Podcast

Episode 232: My Christmas Wish List

October 14, 2025

Know your client. Are they beginners or enthusiastic amateurs? Meaning are they 1’s or 5’s? And where will you take them? If you cannot fully understand who you serve, you cannot serve them. Building your business to serve everyone means you serve no one. Let’s talk knives. Listen in…

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Episode 231: Know Your Clients

October 7, 2025

Know your client. Are they beginners or enthusiastic amateurs? Meaning are they 1’s or 5’s? And where will you take them? If you cannot fully understand who you serve, you cannot serve them. Building your business to serve everyone means you serve no one. Let’s talk knives. Listen in…

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Episode 230: What Do You Want To Measure?

September 30, 2025

We spend all of our time making sure we are checking all the boxes, doing things as expected and then trying to finish well. We measure efficiency, profitability, sales. What if instead we measured engagement, satisfaction, happiness.  It is all about placebos.

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Episode 229: Frustration

September 23, 2025

We should all chart our own course much deeper than simply a strategy to find uncharted territory. Be true to your soul as an artist, where there are no boundaries of possible only the imagination of what could be. What would your creative business look like then? Who says you have to charge any way that someone tells you to. Fifty years next year. Let’s talk HBO.

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Episode 228: Stay In Your Lane

September 16, 2025

What does it really mean to only do work for those that care? To really be the best at what you do? To know your range and to stay there? To really know why you are trusted? Most important, what happens when you allow yourself to do the work you simply do not do well? It is about assumptions, bias and the refusal to believe in the power of your lane. Not everyone knows how to spend a million dollars well and let’s talk about why that matters. Listen in…

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Episode 227: Why Hourly Sucks (Mostly)

September 9, 2025

For creative businesses, the value of time is not linear. There is intrinsic value that has nothing to do with physical effort. Ahem, creativity. You are not lawyers or accountants. So please stop acting like them.

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Episode 226: Play On The Right Stage

September 2, 2025

You are hungry, scrappy, do whatever it takes to get your big break. You never want to lose that. It feels arrogant if you do. And yet you know what got you here will not get you there. Let’s talk Kate Winslet.

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Episode 225: The Value Of The Subjective And Knowing If You Are Drawing Bird Or Clouds

August 26, 2025

Today we are going to talk about the value of the subjective, the emotional component that is critical to the success of every creative business.  It is knowing the difference between drawing birds and clouds and when you might share each.  It is also knowing that the language of emotional and its return dwarfs anything rational.  In the end, what it means is that you have to stop playing the game you are not very good at and start (or only) play the one you are. Listen in…

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Episode 224: Your Business Is Not A Factory

August 19, 2025

We all grew up and are taught the value of a factory.  Efficiency. Low cost. Scale. And you have tried to force your creative business into the paradigm. You measure volume of work, hours, effort, not ideas, emotional intelligence or really anything reflecting the value of relationship.  Your creative business is not a factory so stop acting like it is.

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Episode 223: Factory vs. Community

August 12, 2025

Most of us grew up learning about business through the eyes of the factory model. We all need factories and their models to live our lives. Creative businesses, on the other hand, are needs and have to leave that model behind. Let’s talk about Justo Thomas.

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