The antidote to the "don't give up your day job" blues: Chats with career crazies and freelance fun-makers on how to turn what you love doing into income!
I’ve listened to a fair few life-change and small business podcasts in the last year or so, and a lot of them talk about Financial Freedom as an aim and an achievement. It’s one thing to hear podcasters in the States talk about it, though, and another thing to meet an example of it.
Michelle Ward has been pursuing alternative income streams for almost a decade and has amassed such a broad portfolio of affiliate sales sites that she has the freedom to explore where her interests take her, whether full-time employeehood or even freelancing. After getting to know her at work, I just had to talk with Michelle about how she became an Internet entrepreneur!
It’s one thing to talk about getting paid to play, and another to turn your play into something that others will want to buy. But getting the word about how great your thing is and how it will help / entertain people? That’s a whole different kind of challenge, especially when you’re just starting out and your marketing budget doesn’t even have a brass razoo.
That’s where Tim Reid, host of the Small Business Big Marketing podcast, comes in. Tim is a longtime marketing guru who quit working for some huge agencies seven years ago to go into business for himself. Not only is each weekly episode a fun chat with a businessperson taking an innovative approach to connecting with his or her customers, it’s also a great advertisement for Tim’s marketing consultant and speaking services!
I have to thank my old mate Marcus Herstik for hipping me to Tim, who is the kind of guy I want to be when I grow up: Confident, relaxed, gracious and great to share one of his famous fireside chats with!
When she appeared on the 2009 season of Australia’s The Biggest Loser, the red-haired, red-gloved, hooded Emazon cut straight into not only her trainees but also the audience. Emazon demanded nothing less than everything from the contestants in short, sharp sessions that took them so far out of their comfort zones that they could barely remember what comfort meant. And a lot of folks watching at home weren’t sure just what to make of this fierce being.
It’s easy to be shocked or intimidated by that sort of intensity, but it’s just as easy to forget that Emazon, known to friends and family as Emma Barbato, was putting just as much effort into drawing her contestants out of their former selves as she was into challenging their physical limits. Emma has been working to help people overcome their conflicts with themselves for twelve years now, including helping victims of domestic violence and sexual assault find or rediscover their strength.
There was no way that chatting with Emma wasn’t going to be bloody interesting, and while she mightn’t sport that crimson hair colour any more, she is no less energetic and focused than when she first made us couch-potatoes sit up and take notice! We talked about Emma’s career up to now, her plans to take her STAND program to Saudi Arabia this year – and even about how our modern culture encourages us to dislike ourselves in order to get along.
So much strength in there. What happened to it? Where’d it go? My only objective was to get it back out again.
– Emazon on training a contestant, The Biggest Loser Australia Series 4
But again, there is that story of having one of the best explanations for not following your passion in the world and still not letting that stop you. Talitha Kalago battles a potentially fatal disease known as Stevens-Johnson syndrome. It’s a fight which could almost be a full-time occupation itself.
But while most of us only talk about getting a book published, Talitha has carved out the time to not only write but find an agent and get her work on the shelves. When I interviewed her, Talitha had just received her first royalty cheque!
This podcast, thankfully, is more about that journey to publishing that all authors face and how you can get your career as a writer started. Listen and enjoy!
I’ve been reading a lot of small business sites lately. I’ve noticed that there’s something that most of them assume – that you already have a business on the go, a product and / or service ready for sale, and you just need help taking it to “the next level.”
There aren’t anywhere near as many resources for people who want to make a career change, but don’t yet know what the business of their own personal business will be, who aren’t sure what they have that can become a product or service – or simply don’t believe that anyone else could find value in their wildest, deepest, most secret passions.
That’s a niche that Catherine Caine is only too happy to fill.
While she may have started out the way a lot of Internet business folks do – helping folks build websites – her project for the last two years, Cash and Joy, is geared specifically to help you dig past the crap you and others have layered over the top of your passions and get started on finding the people who will pay money for your ideal work.
I call Catherine a consulting motivator (she called me an “ideas explorer” when she had me on her podcast) and in this episode, I talk with Catherine about the process of experimentation that enabled her to build Cash and Joy into her full time vocation!
It’s easy to think about starting your own business in terms of how it’s going to solve your fiscal problems, but if Jeff Rufino were happy with simply bringing the cash in, he could have stuck with playing poker at the Casino every night.
Instead, twelve months ago, Jeff took a chance on a belief of his – that social media could help Cairns’ struggling businesses get more customers through the door – and went into business for himself. In that time, he’s built himself a reputation as the local Social Media Guy, has formed a company of equally passionate individuals and is still going strong.
I’m very happy to have sat down with Jeff over Skype and talked about how he got to where he is. His passion, his confidence and his honest desire to help people out shine through as he speaks!
It’s easy sometimes to feel that you have so much on your plate that you’ll never get anything done. North Queenslander Saffron Bryant is one of those people who puts the lie to that belief. Saffron turns twenty-two in December, and in the last couple of years, she not only completed a degree in biomedicine, but she also wrote and self-published the first in a series of fantasy novels, The Fallen Star.
If that wasn’t enough to show people that there are no excuses, Saffron completed those two massive projects whilst undergoing surgery to remove a brain tumour.
On top of all that, Saffron is going back for more of, thankfully, two of the above three things, working to complete an honours degree in biomedicine and the second novel in the Lost Child Saga. I just had to have a chat with her about how she got and still gets it all done.
It’s one thing to start a business in order to sell a product, yet another to believe in the product and its benefits. But Brad Russell, the co-owner and operator of Earth Toys with his wife Bree, lives and breathes a whole philosophy of play that seems absent from most places that sell toys.
In my fifth location interview, I visited Earth Toys, a shop in the middle of Cairns, to talk with Brad about how he and Bree set their business up and how it’s going, but came away not just with that but also a hefty slice of Brad himself.
Brad is a great guy to talk with: Always relaxed, always intelligent and always very insightful. Relax and let this one sink in!
And once you’ve finished this episode, drop in and see Brad when you’re next in the area. You’ll probably leave with something you hadn’t thought about buying before, but with a view on playing – and living – that you’d never considered before.
Leigh Dall’Osto is one of my more popular guests, and her story of going from the campaign trail of a local government election to opening a successful fusion of cafe and community centre in Edmonton, on Cairns’ south side, has garnered some interest outside the podcast too.
A few weeks ago I was talking with one of the writers at work about the podcast, and he asked me if I could pen a few words about career changes with Leigh as the sample case. I submittted a draft, and he asked if I could get Leigh to tell me more about that period between when Leigh lost the election and opened the cafe.
Thankfully, Leigh was happy to answer my extra questions over the phone. Thanks to having Leigh on speaker, I was able to record the conversation for quotes in the article – and after I was done, I realised the recording would make a great episode!
So please enjoy the return of the effervescent Leigh Dall’Osto to the Paid to Play Podcast!
Update: At the end of 2013, Foxtel closed SFtv Australia down, making Gavin redundant. He still blogs at his own domain, ShoutyBeardyThing (see the links below).
Don’t let the picture of the medieval gent with the sword fool you; Gavin Lucan is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. I’ve known him since the late nineties, and was frankly a little envious when I found out he’d parlayed his experience in scheduling pay TV channels into a gig at Australia’s branch of the SciFi Channel.
Shortly afterward, I signed up for an e-mail newsletter in which Gav offers wry observations on the week’s events in genre fiction, from books to comics, movies to television, games to conventions, and now SFtv feature that newsletter as a weekly blog on their website!
Given that he’s a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy, my friend Gav is definitely getting paid to play. Join me as I find out how he got there!
