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!
The main struggle I’ve had with being an entrepreneur is this business of identifying someone else’s pain – understanding where there’s a problem in someone’s life that she feels like she can’t solve on her own. from the on it’s a process of analysing that problem and figuring out where, when and how you can help out. I’m a bit of an introvert; my own pains and worries tend to occupy most of my mental space and I have no idea how to fix those, let alone others’.
So when I meet folks who are on my general wavelength and nursing ideas about getting Paid to Play, I start getting interested.
But does that count as a legitimate, capital-P Pain for an entrepreneur to capitalise on?
We geeks are every where, and in force. That, I reckon, is the main takeaway from this chat with Charlie Kennell and Grant Robinson. One is about to do what conventional wisdom would dictate as impossible – organise a pop culture convention in a semi-rural Queensland city. The other is about to do it again.
In this episode, I chat with Charlie Kennell, the organiser of Cairns’ first pop culture convention, Tropicon, and Grant Robinson, organiser of Sugar City Con, which had its first outing in Mackay last year and returns to Mackay this year, about just what it takes to manage and run a convention in your off-hours.
After my chat with Joanna Penn, you might notice that I used the term “disaster” when I was discussing the complications that occurred whilst getting Episode 45 in the can.
In the end, the episode came out fine – thanks in the main to Joanna herself – so it wasn’t really a disaster. And maybe that’s the point.
Something – well, let’s face it, some things – went wrong in the lead up to and during my chat with Joanna. And I do what, I think, a lot of us tend to do when things go wrong.
If Joanna Penn wasn’t an entrepreneur when the novelist bug bit, she was certainly on her way there, with a web log and podcast about self-publishing and a regular speaking gig. Then a chance encounter with NaNoWriMo, an annual writing challenge, resulted in over fifty thousand words of her first novel, the occult action thriller Pentecost.
Joanna levered her existing knowledge of the publishing industry to make Pentecost (now known as Stone of Fire), its sequels in the Arkane series and her second book series, London Psychic, into independent publishing success stories. After having listened to her podacst for years, it was a privilege to chat with Joanna about how she makes sure to keep her noveling, blogging, podcasting and speaking plates all spinning, how Australia helped her discover the Amazon Kindle and just what it means to keep showing up for your dream every day, even when you’re already what most would consider a success.
Kristen Baker was already a success. She’d completed a degree in opera, then become a commercial real estate agent raking in lots of money. Yet she still felt that neither opera nor real estate were her purpose in life; even opera placed too many limits on her creative nature.
Over a process of seven years, Kristen began trying different things until she found herself trying the first thing on her list of dream jobs: Career coach. Now Kristen has her own full-time business helping women bring their true selves into their working lives!
I chat with Kristen about the struggle of finding out what lights you up, how to go about making yourself known to your potential clients and keeping a healthy attitude toward money and being your own boss!
Major Sam is one of the better known cosplayers on the Australian scene. Although it’s partly because she makes sure to attend at least five of the Supanova pop culture expos held across the country each year, Sam still wouldn’t have the reputation she has if she wasn’t such an exceptional craftsperson!
Though Sam’s day job in the bridal industry employs her seamstress and milliner skills, becoming a full time cosplayer is still Sam’s dream, and she’s taking steps toward her goal, selling prints of her cosplays through her online store! Not only that, but she’s also garnered the attention of Australian geek female fashion label Living Dead Clothing, for whom she models!
It was great to chat with Sam about her love of cosplay, geekdom in general and discovering where your true joys lie, even within the hobby you love!
A couple of days ago, I had a “Stop The World, I Want To Get Off” moment. The folks who follow the Podcast over on Facebook would have seen my notice announcing that I’d cancelled all scheduled chats while I work out what direction I want to take the show in.
Forty-two episodes! Does that mean my guest for this episode is the Answer to the Question of Life, The Universe and Everything?
Even if not, it’s great to chat with someone who’s found some pretty good answers to the Question of Getting Paid to Play – and I mean answers, plural! Ash Chain is not only monetising her hobby of cosplay through print sales at conventions, she’s also been able to get into a day job that is all about artistic expression and her personal interests: Tattooing.
Ash has already made her name in both the Brisbane ink and cosplay scenes, and just recently she made the move from the Big Smoke to Cairns, where she will be running a stall at our first ever pop culture convention, Tropicon!
I remember talking with Mal of KerSplatt Comics and Collectables about his fantastic drawing and digital colouring skills. Mal has a profile on DeviantArt where he puts his works up; not only that, he’ll even do work for commission. I asked him about getting paid to draw once, and he told me that he had a hard time charging for the time he put into drawing for others, mostly because he saw it as cheating.
On Facebook, I promised that once a hundred people liked The Paid to Play Podcast’s page, I’d read something out. Well, thanks to the work of the people who love listening to the podcast, I hit the one hundred likes mark a couple of days ago (as of this writing, 103 people like the page)!
So, of the three requests to read stuff out, here are two. Be warned, I’ve not attempted to do any voices or recreate any performances here; I’ve just read them fairly cold and tried to give them emotion close enough to what’s on the page.
Firstly, Franki Andersen’s request that I read Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s first ever Captain’s Log from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
And secondly, here, per Paul Cockrem’s request, is (most of) Henry V’s “Saint Crispin’s Day” speech from William Shakespeare’s Henry V.
