A Freelance Photographer Career from Scratch: Matt Bond, Episode 21

I wonder whether I’ve done Matt Bond a disservice. The most important thing to him is being a great freelance photographer. He’s all about the quality of his work and building his reputation on it.

In fact, one of the first things Matt asked me when we were discussing the interview was this: Could I avoid dwelling on the injuries that caused his switch in career?

Frankly, I don’t need to. Matt’s already racked up an impressive list of photographic achievements since he started his business in 2012.

He’s done portfolio shoots for models, publicity work for comedy gigs and fashion shows – he was even the photographer for Sesame Street’s most recent visit to Cairns. If you have any doubt about Matt’s skill, just follow the links in the show notes to his website and galleries!

If that’s not enough, Matt offers courses that demistify the complexities of even basic photography, teaching people how to find their way around their digital SLR cameras!

Still, you tend to view those achievements in a new light when working them meant Matt was in constant pain just from standing up.

Matt’s photography career was, in a way, his Plan B. Heck, after his leg injuries made him unemployable and put a career in music out of his reach as well, it was his Plan C!

Yet when Matt discovered his new passion, he embraced it and let nothing, not even pain, get in his way. It’s a story all of us folks who dream of getting paid to play can learn from.

In the end, we did spend much more time on just how Matt went about building his career, from his first portrait shoots to how he organises and executes his projects. So please listen to a great interview with a  skilled photographer who lets nothing get in the way of his passions!

(CORRECTION: I originally had the start year of Matt’s business as 2010, and I think I mentioned it as such in the episode intro. It was actually 2012 – which makes his achievements even more awesome!)

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Listen to These Inspiring Stories of Overcoming Disease and Disability

A few days ago, you did the New Year’s Resolution thing. You took a look at 2012, identified the things you could do better. You opened up your secret heart a bit and made promises to do the things that you’ve always wanted to.

But now it’s the fourth of January, and you’re already looking at the return of the usual routine. Maybe you’re about to go off leave. Maybe you’re already back at work. And as those all too familiar pressures resume their presence in your life, you start to worry. You realise you’ve got no real idea how to get to where you want to be from where you are.

What’s worse, you don’t know what’s just around the corner.

It’s a huge, complex world we live in. Even when we think we have things under control, the vast and microscopic forces of life can conspire to change everything in an instant.

How can we hope to truly make our personal passions real when even our own bodies and brains can conspire against us?

I’m here with good news. Not only can we do it, but people have done it.

I’ve spoken with them.

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Episode 20: Catherine Caine, Cash and Joy

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!

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How Does Your Fall Back Position Help You With Your Dream Career?

At first, a fall-back position may seem an excuse to chicken out of following your passion, working a second job as a betrayal of your dream, a diversion of your valuable time.

Take George Clooney, for example. There’s something attributed to him that’s always stuck with me:

His father kept trying to tell him that he needed to stay in college so that he would have something to fall back on. George’s reply was “If I have something to fall back on, then I will”

– From a George Clooney fan web site.

It’s the sort of thing that makes me thing that I ought to be diverting as much time as possible into pursuing my own vocation.

That every second spent on finding other ways of supporting myself is a betrayal of that dream.

But as I interview people for The Paid to Play Podcast, I’m discovering something different:

A lot of creatives are using their “fall-backs” to ensure that they can give their best when they approach their passion.

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Paid to Play: The Christmas 2012 Special Episode

Ho ho ho! It’s Santa Rob here, with a special gift for all the good boys and girls who listen to the Paid to Play Podcast!

Okay, okay, fine. I know, I ran out of interviews. But I’ve had the idea of doing a year-in-review blog post / podcast for a while, and now seemed the opportune time!

So join me as I talk about how 2012 has been a year of change, the advent of the Paid to Play Podcast and what to look forward to in 2013!

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How Do You Find Your Plan B?

I wrote this for an opportunity that didn’t work out, but I didn’t want those words to go to waste! Huge thanks to Chris Harrison for some nifty editing!

Nowadays it seems that being a full-time employee is just as risky as starting your own business. You can devote your life to a company, yet if you find yourself out of the job you’re trained for and experienced in, what do you do?

If Leigh Dall’Osto and Gavin Dunne are any example, the answer would seem to be keep doing what you were already doing – just find different, even unusual ways of doing it.

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Episode 18: Jeffrey Rufino, Social Media Guy

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!

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Episode 17: Carol Tice, Freelance Writer and Career Coach

After having authors and bloggers on the podcast, it’s fun to have someone who’s not only a full-time freelance writer on the show, but also someone who’s dedicated to helping others achieve similar goals – so much so that she not only blogs about making it as a freelance writer, she also runs a paid-membership web site that offers courses and tips on every aspect of the business of freelance writing.

Carol worked at a newspaper and as a movie script transcriber before going freelance and managed to blow away her own expectations of success when she started the Freelance Writers Den. On top of all that, she’s a wife and mother of three! Talk about doing it all…

Please listen to this interview, wherein I completely miss the opportunity to quiz Carol about her early work as a song writer (Brill Building Fail!) but find out plenty about what it takes to make it in freelancing.

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Episode 16: Saffron Bryant, Fantasy Author, Biomedicine Student and Arse-Kicker of Cancer

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.

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Episode 15: Kelly Gurnett, Cordelia Calls It Quits

(I might be far too late on this, but: Welcome, all you fine Cordelia Calls It Quits readers! I hope you enjoy your stay! If you want to know where anything is, please ask!)

UPDATE: As of 2014, Kelly is now fully self-employed!

Changing your career, no matter what you’re aiming for or leaving, is a scary endeavour. Embrace your skills and talent all you like, there are still a heap unknowns that you have to face and a lot of habits and familiar things that make staying where you are a more tempting option.

Freelance blogger Kelly Gurnett has made breaking free of those habits and letting go of the familiar things the purpose of her blog, Cordelia Calls It Quits. In each post, Kelly, in the guise of her alter-ego Cordelia, examines an aspect of her life that she either has changed or is in the process of changing. It’s a phenomenal way of keeping yourself honest; her Quits List numbers twenty-seven, with the most recent having gone up in the last couple of weeks, and she reviews her progress against that list on a regular basis.

By any measure, Kelly has been successful; she’s turned her full-time job into a two-day-a-week job and is blogging on several large life-change web sites. Naturally, this put her on my first List of People I Want As Guests, which made it a double pleasure to interview her about how she got to where she is now – especially juggling the day job with the dream job – and the places she still wants to go!

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