The Professional Creative Podcast - Review
Screenshot of The Professional Creative Podcast - From Spotify
Podcasts or democratic radio?
Department 45 is all about making and enabling our small creatives and artists, and on this journey, knowledge is key and central. With the modern abundance and easy of creating content, we also find ourselves drowned in knowledge, good bad, terrible, and biased, as well as good valuable and clever. We want to find the best knowledge, creators, and sources for our clients and ourselves, to expand our base. This spring on our website we hosted a series looking at a range of books and if these were sources of art business knowledge, we looked at seven different publications and came across great practical books, to outright scams, as well as discussions on creativity and being an artist. Now we seek to continue this by going with one of the biggest current content trends in pod casts. We will be in the next weeks reviewing five different podcasts that we identified recommended across the many podcasts.
These include, The Professional Creative, The Life of an Artreprenuer, The Art Biz, Ask an Artist, and The Business of Art. Look out for those reviews on our website through September, and October.
The Professional Creative
The Professional Creative is a podcast that is hosted by Bonnie Christine, who is a successful businessperson and screen print designer. Her art is focused on designing and training screen-print designers, these creatives are those that make the designs used in any manner of wallpaper, fabrics, and similar repetitive surface usages. Common in fabrics prints, and wallpapers, but not at all limited. The licensing of these designs is a core repeating theme and central to the business aspect as that is the most commonly measure of financial project, through licensing of designs.
Christine, in her own words runs a million-dollar scale business, and of this no small part is the training and community membership work she provides training, educating and community building around the topic of screen-print design, licensing and business.
The podcasts we reviewed, the last five episodes 207 – 211, they are sole participant with Christine narrating and sharing a story, advice, suggestions, and similar content very specific to her business and experience. They are between 18 – 30 minutes and drop weekly.
There are advertisements, however all ads we heard were for Christine’s own products, courses, and businesses, these consisted of a mid-roll and a closing ad. All products would seem applicable to the person that would enjoy this content so the advertisements, were not intrusive.
Topics, Benefits and Value
The Professional Creative podcast, comes across as a very personal outlet for Christine, as a part of exploring and describing her very interesting business journey. The episodes that we listened to for this review covered a range of changes that are happening in her core business which is a membership program that helps and builds community for those screen print designers she is working with. The episodes covered the transition and redesign of these memberships, as well as the development of a print magazine, the creation of a value-add tier system for the member ship program as well as a more entry how to become a designer.
The range of topics was interesting, and every episode contained a lot of specific details, including some financials which I found both brave and appreciated greatly. One-episode outlines in detail the steps to consider for starting a print magazine, with details on method and factors to consider. The planning and outlines mentioned in numerous episodes, show great attention to business details such as listening to your client’s feedback and how to make bold and necessary steps in your business to ensure you´re consistently delivering value over time. I feel the openness that Christine shares her stories with, and the depth of consideration made while being creative and an artist, is a great example of the building of both and the balance that you can have as a creative businessperson.
One item that struck me specifically as a great idea and value add that the podcast speaks of is how Christine and her team developed a value add feature of their membership that allows the members to create and bid for real licensing deals that vendors and clients need created, that the members can work towards in live deals with real life situations, and one of them will get that license deal. Through this licensing process Christine is creating an environment where her members are getting real work experience in the role of a freelance designer under the real world context. This is invaluable for new starting freelancers and new professionals alike and presents a clear value to all participating including the licensor. How she describes this set up and the decision making of it shows that there are great ideas to be had in this podcast.
Many people tell stories and talk of how they do things or decisions they made but not many will do so with detail and this I appreciate with the Professional Creative Podcast.
The focus no screen print industry I don´t think takes anything away from the core business lessons to learn here as well as going to show that most of the underlying criteria for success are universal and shared across all businesses.
Summary
The Professional Creative podcast, offers a valuable narrative from a successful businessperson in our art business environment, who will share details, considerations and good ideas with the listener. With a strong background and experience they share in my opinion the consideration and the insight are good for any type of creative businessperson, and I feel it´s worth a follow and a listen, as there is lessons to learn here.
If you have questions or need some support in developing your next project or building core business routines, in your own projects, why not reach out to us on Instagram dm or by email to timh@department45.eu .
THANK YOU!
Tim H Lead Consultant - Department45.eu
