Hi, Mel here,
This earlier-than-expected episode is called Let’s Go Surfing* and it’s a LIVE Q&A episode recorded at FOUNDRY Poole as part of Creator Day 2025. Extra special thanks to Mark Masters at You Are The Media for organising the space and inviting us to record our first live episode *TV announcement voice* recorded in front of a live studio audience. Thank you to the team at FOUNDRY as well for taking such great care of us.
BTW the video version of the live recording won’t go up for a little while yet - I’m still wrangling with the massive file size :)
Q’s got A’d (mostly…we’re okay admitting when we don’t know stuff)
We had a range of questions submitted on LinkedIn:
Robyn Santa Maria on when to burn it all down and start again
Seyam Hamed on how to rest without the guilt
Felicity Wild on what clients really want
Grace Hall on how to get a retainer
Raymond Manzor on where to focus your efforts when there are 29 things you could do right now
We also had questions live in the room:
Mark Masters on how to switch off
Christine Gritmon on when to work for free
Rachel Extance on how to do market research
Thank you to everyone who came, especially Becky Greaves for sending me this link to a LinkedIn post Ben mentions on the show when talking about how engaging a freelancer on retainer is more cost effective than having an employee.
Creator Day
Friday’s recording closed out Creator Day. On Thursday, I spoke on stage** at the main conference day about how to be lucky. I talked about how chance events impact careers, and the three things you can do to harness luck:
get over yourself and post - put yourself out there online
network, network, network - meet people, with the goal of friendship first
go brain-to fingers - don’t over sanitise your content to the point it doesn’t sound like you anymore
It’s thanks to doing those three things that I ended up meeting Ben. And it’s how we’ve approached building an audience for indie business club podcast too. We don’t make promises about how you can hack your way to six figures, or sugar-coat freelance life to make it sound all sunshine and lollipops. We don’t have fake personas or masks we put on to record. We certainly don’t try and polish our episodes too much. And we try and get out there to events to meet people and turn online connections into real-life relationships.
Creator Day is one of those special events where you walk into the room and feel like you’re surrounded by friends. You might not have met all of them yet, but they’re future friends at least. If you want to get in on the action next year, earlywirly bird tickets are on sale now.
Your friends and mine
Thank you so much to everyone who came along to watch the live recording. We really appreciate you sticking around a little longer after Creator Day to join us in our first studio recording. It’ll be weird going back to recording remotely on Riverside!
Check out what friend of the show Amy Nolan created to showcase the day. What a legend. You can buy Amy’s doodles as postcards and pngs at her shop here.
We’re hoping to make it back again next year. What a blast.
Cheers,
Mel & Ben
* (if you’re not sure if you know the song, you probably do)
**if you were at Creator Day, I’d love to know what you thought of my talk. Please can you spare 3-5mins to fill in this form?
Find our producer, theme composer and speedy splicer Ant Henderson on LinkedIn and you can watch older episodes of the show on YouTube here.
If you enjoy the show, you can chip in on our production costs with a £3 contribution at ko-fi.com/indiebusinessclub please and thank you 💖
🎙️ Spotify / Apple podcasts / Amazon Music and Audible
The back catalogue
23 Separated by Motorways: working with friends
22 Bloc Party: celebrating wins
21 Got Your Money: pricing projects
20 Joy Division: work-life balance
19 Daytripper: conferences part deux
18 The Day We Caught The Train: conferences ft Nick Crawford and Lorna Smart
17 Hanging On The Telephone: ghosting ft Will Slater and Heather Pownall
16 Heart Shaped Box: niching ft Ayo Abbas and Raymond Manzor
15 The Masterplan: goal setting ft Janine Coombes and friends
b-side Word of the year
b-side LinkedIn revisited
14 Handbags and Gladrags: Industry Awards ft Charles Commins and Fab Giovannetti
13 You’re The Voice: Tone Of Voice ft Nick Parker, Rishi Dastidar and Amy Nolan
12 Plug In Baby: Software ft Jo Shock and Jack Chambers-Ward
11 Somebody Told Me: Referrals ft Bob Burg and Penni and Jo Pickering
10 Paranoid Android: AI vs creativity ft Tom Albrighton and Molly Scanlan
09 Shiny Happy People: Personal brands ft Lea Turner and Steve Folland
08 Chasing Rainbows: Business planning ft. Alastair Thomson and Melanie Johnson
07 A Design For Life: Creating for yourself with guest co-host Dan Nelken ft. Penny Brazier and The McKinneys
06 I Bet You Look Good On The Timeline ft. Dave Harland and Jonathan Wilcock
05 Flaming Lips: Public Speaking ft. Pascalle Bergmans, Becki Wilson and Nikki Pilkington
04 A Little Respect: Client Relationships ft. Jodie Newman and Sophie Cross
03 All Together Now: Communities ft. Mark Masters and Ant Henderson
02 It’s Oh So Quiet: Finding Clients ft. John Lyons and Bonnie Harrington
01 Fools Gold: Pricing your projects ft. Tom Garfield and Ange Lyons
00 What’s The Story? Podcast origins
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