Anna Debenham and I have Unfinished Business
Late last year, Anna Debenham and I were talking on the phone. It was one of those easy conversations where we talked about the good and bad of the work we were doing and how to solve a business problem we both had. Before we knew it, an hour had gone by and one of us (I don’t remember who) said, half jokingly, “we should do a podcast about the business side of working on the web.” So we did.
We both listen to a lot of podcasts on various topics, but one thing we’d agreed on was that there wasn’t a show was aimed at designers, developers, programmers, writers and associated trades about the business end of working on the web. Maybe this was because people think that business is boring, the side we do begrudgingly before we get back to designing or developing. It’s also possible that talking about business is a little taboo. But when I write about business topics, I get a lot of great feedback. My Contract Killer was one of the most commented articles on 24ways and is still one of the most visited pages on this site, so Anna and I producing our own show about business made sense to us. We hope it does to you.
We call the show Unfinished Business.
We hope you’ll listen.
We hope you like what you hear.
In the weeks and months to come, we’ll talk about contracts, hiring staff, getting paid, setting rates and more. Although the theme of Unfinished Business is, of course, business, we’ll talk about other things too. I want the show to be fun, informative and above all honest.
As an example, in the weeks before Christmas, my wife and I decided to hire our first employee, a wonderful designer who we’ve known and been inspired by for years. Making the decision to employ someone vs hiring them on contract was daunting — she’s our first employee in fifteen years of running our business — so I talked to my friends who’d already made similar decisions. They gave me advice and insight I wouldn’t have had on my own. That’s what we want our show, Unfinished Business, to do.
Unfinished Business will air every Monday at 2:00pm (GMT) 9:00am (EST) and the first episode, Monkey Business, is available now on the site with iTunes pending.