This week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by James Young to talk about his recent, first conference presentations and why confidence in front of people is as important as a designer’s skills with Photoshop. We discuss his knives business and how a side business can improve the work we do on the web and give us more varied content to talk and write about.

On this week’s Unfinished Business, regular co-host Laura Kalbag and I talked candidly about hosting workshops and whether they make commercial sense and how we make money from them. Laura asked me about choosing Stuff and Nonsense for our business name and we talked about how people can make the best, first impression when you write to us. (Sorry for Laura’s audio quality. We’ll try to do better next time.)

This week on Unfinished Business, I’m joined by CSS hero Harry Roberts to talk about being typecast (literally,) going Keynote commando and Harry’s first week on the dole. We talk about how people can improve the way they think about sending and dealing with email and why we’re both obsessed with the backends of vans.

This week, I’m joined by fabulous designer Veerle Pieters to talk about whether cycling or eating toasties is the best exercise, when working on retainer for long-term projects makes sense and the right questions to ask in our customer enquiry questionnaires.

On Unfinished Business this week, Designer and author of A Pocket Guide to CSS Animations Val Head joins me to talk about practical uses for CSS animations, how small publishers have made publishing books more accessible to first time authors and, of course, The Sooty Show.

This week, illustrator Josh Cleland joins me to talk about how far we can go using a movie or TV character’s likeness, the differences between an illustrator’s and a web designer’s contract and Josh’s “100% satisfaction guarantee.”

In this week’s show, Alex’s friend Brad Frost, who having survived his trip to Brighton, returns to talk to me about designing ‘in the open’ and what the benefits for us and the people and organisations we’re working for can be.

Listen now

On this week’s Unfinished Business, Alex’s friend Brad Frost and I talked about designing in the open, pro-bono projects for great causes like the Pittsburg Food Bank and the open project he and Melissa are starting for them.

Special guest Dan Cederholm joins me on Unfinished Business this week to talk about making money by making things, how making great schwag makes a great impression and what happened to Foamee. We discuss why on Dribbble it’s important for business to not get in the way of a great service and with Dan’s new book coming up, we talk about the process of writing and whether second editions are worth it.

On this week’s show, Designer, icon artist, author and possibly Doctor Who’s next companion Jon Hicks joins yours truly to discuss differences in the ways that Jon approaches different types of clients, how publishing his day rate and availability on his web site has improved the ‘quality’ of his enquiries and who ultimately owns the work that we do. As you might expect we couldn’t spend an hour together without talking about Doctor Who. Quite a lot.

In the latest episode of your favourite soap ‘apera,’ Anna and I go off on a tangent (no really) about the winner of out ‘Daft Proposal Of The Week Award.’ We talk about how to respond to proposals and whether it’s ever appropriate to not respond at all.

Back from my holidays, all tanned and gorgeous (obviously,) I rejoined Anna to talk about Laura Kalbag’s ‘Good Designers, Good Clients’ article on A List Apart. We discuss how I was inspired by Seth Godin to start speaking again and the best bits from the last three episodes including our ‘double our day rate Fridays,’ Sarah’s approach to handling low budget enquiries and the problem of doing work under NDA and having little to show for it in your portfolio.

My friend Sarah Parmenter co-hosted this week’s show with Anna while I was driving back from holiday. This week’s topics are money related — Sarah and Anna talk about fair pricing, taking payment before site launch and educating clients with unreasonably low budgets. Anna also asks Sarah about her new venture and what drove her to start a completely different business. They discuss the importance of honesty and how working on side projects can help with motivation.

I cannot pass up this opportunity to link to this week’s fabulous Happy Monday interview with Seth Godin.

I’m generally bored of interview shows, that’s why we have guest co-hosts instead of guests and this week on Unfinished Business, my CSS hero Harry Roberts steps in while I’m on holiday. Anna asks him about his sudden decision to leave his full-time job, the events that led up to it, and what he plans to do next. Harry shares his advice for people struggling to balance work and personal projects. They also have a sneaky chat about object oriented CSS at the end even though it’s not really business related but something had to replace the usual ten minutes of banter about soap and apes.

In the final chapter of the contract episode trilogy, Anna asks me about writing a contract for working with agencies, we discuss which browsers and devices we should mention, termination fees, and who owns the content at the end of the project.

It’s episode 29 of Unfinished Business and part two in a series about contracts and the Contract Killer. Anna and I talk about how a good contract sets the tone and lays the foundations for a mutually good business relationship. We get down to the nitty gritty of the first few Contract Killer clauses including specifying deliverables, price and payment terms.

Oh. And I mentioned ze Chermans but I think I got avay viz it.

Finally, yes finally, Anna and I get around to the first of two, maybe three, episodes about contacts. We talk about the ‘Contract Killer,’ why we think it’s important to always use a contract and why some people think otherwise. We discuss the essential elements that should go into every contract and why, on top of any legal benefits, how a good contract says a lot about how you do business and why writing yours should be a creative challenge you should relish.

(Don’t miss the gag wheel and ice-cream banter after the show. It’s a scorcher.)

Contracts seem to be the topic of this month and I, for one, couldn’t be happier about that. Anna and I are covering contracts in detail over the next two or three episodes of Unfinished Business, starting with episode 28 out on Monday. Not only will we be talking about ‘Contract Killer,’ we’ll be explaining why writing your contract should be a creative activity and how that says a lot about how you do business.

I know it likely won’t ever happen, but if you get fed up of hearing our voices, Contract Killer also got plenty of mentions on that other podcast Liz and Sean’s The Freelance Web podcast this week too in an excellent episode about contracts.

In this week’s episode, Anna and I discuss Motorhead and motorcycles and how I’m too much of a ‘wendy’ to lift one. Really. We talk about how Stuff and Nonsense’s pattern of weekly working sometimes doesn’t work and how to deal with competing client demands when you have limited time available.

In this week’s episode, lycra wearing, tightrope walker* Anna Debenham and I ask “who would win in a fight? Boba Fett or Batman?” “If the world was ending tomorrow, which endangered species would you eat?” and other important business questions. More importantly we talk about reviews and how they can help improve your business.

* We lied about the lycra.

In this, the 25th anniversary episode of Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about working in a supermarket (a while ago, obviously) and how my professional level skiving almost lead me to a career in supermarket management. We talk about selling an experience as well as selling design or code and how creative services are as much about putting on a show as they are about doing work.

This week, while Anna’s away, I talk to (Alex’s friend) Brad Frost about iOS7, dropping pretzels and chocolate Hobnobs. (Spoiler: Brad had no idea what they are.) In between we talk about speaking and contributing and what you gain by giving away information freely.

In this week’s episode of Unfinished Business, Anna and I talk about me being robbed of my iPhone in Geneva and the implications, both personal and business of what happened. We talk about the importance of ensuring that insurance is up-to-date (spoiler: mine wasn’t) and how to secure your iOS devices and Mac in case of theft.