Latest / Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary) / The importance of insurance for creatives - Ashley Baxter

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The importance of insurance for creatives - Ashley Baxter · Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)

• 0:06
  Ashley Baxter: it's okay to make those mistakes.
• 0:08
  Ashley Baxter: They might be expensive mistakes, but the good thing is you'll probably just make them once, like you adapted and tweaked things going forward.
• 0:15
  Ashley Baxter: So I think if anybody's listening and they're maybe thinking, Oh, no, I'm doing things a bit wrong, or you're going to change in a titty on your business as you, grow and become more mature.
• 0:25
  Ashley Baxter: So it's okay to make mistakes, but hopefully you learn from them and put measures in place to prevent them from happening again.
• 0:37
  Radim Malinic: Hello and welcome to Creativity for Sale podcast, a show to help you start and grow your life changing creative career and business.
• 0:46
  Radim Malinic: My name is Radim Malinich and creativity changed my life.
• 0:49
  Radim Malinic: You see, I believe creativity can change your life too.
• 0:52
  Radim Malinic: I even wrote a book about it and it inspired this podcast.
• 0:55
  Radim Malinic: I've set out to interview the world's most brilliant creatives, designers, writers, musicians, makers and marketeers about their life changing experiences with creativity.
• 1:05
  Radim Malinic: If you ever wanted to know how people go from their humble beginnings to the pinnacle of their success, our conversation should provide you with an intimate look into the triumphs, challenges and untold stories behind their creative endeavours.
• 1:18
  Radim Malinic: We also discuss the highs and lows of creative careers and creative life.
• 1:22
  Radim Malinic: So, thank you for joining me on this exploration of passion, creativity, innovation, and the boundless potential within us all.
• 1:29
  Radim Malinic: Let creativity change your life.
• 1:32
  Radim Malinic: Are you ready?
• 1:36
  Radim Malinic: today's guest has become the go to insurance broker for many freelancers and small creative businesses.
• 1:41
  Radim Malinic: She's been providing necessary products and insurance packages and even education for those who don't often seem to think about possibilities of what might go wrong sooner rather than later.
• 1:51
  Radim Malinic: It doesn't matter what your creative pursuit or title is, I'm sure you will find our conversation very useful indeed.
• 1:57
  Radim Malinic: A former wedding photographer turned into an indispensable insurance broker.
• 2:01
  Radim Malinic: It's my pleasure to introduce Ashley Baxter.
• 2:10
  Radim Malinic: Hi Ashley! How are you doing?
• 2:12
  Ashley Baxter: I'm great.
• 2:13
  Ashley Baxter: It's so good to see you.
• 2:14
  Ashley Baxter: How are you doing?
• 2:15
  Radim Malinic: I'm delighted to have you on the show.
• 2:17
  Radim Malinic: You're my, uh, I believe my second Scottish guest, obviously after the trademark Craig Black, who's been flying the creative Scottish flag pretty much everywhere all the time, which was quite rightfully So it's nice to have you on the show and I'm sorry you've been booked second.
• 2:31
  Ashley Baxter: No, that's fine.
• 2:32
  Ashley Baxter: I mean, I can imagine the conversation with Craig was very interesting.
• 2:35
  Ashley Baxter: He's so talented.
• 2:37
  Radim Malinic: Craig lives and breathes what he does.
• 2:39
  Radim Malinic: he's literally a poster boy for creativity and business and manifestation.
• 2:43
  Radim Malinic: But, yeah, enough about Craig.
• 2:45
  Radim Malinic: How are you doing?
• 2:46
  Radim Malinic: It's nice to have you here.
• 2:48
  Ashley Baxter: Yes, it's good to be here.
• 2:50
  Ashley Baxter: you and I have met in person a couple of times, but it's been a while.
• 2:55
  Ashley Baxter: Definitely pre Covid, wasn't it?
• 2:58
  Radim Malinic: Oh, absolutely.
• 2:59
  Radim Malinic: Yeah.
• 2:59
  Radim Malinic: I believe I might have met you.
• 3:00
  Radim Malinic: I I can't remember where.
• 3:01
  Radim Malinic: I think I saw you once in Scotland, in Aberdeen,
• 3:04
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah, so that was at the Meet Conf, wasn't it?
• 3:07
  Radim Malinic: the a shout out to Cameron Duthie.
• 3:10
  Ashley Baxter: I loved that conference.
• 3:12
  Radim Malinic: that was amazing.
• 3:13
  Radim Malinic: It's such a shame
• 3:14
  Ashley Baxter: was so it was so good.
• 3:15
  Radim Malinic: They couldn't do it again because there was so much money and because it's such a, yeah, it's a tricky subject
• 3:21
  Ashley Baxter: it feels like we, I know, but I know, but it feels like we never get conferences like that in Scotland.
• 3:27
  Ashley Baxter: So I don't know if that contributed to my personal enjoyment of that event, but I just loved the whole experience.
• 3:32
  Ashley Baxter: It was a really good vibe, good people, great talks.
• 3:35
  Ashley Baxter: So that's where I first met you.
• 3:37
  Ashley Baxter: And then the second time was when I was doing a talk in London.
• 3:42
  Ashley Baxter: What was that called again?
• 3:43
  Ashley Baxter: design the business.
• 3:44
  Radim Malinic: I think design and
• 3:45
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah, Um, and that probably was about 2018.
• 3:48
  Ashley Baxter: So yeah, it's been a while.
• 3:50
  Radim Malinic: yeah, I remember that was such an interesting setting and it's always requires someone's initiative.
• 3:56
  Radim Malinic: And then a lot of work to actually make it, happen, just because those things just don't happen easy, just nothing that we see everything that the shiny outcome, of what's happening.
• 4:06
  Radim Malinic: And then, that it's like, as someone said, it's like a swan, it looks so serene on the water, but it paddles manically under the water to stay afloat, you know, just to move about.
• 4:16
  Ashley Baxter: I know.
• 4:16
  Ashley Baxter: Are you talking about the process of putting on events like that?
• 4:19
  Radim Malinic: Yeah.
• 4:20
  Ashley Baxter: it's not for me.
• 4:21
  Ashley Baxter: I've never done it before and I just don't think I have the organizational skills to do it.
• 4:25
  Ashley Baxter: You would be good at it, seeing as you know so many people.
• 4:28
  Radim Malinic: I think I'll stick to the podcast.
• 4:30
  Radim Malinic: I mean, I just literally I have like an hour a day to do this and then I just I'm paddling under the water, trying my best to do this.
• 4:38
  Ashley Baxter: if you don't mind me asking, outside of the podcast, what are you working on right now?
• 4:43
  Radim Malinic: I've got three different avenues at the moment.
• 4:47
  Radim Malinic: Thanks for asking me the first question as opposed to me asking you the first question.
• 4:50
  Radim Malinic: I like it.
• 4:51
  Radim Malinic: so yeah, I still run a brand new studio.
• 4:53
  Radim Malinic: I've scaled down the operation just to work with core roster of clients just on enjoyable projects that they span for a couple of years.
• 5:02
  Radim Malinic: So, that's part of my process at the moment because I actually have not said yes to any new clients for about, what's it, 12, 16, 16 months now.
• 5:13
  Radim Malinic: So, So, that's a long time.
• 5:15
  Radim Malinic: Yeah, I just literally, I've built for 20 years, I've built a sort of core roster.
• 5:20
  Radim Malinic: And 16 months ago, about more than a year ago, I've decided that I was going to make two books.
• 5:25
  Radim Malinic: And try to build my book, publishing business, rebuild it again.
• 5:30
  Radim Malinic: And I couldn't do the two things together because I was, I had a staff and in the past, and I was paying comes with that pensions and, insurance and like a national insurance and kind of stuff.
• 5:41
  Radim Malinic: And it gets busy because we only have sort of one sort of mental headspace and just to build up with young family and it was getting a bit too much.
• 5:49
  Radim Malinic: Book business was doing really well in the past, it's almost as much as you put into it, you get back out, it's never like, you put a one pound and you get a hundred pound return for nothing.
• 5:59
  Radim Malinic: And so publishing business is like another 35, 40%.
• 6:03
  Radim Malinic: And then we are starting a small coffee company, which
• 6:07
  Ashley Baxter: I love coffee.
• 6:08
  Radim Malinic: Yeah, everyone loves coffee, but we're trying to sort of build a coffee for creative moment.
• 6:13
  Radim Malinic: I know it sounds a little bit like a BS alert, but it's more about how to bring speciality coffee to creative people and people who are interested in good coffee, but don't necessarily know which farm or which blend or which single origin to go for.
• 6:29
  Radim Malinic: So we try to create.
• 6:30
  Radim Malinic: this thing where actually helps you to discover things through more of a sort of personal match to the coffee profile and the mood, because when it comes to speciality coffee, it's just, it's incredible.
• 6:43
  Radim Malinic: it just, the difference is so much better.
• 6:46
  Ashley Baxter: Wow.
• 6:46
  Ashley Baxter: So into like a product business now from client work to publishing to product stuff.
• 6:54
  Radim Malinic: Yeah, look, I'm writing a book about how to do actually a product on the internet or how to create automated income because as you know, you go to these talks and you've got some old, dog talking about look, I'm done with client work now.
• 7:06
  Radim Malinic: I'm like, I'm done.
• 7:07
  Radim Malinic: Look, sitting here in the audience as a fresh rookie, and you're telling me how to not do client work.
• 7:14
  Radim Malinic: Can you tell us how, to actually get ahead of us?
• 7:16
  Radim Malinic: So there's going to be a book currently titled Turn Dust Into Gold.
• 7:21
  Radim Malinic: It's one of my chapters from the original book.
• 7:23
  Radim Malinic: Turn Dust Into Gold in a way of creating automated sort of business of product, just how to do it, where to look for margins.
• 7:31
  Radim Malinic: it's going to be quite dry.
• 7:32
  Radim Malinic: That's going to be very functional because I think we've all got all these breadcrumbs everywhere around us and Claiming ignorance.
• 7:40
  Radim Malinic: It's just not quite right
• 7:43
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah.
• 7:44
  Ashley Baxter: To me, you really like epitomize the whole, like you define creativity.
• 7:49
  Radim Malinic: Thank you
• 7:50
  Ashley Baxter: You've like done all and dipped your toe.
• 7:52
  Ashley Baxter: You've got so much experience as well.
• 7:54
  Ashley Baxter: So it is really, that's why you should be writing books and doing talks and doing this podcast.
• 8:01
  Radim Malinic: Well, thank you for the, you know, reaffirmation that I'm doing something right.
• 8:05
  Radim Malinic: That's very good.
• 8:05
  Radim Malinic: Well, to my listeners, welcome to With Jack Creative Podcast.
• 8:10
  Radim Malinic: thank you, actually.
• 8:11
  Radim Malinic: Thanks for my questions.
• 8:12
  Radim Malinic: But I think what I would love to do, talk about ignorance.
• 8:15
  Radim Malinic: I think ignorance, I think is a topic that very much goes with what you do.
• 8:19
  Radim Malinic: And in fact, ignorance may be a lack of knowledge because, if we claim ignorance, sometimes that's not necessarily the right word.
• 8:26
  Radim Malinic: So.
• 8:26
  Radim Malinic: You and I, as you introduced us and talked through the introduction, how we met, I very much enjoy your talk in 2018, and I'm not sure if I had already signed up with your insurance company or was about to sign up on the back of your talk, but it was an eye opener because I've been doing this for more than 22, 23, depends on how I remember the stuff, more than 20 plus years.
• 8:53
  Radim Malinic: And for most of my original, most of my professional time, my freelance time, I never had a contract.
• 8:59
  Radim Malinic: I was winging it.
• 9:00
  Radim Malinic: And I was just happy that if, People paid, if it was somehow agreed, people didn't pay.
• 9:06
  Radim Malinic: Sometimes, we've written off the losses and stuff, but in some ways, where sometimes insignificant, you know, if someone didn't pay me 20 years ago, 200 pounds for a logo, I can still hold my grudge against them 20 years later, but I'm not going to pursue it, in the law of court, but.
• 9:21
  Radim Malinic: But when things get bigger, obviously you realize, okay, I need to protect myself.
• 9:24
  Radim Malinic: what I'm doing, obviously, what's, what's the sort of safety policy?
• 9:28
  Radim Malinic: Because things get no, you you grow up in the world and you need to change the way you do business because I love this quote at the moment, which says, we'll, got you here.
• 9:37
  Radim Malinic: won't get you there.
• 9:38
  Radim Malinic: Means what I was doing 20 years ago is absolutely invalid and obsolete to how I'm doing business 20 years later.
• 9:45
  Radim Malinic: So insurance was something when I listened to your sort of explanation how it actually works.
• 9:51
  Radim Malinic: What do I need to do with it?
• 9:52
  Radim Malinic: Because it was yeah, it was all of a sudden like the Got a floodgates of knowledge by insurance open.
• 9:58
  Radim Malinic: I was like, Oh, shit, that is so important.
• 10:03
  Radim Malinic: And I think I signed up the straight the next day and told everyone to do this.
• 10:07
  Radim Malinic: And I was very impressed with how you've set up the product to be accessible and tailored to the micro niche of creatives because.
• 10:16
  Radim Malinic: if you look at the big companies like Hiscox or whoever else, it's just, it's crazy.
• 10:21
  Radim Malinic: You don't know where to turn and what to do.
• 10:23
  Radim Malinic: So let's go back to the start of your journey.
• 10:28
  Radim Malinic: What motivates you to hang up your camera and let the wedding people be photographed by somebody else, the bride and groom start insurance company?
• 11:22
  Ashley Baxter: I think a few things led to starting my own insurance company.
• 11:26
  Ashley Baxter: I was working in insurance when I was doing wedding photography on the side and I was figuring out what I wanted my next step to be.
• 11:33
  Ashley Baxter: I enjoyed photography but I don't know, after doing weddings for several years, I was finding myself enjoying it less and less and it's one of those things where I don't want to take people's money off them if I'm not.
• 11:44
  Ashley Baxter: you know, 100 percent present and given it my all.
• 11:48
  Ashley Baxter: so I also felt like with wedding photography, there's always like a ceiling, not that I'm a hugely money oriented person, but there's always a ceiling.
• 11:56
  Ashley Baxter: You're only ever going to earn as much money as you're physically there shooting and able to do So I liked the idea of having a business that could grow beyond that.
• 12:05
  Ashley Baxter: Like I said, I was already working in insurance at the time, but it wasn't, insurance for freelancers, it wasn't business insurance, it was a completely separate thing.
• 12:13
  Ashley Baxter: and so I just started playing around with starting, because I had been a photographer and I'd had this experience of buying insurance, a really terrible experience, like I had no idea what it was that I'd purchased.
• 12:24
  Ashley Baxter: I just remember, you know, hitting the checkout button.
• 12:29
  Ashley Baxter: and crossing my fingers and hoping that I'd got the right thing, but also praying that I would never have to find out if I had the right cover, I'd never have to find out if I was in a situation where I needed to use it.
• 12:40
  Ashley Baxter: so I wanted to start something that Simplified insurance for creatives at the time there weren't any providers that were solely focused on creators Which is why you mentioned like Hiscox and various other providers they have these products and they're trying to market them to small tech businesses with multiple employees or estate agents or solicitors or people like us creative freelancers and what you end up with is you're never able to articulate what exactly this product doesn't, how it helps people.
• 13:14
  Ashley Baxter: So I think with us being so niche and so focused on freelancers, we're able to pull out all of the relevant bits of the policy and talk about them in a way that resonates with you.
• 13:24
  Ashley Baxter: Like you were saying, when you heard me speak at that conference, you finally understood how it worked and how it applied to you.
• 13:29
  Ashley Baxter: And that's what we're trying to do.
• 13:31
  Ashley Baxter: so yeah, it started with Jack back in.
• 13:34
  Ashley Baxter: Was it?
• 13:34
  Ashley Baxter: It was 2016, a launch.
• 13:36
  Ashley Baxter: So we've been going for a while now.
• 13:38
  Ashley Baxter: but what I will say is it's very difficult to sell insurance to freelancers.
• 13:42
  Ashley Baxter: So I'm hoping that conversations like this continue to educate them about how it can benefit them because when it works, it's one of the best things in the world.
• 13:51
  Ashley Baxter: But the problem that we have is that so many freelancers don't understand how it works.
• 13:56
  Radim Malinic: Yeah, That's an interesting story.
• 13:58
  Radim Malinic: It reminds me of a quote of, Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
• 14:02
  Radim Malinic: And I think we all hope for the best, and think that the worst will never come.
• 14:06
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah.
• 14:07
  Radim Malinic: that's what happens, because, yeah, as I said, I was blissfully sailing, unsecure.
• 14:12
  Radim Malinic: And luckily nothing terrible happened.
• 14:14
  Radim Malinic: Yeah.
• 14:15
  Radim Malinic: When you say about selling insurance to freelancers, it's almost like you don't know what you don't know, and only when a problem happens, you start searching for solutions.
• 14:24
  Radim Malinic: I think it's almost like, how do we get people to understand it quicker?
• 14:28
  Radim Malinic: So I've got a couple of car crash examples, which I will talk to you about, which I think will potentially explain some of the products that you do.
• 14:37
  Radim Malinic: So my first.
• 14:39
  Radim Malinic: example, if it's okay, let's talk about, late payments because late payments is chronic.
• 14:44
  Radim Malinic: we like to tell ourselves in a creative industry, it's only us.
• 14:47
  Radim Malinic: Like it only affects us, but I think I read an article in the Guardian saying that's pretty much 44, 000 businesses are likely to go out of business because of the cashflow problems.
• 14:57
  Radim Malinic: You like a knock on effect.
• 14:58
  Radim Malinic: People pay you late, you pay late other people.
• 15:00
  Radim Malinic: And it's a big problem.
• 15:01
  Radim Malinic: So it's not just the freelancers.
• 15:03
  Radim Malinic: You're not like the sort of the unique unicorns going, sorry, if my universe is just us.
• 15:09
  Radim Malinic: And obviously it can feel that way, of course, because, you feel like, how come the agency's getting, the money but when you look at it as a sort of full circle, having been freelancing in the past and now running the agency, it's quite tricky to.
• 15:21
  Radim Malinic: Sometimes managed to cashflow because running a business is not easy, cheap, no quick or, and effortless.
• 15:28
  Radim Malinic: So.
• 15:28
  Radim Malinic: I can now see like, Oh, why was I paid a month later from an agency and stuff.
• 15:32
  Radim Malinic: But when it comes to dealing with clients, because that's your, especially direct clients, I think that the late payment product is I think it's the most suitable product that, that there is for the issue.
• 15:42
  Radim Malinic: So I remember being in a situation where I thought, even though.
• 15:48
  Radim Malinic: I thought I had some understanding of the late payment product, it's like, oh, I'm sure if my client doesn't pay, there's a magic pot of money that the insurance will help me, I will get paid by the insurance.
• 16:01
  Radim Malinic: And then you realize, actually, I had it all wrong, because there is no magic pot of money, that will recoup income.
• 16:09
  Radim Malinic: for those who don't know, how does the product work?
• 16:12
  Ashley Baxter: Okay, so, like firstly I just want to say the issue with late payments or non payment, for me it doesn't actually have anything to do with the size of the invoice because earlier you were saying like when it was a smaller invoice it was frustrating but you were willing to write it off.
• 16:26
  Ashley Baxter: I want to create products that actually prevent people from, wanting to take advantage of freelancers.
• 16:32
  Ashley Baxter: I want them to realize that they cannot take advantage of us easily because we are coming for them.
• 16:37
  Ashley Baxter: So I want to stop people from thinking freelancers are vulnerable, they're there to be taken advantage of.
• 16:43
  Ashley Baxter: That's kind of my, goal.
• 16:44
  Ashley Baxter: Now I understand where your confusion arose from with that product because there's two products that we have that can assist with non payment but under two different circumstances.
• 16:59
  Ashley Baxter: Under the professional indemnity policy there is a mitigation costs clause and this is where the insurer will pay the amount that is owed to you by your client if they're not paying but only if it's accompanied with a threat of legal action or something else that would trigger the professional indemnity policy.
• 17:18
  Ashley Baxter: So some people can find it difficult to differentiate between the different products because they're complex products but there is cover for unpaid invoices under professional indemnity where the insurer There is a pot of money, they will pay you what's owed to you, but only if it's accompanied with something that would trigger your professional indemnity policy.
• 17:39
  Radim Malinic: Could we have an example?
• 17:40
  Radim Malinic: What could that trigger be?
• 17:41
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah, of course.
• 17:43
  Ashley Baxter: so professional indemnity claims usually arise when clients are dissatisfied with the service that you've provided and perhaps you've delivered something late, they've then went on to miss a launch date and they're refusing to pay you, and we've had things like clients threatening to, bring legal action against you if you continue to, pursue them for payment, or, we've had a client, there was one issue with scope creep, where the client misunderstood what the developer was actually creating for them.
• 18:14
  Ashley Baxter: And at the end of the project, he felt like he didn't get the work that he expected to get, and he refused to pay the developer for the work that they'd done.
• 18:23
  Ashley Baxter: And because there was a dispute with work, they also threatened legal action against the developer for breach of contract and whatnot.
• 18:30
  Ashley Baxter: Provided there's a situation that triggers the professional indemnity policy and it's accompanied with a refusal to pay you, then there is a pot of money, but we tend to find that those are only very extreme situations and they're quite rare as well.
• 18:44
  Ashley Baxter: So the product that you're talking about is the legal expenses product and this has a debt recovery service where a solicitor will chase.
• 18:54
  Ashley Baxter: your overdue payments on your behalf.
• 18:57
  Ashley Baxter: There are a few caveats like, off the top of my head, I think the invoice has to be over 200, and I think it's limited to invoices.
• 19:07
  Ashley Baxter: So I think that was one of the problems.
• 19:09
  Ashley Baxter: you had, I might be wrong, I think your client was abroad.
• 19:12
  Ashley Baxter: It can be really difficult for them to pursue payment from clients abroad.
• 19:16
  Ashley Baxter: I think like the whole legal process just changes depending on what jurisdiction the client's in.
• 19:21
  Ashley Baxter: So for our products, it's limited to UK and EU.
• 19:24
  Ashley Baxter: so the issue that we tend to find as maybe something you felt you experienced in that situation when you tried to use the service is that freelancers get a little bit jumpy the second that we mention anything legal.
• 19:36
  Ashley Baxter: The second we mention like there's a solicitor involved, they're a bit like, oh, I just want to get paid.
• 19:41
  Ashley Baxter: I don't want to go down that legal route.
• 19:44
  Ashley Baxter: And also the second you involve solicitors, I'm not going to lie, the process becomes lengthy, right?
• 19:49
  Ashley Baxter: You know what it's like with legal services.
• 19:52
  Ashley Baxter: It's not a quick fix.
• 19:53
  Ashley Baxter: It does take time.
• 19:54
  Ashley Baxter: So it's what I tend to, suggest people use just in extreme situations where they've exhausted all other avenues.
• 20:02
  Ashley Baxter: But off the back of what happened to you, where I think you ended up using a third party service, off the back of that, I decided that WithJax should launch low hanging fruit type of service.
• 20:14
  Ashley Baxter: It's not a legal service, so we don't have to sit and pore over your contract to make sure you've done the work that you said you were going to do.
• 20:19
  Ashley Baxter: We don't have to look into your client's finances, and it's just where we simply provide a credit control service where we're chasing your invoices on your behalf.
• 20:29
  Ashley Baxter: So it means it's one less thing you have to worry about.
• 20:32
  Ashley Baxter: But we do also find that with a lot of clients having a third party involved, Suddenly to chase your invoices for you, it frightens them and they're likelier to pay and we've had a lot of success with that.
• 20:42
  Ashley Baxter: So that's something that we launched off the back of Udexperience.
• 20:45
  Ashley Baxter: Did I get that right about Udexperience?
• 20:48
  Radim Malinic: and what I'll do actually, I'll tell you what I've gone through in detail because Would you describe it actually makes perfect sense because I was in a situation where a client slipped the onboarding process because it was a work that was done really quickly.
• 21:03
  Radim Malinic: There was a short deadline, quick negotiations, no contract was signed.
• 21:06
  Radim Malinic: And at that time I was actually, I had a template.
• 21:09
  Radim Malinic: I was issuing the work because everything was around, let's say the 20, 25 grand mark for new projects.
• 21:14
  Radim Malinic: So the contract was always in place just to even make us look a little bit more professional, And.
• 21:19
  Radim Malinic: There was no contract, the work went really quickly.
• 21:21
  Radim Malinic: We got paid part of the sum because as it transpired, the company was pretty much a professional money ower.
• 21:28
  Radim Malinic: like they owed money to everyone and everything, staff, employee, same thing, staff, contractors, you know, suppliers.
• 21:36
  Radim Malinic: They played high gamble, and I think just because of Covid, they lost some of their events they were supposed to run and then, the money wasn't coming in and even there was a sort of high profile investors in the business.
• 21:48
  Radim Malinic: yeah, it was a little bit, of a shady operation.
• 21:51
  Radim Malinic: So it was the founders were sitting at home in their multimillion pound houses, that the supplies weren't being paid.
• 21:57
  Radim Malinic: So I got partial payment.
• 22:00
  Radim Malinic: I never been a bit silly about paying the rest of the payment, which was, it was only about a deposit.
• 22:05
  Radim Malinic: I think we agreed just to pay it even half, just get that balance cleared and let's do this, and they were not.
• 22:11
  Radim Malinic: So after a few emails, which obviously I've got my templates on like how to escalate things.
• 22:15
  Radim Malinic: And you you threaten look, I'm going to pass it over to a debt collecting agency, you know.
• 22:19
  Radim Malinic: And usually at that point, as you quite rightfully said earlier, people start paying attention.
• 22:23
  Radim Malinic: If you say, I'm going to hand it over to, Whatever, an entity you can even make up that can work reminds me of a friend who set up literally a, debt collector credit control.
• 22:34
  Radim Malinic: Literally, they just were sending the letters themselves under a different entity.
• 22:38
  Radim Malinic: So they've set up a, let's say Store Guard and Brown, debt collectors and they're like, and people start paying attention.
• 22:44
  Radim Malinic: They're like, Hey, look, your invoice is unpaid.
• 22:46
  Radim Malinic: and unfortunately your friend that you, that's working for you is unhappy, so pay them.
• 22:51
  Radim Malinic: And that gets people like, people pay, start paying attention, which is good.
• 22:55
  Radim Malinic: So I have, because yeah, at that time you didn't have a product of chasing, actually having, working in credit control.
• 23:02
  Radim Malinic: So I appointed that collecting agency.
• 23:05
  Radim Malinic: And I was quite impressed because they've guided me through quite a bit of, the process.
• 23:09
  Radim Malinic: So one of the things was, would you describe it in mitigation for indemnity?
• 23:13
  Radim Malinic: Like my client agreed to work being absolutely fine.
• 23:17
  Radim Malinic: And then they agreed to the invoice.
• 23:18
  Radim Malinic: That was really important saying, is there an invoice?
• 23:21
  Radim Malinic: Are you happy with the work?
• 23:22
  Radim Malinic: yeah, there was no problem.
• 23:23
  Radim Malinic: So, which was like a massive take, like there is no dispute about the work.
• 23:27
  Radim Malinic: There's no dispute about the invoice.
• 23:28
  Radim Malinic: There's just a dispute about the payment.
• 23:31
  Radim Malinic: So they managed to get a payment plan from the client.
• 23:34
  Radim Malinic: And for a while they were like doing a weekly payments, which was fine.
• 23:37
  Radim Malinic: And then they stopped and then.
• 23:39
  Radim Malinic: My debt collecting agency was on commission, so I think it was like 10 percent from what people know, whatever they 10 percent on top, like not on top, like from the money.
• 23:50
  Radim Malinic: So let's say if I got 500.
• 23:52
  Radim Malinic: 50 commission on that.
• 23:54
  Radim Malinic: So that was the process.
• 23:56
  Radim Malinic: And then it stopped and we see it start looking at escalation.
• 24:00
  Radim Malinic: Okay.
• 24:01
  Radim Malinic: So what do we do next?
• 24:03
  Radim Malinic: And this is where having a debt becomes not only cumbersome and inconvenient, but also expensive because to start proceedings to take them to the, CCJ, is that right?
• 24:13
  Radim Malinic: CCJ?
• 24:14
  Radim Malinic: County court judgment, which is basically.
• 24:18
  Radim Malinic: to legally certify they owe you money, that's like, okay, so you need to pay us and you need to pre pay the legal fees and all of a sudden you're looking at a bill of a thousand pounds or nearly a thousand pounds, you're like, this debt is going to cost me money before I get any money.
• 24:31
  Radim Malinic: and then you get the caveat like, okay, well, even though if the county court judgment says that they owe you money, which is They don't have to pay it and you're like, Oh my freaking word, so then you have to appoint a bailiff to go and it's just Oh my, you know what?
• 24:45
  Radim Malinic: I think I'm going to throw my hat in.
• 24:46
  Radim Malinic: I think I'm done here because all of a sudden it costs you money.
• 24:51
  Radim Malinic: And then obviously as a company, you get other callers, they're like, Hey, we run this differently.
• 24:56
  Radim Malinic: We are different debt collecting agency.
• 24:58
  Radim Malinic: I'm like.
• 24:59
  Radim Malinic: Yeah, we can guarantee the money.
• 25:00
  Radim Malinic: Like we've still got a sales guy who tries to sell you a product.
• 25:03
  Radim Malinic: Like we don't do commission.
• 25:05
  Radim Malinic: We charge on top and you only pay us like a yearly fee to do this.
• 25:09
  Radim Malinic: I'm like, you know what?
• 25:10
  Radim Malinic: Let's give it one more shot.
• 25:12
  Radim Malinic: It was like a nominal fee of, let's say, 250 pounds a year to pursue as many invoices as you want.
• 25:18
  Radim Malinic: But obviously they're all salespeople.
• 25:19
  Radim Malinic: They're like, we can't guarantee your money.
• 25:21
  Radim Malinic: I was like, well, your sales guy was pretty much saying, you know what, we've looked at their finance, we run a credit check, I wish I was as poor as your clients.
• 25:28
  Radim Malinic: Like we can do this.
• 25:30
  Radim Malinic: But then as you speak to someone like, what are you going to do?
• 25:32
  Radim Malinic: Well, we're going to send them letters.
• 25:33
  Radim Malinic: We're going to introduce ourselves.
• 25:35
  Radim Malinic: So how are you different?
• 25:36
  Radim Malinic: They're like, oh, we're more, more robust.
• 25:37
  Radim Malinic: Like we call them all the time.
• 25:39
  Radim Malinic: Like it only takes 10 seconds to block your number.
• 25:43
  Radim Malinic: You can't call anyone.
• 25:45
  Radim Malinic: That product is very much alike from much, from most of the debt collecting agencies just depends on the, from my personal experience on the tone of voice on the authority, like how authoritative your company is.
• 25:55
  Radim Malinic: It depends on the branding as well.
• 25:57
  Radim Malinic: It just depends on if you're some scrappy company or something and the stakes to some flashy address.
• 26:03
  Radim Malinic: And it just depends like how much of a threat do you come to the company.
• 26:06
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah, and I will say that what's different about the insurance product, the legal expenses product with the late payment, the debt recovery service is similar to debt collection companies, but the difference with your insurance is that at the end of that process, if your client hasn't paid you, the insurer, assuming the claims covered under the policy, the insurer will help you pursue them through small claims court as well.
• 26:30
  Ashley Baxter: And the cost of that is covered under your policy.
• 26:33
  Ashley Baxter: But to be completely transparent, we've yet to have a claim reach that stage, like the debt recovery service, where the insurers covered the claim, they have been able to recover the money prior to that stage.
• 26:44
  Ashley Baxter: So we've yet to get there.
• 26:45
  Ashley Baxter: but yeah, it's definitely a tricky problem that I think needs.
• 26:50
  Ashley Baxter: a better solution.
• 26:51
  Ashley Baxter: I have a question for you as somebody who has a lot of experience billing clients.
• 26:55
  Ashley Baxter: Do you find that having certain payment milestones or structuring payments in a certain way can help with that?
• 27:03
  Ashley Baxter: Like for example, instead of just sending maybe an invoice for a deposit to book the project and then a final invoice at the end of it, do you find Invoicing more regularly eliminates the likelihood of a client not paying or eliminates the likelihood of you missing out on a lot of money due to non payments.
• 27:20
  Ashley Baxter: You know what I mean?
• 27:21
  Radim Malinic: yeah.
• 27:21
  Radim Malinic: So I feel very fortunate to be in a position where I've graduated from that shitshow school of, mid career business, if that makes sense, because I just feel like every career starts knee, deep in the mud and then it gets a bit better and a bit easier and then a little bit easier and everything changes.
• 27:39
  Radim Malinic: And then someone once described to me that parenting.
• 27:42
  Radim Malinic: Doesn't get easier.
• 27:43
  Radim Malinic: It just gets different.
• 27:44
  Radim Malinic: You know, there's a different issue.
• 27:46
  Radim Malinic: So chasing people for like for smaller parts of money in the past, if you're building 200 or 300 pounds or 500 pounds, five times a week, you've got five invoices to chase.
• 27:56
  Radim Malinic: Whereas the billings, the frequency gets, that's slower, what, for what we do now, and we have a trusted partners actually, I invoice people in advance.
• 28:05
  Radim Malinic: I don't chase new clients that much anymore.
• 28:08
  Radim Malinic: As I've told you at the top of this conversation, we have very much established connections with our clients and with their companies.
• 28:14
  Radim Malinic: So sometimes it takes quite a while to get a PO for pre procurement.
• 28:18
  Radim Malinic: You know, it takes, usually waiting time.
• 28:21
  Radim Malinic: Because once the invoice goes on the company system, it's paid within 24 hours.
• 28:26
  Radim Malinic: So, luckily, and I feel like I'm also very lucky and I feel like that's my sort of dividend for 20 years of.
• 28:33
  Radim Malinic: crap on and off that I've got clients who pay us what we want to be paid when we want to be paid and they pay as soon as they get the work or as soon as they get the invoice but that's literally I feel like that's a life dividend for sticking with this for 20 years because it wasn't always that easy.
• 28:52
  Radim Malinic: So to answer your question for someone because obviously to get to this position I feel as it's a dividend, really had to earn this because you don't get these clients straight away because it also depends on how worthy you are of how much you deliver, how much is your service, because from my experience, if someone tries to launch a new physical product or digital product.
• 29:12
  Radim Malinic: Their head is all over the place and usually they're scrappy, you know, they're kind of like the freelancer trying to do their own thing.
• 29:18
  Radim Malinic: they don't necessarily think about being on time, spending, billing invoices, because it's question of respect.
• 29:25
  Radim Malinic: if you condone yourself, I'm not saying that freelancers don't do it right, but if you condone yourself professionally and say, look.
• 29:31
  Radim Malinic: To start this work, this is 50 percent deposit, let's do this.
• 29:35
  Radim Malinic: I mean, that should be a standard.
• 29:37
  Radim Malinic: And for example, when it comes to, development work, for example, let's say we work on e commerce projects.
• 29:42
  Radim Malinic: When the work is signed off for development, we get paid.
• 29:45
  Radim Malinic: Literally, I tell people, I look, I have to pay the development team.
• 29:48
  Radim Malinic: We have to do this.
• 29:49
  Radim Malinic: Of course we don't have to, but that money is locked in.
• 29:52
  Radim Malinic: And now it's actually in our, the ball is in our court, making sure we deliver on time.
• 29:57
  Radim Malinic: But all of this depends how you carry yourself, how you think about it, how you verbalize this problem, because I've had freelancers who send me an invoice with the final work Well, thanks for the invoice, but the work is wrong.
• 30:11
  Radim Malinic: You know, like you can't get ahead of yourself too much and I very much talk about it in a Creativity for Sale, in the book, like the stages of okay, when is it the right time to invoice?
• 30:20
  Radim Malinic: When is the right time to chase the invoice?
• 30:22
  Radim Malinic: You know, like people have found, which is really interesting is that you get freelancers who are like, I've got three day payment terms.
• 30:29
  Radim Malinic: Well, that's great, but I've never heard of it, or 10 days, Oh, I'm chasing the invoice.
• 30:32
  Radim Malinic: I'm like, you haven't even delivered the work and you're really chasing your invoice.
• 30:36
  Radim Malinic: So you deliver the work a month later and you're chasing the invoice four days later.
• 30:40
  Radim Malinic: I was like.
• 30:41
  Radim Malinic: If we didn't agree this, I don't have a sort of a magic buffer of cash that we can just give it to you because the client's pissed off because it's late, obviously we are not exactly happy and it's about.
• 30:52
  Radim Malinic: Being human about how you carry yourself through the business and how you communicate because that great Carnegie, that Carnegie Hall of Institute, whatever, but there's a quote that 85 percent of your success is how you communicate, innovate, carry yourself, who your personality is, and only 15 percent of your success is your technical skills.
• 31:13
  Radim Malinic: So it's a Carnegie, but it's how that is because your work can be let down by how you communicate, how you set up your terms, because it can be so intoxicating to get work.
• 31:26
  Radim Malinic: For what you do.
• 31:26
  Radim Malinic: So I feel like with freelancing or with creative work and like you do, it's like a two part job.
• 31:31
  Radim Malinic: You put your expression out there.
• 31:33
  Radim Malinic: Like, okay, I'm going to do work, which is creative.
• 31:35
  Radim Malinic: I put my soul into this and also have to run it like a business because, solicitor or let's say debt collector be like, okay, here's the invoice.
• 31:43
  Radim Malinic: Here's the phone call.
• 31:44
  Radim Malinic: Here's the outcome.
• 31:44
  Radim Malinic: Goodbye.
• 31:45
  Radim Malinic: No one can say, listen, Jerry, who made up Jerry as a, like Jerry, you didn't make the phone call really good.
• 31:51
  Radim Malinic: You know, did you speak to him?
• 31:52
  Radim Malinic: did you follow my brief?
• 31:53
  Radim Malinic: Did you tell him he owes the money?
• 31:54
  Radim Malinic: no one's going to ask Jerry how he does his work.
• 31:57
  Radim Malinic: Whereas with creative work, there's so many ifs and buts and possibilities that we really sort of overload the emotional side of how we run our businesses.
• 32:06
  Radim Malinic: Because we think that what we create is of the highest value, of the highest expression.
• 32:10
  Radim Malinic: We get married to the first idea, thinking that's the best thing ever.
• 32:14
  Radim Malinic: we spend more time being emotionally unbalanced before it comes to the payment.
• 32:20
  Radim Malinic: So then, you had people like, let's say they wouldn't pay or they say Oh, I don't like the work.
• 32:25
  Radim Malinic: I'm not happy with this.
• 32:27
  Radim Malinic: The emotional side kicks in and you're like, start, you start seeing red and you're like, well, I've done everything you told me to do.
• 32:33
  Radim Malinic: And we become very much emotionally triggered, freelancer, creative, rather than, listen, there's contract, there's conditions, there's the brief, there's a delivery.
• 32:45
  Radim Malinic: And if it gets to the stages where client is unhappy and doesn't want to pay.
• 32:50
  Radim Malinic: There's something in the middle didn't work out, like something you didn't put right into place, because it's safeguarding of the outcome.
• 32:57
  Radim Malinic: And I think you have to be knocked off your feet a few times to actually understand that, you know what, there's no need to be emotional about this business, because put your ego towards the back and don't think that you've created the next masterpiece worthy of know in a VNA museum, then okay, have I done my work?
• 33:15
  Radim Malinic: Have I done this right?
• 33:16
  Radim Malinic: have, not, have I answered the brief?
• 33:17
  Radim Malinic: have I not, have I put the right positioning in place?
• 33:20
  Radim Malinic: is this, is my work not competing with that sort of competition, there's so many checkpoints that.
• 33:26
  Radim Malinic: Can be so totally missed, especially at the beginning of our careers, because we think I'm getting paid to do my hobby.
• 33:33
  Radim Malinic: I'm getting paid to be happy.
• 33:34
  Radim Malinic: I'm getting paid for all of this.
• 33:35
  Radim Malinic: I'm not getting paid now.
• 33:36
  Radim Malinic: What's going on?
• 33:37
  Radim Malinic: Yeah.
• 33:38
  Radim Malinic: So I think that emotional side of running a business can easily take over our sort of.
• 33:47
  Radim Malinic: decision process and our communications.
• 33:49
  Radim Malinic: And sometimes we look a bit sort of naive and rookie because, you might have the same match on the other side.
• 33:56
  Radim Malinic: Someone might be 20 years old and try to start a startup or a business.
• 34:00
  Radim Malinic: So you get a couple of not very knowledgeable parties trying to fight it off.
• 34:05
  Radim Malinic: in a very bad style, it's like a pub fight, you know, at 11 o'clock
• 34:08
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah.
• 34:09
  Radim Malinic: with after some, too many after many, you know, and for the liquid anaesthetics.
• 34:13
  Radim Malinic: And I think this whole process is like, we need to spend more time about knowing what we don't know.
• 34:22
  Radim Malinic: So we can be better rounded article, more multifaceted article to be ready for this.
• 34:26
  Radim Malinic: Because.
• 34:27
  Radim Malinic: If you get someone in a different position, they need to learn, let's say, they create a cosmetics product.
• 34:32
  Radim Malinic: So they need to know about the production.
• 34:33
  Radim Malinic: They need to know about the FSA certification.
• 34:35
  Radim Malinic: They need to know about what's in and what's in there.
• 34:38
  Radim Malinic: what is the sort of legal implications of selling the product in the market?
• 34:41
  Radim Malinic: Like how to package it, how to sell it, like what's, you know, they've got so much more layers into this.
• 34:47
  Radim Malinic: And no one can say well, you didn't tell me what I should and shouldn't do.
• 34:51
  Radim Malinic: You know, like it's for us to know, like how did the, even the simple way of getting paid, like how to have an insurance, how to have a contract, cause you said in your conversation, like the contract is good to have the contracts, not going to get you out of trouble.
• 35:03
  Radim Malinic: The contract is a piece of paper just to say.
• 35:05
  Radim Malinic: This happened.
• 35:06
  Radim Malinic: This happened.
• 35:07
  Radim Malinic: We agreed to do this and this is our conditions, and people say, I've got a contract.
• 35:10
  Radim Malinic: I'm covered.
• 35:11
  Radim Malinic: No, you're not like, this is literally like,
• 35:14
  Ashley Baxter: No, yeah, nothing stops the client from bringing a claim against you or you can even breach your contract and that leads to a claim being brought against you.
• 35:23
  Ashley Baxter: I think something you said earlier about, a freelancer's mindset being like, Oh, I'm getting paid to do my hobby.
• 35:28
  Ashley Baxter: Sometimes I think that's part of the problem.
• 35:30
  Ashley Baxter: I think from day one, we need to shift our mindset as freelancers and really treat this like a business.
• 35:35
  Ashley Baxter: And that does mean getting yourself a contract.
• 35:38
  Ashley Baxter: getting yourself insured and even the way you communicate with clients as well.
• 35:43
  Ashley Baxter: because I've noticed that a lot of people, when they come to me with problems with a client, They'll say, oh, I threw this extra work in for free just because the client was being nice and not in every situation, but suddenly the client's going, well, I've now got more work than I expected.
• 35:59
  Ashley Baxter: freelancer isn't adhering to the original project scope or the original terms.
• 36:03
  Ashley Baxter: So where do we stop from here?
• 36:05
  Ashley Baxter: I'm just going to keep asking for more and more work.
• 36:07
  Ashley Baxter: And before you know it, there's a whole can of worms that's been opened and the freelancers in a really difficult situation.
• 36:12
  Ashley Baxter: So I think like changing your mindset, approaching it like a business and getting everything kind of getting all your ducks in a row from day one is not going to completely eliminate problems because there are always going to be difficult clients out there, but it's going to help you handle those problems better when they arise.
• 36:29
  Radim Malinic: absolutely.
• 36:30
  Radim Malinic: if there's one tip I can suggest to people, it's, one tip for me now, but working on a sort of itemized brief sometimes creates a lot of trouble going, where's the business card?
• 36:42
  Radim Malinic: Where's the letterhead?
• 36:43
  Radim Malinic: Where's the poster?
• 36:44
  Radim Malinic: Where's this?
• 36:45
  Radim Malinic: And I think with freelancers, it's more like a, it's like tradies, like I've always feel like freelancer is like a tradie, like, okay, my pipe is broken.
• 36:53
  Radim Malinic: I need a plumber.
• 36:54
  Radim Malinic: My Logo is broken.
• 36:55
  Radim Malinic: I need a logo designer.
• 36:56
  Radim Malinic: It's kind of like a very singular sort of exchange of, work.
• 37:00
  Radim Malinic: Whereas when you start selling your work as services It's much like it's literally like how to build a house.
• 37:07
  Radim Malinic: You need multiples of different skills or and or disciplines to actually create the work and what I Tell our clients or how we build right now is that they say, okay, we need XY's are done And they say, I need X, Y, Z done.
• 37:22
  Radim Malinic: And I'll say, okay, we've got a day rate, which is a studio rate, which is eight hours.
• 37:27
  Radim Malinic: And I assumed it's going to take three days to create.
• 37:30
  Radim Malinic: And obviously we've got 24 hours to do it.
• 37:32
  Radim Malinic: 24 working hours.
• 37:32
  Radim Malinic: And obviously the client knows that the time will take that.
• 37:36
  Radim Malinic: And let's say within a day and a half, they're like, actually, we've got changes.
• 37:40
  Radim Malinic: We're going to change this.
• 37:42
  Radim Malinic: And we go, no, are you?
• 37:43
  Radim Malinic: And I'm like, okay, cool.
• 37:44
  Radim Malinic: Still, we're still within your time.
• 37:46
  Radim Malinic: There's not a problem.
• 37:47
  Radim Malinic: And I think that's such an easy way, again, like the emotional, battle with the client.
• 37:52
  Radim Malinic: It's so easy to get in because They realized that what they've started, they've visualized it.
• 37:56
  Radim Malinic: Oh, now we see it.
• 37:57
  Radim Malinic: Actually, this is not quite right.
• 37:59
  Radim Malinic: We need to change our minds, but the freelancer or the designers are not going to change their mind.
• 38:03
  Radim Malinic: They'll be like, Oh, we actually, you know what?
• 38:04
  Radim Malinic: I'm happy to change this for you because what they feel they're getting paid for that one blog, you know?
• 38:09
  Radim Malinic: So like you fixed that leaky pipe, but actually there's a bigger hole just up the pipe, I'm sorry, the plumber metaphors that arrive on this podcast.
• 38:19
  Radim Malinic: And you're like, but you asked me to fix.
• 38:21
  Radim Malinic: This pipe, but it's not my, hole up there.
• 38:24
  Radim Malinic: Like the hole up there is not my problem.
• 38:26
  Radim Malinic: Whereas if you say, look, you've got me here for eight hours.
• 38:29
  Radim Malinic: Like this will take me eight hours.
• 38:31
  Radim Malinic: Actually it will take me three hours and you go five hours spare.
• 38:35
  Radim Malinic: I'm happy to look at this, I'm happy to look at that, and I'm happy to actually just look at the pipes that you told me where the leak is.
• 38:41
  Radim Malinic: But if you want me to check around the house, if there's any other problems, I'm happy to do it.
• 38:47
  Radim Malinic: And then it becomes a broader conversation because.
• 38:50
  Radim Malinic: For most of the projects we've done in the last five years, the work was very little about the logo.
• 38:56
  Radim Malinic: The work was very little about the original problem.
• 38:58
  Radim Malinic: It was very little about the original point of conversation because you open the patient and you find out, okay, this is what needs to happen.
• 39:06
  Radim Malinic: This is what needs to be fixed.
• 39:07
  Radim Malinic: This is actually, what we can improve on your conversation.
• 39:10
  Radim Malinic: Actually, we can build a better product as a result of a conversation.
• 39:13
  Radim Malinic: So when you see freelance workers, sort interchange, like when you got like a transactional.
• 39:19
  Radim Malinic: When you see the work as transactional, it's very easy to be very transactional about the detail.
• 39:25
  Radim Malinic: Whereas when you hold yourself more authoritative and more knowledgeable and going.
• 39:30
  Radim Malinic: I listened to your problem.
• 39:31
  Radim Malinic: This is my services.
• 39:33
  Radim Malinic: This is the outcome.
• 39:34
  Radim Malinic: This is what we can do for you as a, broader package.
• 39:37
  Radim Malinic: Then it becomes easier because everyone's more at ease because I found with clients that more you explain to them what's in the process, the more you explain to them what you need to do to get to do from A to B to Z, they become more at ease with, knowing what's going to happen.
• 39:53
  Radim Malinic: They start this.
• 39:53
  Radim Malinic: They stopped counting their money.
• 39:55
  Radim Malinic: They stopped worrying about what's going to happen.
• 39:57
  Radim Malinic: And it just gets much, much easier to get paid and just to deliver a project.
• 40:03
  Ashley Baxter: So are you saying that your approach, just so I can understand this correctly, your approach has been more so to say to clients like Here's what we do and here's the amount of time you have us for and that means that if the project does change scope, which we find happens a lot, that you're easily adaptable to that and then it minimizes problems or conflict around scope changes and payment.
• 40:29
  Ashley Baxter: Is that correct?
• 40:31
  Radim Malinic: A hundred percent.
• 40:32
  Radim Malinic: Yeah.
• 40:32
  Radim Malinic: A hundred percent.
• 40:32
  Radim Malinic: So if someone comes, let's say for a branding package, let's say they want that cosmetic product from an idea to, to an online e commerce store.
• 40:40
  Radim Malinic: There's going to be lots of changes, things will change.
• 40:42
  Radim Malinic: Things will, will have to be amended, adapted to the situation.
• 40:46
  Radim Malinic: They will come inevitably down the road.
• 40:49
  Radim Malinic: And I just see this, I sell time.
• 40:52
  Radim Malinic: I sell time more than the individual itemized billings because.
• 40:57
  Radim Malinic: I've seen internal quotes from agencies.
• 40:58
  Radim Malinic: They're like, two grand for Twitter template and that one.
• 41:01
  Radim Malinic: And it's just, it gets messy.
• 41:03
  Radim Malinic: Like it just literally done.
• 41:04
  Radim Malinic: You give people reasons to start splitting hairs.
• 41:06
  Radim Malinic: Whereas if you say, look, I've got your bag, I can make my studio available for a week for you.
• 41:12
  Radim Malinic: and I think that's, what's really good.
• 41:14
  Radim Malinic: As you say, look, this will take two weeks over the course of three months.
• 41:17
  Radim Malinic: You pay us for two weeks of time for the block of, so that's 80 hours.
• 41:22
  Radim Malinic: They can do whatever they want.
• 41:23
  Radim Malinic: If they want us to come to their offices and sing, you know, hallelujah, whatever, we can do that because we've been paid for it.
• 41:29
  Radim Malinic: So it's been more about flexible and actually having conversations with people and saying look, we know you tell us what you think you want, and we're going to help you to get the right stuff to build the product.
• 41:42
  Radim Malinic: I always say like.
• 41:43
  Radim Malinic: People come to creatives saying look, I really want a car.
• 41:48
  Radim Malinic: Great.
• 41:49
  Radim Malinic: We can build you one.
• 41:50
  Radim Malinic: Okay.
• 41:50
  Radim Malinic: What do you want now?
• 41:52
  Radim Malinic: They're like, maybe a steering wheel and a couple of seats just to see how, I'll see how it goes.
• 41:56
  Radim Malinic: you need a lot more than that.
• 41:58
  Radim Malinic: Like you need a lot more parts, a lot more process, a lot more thought and more strategy into actually delivering this project because it's not that simple.
• 42:08
  Radim Malinic: But people see it from a transactional I can say that for a long time, I've been trying to master the process of like how we can package this stuff, how we can deliver this, how we speak to people.
• 42:20
  Radim Malinic: I thought for a while, like, look, I finally got it.
• 42:23
  Radim Malinic: Let's say five or six years ago, I finally got it.
• 42:26
  Radim Malinic: And then me and my wife were trying to renovate our house and we had a great builder.
• 42:31
  Radim Malinic: He was helping us with all the sort of, he was asking me all the questions.
• 42:34
  Radim Malinic: I was making all the decisions, but then me and my wife went to the bathroom shop.
• 42:38
  Radim Malinic: That, I wasn't prepared for like you scout with Pinterest for everything, you know, like, okay, this is what I want and stuff.
• 42:44
  Radim Malinic: And this bathroom show was saying, look, we only start projects at five grand and that's our minimum spend.
• 42:51
  Radim Malinic: Okay, well, let's have a chat.
• 42:53
  Radim Malinic: I didn't know what I want.
• 42:54
  Radim Malinic: there was a restriction, there was a space restriction and I turned into an idiot client, like maybe put a shelf in there, maybe put the, I was throwing everything at it.
• 43:03
  Radim Malinic: And I'm thinking.
• 43:04
  Radim Malinic: Oh, I'm a patient zero here.
• 43:05
  Radim Malinic: Literally, I'm like, I'm the case study of an idiot going anything, anyhow, because the person on the other side wasn't guiding us to the right result, to the right idea, because she didn't have the constraints from us, because we were like, maybe, you know, sink, we need a sink, we need a bath, tiles, and then you just have which tiles, what size, what color, and in fact, I need to be better prepared for this, but, If you're trying to sell me tiles and a bath, I don't know which way it's going.
• 43:32
  Radim Malinic: I'm not going to pay you for it, but I'm not going to commit to this because I'm not really sure what you're going to do and how you're going to do it, or I just felt the process wasn't clear and I was very much almost stunned by how I failed to get any process in the way.
• 43:48
  Radim Malinic: I had to do a lot more sort of finding and planning and reference finding and planning of like how I can actually get the space properly done.
• 43:57
  Radim Malinic: And it took a lot longer.
• 43:58
  Radim Malinic: So all about a communication of like, how do we get the other side to fully understand?
• 44:04
  Radim Malinic: Because as you know, if you can work with people every day, you can be with your partner every day.
• 44:10
  Radim Malinic: And you can still have moments in the day when you go cross wires and when you like, when you've got clients on the other side of the world and different cultures, different everything, you know, way of conducting a business, so much can go amiss and you can't say, well, it worked with my friend, Gary down the road to someone in Brazil.
• 44:32
  Radim Malinic: And it's really like, personal and business growth is for me, like so much more important than following the latest, Adobe 10 features and, you know, spending time on general generative AI, because I found from writing these two books, the kind of audit, personal audit of my personal and business skills, like what has led me to this sort of situation where actually I can say, you know what?
• 44:59
  Radim Malinic: I can enjoy this now, like we've done a lot of hard work of learning, growing, getting knocked back, getting knocked down, picking ourselves up and thinking there's some pattern recognition in this.
• 45:10
  Radim Malinic: I don't think We should be doing it the same way as we did before, because we're not going to get far doing the same way.
• 45:15
  Ashley Baxter: So do you still provide a client with a statement of work, or is it just more of a general, instead of itemizing what they can expect, is it more just a general design and build?
• 45:29
  Ashley Baxter: Or do you know what I mean?
• 45:30
  Ashley Baxter: I suppose I'm just trying to understand how explicit you are with your clients about what they're going to get, just because we find like loads of our issues between freelancers and clients stem from like lack of communication or misunderstanding.
• 45:45
  Ashley Baxter: So I just want to understand How you approach that, because you are very flexible and they're booking out your time.
• 45:52
  Ashley Baxter: Do you provide them with a statement of work that itemizes what they're getting or is it just more general?
• 45:58
  Radim Malinic: do have a sort of deliverables list.
• 46:00
  Radim Malinic: because I mean, there's an original contract with every client in place for providing services.
• 46:05
  Radim Malinic: So it can just seem like that there's a clause for a brief that sort of can be added to an audition.
• 46:10
  Radim Malinic: You're like, okay, at this point we did X, Y, Z, but.
• 46:13
  Radim Malinic: What happens with our clients now that often they come with a problem or a shape of a problem and say, okay, we need this solved, or we need this provided.
• 46:23
  Radim Malinic: So let's say we do, a campaign, imagery an ice cream brand.
• 46:28
  Radim Malinic: So we know what the flavors are, we know what the colors are, we know what the sizing, no, we need to do that kind of stuff.
• 46:34
  Radim Malinic: So we go, okay, we're gonna do this.
• 46:35
  Radim Malinic: So it's.
• 46:36
  Radim Malinic: depending on this.
• 46:37
  Radim Malinic: And sometimes they can say, okay, the flavor's changed.
• 46:39
  Radim Malinic: Like there's something like you got a sort of scope of amending the product or like amending the outcome.
• 46:45
  Radim Malinic: Like we can do that.
• 46:46
  Radim Malinic: But what they normally do, they would, at that time when they commissioned the work, they provide a PO, which says we want this X, Y, Z done.
• 46:54
  Radim Malinic: So there's always some form of communication, some form of document to say.
• 46:58
  Radim Malinic: That's the work, that's what we're doing, and I'm very lucky that we've got such a deep relationship with these clients that they really respect what we do and respect what they want from us.
• 47:08
  Radim Malinic: it becomes a little bit easier, to do this.
• 47:11
  Radim Malinic: So I think in my life, in my sort of professional life, I think wrote like one statement of work that didn't go anywhere.
• 47:18
  Radim Malinic: we normally provide quite sort of detailed estimates, which say what goes into process.
• 47:23
  Radim Malinic: So sometimes some people do proposals, they're like, they spend copying and pasting some information about a client and how the work is going to go and stuff.
• 47:31
  Radim Malinic: Whereas from experience, I know that.
• 47:32
  Radim Malinic: People don't read.
• 47:33
  Radim Malinic: People want to see pretty pictures, you know,
• 47:36
  Ashley Baxter: Tell me about it.
• 47:37
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah, I know that.
• 47:38
  Radim Malinic: I think that's just, you know, for someone who writes, who's got a publishing business, like I know people don't read anything over 300 words and that's sometimes not 300 words, too many.
• 47:47
  Radim Malinic: So.
• 47:48
  Radim Malinic: It's about effectiveness, we don't do tenders because that's way too many pages for my liking.
• 47:52
  Radim Malinic: So we itemize what we're going to do.
• 47:55
  Radim Malinic: We don't have to commit to every single sort of part because there is a process.
• 47:59
  Radim Malinic: I feel like with creative work, it's like an equation from start to finish.
• 48:02
  Radim Malinic: Now, if this adds with this, you know, if this, these things add up, you get the right outcome.
• 48:07
  Radim Malinic: If you fail in one part, it's not going to add up.
• 48:09
  Radim Malinic: You know, it's literally as simple as that.
• 48:12
  Radim Malinic: what I would suggest, like, it's some form of like just a reference document is good to have, you know, you can just have someone to say itemized email to say because email is a legal form of communication that you can submit to a court if you needed to, then.
• 48:27
  Ashley Baxter: it's so important to have that audit trail.
• 48:30
  Radim Malinic: Yeah, absolutely.
• 48:30
  Radim Malinic: So just having it written where people say, yeah, I'm happy.
• 48:32
  Radim Malinic: Like just reply to me.
• 48:34
  Radim Malinic: You're happy.
• 48:34
  Radim Malinic: Just know if you're happy for me to go ahead.
• 48:37
  Radim Malinic: My accountant doesn't submit my VAT until I'd say I'm happy with this, submitted.
• 48:42
  Radim Malinic: So it's like the paper trail is very important because there's nuances.
• 48:46
  Radim Malinic: I always feel with the creative work, because it can, as I've talked about this with emotional expenditure, it can be it can take over us because you're not necessarily thinking about, look, I've onboarded a client.
• 48:57
  Radim Malinic: I'm going to set up, let's say, a sign up board and we're going to itemize going to get a contract placed because we're thinking like, I've got tax bill to pay.
• 49:05
  Radim Malinic: This client's going to help me to do this.
• 49:07
  Radim Malinic: So I'm going to focus on the work and let's see, you know, how quickly I can do this.
• 49:12
  Radim Malinic: You like I'm not necessarily thinking about, the problems that I talked about a client that slipped through the net.
• 49:17
  Radim Malinic: Like we didn't have a contract.
• 49:18
  Radim Malinic: We didn't actually itemize.
• 49:20
  Radim Malinic: We didn't have a proper sign off.
• 49:22
  Radim Malinic: Like it was a mess.
• 49:23
  Radim Malinic: And you're thinking.
• 49:25
  Radim Malinic: It's going to pay off to take an hour to put everything in place, to set it up and go, you know what, I feel like I'm running my business a bit better because when I was writing creativity for sale.
• 49:38
  Radim Malinic: It's that sort of, that vegan meme when you go guy who goes mmm, mmm, and you're like, I want to tell everyone I'm vegan, but I can't.
• 49:45
  Radim Malinic: And it's just like, how do I not tell everyone, say, look in every book, in every business book it says, every sort of book on freelancing or creativity or business says, you know what, this is business.
• 49:57
  Radim Malinic: Because It's blatantly obvious, yet in that hobbyist sort of mindset, kind of in talk like dopamine and intoxication with thinking like, Hey, I am getting paid for sitting at home in my pants, creating posters.
• 50:11
  Radim Malinic: This is amazing.
• 50:12
  Radim Malinic: And then you realize.
• 50:15
  Radim Malinic: You know what?
• 50:15
  Radim Malinic: There's so much more that goes into it.
• 50:17
  Radim Malinic: I spent 42, 000 words of just explaining how you can do this just to get to the starting line to do this properly, to set yourself up properly.
• 50:26
  Radim Malinic: And then you know what?
• 50:28
  Radim Malinic: You go again, like what you've created a year ago needs a tweak.
• 50:31
  Radim Malinic: Like you need to still learn what's changing because if all my business is What worked a year ago or two years ago or six years ago doesn't work now.
• 50:40
  Radim Malinic: everything's adapting.
• 50:41
  Radim Malinic: Everything's changing and as I said, we talked about it at the beginning, like knowing what you don't know doesn't apply anymore.
• 50:48
  Radim Malinic: the information is there.
• 50:49
  Radim Malinic: The breadcrumbs are out there, you can actually.
• 50:51
  Radim Malinic: learn what you need to learn and go with it because yes, you need to work on yourself as a creative professional, like John Mayer still does guitar tutorials, like famous musicians still practice, you know, they're like athletes, they look after their craft, but they're also like, you have to be, understanding like who you work for, how do you do it, like are you servicing and who do you want to work with and what do you want to do?
• 51:12
  Radim Malinic: And I think that's inexcusable because you can't repeat ignorance these days.
• 51:17
  Ashley Baxter: And I think that, going back to the project you said that was a bit of a disaster, I think firstly, it's okay to make those mistakes.
• 51:24
  Ashley Baxter: They might be expensive mistakes, but the good thing is you'll probably just make them once, like you adapted and tweaked things going forward.
• 51:31
  Ashley Baxter: So I think if anybody's listening and they're maybe thinking, Oh, no, I'm doing things a bit wrong, or you're going to change in a titty on your business as you, grow and become more mature.
• 51:41
  Ashley Baxter: So it's okay to make mistakes, but hopefully you learn from them and put measures in place to prevent them from happening again.
• 51:50
  Radim Malinic: if there's one message from my life of work is you're not alone.
• 51:53
  Radim Malinic: Like everyone has the same mistakes.
• 51:55
  Radim Malinic: Everyone's got the same problems.
• 51:57
  Radim Malinic: They just look different.
• 51:58
  Radim Malinic: There might be a different language with different clients and different people, but all our careers are so much alike yet.
• 52:05
  Radim Malinic: Sometimes, we can easily tell ourselves we are the only with the problem.
• 52:08
  Radim Malinic: All right now in this moment and as you said like making the same mistake twice, you know if you want that phrase like you'd never step in the same river twice, whatever's that quote you know, never get them right.
• 52:19
  Ashley Baxter: Whoa, lots of quotes.
• 52:21
  Radim Malinic: yeah, I put quotes in my books
• 52:22
  Ashley Baxter: You must read a lot.
• 52:24
  Radim Malinic: I do, they inspire me.
• 52:25
  Radim Malinic: Yeah, not making the same mistake twice.
• 52:26
  Radim Malinic: Like, of course, like that was the only client who slipped through the net properly.
• 52:30
  Radim Malinic: And it was a very expensive chapter in my book, it's something that I've learned and I've detailed a process for people to think, Oh, that's what could happen, you know, because.
• 52:40
  Radim Malinic: We've got lots of books on, look, show your work, steal like an artist, life is great.
• 52:45
  Radim Malinic: It's just, we need those books, we need the inspiration, but ambition always meets the reality and the reality goes, ha, so you thought that could be the reality, it's
• 52:54
  Ashley Baxter: So is your new book quite practical then?
• 52:57
  Radim Malinic: it's very much, it's a guide on how to start and grow what I call a life changing business.
• 53:01
  Radim Malinic: So I need to send you a copy so you can see it, but it's very much about.
• 53:06
  Radim Malinic: Speaking to the mind and the person, I don't obsess about sort of portfolio details and the kind of stuff.
• 53:11
  Radim Malinic: It's look, if you want to do this.
• 53:13
  Radim Malinic: You can do this because the book starts with a chapter about me jumping into the waves in Bali.
• 53:19
  Radim Malinic: It's like a seven foot waves With a surfboard just getting whacked out wiped out, you know, totally like making it back to the shore in no time thinking Yeah, I thought it was a good surfer but I wasn't as good surfer as I needed to be and that's my life analogy of like I think I can do this business because I can make a business card for a taxi driver or for, mom's bakery or whatever.
• 53:40
  Radim Malinic: And then you realize you jump in and it's like, Oh, the whole thing can just.
• 53:44
  Radim Malinic: take you under, wipe you out and throw you back on the shore thinking you need a little bit more information.
• 53:49
  Radim Malinic: You need a bit more experience.
• 53:50
  Radim Malinic: You need to do more work on yourself and get insurance someplace, at some time because, yeah, things get real, real quickly.
• 54:00
  Radim Malinic: And repeating myself, but more framework and more groundwork and foundation you put into your business.
• 54:05
  Radim Malinic: you don't have to think about it.
• 54:06
  Radim Malinic: it's, that's the best bit.
• 54:08
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah, do you know what I like about insurance?
• 54:10
  Ashley Baxter: and it doesn't have to be through with Jack, right?
• 54:12
  Ashley Baxter: Just going to any business insurance provider.
• 54:15
  Ashley Baxter: So I can tell you now that statistically speaking, you're probably not going to have to make a claim on your policy, right?
• 54:22
  Ashley Baxter: But I do know that every freelancer benefits from being insured because it can really change the way that you speak with your clients.
• 54:30
  Ashley Baxter: It can give you the confidence that you need to have difficult conversations with clients or stand up to clients who are maybe trying to take advantage of you.
• 54:39
  Ashley Baxter: So I think, statistically speaking, you're not going to use the practical elements of your insurance, but every freelancer and creative person benefits from having it.
• 54:47
  Ashley Baxter: I also think it's really cheap as well.
• 54:50
  Ashley Baxter: we're talking about these products that can help you chase late payments.
• 54:53
  Ashley Baxter: It costs about 5 a month for that.
• 54:55
  Ashley Baxter: so yeah, I would just love for more.
• 54:57
  Ashley Baxter: creatives to consider the boring stuff like that.
• 55:00
  Ashley Baxter: Like I say, it doesn't have to be through with Jack.
• 55:03
  Ashley Baxter: This isn't an advert for with Jack, but just yeah, look into it and get it sorted.
• 55:09
  Radim Malinic: I think if there's one point to add, it's from my experience, even from so far, mid career experience, that the bigger the work you're going for, actually some organizations and companies actually require you to have a business insurance and indemnity insurance, because they want to make sure that if you actually fuck up, that you're covered, they know that they're covered.
• 55:29
  Radim Malinic: So it's, easy to have dream client list without.
• 55:34
  Radim Malinic: the actual reality behind it, because you think you're going to do bigger stuff, bigger work with bigger, bigger organizations, but all of that requires a lot more behind the scenes to make sure that nothing goes wrong because it's easy to think like, okay, you know what?
• 55:48
  Radim Malinic: I can jump, the queue.
• 55:50
  Radim Malinic: I can go from a bedroom freelancer to being, a branding studio.
• 55:54
  Radim Malinic: in no time, but it does not.
• 55:56
  Radim Malinic: you need mostly personal experience, you need professional experience.
• 55:59
  Radim Malinic: And mostly having the right documents and the right sort of insurance policy in place.
• 56:03
  Radim Malinic: It's almost a must, you know, you can't just hope for the best, because you
• 56:06
  Ashley Baxter: No.
• 56:07
  Radim Malinic: for the worst really.
• 56:09
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah.
• 56:10
  Ashley Baxter: And it's not just clients that request it, platforms like, Juno and whatnot, they require you to have it too.
• 56:15
  Ashley Baxter: But certainly if you make a mistake in your work or the client perceives you to have made a mistake, which we find is the likeliest outcome, then.
• 56:24
  Ashley Baxter: They need to know that they can recover whatever expenses have been incurred as a result of that mistake from you.
• 56:30
  Ashley Baxter: If you don't have insurance, you're putting yourself in a really difficult situation there.
• 56:34
  Ashley Baxter: You're probably not going to have the funds to be able to.
• 56:38
  Ashley Baxter: dig yourself out of that hole.
• 56:39
  Ashley Baxter: So that's where insurance comes in.
• 56:41
  Radim Malinic: I think it's been a very enlightening conversation.
• 56:43
  Radim Malinic: I'll just finish this conversation with one story, which is actually not mine, but it's a story of a friend of mine.
• 56:49
  Radim Malinic: he was quite shrewd, but he took on a project years ago, absolutely years ago with a client, that was, let's say, client number two, three or four.
• 56:58
  Radim Malinic: And my friend is quite versatile, he's a producer, so he's decided to create this project.
• 57:03
  Radim Malinic: Digital product for a client and the client briefed it and it quite quickly became a nightmare.
• 57:08
  Radim Malinic: it was not necessarily scope query.
• 57:10
  Radim Malinic: It was more like a sort of scope misunderstanding because what seems quite easy on the outside, like that's not that like surfboard, it's quite difficult on the inside to actually produce.
• 57:20
  Radim Malinic: And it got to the point where the project failed.
• 57:24
  Radim Malinic: And my client and my friend was being sued, for the loss of income by his client What my friend did he actually decided to wind down the company before the legal proceedings Just so he can get away or get away from the issue So that was his thing.
• 57:39
  Radim Malinic: Obviously, I believe that if he had a professional indemnity insurance That could be then negotiated.
• 57:46
  Radim Malinic: I think that could be done worked out and what that's That's your insurance there it's kind of like a hard stopping moment when you realize that something that serious happens, because we never really think about stuff that could go wrong, especially have such a knock on implications on sort of clients, revenue or work on their business operations, because we see that sort of as a, again, transactional value, like you needed this, I'll give you that.
• 58:09
  Radim Malinic: But, Oh, I didn't really know.
• 58:10
  Radim Malinic: It's so much bigger impact.
• 58:13
  Radim Malinic: And yeah, If someone decides after this conversation that they still don't need insurance, I wish them all the luck, but I think from my experience, they should look up someone like your company with Jack and speak to you because, yeah, it's, I feel safe with your insurance policy.
• 58:31
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah.
• 58:31
  Ashley Baxter: And listen, I love talking about insurance.
• 58:34
  Ashley Baxter: So people have a lot of questions about it or so they should, because like we've said, these are complicated products.
• 58:41
  Ashley Baxter: So even if you're not a customer, get in touch and ask me any questions you have about it.
• 58:45
  Ashley Baxter: And I'd be happy to answer it.
• 58:47
  Ashley Baxter: Like my personal goal is to help as many creatives as possible.
• 58:52
  Ashley Baxter: Yeah, any questions you have about insurance at all, just get in touch and hopefully we can, convey the value of it because it is, I know I'm biased because I'm in the trenches and I see the problems regularly happening, but I would not run a business without it.
• 59:08
  Radim Malinic: I think you mentioned before we started recording that you're looking at creating some video content and give more information to the public and especially the creative public about this.
• 59:18
  Radim Malinic: So I think once it becomes available, I'd be happy to share this and because yeah, I think there's never really enough business information that you can not have a note because it makes you.
• 59:28
  Radim Malinic: As I always keep saying like the more multifaceted and more rounder and kind of safer and more More secure in what you're doing, as a creative because yeah, I think if there's one thing I mean you want to be focused on being creative It comes with everything else done, you know It's just like you cook your meal after everything's done and set up and you're like, okay I can now enjoy the meal rather than going
• 59:49
  Ashley Baxter: well, keep an eye on our social media channels because we are going to go big on the content this year.
• 59:55
  Radim Malinic: Excellent.
• 59:56
  Radim Malinic: So, where will people find you?
• 59:57
  Radim Malinic: Is it VivJack?
• 59:58
  Radim Malinic: What's the website again?
• 1:00:00
  Ashley Baxter: So the website's withjack.
• 1:00:02
  Ashley Baxter: co.
• 1:00:02
  Ashley Baxter: uk The Instagram, any social media channels are a little bit annoying because they have an underscore and then with Jack just
• 1:00:08
  Radim Malinic: Yeah.
• 1:00:09
  Ashley Baxter: difficult to get the handles for it.
• 1:00:11
  Radim Malinic: Right.
• 1:00:11
  Radim Malinic: One last question.
• 1:00:13
  Radim Malinic: don't think I've ever asked you that question.
• 1:00:14
  Radim Malinic: I will let you go after this.
• 1:00:17
  Radim Malinic: VivJack.
• 1:00:18
  Radim Malinic: What's the name?
• 1:00:19
  Radim Malinic: Where did it come from?
• 1:00:20
  Ashley Baxter: Oh, so I named after my dad because he's the whole reason that I got into insurance.
• 1:00:25
  Ashley Baxter: Like, I took over the family insurance business when I was 18 and then drove it into the ground, didn't really do a good job of maintaining it or building it.
• 1:00:35
  Ashley Baxter: But then when I went on to start my own insurance business, because he was the reason I got into it, I wanted it to have a nod back to him.
• 1:00:41
  Ashley Baxter: So I'm not very creative or inventive with names, so instead I just named it after my dad.
• 1:00:46
  Ashley Baxter: the little mascot you see on the website, that's based on him as well.
• 1:00:50
  Radim Malinic: I was going to say now it all makes perfect sense.
• 1:00:52
  Radim Malinic: thank you so much.
• 1:00:53
  Radim Malinic: Actually, thanks so much for your time.
• 1:00:55
  Radim Malinic: I think we can talk about for another two or three hours easily about these stories and what people could and should do.
• 1:01:01
  Radim Malinic: thanks so much for your time.
• 1:01:02
  Radim Malinic: It's great to have you on the show and I hope to speak to you soon.
• 1:01:04
  Ashley Baxter: Thanks for having me, I'll speak to you soon.
• 1:01:12
  Radim Malinic: Thank you for listening to this episode of Creativity for Sale podcast.
• 1:01:16
  Radim Malinic: The show was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinic.
• 1:01:19
  Radim Malinic: Editing and audio production was masterfully done by Neil mackay,.
• 1:01:22
  Radim Malinic: from 7 million Bikes Podcasts, Theme music was written and produced by Robert Summerfield.
• 1:01:28
  Radim Malinic: If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support the podcast, please subscribe and leave a rating or review.
• 1:01:34
  Radim Malinic: To get your own action plan on how to start and grow a life changing creative business.
• 1:01:38
  Radim Malinic: You can get a copy of the Creativity for Sale book via the links in show notes.
• 1:01:42
  Radim Malinic: burning, and until next time, I'm Radim Malinich, your guide through this exploration of passion, creativity, innovation, and the boundless potential within us all.