Episode 7 – Elliot Jaffe [Writer]

Hi all. Welcome to episode 7. For this episode we feature Elliot, a young University graduate who is finding his place in the world after graduating from his Bachelor of International Business Degree from the University of Auckland. On a chance conversation with a random rider in the car through lockdown, I met Chelsea. We got to talking and she mentioned her partner was working with blogs.  Through this connection, I connected with Elliot and this is how we ended up talking about his experiences in this new digital age and how he navigated to this point in his life.

After completing his degree in 2016, Elliot continued on and also completed his Masters with honours. The world was at his feet and it would seem that he had it all planned out. As many young people do in this age, he decided to take a bit of a break to travel. After a stint in England playing a bit of cricket and a detour to Japan, he decided to settle in and plan out what the next move to be.

The plan was not to necessarily move to Australia, but Chelsea managed to get a job at the Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and their destiny was set in motion. Elliot managed to get a couple of Sales roles and it would seem that this was to be his future path. Deep down however he knew that this was not the path he really wanted. In fact, he didn’t really know what he wanted to do with himself.

Like many others, when the country went into lockdown, he suddenly found that the work dried up and was suddenly out of work. He then made a decision that the sales area was not something he wanted to go into and accidentally fell into writing. 

He decided to develop a blog to document the stories of small business owners living through the pandemic. He wasn’t sure how to go about it in the beginning. He just did his research and made a start. He learnt how to build a website, utilise Zoom and then also taught himself how to touch type to transcribe the interviews he does.

He also didn’t have much of a network, but he just went to work contacting small business owners randomly to see if they wanted to get involved in his project. Some said no, but most were open to a conversation and he went on from there. His Sales experience started to kick in and he just went to work connecting, chatting and then interviewing. Check out his work with our very own Lisa Listama of the Live Work Digital fame!

Small Business World Blog

His story is one of positivity. His blog continues to grow  with the stories of hope and determination from business owners doing it tough. The message is clear,  local small businesses are struggling but they continue to fight and remain hopeful for the future.

He made a decision to follow another path and in the middle of it he found his passion. We love the fact that he is able to connect with random business owners who want to share their journeys.

What is clear is that no matter what stage of life or career you are at, the opportunity is there for anyone to be able to change course. Elliot is an amazing example for this generation of new leaders connecting and building relationships through this digital age we live in. There is still some uncertainty for the immediate future, but what is clear is that we can all find despair in these tough times, but we can also find hope and optimism as well.

We wish him well for his journey ahead.

From us, until next time….Auf Widersehen [Live, Work, Digital]

How Not to Make a Podcast [Journal #3]

Ok then!

We are continuing to slowly build our  Live Work Digital  Podcast at a nice  pace. Currently we have just launched Episode 3 and at the same time we also just finished  interviewing someone for another future episode.  Lisa and I both got held up a little the past week. We were busy getting in our final assignments for this particular study period and it just was generally a busy week for both of us

One thing is for sure though We are having a heap of fun talking to people and we are so grateful for everyone that is willing to share with us their stories. We have halted the interviews a bit for the moment as we need to catch up and catch our breath. In short, we have up to episode 6 recorded so we are a bit backlogged. We aren’t really worried though as we don’t have a schedule and we are learning a heap of stuff about the process.  As long as we continue to build content and keep moving, we will find our flow and move with the current at our own pace.

Meanwhile we will continue to update our progress and what we have learnt as much as possible along the way. We have actually over 30 topics headings in draft that we want to write about and we are adding more along the way. It may take a bit to catch up I believe.

At the same time, we are slowly building and shaping our brand. It is interesting to see how our Instagram feed has evolved and changed since we started. We have been focused on our story and are hopefully creating some eye catching content with interesting visual images and music attached to the Story Feed. Throw in a #hashtag or 6, a sprinkle of Gif’s and slowly, we are evolving and spreading our reach outwards.

Our Vibe

Photo by Petr Sevcovic on Unsplash 

We are just learning what works and what people like and I am actually really enjoying building the content.  As we find out our vibe to find our tribe we will eventually find our tempo on the timing for our  posts and stories.

Trying to find what works is a little bit like moving into a shared house and buying a heap of fruit to put in a bowl to place on the kitchen bench, just to find out what is the favourite fruit of the household. Huh? What…… you say?

Well, to see what everyone likes  I will be able to see which fruit disappears first. If only the pears a left in the bowl and start to go rotten, then I know I wont need to buy any more pears. If green apples are the bomb, then I will buy more green apples next time. (You will see throughout this journey that I like my analogies…boom!)

Photo by HOTCHICKSING on Unsplash

I am diligently putting into practice some of the things I had recently learnt from Jason our SEO Guru on Episode 3. I will share this information on a blog later in the week, along with the other things I have learnt through my research. I have also been reading and listening to other blogs and podcasts during the week.

I feel we are starting to deliver a good base of information and content and the only thing stopping us really is that we don’t have enough time in the week to do more on it. The important part though is to ensure we have the content for further episodes. With this base, I hope we are now portraying that we have some substance behind what we are trying to achieve. The next step now is to reach out and connect with other bloggers and other podcasters.

It is not an accident that we chose Anchor.fm for our podcast platform and WordPress as our Blog website. Both of these platforms have vast communities of people just like us doing the same things. Part of a spreadable network is to find as many roads and intersections as possible that we can explore and connect to others. By default we are already part of these communities. WordPress in particular has a vast community of connected bloggers that are in the tens of thousands.

At the end of the day, most blogs don’t have a podcast attached to it and most Podcasts don’t have blogs connected to it either.

The other piece of this puzzle is the traction we are also gaining from our LinkedIn profiles. We commenced testing our reach a couple of weeks ago just by me updating my profile to include the fact that I was finishing my degree later this year and also adding Podcaster on my list of titles. The other thing I did also was started a 30 day free trial of LinkedIn premium. Haven’t really used it much except for looking to see who is looking at my profile. Not sure I will have the time to really test the waters with all the other functionalities of the premium subscription, but will check out further in the next week. The one thing I do know is that on a Friday, there is no point in posting a blog. It barely gets any views. Whether this is because of the lockdown situation time will tell, but that was an easy observation. I will just post a meme of some sort instead.

Ok folks, thats it for the moment, Until next time…..

Love you all,

Live Work Digital

Luki

Why I knocked back an Internship.

I knocked back and Internship recently. A couple of years ago, at the age of 48, I decided to go back to University. Now it has been 27 years since I left for a year off from my Bachelor of Business degree. I left because I was lost and was defeated doing something that obviously didn’t interest me. In fact I had no idea what to do so I aimlessly just meandered along and let life take me with the tide.

And as you guessed, I never went back to it. I did 3 years of a 3 year degree with one year to go. What a dropout! What a waste of time.

I wished I had of just travelled looking back! Jumped on a plane and head to Europe or the States and then rent a van to cruise through a while. Oh life would be so different wouldn’t it!

Photo by Kevin Schmid on Unsplash

I decided that I was going to make sure I finished this course in the 3 years even if was going to kill me! Can I do it in the 3 years? I mean, is pretty much full-time study. Bloody ridiculous goal I would have thought, if it wasn’t me that set it. Fast forward everything until now and I am literally on the verge of finishing this damned thing. I had a bit to prove to myself really and it feels bloody amazing that I am now so close.

So this degree was going to set me up to work in the online space. Some people would argue that I don’t need a University degree to do anything online and it was going to be just a waste of time. I am also sure my family were also thinking the same as I struggled to complete  many things  in my life. When it wasn’t really the shiny thing I was actually looking for, the gloss wore off and I would continue on my search for my Holy Grail.

I needed to sow the seeds to the next part of my life.

 Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

This was however the thing that would give me the grounding that I needed whilst I set myself up to be working in a space that I was drawn to. I was drawn to all things online essentially that had to do with media and communications. I was fascinated  with the concept of stories and listening to peoples stories and how they impacted others.

So for those people that are looking and waiting to see me fail again (including myself) take a seat in the back row and get ready to clap me on stage at my graduation.

Earlier this year, I thought I would look at dedicating a day a week to do maybe an internship. There are a couple of places online that will enable me to work with startups and freelancers to get experience in SEO, Online marketing, social media blah blah blah. There were some genuine offers, but most of the people on those sights were just wanting someone to do the work for free. I realised playing around online  working on various things through the years, I realised I had learnt more than I realise. I mean, heck, I built a live online e-commerce website for someone on a major commerce platform.

We just built a podcastchannel from scratch!

There was a couple of reasons why I didn’t end up taking that pat. Sure, the stuff I did was going to be good on my CV, but was it going to get me to where I want to be?

• I wasn’t sure I want to work in the corporate field again (Actually no I didn’t)
• A couple of the companies outlined some of the things they wanted me to do, and it was tasks that I could do, but it wasn’t going to be much of a mentorship type setup.
• A lot of time was going to be dedicated to someone elses work. I was busy as it was driving and studying in between kids and travel

In the end I changed my mind and turned down a couple of apprenticeship opportunities.

I decided I was going to hire myself and setup some things online which I could build and grow and nurture. Through building the blog and podcast, I realised I knew how to do a heck of a lot of stuff already.

At the end of the day, I set on this journey so I could live a life where I was not stuck in the one place or office or life. I wanted to be free of the constraints of a suit or higher management telling me to conform to there way of doing things. You must be dreaming I hear you say! You bloody better believe it. Whats the alternative?

Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash

Can you tell I am a very visual kind of guy right?

I am learning a lot by building this blog and it is something that I can build and document to show others, my journey. So much so I am enjoying adding content and topics t write about. Right now, I have 32 topics in draft in the backend of this baby.

I know that right now, at the beginning, very few people will even read this article if any. Someone asked a question on the University online discussion board the other day about how to get a portfolio together and whether they needed one. Hell yeah! This blog is my live CV.  Every letter I type and every person we interview to how we work our strategy on social media. It is all part of my Portfolio.

How fortunate I am that I found Lisa through the course and we are on this journey to wherever it is it will take us to.

So if you are offered an internship, tell them to stick it! No, I am kidding. Do what you feel is right for you and when it is right for you. I made a decision to knock back an internship, because I had a plan.

Thanks for reading if you got this far.

Cheers,

Live Work Digital Rocks.

Luki

How Not to Make a Podcast [Journal #1]

Photo by Jonathan Farber on Unsplash

Don’t Wait until you start a University degree, and more importantly, don’t wait until the time is right. When you decide the time is right and it is something that you want to do, just get it done.

Photo by freestocks.org from Pexels

With the wind in our faces and our tongues hanging out our mouths, like excited puppies on a road trip winding through the Great Ocean Road, we definitely were on our way.  There was no turning back. We now actually have a live Podcast Channel and it is available on Spotify and Apple Podcast amongst other platforms available  everywhere!

We are currently well on the way to our 4th interview (at the time of writing this post) and about to drop our 2nd Episode with the amazing Amanda Stevenson. She is a dynamic personal trainer who runs a fitness program and works with young kids at a  local Primary School.

Part of what we want to achieve is to document our journey to show  how easy it can be done to start something like this. It also doesn’t matter if  we stuff up along the way. The good thing is that, it doesn’t really matter.  Who cares right?

One of the challenges that we initially thought we would have was the fact that we both lived in different States in the country. The other thing was, what the heck were going to talk about, and who would listen to what we had to say. Driving through the day, especially in these times, everyone seemed to be advertising a podcast. It seemed that if anyone was going to launch one, it was now. There are now over 100 Million people around the world who listen to podcasts, and the numbers are growing each year.

Here is a listen to a few reasons why we shouldn’t do a podcast:

• We don’t have the equipment to start one.
• We are both busy working and studying already. We don’t have time.
• It must be expensive to launch something like this.
• What are we going to talk about?
• Where do we start?
• Why would anyone listen to us.
• How do we get listeners?
• How do we get onto Apple Podcast and Spotify?
• How do we find people to interview?

The list can go on and on forever right?

All of the reasons above are all reasons why we are doing this. It is a challenge and it is an exciting new frontier for us. Although the industry seems new, Podcasts have been around over a good decade now.

It is also important to keep in mind that before 8 weeks ago, Lisa and I did not even know each other. In fact , we still haven’t officially met. The reason we have connected is because of the existence of this digitally connected world. The good thing about this for our situation was that because it was a pretty major assignment for us. We had to at least follow through to a working product that could be assessed.

We did our research and we assigned tasks evenly and we just got it done.  There are many podcast platforms out there that we could have used:

• Buzzsprout
• Podbean
• Transistor
• Simulcast
• Captivate
• Spreaker
• Blah
• Blah
• Blah

So the point is that there are a ton load of choices to choose from. Our main points of difference that we were looking for was that we just wanted the platform to be:

• Totally Free
• East to use
• Able to be used with gear we already had
• We could record with multiple people involved
• It could get us onto the main listening platforms
• There were available resources to learn how to podcast
• One that had a track record within the industry
• It had to be the easiest and shiniest platform out there (Kidding…..not really!)

The internet is a weird and wonderful place for everything and anything. The one thing to point out with the platforms above that I have pointed out, was that none were free. When you look for stuff on the internet for a while, you kind of find out what is bullshit and what is not out there. There you go, I said it! Shhhhh. What, some of the stuff on here is rubbish! Crazy right!

All the platforms mentioned above may have some free trial period, and a couple have some very basic functionality that is free, but in my eyes, none of them were useable for what we wanted. We actually started to set up our channel on one platform, but it wasn’t very useable or editable from a hosting point of view. There were a handful of templates we could use, but we couldn’t edit most of it. We wanted to create something that was our brand.

The interesting thing I realised on my search for a hosting platform  was that many of the major blogs that spruiked these lists of platforms, were most likely earning affiliate commissions on the links that were on these lists. Therefore, this is why these platforms are all not totally free. They are being pushed to make money for the blogs for people who sign up from their personalised links. (Of course this is what we want to eventually do though right?)

Enter Anchor.fm. We actually set up our details on another platform before I found this one. At the end of the day, this hosting platforms did everything we wanted it to do. I only found it by accident whilst doing some research on another subject I was studying. I found this article on Anchor.fm by one of their founders on Medium, a writing and ideas platform. (More on this later, because this company is mind-blowing).

Side Note – Check out Medium for articles on EVERYTHING! If you are going to search for ideas on where to start or just want some inspiration, do yourself a favour and cruise through their pages.

In a very short amount of time, we just got things going and started. We didn’t use fancy equipment microphones or sound studio. And not long after, we were recording away.

Photo by Jaz King on Unsplash

There you have the beginnings of how we got started on our podcast journey. We still have no idea what we are doing most of the time, but we are having fun doing this.

More on our journey soon. Oh yes, you also don’t need to start a blog. It’s just something we are doing as we can share the love with building this project together. I am also just enjoying writing content at the moment, which is weird for me. Slowly, I am learning and finding my groove. This is one message that I want to continue to put across,

Just find what you love and keep searching for it. Never stop learning and exploring.

Love you all

Luki & Lisa

Anyone can do it!

This whole project has been developed to show people how to go about starting anything online. The internet is a vast and wonderful ocean full of information and it can be very overwhelming.  To be build this website, we used Google and  the collective knowledge of the both of us. However it is not as easy at it seams. Everywhere you go there are thousands of doors with just as much information behind them. It is easy for people to be disheartened because they don’t know where to start.

There is one key message we do would like to stress to everyone. One of the most important aspects of building an online presence is to ensure any copyright and intellectual property is protected. This is for the benefit of everyone. Never use anyone else’s work or information. Something that may seem harmless at the beginning, may end up putting you in a difficult position in the future.

One of our strategy’s was to ensure all the images and media we have used are all royalty free from a number of well known websites. [We used Unsplash, Pixabay & Pexels, but there are many others available for people to use].

There also many website free applications that can help build your website and brands with all of them having many templates available for the first time user. You can play around and  you can make as many mistakes as possible. The reason we used WordPress here was because I did just that a number of years ago. I played around and built some different things and my knowledge grew for there.

Lisa and I did our research and we even found anchor.fm for the podcast platform. It was easy to open an account with them and they have there own teaching episodes on their podcast channel.  There is plenty of information to get answers for when we got stuck with things,. Everything is free and all we needed was a profile and an app on the phone. No fancy equipment required! We just made it happen. The App was also easy to use and navigate through.

As much as we have used royalty free images in the spirit of sharing and collaborating online, our next blog post will acknowledge some of the freelancer images and videos we have used to create media for our use to build our brand for the podcast.

We also have licensed our website and content through here. More on this kind of licensing is going to be covered at a later blog post.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

So if you are stuck, or you don’t know where to start, drop us a line and make contact with us and maybe we can point you in the right direction. GO FOR IT!

Live Work Digital……….Peace & Love

Luki & Lisa

Live Work Digital – Stuff Gets real!

And so our journey has begun.

Today we recorded our very first episode EVER! With no knowledge or experience of the podcast industry we did it anyway. We learnt everything on the fly and did all of this with no special equipment, apart from our earphones and our mobile phones. We started this project with just an idea, and somehow just kept on going with it. Even more remarkable is the fact that Lisa and I didn’t even know each other 9 weeks ago.

Our very first episode will feature Thalia Kouts, the founder of Ethica Activewear, a new player in the leisure apparel scene. She is a full time Teacher, and she has built this brand from scratch, only launching her full e-commerce store a few weeks ago. She had an idea 4 years ago and from there, she just kept on going, step by step, to launch her eco friendly brand. Her clothes  are all made from sustainable materials (Bamboo &  Recycled plastic) and they are designed by herself and made in Adelaide.

Fun Fact:  Lisa lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, and I am in Melbourne, meaning all three of us did the interview from 3 different States. Very cool right?

Live Work Digital hopes to encourage, teach and motivate people that want to work in the online world. It is not for everyone, but for those that are searching for their next career step, we want to provide as much content as possible for people to see that it is possible. We are also both just learning and hopefully, we can encourage people to join us for the ride.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Peace & Love,

Luki & Lisa