It's our Birthday! ʕ•ᴥ• ✿ʔ
My Twin and I turn 29 today and what better way to celebrate the last year of being in our twenties than by launching a podcast?!
Today Jodie and I turn 29. I swear we were only just celebrating our 25th birthday, it’s crazy how quickly your late twenties fly by. In honour of the end our second decade, we have decided to launch a podcast called Art of the Side Gig. We have spent the last five or six years working on turning our creative hobbies into creative careers while juggling a full time job. Art of the Side Gig is all about the journey and we want you invite you along for the ride!
☆ Growing Up in a Bakery
Together with our brothers we run a family bakery, Jodie and I even share an office. We grew up sharing bedrooms and bunk beds and now we spend everyday together. Surprisingly we don’t really argue that much. It helps that we have a lot of shared interests; we’re both creative people who hyper fixate on projects (only to drop them to move onto the next one). We both have always loved swimming although Jodie took it a bit too far and swam the Solent at 6am that one time. We also love spreadsheets and plan every trip away hour by hour.
When we were 3 years old our parents decided to move to the Isle of Wight to start a bakery. We both have vivid memories of standing on top of flour buckets to help our Dad press out tarts using a hand cranking press. He would sit us in the front seat of his van while he drove around to our wholesale customers and our shops to deliver bread and cakes. We would insist on trying to lift as many baskets of bread as possible. Collette who has worked at the bakery since we were four years old has watched us grow taller and taller over the 25 years she has been here. She used to get us to fold cake boxes and napkins while we waited for our Mum to finish her paperwork upstairs. I still remember the strong smell of bakery mops and tea towels thick with grease and flour on the drive home because Mum would have to take them back to our house to wash them every night.
☆ Giving up on Art
Jodie and I have always been creative. As children we would turn cardboard boxes into horse costumes or a puppet theatre. We would turn scrap paper into magazines or mini books. When it came to picking our GCSEs and A Levels, both of us picked Art and Design although Jodie took more of an interest in Biology and English Language while I was drawn to Politics, Philosophy and Literature. Jodie has always been fascinated by animals while I am fascinated by people. Although neither of us spoke about it at the time, we both came to the conclusion that although we loved Art, we wouldn’t be able to make a career of it. Jodie went on to study Primary Teaching at University while I picked Politics and Philosophy.
I loved my degree, I was intensely interested in Political Philosophy and Ethics and decided I wanted to work in charities and think tanks. Jodie went on to become a primary teacher for a good few years. But then both of us found that we weren’t happy. I came back to the bakery to help out in the office part-time, something that I didn’t see myself doing for very long. But, part-time turned into full-time and six years later I have taken on all of the marketing for our retail, wholesale and digital sales. Around a year after I returned to the family business, so did Jodie, leaving teaching for good. She is now a HR and Company Secretary genius.
Now looking back it is easy to see from a younger age when our interests and talents diverged what kind of career would suit us. Everything I have ever enjoyed doing has involved communication and story-telling. Taking a concept and communicating it to other people. Whether that is branding, event planning or illustration. Jodie is incredibly organised and has a great attention to detail; her years as a primary school teacher set her up to be great at supporting staff. Her portraits of animals are beautifully detailed, she has incredible patience. She runs a successful Esty Shop where she offers custom portraits for owners all sorts of animals.
☆ What’s the Goal?
In episode one of our new podcast, Jodie and I discuss how far our creative practices have come and where we want to take them now. We have one year left until we turn 30, what do we want to have achieved by then? Jodie has thrown herself into the deep end and signed up for a bunch of Maker’s Markets and Craft Fairs where she plans to sell cards, notepads, stickers and (hopefully) more pet portraits direct to customers. The long game is to try and get her business running independently on Etsy. For me, I have a dream of illustrating a book telling the stories of women in Isle of Wight History. I have been very lucky to have been picked to receive three different grants over the past couple of years to develop my creative practice. I want to pass on my tips for writing successful funding bids, something to listen out for in the podcast!
Other topics to expect as you follow along on our journey are:
diversifying your income streams
funding, grants and applications
networking and self-promotion
marketing
utilising social media
burnout and work/life balance
creative block and finding inspiration
Etsy Shops, websites and print-on-demand
living on an Island and it’s challenges
aaaaand anything else you wanna know!
If this sounds right up your street, then why not give us the best birthday gift of all and subscribe? ʕ☆ᴥ☆¯ʔ Let’s be pals!