The Maker's Playbook

Send us Fan Mail Somewhere between the hot flashes, the brain fog, and yet another pot collapsing on the wheel, it’s easy to feel like everyone else got a manual for this season of life that you somehow missed. What if the other side of perimenopause isn’t about finally feeling less like a failure, but about refusing to take those feelings so personally? Kelli Nina Perkins of Pottery Apocalypse, a...

Send us Fan Mail For so many of us, perimenopause shows up quietly (and often years before we expect it), scrambling the energy, focus, and follow-through our creative businesses depend on, while the people around us either miss it entirely or chalk it up to us being “cranky.” What if this season isn’t your capacity breaking down, but an invitation to finally stop pulling yourself up by your boots...

Send us Fan Mail Some days the clay is calling and you still can't make yourself go down to the studio (and the story you tell yourself about why is rarely a kind one). For potters in perimenopause, that tug-of-war gets louder: bigger feelings, words that won't come, and fewer spoons to spend. It's easy to read all of that as proof you're falling apart. But what if this stretch...

Send us Fan Mail Have you been waking up at 3am wondering where the focus and stamina you used to have has disappeared to? Did you use to accomplish 100 things in the first half of your day, and now barely manage 10 things in 3 days? What if the real conversation us small, handmade artisan business owners need isn't another productivity system, but an honest one about what's happening in...

Send us Fan Mail There's a strange kind of irony in selling something made entirely by hand using an image that wasn't. This episode sits inside that tension… What happens to the meaning of handmade work when AI creeps into how we market it, photograph it, or talk about it online? We’re not taking a moral stance on AI in this episode though. Rather, let’s consider a deeper question: Why...

Send us Fan Mail Many makers treat consistency as the goal and cyclical creative rhythms as something to fix — but Shalya Marsh, of Shalya Marsh Studios, has built a three-decade career on making, unmaking, and remaking herself: sculptor to potter, employee to entrepreneur, solo maker to (almost) business owner with an assistant. Her conversation digs into whether "balance" is really the...

Send us Fan Mail You already know what it feels like to open a cupboard, see a mug, and know exactly who made it before you ever check for a signature. That's the instinct artists have always had. So why does the word "branding" make so many of us tune out? Jessie, one half of the duo behind Inkpot Creative, breaks it down: That same kind of recognition (built on purpose) is all bra...

Send us Fan Mail As makers, we're told to define our ideal audience and nail our strategy before we ever start — but what if the real strategy reveals itself only after you've already begun? Robin Corradino of Rob Ceramics joins to unpack how she built a thriving wholesale and consignment-based business almost by accident, never doing a single craft market until years into selling her wo...

Send us Fan Mail Most of us have been told (or have told ourselves one way or another) that building a successful creative business means picking a lane and staying in it. But what happens when the lane you've built starts to feel more like a cage, and the work that once lit you up becomes just another obligation you can't motivate yourself to do? Christina Orthwein's journey from p...

Send us Fan Mail Many of us assume that when demand for our work finally arrives, we're supposed to rise to meet all of it — that suddenly the rules of supply and demand apply to us the same way they apply to everyone else. What if deliberately not scaling up isn't leaving opportunity on the table, but is actually the thing that makes the work worth wanting in the first place? In her con...

Send us Fan Mail We spend so much energy measuring success by how visible or "full time" our craft looks from the outside, but the version of making that actually sustains you might look completely different from what you think it should. Over the last 5 years, since we first interviewed Camille Beckles (of Camille at the Wheel), on our debut episode here at the Maker’s Playbook, Camille...

Send us Fan Mail For fifteen years, the first piece of advice out of my mouth to anyone asking about self-employment has been the same: keep the outside income as long as you possibly can. And for fifteen years, I wasn't doing it. Until now. In this solo episode, I'm sharing a significant personal update — what led me to take an outside job after fifteen years of running my own businesse...

Send us Fan Mail Most of us have been told — implicitly or explicitly — that success as a maker means growth: more followers, more orders, more revenue. But what if the real question isn't how big can this get , but what do I actually want from this ? Taylor Friese of Maker Bakery built a waitlist that stretches years into the future not by chasing a bigger audience, but by getting radically...

Send us Fan Mail If you've ever Googled "how to price my art" or "how to grow a creative business" hoping someone would just hand you the right answer — this episode is for you. Rebecca digs into why making confident business decisions as an artist or maker isn't about finding the perfect formula. It's about treating your art business like a science experiment: f...

Send us Fan Mail Most of us assume that building a creative business takes years of groundwork before the work can speak for itself — but what happens when the work takes off before you've had time to figure out the business? Aaron Raymond of Redacted Ceramics went from renting a wheel for a week to running a full-time pottery business in under two years, and his story raises a quiet but impo...

Send us Fan Mail As makers with hobbies turned side-hustles, many of us get wrapped up in the ultimate goal and dream of quitting our day jobs to pursue pottery full time—but what if that pressure to monetize everything is actually stealing the joy from the very thing we fell in love with? Matt Robinson's experience first burning out on wedding photography taught him that the freedom to exper...

Send us Fan Mail When you see someone juggling multiple jobs in their creative field, it's easy to assume it's because none of them could fully support them on their own—but what if having options is actually the most strategic business decision you could make? What happens when you intentionally build each avenue to be viable as a standalone career, then choose to keep them all anyway?...

Send us Fan Mail So many of us carry the weight of what we thought our creative careers were supposed to look like—especially when formal education told us exactly what success should be. What happens when you realize that the dream you've been chasing (full-time solo artist, full-time influencer, the one perfect job) isn't actually what you want anymore? As Hope Limyanksy shares her jou...

Send us Fan Mail We're bombarded with messages telling us we're missing some secret key to business success—especially at the start of a new year—but here's the truth:  There's nothing fundamentally new about running a successful business, no matter what year it is. What if the real problem isn't that you're lacking some proprietary system or special knowledge, but th...

Send us Fan Mail For many makers, opportunities to focus solely on creative exploration—without the pressure to produce work for sale or prove our worth through finished pieces—feel impossibly rare or reserved for those along a traditional academic path. When you discovered your craft later in life, already juggling mortgages and responsibilities you can't simply walk away from, where do you...

Send us Fan Mail Building a team is one thing—but how do you actually run a production ceramics studio day-to-day without losing the handmade quality that makes your work special? In this second part of my conversation with Sarah Wolf of Wolf Ceramics, we dig into the operational realities of running an eight-person studio. Sarah breaks down weekly production rhythms, why cross-training her team a...

Send us Fan Mail What if you could grow your business and build a team without becoming a factory—creating a business that values craft, flexibility, and the humans behind the work? In this conversation, Sarah Wolf of Wolf Ceramics shares her journey from studying geochemistry to building an eight-person ceramics studio in Hood River, Oregon. She opens up about the early years working from her par...

Send us Fan Mail Right now, for potters and artists around the world the holiday season is crazy busy - markets, commissions, shop updates, custom orders all piling up at once. But are you choosing what's right for you, or just reacting to everything coming at you?  In this episode, we explore the crucial difference between making intentional decisions based on your unique goals versus automa...

Send us Fan Mail Working as a librarian by day and making pottery in her garage studio by night, Becky wrestles with a challenge many makers face: how do you develop a distinctive artistic voice when you're working in isolation? What if the pressure to constantly produce—amplified by social media's highlight reel—is actually drowning out the quiet work of discovering what you're tru...

Send us Fan Mail Many makers struggle with the tension between creating work we love vs making work that we think will sell, especially when traditional academic instruction is often focused on concepts and what I call “Capital A Art” over the practical skills needed to make a living. What if the key isn't choosing between artistic integrity and commercial viability, but rather learning to wo...