Make Art, Make Money

Today I had the honour of sitting down with one of my favourite local wrestlers BT Urruela, better known as Blade Lennox of UCW and beyond. BT has had a super unconventional past in leading up to becoming a pro wrestler and I had been wanting to chat to him about it for ages. BT's journey began after high school in the military, takes a few turns between being a public speaker, an author and even...

I'd been wanting to have a proper sit down with YakkaBlakka mostly known as Yak, a really cool dude I met through the Unified Championship Wrestling connection. Yak performs as the character Mr Star Power Archie Bower at UCW but much like myself comes to wrestling from a different art form, in this case it's hip hop and more specifically hip hop dance. Yak told me all about the history of hip hop...

In this episode I sat down with Michael AKA Mr Wizowski AKA Wazza, a stand up colleague of mine who has worked in the circus for years. I had been wanting a proper sit down with Michael to talk about what it's like, how you get started etc and this conversation definitely delivered. Michael and myself are reaching a similar stage of career where we are looking a bit more at stability with less tra...

Today I sat down with Renee from Tusken Traiders, an online business selling vintage toys and apparel, they have some freaking cool stuff from the 90s and 00's, very y2k coded. Renee has been doing this as her full time gig for just under a year so it was awesome to talk to her about what that experience was like, as well as getting a bit of an insight about the reseller industry. I'm huge into to...

This time I sat down with Redgie, a tattoo artist, painter and graphic designer who's had one hell of an interesting journey to get to where he is currently and judging by our conversation he might not be finished evolving yet! As it turns out Redgie has done a LOT of self teaching when it comes to art and tattooing so it was awesome to talk to someone with a DIY path like him. Another thing I was...

This week I had a yarn to my pal Troubadette, a musician and comedian who's been swinging away at the full time hustle for 2 years now. We talked about Troob's backstory a bit and how they got into the position they're in currently to be able to pursue art as the main thing and do enough relief teaching work to have a base to work from and pay some of the bills off of. One part of the podcast that...

I originally recorded this podcast for my previous podcast Ruddle Me This, and given that I've just uploaded Sean's 2026 interview I decided to port this one over to the new feed for better visibility. Sean was just recently doing music full time when we recorded this back in 2024 so you can listen to this one and then the one from 2026 to get a bit of perspective about what's changed and what Sea...

I sat down with Sean Tinker, a fella I've known for many a year. We initially met doing stand-up shows together but at the current time Sean is making his living as a musician playing pub gigs and corporates. We recorded a podcast in 2024 on my old podcast, Ruddle Me This where we talked about what it was like that early into his career as a full time musician and we thought it would be cool do a...

In this episode I sat down with the owner of Good Times Comedy Club here in Christchurch - Pip Taylor. Pip and I have been working together for a relatively short amount of time, since late 2024 I think. Pip's one of the kindest people I've ever met and it was great to chat about what it's like from her point of view running a venue. As always we talk about how she got started, when she made the j...

The first episode of my (sorta) relaunched podcast, Make Art, Make Money! Liv Fox is a Christchurch based tattoo artist who was kind enough to sit down with me for about an hour and talk about the ins and outs of being a self employed tattoer. We covered Liv's journey going from apprentice to tattooer to self employed to owning a studio and what are some of the lessons and pitfalls along the way....

In a world where making a living from art is becoming more and more difficult, New Zealand stand up comedian Taylor Ruddle interviews a different creative each week and discusses their process, revenue streams and practical steps to get started making money in their field. Taylor has been making a living as a full time artist since 2023, so to some extent he knows what he's talking about. If you'r...