The Maker's Playbook

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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 work. Her approach challenges the conventional wisdom around audience-building entirely: by simply making what she loved and paying close attention to who responded — and where those orders were coming from — her path revealed itself gradually instead of through any grand plan. It's a reminder that strategy doesn't have to come first; sometimes the most sustainable business decisions come from trusting the slow burn and letting your people find you.
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Looking for support in building your own creative life? Come join over 100 other makers from around the world, having these very discussions, inside of The Community. Click here to learn more.
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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 production potter to sculptor to jewelry maker and back again is a raw and honest look at how the pressure to monetize our work can quietly separate us from the reason we started making in the first place. The real tension isn't whether to niche down or stay flexible, but instead learning to trust that the creative restlessness pulling you toward something new might actually be pointing you somewhere worth going.

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Looking for support in building your own creative life? Come join over 100 other makers from around the world, having these very discussions, inside of The Community. Click here to learn more.
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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 conversation with Debi Stoliar of Curiosibee Ceramics,, we explore what it looks like to hold two seemingly contradictory truths at once: taking your craft seriously as a future business while protecting the joy that makes it worth making at all. The most powerful business decision you might ever make could simply be deciding not to grow beyond what you genuinely love doing.
Check out Debi's work at: https://www.curiosibee.com/
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Looking for support in building your own creative life? Come join over 100 other makers from around the world, having these very discussions, inside of The Community. Click here to learn more.
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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 has had the opportunity to say yes to the most exciting, challenging, and community-driven ceramics opportunities of her career. And it's her full-time job that gave her the freedom to do it. When survival isn't on the line, your art gets to be whatever you want it to be. Could releasing the pressure to monetize everything (and leaning into what genuinely sustains you) actually be the most serious thing you can do for your creative practice?
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Looking for support in building your own creative life? Come join over 100 other makers from around the world, having these very discussions, inside of The Community. Click here to learn more.
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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 businesses, what burnout actually feels like versus just being really tired, and the surprising freedom that comes from detaching your creativity from your ability to pay the bills.
Plus the one question every maker should ask themselves before they spend another minute stressing about Instagram.
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Looking for support in building your own creative life? Come join over 100 other makers from around the world, having these very discussions, inside of The Community. Click here to learn more.
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Love this podcast? Support an episode!  

Follow The Maker's Playbook on Instagram @themakersplaybook