 Hello, I'm Dave and I make things for a living which is absolutely fantastic, hooray. So, but rather than going to past projects in a lot of detail, usually I talk about the projects but Henry suggested I talk more about the business side of doing this kind of thing which isn't something I put online and it's not something I've spoken about before so maybe this is a chance to just talk about something a little bit different. First I'll just quickly go through some past projects so you know roughly what the sort of thing I do. Here is a machine with 49 mechanical ducts that go up and down. This is a commission for a motor company who wanted to show off their motors. Here is a sound system on petrol powered tank tracks. It's radio controlled, you can drive it around and it makes quite a lot of noise. This robot you can sort of see the scale that's built onto a dumper truck so you can sort of drive that around the garden but it's absolutely terrifying when it dips into a rabbit hole and the whole thing is really top heavy. This is a phonograph with about a thousand tracks recorded along it sort of loops of audio controlled by space debris passing over the UK. That was a commission for a composer. This is another portable sound system. It actually took longer to fit the tow bar to the car than it did to build that whole trailer but that's a story for the bar perhaps. That's a synthesiser I've been working on since 2008. Some giant lungs, 11 axis project for aero chocolate was sort of a big moving gramophone thing. Giant ping pong ball cannon. Probably best not even describe this one. Radio controlled wheelie bins, that was a recent project. A musical pig, he's got extra controls in his hat so you can change the pitch and stuff which is quite fun. That's a big chicken called Cluck Minster Fuller and they're not tiny people, it's actually that size and it's still in my garden and it's great to give directions to the courier. This xylophone is actually here, it's out in the lounge if you haven't seen it and I'm probably going to head over there afterwards if you have any questions and I would be glad to talk through it if anyone would like to have a chat. Here's a whole load of projects. I've been making things since 2005 and there's a lot of things on the business side that took quite a while to get my head around. I don't know your background but you might know all this already or have no intention of going into the same industry but I've made the talk as if I'm talking to myself 20 years ago basically. So hello me. OK. All the projects are documented on this website. Types of clients. So the people I tend to work with there are advertising agencies who might want to film things or put something in a shop for people to look at because museums who want something interactive that kids can't break there are medical companies who want something for a conference because otherwise they'd stand to be super boring. There's bands that might want a music video individual musicians who want a bit of equipment or a synthesiser companies that want a prototype or some kind of product design consultancy artists who've managed to secure funding from somewhere and they want a sculpture or artists who have no money at all and they want a sculpture. So I also make projects for myself for fun and it's what I do most of the time and so there's not really any boundary between work and non-work there's often no difference between the two. I also like making things just to collaborate with friends or learn about new tools and materials. The most financially lucrative projects are generally the adverts which often then pay for the fun projects but the fun projects are kind of what bring in the work when people see them so you kind of need to do both so people see the fun ones and then they get in touch and they say can we have one but can we have it in orange and slightly different so yeah you kind of need to do both. The adverts are great because they're done in a big old rush there's usually a big budget it's filmed in a couple of days and then it's all done and you can get paid. So often you get to keep and reuse equipment from the job like motors or whatever. The post-production come and tidy everything up that went wrong on the shoot day and then you have a nice polished video to show people which basically works as an advert for your work so it's really good that someone else is producing this slick advert which you can then piggy back on by saying look what I made so that's useful. The downside is that sometimes the adverts get cancelled and then you've done a whole load of work and you're not allowed to release it. So there's a great value in being able to post projects online as they have a snowballing effect to bring in more work. A couple of years ago I worked on a toothpaste advert it was a really big involved project that was a big Heath Robinson type set with all these kind of mechanical things happening one after the other but at the very last minute it turned out that the toothpaste that was being advertised didn't actually do what it was claimed that it should have done so they weren't legally allowed to use this advert which said make your teeth white because basically it didn't so this incredibly expensive advert these pictures have never seen the light of day so all this was built and none of it ever came to anything so I guess it's very valuable the point I'm making is very valuable to get it out there and people see it and then it works to bring in more work. So there's different clients some types of work pay better than others but it's best to take on everything because you don't know where something might lead even a small job someone might come back later and they've got lots of money to spend. So there's some of the clients it's always different as soon as I think that's it I'm doing music videos from now on then it all changes which is good because it stops the game boring. Some projects are done for money some for exposure or just because they're really enjoyable or they might be a chance to collaborate with someone who is a nice person. How to start getting job inquiries so remember I'm talking to myself 20 years ago I'm not necessarily dictating that this is exactly the way that you go so take photos of everything sometimes it's hard because you're busy and there's a deadline and the client is reading down your neck but make sure that you do it upload details of every project that you work on even projects you thought were boring at the time make the project searchable don't call it concept design for Sony don't call it big animatronic weasel assuming that's what the project is then you'll get more of the same work so someone will search for big animatronic weasel your website will pop up and then they'll get in touch so brilliant it leads to more work hand out stickers to everyone you meet I've got some stickers over by the dialer help yourself make sure that everyone you speak to knows what you do including family members the courier and everyone just make sure that whenever you meet someone they're left so that they know what you do and if someone else mentions a project they'll say oh you want to speak to so-and-so and they recommend you so make sure everyone knows that you're available to do a certain kind of work if someone asks you if you can do a project immediately say yes then look on YouTube how to do it there'll be a guy saying welcome back to part 18 of how to cast aluminium sausages so it's all on YouTube basically work on personal projects in your spare time and upload details of them buy new types of sensors and test them and upload your experiments do a project with pneumatics upload a video of it and then you'll get a job enquiry for something involving pneumatics buy new tools and figure out how to use them I bought this ring roller which is basically you feed in sections of steel tubing or box section and it rolls big old rings and then I told everybody that I had it and then I started getting jobs involving big metal hoops so it's a kind of self-fulfilling thing an important thing is to create as much spare time as you can in which to do personal projects okay this is an important one don't have a TV don't ever have a TV don't have a cutlery tray with separate compartments because over your lifetime think of all that spoon sorting where you're going spoon, spoon, fork, it's just a waste of time you need to be spending that time looking at pneumatic fittings basically where identical clothes every day to save time you need to be concentrating on the making stuff okay, how to deal with job enquiries so now you've got a great online presence and everyone is recommending you your projects speak for themselves so you don't need to persuade people to employ you that you'll just get job enquiries people will say oh we saw that weasel you made and we loved it and we'd like a new one in whatever colour so the problem now is you have to quickly develop the skill of working out which enquiries can return into actual jobs so a good first step is to mention money as soon as possible so I was once approached to fabricate a life-sized Dalek which I was excited about and I got into the details of discussing how it would be powered and how motors would work so after a few days of e-mailing back and forth I sent a quote and the client replied with okay, but I'll have to ask my mummy first so the client was basically a little kid with good spelling and grammar and also e-mail access so you've got to quickly sort of ask when the deadline is, if they're a bit vague about it and you detect that they're not so serious about it happening quickly or it just might be that they're testing an idea so if they reply with an exact deadline you know they're a bit more serious but what you need to be aiming for as soon as possible is agreeing what the project involves how much they'll pay for it and when it'll be delivered then getting that critical first payment all conversations at this point should be aiming for that first payment but don't ever buy any materials before that first payment and don't even spend too much time thinking about it remember the job can get cancelled or postponed very easily before any money has been handed over even if it appears certain and even if they've sent you materials or whatever ask for 50% upfront with the second payment due when the project's completed when clearly what completed means I usually say completed means the thing exists it's in my workshop I sent a photo to prove it exists basically launch dates can be postponed in some cases literally for years for example if there's a pandemic so this one has been a sort of 2.5 meter size sculpture it's been in crates since the beginning of lockdown it's never been out to the event that it was originally intended but I still got paid because I said when I sent a photo of it that's when the second invoice will be submitted use 15 calendar days payment terms instead of 30 have a paragraph on your invoice outlining large amounts of interest in other draconian punishments for late payments and awkward clients at a one off late fee mention that the client will be liable for court's costs it sounds really serious but just chuck it all in there and then it's just there if you ever need the leverage ok chasing for time another reason to chase the payment quickly is the client has probably left the construction to the last minute often clients don't realise how much time it might take to make something and they just it's not something they're familiar with so they won't plan the build time accordingly after 4 months of chatting about the concept there's now 3 weeks left to build it you might need a week of the remaining time just to gather materials so it's good to keep stock of steel, plywood, motors, LED strip the more common sort of things in a cupboard somewhere there might be things you need to order quickly and they might be from sellers who aren't used to doing next day delivery so if it's a project involving you know sort of like garden gnomes or something that it's not usually something that gets sent out really quickly so allow time for that so chase the client to sign things off as quickly as you can to buy yourself as much build time as possible aim to finish a couple of days early get used to sending polite ultimatums like you'll need to choose the colour by Wednesday so that we can order paint even if it's not true just to keep things ticking along this is particularly important if there's a chain of people signing things off so sometimes you can completely get left to get on with it which is great but sometimes there's a chain of agencies reaching up to some distant decision makers and you can lose a week just waiting for confirmation of paint colour so one good method to get around this is send an email saying unless I hear from you this afternoon the crocodiles will all be pink and then you'll get this sort of frantic email saying no they've got to be orange so that's one way of prompting it just to keep it going so another thing to watch out for is sometimes when you agree to a job a client just ticks it off and thinks well that's done, I've found someone to do that and they move on to other parts of their to-do list but the deadline is still approaching but they've kind of mentally ticked it off but you need to pester them to give permission to get going with certain aspects as the deadline might not be flexible avoiding doing design work for free can you send a quick sketch that's a classic one, it's quite a tricky area so obviously you want to be as accommodating and enthusiastic as possible for new clients and potential jobs but you can find yourself working full time just helping companies work on pitches or whatever and not getting paid so you'll be approached with a job that's supposedly definitely going ahead but they'll just need a few more technical advice and drawings so you can be working on that and then you find out the job was unlikely to ever happen or that someone else does the job because they're geographically closer to the company or plus you've worked out all the risk for them so then they're not going to someone with a completely new idea they take your sketch and say can you build this to a construction company so you've taken the risk out of it so your time and advice is hugely valuable so even agreeing to quote for something means you've given your professional opinion that the project is actually feasible it's a difficult thing to balance it's a trade off between being helpful and showing competence without undermining your ability to make a living from what you do a good thing to organise is a day or even just half a day for a concept exploration and some basic sketches so sketches are good because the client then has something concrete to show for giving you some money and it'll help their presentation look good and also make them look as if they know what they're talking about on the technical side of things an initial payment like that is also a good way of filtering out people who just aren't serious about the project they've asked you about a thing to avoid is a detailed cost breakdown just say no or if you really have to be very vague and just chop it 50-50 into parts and labour and that's it a detailed cost breakdown is only ever used by producers to haggle and trim bits off that you need to buy food basically how to put together a quote make a spreadsheet, make a template spreadsheet with headings for things to buy and things to do I usually do a rough drawing in my sketchbook and work out roughly how the project might work then start making a list of materials in the spreadsheet so there'll be steel, motors, LEDs, arduinos, project boxes, power supplies, cables, paint whatever add extra for any materials that are harder to source require faster shipping or are likely to get damaged so if it's glass things then it might get dropped and you might need two order a little extra to replenish your stocks for the next project that's needed in a rush if the whole project depends on a particular audio board you need to budget for a spare and also a spare spare then look at the list of things that you need to do you've got to make some jigs, weld the frames, paint the metalwork attach the LED strip, wire everything up all that sort of stuff just have a column for days don't bother with smaller units of time two days for the jigs, three days for welding four days to deal with the emails if it's someone who sends a lot of emails add extra time for riskier processes like things that might take a couple of attempts to test and get right as you do more jobs you'll accumulate a mental catalogue of things that went smoothly and things to avoid if you have a project with a lot of wiring add extra time, wiring just always takes twice as whatever amount of time that you allocate to it even that maybe times it before the rough spreadsheet method of estimating the time is usually surprisingly accurate although I guess it works a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that if you allow four days for metalwork that's the amount of time you end up spending on it the amount of time might be predetermined by a hectic deadline but you still want to work out how much to charge and even just to get a grip on the size of the job add up the days multiplied by your day rates more on day rates in a bit add the fee for time to the total materials and round up or down depending on how nice the people with whom you are dealing are think of a few extra cool things that could be added to the project so send a quote for what they've asked for but then send a second figure for a version with flashing lights and often you'll be surprised that they did actually secretly have a bit more budget and they'll just go with the flashing lights version because it sounds cool and because you've made them a nice drawing it's good to get going with the quote as soon as possible just throw a figure out there just to see if the job inquiry is serious also it's a good way of getting to the actual figure that they secretly had in mind so they might say £20,000 that's way too much we were thinking £19,000 and then you say okay and you just simplify the design of it and then you've got to the figure they had in mind if the price does have to be reduced try and remove the most difficult bits of the project so identify the risky and tricky bits try and use that as the bit that you trim out because you might reduce the budget by 10% but you might actually be making it 25% easier if that makes sense there's two approaches to agreeing on the budget one is to provide a quote to match what has been described or alternatively the client may have a figure in mind in which you can tailor the design to their figure and work out whether it's made of diamonds or MDF note that a request for a ballpark figure always ends up set in stone you won't be able to increase it easily once you've named a figure add a note to your quote saying that it's valid for a certain amount of days in case circumstances change for example price of timber has been doubling every week recently don't try and get work by quoting cheaply there'll always be someone who can do it cheaper but you want to be selling your reputation as forgetting the project finished and to a high quality if you don't charge enough then it will end up lower quality then people will be sad because they need to spend more money sorting things out if you do things well you'll have enough work coming in that you can quote high and choose the most interesting projects day rate this is likely to be quite variable I found anyway so the actual work might involve folding napkins or high risk pyro techniques so you should be charging more for the second one obviously but just because you're folding napkins it could potentially be taking you off doing other more sort of specialised work so yeah it's hard to balance it if your day rate's too high then you're obviously going to get less work but kind of don't underestimate yourself basically and you want to get it as high as possible just not for capitalist reasons but for needing to buy more tools and fund other cool projects if you've got plenty of work coming in then you can charge more but if work's a bit quiet then there's a tendency to quote less in the hope of getting a job because you need it more but that's really not a good situation to be in because you can start a low paid project and then having to turn down better paid work that comes in halfway through because on that first project you can't take it so try and have a bit of a buffer and just work on personal projects if it's quiet which will work as adverts to bring in more cool work for you and it keeps your day rate high so yeah what is the value of the work to the client? this is something to sort of judge can someone else do it just as easily or is it something that suits your particular skills? is the client a super wealthy corporation? does the client have enough time to go and find someone else at this stage? if the project is needed in 24 hours time then you can charge more as it may be less likely that they can find someone else to do it in that time but remember that even just 10 seconds of your time could save the client a massive amount of time and cost so you could casually mention a material or process they haven't heard of or a completely new approach to your problem so what is the value of this sentence? how about we try magnets in the right context that could just have a massive massive impact remember that you have to cover the costs of your workshop space your tools, your material storage your consumables all that time spent watching YouTube and as well as your time on the project itself so you've got to cover all that one issue with the day rate is that the faster and more efficient you get and the better tools you get the less you get paid in a way in that you can do the work quicker and finish the job in half the time so your payment is potentially halved if you're literally charging per day so do charge for two days even though it took a day because then you're not being taxed for your supreme skills chasing payment get the invoice sent the second the project is done chase the invoice as soon as you can the client may stall with can you add a job number to the invoice please I've been chasing your counts or you need to register with the system to get paid so these turn up almost when the invoice is due these get thrown out there accounts is an ethereal and mystical being that lives in a misty far away forest accounts doesn't have a human name will not be in the zoo meetings you'll never meet accounts at a party your invoice should be processed with the next pay run what is a pay run a pay run is an unspecified time not now split big projects into sections that are easy to define as finished for invoicing purposes particularly if there are a lot of material costs so you don't want to be waiting for months and months to get the second half that finally gets your bill paying money in if the invoice isn't paid send an email pointing out the payment terms and the small print on your invoice the bit about invoking demons and all that sort of stuff and then say that you'll resend the new increased invoice in a few days it doesn't, it very rarely gets to that stage but it's occasionally I've needed to do it just to, you know, and it's worked without having to add any interest it's the threat of it and the presence of this text on your invoice that helps basically but like most people that are just fine at paying there's not a problem glossary of terms the project has been given the green light this means please proceed without contract or payment can you give us a ballpark figure means we will hold you forever to whatever figure you mention next unless it gets smaller can you send us a detailed quote means can you design this project for us for free can you send us a cost breakdown means we would like to remove the funds you're planning to keep to buy food for yourself your invoice should be processed during the next pay run means we may or may not pay you are at an unspecified future time we're keen to use upcycled materials means we don't want to pay for bearings or any other proper components from RS or anywhere this will be a good one for your CV means we don't want to pay you or you'll make some excellent contacts means we don't want to pay you okay some last minute random tips try to design in new tools and materials into a project just to learn them so deliberately suggest using curved metal surfaces if you want to buy a sheet metal roller and then the job will pay for it and you've got a new superpower design using components that can be reordered in five years time so use suppliers that keep a stock that is going to, you know if you get it second hand from eBay you're not going to get it in five years time if you need to replace it or build often you get repeat orders and you need to be able to just slot in the parts do projects in order of riskiness so do the thing that you know the least about first and just get it ticked off even if you just sort of go okay I've proved the concept of that by good clamps no G clamps I'll talk to you about that afterwards if anyone's interested about clamps I am, I really like clamps motor strength you can judge it by the shaft size often motor strength is given in Newton's centimetres or whatever you can just look at the motor shaft size and that's a really good way of just judging it usually there's no such thing as a completely silent motor this often pops up at the last minute where the client says oh the motor has to be really silent by the way so just be aware that that's one that can pop up at the last second the same with making smoke machines work outdoors we need smoke but it's a really windy day so that's hard wireless things can work in your workshop but not elsewhere that's a good one to know beforehand battery power don't base a job on a quick test because the final thing that you make will probably draw about 5,000 times more current and the public will use it in unexpected ways so battery tests are one to sort of watch out for don't say centimetres use millimetres if someone says centimetres you just know that ok I won't get insulting but just use millimetres and metres and inches but not centimetres allow extra time for working out imperial pipe threads they're just a whole world of oh it's a weren't worth three-quarter inch but is it tapered or not and just allow six extra days for ordering the wrong fittings and working out because it's a whole mystical world make sure you have an area in your workshop where you can make lots of dust this is important if your workshops really clean throughout then you need a messy area basically so you can use angle grinders and things like that get a good stereo in your workshop space and then the day is not like work you're just listening to good music and that's it so this has been a weird talk for me because it's not something that I usually would talk about and also it comes across as being sort of you know like a bit sort of a bit negative saying like oh make sure you do all this stuff chasing clients but really it's just a few little pointers I hope will be useful potentially that just make if you get these aspects done it just means you can have the most wonderful job making things I've been doing it for about 20 years full-time and it's just like being a kid playing with Lego basically and I can take time off to make things for myself I don't have an annoying boss I just sort of have to send emails now and again and also the jobs just like I said before the boundaries are just blurred between just having fun and yeah current project new giant robot which will be just two metres hopefully at next EMF if they have me back I'll do a talk explaining how he was built rather than a boring one about sending invoices and stuff so I'm going to head over to the Xylophone in a minute but I hope some of that was useful do check out the website and get in touch if you have a project in mind that you want to collaborate on that's it, thank you