#awinewith Fran Flynn: two decades self-employed, AI and the future of creative work
✨ Thank you to IP Australia for supporting the SPARK podcast and women in business ✨
What does it take to stay self-employed in a creative industry for more than twenty years? One eye permanently fixed on what's coming next. Fran Flynn is an Irish-born, Australia-based professional creative: graphic designer, commercial photographer, videographer and illustrator. In this episode she traces the winding road from Sydney's dot-com boom to Byron Bay's Rails pub to her own studio, and gets refreshingly honest about AI: where it genuinely helps, where it leaves her cold, and what it means for the future of creative work.
From Sydney web design to a Byron pub (and into business)
Fran arrived from a gloomy, recession-era Ireland just before the Sydney Olympics, her work visa held by an agency that hired her out to corporates ("they essentially pimp you out, we used to call it," she laughs; permanent residency meant she could finally "shake off my pimp"). A five-month volunteer project building a school in Namibia rewired her: back in Sydney she realised "all I do is work, there's not much soul to my life here", and moved to Byron Bay for a few months of perspective. A TAFE teaching job evaporated when she discovered they'd be teaching software the industry didn't use, and meanwhile locals kept asking: you take photos? Can you do a logo? Six months of that, and Frangipani Creative was born, named after her Byron nickname.
How do you stay self-employed for two decades?
Partly temperament: "I have a low boredom threshold. I tend to get excited about something, learn it, do it, and then go, okay, I need something more." Partly strategy: Fran watches her own revenue lines like a futurist, and when websites became technical builds instead of visual craft, she noticed her interest and the market shifting together, so web went down and photography went up. Her operating principle is the one she credits her longevity to: "Always have one eye on what's coming next, and figure out how you're going to evolve before you're in a situation where you have to."
Is AI coming for creative work?
Fran got in early, playing with Midjourney and imagining herself at the leading edge, and then her feelings changed: "It's lacking something, on a soul level. It's manipulating words, it's not visual creativity, which is where my love is." She loves AI for editing (need a pheasant feather added to a shot? done) and expects the majority of commercial imaging to be AI-generated within 5 to 10 years, with strong creative directors still steering it. But she sees the trap: as AI-generated content floods the internet, it becomes the training data for the next generation of AI. "It can only regurgitate stuff it's already been fed. It can't create that extra iota of something special." The twist in her own story: AI sent her back to hand-drawn work, full circle to the animation she first studied.
Why is creative work so undervalued?
Fran's son is a creatively-oriented kid, and at school, art is treated "like an extracurricular fluff activity", while the numbers tell another story: creative industries contribute close to 3% of Australia's GDP, against sport at under 1%. People happily pay a lawyer $300 an hour for expertise they don't have, then balk at a designer's rate because "I could slap a logo together myself." Her answer: "I had to study really hard to do this too, and I know your target audience and what they'll be triggered by. There's all this knowledge you don't have, that I can offer. I shouldn't have to justify that."
Fran's one piece of advice for women in business
Evolve before you're forced to. "Humans have two big inclinations. One is to be sheep, nobody likes to be the one at the front. The other is they fear change. To be a successful business owner, you need to do the opposite of both: embrace change, and be brave enough to try stuff other people aren't doing." Businesses that declared "this is what we do and we're sticking with it" faded away (she was thinking of Kodak, specifically). "It doesn't necessarily have to keep growing, but it has to keep changing, or it will stagnate and die."
Meet Fran Flynn, Founder of Fran Flynn Photography
Fran Flynn is an Irish-born professional creative based in Australia since 2000, spanning commercial photography, graphic design, videography and illustration. Self-employed for more than two decades across multiple evolutions of her business, she works with brands that want imagery with soul, and keeps one eye permanently on what's next.
You can find her here:
Full transcript
Danielle: So good! Fran, welcome to Spark!
Fran: Thank you so much, it's very nice to be here.
Danielle: I'm excited to have you, because we've just been gas-bagging for the last 15 minutes. I'm like, oh my god, we've gotta hit record, or all the goodness will be gone! Let's start out by telling everyone who you are and what you do.
Fran: My name's Fran. I'm originally from Ireland. I've been in Australia officially since 2000, but I was wandering in and out for a couple of years before that. I'm a professional creative, so all my background is related to a creative industry: graphic design, commercial photography, videography, illustration. Anything professional, commercial and creative-orientated is my area of expertise.
Danielle: Oh my god, so good. What brought you to Australia?
Fran: I'd always had this image in my head of what Australia might be like. I found the climate in Ireland particularly hard to deal with, I've got a background with asthma, and I got asthma a lot over there, and I just found it really gloomy and grim and miserable.
Danielle: Oh my god, you came to the right place then!
Fran: I had this perception that Australia was all sunny, an outdoor lifestyle. So I came out on a working holiday visa with some friends, and at the end of that year, I set a goal to come back 6 months later with one of the friends from the group. At that point there was no decision to stay, it was just: I want more of that. I got a business sponsorship, it was when Sydney was really booming, coming up to the Olympic Games. And then I kind of just never made a decision that I wasn't going back. I just kept staying. The quality of life here is very different, and economically, Ireland was in a really grim depression at that time, and Australia was begging for qualified people and throwing money at us. It was a no-brainer, really.
Danielle: I wonder how that will transpire with the Brisbane Olympics coming up. I wonder if we'll see another influx.
Fran: Yeah, it'll be interesting. I think the circumstances are a bit different now, because the cost of living scenario here is very different. When I came out here, I felt wealthy with the money coming from Europe, whereas now people are going back to Ireland going, I couldn't last a year, it's so expensive over there. But in terms of skills, there's a lot of skills in demand here, so there probably will be a certain influx. Although I do remember there was this big build-up, all these people coming in, all this money being spent around the Olympics, and then there was this big downfall after it.
Danielle: I know. It's a really weird time for a city, isn't it? A boom, which I think is amazing if you can capitalise on it, but you do have to think a little more long-term about what your plan is, if that's the only thing you're capitalising on.
Fran: Well, there was also the dot-com bust at a similar time, and I was working in web design at the time, very progressive web development. So those two things coincided: all this boom and excitement, the Olympics, e-commerce all coming online, and then it all went boom at the same time.
Danielle: Oh my god, that's wild. So were you in web design working for somebody else, or have you always worked for yourself?
Fran: In Ireland, I did my studying at night, in an apprenticeship-style arrangement. By day I worked in design studios, doing artwork initially as opposed to being a designer, and I worked my way up through the system, so by the time I finished at uni, I was actually a senior designer, when most people would just be leaving full-time uni and starting as a junior. So when I came over here, I was considered skilled, and I was able to start working as a freelancer. There were these companies at the time where your work visa is maintained by an employment agency, and they essentially pimp you out to companies, we used to call it.
Danielle: That still exists!
Fran: They held our work rights, and they could hire us out to other companies. You might go out for a day to one company, a week to another. But really, what happened very quickly was, if you're any good, you ended up being a long-term employee of a company, just paid by someone else, and they were creaming a huge amount of money off your hourly rate, for the pleasure of having your visa. So I worked in the corporate sector in Sydney for quite a long time, and worked my way up. Web development was massive at the time, so most of my work was in web, but I did a lot of print design and advertising work too. After a couple of years, I got my own permanent residency, so I was able to shake off my pimp… and make my own money!
Danielle: Oh, the Pretty Woman story we didn't know we needed!
Fran: Yeah, exactly! So then I had freedom in terms of who I worked for. I worked in Sydney for quite a long time, and then I went to Africa on a project for a while. When I was in Sydney working in the corporate sector, I was also studying photography again by night, at the Australian Centre for Photography, it had been part of my initial training. And then I went on a volunteer project to Africa for 5 months, in Namibia, where I helped build a school. I was the team photographer, and I did some project management there as well. That really changed my perspective on a lot of things. When I came back to Sydney, I looked at my life, which before going I'd thought was amazing, I was earning more money than I could ever imagine, but when I looked at it from the outside, I went: well, actually, all I do is work. There's not much soul to my life here. So I moved up to Byron to hang out with a friend of mine, just to have a little perspective for a few months before getting stuck into anything more substantial. And I ended up sticking around for a long time.
When I was there, there was an opportunity to work teaching at TAFE coming up in about 6 months, and I got a job in a little marketing company two days a week, and worked at the Rails pub in Byron, I don't know if you know it. The absolute opposite of what I'd been doing in Sydney. Minimum work, minimum wage, but a cruisy life, beach life, really lovely and very chill. I was holding out for this TAFE job, and I got it, but they didn't actually tell me I got it, they just called me in for the orientation induction.
Danielle: That's weird!
Fran: I know, it was a bit weird. I thought it was another interview, and then I realised they were describing what we were going to be doing. And during the conversation, they talked about the software we'd be teaching with, and it was Freehand and PageMaker, which were not used at all. The industry standard was Adobe. I said, what about Adobe products? And they're like, oh no, we're not teaching those. And I just thought, I can't do this. I can't teach classes to people who are supposed to be learning industry-relevant skills, with software that isn't used in the industry. And then it became clear the hourly rate didn't cover any prep time or marking time, so it became a lot less appealing.
Danielle: Yes, sounds like it!
Fran: So the combination of those two things left me a bit at sea, because I'd been hanging out at the bar thinking, I want to stay here, and this is how that's going to happen, and then it wasn't what I expected. And just by coincidence, I started getting asked to do little things. Oh, you take photos? This chef needs a few pictures. Oh, you're a designer, aren't you? Can you do a logo? Particularly through working at the Rails, I got to know people around the area. After maybe 6 months of that, I thought, well, maybe I'll actually try and make a go of this, and that's when I started a business. That first iteration was called Frangipani Creative, because my friends in Byron were calling me Frangipani.
Danielle: Oh, that's so cute, that's very Aussie of us!
Fran: So that's how I evolved into being self-employed. And my business has evolved over time as my industry has evolved, my interests have evolved, and my personal life has evolved. I've been self-employed for a long time, that's been a continuum, but how it presents to the world has changed dramatically as time's gone by.
Danielle: How do you navigate that change? How do you know when it's time to try something new or let something go? Has it been an intentional decision, or fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants?
Fran: I think… I have a low boredom threshold, so that powers it a bit. I tend to get excited about something, learn it, do it, and then at some point go, okay, I know this, I need something more. That fuels a lot of it. But I also have a futurist kind of interest. I find sameness stagnating. I always have one eye on what's coming next, and I know that if I don't, change can be intimidating and knock me back. If I have one eye on what's coming, and I'm thinking about how I might evolve to roll with it, I manage change much better, and I can get excited about what's coming. So some of it's instinctual, some of it's personality, and there's a strategic note in there too. I want to stay in business. If I notice web design sales are dropping, what else is out there? That powers it too.
Danielle: That's really interesting. As a business owner, whether it's a strategy day or gut instinct, you do have to look ahead, at how your market is changing, how clients might not be willing to invest as much as they were. You've got to have an eye on the future in business.
Fran: I'll give you an example. When I started that business, web design was my primary income, and I did a bit of photography and a bit of print design, which I knew how to do really well from my background in Ireland. I really enjoyed making animated little websites. But as time evolved, websites became much more technically orientated. They went from being a visual presence, a brochure online, to being something functional, shops and technology, and that part left me cold. While I always had a team member who did the tech side with me, I had to have my head around it, and the conversation with the client became much more about the tech, and the visuals were always compromised because the tech had to be prioritised. So my interest in web design diminished as that evolution occurred. At the same time, my photography skills were growing, my client base was evolving, and I was enjoying it more. Web went down, photography went up. That's an example of an evolution.
Danielle: What do you think's coming next in your space?
Fran: Oh, well, I think we're already well in it. The AI.
Danielle: I know, I was hoping you were going to say something different! I've been talking about bloody AI for months. But it has taken the world by storm, hasn't it?
Fran: And I actually got into dabbling with this early, in terms of image generation, messing around with Midjourney and all these kinds of software. My initial feeling had been: I really want to get into this. I want to be at the leading edge of producing imagery that works with AI and real-world skills. But my feelings have changed over time. I don't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. It's irritating that it won't do what I want easily. And it's lacking something, on a soul level, if you want to call it that. I enjoy working with AI tools in editing, I love that if I needed a pheasant feather in a shot and couldn't get one, I can stick it in later. But in terms of creating images from scratch with AI, it's a techie job. You're just sitting at your computer.
Danielle: Yeah, it's about prompts. How well can you prompt the AI that's not listening to you properly?
Fran: Exactly. It's manipulating words. It's not visual creativity, which is where my love is. But I think it's created an interesting evolution in me, because it's turned me back to an interest in hand-drawn work. It's brought me full circle, because the very first thing I studied was animation, and now I'm doing things with hand drawing. I think AI definitely has a massive place, and I'm seeing parallels with what happened in the dot-com explosion. All this stuff happening, everything's crazy, and at some point it levels out: okay, this is how it's going to be. I feel the same thing's happening with AI. There are so many different tools, and at some point they'll level out, the leaders will emerge, and the format of how we use them will evolve. The bit I find challenging with AI is the pace of evolution. It's extreme. But by nature, humans don't evolve at that speed, so AI has to wait for us a bit. What it can do is probably going to stay ahead of what we catch up with.
Danielle: Absolutely. And I find it fascinating, because a lot of people I speak to about AI really only leverage it for text-based outcomes.
Fran: Yeah, and I do that a lot. I use it for editing and writing. I'm definitely a bit of a tech nerd.
Danielle: But I love your comment about how it's brought you full circle, to leveraging more of your innate talents, physically drawing and animating. Because that's almost what's happening in the copy-driven world too. People are realising the stuff coming out is so generic, they sound like everyone else, so we actually have this amazing opportunity to stand out just by being ourselves, by not totally relying on the robots.
Fran: And I think humans have a value perception in relation to what AI spits out versus what a human creates. As humans, when we create something, we're influenced by everything we see, so there isn't anything completely original as such. But the way we gather all those elements and produce something new is our own little iota of originality. AI doesn't have that iota. It can only regurgitate stuff it's already been fed. It can't create that new, extra iota of something special. And I think that's something we as humans appreciate. And we're the ones buying.
Danielle: And the discernment as well. As humans, we can categorise what we know to be true, where our values align. AI is just a product of the information it's fed, and half the stuff on the internet's crap. It doesn't have that understanding of what's true and what's fiction, or where our values lie. That's our superpower as humans.
Fran: Something else people don't fully perceive yet, and I think it's going to have a big impact: think about the amount of content now being produced by AI. That's going to increase massively. And then AI is going to be sucking that in as its data set to work from as well.
Danielle: It's like this self-perpetuating spiral of…
Fran: Crap!
Danielle: Yeah, crap!
Fran: So I'll be interested to see how that evolves. There's absolutely no doubt, from what I've seen, that the majority of commercial imaging will, in the next 5 to 10 years, be done by AI. There's just no reason why it wouldn't be. It needs a driver, it needs an art director, and there will be people in those creative directing roles who need to be very multi-skilled and very creatively talented to produce cool and interesting creative. But there'll also be a whole lot of crappy stuff that's considered reasonable and adequate. When that becomes the majority of work going out on the internet, and that's the reference material these learning models are using to iterate new concepts from, I believe it's going to become very homogenised, and potentially not an acceptable quality.
Danielle: I tend to agree with you. I think of my own browsing experience on Instagram. Because I follow a lot of women in business, I get so bored and frustrated: everything in my feed is exactly the same, following the same formula, using the same language. Even though the faces are different, the content's so much the same that I'm bored by my own feed, to the point where I've started looking at fashion, and art, and things totally unrelated to my industry, just to find some inspiration again. If people are lazy and keep relying on it, taking what it spits out and popping it up like it's gospel, it does feel like a bit of a self-fulfilling proph… where is that word?!
Fran: Time for another coffee! I do that all the time, I'm really glad you did it first.
Danielle: Hilarious. But if we keep feeding it crap, and keep using what it spits out without injecting our own personality, or fact-checking, or putting our own tone of voice on it, it's going to be trained on that same crap, and it'll get worse and worse. But I see that as a positive for all the people willing to use it to cut a bit of time, and then go over it and put their own spark on it.
Fran: Absolutely. And when it comes to words, that's very relevant: you can now tell at 50 paces whether something has been generated by AI if it hasn't been properly edited by a human. In visual terms, though, the technology is getting so good that it's hard to tell the difference. I've done experiments with people, which of these images is AI and which is real, and generally people get it wrong. You can't pick it straight away. But there is something, a feeling, I can't even describe what it is. An intangible something that I think we notice on some level.
Danielle: Yes. And that's human nature, right? That's why you can stand in front of somebody and get a bad vibe. It's one of our superpowers. It's why people buy from good people. Things can be messy and chaotic, case in point, me, and people still buy from you, because if you're authentic, people get your vibe more than whether you've articulated a 10-point plan immaculately. That human connection is so much a part of what we do, face-to-face, visual, written.
Fran: And that's probably a lot to do with why the trend in social media is very much real-people authenticity. That's what people are buying. They want that sense of human connection, as opposed to polished AI corporate imaging.
Danielle: Exactly. Which I think is great for all women in business. One of the biggest roadblocks a lot of women have is not wanting to put themselves out there. I'm guilty of it, I don't want to be on camera unless I've got makeup on, or, oh, what are these pimples, I don't want to get out of bed today! But that's the thing people connect with. They go, oh cool, you're a real human. Now I want to listen to you.
Fran: Yeah, and it's funny you say that, because I've literally had an absolute aversion to appearing on social media for pretty much my whole career. There's a makeup artist I worked with in the early days in Byron, when Instagram was starting to become a thing, and I was so irritated by her. I was like, would you put the bloody phone away? You're wasting time! And now she's got, I don't know, 500,000 followers, and doesn't get out of bed for less than Naomi Campbell rates. Who's laughing now?
Danielle: Damn it!
Fran: My feeling was, I hated the idea of being in front of the camera, and I found it really hard to feel like the time I was investing in social media was doing anything, because it felt like no one's listening. Of course, now I'm starting to have a different attitude. But it's still, you know, no one's listening! I have to get through that phase, and getting through it is hard, because when no one's listening, I find it hard not to quit.
Danielle: Yeah, I know. And I always go back to: you think, oh my god, only 10 people liked my photo. But if those 10 people were standing in front of you saying, that's really interesting, I really resonate with that, you'd be like, whoa, look at all these people! For some reason social media has gotten our scale of what's good and not good completely out of whack.
Fran: But the other thing I've noticed recently, because I have been posting a little bit, is people will say, I saw you did that shoot, that looked really fun. And I'm like, you didn't like it! And they go, oh no, I don't like things. And I'm like, well, it'd be nice if you did!
Danielle: Everyone lurks!
Fran: They're watching, they're watching. It's funny, knowing that gave me a bit more encouragement. Okay, I'm not just talking to myself, there are a couple of people listening.
Danielle: It's so true. We get hung up on metrics that perhaps don't really matter.
Fran: I was just going to say, when you're trying to decide, do I spend the half hour it takes to make this post, or do I spend the half hour editing these photos so I can go to bed a bit earlier? It's like, I don't think anyone's listening to that, so I'll probably just do the photos.
Danielle: Yeah, I choose bed. Always choose bed! And it's interesting, good segue, speaking of challenges: I'm super fascinated, because I don't have a lot of full creative types on the podcast. What challenges have you had as a creative entrepreneur? Are they the same as everyone's, or is running your own business as a creative a little different?
Fran: Well, I guess I can't speak for non-creatives! But one thing that can be quite challenging as a creative, and I think this runs through society, is that creative industry isn't valued in the same way in financial terms. I think about this a lot in relation to my son, who's at junior school heading to high school, and he's a creatively orientated child. In Australian junior school, art is treated like an extracurricular fluff activity, rather than a serious subject that can earn you money in the future. And yet, if you look at how much creative industry brings into GDP in Australia, it's almost 3%, which doesn't sound like much, right? But compare it: mining is less than 10%. And sport, if you're a kid in school and you're a sporting superstar, look at all the energy and effort put into sport in schools, sport brings less than 1% of GDP.
Danielle: Wow.
Fran: So when you look at it in economic terms, why isn't there more credibility and financial precedent given to creative industry? Why is it so undervalued? I think it comes from the idea that people go, I could slap a logo together myself, that's just a couple of letters and a squiggle.
Danielle: Like the Pollock paintings, where people go, oh, I could do that. Yes, but you didn't!
Fran: But there's that perception. People are willing to pay an accountant or a lawyer $300 an hour or more, because they've had to study all this time and they know stuff I don't. Whereas the perception of what creative people do is, oh, I could probably do something similar, but I'm busy, so I'll pay you a bit, but you really want that much money? And it's like, well, I actually had to study really hard to do this too, and I'm good at it, and I do a much better job than you would, and I know about your target audience and what they'll be triggered by. There's all this knowledge you don't have, that I can offer. I shouldn't have to justify that.
Danielle: No, it's wildly frustrating. And it's one of those industries where you hear "exposure" used as a dangling tool to pay people, across creatives, art, modelling, photography. I was in the influencer marketing industry, that was my previous gig for a decade, and even that was wild, because it was this new thing that wasn't understood, visual-driven, creative-driven, and that was people's attitude too: I'll give you a free product, or I'll share it on my channel. These people are spending so much time honing their craft as creators, and developing audiences, all these things that you don't have, Mr Brand, but are not willing to pay for.
Fran: Yeah. But I think the problem stems right at the beginning: it's not treated seriously at a school level. Certain high schools do, but a lot don't. A lot of the academically driven high schools still don't treat it as a serious subject and a serious career. And I think that's a very challenging thing for people in creative industry.
Danielle: Do you think that will shift? We were just talking about AI, and how human creativity is going to be so valuable. Do you think there might be a shift when we see the work that stands apart from the sea of sameness that is AI?
Fran: I think the unfortunate side is that, because AI will take up so much of the creative industry roles, it will reduce the scope of employability in creative industry. But for those people who are really good, and original, and put all the effort in, and are multi-skilled, there's definitely still plenty of space. And there has already been a movement, a re-emergence of hand skills and craft, and I think this is amplifying it. But the scale is smaller than the quantity of people currently employed in the industry. I don't have a glass sphere I can stare into, but my perception is that opportunities in the industry shrink, partly because AI churning stuff out devalues anything of a similar quality level. Rather than doing a photo shoot for a clothing range that takes a full day, with hair, makeup, models, assistants, lighting, the whole works, you can get one 20-year-old at a laptop churning out something that looks equivalent for $25 an hour in another country. That has a knock-on impact, especially when you see big brands using AI imagery, not just little ones. So there's going to be a big contraction in some areas, and expansion in others. But the overall perception is that just being employed at all might be a bit of an issue as time goes by.
Danielle: It's going to be so fascinating what happens in the next decade. If you and I got on a call in ten years to reflect on this conversation… it's moving so quickly, and it's mind-blowing what you can do, but there are all those questions: what does that mean for people, creativity, jobs, industries? It's that funny time where we're all like, this is exciting, but I don't know what's going to happen.
Fran: There are some countries that have done experimentation with universal income, have you heard of those?
Danielle: No, what is this?
Fran: The concept is that, rather than a big corporation paying people to work for them, they pay some extra level of tax to the government for the fact that they're producing in that country, and that money gets shared out as a universal income. A base level of income that everyone gets, a living income, enough to get by. And that may actually be something that needs to happen. If you look up studies of universal income, several countries have done trials, with incredibly positive results.
Danielle: Really? So does it allow people to pursue what they want to pursue?
Fran: The reason it's only at a trial point at this stage is that it's still possible to find work in other ways. But it's about sussing out: if we get to the point where there's 20% unemployment, what are we going to do? This may be an approach. So yeah, I'd say that's potentially on the horizon.
Danielle: Wow. It makes me think of all the end-of-days movies, and I just think, wow, it almost feels like the start of a ginormous shift in the way we function as a society.
Fran: It definitely is. Like those ages through history, the Iron Age, the Bronze Age. I think the AI age is as big a shift, for sure.
Danielle: Oh my god, we could talk all day! But I always love to wrap up these podcasts with one last piece of advice. Reflecting on your time in business, what would be a piece of advice that you would give to another woman on her business journey?
Fran: I guess a lot of people are very surprised when they hear how long I've been self-employed, and I would say the reason for that is what we discussed earlier: always having one eye on what's coming next, and figuring out how you're going to evolve before you're in a situation where you have to evolve. Always being ready to change. I think humans have two big inclinations. One is to be sheep: they like to follow each other, nobody likes to be the one at the front, they like to do what everyone else is doing. And the other is that they fear change. People like comfort. To me, if you're going to be a successful business owner, you need to be able to do the opposite of both of those things. You need to embrace change, and you need to be brave enough to try stuff other people aren't doing. And if you fail at it, that's okay, because you'll still learn from it. You can't go, "I've made my business now, that's done." It has to evolve and change. It doesn't necessarily have to keep growing, but it has to keep changing, or it will stagnate and die.
I did a certificate in business and marketing strategy when I was in Sydney, and I very distinctly remember this curve they showed: the beginning of a business and how it goes up, and then there's the plateau, and at that point, either you start a new curve with your next idea or iteration, or inevitably you're heading down. If you look at all the major businesses in the world that have lasted, they've always created that new concept, that new evolution, that kept them flowing forward. And any that went, "this is what we do and we're sticking with that", you see them fade off.
Danielle: It reminds me of the famous Kodak story.
Fran: I was specifically thinking about Kodak when I was saying that!
Danielle: Exactly. And it makes so much sense. It's almost a blessing and a curse as a business owner, you're always thinking about what's new, what's shiny, what's next. But if you harness that to keep one eye on what's coming and plan for the future, it can be so powerful for a business. Oh my god, you're the best, Fran, thank you so much for spending your time with the Spark community and coming on the Spark TV podcast!
Fran: Well, it's been a pleasure. I find what you're doing very inspiring, so I'm delighted to be part of the chat.
