Welcome to the Happy Medium newsletter, where I share inspiration and bite-sized musings on creative business each week. Enjoy!
Inspiration
Things that have inspired me this week.
Risographs
Risographs are a cross between a photocopier and a screen-printer which gives them a not-quite-perfect quality. A stencil is made for each colour layer which can either overlap or block out the preceding coloured ink. The overlapping colours blend to create new colours which is what makes the palette so unique and vibrant.




Risographs by Asami Watanabe and Natalie Andrewson
Parakeeto
If you run a creative studio, Parakeeto has a bunch of helpful resources on how to structure your business to run profitably. Super practical and very specific to the creative studio context.
I’ve been low on inspiration lately, I’d love to hear what you’re all watching, reading and listening to.
Quick thoughts
Musings on business, creativity, psychology and more.
Tidy piles
Recently, I had to do a very manual, very admin heavy process with actual printed pieces of paper - it’s been a while! But it was actually a good reminder of the small things you can do to make any process a little smoother.
Put lists in order - by priority, $ value or alphabetise, whatever will make scanning a list quicker and easier
Identify the stages and work through in batches - for example, I had to request a document, check it, send it back if there were revisions, then finalise. So I would do a big batch of requests, then checks, etc.
Avoid typing anything yourself - download an export, copy and paste, use excel formulas - avoid manual entry where ever possible (that’s how mistakes are made)
Have a single source of truth where information is kept up to date and, ideally, shared - avoid having multiple versions in different places
Keep the physical and/or digital space clean - make piles, close tabs, minimise irrelevant programs. Visual chaos = mental chaos.
When to automate
I once worked with a client who had recently had a consultant do an automation review for them. This consultant had gone through all of their processes, done a bunch of analysis and ended up automating one thing - when a client approved a proposal, it automatically added them to xero. That’s it.
A time saving of about 30mins per month is not exactly changing the game but I could understand why - this client’s processes were not in a state to automate at all.
Every project was different, each team member had their own way of doing things and client communication was variable.
When you look to automate processes in your business, it’s important to make sure the process itself works well first, regardless of whether it’s manual or not.
A good manual process, will translate easily into a great automated one. Attempting to automate a bad process will set your bad process in stone at best, or add another messy unhelpful layer at worst.
Keen to get that admin off your list?
Your process is pretty tidy but it still takes way too much of your time? This is the perfect time to automate.
I designed Automate your Admin to help you find a software solution that can take care of those menial tasks for you. It’s the same process that helped The Market Folk scale from 2 to 4 locations and empowered Studio Boteque to hum nicely alongside family life.
Plus I’ve just added a new module all about how you can use AI to speed things along.
And here is a discount code for reading to the end 😉 HMFRIENDS15
If admin is just one of the tasks on an endless to do list and you’re not sure where to start, lets chat. You can reach out at hello@happymedium.au or book 30 min call here where we will talk through where you’re at and where you’d like to be.
That’s it for this week! As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or DM me if you’re shy.
Otherwise, if you aren’t already, subscribe to get these in your inbox every week or catch up on previous weeks below!
22. The Weekly - Systemised Success
Welcome to the Happy Medium newsletter, where I share inspiration and bite-sized musings on creative business each week. Enjoy!
21. The Weekly - Factual Contradictions
Welcome to the Happy Medium newsletter, where I share inspiration and bite-sized musings on creative business each week. Enjoy!