Behind the Scope

Veronica Paula left a decade in corporate marketing to build blankbase, a platform for remote workers seeking work-ready places to stay. She shares the realities of bootstrapping, building in public, slow travel, and becoming a mom while growing a startup.Guest links:Website: https://blankbase.io/coming-soon/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blankbasehq/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronicapaula/

It started with a Threads post asking whether creatives factor in their client's location when pricing. The comments were... telling. In this episode we break down two exchanges that perfectly capture why so much of the creative industry is stuck. We get into why location matters, why comparing creative services to groceries fundamentally misses the point, why the hourly rate isn't as fair as it feels, and what it would actually look like to productize your services in a way that still accounts for the factors that matter.

Daniel Triendl is an illustrator based in Austria and someone whose career has been shaped by the people around him. In this episode we talk about how working alongside other creatives in New York pushed him to start illustrating seriously, and what his ongoing collaboration with fellow illustrator Birgit Palmer looks like in practice. We also get into the design community, why creatives tend to keep to themselves even when they don't need to, and why reaching out is always worth it.Guest links:Website: https://www.danieltriendl.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/danieltriendl

A McDonald's Christmas ad made entirely with AI. A Porsche ad drawn completely by hand. Both dropped around the same time. Only one of them got pulled from the internet. In this episode, we get into what these two examples actually tell us about where the market is heading. We're seeing the beginning of a real split: AI is becoming a signal for cheap, and human-made is becoming a signal for quality, craftsmanship, and even prestige.

Where did all the emos, skaters, and indie kids go? And where are we finding meaning behind what we wear and who we belong to? The algorithm telling us how to think, AI homogenizing our research habits, 2025 was officially called the year of overwhelming okayness in brand identity. It's all connected. In this episode we get into why everything looks the same right now, in branding, on social media, in our homes, on our feeds, and what's driving it.

In this episode we sit down with Eva Christ, founder of Unmuted Collective, a Vienna-based platform making mental health visible in the workplace. We get into why creatives are statistically more prone to burnout than other industries and why loving your work actually makes you more at risk. We talk about our own mental health crises and how we got through it. One of the more honest conversations we've had on the podcast.Guest links:Website: https://www.unmutedcollective.atInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/unmutedcollective.at

What does success look like to you, and where did that definition come from? In this episode we get honest about how our answer to that question has changed, why we spent years chasing a version of success that wasn't actually ours, and what it felt like to scale down when the world around us treats growth as the only valid metric for success.

Laura Reichert is a photographer based between Munich and Vienna whose work is rooted in documenting people and authentic moments — and whose Studio Reichert project started as something deeply personal. After her grandfather, a typographer and artist, passed away, Laura began archiving his work, photographing his untouched workshop, and eventually turning his prints into something people could carry with them. In this episode we talk about keeping a creative legacy alive, why she stopped performing for the algorithm, what it means to document rather than photograph.Guest links:Website: https://laura-reichert.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorakfilm/ & instagram.com/studio.reichert

Creative Boom surveyed young freelancers on the hardest parts of being a creative. The results weren't surprising and very relatable. In this episode we go through every single finding, share where we've been there ourselves, and get honest about the ones we're still figuring out. Money, burnout, AI anxiety, feeling replaceable, direction, visibility, client nightmares.

You've heard it a hundred times, even on this podcast – niche down, become the go-to person for one thing, and the right clients will find you. Our guest Marie Zieger disagrees. She calls herself radically anti-niche, and in this episode we get into why that advice can be just as harmful as it is helpful, what a business as a multi-hyphenate creative looks like.Guest links:Website: www.everyseason.xyzInstagram: www.instagram.com/everyseason.xyzImage copyright:https://www.instagram.com/sophienawratil