How to reinvent yourself with Phoebe Hartley

Rachel Smith: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives.

Lynne Testoni: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

Hi Rachel! So excited to be back again this week and we are tackling one of my favourite topics, creative reinvention, which is such a better term than that terrible, pivot.

Rachel: Everyone hates that word.

Lynne: Everyone hates pivot.

Rachel: We don’t want to use pivot, do we?

Lynne: No.

Rachel: But it’s true. I think as freelancers and writers of all kinds who tune into the podcast, we’ve all had to really – especially over the last few years, adapt to new demands and changes in our industries and just so we can continue to pay the bills and make a living.

Lynne: Be relevant.

Rachel: Absolutely. And I have definitely adapted the kind of work I do, the way I work and that sort of thing. What about you?

Lynne: Oh, so many times. I mean, I started as a journalist and then I became a subeditor because that’s where the jobs were back in the day. Then an editor and I’ve moved back into writing in recent times, which is much easier I think, as a freelancer. Even then, it’s changing all the time because I still occasionally write for print, but most of my work is digital these days.

Rachel: Well, that’s the same for me. I do a lot of web copy now when I didn’t probably ten years ago. But I love that. It’s a really long way from the magazine world where I started, but that’s why I’m very excited about our guest today, who is sort of in the magazine world, has gone back to the magazine world.

Lynne: No sort of about it.

Rachel: No. She’s definitely back in the magazine world. She’s worn many different hats and has many different career paths, which we’re going to delve into. Her name is Phoebe Hartley.

Lynne: I love Phoebe. She’s so good and she’s got so much to talk about, so let’s get her in the hot seat and chat about it all.

Rachel: Sounds good.

Lynne: Welcome, Phoebe.

Rachel: Welcome.

Phoebe: Hello. Hi, Rachel. Hi, Lynne. Thank you so much. I’m a fan of the podcast. Thank you for having me on it.

Rachel: Well, that’s always good to hear. We love a fan coming onto the podcast.

Lynne: Yes, we do, we do.

Rachel: I have to say, I was very fascinated to know that you started as a filmmaker before becoming a journalist. Tell us a little bit about your whole career trajectory.

Phoebe: I did, it’s a funny one, I suppose. I was born into a creative family. Dad was a TV writer for a long time. Mum has always worked in theatre. My sister is a musician and I always loved writing, which I probably got from dad. That was always what I wanted to do, but I also loved film and I thought writing was part of that. So, that’s what I started out doing. I started working on film and TV sets in production.

At first, I was interested in cinematography. I thought I might go down that path, and then I decided I wanted to write and direct. So, I made several short films, which is what you have to do and it was great fun. I got them screened at MIFF – Melbourne International Film Festival.

Rachel: Cool.

Phoebe: And in some film festivals around the world. It was lots of fun. It was a little bit glamorous. One of my highlights, I think was walking the red carpet in Hanoi at the Hanoi International Film Festival and being put up in a five-star hotel, and I was interviewed one day on Vietnamese TV. I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but I just felt a bit like a rockstar. It was really fun. It was also really hard work and a bit of a boy’s club, I have to say back then. This was ten, fifteen years ago. I think things are changing a bit and hard, hard to make a living from doing that. Especially, chasing, wanting to be a feature film director or something. It’s just a very hard career path in Australia.

So, I produced and directed a lot of corporate videos, which is a world in itself. And then we had our son and it was a chance to step back from that world and have a think about whether I really wanted to be in it anymore and maybe do something a bit more flexible because the hours are not family friendly at all. And so, I went back to focusing on writing, which was my first love.

Lynne: Fantastic. And so, you retrained as a journalist, you were in your forties by that stage. Was it hard or did you think being mature made a difference?

Phoebe: It was tricky because by that time, of course you have mortgage and bills to pay and all that sort of stuff, so I had to take a bit of time out from work to retrain, and my beautiful partner supported us during that time, and I went back to uni just for a year.

I did a graduate diploma in journalism at RMIT in Melbourne, and I was definitely the oldest one there. There was a lot of people who’d come straight from uni, did a degree, and went straight into their graduate diploma. So, they were all of twenty-three, twenty-four or something. I was not only the oldest one there, I was thirty-nine and I was pregnant for most of that year of study as well.

I turned up for work experience; it was quite funny. I think it was at Crikey, and I was greeted with confused faces and people saying, you don’t look like our usual work experience. And we went on some excursions, and I was assumed to be the teacher. There were a lot of funny incidents, just being the eldest.

But with that maturity, I mean, I was ready. I had never done so well at uni. I’d been twice before and when I was much younger, but this time around I felt really ready, really determined, and I knew exactly why I was doing it. I was there to learn certain things, to get my head around it and to take that and then run with it and change my life really changed my careers. So, having maturity and life experience from that perspective really made a difference and I loved it and I got so much out of it.

Lynne: Wow.

Rachel: Oh, wow. Well, you still do a mixture of many things, don’t you? Because you do audio docos and feature writing, and now you’ve got Billy. What does a typical week look like?

Phoebe: Yes, well.

Lynne: I think we should explain that Billy is her magazine.

Rachel: Yes, yes. Sorry. Billy is her magazine.

Phoebe: No, that’s okay. We’ll get to it. I’ll lead up to that. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. I think we all know, you two certainly know as well as I do, there is no typical week for freelancers and that’s what we love about it. That’s what I love about it, having variety and flexibility. Really, they’re the best things about this way of working. So, in my week, I do have a lot of alone time. There’s a lot of solo writing, working in my study between school hours, sometimes going a bit stir crazy and you need to go out and talk to an adult or something sometimes.

But I get to, I try to prioritise exercise first thing in the morning after school drop off. And I love that I can do that when I do. Occasionally I make audio documentaries for ABC radio national. I’ve done a handful for their history programs, so sometimes I get to go into their office and that’ll be a real novelty.

Lynne: Yes.

Phoebe: And then that’s fun because it’s a change of scenery and it’s well, mostly, I suppose, depending on the project I’m doing, no matter what it is, there’s always a lot of interviewing involved. That’s what I love most about this type of writing, I guess, is asking people questions, hearing their stories, and finding ways to shape them and make them readable.

So, I do a lot of interviews, and I do a lot online like this or over the phone, but with Billy, which is my new print magazine, it focuses on local stories in my area in Victoria. So, it’s really nice to be making. I’m making a real effort now to actually go and do face-to-face interviews, going to people’s houses and their properties or their businesses, and that’s really the best way I think, to interview someone.

That’s a lot of my week is talking to people now and interviewing people.

Lynne: I love that you started your own magazine. What was the story behind Billy and why did you want to do it?

Phoebe: It’s a little bit crazy, my head’s spinning. What on earth am I doing? It’s come about because I live in the Macedon Ranges in Central Victoria, which spans Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung Country.

It’s a beautiful part of the world and it’s really not far from Melbourne. Forty-five to an hour away from Melbourne, so you get the best of both worlds. I grew up very inner-city Melbourne, and I never thought I would live in the country. It was just something I didn’t really think about.

We decided to move here, my partner and son and I at the end of 2020 and we haven’t looked back and we love it. And the biggest difference I’ve found living here outside a city is a really strong sense of community. It’s almost a cliche, your country community but people have such pride in their town and pride in the region. And so, I wanted to celebrate that and there are so many interesting people living in this region. I found out fun fact; the Macedon Ranges has more working artists living here than anywhere else in Victoria.

Lynne: Wow.

Phoebe: So, I had started writing stories about all the local folks around here, all different sorts of interesting people and pitching them to other people’s magazines. I’ve been writing for Graziher, and Australian Country and Women’s Weekly and giving these stories away, which is great because then other places get to hear about them, but I saw a bit of a gap and I realised we need our own magazine and to be able to tell our own stories and to be able to celebrate the local people here. We have beautiful local papers, and they serve a different purpose though. They’re much more community group focused. The Scouts might have a piece in there or things from the schools or whatever, but this is different. This is trying to be like a magazine that you’d buy in the newsagent.

And so, Billy was born, but it’s free. It’s a little A5 – your listeners can’t see it, but I’ll show it to you guys. It’s there with beautiful artwork on the front, really nice and small, so you can carry it in your bag, and you can take it with you and it’s free. It was really important to me to make it free, and it’s print only as well. I don’t think at this stage I’ll put the whole issue online.

It’s an arts and culture magazine and it’s available from all the cafes and local homeware stores for people to pick up and different community hubs. So far, I’m working on issue two now and I’m distributing two thousand copies.

Any Victorians might know, right from Sunbury, which is outside of Melbourne, right up to Castlemaine, and I’m sort of offering it as a platform for locals. We’re sharing local stories and I’m inviting artists and writers to have their work published. And for local businesses to have an affordable advertising option in something that is, again, different from our local papers. Something that’s really beautiful and collectible. So, that’s the aim with it.

Lynne: Oh, that’s so lovely.

Rachel: I’d love to know the kind of technical side of actually starting Billy. I mean, you knew you were going to make it free, and you knew that you would fund it with advertising. Was that nerve wracking? How did all of that come about and did you find a printer and how did you do all the number crunching? That would terrify me. I’d be leaving all that to Lynne.

Phoebe: All the number crunching.

Rachel: She’s very good at the number crunching.

Phoebe: There was a lot of research. I really thought about doing it for about nine months of the year and did a lot of research. And this is me; this is the way I tend to do things. I listen to a lot of podcasts. There are some really good magazine focused podcasts. Well, actually there’s two that I can think of. One, they think they both come out of the UK and they’re both called – there’s The Stack and there’s, the other one is a Monocle offshoot. They’re both really helpful if anyone else is interested in finding out how people do it, because there’s a thousand different models really, of how to do it.

I looked into different models. I thought, do I create one and sell it? How much can I bring in doing that? Do I get it funded by advertising and then give it away for free? How do I do that? So, I looked at different models, decided to go with the free model, and I am running it as a business. I do want to make a bit for myself. I can’t do as much freelance writing now. I don’t have the time for other people, so I need to replace that income.

It’s all a bit of an experiment. I’ve done one issue so far. I’m in the depths of issue two. It’s all been a learning curve, and I think really, I’m just doing a lot of research and asking people for help and advice and to see if they’re interested. What do people want, what do readers want to see, what do advertisers want? Just really trying to take on board a lot of feedback as well, because if I don’t make something that people want to be involved in, then I can’t do it, and there’s no point doing it, I suppose.

Rachel: What has that feedback been like from the public and people who want to have their stories in there and the advertisers. I mean, obviously print still has a place, many of us believe that. What’s the response?

Phoebe: The response has been overwhelming. I’ve just, I actually, by the end of the year, I felt like my head was spinning in such a good way. I’ve just been really overwhelmed. Again, it’s the sort of project that if there’s no interest and no support from the community, I can’t do it and there’d be no point doing it. It’s really for the community and I want the community’s involvement in so many ways, and it’s just been an incredible response from the community.

I think that I saw the gap there and we had the skills to do something to fill that gap, but I think there was already a lot of people out there who had seen that gap as well and just jumped on it and said, yes, this is what we need. I’ve had so many people just going out of their way to email me to just say, love what you’re doing. We really need this in the region. So, that’s been really, just has given me a real boost.

I think I’ve tapped into something and again, it comes from being outside of a city, that pride in the place where we live and, in the community, we are part of. So, people have just been really supportive and I was amazed. I was ringing people and asking people to advertise, and people were saying yes, despite there being nothing for them to see yet. I just sort of had to say, wow, wow, this is what it’s going to be like. Do you want to get on board? And they were giving me money to do it. It was really quite amazing.

I’m having lots of people pitching and contributing and just saying they want to be part of it because of this amazing community have so I feel very overwhelmed and very grateful.

Lynne: That’s so lovely.

I know you’re a big believer in adapting all your creative skills. Have there been some hard lessons or some things that you’ve learned along the way?

Phoebe: Yes. I think change itself is really quite hard. I still grew up thinking I would have a job and a career, and that’s what you do, and you study and you get that job and you follow a career path with a certain amount of logic to it. I guess creative industries don’t really have that, so I probably should never have thought that way.

But I think the hardest lesson, I think for me, it was probably leaving the film world and deciding I’m not going to be a filmmaker anymore. I felt very much like that was part of my identity.

Lynne: It was part of youridentity.

Phoebe: Exactly. I think we get very attached to our career as our identity. So, in a way, leaving that behind a bit unfinished, because I didn’t direct that feature film or become a famous director or anything.

Part of me felt like I failed. So, I had to work on that to see that differently. And since then, I now see the success along the way, and I see that the change. Each time I’ve done something different in all these creative ways, they’re all, there’ve been opportunities to shift from one creative realm to another and to take all the skills that I’ve brought from those different things to the next, and to be able to enjoy that and embrace it.

Rachel: I love that.

Well, you’re moving into issue two now of the magazine. What do you wish you’d known before you started?

Phoebe: Well, everything.

Lynne: But would you have done it then?

Phoebe: Well, let’s see, this is the thing. Maybe it’s good when you don’t quite know how difficult something’s going to be and how much work it was going to be.

I did go into it knowing I had a lot to learn, which is why I was very quick to ask people for help. I wanted to ask a lot of experienced magazine makers and, I had a few relationships with different editors from being a freelance writer and then others. I just started approaching people to sort of ask questions and I thought, wouldn’t it be sensible to make a podcast while I’m doing that if I’m going to be asking people effectively interviewing them anyway. So first I thought I’ll be clever, I’ll make a podcast called How to Make a Magazine, and I will ask questions and learn as I go.

I am still doing that, but partway through that I just got itchy feet, and I just dived in and started making the magazine.

Lynne generously gave me some of her time and will be on that podcast coming soon to your ears when I actually get around to finishing it. But I learned a lot from doing that.

Lynne: People are quite generous with their time too, aren’t they?

Phoebe: They really are. And, if you ask for help and you tell people what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, most people are very generous, I think, with their advice and help.

Apart from that, the technical learning, I’ve been learning how to do the layout in, InDesign, which I actually love. I’ve always been a bit of a wannabe graphic designer, so I’m getting to fulfill that part. And in a way, I think making a magazine is the perfect combination of all my existing creative skills. I feel like being an editor of a magazine is a lot like being a director of a film. I’m bringing all these different elements together and making it work as one cohesive thing, so there is a bit of logic to it, actually.

Lynne: Yes.

Rachel: Amazing.

Lynne: That’s good. Look, I’m sure our listeners would want to know if you use freelancers in your magazine, and if you do, what do you look for in a freelancer?

Phoebe: Well, I do have contributors at the moment. I’ve got some beautiful contributors, not necessarily professional journalists or writers, but I do also have some amazingly experienced journalists and writers coming to me, which I’m really blown away by.

I’m offering everyone a very small fee at the moment, but I can’t pay proper freelance rates yet, but I want everyone to get value out of it. I’m doing a bit of bartering, I’m exchanging, whether we can exchange a bit of advertising space for writing a piece. There are ways to work it out at this stage, but I’m sort of treading carefully. But what I’m looking for is, cinematic storytelling. So that’s never gone away for me.

I love really sensory writing that drops the reader directly into a story immediately. So, the opening paragraph of any story has to be almost quite visceral. We want to paint a picture of where we are. I like that style of writing. And I do look for really proper well thought out pictures.

I’ve done so many of them myself, and I know how important it is to be really clear and really impress someone and get their attention upfront. And you do have to put time into it, which is tricky.

Rachel: What’s the process for planning out issues? Are you flat planning? I used to do flat planning. I love flat planning. How are you planning and how far ahead are you planning everything?

Phoebe: I dream of getting to the stage where I’m doing a proper flat plan and I’m properly thinking ahead. At the moment I’ve got two whiteboards behind me here with scribble on them, and that’s working so far. But, no, a lot of it, this is a terrible thing to say. A lot of it’s in my head. A lot of it’s in notes and notebooks and whiteboards.

It’s really the first time I’ve had a project that just feels very clear to me. I was very clear about wanting each issue to be focused on arts and culture, but because of where we live, we’re all very influenced by the natural surroundings.

So, each quarterly issue has a natural element theme which really is just a loose guide to helping me decide what stories to put where and it just gives it a bit of a neat package. So, issue one was the water issue and issue two I’m working on is the earth issue. And I guess the way I am planning it at the moment is that I think the next one might be air and the one after that might be flora. They’re not strictly elements, it’s natural themes and as stories are coming in, I’m fitting them in where I think they’ll go. But honestly, beyond a whiteboard at the moment, there’s no formal process which I need to develop probably.

Rachel: It’s really fun putting a magazine together and all of us kind of, well, I know I really miss working on magazines and I’ve put some stuff in the wrap up our Friday newsletter at Rachel’s List recently, which is about the resurgence of magazines.

Phoebe: Yes!

Rachel: And this desire for tactile things that you can keep and hold and like you said, has something beautiful that’s like a collectible. And so, I just love what you’re doing. It’s very cool.

Phoebe: Oh, thank you. This is the thing.

Lynne: And I should say that there’s this great software called Flat-Plan. It helps you.

Phoebe: I’m writing that down.

Lynne: Write that down. I’ve used it.

Rachel: And could use that for the podcast, Lynne, for your Phoebe podcast. You could have saved that nugget for your Phoebe podcast.

Lynne: I could’ve. But that is really helpful. Flat-Plan is if people aren’t aware, it’s basically a grid of how the magazine will flow.

Phoebe: Oh, that’s what I need.

Lynne: You can get something off InDesign that plugs into it but honestly, that Flat-Plan, which is a fairly cheap software, is really good. And it does help you plan out a magazine in some ways. Depends on, I’ve used it for client publications. It’s quite good.

Phoebe: I literally did fold some a four paper into an A5 magazine and pencilled in just to get my head around how many pages do I need, how do I, where do the ads fit? What’s the order of things? Then of course you did ask earlier. I don’t think I answered that, Rachel, about I had to find a printer then and unfortunately, I haven’t found one yet locally. But I’m using one in Melbourne that has printed a lot of my favourite magazines. Do you remember Dumbo Feather? I’m not sure if they do Frankie. They do some really beautiful, I wanted someone who really knew how to do a magazine properly.

Rachel: Oh, that’s fantastic.

Phoebe: So, it looks beautiful. It’s printed beautifully.

Rachel: Oh, that’s lovely.

Lynne: I wanted to ask about what it’s like to work in a rural area. I mean, obviously that’s probably one of the strengths of the magazine being rural, but what about your other work? Is it hard being that little bit out of Melbourne or in the country?

Phoebe: I think it’s one of those yes and no answers. Writing, of course, you can literally do it anywhere, so it hasn’t been a problem in that way. It’s only tricky really, when I need to go into someone’s office, or for some reason I need to be based in the city during work hours. And that’s just tricky because I do all the school pickup and drop off and all that sort of stuff.

So, it’s just that working between school hours and that. That would be tricky probably even still living in Melbourne as well, I think, for freelance writing. But now, for particularly this magazine being located regionally, I’m not rural, I’m not out on big acreage blocks or in the Outback or anything. It’s very regional area. It’s only an advantage.

So before starting Billy, I’d found a real niche in writing for regional and rural magazines. There’s a real scene for that at the moment. There’s a number of them that I was writing for, and so living in the country, being able to call myself a country person became an advantage for that so I could become part of that scene. And now with Billy, it’s a hyper-local magazine, so it can only be done here. So, I’m tapping into, again, that local community because I’m a local. It is a huge advantage.

Rachel: How amazing Are you keeping an eye on other magazines, on opportunities in publishing that are on the horizon?

Phoebe: Yes, absolutely. And I think as you started saying, Rachel, it’s we’re all a bit sick of scrolling and looking at our phones and having everything. And so, I do think there’s quite a resurgence of analog things and tactile mediums that we can hold in our hands and smelling the pages of a magazine. It’s sort of ridiculous, but that there’s real pleasure in that.

Of course, a lot of the world is a bit ahead of us. I think there’s some amazing independent magazine conferences that are being held in Europe and Japan where print is huge. I mean, they have so many magazine shops solely dedicated to all the different print titles. So, I’d love to head to some of those. I’d love to be able to actually become part of that independent publishing scene and learn more about that because that’s all new to me as well.

Rachel: Oh, how exciting.

Lynne: Now, Phoebe, we’re ending the podcast – this is a new thing from 2026 with a fast three questions. So, are you ready to do this?

Phoebe: I’m ready. I’m ready.

Lynne: You’re ready?

Phoebe: Okay, go. I have notes, I admit I have notes.

Rachel: Okay. First question – favourite tools you can’t live without.

Phoebe: Favorite tool of a writer is your laptop. I’ve got my lovely Mac laptop, and I can work anywhere. Everything I need is in one place, synced up with all my devices ready to go.

The next one’s the antithesis of that, which is pens and notebooks, because I just still love writing down all my ideas and lists constantly, and I have a different notebook for each project, and I really enjoy doing that. In conjunction with that, I use Google Keep. To me that is the best little note taking device to have on my phone – syncs up with your Google accounts, colour coded. It’s all in sections. I find that really handy. That’s Google Keep and that’s free.

Rachel: Have to check that out.

Phoebe: It’s really worth worthwhile. I can’t remember how I heard about that. Can I say books are my tools?

Lynne: Of course.

Phoebe: I can’t live without books. I read a lot and I learn more and more about writing as I go. Learning, writing from reading is the way to do it.

Lynne: Oh, definitely, definitely

Rachel: Love it.

Lynne: Okay, question two – one habit that genuinely saves you time.

Phoebe: Yes. I was thinking about this, and I realised it’s the time management. I do my writing, my creativity in the morning, because that’s when my brain is in that space. I try to leave admin and all the non-creative stuff until after lunch when my brain starts to fade a bit.

Rachel: Oh, that’s nice. Okay, final question – one thing you wish you’d done sooner in your career.

Phoebe: Yes, I wish I had had more confidence earlier in my working life. I did a lot of things like working for free and I didn’t do a lot of things like putting myself forward for certain opportunities because I lacked that confidence. But I guess that comes with experience and with getting older and it feels like a real relief now, or a release or something to just not be as worried about that anymore and just not listen to that imposter syndrome. I just, I don’t buy into that anymore. I just think, I can, if I want to learn how to do something, I can do it.

Rachel: Yes.

Lynne: Oh, that’s so important. Love it. Well, I think confidence it does come with maturity.

Phoebe: It definitely does.

Lynne: And also, I think it actually comes from failing, when you don’t do as well as you want to do and you realise that the world doesn’t end, I think it makes you more confident to take risks.

Phoebe: That’s probably true. And of course, that bit of faking it till you make it as well. People don’t need to know that you don’t know what you’re doing. Just act like you do and trust.

Lynne: Start Googling.

Phoebe: It’ll work out. Yes, yes. Start Googling, listen to other podcasts, learn things.

Rachel: Absolutely.

Lynne: Oh, Phoebe, thank you so much. It was such an inspiring conversation, and I think Billy got inspired about the future of print, so that’s good and I’m sure it got a lot of our listeners excited.

Phoebe: Oh, I hope so.

Lynne: Thank you. You might even have the odd pitch or two coming.

Phoebe: Yes. Well, look, it’s strictly locals only though, so if there are Central Victorian listeners, yes, please do. Yes, I’d love to.

Lynne: I think we have a couple. I can think of a couple.

Rachel: We do.

Phoebe: You do in the Rachel’s List community. Yes, as well, there are. So, yes

But thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Rachel: It’s been great, Phoebe. And we will put all the links on where to find Billy and where to find you in our show notes.

Lynne: That would be fantastic.

Rachel: That brings us to the end of the show this week, but we’ll be back, won’t we next week?  

Lynne: We’ll be back next week. Fantastic. Thank you, Phoebe.

Phoebe: Thank you so much.

Rachel: Thanks. Bye

Lynne: Bye.

Credits:

Connect with Phoebe via https://www.billypress.com/ or https://www.phoebehartley.com/

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com 

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au 

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au 

Thanks (as always) to our sponsors Rounded (www.rounded.com.au), an easy invoicing and accounting solution that helps freelancers run their businesses with confidence. Looking to take advantage of the discount for Rachel’s List Gold Members? Email us at: hello@rachelslist.com.au for the details.

Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co