The Fink Tank

Cam and Col Fink
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A podcast for people dealing with the weirdness of running their own small business. Brothers Cam and Col Fink chat about work, life, and the confounding idiocy of themselves and others. They've been brothers for 45 years. You get to pick who's older. Col helps people run successful small practices, and is an expert public speaker and trainer. Cam is an event producer and freelance videographer, and loves helping people bring their best selves to video.

  1. Sep 24

    He doesn’t give a shit about the videos

    I made some videos for a sports doctor, and what he said the next time I saw him floored me. “Sorry mate, I haven’t actually watched the videos!” I couldn’t BELIEVE it!! He’d paid me to make short explainer videos for his medical practice. They’re the first thing visitors to his website see. They’ve been live for six months. HE’S NEVER WATCHED THEM. And I was back in his medical rooms because he’d asked me to make more. He was clearly happy with my work. But he wasn’t buying what I thought I was selling. The videos themselves didn’t matter to him. He was doing what his practice manager had told him to do, and happily paying for it. He wanted a quick and painless experience in front of the camera, so he could get back to doing what he actually wanted to do with his time. He doesn’t give a shit about the videos. We’re terrible at imagining how the world looks from other people’s perspectives. As Col explains beautifully in this episode of the Fink Tank, there are ways to be curious and find out.  And as I learnt from facilitator and all round legend Kayleigh Woodings, “Don’t make decisions on behalf of someone else’s wallet.”

  2. Sep 17

    The early bird spoils the broth

    - Many hands make light work. - Too many cooks spoil the broth. This week on The Fink Tank, we examine the profound wisdom contained in clichés. Unfortunately, for every piece of profound wisdom, there's another piece of profound wisdom telling you the exact opposite. Good luck out there.

  3. Sep 10

    Your greatest hits

    I once saw The Smashing Pumpkins, long after their heyday, and Billy Corgan DIDN'T play their best song, 1979. For the "encore" he played a wailing and indulgent 15 minute guitar solo, which the crowd hated. Ugh.Bands get tired of playing the same old hits, but it's what the fans want.When you've been delivering something for a while, it becomes second nature. The pacing and pauses, the humour and drama, it all gets improved and refined every time you deliver it. It gets better over time and yet... also runs the risk of feeling stale.Lots of people feel pressure to reimagine their work (whether it be a presentation, a workshop, a framework, etc) to ensure the audience is delivered something fresh and new.If you feel that pressure, it's worth asking yourself the question "is novelty really what they're paying for?"Usually, the answer is no. They're paying for efficacy. They're paying for certainty. They're paying for the tried and tested results that are delivered by your best, most refined stuff. To return to the concert analogy, yes, you can sneak your new songs into the middle of the set.You might not be a rockstar, but people still want your greatest hits.I saw Suzanne Vega last week in Wellington, and she opened with her breakout hit Marlene On the Wall. "I've found people get anxious if I leave it too late in the set," she explained to an amused and happy audience. She closed with Luka and Tom's Diner. Perfect.PS. The Fink Tank is BACK! Col and I are delighted. Looking forward to some good banter in the comments.

  4. Sep 8

    The top five numbers ranked

    We're easing back after a layoff with some light sibling dickheadery.

  5. Jun 4

    Make more bad stuff

    Who's a global genius? Not me, not Col, and (sorry for crushing your dreams) not you either. But we'll forgive Col opening with a Picasso comparison, because it points to a useful idea. Your vision is capable of imagining quality beyond what your talent can presently produce. So there's a painful period, that lasts anywhere from a few months to forever, where what you create doesn't meet the standards you aspire to. Continuing to produce, in the face of that shortfall, is how you develop talent. It can be frustrating and annoying, but that's the price of quality. For me it was posting weekly videos before I thought they were good enough (Peter Cook and Alicia gave me the weekly framework, before then I posted exactly nothing).  For Col it was doing clunky public speaking that fell short of his ambition (pretty sure Pete helped him too!). Quality matters, but it’s most usefully developed by focussing on quantity. The people whose work you admire have almost all been through some version of this process. You’ll never regret the clunky early stuff.

  6. May 28

    Human bacteria

    Col thinks we're all basically bacteria. Put bacteria in a warm, nutrient-rich environment and it thrives. Put it in a cold, sterile Petri dish and it stagnates.  Your conference in the beige hotel function room with polystyrene ceiling tiles sucks. You can’t put a bunch of humans into a Clifton's venue and ask them to feel inspired. There’s a reason every good house party ends up crammed in the hallway, the laundry, the kitchen. The tight spaces create an intimacy an expansive lounge room can’t.  Right now a delightful bunch of solo pros are twinkling and shining at The Dale Loft in Redfern Sydney. We’d love to be masters of our own destiny, unaffected by trifling matters like the room we’re in. But the choice of Petri dish matters.  Yesterday was inspiring. Today we ferment. P.S. For those wondering, Bluey is Col's homemade Catchbox mic. She's got a lav mic in her guts so the people online can hear things clearly. A side benefit is her role as "The Conch" to indicate who has the floor.

  7. May 21

    Fifty years of stuff

    Something I couldn't bring myself to throw out five years ago is plainly junk now. The line separating nostalgia and rubbish is thin. Every few years we wade through a sedimentary layer of crap in the Fink family home. We don't often make much headway, because the room is full of mementoes that span lifetimes. The trinkets in here go all the way back to Mum's childhood. Mum's uncle Noel, who lived to 99 and ten months, had a framed letter from Winston Churchill. Amazing. Also useless. Col and I had different feelings about the family home after we moved out, but we've landed in a similar place. Neither of us are attached to much there now, but there are some things we couldn't bear the thought of purging. A keepsake here, a handcrafted relic there. The rest could go tomorrow and we'd never notice. The trouble is, the room doesn't know that. So it sits there, holding fifty years of stuff hostage on behalf of the handful of things that still matter. As he often does, David Whyte captures the feeling well: "Nostalgia is not an immersion in the past, nostalgia is the first annunciation that the past as we know it is coming to an end." See you again in a few years.

  8. May 14

    Hoarders delight

    Col has hoarded so much stuff he literally owns a forklift to manage it. This week on The Fink Tank, we dig into the psychology of keeping shit you don't need. I LIVE for the moment when someone asks "do we have a cable for this?” and I can produce it from a cluttered box I fought to keep. That feeling is so good it almost justifies the years of stepping over the box. Almost. We’re at Mum’s place, the Fink family home where we grew up, attempting to declutter.  Progress is slow.  She rarely wants to throw anything out, and we quickly get distracted by sedimentary layers of keepsakes. Our mate Pete Cook wrote a blog that’s helped with my slow recovery: “I think when you buy a thing (as opposed to an experience) you pay for it three times.  You pay to buy it. You pay to own it (in physical space, head space, and possibly maintenance and repairs). And then you pay to dispose of it. And generally, we underestimate the cost to own and the cost to dispose.  It’s a good reminder to think twice about the next thing I want to buy.“ The complication is that throwing things out feels terrible too. Another item condemned to landfill, when it might come in handy one day.  It's a real tension, and we obviously haven’t solved it. But Mum, Cato, if you're reading this, step away from the hard rubbish.

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About

A podcast for people dealing with the weirdness of running their own small business. Brothers Cam and Col Fink chat about work, life, and the confounding idiocy of themselves and others. They've been brothers for 45 years. You get to pick who's older. Col helps people run successful small practices, and is an expert public speaker and trainer. Cam is an event producer and freelance videographer, and loves helping people bring their best selves to video.

Information

  • Creator
    Cam and Col Fink
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    131
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Cam and Col Fink
  • Show Website
    The Fink Tank

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