Open Studio #2: Katie Price Bet on Herself Before Anyone Else Would.

Open Studio is a brand new podcast about what the creative industry's actually like. For the people in it, the people near it and the people still working out whether to jump in.

Then she started her own studio anyway.

Most people would call that a warning sign. Katie Price called it a starting gun. In episode three of Open Studio, the founder of Studio Good Work talks us through the moment she stopped waiting for someone else to hire her, and built the thing she wanted to work at instead.

Katie Price is the founder of Studio Good Work, a brand design studio built on research, reality, and respect for community and for craft. She grew up in the South Wales valleys, graduated with a master's in design for social change, and spotted a gap in social design back home that nobody else was filling.

Getting to Studio Good Work wasn't a straight line. Two redundancies knocked Katie into a period of real self-doubt before she landed on the decision that changed things.

"I'm going to give myself a go and bet on myself before I bet on somebody else."

Here's the thing about doubt: it's not a signal to stop, it's raw material. Every career is a path made of stepping stones, and nobody's laying the next one for you but you.

• Why it matters: faith in your own ability is non-negotiable once you're the only one deciding what you work on.
• How to do it: get honest about your strengths and the impact you actually want to make, then use the doubt as fuel instead of a brake.
• Skip this at your peril: hesitating on entrepreneurship because failure feels possible. It's always possible. Do it anyway.

Running your own studio sounds like a one-woman operation. Katie's version isn't.

"I lean more on a collective approach these days," she says, pointing to a group of friends from a previous job who now double as her sounding board.

• Why it matters: a circle around you brings encouragement, sharper criticism, and ideas you wouldn't have landed on solo.
• How to do it: reach out to other creatives, show up to local meetups, get stuck into online communities. Relationships turn into collaborations faster than cold applications do.
• Skip this at your peril: isolating yourself. It feels productive. It isn't.

When you're a studio of one, there's no second designer down the hall to sense-check your work. Katie's fix is refreshingly low-tech.

"I turn to my family and friends for honest opinions," she says, deliberately stepping outside industry norms to get a read that isn't shaped by them.

• Why it matters: feedback keeps the work sharp, especially when there's no one else in the room to catch what you can't see.
• How to do it: show the work to people you trust, industry or not, and actually use what they tell you.
• Skip this at your peril: taking it personally. It's a note on the work, not a verdict on you.

• Bet on yourself first. Nobody else is going to hire you into the career you actually want — build it.
• Build a collective, not a solo act. A small circle of trusted creatives replaces the colleagues you left behind.
• Get feedback from outside the industry. Family and friends will tell you what your peers are too polite, or too close, to say.

Open Studio, made at Shillington. Episode 02, listen here.