Ahh, The obligatory New Years Resolution blog post…It’s cliche, of course, but darned if it isn’t a good excuse to put something down on paper, or LCD panel, as it were.
At any rate, I hope you will indulge me in taking down some notes, more for myself, but that maybe, will help somebody else. Here goes.
I am not usually one to make bold resolutions. I am more of a think it, do it kind of guy, whatever time of year that might be. When I was a younger man and legalized gambling was isolated to pretty much Las Vegas and Atlantic City, I would routinely hatch a plan at midnight on a Saturday to play some black jack, grab some friends and just drive to New Jersey, a 3 hour one way trip! If you have listened to my podcast The VO Meter, https://www.vometer.com you may have heard the story of how I acquired my Whisper Room. I saw an ad on Craigslist in New York City. I made an inquiry and was driving up I-95 36 hours later in a rented cargo van to pick it up! I don’t need excuses to take action.
Still, mostly due to the fact that I make a lot of business investments in December to qualify for late Tax deductions (or at least I used to, thanks Congress!) I have a lot of memberships that expired recently. That brings me to my first resolution.
I am pairing down my involvement with online casting sites (p2p). My membership to Voice123 expired in December. I decided not to renew. There just wasn’t much return on investment for me. I may try again at some point, but for now, I chose not to continue with that particular company. I had at one time 4 memberships to p2p sites. The other two shall remain nameless. This means bodalgo, is my only current online casting membership. Truth be told, I haven’t had much luck there either, but I really like their process and of course their rock star founder Armin Hierstetter.
This brings up the question then how will I drum up business? Well, I’m glad you asked, because that is resolution number…2
I will market more to local businesses. I have already started looking. I’m in talks with my local chamber of commerce about a membership, and plan to seek out others like it. I will try to reach out to my other contacts locally to see how I can help their businesses. I hope to use Linked in and other networking sites to further build my network locally. After all, a client that is built out of a relationship is more likely to become a long term client.
Finally, I plan (hope) to stop obsessing about equipment and focus more on the important aspects of the business. I have worked long and hard on creating a top notch studio sound and by in large I have achieved that goal; its time to cut that line item out of my budget.
To that end, I plan to focus on coaching. I am about to “Graduate” from the narration training program with Sean Pratt, I am currently doing some coaching on imaging, and I hope to pick back up with character work (Everett, I’m going to call you I promise).
That’s it, really. Like I said, I’m not much of a resolution guy, but the perfect congruence of the budgeting that comes with the end of the year really crystalized things for me and made this list easy.
What are some of your New Years Resolutions? Drop me a comment please!