A bit late is better than never. While the monthly report has been completed, I’ve had to push the episode recording back due to Project Dollar, workshops, and other activities. Being that it is so late in the month, I will be skipping the August podcast episode and will instead release the blog. In a few weeks, September update will be recorded and released.
-Mark

Blog

Why Publish A Business Report?

Publishing my business report allows me to reflect back on the month to see what I did or didn’t do so well. Lastly, I have read blog income reports such as SmartPassiveIncome and I like to see what they have tried. It is a form of motivation for me and I hope that this can be one for someone else. Be sure to check out CashFlowDiaries for bloggers that share their blog income reports. Or one that I’ve recently found from publisher Microcosm Publishing.

August 2018 Business Report

Disclaimer: Any income reported will only be reported as “cash” in hand. If it did not deposit into my account, or if I didn’t cash a check, then it does not count as income. Additionally, income will only be reported for ApexThis business and not for personal income. I may discuss side hustles for additional side income, but only income in which I represent ApexThis will be counted.

**Numbers in parenthesis are negative values.

Revenue/Contribution Report

Contribution – $500.00
Shopify – $61
WePay (Meetup) – $28

Expense Report

RawVoice (Blubrry) – ($12)
Google Apps – ($10)
Adobe Suite – ($54)
Xero – ($9)
Podcast Movement – ($1690)
Motion Media Arts – ($700)
Printful – ($30.76)

Overall

Owner Contributions – $500
Gross Income – $89
Total Expense – ($2505)
Total Net – ($2416)

Hours Worked

Time Logged – 47hrs

What Happened?

Finances

Podcast Movement expenses finally hit as I paid off the business credit card. This includes travel, lodging, and food. Ouch! Good thing I saved for this trip and I’ve already started saving for 2019.

Another big hit financially was a year membership to a local non-profit film school that allows me to rent and use their equipment, office space and hold events. I had also purchased two workshops. The first workshop deals with production sound recording. In the film world, production means on-set aka production recording.

My next training will deal with post-production in Adobe Audition. This is great, personally, as my focus will be in post-production and I’ve found that I needed to move into the film world to seek the deep technical training that I need. I think these were and are going to be great investments. This training does not start until mid-October and concludes in early November.

What also happened this month was a soft launch of the Merch Store. I have not marketed this yet but I will be writing up a blog post. I did have one sale already which is great. I have LOTS of ideas for things to add to the store but they will come over time. Wait – what did you say? Am I spreading myself too thin? Remember the store launched primarily for Austin Podcasters as a way to fund the events and other costs of running a meetup. Other shirt ideas came to me, and I plan to produce other prints, zines & books. I am super excited to experiment with this.

Lastly, not only through saving, but most welcome bonus’ from my day job helps fund ApexThis. I do realize overall that I am reveling in excess and I plan to curb this down for 2019. Again – I do this all on the side and so I have the comfort of having a day job that I love as well. Though, there is no question that I want ApexThis to be my full-time gig. Until that time, I will experiment and either succeed or fail. And either will be great for me!

Time Breakdown

47 hours! Wow! It did not feel as if I worked 47 hours but I did! Here is how that breaks down:

Blog – 7h 58m

This time was mostly towards finishing off previously planned blog posts such as How I Use Trello To Organize Austin Podcasters & Using Trello To Plan Your Podcast. While the content was mostly written for these, I did some updates for an upcoming talk that I will be giving for using Trello to plan and manage your podcast.

Business (Administrative) – 7h 5m

This contains administrative time for answering emails, collecting finances for July. I also spent time thinking about the rebrand.

Podcast – 4h 49m

The July update episode time is now comprised of recording and editing as the administrative function of collecting the data is recorded separately.

Austin Podcasters – 21h 11m

This is a BIG division of ApexThis. What I mean by this is I considered this an events area of ApexThis that launched the Austin Podcasters Meetup. When forming ApexThis as an LLC, I also applied for a DBA or Doing Business As – in other locations, this would be a Fictitious Business Name – for Austin Podcasters. At the moment, all resources are shared but I may spin this off into its very own thing. Outside of this, the month entailed the newsletter, blog spots, meetup planning, social media, and time spent running a meetup. The latter is new as I didn’t previously record time for the meetup but I am now doing so so that I can better reflect my time spent.

Store – 2h 30m

Updating and soft launching the merch store.

Project Dollar – 1h

Edits for the first 4 episodes. These are ready for their second draft but first – edit the remaining 4 episodes to complete the first draft edits!

Without Project – 2h 55m

This is for Pomodoro Breaks. I’ve set Toggl to run the timer for 25 minutes and then to stop the activity and break for 5 minutes. This allows me to break out work into smaller chunks and then take a break to get some tea, stretch the legs, or whatever. Of course, if I don’t want the break, I can just hit the “continue” option.

Theme

Last month was all about iteration and how I had lost my ability to iterate on my work for improvements over time as opposed to holding on to them to make it perfect. This month was all about discovery. If I could Iterate? What would I Discover?

Apparently, a LOT of progress. I discovered how much I was holding back trying to make things perfect and I STILL feel this nagging at me. I push through it anyway!

Goal Completion

I had a few goals last month, so let’s see how I did:

Publish an article on using Trello with your podcast – Success
Publish an article on my attempt to build branding with the Austin Podcasters Conference – Fail
Publish an article on Podcast Movement 2018 Recap – Success
Complete first edit/development edit of the first 4 chapters of Project Dollar – Success
Finish reading “Out on the Wire” – Success

4 out of 5. I get a ‘B’ for my August report card!

What’s Next?

Speak

I’ve given a few talks this year ranging from podcasting to system administration and I have another one coming up in September. The best part about giving a talk is interacting with folks after. I’ve been very lucky to have been asked and I hope to be able to do more in the future.

Write

Project Dollar

I am two weeks behind in my edits, therefore, I will be dropping most, if not everything, to get caught up. Weekends will shift to focus on this while other tasks will be done weekday mornings and nights.

This next month I plan to:

Publish an article on my attempt to build branding with the Austin Podcasters Conference
Round 1 edits on Project Dollar episodes 4-8
Begin the second draft for episodes 1-2

Learn

I completed my reading goal last month (thanks to recent travels I was able to knock this out in two plane rides) and have started a new book: Story Craft by Jack Hart

This book focuses on writing narrative nonfiction and is breaking down real news stories, narrative arcs and story structure. I am enjoying it thus far and I hope to make some good progress on it for September/October.

Reading Goal

Read 50% of Story Craft

In Closing

That was a big update. As always, I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do making them. I learn so much with every update I do and I never want to stop.

Until next time

August 2018 Update