October 2018 Update

by | Nov 13, 2018 | Announcement, Business, Listen, Podcast | 0 comments

About This Episode

Host/Producer/Music

In This Episode

This is the October 2018 monthly report.

Links

Show Credits

Main show hosted, produced, mixed, edited & music by Mark.

Narration Intro Teaser
– Recorded at Spitshine Studios
– Post-production by Mark
Ambience, Night Life by InspectorJ licensed under CC BY 3.0
– Creature deep growl by vykroft licensed under CC BY 3.0
– Creature Pant by JuliusMabe licensed under CC BY 3.0


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.

October 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 – $0.00

Expense Report

  • RawVoice (Blubrry) – ($12)
  • Google Domains – ($12)
  • Google Apps – ($11)
  • Adobe Suite – ($54)
  • Xero – ($9)
  • Sales Tax – ($8.39)
  • Genuine Joes – ($33)

Overall

  • Owner Contributions – $0
  • Gross Income – $0
  • Total Expense – ($139)
  • Total Net – ($139)

Hours Worked

Time Logged – 39hrs

What Happened?

Finances

Things are getting back to normal regarding expenses. The two additional items outside of the normal are the Genuine Joes expense for booking room for the Austin Podcasters Meetup and state sales tax that I had to pay.

Time Breakdown

In comparison to the two previous months, I’ve worked fewer hours for the month of October and that comes in for a total of 30 hours. Here is how that breaks down:

Blog – 30m

I continue the trend of minimal blogging hours as I focus primarily on other things. This time was focused on creating a links page that I can use on Instagram and Twitter. This is a custom page on my website that consolidates any links I want to promote.

Business (Administrative) – 7h 16m

This contains administrative time for answering emails, collecting finances and more.

ApexThis.Podcast – 4h 51m

This is time spent recording and editing the September Monthly episode.

Austin Podcasters – 11h 33m

My time for the Austin Podcasters was focused on workshop planning, hosting the meetup and the “Friday listen” blog post and a custom consolidated links page. 

Project Dollar – 4h 55m

From 45 minutes in September to nearly 5 hours in October! More detail here in a few.

Training – 9h

In October my Post Production workshop classes started and will complete by the time of this post/podcast. The focus is on film post production but the concepts still apply. This training is great it helps me solidify and learn new things I didn’t know before.

Without Project – 1h 11m

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 (sprints) 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

October’s theme was EDIT

Edit was my theme for the month as I honed in on completing my editing for Project Dollar. This didn’t really have any other meaning behind it than “Get your editing done!!!” And that, I did.

Goal Completion

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

  • Complete first edit – Success
  • Complete first half of 2nd draft – Fail
  • Research Editors – Success
  • Read 75% of Story Craft – Fail

2 out of 4. I get an ‘F’ for my October report card! Another F for the second month in a row. Arg!

What’s Next?

Write

Project Dollar

For this next month, I am focused on completing the second draft. I believe that I’ve been so slow on the second draft because I’ve been really wondering if what I wrote is good or good enough. I’ve been looking at the structure and trying to figure out if it makes sense. Where do I need to expand or constrict the story? Does it make sense? Is this good enough for audio? Is this good enough for a book? Ultimately, I’ve found myself getting into my head and that is delaying progress. Buckle up, Mark, and get this done!

This next month I plan to:

  1. Complete 2nd draft
  2. Book editor

Learn

I’ve lost interest in Story Craft by Jack Hart. I set a lofty goal to have read at least 50% of the book by September’s end and I was only at 20%. While I’ve made it to 50% for October, I am not enjoying the read anymore. I get what it is trying to do in regards to showing story examples and what reporters are doing to build and write a narrative but it’s just not sitting with me and I don’t have any interest in continuing the read.

Story Engineering is a book I picked up briefly and have gone over the outline and have discussed this book with a few writers locally but I’ve shelved this to read a little later.

My goal for November is to read Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass followed by Just Write. Why? I’ve seemed to have joined a writers book club in which we read and then discuss how the book applies to our writing and how we have or can use the information learned.

Image result for writing the breakout novel

Reading Goal

  • Read 35% of Breakout Novel

In Closing

October was so great since I completed a big goal and that was completing my first edit. Now to climb the mountain of writing that second draft.

Until next time

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