September 2018 Update

by | Oct 11, 2018 | Announcement, Business, Listen, Podcast | 0 comments

About This Episode

Host/Producer/Music

In This Episode

This is the September 2018 monthly report.

Links

Show Credits

Hosted, produced, mixed, edited & music by 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.

September 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
  • WePay (Meetup) – $16

Expense Report

  • RawVoice (Blubrry) – ($12)
  • Google Domains – ($12)
  • Google Apps – ($11)
  • Adobe Suite – ($54)
  • Xero – ($30)
  • Trademark Fees – ($500)

Overall

  • Owner Contributions – $500
  • Gross Income – $16
  • Total Expense – ($620)
  • Total Net – ($604)

Hours Worked

Time Logged – 46hrs

What Happened?

Finances

We continue with big expenditures for the year that pertain to training, and legal work regarding trademarks. I believe this is the second time, especially consecutively, that I’ve blown the budget I set for the year. And yes, I did set a budget.

Even though I have a budget of things I expect to pay for, there are other things that come up that I may think would be really good and helpful. For the past few big expenses, these are investment items; going to the conference is something that will be on my books every year. Trademark is something that wasn’t immediately necessary but something I wanted to get done. This doesn’t mean I have a trademark, I am just going through the process. Lastly, training is a big investment for ApexThis and as such it was something I felt that I needed to make happen.

The last bit to hit last month was final payout in regards to the mini-workshop I held for Austin Podcasters. It was a great workshop and I really had fun with the everyone in creating and seeing their audiograms. I’m currently outlining the next workshop to be held before year end.

Time Breakdown

46 hours! Like August, September sees a big jump of hours. Here is how that breaks down:

Blog – 25m

Very minimal blog time this month as I pushed out a Tuesday Listen blog post. Less writing here, more writing finishing other projects…you’ll see in a few.

Business (Administrative) – 4h 31m

This contains administrative time for answering emails, collecting finances for September. 

Austin Podcasters – 12h 49m

This time was composed of the audiogram workshop, meetup planning, and the monthly newsletter. Building workshop material or presentation material, in general, is always an expensive process but it can become evergreen content that you can reuse and update as time changes and present over and over again if it’s appropriate.

Store – 7h 44m

More time in launching the merch store. This was to write blogs for ApexThis & Austin Podcasters as well as prep social media posts and a giveaway for Austin Podcasters. The good thing out of this was that I had a bit of learning in how to format and organize content for anything I do that is similar to this in the future.

Speaking – 5h 42m

This is new! I have spoken at events before but I didn’t track this for time, just as I didn’t track time for Meetups.  For September, I had the pleasure to be invited to speak at a local Trello event that was being held at the HQ of Service Direct. The theme was how businesses use Trello. It was fantastic meeting the folks of Service Direct and seeing the Austin Trello leaders again. The time spent here was updating an existing presentation that I had and for participating in the event.

Project Dollar – 45m

Edits for the second set of episode chapters. Again – I’ve been knocking out the things I’ve been holding on to by Iterating. Now that those things have been pushed out of the way, October is going to be great!

Training – 12h

For September, I attended the Production Sound Recording weekend workshop that was being held by the Austin Film School. It was a really educational course for recording sound live. The best part for me was breaking down the basics and discussing what sound was. I’ll be rewriting my notes from these sessions to reinforce the knowledge.

Here is where I will impart my knowledge for you AND myself. 

INVEST IN YOURSELF!

Whether it is for your full-time business, side-business, or a personal hobby, it is important that you invest in yourself. If it is for your business, then that could be training to improve your skills in that business. For me, that was taking courses in sound recording and post-production. This can also be personal as well. For me, I participated in a lettering workshop as it is something that I have gotten back into to destress. This could have also been a nice night out or maybe a good book to read for the afternoon. The point is to take time for yourself to relax or to improve your skills.

Without Project – 2h 6m

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

We continue on from Iterate, to Discover, and now Sprint!

Sprint has many meanings; I’m sprinting towards my goal for Project Dollar and I’m breaking my work down into small bite size chunks and challenging myself to see how much I can get done in that time. The result? Two months where I’ve spent over 90 hours getting things done!

Goal Completion

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

  • Publish an article on my attempt to build branding with the Austin Podcasters Conference – Fail
  • Round 1 Edits of Project Dollar episodes 4-8 – Success
  • Begin the second draft for episodes 1-2 – Success
  • Read 50% of Story Craft – Fail

2 out of 4. I get an ‘F’ for my September report card!

What’s Next?

Write

Project Dollar

My plate is cleared and I am focused on this next quarter. Overall, I am behind in this project from what I originally estimated when planning for 2018 but I am back and have the next quarter (90 days) planned at a high-level. In the next 60 days, I will be heavily focused on writing and editing. My goal is to have Q1 2019 completed with this project in audio and print.

This next month I plan to:

  1. Complete first edit
  2. Complete first half of 2nd draft
  3. Research Editors

Learn

Unfortunately, I am still reading 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%. 

Image result for story craft book

Reading Goal

  • Read 75% of Story Craft

In Closing

September was a blast. The training and learning, everything! And I am EXTREMELY excited in getting Project Dollar done. Like an indie director – this will become a piece in the portfolio of ApexThis. Let’s make this happen!

Until next time

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