I started setting Resolutions each year of the goals I want to achieve over the next year and then reviewing how I did at the end of the year. In January of this year I wrote my resolutions in the post titled “New Year’s Resolutions from Eric Miller Animation.” Check them out or just look below to see how I did. Looks like I need to try harder in 2017 if I want to get a perfect report card
Animated short:
I made it a goal to finish Bink’s first 30-second episode this year. While it took a little longer than I expected, we were able to finish it in June of this year.
New Clients:
I set a goal of getting 3 new clients this year and, although it may be debatable, I think we can count on 3 new clients. The debatable part is the project that both our client and the end client we were dealing with had. So I’m going to count both Alpine and Honda as customers for this purpose. Honda is a big customer too, so it was great to work with them on the two projects we did for them this year. The third, and actually the first client we had this year, was Future of Play. We did the most work for them by creating 4 episodes of the MagicMeeMees web series. I am very happy with the work we did with these three clients and I look forward to continuing to work for them in 2017.
Learn something new:
This goal has been easy to meet each year. I still put it on the list because I think it’s a very important goal. You should never stop learning and this is the cornerstone of my company’s success. Of all the things I’ve learned this year, the only thing that comes to mind now is how the intellectual property sales market works. This was something I always wanted to learn about, but it was always unknown to me. It was great to sit down with a couple of producers to talk about how it works. What I learned was an eye-opening experience and also showed me how much more I have to learn about the topic.
Grow the social network:
This goal was to grow all of our social networks by 100%, and although I grew some of them to more than 100%, I couldn’t do it with all of them. Take a look at the numbers below to see how we did.
These are the numbers: Starting point –> 100% increase goal | Current followers = % actual increase
Facebook: 4,427 –> 8,854 | 4829 = 9% increase
Twitter: 513 –> 1,026 | 1033 = 101% increase
LinkedIn: 146 –> 292 | 233 = 60% increase
Google+: 11 –> 22 | 23 = 109% increase
Instagram: 235 –> 470 | 697 = 197% increase
YouTube: 5 –> 10 | 282 = 5.540% increase
As you can see, the big winner is YouTube with a 5,540% increase and Facebook has the smallest percentage increase.
Profitable 2016:
The goal was for the company to make enough money so I could earn a salary and remain profitable. I did not achieve this goal, because although the business was profitable, it was not profitable enough for me to collect a salary. Technically, I could have taken a small salary and still been profitable, but I decided to keep the money in the business this year. I hope for a more profitable 2017, so I can receive a salary and at the same time maintain the profitability of the company.
Regardless of not achieving all the goals I set for the business, I still feel like 2016 was a great year for the company. While I don’t want to set unrealistic goals, I also don’t want them to be so easy that I don’t have to work hard. In next week’s post I will delve a little deeper into 2016 and what we were able to accomplish this year.
If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog. If you have any ideas or tips, I’d love to hear what you have to say, so feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only time will tell.