Report Card for 2016’s Resolutions

I started to set Resolutions each year of the goals I want to accomplish within the coming year, and then review how I did at the end of the year.  In January of this year I wrote my resolutions in the post titled “Eric Miller Animation’s New Year’s Resolutions“.  Check them out, or just look below to see how I did.  It seems I need to try harder in 2017 if I want to get a perfect report card

green_checkAnimated Short:
I set the goal to finish the first 30 second episode of Bink this year.  While it took a little longer then I expected we were able to finish it in June of this year.

green_checkNew Clients:
I set the goal to get 3 new clients this year, and while it might be debatable I think we can count 3 new clients.  The debatable part is the one project had both our client and the end client we were dealing with.  So I’m going to count both Alpine, and Honda as clients for the purpose of this goal.  Honda is also a really big client, so it was great getting to work with them on the two projects we did for them this year.  The 3rd, 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’m very happy with the work we did with all three of these clients, and hope to continue to do work for them in 2017.

green_checkLearn Something New:
This goal has been an easy one to check off each year.  I still put it on the list because I feel it is a very important goal to have.  You should never stop learning, and this is a cornerstone to the success of my company.  Of all the things I have learned this year, the one thing which sticks out in my mind now is about how the market of selling your IP works.  This was something I always wanted to learn about, but was always an unknown to me.  It was great to sit down with a couple producers to talk about how it works.  What I learned was an eye opening experience, and it also showed me how much more I have to learn on the topic.

painted-xGrow Social Network:
This goal was to increase all our social media networks by 100%, and while I grew some of them to over 100% I was unable to do it with all of them.  Take a look at the numbers below to see how we did.

This is what the numbers are: 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 having the smallest percent increase.

painted-xProfitable 2016:
The goal was for the business to make enough money I could take a salary for myself, and still have the business be profitable.  I did not achieve this goal, because while the business was profitable it was not profitable enough for me to take a salary.  Technically I could have taken a small salary, and still have the business be profitable, but I decided to keep the money in the business this year.  I’m hoping for a more profitable 2017, so I will be able to both take a salary while still keeping the company profitable.

 

Regardless of not achieving all the goals I set for the business I still feel 2016 was a great year for the company.  While I don’t want to set unrealistic goals I also don’t want to make them so easy I don’t have to push myself.  In next week’s post I will dive a little deeper into the 2016 year, and what we were able to accomplish this year.

 

If you have not already, I hope you will join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  If you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.