I wanted to take a moment to set some goals for 2017 on what I want Eric Miller Animation to accomplish. I feel it is important to write down my goals at the beginning of each year, and to constantly revisit those goals as priorities change. You can see how I did on my 2016 goals in my earlier post “Report Card for 2016’s Resolutions“. Here are my goals for 2017.
New Bink Short:
It would be an understatement to say the progress on Bink is slow. It has always been on the back burner as we work on other projects. I also need to make sure I have enough money coming in from client projects to pay for the work on Bink. This situation has caused our progress to be much slower then I hoped it would be. We are currently working on a 3-4 minute Bink short, and my goal for this year is to have it finished. The major hangups right now is getting the fur working properly for lighting, and locking down a great story.
Grow Team:
This year is all about new relationships for me. I will be spending a lot of my time meeting with talented people in the industry, and finding ways for us to work together. I would love to be able to build a great team of very talented people who are ready to take on any new challenge which might come our way. My goal is to bring on more people to help grow the company. This could be producers to help bring on more clients, directors or creative directors to take the creative lead on our projects, or advisors who can guide me with their wisdom and experience.
New Clients:
We have had 5 clients we have worked with since I started the business in July of 2014. I would love to continue working with these clients on new projects, and I would also like to bring on additional clients. The first few years have been about getting things setup, but for this year I really want to take off. I will be setting a very ambitious goal of 5 new clients in 2017. I think with the momentum we ended last year with that this is an attainable goal.
Be Profitable in 2017:
I’m actually surprised I have been able to keep the company profitable considering most business can expect to loose money in the first few years. So far the only year I was not profitable was 2015, and that was because we were doing work on the Bink Teaser.
With my business 1 project could be the difference of a profitable year or a loss. I’m not selling widgets to consumers where it is all about pushing product. My business is more about building relationships with my clients, and hoping when they have animation work they think of Eric Miller Animation Studios.
While the business has been profitable I have yet to take a paycheck for myself. I have been keeping the money in the business to help it grow. My goal for 2017 is we make enough of a profit that I can take a reasonable yearly salary, while still having money left over to grow the business.
Grow Social Media Followers:
Growing our social media is important to me for several reasons. I want to be able to share all the amazing things we are working on, and also would love to increase our chances of finding those new clients. I think social media is a very cost effective way to market our services to grow the business. While the quality of our followers is more important it is a hard thing to track. I will set the goal as growing all our social media accounts by 50%.
Increasing each network by 50% will be as follows:
Facebook: 4829 -> 7,243
Twitter: 1033 -> 1,550
LinkedIn: 233 -> 350
Google+: 23 -> 35
InstaGram: 697 -> 1,046
YouTube: 282 -> 423
Well, these are some of the general goals I have for this year. I hope to not only achieve these goals, but to go above and beyond them. I hope you all have a great and successful 2017!
If you have not already, please join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog. Also, 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.