I don’t want to sound like a broken record… but where does the time go? It feels like just yesterday I was writing my ‘month in review’ post for March, but here we are again a full month later! So here’s what I did and didn’t get done in April, plus plans for May.
The Business
April was a really, really busy month, but I did manage to take a little more time off (I think). Overall I managed to get a lot done and I’m pretty happy with how everything turned out.
- Launched the brand new Lyrical Media iPhone site
- Got approved finance for Lyrical Media
- Won some new clients and worked on some great projects
- Got Lyrical Media featured on Smashing Magazine!
- As a result of the above got my office completely sorted out (see pics below)
- Finally sorted out my business bank account (detailed post coming this week)
- Conducted an awesome interview with Brendon Sinclaire
- Conducted an equally awesome interview with Chris Spooner
- Reviewed the SitePoint Email Marketing Kit
Reviewing Goals for 2009
As it’s now a quarter of a year since I set out my 2009 goals, I thought it’d be good to have a quick look at the ones I have managed to do so far.
- Sustain myself comfortably between now and May 1st – Success!
- Find and successfully acquire some finance for Lyrical Media – Success!
- Read 11 web/marketing related books – 5 done so far
- Get featured on Smashing Magazine – Success!
Reviewing Goals for April
- Set up Newsletter – back from last month, really want to get this done Half success, it’s all designed – now I just need to code it
- Review the SitePoint Email Marketing Kit on this blog (fits in with the above) – Success, but more to come!
- Review the Rockstar Freelancer Book on this blog – Big fail
- Win (at least) two new client projects – Success! I won 4
- Complete the first sample of my top secret Lyrical Media project (watch this space) – Big fail
- Grow my twitter account to 1,500 followers – Success! 1,510
- Grow my rss subscribers to 100 people – Fail. 80
- Sell EggRage.co.uk (leave a comment if interested) – Fail
Goals for May
- Code up and release the first Lyrical Media newsletter
- Review the Rockstar Freelancer Book on this blog
- Get new business cards, letter heads, and stickers printed
- Grow my twitter account to 2,200 followers
- Grow my rss subscribers to 100 people
- Take on a virtual assistant
What Are You Up To?
Let me know what you’re doing this month and if you have any exciting projects coming up, and I’ll be more than happy to mention them here!
Excellent, it sounds like you are well on your way to success.
Congrats on all that you have accomplished.
Wow! What an inspiration to see your goals and progress. I think I might have to sit down and write some of my own.
How did you go about:
Find and successfully acquire some finance for Lyrical Media
Any tips you could share on that would be much appreciated.
Hi Kristy, I spoke to my bank about getting finance and provided them with a business plan and 24 month cashflow projections. It’s a tight “climate” at the moment so I was very lucky to be approved!
Glad the business is going well for you. It’s nice to have an inside look at starting a business up from the ground. It’s something I really want to do at some point after finishing my degree. I have been advised to work in the industry for a year or two first to get a grasp of how it works though. If you have any advice too, that would be great.
Great job.
Andy
i think you’ve managed some of the most difficult goals in the first few months tbh :)
As always great job. Although I must say I’m surprised at how you don’t have car vinyl on your to-do list ;).
It’s a bit pricey – like – almost as much as a MacBook!
Hi John,
I am loving what you are doing here and at lyrical media, you are quite an inspiration to people like me, and I am loving the up to date monthly analysis on how you are getting on, so people like me considering freelancing, can see what to do, and what not to do.
What do you mean by take on a virtual assistant? to assist at what?
Hi Craig, thanks for commenting – always nice to know that people are reading and finding at least some value in my musings! Virtual assistant would be an outsourced position to india/china/philippines to essentially take on all the work I don’t want to do. Administrative tasks, research, content organisation, etc. If you’re still in doubt as to what I’m on about, pick up a copy of The 4 Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss – I highly recommend it :)
I love your website John, the blog posts are informative and fresh, not to mention super helpful. Your monthly posts of your freelance gig are particularly good.
What do you mean by “taking on a virtual assistant”? Are you looking for a part-time/contract designer to assist with your workload? Cheers.
Hi Joe – Thanks for the comment! Really glad you’re enjoying the content :) Quite a lot of people have asked about that point and I left an answer to the last person just above your comment there ^
Thanks for this – I really like using your site and it’s really good to see yourself setting goals like this!!
Hi John,
your desk on the pictures above looks exactly the same as mine from Ikea… ;)
Cheers from Germany,
Lars.