2016 Business Vision
Last year I published my vision for 2015 on my chicvoyagetravel.com blog with good results. Now a year later I can see the benefits of doing so. A lot of what I wrote about ended becoming a reality. It takes a lot of mental exercise to actually do this and I still experience some hesitation to publish this.
Last year I felt a bit too spread out in terms of the projects I was working on. I want to aim for better organization around my data assets and storage. I have data sprawl from with videos, pictures, backups, documents, and music spread across my laptop, external hard-drives, and the cloud.
I also want to manage my flagship products better with an emphasis on continuing to raise production value and utility. I realized I enjoy learning, sharing my knowledge, shooting video, business development, pre-sales and traveling. During the day-to-day grind I’ve also realized what I don’t enjoy. For example packing and setup for a video shoot as well as the editing process. I also don’t enjoy the administration and publishing of content. If I were able to outsource these things I can free up time to focus on performing better on video and air. Eventually I would like to start creating systems that can automate major parts of the video business.
I also have a better blueprint of what I need to do this year thanks to my time in Chiang Mai Thailand. This leads to building an audience and producing quality content across major platforms like Udemy, Amazon Kindle, iTunes, Meetup and Youtube through a variety of mediums.
I began to reach out to individual people who saw the value of what I was doing and inspire them to take action. Seeing the real life impact that I have had on people around the world motivates me to keep moving forward. In the end it’s about help people produce value to the world doing what they love. I want to keep on speaking about business and travel in different cities.
Currently 1 US dollar is now worth $1.40 Canadian. Working on-line you get paid in US currency. For me this means that exceeding by corporate salary is now a reality. My goal is to exceed 100,000 CDN this year and if I can exceed that even better. I think the goal is to break it down into a manageable goal. 100K CDN is $76K US a year, $6356 a month, or $211 US a day ( assuming I work everyday).
I would like to start getting into different types of business once I have automated my video business. I’m highly interested in food and beverage. Every city does something well. Vancouver has great local wines and beers. Asia has the great street food culture. I want to facilitate cultural exchange. I also see room to educate locals in popular digital nomad destinations on how they can start their own business as a way of giving back to the community. Further down the line I have an interest in energy. I realized that all these electronic devices as well as the world are dependent on energy. During my time in Asia I see opportunities to harness excess solar energy perhaps that could be exported to other countries.
Jan - Mar 2015 Housekeeping, Producing Content
While in Vancouver I want to take care of any housekeeping to set me up for my travels for the 2nd half of the year abroad. That means things like my Thai visa,10 year passport, and drivers license etc. Because of the weak Canadian dollar electronics and shopping in general is cheaper in the Canada than it is in the US. This is an opportunity to upgrade my gear with a focus to build up my 4k collection and improve course content.
I would like to take advantage of the resources at the Vancouver library to produce high quality video content for courses while I’m here. Their Inspiration labs offer the opportunity to produce quality video and audio content without additional expenses. I would like to focus the first 2 months on producing course content and free videos in Vancouver. To streamline things I want to find some reliable video editors that can help put together my lessons.
There is a core focus on building my audience this year through diversifying my content on different platforms using video/audio/text mediums. I’m planning on releasing my free Stock footage book on Amazon kindle during this year to expand my audience. I’m also thinking of producing a course aimed at preparing Westerners to work and live abroad on Udemy. I’ll continue to work on my podcast releasing regular episodes through itunes, stitch, and occasionally Youtube. Taking a lead from Tim Ferris I want to be consistent and release episodes with minimal editing.
Greg Hung (left), aerial videographer
April - June 2016 - Marketing and planning for help and return to Asia
I will have settled in Chiang Mai, Thailand so I will have time to publish content from Q1. I also want to put some time towards marketing my existing products (online courses, stock footage) and setting up some new revenue streams. I have a lot of video content now and want to experiment with different ways of monetizing that. Perhaps I sell footage to customers directly. I want to also examine setting up affiliate programs as well as being an affiliate for services in my niche that I can recommend and use. I want to try and start planning for automated systems for my on-line business models. I also want to try find video experts in certain niches to produce course content for the Academy.
I will begin to plan for someone to help me either through an internship or outsourcing. I like the idea of having an intern or 2 that could free up my time and is able to begin translating some of my content to Mandarin Chinese. I would like to resume my Chinese studies perhaps in Taiwan or Penang sometime during the year. I want to try and visit South Korea and Japan while I’m in this region.
My goal is to reach $2000 US in monthly sales for Online Income by this time. I would like to focus on doing some Freelance videos for larger corporate clients at least once every 2 months.
July - September - Plan for help, space, and scale
I will need to take a Visa run during this period and return before August 18th. Perhaps this is a trip to Taiwan, South Korea, or Japan in some combination. Once I return I will have until November 18th when my Thai visa expires. If I have enough momentum I can pull the trigger and hire someone to help me with my business full-time. The on demand stock footage business model would fit nicely into this. I’ll also want to partner with someone local to speak at an event in Chiang Mai. It would be nice to start planning (budgeting) ideal workspace. A workspace to do computer work like editing, blogging, and marketing with at least 100 mbps down/ 40 mbps up. I want speeds fast enough that there is no bottleneck to exchange content. I also want a separate space to function as a recording studio. This space will be similar to the recording studio in the Vancouver Inspiration lab. It will have the lighting, video, sound-proofing, and gear to recording professional video content. Later on we can offer a service to teachers or people who need to record content. I want to provide a space that creators can create videos for course content, podcasts, or youtube videos.
October - December - Hire, Scale, Get Office
My Visa will expire around November 18th. My option would be to leave my things in Chiang Mai, relocate to Taiwan for a bit, or try Penang Malaysia for a bit or even more there. Penang seems to check a lot of boxes for me. It is English and Mandarin speaking and it is affordable to rent out a 3 bedroom apartment. I could use one of the rooms as an office. I also get tired of the Visa runs in Thailand. On the otherhand I have some friends here and have built up a good knowledge of the city. Taiwan is a great city, but it really is expensive and harder to find comparable accommodation.
Jan - March - Invest in Drones & VR
By the end of this quarter I will have a good idea of where I stand. Did I reach my goal? If I have I will have the financial and time freedom to travel a bit more and invest funds into future video content like 360 video and VR. If not perhaps it is time to return to Canada. I would like to return to Phuket for beach time during the best time of the year.
Q2 - Q4 - Scale
The focus on Q4 will be to build the a team and to continue to scale. I also want to start experimenting and learning more about Solar energy
want to start branching into other business such as food, wine, and solar energy.
Metric Goals for end of Q1 2017
- Email List of 2000 subscribers
- Monthly Youtube Revenue $500 Cdn 2000 subscribers
- Monthly Podcast downloads 5000
- Pond 5 8000 Shutterstock 7000, Videoblocks 4000, Dissolve 5000, Pixta 3000, Motion Elements 8000 collectively earning $2000 US
- 500 paying students on the Video Production Academy paying at least $125
- 10 courses earning $1000 on Udemy
Have you created your Vision?
Okay so I've finally publicly published my vision. Perhaps you can try one this year and see how it works our for you this year. If you would like to receive my updates during the year to see how this vision shapes out click to join my newsletter