I recently listened to an interview with riCardo Crespo and it made me think about whether or not I've clearly communicated my goals to my marketing department. riCardo is an advocate for having internal creative directors in order to better communicate with an ad agency. It makes complete sense as creative directors speak the same "language" and therefore begin the relationship with several commonalities. The challenge, as a freelancer, then becomes, "Who composes your marketing department and how often do you communicate your goals with them?"

In my case, as a lone freelance voice-over artist (cue Lone Ranger theme,) my marketing department would ideally be my representation. But the reality is that all of my agents and manager are my national sales department. My marketing department is actually composed of none other than me, myself, and I. So, the second part of the question would naturally mean that I need to schedule meetings with this singular trinity.

Once this creative meeting is scheduled, the next step would be to create an agenda with input from the rest of me... uh... the company. This agenda will consist of objectives. The intention is that during this meeting, I... sorry... we will come up with creative ways to meet these objectives (otherwise known as goals. "Goal," by the way is not a four-letter word. "Resolution" is - especially that of the New Year variety.) The goals should be simple and straightforward, because we don't want there to be any miscommunication. One final and crucial note; This meeting is closed to your accounting department.

I can't allow my accountant (my left brain) to hinder the no-limit thinking of my creative (my right brain) during this time of important ideation; Hence, the closed meeting. Don't worry, there will be plenty of time for both your right and left brain to work together during a future strategic meeting or, even better, a year-end review (another four-letter word depending on the context.)

The problem that many freelancers face is that their accountant is allowed into way too many meetings. If coming up with an agenda is an issue, then steal your accountants agenda and re-write it (then kick him out and lock the door.) Instead of thinking about how much money you need to generate, write down how many bookings you would love to have (daily, weekly or monthly.) Instead of thinking about how to increase revenue, think about how to shift your work to more passive income or, in my business, residual generating voice-overs (commercials) or recurring voice-overs (signature work, launch campaigns, radio imaging.)

This isn't meant to be a how-to article on generating ideas. My goal is to share a way to shift your consciousness in order to allow your artist to play. In turn, it will flourish in this no-limit environment - the accountant-less marketing meeting of the mind. Who knows, you might even have fun! Don't forget the entertainment in entertainment business. Schedule that meeting.

Here's a meeting I just had yesterday with my marketing department:
Agenda:
Increase engagement on my voice-over site by shifting the visitor's experience from an auditory one to a visual one. (i.e., Videos with audio will take center stage and replace audio-only)

Here's a meeting I had with my accountant department:
Response:
Adding more video would increase bandwidth and risk being shutdown or, worse, getting hit with exorbitant hosting fees.

Here's a subsequent meeting (after thought... emphasis on after) I had with my IT department:
Challenge:
There's more latency with video and therefore a higher risk of increased bounce rate.

Now, there's no question that the marketing department's creative idea was going to be implemented. I never judged it during ideation. After the meeting, I presented it to accounting in a separate session. The accounting department raised some fiscal challenges that might present themselves down the road. At the same time, I had a discussion with my IT department. The IT department raised concerns that were later taken into consideration. 

The solution, was Amazon's CloudFront service. Which I'll be talking to you more about tomorrow and, hopefully, showing you a quick tutorial on how I set it up. Presently, all of the media (audio, video, and images) on my AnthonyVO.com site are stored on my Amazon S3 account and distributed via their CloudFront service. My webhost only serves up the HTML/CSS text files (i.e., small files when compared to media.) What's the cool part about it? The specific server that presents the media is dependent upon the visitor's location - it automatically chooses the closest server - thereby minimizing latency. Very technical, but overall still very creative (and super affordable - just in case your accountant was wondering)!

With CloudFront, I've addressed marketing (allowing more media,) IT (reducing latency and therefore bounce rate,) and accounting (minimizing bandwidth costs.) Before you think I've gone schizophrenic, I'm merely suggesting you compartmentalize your multiple roles in order to create more effectively. 

Does your number crunching get in the way of your creativity?

-Anthony