Monday, March 7, 2011

Canfield Coaching - Decisions, Decisions

As mentioned previously, I changed my 'breakthrough goal' from writing an e-book to making $150,000 in 2011 - originally the e-book was a piece of the $150,000 puzzle.

However, in brainstorming ways to make $150,000, I quickly came up with 11 well realized concepts, 8 of which I has already started (and mostly set aside).  Obviously I can't do 11 different things, so I had to go through the process of sizing each one up and determining how effective it would be in reaching my goal.

After a few hours work I narrowed it down to two: Getting Isecas the Dream Cat (series of children's books) published and creating travel Apps for Ontario cities (which don't have it seems).  The e-book was close but these two represented much better prospects for making significant money - this year.

However, my on/off girlfriend and chastized me for not sticking to my 'true purpose' - writing for kids, in particular, writing comics. Why is that my true purpose?  That's a long story for another time, just trust me on that one for now.

I had considered it, it showed up twice in the 11 ideas in different forms, but being an independant comic writer (especially one who can't illustrate) is really hard - or at least, that's been my experience of it from my time in the industry.  Most people who attempt it lose their shirts trying.   The start-up costs are huge.  The development time needed substancial.  Getting distributed, let alone noticed, is a major hurdle, especially for a complete unknown.   The odds are heavily stacked against me, and the possibility of earning $150,000 in 2011 from doing it are completely non-existant to any conventional thinking.   Ending up $150,000 in debt is far more likely.

However, that's not positive thinking, following my passion, purpose or being in accordance to God.  It's just looking at reality and saying 'it's not possible' which, I'm sure most people would agree, is just plain common sense.  However, I'm guilty of saying it myself, if you want an uncommon result, you need uncommon sense.

The fact is, while no one has ever gotten rich quick doing it, people have gotten rich.  Famously Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird who created Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles .  More recently Jeff Smith of Bone.   Lots of others have made a living doing it, many even getting movie deals in the process. 

Problem remains, unless I come up with some completely revolutionary way to making money off the industry, pursuing a career in comics will not only not help me to reach my $150,000 goal, it would in all probabability move me much further from that goal as the start up costs kick in long before profit does.

So what to do?   That is a question I'm about to pose to the coach line and we'll see what they think.  I'll post the answer.



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