Two years of Pugsteady!

Murray helping with one of my milestones.

Wow, time flies when you're having fun! It's the end of Pugsteady's second financial year, and it's been very different from the previous one! Last year, at the 2015 Pugsteady Corporate Retreat (i.e., sitting on the couch with Murray), I came up with three goals:

1) Financial: Increase the amount of work in which I own the rights, while still doing projects that are work-for-hire.

This was very successful! In January I worked with Onyx Path on the Pugmire Kickstarter, and it wildly exceeded my expectations, at well over 1000% funded! That led to not only several stretch goals, but has since led to some interesting conversations about potential future projects in the world of Pugmire. And while I'm happy to collaborate with a wide variety of folks, I'm happy to say that the core rights to Pugmire stay with me, and should revert to me in any negative circumstances. So, this is completely successful!

2) Professional: Work with at least three new clients, while maintaining relationships with the current ones.

This was successful, but in a weird way.

One client I'm working with is the new White Wolf, which was formed after the original White Wolf assets were purchased from CCP. This might seem like a bit of a cheat, but I don't think so -- the new White Wolf has some very ambitious ideas, and the variety of work I'm doing with this is quite different than what I used to do for CCP.

The second client is Wooga and Fox, as I've been a writer on Futurama: Game of Drones for nearly a year now! In fact, at the moment they're one of my main clients (along with Onyx Path Publishing and Earplay, although those are ongoing assignments), and I couldn't be happier. I love working with this team and on Futurama, and they seem to be happy with me as well.

The third is actually Pugsteady. One of the things I've learned after the Pugmire Kickstarter is that working for myself literally means that sometimes I have to be okay with carving out time to work on my projects. Now that there's an investment in the success of Pugmire, I feel more comfortable spending several hours a week in getting my own projects moving forward. I don't get directly paid for that time, but it's a time investment that (I hope) will pay off in royalties down the road!

3) Personal: Learn one skill I don't currently possess.

I admit I had forgotten about this goal, but it turns out I did learn a new skill -- namely, voice acting. I've done some minor voice work on a couple of projects now, including one where I got to work with an experience voice director. It's hard work, but a lot of fun, and I certainly feel like I understand what voice actors go through a lot better now.

Now that I've had my secret summit with COO Murray, I have three new goals for the coming year:

• Financial: Balance travel and work expenditures better. This past year I've done a lot of travelling, and more often than not I lose money and work time with not a lot to show for it. I'll have to more carefully consider my travel plans in future, to make sure that each trip is beneficial to Pugsteady or me personally.
• Professional: Land another long-term contract. Working on Futurama has helped me to realize that there's some stability in contract work. I'm so used to lots of short-term contracts, which gives me a lot of churn but isn't income I can rely upon. As I continue to work on Pugmire, I'll need to know that there's some ready cash there when I invest time into those projects.
• Personal: Focus on daily goals over weekly and monthly goals. One bad habit I've run into time and again is constantly thinking about my work over the course of a week or a month, instead of what's in front of me. I can put in a full day's work and still feel guilty because I haven't done enough. In order to find a better work/life balance, I need to plan my day's workload, and then just make sure I get that done, instead of worrying too much about what's coming later.

That's all for this year's report!

Happy Tail: A Look At Pugsteady's Year-End Progress

Murray says Pugsteady is off to a great start!

Murray (the Pugsteady COO) is celebrating because we had a great first year!

Pugsteady was officially a legal company in late June of 2014, but I decided that July 1 would be the start of our fiscal year and our formal birthday. Now it's one year later, and it's time to take a look back and see how Pugsteady did.

Financially, Murray is very happy with the number of treats he's been getting since we've started. I'm pretty happy as well! I won't share hard numbers, but my goal was to make a living wage this year. Running the numbers, it looks like this was a complete success, as my gross profits were over 200% of the living wage numbers for Georgia.

My financial stretch goal was for the company to purchase a new, high-quality laptop, since most of the year was spent on old, borrowed, or cheap equipment. Yesterday I was able to place the order for an Origin EON15-S -- a nice, portable Windows machine with enough power to run unoptimized graphics as well as intensive software such as Unity.

Professionally, this year had the obvious goal of establishing myself and surviving for a year. Again, that was a huge success! I handled contracts for over a dozen clients, with some regular monthly consulting agreements. Four of those clients are in the area of digital games, two are exclusively fiction, one was with a sales company, and the rest are a blend of fiction and tabletop RPG writing and design. Nearly all of my work was "work for hire," but all of my clients are amazing and have paid promptly -- sometimes with unexpected bonuses!

My professional stretch goal was to have one product that Pugsteady can call its own, which was intended to be the Pugmire tabletop RPG. In that I fell a little short, but there has been excellent progress, and the partnership with Onyx Path Publishing has been amazing. We're hoping to have a good marketing push at Gen Con and beyond, leading into a crowd-funding campaign.

Personally, I've really had a great year. Working from home has been surprisingly satisfying, and it's been nice to be able to take care of Murray (who is getting on in years) as well as having the flexibility to make some improvements in my life. I've been learning how to cook, and I'm starting to take classes to improve my skillset. I've dramatically increased my skills as a designer, consultant, producer, and programmer, and I continue to push the boundaries of my writing skill when I can. Also, my family and I have bought a new house, so I have a larger office that I can really customize to my business needs.

Today, after a company retreat with Murray, we've settled on three big goals for the upcoming year.

• Financial: Increase the amount of work in which I own the rights, while still doing projects that are work-for-hire.
• Professional: Work with at least three new clients, while maintaining relationships with the current ones.
• Personal: Learn one skill I don't currently possess.

Overall, things are looking positive, and I hope I'll have good news to share this time next year!