Euripides is quoted as saying “Circumstances rule men and not men rule circumstances.” The irony…we are victims of our own circumstances, the reason, is because we do not assert the type of control over our lives that we so boldly proclaim to have.
Just the other day I was telling a friend that if I never reach the level of success that I want in my career, it won’t be because I didn’t try. Things go wrong along the way (circumstances) but they are more of a nuisance that a ruler, I can deal with that.
As circumstances had it I was away from my social networking for a while and my website (rca-media.com) went down. Things were slow for me as it was but I couldn’t afford to miss out on any potential opportunities so I created raisincanearts.biz, a mirror site to rca-media. Eventually I will be bringing the original domains (raisincanearts.com and rca-media.com) back, but for now the dot biz is home.
The final quarter of 2009 and first quarter of 2010 was pretty good to me, much better than that of ’09 but business seems to have cooled down as summer warmed up. Part of that has to do with me not being on top of my marketing and promoting which is going to be my focus for the next 6 weeks. I have a few things that I have been holding back on that I am going to launch, if you follow my blog and site you will hear about them as they come. One project in particular is my e-store, featuring original artwork, clothing, books, videos, music, accessories and more. Something else I really need to focus on is my promotional sales and referral program. I realize how design services can take the back seat sometimes, even for start up businesses. What I try to stress is that presenting your services and product to the world is a critical part of your business. 90% of my business comes via referral and I want to shout out all the folks who have supported me from day 1, you know who you are…At the same time, 75% of my actual work is marketing and promoting more so than an actual contract. I’ve quite a bit of sweat equity placed in Raisin Cane Arts & Media….I’ve been an artist all my life but wanted to be a designer since 1991. In 1993 I had my first published work, one piece in a small local magazine another in a nationally published one. I remember designing T-Shirts and selling them at Freak-nik in 1994, then in 1996 I did a TV commercial for WB-36, I may still have the VHS tape, I don’t know. I can also, still remember my first business card design job in 1997…I got burned. In 2000 I created my first websites, one was a Hip-Hop e-zine type and the other was my online portfolio…GOD they were cheesy LOL, but I designed them all hand coded no Dreamweaver, I still have some of my ancient design work…think I might post. Oh, and I can’t forget all those years of graffiti writing, this one night I did an art show and decided to go paint trains after. I parked my car…wasn’t even my car was my girlfriend at the times car, anyway I parked in an alley way. I came back to find the car window busted and my portfolio gone…That was it, just my portfolio, her wallet with credit cards and ID still there, stereo still there just my portfolio gone….still an oddity to me till this day. Lot’s of up’s and downs between them then and now, I left a few things out but point is, I’m still here doing what I do best. Circumstances knocked me around a bit and sometimes recovery takes longer than others but you will never see me throw in the towel due to circumstances.
I rambled on a bit but that’s life is in a way. We start some where we stumble through and at the end of the day we’ve made our point…hopefully.
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