So, got an Australian mobile number… finally.

Plus, big progress, although difficult to visualise, on the project that I’m working on.

I figured out… (rather late), that if for this project I wish to work WITH the WA Department of Tourism, then I would need to set up my own company, because they prefer to deal with companies, and prefer to give grants to companies etc.
So unfortunately for the actual development of the project, I’ve got a bit distracted because I’ve had to learn about the ins & outs for setting up my own company.
I’ve been asking a few family friends who have set up businesses in the past, and have been asking for their advice.
Have got some pretty good detailed information, including great contacts as well.

Don’t forget the day-to-day running of each business is similar to any other (especially for a small business), so asking people that have businesses already, and things that they think could help is really useful, regardless of which industry they’re in.

So far I’ve asked family friends that have businesses in Child care, Furniture making, & Team building.  Plus, talked with a guy that I originally met in Chengdu – the Head of the Fremantle Chamber of Commerce, a lovely and helpful guy called Tony.

So, on the recommendation of some family friends for which they highly recommended, I signed up to a course at the West – Australian government led Small Business Development Centre (SBDC) to do the Small Business Workshop.

https://www.smallbusiness.wa.gov.au/business-advice/small-business-workshops/starting-a-business

Very, very informative and well worth the event. I learn a lot actually.  And it was absolutely free!  I would highly recommend this to anyone looking to setup a business.  (in Western Australia of course)

So that was on Tuesday.
And then, it was so good that I signed up to the Digital Marketing workshop.  (All other workshops after the 1st one is $50, but still, well worth it.)

So Thursday, Digital Marketing Essentials was great.  It covered…well here’s a little picture.

It also covered the importance of analytics, in depth analysation of different social media platforms including Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram & Pinterest.  As well as going into detail about email marketing + social media managing dashboards, like hootesuite. Etc.  Plus a bit about ‘what customers are looking for online’  (which to be fair, needs to be changed a bit because my audience doesn’t really follow ‘western’ (international) social media, or are their ways of thinking 100% the same, yet it’s still worth a look at and thinking about.

Essentially, as you can imagine, you should register your business, then create all of your accounts at the same time, whilst also registering your IP, so as to not get the chance for people monitoring your social media to just simply set up a Chinese social media account, or something, and then take business away from you.

There’s an advanced course starting in April, which I will try to get onto, but in the meantime I have registered my ABN (Australian Business Number) + registered my company name- very easy process, took total of 35 mins online.

I have also booked onto the course about planning a Website Planning, a separate course, which even though I assume will be mostly theoretical, however will hopefully give me some broader insight to what I want, and how I want to present it.

I’ve already decided that I will be using the Divi theme (https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/) from Elegant themes, but there’s quite a lot of leeway in terms of how the website will look.

On non-business related, I’ve been experimenting with transitions with the video editing, finished a video about Go-karting in Chiangmai, and will be making a review about a Steven Seagal movie so that I can practice on how to add subtitles to videos. 

On the audio book front, I have re-listened to the entire Super Powereds series + the spin-off book  Corpies, in anticipation of the final book that will be released…..in June of this year.  It was announced on Drew Hayes (the author of this series) facebook page…which of course I follow, and I figured I’d better refresh myself with the story. 

It was just as awesome listening through a second time, if not better…because there’s more that you pick up.

But now of course, I’ve still got 3 more months before this latest audio book comes out.

So, I’ve also finished ‘The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared’  which was pretty good too. 
Click on the title to see my review on that.

And now I’m finally working my way through the backlog of books that I have.  Here’s a little picture of what I still have to go, but I won’t bore any of you with the details.

Essentially it’s 193 hours worth of listening time before I get to move onto anything ‘new’.

Also, I’ve been catching up with my good friend Michael, and we’ve been having BBQs each Friday or Saturday.  It has become a little tradition which has been great.

The plan for these 2 weeks going forward is to register my domain names for the business/ project, get the email address up and running, plus register for all the social media accounts that I need to promote the project.

+ make a few sample videos for which I can practice certain skills, such as subtitling, voice-overs, editing, camera lighting, drone footage, transitions etc.

Looking forward to it.