My first month in the new business has gone quite well. Thanks be to God! 🙂 But I’m also reminded to listen out for a greater purpose.

He feeds the sparrows…

God feeds the sparrows, surely he will provide for you.

For the record, and as a reminder to myself, lest I get carried away and think all this month’s accomplishments were all my own doing, I shall give credit and thanks to where it’s due – to the Lord my provider.

I’m thankful to Him and I suppose I should be humbled to know that even out here daily provision does not depend on anxious striving.  Indeed he feeds the sparrows, clothes the lilies and provides us his children with enough.

So far I’ve been kept busy by projects from referrals and new acquaintances, and all the capital I’ve put into this little venture I’ll be making back and more. Now, if only I could stay focused on listening to His voice. Surely he has even better things in mind for the days ahead.

Do I think it was the right choice venturing out? I think so. It’s given me the opportunity to learn, experience so many new things, and there’s so much more to grow into. Thanks family, friends and clients for your support and encouragement in this rather fascinating time!

I also believe God has been gracious and allowed most of the work of my hands to prosper this month.

Social Media

This month, I’ve had a bit of success providing social media solutions. I designed some strategic enhancements for the Facebook page of a client’s magazine and helped them run a promotion on it. Their Facebook following grew from just over 70 fans to over 700 fans in just about 10 days! To help you understand the scale of that little achievement, it took my previous office’s Facebook page about 6 months to reach numbers even close to that. It’s safe to say I’ve learnt a few tips and tricks during and beyond my previous work experience that helped. But it also took some open-minded collaboration and trust from the client, and well some grace from above. It’s just an injection of pace, now the challenge lies with the content providers to grow and engage with kick-ass content.

Ironically, my own social media platforms get a wee bit neglected whenever I get busy with work for a client. haha! I should continue to press on.

Corporate Videos

Thanks to a friend’s referral, I got to complete a corporate video with a tight deadline for a multinational hotel management company. Thank I  completed it without a hitch in spite of the quick turnaround required, and they seemed quite pleased with the outcome. Thank God. And they say there may be more to come in the future.

Also, about a week ago, I shot a video for the ACS Oldham Hall boarding school, where I got to meet and interact with students from all over Asia, and I look forward to putting that video together soon.

TV

It’s been cool to get back to a bit of TV concept and content development work. I had the opportunity to help a friend with her documentary pitch to a TV broadcast channel. A week on it’s been shortlisted and the channel sounds keen so I’m hoping it gets picked up. But whatever happens, it feels meaningful to use my experience & expertise to help others grow their business.

The option to return to TV in a more conventional way also came along. The old company called me up and we met. They had interesting TV projects in the pipeline that they asked me to consider working on freelance. They were rather long projects 30-90 days and they didn’t have enough budget to make up for my opportunity cost, so I thought it may be better to let it go. Maybe next time. I had mixed feelings about having to pass those up, but I sense even more meaningful opportunities may avail themselves soon.

Growing Partnerships and the business

I’ve come to the conclusion that in the longer run it will be important to grow a team or join up with others beyond myself, or possibly the business needs to grow deeper, meaningful long-term business partnerships, not only to secure more sales and revenue streams or greater production capabilities but also to be prepared for more eventualities. For example there can be better cover when you’ve got to serve the country during reservist.

I think the next phase, beyond mere survival, will be to find strategic partners and clients that can really take the business to the next level. And this will involve setting up more meetings, finding more leads and strategizing sales and development. But this being a small operation I find it hard to work on sales and outreach whenever I’m in the thick of production work. It’s a challenge but I’m looking forward to it.

Purpose, Mission & Jobs.

The late Steve Jobs, the former Apple CEO and co-founder, wasn’t by most accounts the nicest of guys but he knew a thing or two about living with purpose.

He said, in what must by now be a much overtweeted quote:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. … Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Knowing one’s core purpose is of primary importance. It surely shouldn’t only be about money.

I set up the business with the intention of achieving social good and creating good media content that tells good stories for good purposes. But there’s a lot of good to be done and to really know what good you need to help with in the world it may take more time listening and discerning what good God has on His heart for you to work on. And I hope that in the hours, days and weeks to come  I shall always give this the utmost priority, for the world is full of distractions that could take you away from your best and truest purpose – what you were made, designed and created for, that God may be happy and glorified, and you might find joy in being what you were born to be.

“(Design is) not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

Sorry, I couldn’t resist another Steve Jobs quote. But you’ve got to admit he knew a thing or two about design. 🙂

Similarly, our design is not to work to achieve things for the sake of keeping up appearances or for the applause of others, ultimately we should to do what we were designed to do. I hope you want that too.

But we don’t define our own purpose. We are like clay in the hands of a master potter, or here’s a more modern analogy in line with recent events, we are like iPhones in the hands of an owner.

Our purpose is defined by the greater being in whose hands we are in. We are wonderfully made but our true worth is expressed in fulfilling a purpose greater than ourselves.

If we don’t listen to our Master’s voice, we’d be like the iPhone 4s Siri personal assistant switched off or malfunctioning – rather useless or maybe even dangerous (!) Imagine it messaging people without your permission!

I’m pretty certain Siri is somewhat useless in a super noisy environment, are we’re pretty useless if we’re drown out in the noise of the world. How can we hear the voice of Truth amid a world of din and distraction?

If we can’t hear the Master’s voice, we  won’t know what we really we need to do, or worse yet we might do the wrong thing!

We mightlet the noise of others’ opinions can drown out your own inner voice (haha.. oops!)

For the Christian, his or her inner voice should be the still, small voice of God – a voice that echoes the Word of God, messages from our maker that resonate with something within us.

And we need to press in to listen to those life sustaining words. Beyond listening, we’ve to understand. Beyond understanding, we’ve to know what’s being said to us. And beyond discerning the message, we’ve to obey and let it live out in our daily lives. (O man that sounds challenging! I wish I’d actually do that more.)

Are our sensors switched off or numbed? Are we inattentive when the Master’s has something to say to us? Or are we too caught up in the noise of daily care and the busyness of the world, that we can’t hear whispered instructions?

Reflecting on the month’s provision, I am reminded of the following Bible verse…

“He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known,

to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”  – Deut 8:3

The next time He speaks, I want to press in to listen, because everything else is secondary.