How to be Your Own Team

Hey, let's face it, there are just so many hours in a day. Things would be so much easier if you had a team of people working with you to achieve an objective or complete a project. Then maybe you would not have to spend so much time working and you might even be able to actually have a life. But what do you do if you don't have that team of people to help you out? I guess you would just have to be your own team.

Let's take an entire package created by a group of individuals like a band, a video editor, 3D artist, web developer and writer. Now let's assume that they are not really a group of people but, in reality, one person who does all of those things. Well, that would be me. Now allow me to elaborate:

I am a musician. A number of years ago, I put out a CD called To infinity. I wrote and arranged all of the music, played all of the instruments, recorded all of the music, mixed it, did the CD cover artwork and layout and did what had to be done to make it available for sale on Amazon.com. Then I re-designed my own website and included information regarding my CD and music. Those are a lot of functions for one person, right? Needless to say, it took me a long time to do all of those things but I basically did all of the functions of what could have been done by a team of people. 

I have also done some videos for the music. In the videos, I have included some of my 3D artwork and animation. So now you can add a 3D artist and animator and a video editor to the team. You could also add writer to the list of titles if you want to include the articles I have written about my various projects for the sake of promoting them. Obviously, if I had had a team of people assisting me in the various projects, the process would not have taken nearly as long to complete. Unfortunately, I was alone to fend for myself.

I am neither bragging nor complaining. I am not bragging about my abilities to do a number of things and I am not complaining about the fact that I had to do all of those things on my own. It just happened to be my situation and if you are in the same situation, maybe my advice can help. So here is the advice:

You absolutely must be goal oriented as well as task oriented. You must know how to prioritize and stick to a project or task until it is completed. If you can't do that, you can't be your own team. 

My first task was obviously to compose the music. So I set out to compose a CD's worth of material. Then I recorded the tracks for all of the songs. After that, I mixed and mastered it all. Upon the completion of that, I designed the CD cover and did the layout for the CD. Then I did what needed to be done to make it available for sale on Amazon.

After my CD was made available on Amazon, I decided to do things to promote it. First was a re-design of my website. Then I began to write some articles that were designed to promote my work as a musician. After that, I did some music videos.

I am still putting together an occasional video for my songs. I have included one with this article as an example. When I first started to play around with 3D artwork and animation, I decided that the first thing I would do with it would be to use it for a music video featuring my music. The example I have provided here is the first video project I did with the 3D software I was learning to use. I wanted to describe in this article just how much work over an extended period of time was put into the entire package.

So, to reiterate: be task and goal oriented. Try to finish one task at a time before moving on to the next. Prioritize your various tasks and try to determine what order would be the best order in pursuing your overall set of goals. Stick to it. If you find yourself losing focus, pause and analyze where you are and where you need to go. See where you may have deviated from your course and try to set yourself back on course. Believe me, when you have a lot of tasks you are trying to do, it is very easy to lose focus.

So, I hope this advice helps and here is the video I was referring to: 

Photo Credit: "The Pirate Gang" by Bob Craypoe, also known as R. L. Crepeau