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How to startup? This is a question nearly everyone asks themselves at every major turning point in their lives, it is also asked by nearly every living person at least once a week.
How to startup is up to you and depends on the task, cleaning the house barely needs consideration. Starting up a new business venture requires some forethought.
Talking on the phone to a friend in Australia the other night got me started up in a couple of ventures that I have been thinking about for a year, but not got around to actioning.
What did he say to me that spurred me into action?
Geoff a good friend and very positive person in Queensland, Australia and I were talking about keeping positive in my current cash flow crunch (one movie in over a year doesn't carry too well) and how things tend to work out and you bounce back higher than when you started going down, so to speak.
I was talking to Geoff about coincidences, and how for the last 3 months I have been lethargic and bored, for me that means I am depressed then a friend mentioned I seemed to be very negative in a very tactful way. I picked up on this and thought about it and I was. Thinking always negative thoughts, of possible outcomes I was dwelling on the bad ones for any given situation. I went home and decided that I was going to switch to thinking about positive thoughts and outcomes from that moment on.
Next day I awoke and had to keep switching my thought procesesses. Next day I was a little better and in the afternoon recieved a call from a friend who started in the acting business just a year ago and is doing rather well as he has some interesting life experiences that project well when he is placed in similar circumstances in a movie. ie He doesn't act, he just remembers the emotions and feelings when something similar happened in his life previously. Anyway Mark told me there was a Japanese movie filming and they were looking for action actors.
Next day I got in contact with the acting agent who was responsible for casting this movie and got an appointment to see the Japanese Director a few days later. That went very well with the Director saying she was going to rewrite the script and add more for my character.
Next day a friend in the international TV business and was invited to a meeting that would bring me some local TV work possibly.
I went to this meeting and with my good attitude was able to sell myself to the sponsor of the TV segment that I hope to work on. I also made friends with a new local (Bangkok) agent and swapped details.
Two days later I got a call from the same friend to come and meet some movie people for dinner. Going along I met an International acting agent with ties into the US movie market. At first he was fairly standoffish but through the night we became friends, even going out for a few drinks after dinner. I also met a movie investor who will be a prospect when I start pitching my current two action movie ideas with the working titles of "Overdose" and "Madness".
The next night I went to sleep thinking how things had just turned around and now I had future prospects, and coincidentally it had happened just after I turned my thought pattern around and thought to myself this is just how it happened when I got the email from the Producers of Drona I got an email out of the blue (due to the prior preparation on this website) and a few weeks later was in Mumbai, India working on the biggest budget movie of the year.
Then next morning my phone rang and my agent in Australia had a show of interest from a Producer in America with a very well known star. In a movie that would completely change my career and launch me onto the world stage. Turns out that they found me via my website too. I called a friend with a good camera and he called a fellow I had met briefly and they came and helped me with the Audition tapes that we made two days later and I uploaded them to my server for the Producers in the US to watch.
Now I am not going to attribute this to some mystical "Secret" or some other Whoo-Ha meta-physical hoopla.
What happened is that my attitude changed, and when I am happy I am like an over excited child and fun to be around, when I am brooding I don't speak and people are afraid of me due to my size and intimidating "don't approach me" look on my face. So being happy and personable (hopefully) got me the local TV work, this lead to the invitation to the next meeting with the International Agent and movie Investor. It also got the local agent casting the Japanese movie onside and then got the Japanese Director excited about putting me in her movie.
(Unfortunately the TV work and Japanese movie don't start until late Sept/Oct so that still leaves me in a financial hole now)
This is how positive thinking works, it puts you in a frame of mind where you are receptive to offers and you spot the opportunities more easily. Not sure how the coincidence of scoring the 2nd serious movie offer from my site came about though.
Anyway back to Geoff and his advice on how to startup.
Geoff said to me what do you want to happen in your life? I told him a few things and he said to me - "Have you written them down?". I laughed, as I am sure I have written an article about writing things like this down before, but I answered truthfully "No".
"Go and get a pen and paper and write them down, there is magic in writing these things down."
So first thing next morning rather than check my email I thought about "how to startup" and got out a notebook (paper) and pen and started writing.
I wrote what I would like to happen with my career, my bodybuilding goals and how I was going to achieve them and on point number 3 came the idea to make money "quickly" about filming and producing my own lifestyle/workout DVD. I wrote what I wanted, I started to write how I was going to do it, I wrote a scene that I wanted to put in it before I forgot it.
4 pages later I had written out the entire DVD in order, with shots required and dialogue outlines. I now have a plan of action. How to startup? Write a plan is the first order of business.
A good friend from Europe (see how important real friends are in getting ahead in life? No one makes it by themselves) called and said he had brought a TV quality camera down with him from Bangkok and was staying in Pattaya for a week, we could film if I wanted to.
Awesome. The pieces fall together. See how he arrives with the camera and since I am ready with a plan I can jump on the opportunity and start filming soon. If I had not written the plan I would still be dilly-dallying and wasting time, but when I arrive with a written plan then he takes me more serious too and I'll get more help from him as it won't just be wasting his time.
Now since i have had two weeks off training due to a shoulder injury I need to do a week back in the gym to pump my muscles up so I look 'hard' and 'full' (minds out of the gutter please - yes they are real bodybuilding terms). Then we will shoot the Conan Stevens Pattaya Bodybuilding Lifestyle and Workout DVD.
It'll take 3 days to shoot the whole thing as the geographical area is limited and it is easy to get around now that it is super low season (Pattaya is a massive tourist destination), then I guess it'll take me about 4 days (18 hour days) to edit and do voice overs for parts the require it, for example explaining what I am doing in certain exercises, obviously I can't concetrate on my talking while I am exercising.
So in a little over 2 weeks I should have the workout video ready for sale from this website, and generate some sorely need income for myself and provide some good, funny and interesting video for those who want to get to know me better. I can guarantee that there will never have been a workout video like this before - it'll blow the competition away. (is there competition for a 7 foot heavily muscled lunatic who lives in Asia?).
So how to startup? Take Geoff's advice and get out a paper and pen and start writing.
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