A Glimmer of Hope Shines Today!
Let's take a walk, and begin a new adventure -- Living the Dream.
Today is a totally blessed day!
I mean, I understand that today is Christmas with all it’s good cheer, and kind warmness for fellow Humankind, but today, for the first time since before the Election, I feel excitement. I feel the joy I used to feel as a child waking up Christmas morning, ready to dive into destroying the living room with scraps of wrapping paper, bows, and shrink-wrap littering the carpet. I feel this not because I received any presents this year. I don’t even have a Christmas tree up this year, I couldn’t afford one, and I was too depressed to even bother with decorating. No, I was given something much better than anything material. I was given a thought this morning while in the shower during my morning mediation. I was given the spark of imagination, of creativity, I was shown a vision of a world that I could create, and given the methods for how to achieve it, despite the Dystopian Dumpster Fire many people find themselves facing. My solution: A business adventure!
For more than a few months now, I’ve been pondering about starting another business. This will be my fourth attempt, and I want to make sure that I do it correctly, and not rush into anything. This is especially important given the current economic landscape we find ourselves on. Credit is expensive, banks aren’t lending, investments are reserved, and savings are at an all time low (or simply non-existent, like in my case). The question I keep asking myself is, “What can I do to provide a product or service to people who have enough money to spend on whatever I’m providing?” I look around, and I see so many people struggling just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. So why should anybody sacrifice what little financial resources they have on some crap that I want to sell them? And between last night and this morning, I had an epiphany. That’s the Capitalistic way of thinking about a Society. Here, I’ll sell you this junk, so you’ll give me your money, and then I eventually, I don’t have to do any work anymore. And it’s obvious that the System as designed is about to implode on itself. Because any economy needs currency to flow through it. But recently, it seems that the majority of the money is only being circulated up at the very top, like the 1% top, and what little money is still left at the bottom (the 99%) is being sucked up toward the top. Prices of everything are going up, yet people’s income has remained mostly stagnant for over a decade now? There are countless studies and papers that have been written about this. People on Social Media are adamantly complaining about how broke everybody is.
But I don’t want to just have an easy life, sitting with my feet kicked back. My ethics wouldn’t allow me to do that anyway. I truly adore being of service to other people. It scratches some internal itch that I have when I can show my love for other people, even it’s just doing something as simple as brewing a pot of coffee or making a dinner. And there was my answer. I don’t want to make a product— well, at least initially. I need to create a service. I already know that I want to create. I already know that I adore anime. Simply writing isn’t enough value for people to support me. I want to offer more. And I want to learn more. I’ve dabbled with technologies such as Unreal Engine, which allow animations to be produced. There’s software that allow for easy 3D character designs to be made. I have a ton of story ideas in my head that are bursting to be shared with the world. And there are lots of fans who adore anime, just as I do. Why don’t I just create my own anime studio?
But at the same time, I don’t want to create a business that funnels all the profits up toward the top. My heart is too big. I see so many hurting, and it breaks my heart. I want to share my wealth with others. My previous three businesses were all Limited Liability Companies (LLC). Each time, I wanted to build them so that the people working with me were considered equals. The problem is that when you’re working with other people, they may not also align with my equality wishes. And the typical company structure is designed to be a hierarchy, like a pyramid, with a single person at the top controlling everything, and a board that can vote to choose that one person to run everything, with the caveat that the Board members are compensated well for allowing this individual to lead the company. Recently, however, I discovered my equality structure, something that resembled a circle, or sphere, rather than a pyramid. The Workers-Cooperative (WC). And two days ago, I discovered that even an LLC can be structured with this equality mechanism. I’ve even seen a few examples of small companies that operate using the WC framework, and believe it or not, everybody is much happier and finds more satisfaction working at these companies.
So with the WC structure build on the ease of setting up an LLC, and that simplifies taxation too, the first major definitions are written. The next step is to figure out how am I going to get started though? I’ve looked at incorporating in a variety of States, and Wyoming looks attractive at $60, but there’s a problem. I live in Massachusetts, and if I wish to operate a business in MA, I need to register with the Commonwealth of MA as a Foreign Business, which will cost the same as registering within MA at $500! Talking with ChatGPT, I discovered there is a potential loophole, in that if I don’t employ anybody or sell products or services directly to residents of MA, then I don’t need this additional expense. And while my business idea is completely virtual right now, with allowing my employees, or teammates, or comrades, to work out of their own homes, this may indeed be the way to go, however, I could end up in some sticky situations later, but I can always come back and address those when (and if) it comes time, right?
Great, so I might have figured out where to incorporate, I’m still clueless on a business name as of right now, but I have a much bigger problem. Just doing some quick thinking in my head (aka, talking to myself), I realized that I don’t have all the skills that I would need to successfully launch and run a animation studio business. Sure, I can write mediocre fiction contained within an anime setting, but I know nothing about how to format those wonderful story ideas I have whirring around in my head into a screenplay format. So I’d have to learn that. And while I’ve dabbled using Unreal Engine for game development, I know next to nothing with regard to using it for animation. Granted, there’s YouTube and other online sites that I can use to research all that. But anime is more than just ink on paper. There’s epic voices that drive memorable characters. So unless I plan on doing all the voices myself and using some sort of voice changing software or AI to generate the voices for me, I’ll have to hire talent for that. (I’ll address this in a little bit) Finally, or maybe not quite so much, there’s all the business administration stuff that happens in the background. Marketing, demographics research, polling, merchandising (because I’m sure there’s going to be at least one person who wants collectable statues or posters and other goodies to showcase to their friends, all the characters that I’ve created, right? There all the accounting, and taxes, and legal stuff, and potential contracts that need to be created. I other words, so much more stuff happens behind the scenes, and I didn’t even get into advertising yet! *scream*
I need a plan. A good business plan will take some time to write. I need to do the appropriate research. I need to know where online to go to reach out to other Otaku (fans of anime). I need to know how much income I can expect to generate with a production, and how much money will be spent on producing a title to begin with. And, I need time and money. Right now, it appears that I’ll need a good five years to get this company off the ground. That’s even being a bit modest. And I can’t concentrate on this business while I’m being run into the ground standing around all day working in a warehouse for eight hours every day, and then loosing another four hours just going to and coming back home for the commute. I’ve estimated that $50,000 per year for my living expenses (rounded up) will provide enough income to not need to be worried about rent, utilities, and food, and provide enough extra to be eaten up by taxes. But that’s as of right now. With Trump’s administration coming in to power, and his proposed tariffs and other economic disaster plans, I’ll need to increase that amount, probably by 25% for the first year, and 10% every year after, just to keep up with the cost of living. So for the first five years, just for myself (an disabled partner), I’ll need roughly $385,000 just to dedicate the time I need in building this business. And I won’t even be releasing any titles during that time!
And for every person who I plan to employ, I’m sure that’s a conservative number. Because I don’t have a car. I don’t have the insurance payments, so the amount the two of us need to survive is much smaller than somebody else. The talent that I’m going to need will probably be asking for much higher wages (as a base, the additional profits will be added evenly to everybody in a WC), and I’ll need at either somebody capable of voice acting several different voices, or I’ll need to hire multiple people, just for the voice acting roles. Then there’s the animation and character design. Simply put, this is going to add up quickly, and may break one million dollars just for a five year start up plan. So where am I going to find that magnitude of funding?
Clearly, I don’t think I’m ethically aligned to ask for a loan from any traditional sources, like banks and investors. They would want a controlling interest in the company, which would undermine the goals of the company as a WC, because any investors would want to see hefty dividend checks being mailed to them once the company is up and running, and the motivation is for continued increasing profits. We clearly see how that’s working out for society right now, and I’m not all that interested in becoming another part of the already established problem. So, I’m left with crowd-funding sources, like KickStarter, GoFundMe, and perhaps even my own SubStack right here. But that creates another problem, in that people seem to be impatient today. They want to see results quickly, and I don’t blame them. And I wouldn’t be able to start working on anything until I’ve secured at least the initial $50,00 to secure my own living expenses for the first year. So that means that nothing will be getting produced or defined or even setup while I’m still wasting away at my nine-to-five job. And that is the main problem that I’ve been trying to answer for years, especially over the last 18 months, because I’m energetically dead by the time I get home. It takes me two days just to recover my energy levels and creativity after working for an entire week, so rinse and repeat. What’s a girl supposed to do?
The obvious answer is to work on this project a little here and a little there. But I know myself. If I don’t dedicate myself full in on doing something, the energy dissipates and the momentum dies. Maybe it’s a discipline problem I have, I’m not entirely sure, but I do know based on my own observations of the past, I understand how I work. And I’m trapped in a System that is preventing me from changing. Is that an excuse? Perhaps. But how do you dedicate energy to something when your reserves are bottoming out near zero? Maybe if you’ve got some solid suggestions from your own experience, you could pass it along to me? Because right now, the only thing I know is something’s gotta change, and waiting around for somebody else to make the change will result in my death first. So I have to be the one to initiate change. But I need help.