The Allan McKay Podcast

This is one of the most critical episodes so far in our journey to grow our career and multiply our successes. Something so critical yet overlooked, is defining our name and our niche and building our brand. Associating ourselves in a way that will resonate with others and key ways to introduce ourselves that will stay with your audience and grow your job prospects. This episode we learn to make ourselves more than just an artist or an employee but to strategically build our name and reputation up, and consolidate our efforts and focus onto one outcome, building a our brand.

This episode is a look back at my year and what I accomplished, as well as a lot of very valuable lessons I've learned along the way, including areas I failed and what I have taken from that. A lot of valuable information I've taken from this experience and how I can apply this to 2015. The most valuable piece is a overview of the 3-6-3 mindset which is how I personally have owed a lot of my success as well as how I have defined a lot of my goals and lifestyle around. Really great and valuable information that will ensure you hit your goals in 2015 but also your BIGGER goals further down the road to position yourself in the career and lifestyle that you've always dreamed of! HAPPY 2015!!!

So this episode definitely is 'off the cuff' but there's a lot of really vital information for those of you who do want to travel the world and want to understand where to start! I will say this is definitely just scratching the surface, and unfortunately being the week of x-mas and with a product launch underway I've only really had time to hit record and go for gold! But I do want to hear your thoughts on this and if it is something you do want to know more about, I have plenty in store for you let me know before I put weeks into bringing the right people on to give you a step by step guide to working overseas and all over the world as also how to approach studios and find sponsorship!  

Midway through the month! Lots of episodes flooding out on a lot of very important subjects! This episode is all about learning the power of negotiation and becoming comfortable discussing money with employers, how to get a raise and how to position yourself so they pitch to you. This episode I'm sure to some is taboo as people typically don't talk about money or negotiating skills very often. However that also means a lot of us are left in the dark how it all works and how to get what we ask for. This episode will go over many of those subjects shedding a lot of light as well as showing what to say in any situation and how no is just the start of the conversation. This episode I think, is vital for everyone working in any industry to learn the art of negotiation. Leave any comments or questions I'd love to hear from you about this subject!

This episode is very focused on more our core habits, how to build a 'ritual' to start out your day so you wake up productive and know exactly what you need to get done and go about doing it by batching your tasks intelligently and adding time constraints to all of your tasks so that you're able to track your succes, eliminate bad habits and be more aware where your time is actually going. We all want more time in our day to get more done, typically a task takes 30 days of doing daily to form a habit. The more habits we have the more auto-pilot we are to waking up, doing those things and getting them done with minimal effort, and using our goals from Episode 10 (http://www.allanmckay.com/10/) you'll be able to create 2-3 additional days a week to focus on those bigger long-form tasks! Leave a comment I'd love to know your thoughts, and I triple dare you to try an ice bath, 20 minutes submerged, can you do it?! Show notes at http://www.allanmckay.com/13/  

This episode I have been excited to discuss for some time - and have shared a lot with my discussion with Todd Sheridan Perry in Episode 9 about his experiences on working from home in Seattle. I have had so much personal experience both launching my own visual effects studio of 30+ people and working on many feature films, as well as working remotely for myself from my home both in Australia and in Los Angeles. With technology and many tools and the internet booming more each day, there is no excuse for many of us to break free and set up our own visual effects services, or renegotiate our lives to work from our own environments we choose. Whether it be leaving to set up our own studios, or working remotely from home - or going the more adventurous and taking our services on the road - working from beaches or other remote locations! Anything is possible! Show notes here: http://www.allanmckay.com/12 I urge you to sign up to the VIP list this week as I am starting to send out a lot of goldmines of information pertaining to these subjects, such as email scripts I've personally used to get work as well as many tools and other great and vital information to help you. I want to reward those who are serious about taking the next step with these tools so they're exclusive to those of us taking action! Leave a comment or a review, I'd love to hear you thoughts - December is our big month so dive in and let me know how you go in the comments section, I promise to read every comment and reply as much as I can! I'd love to hear from you! Show notes here: http://www.allanmckay.com/12  

This episode dives into some of the core concepts of writing a strong cover letter or email to reach out to studios for work. This can make the difference between whether your email actually gets read and if your reel gets seen, and how to have invisible threads that help you promote yourself without sounding like you're bragging.Check out the show notes at http://www.allanmckay.com/11/ and leave a comment on any experience you've had or thoughts you have on this subject! I'd love to hear it and I promise to read every response!

This month is all about change - we're going to band together and commit to our goals for 2015 and begin to build a roadmap to how to achieve even our most unattainable goals. This month is your chance to make change and to go after your hopes and dreams and measure your success as all of us will will be provided the tools throughout December. Every few days a new episode will be up giving you the keys to change and opening up new doors, with episodes tackling our biggest sticking points and showing how to break through and move forward, gain new skills and look at our careers under a microscope and find out exactly what we need to 10x our career and make the biggest impact imaginable! Go to http://www.allanmckay.com/10 and write your goals and join us as we commit to transforming our careers and making a big impact in 2015!  

I jumped at the chance to talk with Todd about this subject, as it's one I plan to cover later this month! Todd has major success working on projects ranging from The Lord of the Rings all the way through to X-files, Final Destination 5, 2012, The Mist, and dozens of others. He's a major source of talent nad also having worked in this industry for over two decades! The best thing by far, is that a majority of the work he does now is all from home - I love this story because it's a perfect example of both success and creating freedom in your workplace. Quitting the typical 9-5 and freeing yourself up to work for yourself gives you many options.   DEFINITELY check this episode out - it's a long one but full of priceless advice! I will be following up too later this month with a lot of additional information from my perspective as a more how-to guide.   What is your plans for 2015? Throughout December I am going to be posting THREE episodes per week regularly to help jump start your career in visual effects and for those who are hungry for more, to really raise your game and hit all of your goals. This month is going to be a chance for you to transform your career and your life - get ready Wednesday as I post the first episode of this series that will lead you through building up your path to success in 2015! Click here to jump start your career and money with a bang!   Lastly - next episode I will be announcing the winners of the current contest - which is to win a free one month membership to Digital Tutors. You can win this by simply: 1. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes (click the blue button on the left to load up iTunes) 2. Also leave a brief review and don't forget to rate it as well! Click here 3. Lastly, click like on my Facebook page so you can get updated on more free content and new episodes as they come out! Winners will be announced in a few days   ALSO Digital Tutors was kind enough to let me release my course I did with Digital Tutors, on Realfow and Python Scripting and advanced V-Ray shaders. Check it out here, this is my gift to you from Digital Tutors and myself, enjoy!  

This is a great interview with extraordinary artist John Brennick for his contributions at studios like Weta and Digital domain and other studios around the globe on many high profile films including Dawn of the planet of the apes and The Hobbit 2. This is a really fun interview that covers a lot of really great insight into both burn out and finding passion in your work.Check out show notes (they're coming, I promise!) at http://www.allanmckay.com/8 Also feel free to email me any questions or comments, or leave some on the website!