Alexander Kluge

January 4, 2023

year 2 of building my dream company :belated: {Sunday Truth 104}

It’s looking grim.

I finished year 2 of Susé Patrola with a deficit of -5.618,43 EUR. You can see how that happened in my cash overview for 2022.

With 392,93 EUR left on my bank account and average monthly costs of 672 EUR, I’m screwed if I don’t make shit happen in January 2023. Luckily, the big payments have happened already. [1] Plus, Basecamp was so kind to add a $99 credit to my account without me explicitly asking for it. Ninety-nine dollars being the weekly price for a month of Basecamp as an existing customer, although that may change.

I’m in my first 1-week sabbatical of 2023 right now, yes I re-started it, but I’m broke AF! It’s the classic “Yes, I have all the freedom and time I want, but I have no money.” I plan to get out of this situation ASAP to have freedom, time, and work on my own hours, and have money to sustain my monk lifestyle.

I usually have an epiphany at the end of each sabbatical, but this time, I already have the epiphany, forcefully, because of financial pressure.

Here’s my “Alex Saves His Delicious Ass” SOS 🛟 Plan for January 2023:

  • 10 auditions a day (70/week)
  • 1 daily ad a day targeted at a company I’d like to work with (7/week)

Execution starts next week on Monday, January 9, 2023.

I only focus on what’s in my control, outcome is not part of it, but execution is.

If I accomplish these 2 things to a satisfactory level, and I still have mojo and strength, I will turn daily ad no. 1 (remember “Finally our boy is out of the house!”?) into a full video. This is a one-month-long activity, or potentially six weeks, because it includes many things I haven’t done in a while or not at all, like illustration, motion design, music, and sound design. So the focus is on the 2 things above, naturally.

(to be continued after a short break)

ℹ

It was 10.25 p.m. Eastern, here in the State of New York when I started writing to you the {Sunday Truth 104}.

On January 3, 2023 with +5 degrees Celsius (+12 degrees warmer compared to last week; snowman ☃️ is gone 🫤)

hi, i’m building my dream Voiceover YouTube channel as a milestone to my dream storytelling company, Susé Patrola. when done, i’ll move to singapore.

🥥 making money with voiceover is the only 1 thing i care about right now uga uga 🐒

ℹ

(back again)

While the situation is dire,
I won’t express the desire
to run into the dangerous fire
of desperation and scarcity.

Because if words can change minds,
then words can also define
the actions I’m taking.

So…

I will overcome this dire situation 😌 and be able to pay the upcoming February 2023 bills.

➡️ If you want to help me see the light of day on February 1, 2023,I would appreciate if you could point a contact of yours to my Voiceover Ads Portfolio on YouTube, so they can decide whether they’d like to hire me for their next voiceover project.

On a sidenote…

My dream came true. We talked. Actually, multiple times. I’m happy that I haven’t lost her.

Synchronicity of nature and human connection is what I would call what happened because one day after two longer calls with her (1h and 40 minutes in total) I saw the melting snow and ice outside because of increasing temperatures. She explained that my snowball attack from last week was so painful for her, and now I absolutely understand my misdeed. Then we apologized to each other and arranged a way to exchange our Christmas gifts for one another without seeing each other, because that is something that is not going to happen anymore because of what I did on said Tuesday.

I’m happy that we talked. I’m very happy and grateful that we talked. Really, really, really.

Two days ago, when I felt desperate and un-wise, I drafted a text that I could have sent out as {Sunday Truth 104}, which went like:


SL: getting a marketing day job and building up Susé on the side using the Overlap technique {Sunday Truth 104}

I’m now on the hunt to get a marketing job, preferrably something with writing, copywritng, UX-writing, etc.
I want to work in a team, and I don’t want to be on my own and solo again. It depresses me, and after the 18 months of agency time and now 3–4 months without my agency people I feel like I’m missing something.

So, I’m doing the following now:

  1. Continue doing my daily voiceover ads
  2. Apply for marketing/writer jobs

I don’t want to bet on just one horse.

By continuing my voiceover ads every day, I’m presenting my voiceover and ad-writing chops.

And by applying for a marketing job, I’m making an effort to a steady income and to be working in a team again, fully remote; I won’t take a job that is bound to a local place.

I realized I’m not as passionate about doing voiceover as I am about building Susé. I want to write and voice and produce my own shit and stories, I don’t care about voicing other people’s stuff. I realized that while doing these daily voiceover ads. They’re fun, and I’m inclined to continue them on my YouTube channel because I’m focusing on ads (i.e. story-based ads) with Susé by turning my daily ads into full video ads.

Once I’ll have a team together I’ll change the YouTube channel’s name from “Alexander Kluge 🐣 (sometimes naii.io)” to “Ads by Susé Patrola Story Productions” or “Story-Ads by Susé Patrola”, which means that I finally have found a first direction for Susé, in terms of what kind of stories I want to produce: ads that are stories, stories that are ads. This is then also something that I can offer to customers as a service, and I can use my copywriting and voiceover and other skills but under the umbrella of Susé.

That is the plan, and it finally sounds like a good direction for the “rise” of Susé. I’m stoked, and it only took me 2 years and sending 104 emails to you to figure that out. I told you I’m not one of those early bloomers; I’m a late bloomer!


Sidenote: It’s more important for me to realize my dream story production company, Susé Patrola, than to feed my ego and be a recognized voice actor.
In short: Susé > ego

The nice thing about turnng my existing and growing daily voicover ads into full video ads is that I’ll come closer to realizing my Story Production Company, Susé Patrola, through the avenue of ads as stories (video ads, animated ads, fun motion ads, fusion ads - fusion = fun + motion).

But I’ve only come to the conlusion of turning the existing voiceover-only ads into full video ads after I had started doing the voiceover ads, which just shows how important taking action is. I could have pondered miles and years more without coming to a conclusion, because in this case an intellectual conclusion is not the way forward, only action is and what you conclude AFTER having taken action. Yep!


:::

I’m sharing it with your because the text contains some epiphanies I’ve had.

Also…

I now have values (it was overdue).

Of course, I didn’t come up values only now. They’ve been in existence for more than a decade.

But I updated naii.io, where you can now see the 10 values that have been commanding my actions in the past 10+ years as a business owner and creative person, leaving aside how successful I’ve been in implementing them.

And…

I’ve been thinking about studying psychology to help her heal. We had an hour-long conversation, as I wrote above. It was revealing. And now I know what I did wrong. I understand now, and I love her more than anyone or anything.

My conclusion therefore: learn how to help her overcome trauma, and my best guess for that to happen is to study psychology and become a certified and/or licensed psychologist who can help her pro-bono. But this is all I’m going to say about her, because as I said before (in {Sunday Truth 92} i lost 8 kilos), she is not a story for me to share. She is the woman I love and the last woman I want to be with in my life.

Also, the ads I produced this week:

Monday, January 2, 2023


Friday, December 30, 2022
Thursday, December 29, 2022

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Let me end this rollercoaster of a week with the word of the week: odious. An adjective being pronoucnd as OH-dee-us. Odious means “causing strong hatred or dislike,” which is the opposite of what me and her have been feeling towards each other, so it’s nodious, if you know what I mean :D.

Lots of New Year’s love to you,

Bye bye,
- Alex (you can hire me for your next voiceover project)

p.s. adventure ⛰️ + i’m winning
p.p.s. write drunk voiceover sober

[1] I deducted the social insurance premium of 144,19 EUR that will be due tomorrow from the calculated amount that’s left on my bank that I mentioned above.

About Alexander Kluge

I run a voiceover studio (naii.io), document how I produce original stories, while building my dream company (suse.la), and try to survive in a pendulum of existential angst and lust for adventure!