Monday, February 13, 2012

Jimothy Lightson

Meet Jimothy Lightson, a character I invented many years ago. 
He's always been a patient little fellow, eager to please and happy to go with the status quo.

Well, that was until yesterday.  Now, Jimothy has had the tiniest taste of stardom and he's absolutely chomping at the bit for worldwide success.

I've been trying to tell him that there will be a lot of hard yakka between now and then, but he's been dancing a jig for the last day, and isn't listening to me at all.

I don't know what to do. He's driving me crazy!

It all started because of Brian Thompson of Thorny Bleeder. He hosts several different podcasts, and the one that I listen to religiously is The DIY Daily podcast. Essentially, its 15-20 minutes of hardcore motivation aimed at all those creative types amongst us, and people into marketing, branding or simply just bettering themselves.

His messages quite often boil down to "just do it".

I was listening to another of Brian's podcasts on Sunday morning in bed, and Jimothy's story was in the back of my mind. All of a sudden, I had a lightbulb moment, and I thought that I'd get up, join Soundcloud and record a podcast too by reading Jimothy's story.

Yes, I was nervous. I was worried about how my accent would sound. I didn't know if I could even get Soundcloud to work properly. But, it was Sunday and I had all the time in the world.

I went for it.  You can listen to it here:
 
 
And now, here I am 34 hours later, and this is what's happened since I hit the record button on Soundcloud:

  • The podcast has been played 132 times

  • Its been tweeted and mentioned on facebook by loads of people, some of whom I don't even know (unbelievable)

  • The number of followers on Jimothy's facebook page has doubled in size. He doesn't even have hundreds of followers, but he certainly has way more than Saturday

  • I received countless messages from people saying their kids absolutely loved the story (whew!)

  • Kevin Helas (of Roger London), a friend of mine since we were 11 and who drew Jimothy's portrait initially, became aware of what was going on via facebook and emailed me from England about finishing the illustrations (so we could publish the book in both hard and e-copies)

  • A kids radio station based in Melbourne, Australia has asked for the track to be re-recorded so they can play it.

This hasn't quite been an overnight success story, but if I hadn't leapt out of bed on my lazy Sunday and given Soundcloud a whirl, I wouldn't be sitting here now, typing this blog with my heart racing and swelling with pride and my mouth hanging open from shock (oh yeah, I'm looking gawgus at the moment).

So, in closing...you know that thing you were going to do, but haven't quite gotten around to doing yet? Yeah, that thing. Just do it, ok? The results might just blow your mind.


What?! Jimothy can't believe you haven't heard his story yet or liked his facebook page, so he's insisted that I include links to make it easy peasy (his words, not mine) for you.

http://soundcloud.com/yvonne-milroy/jimothy-lightson

http://www.facebook.com/#!/Jimothy.Lightson

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