Press Kits

As I am developing my artist career I am always looking for new outlets to go through to see how I can benefit from them. Recently I have been working with a gentleman who is currently acting as my public relations. Since I am just starting in my career he has not been charging me for his services. As such, I really can’t ask much from him since I am not paying him.

I decided to do some research on my own and started inquiring on how much I would be charged for a service like this from a professional. For every firm that I contacted they all required a physical press kit. So I guess where I am going with this is that I thought we we’re moving to a digital and paperless era? So, why are they asking for a physical paper press kit? This really caught my attention and drove me nuts!

I guess after all not everything is going digital. People still prefer things the traditional way with paper and something physical that they can hold in their hands and feel. I have been thinking all day and have tried to find the logic in this, and why they want it physical and I still have not been able to find a logical reason for it. I feel as if I am going to have trouble with this, as I have never created a physical press kit, at least not as I can recall. I have gotten use to having everything digital. I am at a point where I have come to the conclusion that I dislike paper very much. Well! I guess it’s time that I go out shopping for materials again. I will be placing Staples a visit after a very long time.

Professionalism!

This week I realized something really important in the music industry. I have a friend who is currently staying at my house for a short period of time until he gets his feet off of the ground. He is a very well known producer in Puerto Rico and has worked with the best artists in the industry. He came to the mainland because he was going to start working with a new artist. The first 2 days he spent going all over Miami in a bus. The purpose was to meet with different people and to get everybody on the same page with the project.

As a result of everything the project fell through due to the lack of professionalism from the actual artist himself. The lesson of this issue is that you must have your things set and have the professionalism in order to be successful. You can’t go crazy and travel to a new country thousands of miles away from home without having your things planned and set.

This is a very fast paced business that moves very fast. You need to be able to keep up with it in order to maintain your success in it. Being cordial and professional is a must! That is what many people look at the most. Anyone that is going to go into business with you the first thing that they are going to look at is how responsible you are about your businesses and you professionalism. It is the number 1 key to success in this industry. Always maintain a positive energy around you and the people that you are around with. This will help you to have a successful career in this very fast paced music industry. Always carefully plan things before taking them into action. Patience is a virtue!

Simply the best year yet!

So as I am closing out the last month in my masters program. I am starting to get a feeling on how my life and my career is starting develop on its own. This year by far has been the best year in my life. My music career is taking off; I am starting to make a name for myself. My knowledge is growing and I am becoming wiser. The masters program really helped me settle in my decision that my life is basically going to revolve around the music world and the entertainment industry, as I am now starting my pursuit in my law degree in entertainment and sports law.

I am now growing a brand not only locally or nationally but also internationally. My brand is starting to get recognition from across the world. My brand is starting to venture in new grounds by developing a clothing and hat line. All in all I am truly blessed and happy to know that I am finally making a difference whether its personally or through my line of work I am glad to know that I will always be remembered by the person that I am, by the perseverance and drive that I have.

In conclusion all I can say at this point is that I am ecstatic on all the things that are currently going on in my life. One of the biggest things is the completion of my Masters degree. This has really opened my eyes to a lot of new things that are going to come in the near future. I am currently working on new projects that are going to take over in the Latin industry. The teams of professionals that I have that work under my direction are a great group of people and thanks to their determination and belief in me we are going to take over of this whole thing!!!

Business Plan's

So as I’m in the last month in my masters degree we are preparing the final pieces in our business plans. Although I am already established as a business, I have really learned new things that as an entrepreneur. This last class helped me understand how to really go by speaking to investors and persuading them to fund me as a business owner. I was able to perfect my communication and persuasion skills in order to get what I am looking for.

Through different institutions like, The Small Business Association, and many others. I learned that there are different sources of funding, whether it is through government contracting, or through venture capitalism. There is many different ways and outlets to get the funding you are looking for. There are various qualifications that you need to have in order to receive these types of funding such as; licenses, and permits.

The sites also provide information on how business owners can find special grants or governmental help based on the sector that the business is in. They provide the name and contact information of the various agencies whether it is governmental or not. That way the people can contact them directly and get the needed information in order to qualify for these special grants. These grants are also based on the situations of the owners of the businesses. Whether the owners are disabled, Hispanic, single women, minorities or even African Americans, there is a program where each of these qualify for and can get the help that they need.

To conclude this post I have been able to learn about new programs in which I as a disabled Hispanic business owner might qualify for and possibly get free money for my business. This is something I will definitely continue to look into.

My view at Business Plans

This was a very interesting month for me. Since I am a semi-established entrepreneur already. I kind of was taught a new perspective this month on how to look at business plans. I studied 2 very known and very smart business plan writers. The things that I have learned in the past 4 weeks have been more than what I have learned in a very long time. I created a new perspective on how to view things in order to get what I want. This has caused me to tweak my business plan a bit, but for the better which is all that counts.

Most of the changes that I made to my business plans were with the numbers. I learned from these gentlemen that the banks really don’t care about the explanations and things like that. What really matters to them and what they mainly look at is the numbers. They want to see that you are able to show at least a break-even status or preferably a profitable status. What really matters is that they feel comfortable lending you money when they know that you are going to be able to pay it back.

As mentioned before what really matters is the numbers so, therefore I believe that is the most important part of any business plan. That is the first thing that any bank or investor is going to look at. Before wasting any time meeting with you or anything.

I really appreciate this month’s class because; it helped view the industry a bit better. I am able to understand it a bit more, and feel more efficient within it now. I am now on my way to become a better and more successful entrepreneur than what I was before. Definitely by far the best class period.

The Business Plan

As I am reaching the end of my studies for my Master’s Degree, the current class is about business plan and how to prepare them. While working on my business plan I decided to do some research on the experts of developing business plans. I was interested in their perspective of plans and how they should be developed.

The first expert that I came across to was Carl Schramm. He is a PhD Economist and was the President and CEO at Ewing Marion Kauffmann Foundation. His definition of an Entrepreneur is an outsider that asks hard question and presses leaders on the “why” around status quo. The one thing that I do like about Mr. Schramm is that he has a very conventional view about business plans. He believes that they go out of date really quickly and that numbers in forecasts almost never match.

In my opinion investors really don’t care for the gibberish about the market or the sweet and dandy stuff that we tend to put in the plans. They see every business plan as their for of income. All they really care about is the numbers and how realistic you are with the numbers.

The last expert that I researched was Chuck Blakeman. He is a serial entrepreneur and a business success mentor. As well as Mr. Schramm he caught my attention based on the fact that he does not believe in Business Plans period. He think thinks that business plans are to forecast the future. It is his opinion that developing is a waste of valuable time, as the future cannot be foreseen. It is time that should be invested in the actual business and getting it off the ground.

After doing my research I have learned the real significance of business plans and the affect that it has in the industry.

http://bpexpertviews.blogspot.com/

http://chuckblakeman.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/allbusiness/AB12322189_primary.html

A simple DJ fix

Today I was at one of my best friends daughter 1rst birthday. And oh am I upset at what I witnessed today. So they had a DJ already reserved and he called in the night before saying he couldn’t make it. So they called in someone else at the last minute. WOW! Was this guy dumb or what? So the sound was absolutely horrible and full of static. I analyzed him the whole afternoon, and he would unplug all the cables and blow in them and plug them in again. It still did not fix anything. It got to a point that I got really upset, and approached the guy and asked him if everything was okay. Mind the fact that it was really windy out today. His answer was that the wind was affecting his equipment. I mean this guy just pissed me off at that point of how illiterate he was sounding at that moment.

I politely asked him if I could intervene and possibly resolve the situation, he said yes. The first thing that I immediately did, was turn everything off and unplug the speaker cables. I ran to my car and swapped the cables with some spare cables that I had in my car. I came back and plugged in the new cables and turned everything back on. The music sounded crystal clear with no more problems. I simply told the gentlemen, wind has nothing to do with it, it was the cables that were bad.

I guess what I’m trying to get across with this. Is that there are a lot of people out there that are ripping off people for something that they have never even done in their life. This makes us the professional’s look really bad. People need to be conscious of what they are doing before they go out in public and make themselves look really bad in front of everybody. At the end of the party the guy went to the dad of the birthday girl and gave them their money back.

http://www.howtogeek.com/66124/how-to-fix-damaged-or-broken-audio-cables/

http://www.guitarcenter.com/DJ-Gear-Pro-Audio.gc

 

The Business Side

So today I had an unexpected meeting with a few of my neighbors. One of them has been helping me out lately in opening my own business. He has been pointing me in the right directions in order to get what I need. The most recent roadblock that I have faced is that banks are requiring you to have at least 10% of the amount of money that you are asking for in the bank. Obviously as a young aspiring entrepreneur I don’t have that kind of money to have sitting in a bank account.

So during this meeting we were strategizing different ways of getting around things in order to successfully get my business off of the ground and start working. We went back and fourth with different ideas. Until we were able to figure out that its not the fact of having the physical money in the account or not. It is all about making the numbers work. Getting 15 or 20,000 dollars is not the biggest problem here. The biggest problem is getting the numbers to look good enough that the bank will just oversee the fact of not having the money in the account.

I learned through this meeting that my overall goal when presenting my business plan to the bank is to make sure that they absolutely do not have any questions in regards to the business by the time that they are done reading that packet. I want to try and cover all of my bases within that package in order to minimize the number of questions that I am going to get when they are done. Not only will this help me out with their financial decision but also it will show them that I am a very organized person and like to keep things simple enough for them to understand it easily.

A Great Satisfaction

For the past couple of months I have been preparing for one of my biggest performances I have ever had as an artist. The "Calle Ocho block party" is known as the biggest festival in the world. Where they close about 20 blocks and setup several stages along the street to hold musical acts. It is said to have an attendance of over 50,000 people. So this was huge for me. I had a big problem though; I didn’t have the money that I needed to pull off a competitive performance that all of the other artists performing would have.

So I decided to use the skills that I have learned so far in my master’s degree. I decided that I was going to find some sponsors to help me out financially. I had a perfect plan. My plan was to find sponsors that would help me out financially to cover the costs of the band members, the dancers, the transportation, the videos for the actual performance and so on. In return, I made t-shirts that had my information in the front of the shirt and on the back would show everyone that sponsored me in the event and their information.

My idea seemed to be a pretty good one and actually worked. I was able to raise the sufficient amount of money that I needed in order to cover all of the expenses for the show, and more than that. I then printed the t-shirts and gave all of the sponsors a few of the so that they can have them and see what we did with their proceeds.

After doing all of this work, I really learned something out of it all. I learned how to implement all of the skills that I learned in school in a real world scenario. That was great feeling, and a personal satisfaction for me.

The Miami Hurricanes

Today has been kind of a slow day for me. With a muggy weather I decided to stay home today and rest. I had plans to watch the University of Miami versus Clemson University basketball game today. It was probably one of the most important games in the whole season for the Miami Hurricanes. As I was watching the game my mind start working. I started thinking about the pending sanctions on the school and how it has affected them. I noticed it while listening to the commentators of the game. You can tell that there is just a huge dislike of the school throughout the country.

You know this is something that really gets me upset and worked up, because, there is no reason for this to be happening. The NCAA has made this worse than what it originally was. It’s like if everyone wants the school to go down. I really think that they should get rid of the current school president Donna Shalala because she has done nothing at all to remedy the situation.

As a future law student at the university, it is really shocking to me that the law school has not given any effort to get involved with this situation. It’s at a point right now that it needs to go the legal route and resolve this matter in the courtroom. The NCAA has just done whatever they feel like with the school and it is not right! They are plain out defaming the school and it needs to stop.

If the NCAA is going to give sanctions than give it already but don’t have the school in limbo for 3 years and then not do anything at the end. Let the kids play and have fun out there. Don’t steal their dreams and take all their aspirations away.

As you can see I am a die hard MIAMI HURRICANE!! I BLEED GREEN & ORANGE!!!!                                                                  []_[]!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reporter’s credentials

As a sports broadcaster it’s sometimes very difficult to get into sporting events to do the reports. All broadcasters or press personal are required to have appropriate credentials in order to legally report the event. The promoters of such events at their own discretions give out these credentials. We recently saw this at an MMA event in Nevada. The MMA recently bought Strike Force a competing organization in the same field. Since this happened the press has released very negative feelings about the situation.

When the MMA had the matchup in Nevada, the president Dana White, refused to issue press credentials to those spoke bad about the decision to buy Strike Force earlier in the year. As you can imagine this created a huge outrage from broadcasters that were denied. They started saying that they were being discriminated against. He responded publicly by saying that it was his discretion on who to grant the credential to. He felt that if they were going to speak negatively about the sport than they shouldn’t be there.

In my personal opinion I think that was the right call by Mr. White, I see it this way. If you cause harm to me in anyway, then you do not deserve to be part of any of my events. A lot of people are saying that they are only hurting themselves. I believe that they are protecting themselves from any negative energy around them. Now, I know that the reporters are just doing their jobs, but there a certain line there. There’s a line between you just trying to do your job and you harming others.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/jeff_wagenheim/04/13/credentials/index.html

http://www.fightopinion.com/2012/12/26/ufc-dana-white-sherdog-credentials/

http://sportsaddict-kconner10.blogspot.com/2011/06/dana-white-has-refused-to-issue-press.html

Miami Hurricanes Scandal

As a die hard Miami Hurricane fan and a future student at the University of Miami, it has been very difficult to deal with this investigation by the NCAA. It all started when Nevin Shapiro started being investigated in 2011 for his role in the Ponzi scheme. This is when after 100 hours of interviewing him from Yahoo; he spilled out the beans as some say. He admitted that he made many donations to the school with money from the scheme and gave actual and future players benefits in exchange for good play in their perspective sports. He bought them cars, took them to high-class nightclubs, bought escorts for them and everything.

As many may know that this is against NCAA regulations. Since then they have launched an investigation against the school and it’s athletic program. It has been a rollercoaster ever since they were launched. After the football team had made it to the AAC Conference Championship game twice in a row they decided to self impose a ban on them selves in order to lessen the impact of the NCAA penalties. It has been the word around the league that these penalties are going to be the worst that the NCAA has given in the history. The University of Miami can even face the death penalty. Facing the death penalty would mean that the school would be banned from the NCAA for life and will no longer be able to participate in any event hosted by the NCAA.

The latest news in the investigation is that apparently the team that was conducting the investigation recently went out of their jurisdiction by hiring the bankruptcy attorney for Nevin Shapiro in order to get information related to the investigation. Under the laws of the NCAA they are not permitted to hire third parties to acquire information to go towards their investigations. Due to this the NCAA has put the investigation on hold and started a separate investigation on the team that did the investigation. We are still waiting for those results.

http://sports.yahoo.com/investigations/news?slug=crrenegade_miami_booster_details_illicit_benefits_081611

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/25/3199699/ncaa-investigation-of-miami-hurricanes.html

A lengends ongoing controversy

If your father is a legend in the sports world, does this automatically make you a legend also? Just because you’re his son? Marcus Jordan seems to believe this. As the Jordan family recently relived another Nike controversy. You see, Marcus who is a point guard for the University of Central Florida Knights. He is averaging about 13.7 PPG (points per game) and has recently broken many school records. He is starting be called a school legend around campus.

He recently began his senior year of school. He decided that he wanted to wear his father’s Nike Air brand shoes. Although the school has a 3 million dollar agreement with Adidas that everything that the athletes wear is their brand. So from the schools view who have never won a national title with their basketball team. They actually had a chance with Marcus Jordan. It really came down to what were their priorities. They wanted a national title, but they did not want to get into a lawsuit with Adidas. They finally decided they would work with Adidas to come up with a new agreement so that the players can wear the shoes that they would like to wear. Although they never released the outcome of the negotiations with Adidas publicly, Marcus decided that he would no longer play for the team.

This controversy has really created an out roar in the community, everyone wanted to see this young man evolve and make it to the pros just like his father did. This has just made everyone upset because, he seems more interested in his image and fashion than the actual game. It is just a legends family controversy that seems like it will never end.

http://www.wftv.com/news/sports/mjs-son-creating-shoe-controversy-at-ucf/nJw9s/

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2009-10-22/news/0910210236_1_adidas-ucf-athletics-association-ucf-s-contract

http://nysportsjournalism.squarespace.com/jordan-nike-adidas1149/2009/11/4/if-the-shoe-fits-michael-jordans-son-relives-nike-controvers.html