Business Plan Development
During the progress of this month, I learned about all the
important parts that a modern business plan should have, and what should be in
them, in order to have a document that investors can easily understand, and
catches their attention.
An industry overview and analysis should be on it to show your
future investors that you understand the field where you are getting into, and
should reflect positive numbers and statistics that show growth and future
opportunities. The company itself should also be descripted and it should be
clear what it does and for what purpose.
After saying who you are and what do you do, you should then say
who are you providing a product or service to, and how are you going to make it
available to them. A monthly budget should be presented for this for the first
three years of operation of the company, and a description and analysis of the
competition should also be shown, to provide a reference of the industry
standards. Monthly budgets should be also provided for the costs of your staff
members and operations, because this is how much it’s going to cost to provide,
or create, a product or service.
Also,
during this class, it was Hall Of Fame Week in Full Sail. One of the most
interesting guest speakers I could see were Andrew Kautz, Chief Operating Officer for Big Machine
Label Group, and Rob Souriall, Vice President, Global Marketing, Disney Music
Group, responsible for releasing Taylor Swift’s “1989”, and the Disney’s “Frozen”
soundtrack respectively. They talked about how thinking outside the box, and
knowing their target markets, helped them reach the top two most sold albums from
2014, and to date. They also mentioned the reason why Taylor Swift’s “1989” is
not on Spotify, which is because they only wanted in to be available for
Premium users, but Spotify didn’t agree with that and the label didn’t upload
it, contrary to common belief where people believe that Taylor Swift didn’t
want her music streaming at all and took it down from Spotify.
Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution
This course completely
surprised me with what we are learning on it. I thought it was going to be only
about the different channels to distribute music, films, video games and books,
but it has covered a lot more than that.
It is making a big focus on
how to distribute your entertainment business related product yourself without
needing a big company to help you, and its showing us how its actually really
simple nowadays and how you can make more money that way. The first week of
class we learned how to write a pitch letter to an agent with the purpose of
getting help to license or get your work published. We were told what are the
key elements that should be there and what is the best way to present to catch
the agents attention. We also learned how to find these agents depending on in
what field are you trying to get your work published and how to avoid scams or
fake agents or agencies.
Another thing that I found
very useful was learning how to create a proper press kit for an artist you are
trying to promote and distribute. As a musician, I have created press kits and
press releases in the past successfully that have helped my own band move
forward, getting shows, magazine reviews, and radio interviews, but it was good
to have a formal instruction about how to create them and what should be on it
in order for it to be effective.
As someone aspiring to own a
record label in the future, it was also very helpful to learn about the
different ways of licensing music, it’s benefits and how to do it
independently. I find this important because in the changing world of music,
its becoming everyday harder to monetize only out of records or songs sales,
and to survive companies need to adapt and expand, licensing music for movies
or commercials, or selling them to other artists in other countries for
example.
Digital Marketing
Now that we are halfway through the digital marketing course, I feel that I have learned more than I originally expected, not only because I’m learning interesting and useful things that I wasn’t expecting, but also because we are already putting them to use in real life.
In class we are conducting a paid online marketing campaign to a product that just has been released to the market and it’s being sold through it’s website. It’s very interesting how a little economic boost can make a big difference in the online world; it increases our exposure and our chances of getting visits. It is also important to have a strong creative side to combine with this effort, you need to make the most of a few space, and a few lines and characters. With little words and information you need to catch the attention of people in a few seconds.
The marketing campaign is a way to put in a practice the payment model ‘Cost Per Click’ (CPC) but we have also learned a couple more of them. Another payment model is ‘Cost Per Impression’ (CPM) which is paying for placing your ad and the exposure, and the third one is ‘Cost Per Action’ (CPA) which consists in analyzing the cost of every single conversion, or the action that we were calling for in our original objective when placing the ad. Each one of these models can be used for different kind of product/service and with different objectives.
Another thing that I wasn’t expecting and that I’m enjoying is the exposure to interesting people either face to face, like when we met entrepreneur Chef Bob, or by watching speeches of people like Eli Pariser, who leaves us with great reflections and concepts like the ‘”filter bubble” which is the danger of only getting exposed to things you are interested and related to material that you had view before.
Entertainment Law
I am happy to say that my original goal for this course was 100% met, and I learned many other things that are complete related with my business plan and that I should be aware of.
My original goal was to learn about copyrighting. I learned the importance about having your intellectual property protected and with the credits properly distributed amongst the people that completed the work. If you don’t have your material protected somebody else could use it and make profits with it or damage your brand image. In order to avoid this, the only thing that is needed to do is to fill out the proper forms at copyright.gov and pay the fees, writing down the information of every party involved and determining the legal owners of the material.
I also learned that there are certain contracts with companies or agents that keep a percentage of the copyrights; this is not a good idea because they would have control to do with the material things that might be not of my best interests so I need to always own what I created to be able to protect it. This means that I also learned how to avoid infringing on other’s copyrights or intellectual property, before publishing any type of work it is important that I make sure I have clearance or permission to use any type of art work (music, lyrics, sculptures, photographs, etc) that belong to others.
It was also good to have learned some legal terminology basics, understanding terms like “plaintiff” to refer to the party complaining or filing the case and “injunction” to refer to a stop order to request an individual to stop doing something for a court order, amongst others, is helpful for future understatement when reading articles that talk about court cases of the industry
Artist Management
During the course of Product and Artist Management all of my expectations for it were covered. I did not only learn about what it takes to properly manage an artist or a product, but also how to deal with different issues and problems that could show up along the way.
Among the most important things I learned during the month was the importance of having a good support team for an artist. Its important to work with a good booking agency or booking agent if you don’t have the sufficient contacts to plan a tour, because they will have more experience and will know how to help make it possible. It is also important to have an attorney that can help you from the beginning to make sure all of your brands and trademarks as an artist are not taken already, and that they wont be bringing any legal issues in the future, as well as going over with you any type of contract being offered so that the artist can make the best out of it and doesn’t get limited with other opportunities that could show up in the future.
I also believe it was important learning about the different fees that the artist’s support team charge for their services. For example, the artist manager usually takes between 10% and 25% of net income for all the services he provides for representing the artist, this means negotiating in its behalf, branding and conceptualizing, and creating and applying a marketing strategy appropriate for the artist among others. A booking agent usually charges a 10% fee that could be down to 5% for most successful artists, or if revenues are substantial, or that could increase if the artist is just starting out, and a publicist can charge a few hundred dollars for a press release or over $1,000 per month for ongoing support (over $4,000 for national projects).
Its key to surround yourself, in any aspect of your life, by a team of people responsible and capable of accomplishing goals that are related to your purpose in order to move forward and reach your objectives.
Negotiation and Deal-Making
One of my original goals for this course was to learn how to negotiate in the entertainment industry. I think this goal was met with the different mock negotiations we conducted in class that involved artists, filmmakers, producers, athletes and executives.
I learned that is important to always try to find out what the underlying interests of the party you are negotiating with are, as well as to let them know what yours are so that an agreement that is 100% beneficial to both can be reached. The best type of negotiation is where all the parties involved are 100% satisfied with the result, and not one where one wins and the other loses or one where the parties get 50-5 of what they originally wanted.
One of the key lessons I learned in order to be able to reach these types of agreements is to learn to separate the people from the problem and to keep emotions away from the negotiation. By separating the people from the problem and focusing on the issue itself, you would obtain better results in the negotiation because everything will be dealt in a more objective way. The same for keeping your emotions away, its ok to eventually drain a little, and let the other side drain too, but whenever things start to get heated is always better to take a break and continue later, because after all, a negotiation is not a fight and the other party is not your adversary.
And finally, it’s always important to previous of a negotiation run a background check of the people you are going to be dealing with if you don’t know who they are. This way you can make sure of what is the best away to communicate with them and you could find out ways to relate. It is also important to run a background check as well of the topic being negotiated so you could have objective criteria to compare your propositions and play fair.
Finances
After taking the Entertainment Business Finance course I felt like my original goal of learning different ways to finance projects, and more, was fulfilled.
I know now that to finance a company or a project you can sell shares, or a part of it, to investors depending on how much the company is worth and depending how big this share is they will have more or less participation in the decision making processes of the company. I also learned that when they change the amount of money that they are willing to invest in the company, the value of it could go up or down depending if he wants to invest more or less, or if he wants more or less share of the company for the same amount of money.
Another way of financing companies and projects is taking loans from banks or other related entities, this is a good idea if you are not willing to give up a part of your company for money to operate it, but you are going to have to pay interests on the money that is given to you in time.
I also learned that sometimes you could be on the other side and be the investor, when this happens there is key information that you would like to considerer about the company before putting some of your money in somebody else’s project. Its important to read the Income Statements and Balance Sheets of the companies you are interested in investing in and paying attention to certain ratios that allow you to know how capable is the company in covering their short, and long term financial responsibilities, how does their assets generate sales, how much debt they have and how their sales turn into profit, among others.
But the biggest takeaway I take from this course is one that comes from the book we red “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” where we learn that is important to be financially literate. This way we can put our money to work for us by buying assets that will generate more money in a shorter amount of time rather than spending our life working for money to pay bills. It is also important to watch out not to buy liabilities thinking that they are assets.
Brand Development Course
In this course my original objective was to learn how to develop strategies that help companies become icons within their industry. I felt that I learned beyond that, I felt like I learned how to develop brands and companies that can become icons in the world and not only within their industries.
One of the ways of doing this that I liked the most is creating a story behind the brand and the many different and creative ways that this can be done effectively. For example, when I used to watch my favorite artists in YouTube performing in the Moog’s sessions ‘Moog Sound Lab’, I never thought before that this was an effort from Moog to tell a story about who they are. But when I come to think about it, their objective was accomplished with me, unconsciously my way of looking at the brand has been changing through the past years, also with the help of the documentaries they have released about their role in the music industry since the 1970’s, and their instruments been on stage of big festivals played by some of my favorite artists, and now I look at the brand as reliable, historic and innovative thanks to all the storytelling they have been working on.
Another thing I liked about the course was learning the importance of getting to know your buyer persona, to the degree of creating a profile of how your main target is, because this would give you a better understatement of how to make the brand get to them. Also, learning how to create a Brand Identity Model and setting up your Business Model, are important steps needed to go through before starting any business because they give you direction and security of knowing what you are about and what you are doing.
Overall I found this course to surpass my expectations and I am very grateful for what I’ve learned. Been a brand manager in the Entertainment Business and getting to apply all of this concepts is something I would enjoy doing for a living.
Project and Team Management Learning
I have to admit that I was very surprise when in this course we were told that we were going to be studying different types of personalities as a part of learning how to mange a project or a team.
It was, of course, a very pleasant surprise because the course felt not only as a management course, but as a phycology course as well. By learning about different types of personalities with the DiSC assessment (Dominance, Influence, Steadfast and Compliance), and learning how to deal with each one of them, I discovered that everyone of them has its own advantages and disadvantages, and that none of them is better than the other, but that for certain things or projects some of them are a better match.
Understanding the pros and cons of these different types of personalities is something that I would recommend everybody to do, it makes you see the world in a different way, and makes you appreciate more the variety of people on it, because everyone has something good to bring to the table.
A great way of practicing analyzing people is by doing the character studies we did in class, I recommend watching interviews of personalities you admire, or whom you don’t know much about, and try to identify what traits of these types of personalities they show. This way next you are dealing with people at work or in your personal life you will understand better what type of personality they have and what is the best way to work or get along with them.
During this course I also got to learn more about myself, I have traits from all these types of personalities, and in the right amount and in the right moments they can be very useful, but they could also be harmful if they are not dealt with properly.