St. Vincent - 'Year of the Tiger'

If you haven't listened to St. Vincent's new album 'Strange Mercy' you should get on it. It's amazing.

Below is a video of one of the new songs off of the album, enjoy. She's so bad ass.

St. Vincent - 'Year of the Tiger'

Time To Put It To Use

A few weeks ago I wrote about what Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook could teach a young entrepreneur in “Learn From The Experts.” These two men have definitely made something of themselves following a few key rules, and it is about time for me to flee the nest to put those tips to use.

These two men have taught me to think long term when developing a business plan. Not only does show investors that you have a well thought out plan, but it helped me to see the big picture. By envisioning the whole process, it allowed me to tweak ideas and think of new ones.

The second and main thing these two entrepreneurs taught me was to dream big. My business plan includes ideas that I never thought I would be capable of coming up with. I have completely taken my beginning idea and ran with it. Sometimes it can be difficult for me to be as creative as I want, but I pushed myself very hard for this project and I am glad that I dreamed big.

As a graduate student, I have done my fair share of researching different techniques for being successful and it seems that two keys to have are creativity and persistence. As long as you have these traits you will survive. There are many bright minds out there, but they don’t have the motivation to make something of themselves. And I’ll be honest, there are a lot of times that I just want to quit, but where’s the fun in that?

In addition to following these tips, you should pay special attention to certain sections of your business plan. Entrepreneur.com says the business concept, market overview, and financials sections are the most important and I completely agree with them. The business concept section will give the investor an idea of what your product/service is. It is where they get to know you. Secondly, the market overview helps to investor to understand if there is a market for your idea. If there isn’t any room for growth in the market, then the investor isn’t going to be interested. Lastly, the investor needs to know what kind of money you are looking for. By providing him with your financial section they will know exactly how much is needed to start your business.

I have constantly taken these techniques into account while developing my final business plan. So many factors go into the development of a business plan; what to do, what not to do, how to word it, how to make it look, etc. On top of that, the people you hand your business play to have already viewed many other business plans, so you have to make yours stand out.

Just remember that your idea is great and that you can reach your goals with persistence.

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Sources:

http://www.allfacebook.com/what-every-entrepreneur-should-learn-from-mark-zuckerberg-2010-06

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219592

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/38290

http://billingsleykatie.blogspot.com/2011/10/learn-from-experts.html

http://www.betadaily.com/2010/02/07/professional-business-plan-writer/

Wish I Made It to Austin City Limits Fest 2011

Things came up that made me miss out on this year's Austin City Limits Festival, but I'll survive. There is always Coachella in April.

Anyway, here are a couple of performances that I would have killed to see...

The Antlers - 'I Don't Want Love"

Alexander - 'Truth'

AWOLNATION - 'Burn It Down'

Do you agree? NME's 150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years

To celebrate their 15th anniversary, NME released their list of 150 best tracks from the last 15 years, and I agree with a few.

I actually like most of the songs on the list, but the order is off for me. Do you agree??

Some of my obvious favorites from the list, though I don't agree with the numbering, include:


141 - Gorillaz "Clint Eastwood"

139 - Coldplay "Yellow"

121 - Santogold "LES Artistes"

118 - LCD Soundsystem "All My Friends"

107 - Radiohead "No Surprises"

99 - MGMT "Kids"

76 - Beck "Where It's At"

49 - Best Coast "Boyfriend"

44 - Muse "Knights of Cydonia"

29 - Crystal Castle "Alice Practice"

22 - Arcade Fire "Wake Up"

6 - The White Stripes "Fell In Love With A Girl"

4 - The Strokes "Last Nite"

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Source:

http://www.nme.com/list/150-best-tracks-of-the-past-15-years/248648/page/1

First Music Festival in Afghanistan in 3 Decades

On Saturday, October 1, 2011, Afghanistan held their first music festival, Sound Central, in three decades. Though the festival was only six hours long, musicians from Australia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan were all there to rock out. 

During the 6 hour gig music had to be stopped twice for the call to prayer and no alcohol was served. This isn't the typical music festival I usually write about, but it is music and a huge step for Afghanistan, where music was outlawed under the Taliban regime. 

Here is a video of festival goers rocking out and having a good time. Hopefully this is just the beginning of music festivals to come.

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Sources:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/afghanistan-holds-first-rock-concert-242875

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/01/us-afghanistan-rock-idUSTRE78T27720111001

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15142243

30STM - 'Hurricane' (Explicit)

30 Seconds to Mars visited Hawaii this week and unfortunately I missed the show, but it did remind me that I really liked their second album 'A Beautiful Lie' and a couple of songs off of their newer album, 'This Is War.' 'Hurricane' is definitely one that I liked (make that loved) off of the new album. This video has been out for a while now, but call me crazy, I love it. It has some pretty explicit things in it, so viewer beware. It also features Jared Leto without a shirt, which is a plus.

30 Seconds to Mars - Hurricane (explicit)

Learn From The Experts

Some of you may already know this, but I am working on my Master’s Degree in Entertainment Business and I have been trying really hard to soak up all the knowledge that I can to make something of myself. While going through each of these classes I always find myself wanting to know more about a subject and digging a little bit deeper to find research on my own.

In my current class, we are discussing business plans and how to develop an effective strategy for your business. This makes me think of the social media entrepreneurs out there and what they have learned from their start-ups. I chose the obvious social media guru and creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, and founder of Mashable, Pete Cashmore, to find out what they can teach new entrepreneurs from their experience.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

Even if you haven’t seen the movie ‘The Social Network’ you know who Zuckerberg is and what he has accomplished, but for the sake of being thorough I will give you some background information:

• CEO and Founder of social media network, Facebook
• Studied Computer Science at Harvard University
• Founded Facebook in February 2004
• Facebook has more than 800 million active users
• Facebook’s net worth as of January 2011 is $50 billion, (Venture Capital, 2011)
• Zuckerberg’s net worth as of September 2011 is $17.5 billion, (Forbes, 2011)

Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable

Cashmore is less publicly known, but his website, Mashable, is a well known news site and is growing quickly. Here are a few key points on his background:

• CEO and Founder of social media and digital news blog, Mashable
• Skipped out on college
• Founded Mashable in 2005
• Mashable has more than 50 million monthly pageviews & 17 million unique monthly visitors, (Mashable, 2011)
• Mashable’s “revenue is in the millions but that is as much as Cashmore will say about it,” (Reuters, 2011) 

Now to the main question…

What can these two guys teach us to help develop our business plans?

Let me start by saying that even though your business may not be strictly social media or web based, you can still learn a thing or two from these tech saavy guys. They have both found ways to make themselves successful that would apply to anyone starting a new business.

Dream Big

Zuckerberg has obviously demonstrated how big he would like Facebook to be nowadays, but did he always dream for it to be this big? 

Nick O'Neill points out that Zuckerberg has began exercises to help him develop ideas that can only be accomplish with unlimited resources. This helps him to take the company above and beyond, but the key is confidence. Without the confidence to believe in your ideas, they will not succeed. 

Cashmore says, "A lot of people start out with an exciting thing and they want to take over the world, but really the people who do take over the world have a good plan of how to get there and the steps along the way."

You have to think outside the box when developing your ideas for your business plan. Not only will this help you to accomplish your goals in the long run, but it will show investors that you are innovative and creative.

Be the 'New Kid'
This tip goes in hand with dreaming big, but you should take advantage of being the 'new kid.' You can learn from the mistakes of other businesses, but Cashmore says to embrace your naivete in the industry. This will help you to develop something completely new and unthought of. 

By being the 'new kid' you are able to invent yourself in whatever way you see fit. Take advantage of this and dive head first into the challenges ahead. This too will show investors that you are creative and willing to take risks to succeed.

Think Long Term
O'Neill says if there is anything that you can learn from Zuckerberg it is to stick with your long term plan. Investors want to know that you have a plan for the long term life of the business and that their money isn't being recklessly spent, so think long term. 

Try to vision your business plan over a 5 to 10 year span. This doesn't need to be very specific since many adjustments will be made over the span of this time, but it will help you to identify your goals, reach them, and grow your business. 

Just look at how big Facebook is now. A small idea with a long term goal of connecting people and now you have a social media conglomerate that won't be disappearing anytime in the near future...or ever.

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Sources:

https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet
https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?founderbios
https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/goldman-invests-in-facebook-at-50-billion-valuation/

http://www.allfacebook.com/what-every-entrepreneur-should-learn-from-mark-zuckerberg-2010-06
http://emarkzuckerberg.com/2011/05/what-entrepreneurs-can-discover-from-mark-zuckerberg/

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/219592

http://mashable.com/about/

http://kaleazy.com/revenue-and-net-worth-of-the-20-most-popular-blogs/

http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2011/01/11/the-most-influential-ceos-under-30/