Month 11: Business Plan Development

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Business Plan Development course:

When researching who to write about in the leadership portfolio assignment I came across some interesting and brilliant authors along the way that were worth of investigation but we could not pick all of them, so we picked Mr. Garret Sutton, Esq. for the book “The ABC’s of writing winning business plans” and the team of authors of Mr. Brian R. Ford, Mr. Jay Bornstein and Mr. Patrick T. Pruitt authors of the book “The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide”.

On one hand we have the renowned lawyer Garrett Sutton an author, speaker and a member of an elite group of "Rich Dad's Advisors” that are hand selected by author Robert Kiyosaki, with over twenty-five years experience assisting and advising individuals in the selection of the appropriate corporate structures of limit liability in business, protect their assets and advance their personal and financial goals through real estate investments and other means of wealth creation. Sutton attended Colorado College and the University of California at Berkeley where he received a B.S. in Business Administration in 1975. In 1978, he graduated with a J.D. from University of California's Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. As a member of the "Rich Dad's Advisors" Mr. Sutton speaks to investors and entrepreneurs on a variety of topics including asset protection, liability limitation, wealth creation, as well as various business and real estate issues. Sutton had written several books; among them there is “The ABC’s of Writing Winning Business Plans”, “How to Buy and/or Sell a Business” and “Start a Business Toolbox” among others. His books provide an accessible source of information for building your own success.

In the “The ABC’s of Writing Winning Business Plans” Garrett Sutton suggests that the three essentials every business plan must have are:

• It must be a true and complete description of your business.
• It must use simple and understandable in language.
• It must be summarized and directly to the point.

It is important to point out that according to Mr. Sutton the success of a business relays on the entrepreneurial spirit of the person and not his age or gender. I completely agree with him. He states that to him the personal traits a business plan presenter needs to be a successful entrepreneur are:

• Vision: the ability to find opportunities others cannot see.
• Courage: the ability to act despite tremendous doubt.
• Creativity: the ability to think outside the box
• Ability to withstand criticism: understand that there is not one successful person who has not been criticized.
• Ability to delay gratification: understand that even if its very difficult to deny yourself the short term immediate self gratification you need to do it in favor of a greater long – term reward.

On the other hand we have the Ernst & Young team of Mr. Brian R. Ford, Mr. Jay Bornstein and Mr. Patrick T. Pruitt authors of the book “The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide”. All three of them are partners in the Philadelphia offices of Ernst & Young and have worked with entrepreneurs from the “idea” stage to beyond going public. In the case of Brian R. Ford we have an individual with an extensive professional experience, especially when it comes to the casino gaming industry where he is considered one of the leaders. He has also worked in industries from manufacturing, to retail to distribution with even some Fortune 25 clients. Mr. Ford was one of the original authors of “The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide”. On the other hand we have Jay Bornstein, with a 20 plus year experience as a tax advisor for business from the start up stage to the going public one. He joined the authors of “The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide” in 1993 for the second edition. And finally we have Patrick T. Pruitt as the newest member of the team of authors. Mr. Pruitt has extensive experience in all stages of the business cycle having worked with companies on finding financing alternatives from obtaining early-round angel financing to getting private-equity financing to find a way to enter into the public-capital markets.

According to the Ernst & Young team, a business plan can be used for either of the next three things and if done correctly, with some modifications, it could even be used for all three.

• Set the goals and objectives for the company’s performances.
• Provide a basis for evaluating and controlling the company’s performance.
• Communicate a company’s message to middle managers, outside directors, lenders and potential investors.

One thing that is stated very clearly in this book and is that future businessman and businesswomen like us need to be very clear about every part of our business plans creation. They tell us that for an entrepreneur the use of a business plan is important, if anything, for setting the direction of the company over the next several years because for this you need to have a plan that should be the step by step action course to take during this period. This is an extremely important piece of advice since for many entrepreneurs the pressures of the day-to-day management of the company leave them with little time for planning. This becomes a very unfortunate scenario for a new business owner because without a plan of action an owner run the risks of proceeding blindly during a rapidly changing business environment. Of course, a business plan is not a guarantee that there will be no problems, but at least you have a plan and you can anticipate a crisis situation and del with it up front to cause the less damage possible to the company.

With both books the main similarity I find is the fact that they are asking the reader to be as specific and thorough as possible. One because the investor will get the exact idea of the kind of business that you are tying to offer him/her and more important than that because its what you will come back to, to make sure all the goals you stated in it get accomplished along the way. This is something that in our Business Development class was mentioned more than once as one of the key things to take into consideration when writing a business plan. That’s why I plan to take this piece of advice and be as specific with every part of it as possible. How can I be specific in my business plan? Well, I will start by finding a niche in the market with the need for my product of service, then be specific in the way I’m going to create, sell and distribute this. And finally, in our investors interest, I can be specific letting them know what are they gaining from their investment and how am I going to repay them. This could take some time to really put together the right way but it will benefit me more in the long run if I can avoid crucial mistakes that could cost me my company.


References:
•Ernst & Young Outline for a Business Plan (PDF)
www.concept2venture.org/EYplan.pdf
•Ford, B. R., Bornstein, J. M., & Pruitt, P. T. (2007). The Ernst & Young Business Plan Guide. Hoboken, NJ: John Wailey & Sons, Inc.
•Sutton, G. (2005). The ABC’s of writing winning business plans. New York, NY: Time Warner Book Group.

Month 10: Mobile Marketing and Commerce

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Mobile Marketing and Commerce course:



Survey Subject Overview:


The ten subjects interviewed, five females and five males, were between 24 – 46 years of age and had been using a cell phone device between 5 – 10 years. They were from different backgrounds, from bank executives, to someone in the creative team of an advertising agency, to a collage student. I wanted to get a feel of all of these demographics because my company is not targeted to any specific demographic since anyone from 24 to 46 years old can hire us to do an event for them.

Survey questions and summary of the responses:

1.What do you look for in a cell phone?
The subjects that took this test agreed that what they look in a cell phone is, above all, the latest technology available, as easy to use as possible, in a fashionable looking cell phone.

2.How often do you change or upgrade your cell phone?
Out of the ten people interviewed six upgraded their phones every couple of years and the other four every 6 months to a year. This shows that the majority probably waits until the upgrades in their cell phone carrier contracts are up and not go and buy a new phone just because of the hype. This majority were the older subjects, with family and more financial responsibilities. While the other group was composed of the younger interviewees that are less financially committed and that work for getting the latest product that is “IN” at the moment.

3.Why change the cell phone?
The main reason the subjects changed their cell phones were to get an upgrade on their actual model. In this case all of them had either iPhones or Blackberries.


4.In regards to your cell phone, is functionality or style more important to you? Any other reason?
All of the people surveyed responded that when it comes to cell phones is more important functionality than style. Given the fact that most of the subjects have either Blackberries or iPhones its safe to assume that they want the latest technology in their phones.

5.What do you primarily use your mobile device for? Ex. calls, text messages, check email, entertainment, etc.
The top three answers to this question were text messaging, calling, and Internet use, especially to use social media networks.

6.Do you still have a home phone?
The majority of the people interviewed did not have a home phone. This proves that cell phones are a gadget that people have around and so close to them that they find the use of a second phone around the house not useful since they already have their mobile phone.

7.How do you feel about mobile advertising overall?
None of the people interviewed were keen to the idea of mobile ads. They found them intrusive and annoying.

8.Do you feel mobile ads will replace traditional ads? Why or why not?
The general consensus about this question was that mobile ads will no replace traditional ads. What they subjects stated was that mobile ads with time would probably become very relevant at the time to promote something but not take over entirely. They think that traditional ads would still be around because people will still watch TV (and as always, a lot of it), but with the introduction of interactive TV and apps ads for traditional TV will change, and behave more intelligently; more like web ads.

9.What services or features on your phone do you think should be free?
They all agreed that text messaging should be a free feature in the use of your mobile phone. Text messaging has become such a big part of the use of a mobile phone that that’s why I think cell phone carriers have figure out some type of package deal where they don’t loose money but they make the text messages available to everyone for free or at least cheaper. This would be a plus for the costumer at the time to choose a cell phone carrier.

10.Why did you choose your cell phone provider? What are your reasons for staying with them?
The people surveyed that had iPhones answered that they had no other choice since they wanted the phone and ATT is the only cell phone carrier that has it. They remaining people who had Blackberries, since most – not to say all of them – cell phone carriers have them available, chose their cell phone service because of how cheap were their plans and how good the signal was.

11.What do you most dislike about your current cell phone or cell phone provider?
There where two main concerns, first problems with the signal, which in result created the problem of dropped calls and then the other concern was the fact that they were already in contracts with their current company and even if they wanted to change cell phone provider because they wanted to get the iPhone it would cost them more because their company did not provided this mobile phone.


Conclusion:

After gathering and reviewing the results of this survey and applying them to what the mobile marketing plan would be for my business plan it reinforces my thoughts about using it as a compliment to my main marketing plan. I think mobile ads are still a new development to a lot of people and unless we give them a really good reason to have them in their phone or give them something they can get out of it worth something, I think people would still think of them as an intrusion and annoying. And that is an image I don’t want my company to be associated with.


References:

•Survey done with the help of the survey tools of Zoomerang. (www.zomerang.com)

Month 9: Internet Marketing Optimization

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Internet Marketing Optimization course:

For the Leadership Portfolio Assignment we had to develop a class website by writing a single wiki-style web page using Google Sites. I had never even heard of this type of website so it was great to learn how to create one and take advantage of all the resources we had at our reach that we didn't even knew we had.

Here is the link for my part in this wiki web page:

https://sites.google.com/site/digitalimo/bianca-maldonado-lp-1

Month 8: Entertainment Media Publishing & Distribution

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Entertainment Media Publishing & Distribution course:

For the Entertainment Media Publishing & Distribution Leadership Portfolio we had to write a formal business strategy in which to digitally self-publish, promote, distribute and merchandise their own print media, music, or audiovisual content. I created 'Scape Management and bellow you can see my business strategy.




Mission Statement

In ‘Scape Management we aim to develop relationships with the artists we work with based on mutual trust, understanding, a common love for music and, very importantly - an ambition to achieve and succeed. We strive to work with and develop the careers of top-quality artists and to providing the highest level of management service we can for them with the common aim of achieving a consistent and consummate level of professionalism. We hope that our endeavors result in a contribution to the development of the performance of live music both for the artists we work with and their audiences alike both in Latin America and abroad.


Executive Summary

Bianca Maldonado – Owner and head manager.
Mrs. Bianca Maldonado was a music enthusiast all her live. Because of this she was very clear from a very early age on what she wanted to focus her career; the music industry. She graduated with honors from undergrad from the University of Puerto Rico with a double major in Public Relations and Advertising. After that she moved to the sunny skies of Miami, FL to work in the public relations market for almost three years. After all of those years of networking in and out of the entertainment industry she decided to pursue her desires of a post graduate education in Orlando, FL at Full Sail University where she got an Masters of Science Degree in Entertainment Business.

After graduation, Bianca Maldonado started her own artist management business called ‘Scape Management with the purpose of development new and enthusiastic talent.


Company Description

‘Scape Management is an artist management company based in Miami, FL. With a history of working with both Latin and international acts, we have developed a reputation as an artist-friendly company whose main focus is always on providing high quality musicians with a platform to develop their careers and to assist them in reaching a larger audience internationally.

Our approach to every artist we work with is to offer a broad representation service which covers each element of the artist’s recording and performing career including executive production of the recording process, negotiation and development of relationships with record labels, digital distributors, publishing companies, and booking agents worldwide.

Our central aim with the acts we work with is to ensure that their music and performance receives a high level of exposure to the audience we feel they need to reach. While we do run a core roster of key acts as a management company, our business does also on occasion provide services for artists on a project-by-project basis.

Please see our Services page for specific details on the management services we provide.

Product:

The product would be the recorded music from the artist in the company starting with the first solo album of Latin artist Lorenzo Duarte. The album would be composed of 13 songs written and co-produced by the artist himself.

Manufacturing Strategy:

The manufacturing part will be both digital and hard copies. The type of artist that he is will cover a broad market in Latin America. That’s why we are looking to give options to very technologically advance countries such as Puerto Rico, Mexico and Argentina to have the material digitally but also for countries that have some restrictions because of their economy they might want to have the hard copy of the CD.

Distribution Strategy:

CDBaby.com will do the distribution for this artist. They are a company that offers a wide range of distribution methods for this type of target market and also because of the benefit the offer on paying the management company weekly. With this company we would have our artist music in the main music download companies such as iTunes, Amazon and Raphsody.com among others and they also have the option of selling to the fans a duplication of the hard copy of the CD for those who want it

Marketing and Promotion Strategy

My artist is already known for his work on the Latin boy band MDO so he has already somewhat of a captured fan base from the get go. After studying that fan base we have concluded that for this project the marketing and promotion strategy will be aimed to females, 18-25 years of age, middle – high class, whose primarily taste in music is pop music.

Since the fan base is spread out across the Caribbean and the Latin American countries we will use a lot of Internet marketing via Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and You Tube. This will allow us to have a broad but concise marketing plan all across those markets. Street team guerrilla marketing and promotions in the countries will support this online effort, especially when the artist is doing presentations in the country.

Month 7: Entertainment Law

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Entertainment Law course:

For my leadership portfolio I decided to interview Mrs. Griselle Hernandez, Esq. She is a corporate attorney in Puerto Rico. She graduated twenty-five years ago from the University of Puerto Rico Law Department. After that she started practicing first as part of the legal team for Proctor & Gable in Puerto Rico. With time she also started to give classes at the same university where she graduated and at the Interamericana University, two of the major universities in Puerto Rico. After all of this she decided to open up her own practice about ten years ago with the help of her husband who is a Civil Law Lawyer.

I thought it would be good to interview her because she had corporate experience and more than likely those will be my clients when I decided to start my event planning company. As an example of an experience related to my company she told me in her email that she dealing right now with a case about a couple of event producers who made a proposal to a mayor in a town in Puerto Rico to produce all the Christmas festivities for the town on 2009, this including live presentations of artists, decoration, cultural activities, sponsorship requests and more. A different producer won the pitch for the contract. When they went to take part of the different activities in town during Christmas time turns out that the producer had developed all of the activities they had come up with and had previously pitched to the mayor and the committee. Because of this they want to sue the Mayor, the Producer and the town and she is evaluating how to go about it.

After she telling me about this particular case we started talking about the different liabilities I could encounter in a situation like that. Her advice to me, which is where she saw that they went wrong, was that if I’m going to go into detail of my creative ideas when I do a pitch I better have them by writing also in the proposal I give them. If I don’t the better option, in her opinion is not to go into it with detail and just not have that risk. According to her in this case the couple did not went into detail in the written proposal they turned in but since they were doing whatever was needed to win the contract they discussed them in the meeting. Apparently someone from the meeting told the ideas to the producer who won the pitch and decided to execute them. What she is looking into now is that if those conversations are protected since the only written document they have to show to a court don’t say much of anything.

She told me that for her the ability to have her own practice and not have to work for anyone else has been her moment of shining glory. The independence she feels every time she goes to work its something that makes her proud of her work every day.

Reference:

Interview to Griselle Hernandez, Esq on March 22, 2010 via email.
Contact information:
Griselle Hernandez, Esq
(787) 366-1047
(787) 653-5093
grishernan@gmail.com

Entertainment Law Leadership Portfolio

View more presentations from Bianca.

Month 6: Product & Artist Management

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Product & Artist Management course:



For my Leadership Portfolio I decided to interview Product Manager, Ineabelle Soto. She has been the Product Manager for Dell in Latin America & the Caribbean for the past three and a half years. Mrs. Soto has a Bachelor in Advertising with a minor in Marketing from the University of Puerto Rico. Once she graduated she started applying for different position outside the Island and was fortunate enough to get this opportunity given the past experience in marketing and advertising she acquired while going to school.

What her job entails is basically to manage the brand (Dell) all over the Latin America and the Caribbean markets. Some of the countries her product currently has presence are: Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia among others. Also her job can be divided with the fact that her product is not only one. They divide the product in two segments. First the have the ones that are targeted to a normal, every day consumer audience and second they have the ones that are targeted to a more business-oriented consumer. According to Mrs. Soto this is done because even when both are under the same name (Dell) and are the same product (computers) they are targeted to very different audiences so the way to reach them and make an impact so they will buy the product is very different.

A week in the office for Mrs. Soto starts with a conference call with both the Media and the Advertising Agency to plan where and when are they going to be promoting the latest product in all of those countries. She has a weekly budget to which she has to make sure both the Advertising and the Media agency adhere to. Coordinating with both they decide the type of advertising campaign that they will use for both target market in the different countries. Some may only use print media (which is generally where they promote the product in the Latin American countries), some will be supported by either radio ads or online advertising or both. For example in Puerto Rico, since it’s a market that is what they call very “Americanized” they use a lot of online marketing but for countries like Mexico, Venezuela or Colombia they prefer to use only print ads in both newspapers and specialized magazines.

All of this strategic planning is also highly influenced by what time of year is and the different holidays or special dates that that country might be celebrating at the moment. For example, we might think the famous “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving Day is an event only happening in the United States but in Latin America and the Caribbean they also have it or at least a version of it. This is one of the most important days in the year for a product like Dell Computers. The weeks before this event, and more important the days before, the advertising has to be very strong and strategically placed so they can make the most of this day where one of the most purchased items are electronics.

After all this meetings she receives the clippings and copies of the different ads in the different countries so she can have a record of what was advertised and where. In this ads there is a phone number that people need to call to buy the computer. Each ad has a unique phone number each week.
They do this to measure how effective is the ad and where they advertised it by how many people responded to it. This is a data that she has to study each week so she can plan what is going to be advertised and where so each the goals she has for the brand are accomplished and to make the most of her budget at the same time.

Besides all of this, she coordinates her appearance at all of the different conventions that she as the product manager would have attend to represent the brand. Also they have a yearly event where the showcase to different vendors their new products.

At the end of the interview I asked her what would be the three most important characteristics that she thought a good Product Manager should have. According to her they should be organized, strategic thinkers, and multi-taskers. They need to be strategic in the decisions they make, and organized and multi-taskers because they have different things going on at once for their product and they can’t afford to drop the ball on any of them because that could affect the brand.


References:

Interview with Dell Product Manager – Latin America and Caribbean Market, Ineabelle Soto on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010.

Month 5: Negotiation & Deal Making

Here is the Leadership Assignment for the Negotiation & Deal Making course:


For the Leadership Portfolio I had the pleasure to interview record producer Ruben Kahno. He is also currently working as the A&R Manager for the independent Latin record label Top Stop Music in Miami, FL. Mr. Kahno has been in the recording industry around five years and started working as a producer and recording engineer for The World Studios. On his spare time he also writes music and works on his own material as a singer.

I chose to interview Mr. Ruben Kahno given my interest in networking with individuals in the music industry, which is where I intend to work either on my own, with my own business or with a company already established. Given the fact that he has been working, both as a permanent employee for companies such as the ones mentioned before and also as a freelance producer, engineer and composer I though he could give me a better idea of how is it to negotiate your way into this very tough industry and maintaining a growing contact base.

While growing up in Bayamon, Puerto Rico, the 30-year-old music enthusiast always knew that music had to be a constant part of his life. According to him, he knew that living in such a small island was going to be detrimental in the process of learning about the industry he enjoyed so much and was looking forward to be a part of. That’s why in 2004 he decided he decide to move to the States, specifically to Miami, FL and enrolled at the Audio Technology program at the SAE Institute. After 9 months of been a full time student in the Institute he finished his degree and was already networking his way into the industry as a freelance assistant engineer at some of the recording studios in town. The networking factor, like in the other interviews I have done along the course of me being in the EBMS program at Full Sail University was a key factor in Mr. Kahno’s success to this day. While we were talking he expressed that one of his favorite quotes was “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet” because he had truly seen that the opportunities he had gotten by being prepared in his craft, while been in the right place at the right time, talking to the right people is what opened the doors for him in the business when no one else knew about his work.

I asked him about one of the toughest negotiations he had to be involved in and his answer was that it would probably had to be the negotiation to get on board as the A&R manager for Top Stop Records. He knew his passion laid in making music and creating something beautiful for the public to hear, so working a corporate business job in the industry was not something that he would just take at the first offer. By now he had worked as a recording engineer in the records of such amazing Latin artists as Enrique Iglesias, Luis Fonsi, Ricky Martin, Pit Bull, etc. He knew he had the chops to work as a producer for artists of this caliber so becoming part of the Top Stop Records family looked to him like the perfect opportunity to showcase his talent while also still maintaining the level of artists he worked with. So he decided to work in the deal that he would be able to, as part of his responsibilities, produce the work or some part of it of the artists of the label. One of his greatest accomplishment this far while been part of the Top Stop Records family has been taking part in producing the Latin Grammy winning single “No se mañana” that was responsible for the comeback of salsa singer Luis Enrique.



When I asked him how did he managed to maintain his deal making techniques in a creative world like the music industry where emotions are always flying high he laughed and said that at the beginning that was the hardest part because he came from a family of doctors, so creative, emotional people were not his expertise. At the end of the day he told me what we have been learning at class, that the best deal making technique he can have other than honesty, is just look at the other person as just that, a person. With the same needs and fears and dreams like you. To try and look at the situation from their perspective to see why is he or she making those demands and then reassess your “game plan” so you can get what you wanted out of the situation. Also a key factor for him in all negotiations in the professional world, but especially in the music industry, was professionalism. From the people working backstage, like himself more so than to anyone else. The unknown faces. Why is that you may ask? Well I really enjoyed how he explained that some artists get caught in the glitz and glamour of the industry and loose track of what’s important. They start getting involved in drugs and alcohol, thinking they can control it and at the end they don’t. They end up getting a bad reputation, the artist and everyone around them who are involved in that situation with them. For him, as much as he loves it, at the end of the day this is a job, and professionalism for him is key, because there are very few artists with a long careers. Artists fade, their careers end, but regardless of all of this his work will always be there and his calling card is how professional and competent he is while at work is and that is what is going to make of his career a long one and is what is going to give him more clout when he keeps negotiating deals in the future. If they don’t trust you, if they don’t trust you can do the job they will not hire you and make business with you and therefore that is the end of your career. I completely agree with Mr. Kahno’s point.

If I could summarize what I have learned and the most important points I could gather from talking to such and experienced man in the industry I could say they were some of the same basic points we need to know when we are doing a negotiation that we have been learning in class, which are:

• We are all the same and want the same things.
• We need to be straight and honest when negotiating because deceit will come back to haunt you further down the negotiation road.
• Communication is key. If you are not communicating well the negotiation is doomed from the start.
• And keep yourself and your emotions in check because they can cloud your judgment and hurt the negotiation process along the line.

Resources:

Information gathered from phone interview with Mr. Ruben Kahno on January 19, 2010 at 2:30 pm.