"Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up." – Ernest Hemingway
July 17, 2012 Leave a comment
The New Closet Guitar Hanger by Russell Garehan — Kickstarter.
I was just surfing around on Kickstarter and came across this item that I thought was worth sharing. Closet guitar hangers! This seems like a great idea when space is an issue or you don’t have the wall space for those wall hangers. I saw one other option online that costs more than getting one of these. Check it out!
June 5, 2012 Leave a comment
From a young age Justin Beiber understood the importance of social media from when his mom first started posting his videos on YouTube. In fact, it was those YouTube videos of him singing and playing his guitar that caught the attention of every screaming 15 year old girl, Ryan Seacrest, Ellen DeGeneres, David Letterman, and the nine figure mis-click made by his manager Scott Braun. One of those 15 year old girls was Selena Gomez, whom he can claim as his attractive and equally famous girlfriend.
Justin is now at an age where he must do more for himself. But when you think about it, he always has promoted himself. Justin, at a young age knew what most of us didn’t. Social media is the new wave of self-promotion. These 15 year old girls are now mostly legal adults and avid users of social media, leading the base of his online fan base. This generation knows how to use more than Facebook. They can use text messages, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, and other social media channels to share their love for Justin Beiber.
So what are his stats? Justin’s Twitter account has almost 23 million followers. His Facebook page has almost 44 million ‘Likes’ and listed as having almost 700 thousand talking about him. He has a MySpcae page with over 2 million friends and 110 million plays. His YouTube channel has almost 125,000 subscribers and over 6 million views, but he has a second YouTube channel with Vevo that has almost 1.5 million subscribers and over an astonishing 2.5 billion views. That is almost half of the world’s population of each view was unique! Oh and he also has sold over 15 million records.
So what has he done with all of these riches? He has invested. Not in common stocks like Microsoft, Pepsi and Apple, but into tech startups. Forbes wrote a recent article confirming four of them as messaging platform Tinychat, social curation app Stamped, gaming outfit Sojo Studios and, the fast growing and most critically acclaimed of his profile, Spotify. Spotify itself is quickly changing the music landscape, providing the ability to listen to watch you want to, provided you either pay a service fee or listen to a few ads. He also plans to invest in Viddy, a video-sharing app.
Without technology, Web 2.0, and the growth of social media, Justin Beiber would not exist this big in the public eye. Social media gave birth to the phenomenon of Justin Beiber. He uses YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and was an early adapter of Instagram. He says a big difference between him and Lady Gaga is “She didn’t have online fans before she had mainstream fans”.
Another strong note about Justin is his skill at networking. He boasts as friends the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Sean Kingston, Ryan Seacrest, Ashton Kutcher, and David Letterman.
With his social media savvy, his growth as a venture capitalist, and his hard work in music, Justin should be around for a long time and not become a phased out, burnt out teenie bopper. He is working to mature his music for adulthood and take a dip into acting in movies. He hopes to be known for the assets he buys into just as much as the songs he sings.
So what can we learn from Justin’s young career?
References
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_Justin_Bieber_on_any_social_networking_sites
May 16, 2012 Leave a comment
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if your company was run by legendary rock band, Guns N’ Roses? How would the company function? What would the culture be like?
Culture:
It’s a rock n’ roll band, so of course you would have to expect there to be a wild and loud culture. At the early onset of the company there might have been a lot of partying and an appetite for destruction, but once the stakes were realized and they fought through the lies everything would become more about the illusion of a business. There would probably be a lot of parties thrown by employees, but they would have to be squeezed in between the boss’ many oddly timed work sessions that give another illusion of hard work.
Management:
Axl Rose is boss, everyone else works for him. He may delegate some duties, such as the development and creation of his ideas, and also some supporting functions like who gets lunch, but he assumes total control. He may be late to a lot of meetings or product releases, or he may not even show up at all, leaving employees and customers baffled alike.
Project Length:
The length of a project is unpredictable due to cost overruns, poor decision making and poor planning. Some projects may seem easy, but they may take several years to be completed, frustrating their customers. But no matter how long a project takes to complete, the customers are so intrigued, and also have been overly impressed by earlier products, that they will hang around and wait for it to be delivered.
Talent:
There would be a lot of turnover in the company. The company would start with a few core guys involved in the creative and management direction. But, after a while one guy would assume full control of the company, essentially forcing the other founding members out. A few long time employees would stick by that remaining founding member, but there would be a lot of bad blood left from the former members of the company.
Human Resources would not have a lot of control over talent acquisition. The boss would control this process only seeking out the best development talent available, sometimes going through several employees until the right fit was found. The boss takes full advantage of ‘at will’ employment.
Employees would not be developed from within as training is not a high priority. Axl expects those that are hired to already know what they are doing and to buy into his style of managing.
Methodologies:
The development processes would be very ad hoc. No one seems to know what is going on except for the boss himself. It is difficult to identify any specific methodology. The development of projects would appear to those on the outside to be very chaotic and strung together in a very haphazard manner.
Since Axl brings in the best, he would rely on the talent that already exists with those employees. The results would prove to be unpredictable. At times it would seem like employees are not doing anything except telling people that they are about to do something big.
Costs:
Due to poor planning and decision making, as well as high employee turnover and highly talented replacements, costs are very high. Most of the costs go into the ad hoc development processes, the search for new employees as old ones leave, and the cost of training those new employees on Axl’s methodologies. A lot of money would be spent on the equipment to perform job tasks, always having the latest and greatest computers and other tech gadgets to try and remain relevant in the public eye. This would be an area Axl would want to show off.
Conclusion:
While it might be a lot of fun from the start to work for Axl, in the end it may prove to be too frustrating for anyone’s professional goals. Lasting a year would provide anyone with valuable experience on how not to run a business to their next place of work. Many former employees would feel left out in the dark and develop a lot of frustration and anger towards Axl. They might stick together and form other companies they may do fairly well, and they might say things they regret and later change their stories to try and reconcile and rejoin the company.
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