Lessons from my Grandfather

Even though I never met this man because he passed away before I was born, there is much to learn from our immediate ancestors. There is an abundant amount of interesting accounts from his life that coincides with much of history and for these reasons, a young entrepreneur in today's age can learn from him. Before I get into the meat of this BLOG, I want most of us to admit that at one point our lineage had nothing in this country but a burning desire.

With this being said a full  connection can be made with myself, my brother and our grandfather. While my grandfather or "Lolo" as Filipinos called our grandfathers, was young he set out to America. He earned his engineering degree and soon started looking for a job in Detroit. Similar to most immigrants, he wasn't well spoken in English, but he did find opportunity in the US Army. He served in World War II and most tragically he was captured by the Japanese. He was a prisoner in what is the now famous Bataan Death March, where US and Filipino Soldiers marched 60 miles to the prison camp for over 3 months. As most Filipino Soldiers were slaughtered by the Japanese, our Lolo luckily survived. My grandmother always talked about how he came back thinner than her when he was finally reunited with her.

Now come back to the future with me in present day 2011. I am 2 generations away from my grandfather, but we have the same goals, to leave a better life for my family. Of course I will never compare my hardships of being  an entrepreneur with his World War II survival and experience, but I do admire his story of becoming an American Citizen. He went through the difficulties of coming to a new country, fight in history's most brutal war, and have a multitude of family ranging from many children, grandchildren, and great grand children within a hundred years. I would only be so lucky if I achieve a percentage of the experience my grandparents had. I know taking business risks are hard, but not to the measures of leaving your country in lieu of success, fighting a war, and when its all over having a family to be there with you. My final words for this BLOG is to remember that at one point your family had nothing in this country, but because they had nothing and worked hard to sustain in America, you now have opportunity. I would take opportunity any day over an entitlement.

Why are we so immersed in Social Media??? Part 2 The New Norm

For part 1 of this subject I took a very lighthearted yet cynical view about Social Media and its users. For part 2 I'm going to take a more objective view on the subject matter. For those who don't know my company is a Below the Line Ad Agency, which focuses on non-traditional advertising. So basically Social Media is on my mind and my clients' mind 24/7.Maybe that's why I keep talking about it. But this blog piece is my elementary Freakonomics moment where I want to combine Social Media and different instances in time.

The question still arises though, "Why do we keep going on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace, and the occasional LinkedIn connection?" My answer is simple but like most simple things in life, it is hard to understand. I hear a lot of people complaining people that the net and SM platforms are taking away the social aspect of everyday life, that kids will not be able to communicate or interact anymore. I have a different look at it. In the 80s and early 90s most business men were using phones, faxes, and couriers to transfer information to their clients. Now all it takes is an email or even a text message with a link to a PDF to send that information. Don't get me wrong Client relationships need to be strong, but a lot of work can be done via  a weekly conference call instead of constant contact during the work week.

This is where I believe most modern workers lost a feeling of being social. Technology took away the social aspect of work and home, but yet technology also brought the solution. The more un-social work and home has gotten, the more demand of being social was on the rise. Hence the rise of Social Networks. All of a sudden social spaces went from being perverted to trendy and finally the New Norm. The New Norm re-connected many people and enhanced their social well being. For instance my "frat house" roommate from Delta Chi and myself, message each other about meeting up and occasionally when the magic moment where both of us are free, we finally get together for a drink. And this is only possible because of Social Media.

As I said before, this is how I define Social Media:

“The collective thoughts, emotions, memories and events of many modern human beings”

-http://youngrichnerdy.blogspot.com

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Social CRM is the Future

Over the past 2 months I have had some experiences dealing with some great companies and not so great companies as a consumer. In this blog I will only focus on the great companies. These 2 companies Blue Sky and Scosche are 2 smaller tech companies both dealing with audio. As having an alternative life after work I produce music and DJ so I'm really in tuned with the new Audio Technology coming out. So this past Saturday while recording my Blue Sky monitors totally blew. The first thing I did was email their customer support. Guess what???? They mailed me back within 30 minutes apologizing and explaining the problem. As mad as I was about my Studio Monitors blowing up, the tech support was able to calm me down and we are currently solving this problem.
The second company Scosche, I had an awesome experience with. My girlfriend and I bought 2 pairs of their headphones and within the month, both broke in the identical manner. This was just unacceptable, so I went to their tech support site to the instant chat. The support was great and he apologized. He said it was unacceptable as well and that he will replace the models. So I send it in and within a week, the support emailed me back saying that they will be upgrading the headphones to on of their top of the line models. I don't expect any company to upgrade a product, but just to replace a broken product. But the support these two companies given were enough for me to become an advocate of their brand.
CRM is the future of brand advocacy no matter what product you provide for your customers. These two companies showcased class and dignity for their brands and products that should be studied throughout every company.

This is America and "You Can't Hustle the Hustler."

Speaking to a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs the past few weeks. The common sense is that we're all scared and afraid of the unknown. There were a few signs of hope but these signs are not significant enough for us to keep our head up. I watched a doom prophecy show the other night on the History Channel and they were all saying that Americans were doomed because we're too comfortable with our way of life and we can't conform. 

I don't believe in that. That's an answer that an elitist would say. This is America people, land of opportunity. As long as we have the opportunity to make a solution, America will be great. Elitists say that we're doomed to our own failures in oil. Guess what in the 1800s there was an oil scare. The difference was that the oil was actually whale oil. Obviously we moved to our modern means of energy but in America we will "Hustle" our way to a solution to make life better. America was built by immigrants who had a dream. Did the second richest man in history Andrew Carnagie build his wealth by going to Harvard? No he did not. Did Domino's Pizza start with an economic business plan with a golden parachute? I highly doubt that since they started by paying $500 for a pizza store name DominNick's. Did Thomas Edison go to MIT or CalTech to become the greatest inventor of all time? The answer is no. They were hustlers in the finest definition of the word.

Hustler: –noun

1. an enterprising person determined to succeed; go-getter.

 

My point is this. In America we can't get too comfortable because there are people hustling to make a better life for themselves and their family.  Solutions are being developed every day to make life better and that is the reason why I believe America will succeed. I still believe that if you can go to any country in the world there would be many people coming into our country in lieu of their own just because you can have an opportunity. That is the reason why my Grandmother, Mother, and Father came here. To give my brother an opportunity to become successful, but we know it doesn't guarantee it.

Where is hip hop music heading? Cause it'sleaving a alot of fans behind.

After listening to an intern today about hip hop music and how great Drake is I had to put my two cents into this. I grew up listening to rap and hip hop. I used to turn on the radio at night onto Hot 97, and make sure I recorded on cassette tape the hottest tracks like Biggie's One More Chance, Fugees' Mona Lisa, and random tracks Funkmaster Flex played. Luckily I grew up during the Golden Age of Hip Hop and music in a whole was not  tainted with the internet. But those days are long gone. I always thought I can grow with hip hop music, but the older I get the less relevance it has in my life. The new artists today has no relevance in my life since, I can't "stunt", "floss" or even "roll." With an exception of a few artists such as Eminem, Drake, and Kanye, I really can't see any young or elder adult take hip hop that seriously these days. The only thing I can see a young adult do with hip hop music is either dance to it at a bar, club, or sing the hook in your car.

Growing up, people who were older than me used to listen to Biggie and Pac and listen to their lyrics and not just that, memorize the meaning to it. After listening to hip hop and rap today, I have no idea nor clue what they are trying to say. Then one of my friends said, you're just too old for it. Well if this is the case then great, I can't bring my intelligence down to understand non-sense. On Biggie's Juicy, he overwhelmed us on how he took himself from poverty to success, now kid's have to listen to someone talking about black and yellow.

Whether I'm getting older or I just out grew hip hop and rap music, I will still listen to the classics.

Artis we should've taken over Atlantic Records 4 years ago.

I was texting with my good friend Artis the past few days on how Warner Music is operating at a loss. A few years ago when we were at Atlantic Records we were discussing the future of the music business. This was around 2006. Artis asked my brother and I where do we see the music business in 2010. We bluntly told him that the business will be insolvent but more than ever the population will want new music. As contradictory as it sounds, that is the reality of what the music business is today. 

So around 2006 Artis was able to secure a meeting with  some pretty high ups over at Atlantic to discuss future strategies and planning of their artists and businesses. After our introductions and brief presentation, he asked where do you see music in the near future, we said everything is going electro and there's going to be rappers and artists coming from different races and areas in the world. First off nobody believed us, second which really pissed me off was that they said that Pop music was going to start to use more instruments. Well tell that to Ke$ha and Far East Movement. That was the first prediction that came to fruition.

The second prediction we came up with was that artists will start to look for corporate sponsorships to release new music. This is a little difficult to grasp because we talked too much business at the table, but our thoughts was that if you go this route the public will reject most of the music that is associated with a product or brand. Since music is still ART, people will ultimately reject this music. There's a bunch of examples out there such as the Bacardi Music Launce, Axe music launch and the Toyota music launch that failed. Here's a tip, Brands and Sports work 99.9% of the time, Music and Brands may backfire on you 99.9% of the time. 

The lesson from this was that Artis, my brother and I were right. LOL J/K. The real value to this story is to always look ahead in your business no matter what industry you are in and sometimes the executive may not have all the answers, as we saw from the banking crisis.