Monday, October 31, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Lloyd Banks- "Turn it Up" feat JS aka The Best (produced by. JS aka The Best)
Listen/Download Link-http://hulkshare.com/3a3wbqvnbbdu
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
The Grand Cinema 2: "All or Nothing" is coming soon!
The Grand Cinema 2: "All or Nothing" is coming soon!!! 11-8-11
We Don't Make Moves, We Make Movements!!!
Saturday, October 15, 2011
2nd trailer for The Grand Cinema 2: All or Nothing
The official release date is coming up so lets keep the #Movements going! There was a trailer that I was in that I wanted to put up but it only made sense to wait til we get closer to the release date to put it out. Until then enjoy this.
Check out the tracklist below also
An Entrepreneur Does Not NEED University Education
Image by j.o.h.n. walker via Flickr
I get asked a lot if an entrepreneur needs a college degree or university-level education in certain areas, in order to be successful as a business owner. My answer to this question is: No – of course not! The list of entrepreneurs who have been extraordinarily successful without college degrees is “a mile long”.
As someone who spent a lot of time and money on college, it pains me to say it, but you don’t NEED a university education to succeed as an entrepreneur. I emphasize the word “need,” because although I don’t think a college education is a must for entrepreneurship (it is for some other professions, obviously), I do believe it can be helpful in many ways. For me at least, the most important thing learned in college was a broader perspective on how human beings have approached life and conquered particular challenges in the PAST. That said, there’s no reason you cannot learn those things on your own, and further, as entrepreneurs, we’re really mainly interested in the FUTURE. The past can provide guidance, but you should not believe that the future will be exactly the same as the past. Rather, as an entrepreneur, you must condition yourself to create the future, and if past “realities” stand in the way, you find a way over, under, around, or through them.
I have written elsewhere that, in my observation and experience, five key character traits to succeed as an entrepreneur are the following. Let’s look at them in the context of what a university education provides.
- Perseverance: Yes, you can learn to persevere in a college environment, but you can also learn it on a farm, on an athletic field, in the military, or on your own in a multitude of scenarios and environments. Perseverance and the ability to tap the strong willpower that we all possess, come from inside. Your experiences in earning a college degree can help you further develop these skills, but you can learn them just about anywhere else too.
- Goal Setting: If there was a goal-setting course somewhere in my college education, I must have missed it! Everything I’ve learned about goal setting, I have learned on my own, from experience, from coaches, or in seminars.
- Tolerate Uncertainty: I’m not sure going through college really helps much with tolerating uncertainty. College, at least in my experience, tends to be a very structured environment, where you are told which courses you need to take to obtain a certain degree. There’s usually flexibility in some of the curriculum, but generally speaking, there’s a lot of imposed structure and not much uncertainty. An exception may be if you pledge a fraternity or sorority, but that’s another story, and you don’t need to go to college to join groups that “put you through the ringer” to become a member.
- Strong Desire To Succeed: Having a strong desire to succeed is something that comes from inside. You can help yourself nurture this desire by setting goals that really fire you up, but in the end, this desire comes from within you and cannot be taught at college.
- Different Definition Of Failure: Again, college is a very structured environment, unlike that of entrepreneurship. In college you get a grade from A to F. True, you can either pass or fail, the binary nature of which is more parallel to what you see in the world of entrepreneurship, but again in college it’s occurring in a protected and structured environment. There’s little reality in a protected environment. Some professors do a great job of mixing “real life” scenarios into the education process, but by and large, the university environment is its own little world. Quite frankly, that may help with the issue of having a “different definition of failure,” where it’s not expected that every test and every person be 100% successful right out of the gate. There needs to be room for “many small failures” and course correction along the way; that’s how entrepreneurship works best. The utility of college on this one could go either way, depending on the particular student, the particular university, the particular course of study, the particular professor, etc.
Let’s add five other key “things” that are very helpful in your quest to be a successful entrepreneur, and let’s also look at those in the context of a university education.
- Basic Understanding Of Finance And Accounting: These can certainly be learned in the university environment. You don’t need a college degree to understand them though. In fact, the key issues can be learned in a long weekend, or even less, if you’re already comfortable with numbers.
- Being Able To Differentiate Opportunities From Ideas: A good course in new venture initiation at the college level will get you pretty much all you need to know about how to filter through ideas and determine if they’re opportunities. Again though, you can learn how to do this easily without ever stepping foot on a college campus, or taking an online college course, never mind obtaining a diploma.
- Knowing How To Sell: You may learn a bit about selling and persuasion in your college experience. It won’t likely have anything to do with the courses you take though; rather, it will happen in the many social interactions that occur during college. There are university courses on negotiation and sales, but they also exist outside the college environment and tend to be much shorter and more focused.
- Networking Well: Learning to network well is something most people do by trial and error. It can help to have a mentor or two, whether it’s in a college environment or not. You certainly don’t need a college degree to be good at networking.
- Knowing How To Market: Marketing is as much art as science. It’s very helpful to learn the theory behind it, which you can do in college, at your job, on your own through self-study, or in your entrepreneurial experience. In the end, marketing is about testing, testing and more testing. You need to understand how to run the tests and how to interpret the results, then run the tests again. How you learn this, is up to you.
So, what do you think? Do you NEED a university education to be successful as an entrepreneur? If you agree with what I’ve said in this article, the answer is obviously: “No”! If you have a university degree or are pursuing one, I’m not saying it’s worthless! The way I look at it, just as athletes who are considering pro sports are wise to have a university degree “in their back pocket” as a form of insurance, so are entrepreneurs. Like pro sports, entrepreneurship is a highly competitive endeavor with significant uncertainty regarding how long you’ll be able to do it and what your ultimate level of success will be.
That said, many would say that such college degrees have now become commoditized, and except in specific circumstances, don’t really offer you much “insurance” or differentiation in the job market. It’s your life; you’ll have to be the judge of course! But if entrepreneurship is your focus, you have every opportunity to be successful whether or not you have a college degree on your wall, or in your closet. I would not change or trade the time I spent in college, but that’s not because it taught me to be a good entrepreneur. It’s for a host of other reasons.
-Paul Morin
Video: Jay-Z on Bloomberg Game Changers (Full)
The Bloomberg network’s Game Changers series traces Jay’s rise “from the street corner to the corner office”, through his early years under Jaz, the rise of Roc-A-Fella, his ascension to President of Def Jam and his monumental deal with Live Nation. They didn’t talk to Jay himself and they kind of gloss over the whole Roc split, but there’s some decent commentary from people like Steve Stoute, Barry Michael Cooper, author Jake Brown, Mr. Cee, Jaz-O, Jay’s 6th grade teacher and Lyor Cohen. They also took the lazy way out and chose to blindly perpetuate the myth that Vol. 1 was a horrible album and Vol. 2 was Jay’s big creative redemption. Because as we all know, with the exception of the “Always Be My Sunshine” fiasco, Vol. 1 is a way better album than Vol. 2.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
That's Rocawear: 99'-11'
How does cultural perception affect which fashion labels people wear and which ones they abandon? We sat down with entrepreneur and record exec, Steve Stoute - celebrity stylist, June Ambrose and Rocawear's Chief Marketing Officer Jameel Spencer to discuss how changes in popular opinion have affected some of today's fashion brands.
That's Rocawear viral videos celebrate the evolution of hip hop culture. Rocawear was established in 1999 off the excitement around Jay-Z and Rocafella Records and remains today as the number one urban lifestyle brand in the world. We celebrate how the culture has evolved and how Rocawear has not only evolved with the culture but has been a major force in communicating that evolution around the world.
For more information visit http://www.ThatsRocawear.com
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
A Quick Look of The Grand Cinema 2: "All or Nothing" tracklist
-JS aka The Best
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Be Bold. Rise Above The Noise.
Image by BBM Explorer via Flickr
As an entrepreneur, it is important to be bold. We live in a world where there is so much “noise” of all sorts, that if you’re not willing to be bold, it’s likely that you will get “lost in the shuffle”. Think about it; how many TV ads, radio ads, emails, billboards, print ads, and other marketing messages do you receive in a day? What percentage do you think you pay attention to?
The bold are not always loved, but typically they are respected and in a lot better position to be remembered and ultimately, to be successful. Particularly as a relatively new venture, but also true for more mature businesses, one of the biggest challenges you will face is making yourself and your company stand out from the rest of the pack. Without being bold and trumpeting your strengths and differentiating factors, it is unlikely that you will stand out and succeed.
I realize that this concept of being bold will not appeal to everyone. In fact, a lot of the time, I’d rather “fly under the radar” as well. Unfortunately though, as an entrepreneur, you typically need to find a way to be noticed, in order to be successful. This is not to say that you should be obnoxious, but it is to say that you will probably have to do some things that you’re not entirely comfortable with, in order to become known. Use your imagination. The wilder, the better. Stay within the law, of course, but with those guidelines, the sky is the limit.
Take for example mega successful billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson – he used to do all sorts of death defying daredevil stunts to promote his early and very successful company, Virgin Records. I’m not advocating necessarily that you risk your life, but the more different and exciting that you and your company can be (within reason, given the industry you’re in, of course), the more known and successful you are likely to become. Be creative in your boldness.
If it makes your stomach turn just thinking that you need to be bold, try looking at it a bit differently. Don’t think of it necessarily as the peacock, strutting its beautiful, loudly colored feathers in an effort to be noticed. Rather, think of it as “finding your voice”. I hear this phrase used quite a bit in the online, blogging and social media space, and being more of an auditory person, it has a visceral appeal for me. In essence, it says that you don’t necessarily need to make yourself stand out by being “loud and obnoxious”. Instead, you can do so by finding “your voice,” or unique and distinctive way that you communicate with your target market and other constituencies.
As long as the “voice” that you choose resonates with your constituencies, you can establish yourself as someone (or some company and brand) adding value with a unique perspective and approach, which makes you someone worth listening to. I think Apple, one of the most recognized brands in the world, with one of the most loyal groups of followers and customers, does a great job of getting its “voice” across to its markets. It does such a clever job of doing so, in the way its products are designed and in all of its communications, that the target market actually believes that it’s “their voice”. And as you know, most people love the sound of their own voice.
So, if you’re sitting there thinking, “I don’t want to be bold and obnoxious,” well, you really don’t need to be in order to establish your “voice” in the marketplace. You must, however, be unique and most importantly, be adding value, from the perspective of your target market and other key constituencies. Remember, if you don’t find a way to rise above the “noise,” no one will ever know about the great products, services and solutions you provide.
-Paul Morin
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)