#AspireAndInspire: Keeping Up With My Former Interns

I use the hashtag #AspireAndInspire (I might have even coined it) because I believe that we should give back; not only after we’ve “made it” but while we’re taking on the pursuit of happiness, success, or whatever our pursuit may be. I do this by organizing internship programs for college students. I tend to focus on two fields: Marketing (grassroots marketing, social media marketing, PR, event planning, experiential marketing/tours, and promotions) and Music Business (artist support team, music copyright law, music contracts, royalties and publishing, and music commerce & business models).

I launched my first official internship program in 2009  as the head of marketing & music at Shiekh Shoes (although I would say that it may have begun in 2006 when I organized street teams for nightlife marketing and events and rented meeting rooms to teach concepts in that particular field).

My slogan for my internships has remained “This is not a photo copy and coffee internship program!“ My interns work…and they work hard. But I do not believe in “busy work”. You know, the kind of mindless tasks that interns are given that have no real big picture?

My internship programs are part hands-on experience and part lecture. I lecture once or twice a week and often provide a syllabus for the session. My interns learn industry terms and jargon, concepts and theory and apply what they’ve learned in my lectures directly to the work they’re doing that week. Sometimes I make them take notes and email those notes to me to make sure they are capturing what I’m teaching.

They are forced to make important decisions that have real world reward and consequences. They participate in meetings with third-party business colleagues and clients and sometimes they travel out of town (they tend to like the travelling). By the end of the session (usually one college quarter), most of my interns feel they’ve learned a great deal of information and many ask to do another session (I’ve had about 5 interns complete 2 or more sessions). I’ve been told a few times that they’ve learned more in my session then they’ve learned in a comparable class in college. I’m flattered!

Over the last 5 years I’ve had the pleasure of training over 2 dozen college interns who’ve since gone on to start careers in the workforce after graduating with Bachelor degrees (most of them studied International Marketing, Business, and Communications…and recently I’ve had Music Business majors). They work at tech firms such as Google and the corporate offices of retail chains such as Target. The music majors are leaning towards production or music business as a music company (record label or publisher).

Several of my former interns are now hiring their own interns and have reached out to me for advice. I’ve visited and spoke to current interns of an internship program I had started several years ago, which is now run by my former intern who I had hired full-time at the same company (after he dominated 3 back-to-back internship sessions over the course of a year).

Yesterday, I had lunch with one of my most recent former interns who reached out to me to offer him advice and guidance in his new marketing role with a social media tech start-up based out of Miami. He participated in my Music Business & Marketing internship program at ChazBo Music:

Hey Dae,

It’s Brandon! I was an intern for you at ChazBo Music in the Fall. I’m emailing you because when I look back at my time at ChazBo Music I really learned a lot from you, as you were a great teacher. I’m now coming up with a great new idea for a startup [he goes on to include details that I've omitted]. I’ve been wondering where do I start? How do I go about it? And the first person I thought of was you. I really wanted to see if you had any ideas, pointers, or if you could help me layout a plan of implementation. You were a great teacher to me, I learned a lot, and I’m sure if you could give me any advice about this it would help me a lot, I would really appreciate it. I would love if we could discuss your ideas over the phone, or maybe I could stop by the office.

Hope all is well,
Brandon

Another one of my stellar former interns who completed my Marketing, Social Media & Events in Retail Industry internship program at Shiekh Shoes has gone on to land a solid job in the workforce:

Hey Dae,

I just wanted to take the time to say thank you. The short amount of time I spent with you at Shiekh Shoes as an intern, taught me much in business, marketing and event plannning.

At my current job I was asked to plan/execute the company holiday party for all of our clients, sales execs, and upper management with about 200+ guests and the greatest reward was having the president of the company tell me that he was very pleased with everything and also stated that it was much better than last year’s.

Thank you so much for everything you taught me, it has really brought me a long way and has opened the doors to other opportunities as well.

Best of luck and may you continue to be blessed in everything you do.

-Britney

She recently sent me an email asking for words of advice on her own internship program:

Hey Dae,

Just hired my first two interns and they start tomorrow. I only hope that I can be as great of a mentor to them as you were to me. Any words of advice?

Britney

I was happy to hear that another of my former interns now have interns of their own and thought of me when seeking advice:

How exciting! My #1 advice is to remember that they must take something away from your internship for it to have been successful. It’s so easy to give interns mundane “busy work”…it’s harder to give them something they can learn from. You don’t have to have a syllabus and do lectures and all that craziness I like to do; just make sure they are grasping what they are doing and why they are doing it. Ask yourself, “how does this task relate to their field of study and do they understand the implications of their task/project in the real world?”

Good luck! – Dae

Internship programs, if done right, can be rewarding for both the intern and the supervisor. I’m not a traditional teacher in a classroom, but I do feel like I’m teaching these college students something valuable. And from their feedback, it seems they think so as well!

#AspireAndInspire

Me conducting a lecture on publishing during my Music Business internship program at ChazBo Music

I’m not pictured, but I’m coaching one of my interns through the flow of royalties in the music industry by asking questions and making him connect the dots with the right answers.

My intern next to his work at the end of the lecture. He’s really proud!

Photo of my white board after a lecture.

Photo of my white board after a lecture.

Photo of my white board after a lecture.

My music interns hard at work at ChazBo Music

My retail marketing interns in the intern room listening to a guest speaker from our Shiekh Shoes buying department.

My second class of interns. Summer 2009

My interns hard at work in the intern room…most likely working on an event or POP for a marketing campaign. And it was pizza day so I bought them lunch!

Another class of interns working in the intern room at Shiekh Shoes…and it looks like another pizza day!

My first official class of interns at Shiekh Shoes – Spring ’09

Demystifying the Music Industry: Where does Public Performance Rates, Licenses and Fees Come From and Go?

Over the last few weeks, I have been in discussions with one of my clients trying to help them understand the concept of public performance (and the associated licenses and fees) when it comes to playing music in their business establishment.

Like many businesses owners, my client values music as part of their in-store environment; and uses music to enhance their customers’ shopping experience. Music is a key lifestyle component of their target youth customer, so my client aligns their brand to music in many ways.

But also like many business owners, my client does not know much about the legal implications of playing music videos and sound recordings in a business establishment or for commercial use. This has made it difficult to move forward with a service request from my client, since the service requires additional costs related to the way in which my client would like to use music. The additional cost is derived from public performance fees.

Most people do not think of playing music in a public setting (in a way that transmits sound to many people; the “general public”) as a right that must be granted by a license. But that is exactly what it is to play music in a business establishment. When you walk into your local coffee shop or mall clothing store and hear your favorite song, if all is done legally, the business owner of that establishment has obtained a public performance license and pays a public performance fee for the right to play the music you hear in his/her store.

In this article I address and demystify public performance rates, licenses and fees.

QUESTION: Where does public performance rates, licenses and fees come from and go?

SHORT ANSWER: United States public performance rates are set by the Copyright Royalty Board which is appointed by the Library of Congress of the United States Congress. Public Rights Organizations (PROs) administer public performance licenses and collect public performance fees from licensees (businesses that use music commercially) to distribute back to songwriters, publishers and record labels in the form of royalties. Public performance royalties compensate copyright owners (songwriters, publishers, and record labels) for the public performance of their copyrighted works defined by the US Copyright Act of 1976.

A public performance license grants business owners the permission to play copyrighted music in their establishments. Business owners must pay public performance fees to US PROs ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI in order to play music in their establishments. These law-mandated fees do not include content license fees (digital downloads) or content ownership fees (CD or DVD) that may be due to copyright owners to obtain original copyrighted works.

LONG ANSWER: This diagram reveals the general legal structure and relationships behind the concept of public performance as law.  (Note: I purposefully omitted the details of the relationship between Public Performance Organizations and Copyright Owners including the flow of royalties as this will be discussed in a later blog.)

(Click to enlarge image)

Public performance is a unique yet important aspect of the copyright law. Understanding what it means to a Copyright Owner and the end-user of copyrighted works is an important responsibility when using music commercially.

I Met Quincy Jones!

I had the pleasure of meeting Quincy Jones. This man is a legend. It was great chatting it up with him!

“Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations,[2] 27 Grammys,[2] including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991.” – Wikipedia

RIAA Launches New Website To Show Consumers Why Music Matters

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) launches new website to help consumers understand “Why Music Matters”. A key feature is their navigation tool of digital music retailers.http://whymusicmatters.com/find-music

My Personal Hashtags

Often I start the day by posting on Twitter/Facebook the following hashtags: #RiseAndProgress #AspireAndInspire #StartupJunkie. The first (#RiseAndProgress) represents starting the day with a fresh pursuit of moving forward either on a specific project or in life or career in general. The second (#AspireAndInspire) represents my personal aspirations towards a material goal or enlightenment while giving back. I try to “give back” by creating internships for college students where I can share my experience and knowledge on special topics in music and marketing. And the last, but not least (#StartupJunkie) represents my entrepreneurial spirit.

New Year Resolution: Blog More!

Happy New Year!!!! This is a quick blog to say that my New Year Resolution is to post more blogs! I’ll start by taking some of my blog-like Facebook status updates from 2012 (the ones relevant to the theme of my blog) and posting them here. Thanks for reading!

If Your Dreams Don’t Scare You…They Aren’t Big Enough #StartUpJunkie

Dream big my friends.

YFS Magazine: Former VP of Marketing Turns Layoff Into Into Multimillion Dollar Deal With Former Employer

I’m blessed to have been honored with a piece in YFS Magazine (Young, Fabulous & Self-Employed) on my new music tech startup ChazBo Music.

Excerpt:

Read the full article here.

ChazBo Music (Beta) Goes Live

After months of development, I’m happy to announce that my music tech startup, ChazBo Music (Beta) and our website is now live!

ChazBo Music is a FREE cloud-based music video digital signage solution for businesses and a music video distribution and promotion platform for artists and record labels.

A more official press release will go out in the next few hours with more details including our launch partners and first customer.

Visit http://www.chazbomusic.com for more information.

Deferred Achievement: Entering the Era of Results

Today is the beginning of a new era in my life. An era when things begin to build as a result of years of laying the foundation. I’ll call it the “era of results.” The result of years of hard work, of failures and setbacks, of pushing forward, of going for “it”. The result of accumulated education (both street smarts and book smarts) applied to real situations with real consequences and real rewards. As much of a cliche as it is to say “never give up”, “take risks”, and “be aggressively ambitious,” this is what I’ve told myself since I first decided in my youth that I wanted to do something great with my life. Great people don’t stumble upon greatness; they sacrifice for it and dedicate themselves to the idea of greatness. Often they get off track; whether misguided, misinformed, or simply too spread thin trying to be great at several things at once. I’ve been all. But eventually these folks who actively pursue greatness will reach their “era of results” (or die leaving a legacy of profound ambition…the latter sucks, but contributes to awesome inspirational slogans).

Today I closed a deal representing 7-figures with the first customer of my new music tech startup, ChazBo Music. It’s funny because just 4 months ago this company was my employer from where I was laid off. I could have been pissed (well, I was) and I could have ranted and attempted to publicly bash them and completely write them off in my book, but I believe that you shouldn’t burn bridges (even when a business relationship ends not in your favor).

A unique and ironic series of events has led to going from being laid-off to signing a 7-figure deal in 4 months. Today, I enter the Era of Results.