TranHo

MSc of Entertainment Business | Professional Event Planning & Management | & an OCD

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Final Project - And a journey begins

This is my final month on the journey pursuing my Master's degree here at Full Sail University. We learned to enhance our business skill of pitching, including elevator pitch and business plan pitch, which is one of the most critical skills for business doers. Presentation skill is not just to showcase all the information you have, but to me, it is an art of storytelling. You not only have to filter the info but arrange them in an effective order, to catch your audience attention and efforts. Although we have had opportunities to practice this skill in the previous class, this month was still different by making it even more real with a board of panelists. 

There is a mixed feeling within my mind for the whole month. I am joying with the accomplishment; at the same time, I am worried about my job searching after this achievement. My goal is to find a short-term internship in the touring industry before I will go back to Vietnam for my longer goals.  In this month, we have been told a lot of practical tips during this process, which I genuinely appreciate. There are a lot of theories, even books about this, but we have got one of the best instructors, always down-to-earth to tell us all the insightful truths of the industry. 

We also had the honor to attend the Hall of Fame (HoF) celebration; moreover, it was the biggest one ever as the school celebrated its 40th Anniversary and 10th HoF. I have been inspired a lot about how those successful alumni come back to return for the old school. It motivated me for striving my bests in this passionate pathway of mine. I love what I am doing and would love to pass it on more and more people like me in the future.

And the journey has just begun.

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Business Plan Development

I always believe that entertainment business people who know how to connect the world of creativity to reality will be the successful ones in this industry. This month of the Master's journey, I have had an opportunity to look back overall at my business plan. In another word, it is a chance to incorporate the creative ideas and business skills I have developed throughout study into research for my program. The result turned out helpful more than I expected. I am glad that we had a broadly experienced instructor for this Business Plan Development. He has worked on business plans all over the world, which is useful for me quite a lot on the international perspective since my business plan is to open an event company in Vietnam. The analysis is definitely an essential element for winning this month. I have had to combine both of the research conducted during the course with in-depth analysis for different angles of my business operation in contexts.

This class clarifies small elements can make significant impacts. It always seems a lot easier from the outside view but stepping on this level of leadership and entrepreneurship I have to be very detail oriented. I have to care not only about the sales, revenue and marketing strategies, but also such small things from the staffing policies to technological plan for the operation, and some other insights that I have not experienced as an employee before this class.

To sum up, a business plan is for investors to assess the feasibility of a business. Moreover, it is for the business owner to gain a clear understanding of the operation. However, it is like looking at a screenplay, and a good movie involves so much more factors. There will be changes along the way. The investors also invest in a business because of the owner, not because of the numbers or words in that written document. A business plan is like the script of the movie, I believe as long as the director can feel/passionate and understand the script, they can flexibly grow and run their project in the future. I can use this business plan to guide me, and I can adapt it regularly.

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Media Publishing and Distribution

I would have to say this month is the most practical class I have had so far for the program, Media Publishing and Distribution. Although my main focus in the live experience industry doesn't involve much into the workload of publishing and distribution, I was surprised by the knowledge and inspirations I have pulled from the class. We discussed the real industry standards and vendors that could help artists publish their work to the world. Since they are most creative work, we have also discussed in more details about the copyright protection for each specific category, that contributes to the source of royalty collection. This information helps me build a stronger foundation as an entertainment entrepreneur. You would never know what you may touch into in the future since entertainment businesses are all connected. In an in-class project, I delivered a presentation about "Who owns the art-works created by Artificial Intelligence?", which left a thought for me about the future of the entertainment industry. There soon will be legal policies and statutes where machines and human both live in the same world.

As mentioned, with a broad experienced foundation, our instructor fascinatingly delivered different types of real-world expectation in the current market. I was soon able to develop a further thought for the future market as pioneer advantages. The publishing and distribution works have their traditional process, but they will quickly need to adapt to the market's situation. Such as traditionally publishing a book is so different now in term of the digital contexts. Therefore, marketing and innovative thinking play a vital role besides the techniques.

We have also talked about self-publishing as a new trend in the industry. In my observation, artists nowadays choose to build their influence and following first then to think about settling a publishing or distribution deal. In either way, artists with good content always win.

As an international student, I was curious about the method that would help to distribute my country's entertainment works out to the world. Recently we have just had a Vietnamese movie named Furie that is commercially distributed by USA agent (Well Go USA Entertainment, 2019). It's simply a proud feeling when I see a movie in USA theaters. Before that, Vietnamese films were only known from sorts of international film festivals. After taking this class, I have found more confident helping more domestic products to be introduced in the US.

References

Well Go USA Entertainment Entertainment (2019). Furie (2019). Retrieved from: http://www.wellgousa.com/films/furie?fbclid=IwAR1hYHfTe4c5kGtuwBx4lXEs4WUtYM9p7Q2K7quEQ2GGKtNqaTpZC6Nunkg

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Advanced Entertainment Law

I recently took a month off to get back in touch with the industry network in my home country during its busiest event season of the year. There were opportunities for me to apply some of the theories onto the practical contexts.

The first class I had when I was back for this month overwhelmed me at the beginning, not because of the whole month off spirit, but the class's content itself. Even in my first language, I rarely touched this legislation in depth, neither reading a court's opinion or in-purpose researching on the legal terms. I've usually worked with a legal team only to get the consulting solutions. With this class, I had to start from scratch with some necessary steps such as to get used to the world of law vocabulary, to dive into the legal liabilities by reading those core books. Eventually, the topics have got my interest by its essential term related directly to my job, I know I would have to apply these learning onto my work especially when I want to expand the business to international platforms.

Even though this class covered most of the legal terms within the states, it has been a comprehensive fundament for me to start developing further to the international markets. We talked a lot about intellectual property (IP) protections, which is the heart of this entertainment industry. The assignments system was excellent as it helped us prepared for our future businesses. Since this level expects us to act on a leading role, we not only talked about protecting our IP by using trademarks, patents, copyright, or trade secrets reserve but also we acknowledged the employment regulations for our employees and other human resources for our business.

The entertainment industry is a complex structure, where sometimes the law can be applied differently depending on the case. This class taught us the ability to analyze those situations and gain control awareness for such circumstance that may harm our business in the future.

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Product & Artist Management

This month is one of the most expected courses on the journey to pursuing my Masters in Entertainment business, Artist & Product Management. Artist is a creative individual who has strong personalities of their own. People usually assume the artists live in another world, and there must be a reason for that assumption. Therefore a manager is in place to keep them in reality, and still allow them to fly in their creative environment for their possible phenomenon outcomes. Managing people is a tough job, and managing artist seems even harder.

This class started with a lot of inspiring tips, fuel to the passion I have had in the live entertainment industry. I could acknowledge the dynamic of the industry when we have been asked in every class about what we had done related to our field. That reminds this industry is changing and evolving every day. Noticing the trends within the industry would be an advantage for a leading position. The class also demonstrated the vital role of leadership. Leadership styles and traits are required to employ in the process.

My original goals for this class were mostly to explore the concepts of US-based artist management from the textbook of Paul Allen (2015). Surprisingly, I could relate those concepts to my market in Vietnam, even more, I think I can explore this to a niche and innovative solution for my market's artistic processes.

On the other hand, the class explained the underlying theories for product management in term of entertainment. Nowadays in this digital world, the artist's revenue streams have to be various, from record sales, touring, live performances, to even images sales on the more angles, the better. These are complete skills an artist manager need to pursue to succeed in this entertainment industry.

References

Allen, P. (2015). Artist Management for the Music Business, 3rd Edition. Burlington, MA: Focal Press.

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Negotiation and Deal-making in Entertainment industry

Negotiation is pretty much inevitable in any businesses. This month class is one of my most looking forward classes in the program. My original goals for this month were to have a broad approach to the term negotiation in the specific entertainment business and to be able to adapt the different usages in my home country market. The class has satisfied both my goals with a lot of international concepts for deal-making. The course provided many negotiating simulations in the US entertainment industry which created a great chance for me to research and have an awareness of particular criteria for each scenario. I have also had a chance to dig into a real case studies in the industry via the final assignment, that actually fascinated me but I could not find a good reason to figure it out.

I have worked in the industry of my home country before with many times facing these challenges of negotiation. However, I have never taken any official training for this specific skill. Hence they were mostly based on the experience and tricks more than using any techniques. The course brought valuable theories such as game theory, styles of negotiation, and the foundation of interest and bargaining position. These terms explained why negotiations happen and how to get the best solutions.

I also appreciate the professional expertise of the professor that clearly could explain why we need to use Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) than taking any lawsuit processes, which cost a substantial of time, effort and financial resources.

On top of that, this negotiation skill is something I can learn and practice forever, as for each different case, there will be different solutions. The more creative and prepared I can be, the more chance of success I will have.

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Digital Marketing

I did expect to take this Digital marketing class since I have experienced the "need" of it within my job. And moreover, the digital world nowadays has been leaving a giant impact in our life, which leads to a big change in marketing strategies. My original goals for this class is to dig into deeper the understanding of SEO. I have interned for an event firm who used to spend $5000 per week for the SEO engines within an event marketing campaign, I couldn't understand how it was worthy. After taking this class, I have learned the power of keywords, and the benefits of SEO to help a campaign stand out by those keywords or long-tail phrase.

I have also wanted to learn more the differences of those social marketing channels, that to learn why and which channels I should use for each marketing campaign. The class was well structured with its coursework, I had a chance to do applied the research on my paper for the usage and choices for those channels regarding the target market.

This class of digital marketing was more about integrated marketing using digital approaches. In order to have a comprehensive plan, you would have to understand your target audience's insights well enough. There is no formula for all the campaigns, I have found an effective campaign would be the one can touch its audience the most.

I have established a website base for my personal brand and been executing the blog platform according to my plan. I want to raise the awareness of my brand to the target audience via the informative platform, where they can find the event inspiration posts, the industry information, and trends, the new technologies can be adapted to events, and so much more. 

The website can be seen from www.traho.events.

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Entertainment Business Finance

Under an expectation of a leader, also as a decision maker, I will face the challenge of forecasting the financial performance of either my own business or an organization. I ultimately have to rely on my intuition and judgment. There is no getting around that in a world of uncertainty. But taking this month class of Entertainment Business Finance, I am more confident with an effective forecasting that provides essential context that informs my intuition.

I used to work on Excel tasks that required a lot of focus on formulas and details. Before taking this class, I first expected it would be a higher level of professionalism in finance and accounting, but this class has overwhelmed me with a broader point of view for a management board position. It was not too theoretical dryness like another finance and accounting training I had had in the past, in fact, this month class has provided a lot of practical information and assignments for my entrepreneurship. I have found it's very useful to know how to calculate the present value and future value of money, in order to analyze the worth of an investment or a business plan.

Another valuable portion in this class is that we could learn about the essence of the annual report and financial statements, we can only read the number and tell the firm's performance with the ratios. The assignments gave us a good idea on getting a winning with investors for my future project by asking the right questions. They also help us prepare for the beginning of a business, such as working on the initial costs of a start-up, preparing a pro forma cash flow forecast, balancing the working capital and investment requirement. Last but not least, in order to achieve the efficiency in managing a firm's finance, it is critical to managing my personal finance effectively.

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Branding and Business Storytelling

Another month end, another month wiser. I appreciate this month class about Branding and Business Storytelling since I have experienced the importance of product branding through my work as an event manager before. Beside those insights about my own personal branding, I've learned some useful tools I can use to visualize my ideas or thoughts before any further professional development of designing team, such as shaping a simple digital storyboard via StoryboardThat (StoryboardThat, 2018); or creating a basic story video via Adobe Spark (AdobeSpark, 2018). Furthermore, I have a portfolio of my work experience that captures all the highlight work I have done in the past, and I find it very compelling for my brand. As one of my goals set before, I want to transform this photograph portfolio into a more emotional version. After taking this course, I've learned that I'd make it more of a storytelling version, which strategically obtains my brand's authenticity. Also one of my goals for this month was to finish my logo guideline, I have a more in-depth acknowledgement of what I should include in this guideline, it's more about the brand identity guide which not only can keep my brand usage consistent, but also somehow can tell people about "the soul" of my brand. Talking about telling the story of a brand, I would love to apply this method for my future creative consulting job, that I won't not only organize bespoken events for their brand but also help them to spread their stories far and in long-term. Last but not least, I've found myself very enjoyed exploring a theory that can explain my personal way of creativity, which is from reading the theory about "Design Thinking" by Marty Neumeier. Design thinking is an approach for organization innovation (Neumeier, 2005). My expectation in leadership is to create sustainable advantages of innovation. According to Neumeier (2005), I can summarize the process as, Vision --> Cultures --> Innovation --> Growth --> Value; And those visions can be spread out via telling the organization stories and purpose statements.

References Adobe Spark (2018). Adobe Spark. Retrieved from: https://spark.adobe.com/

Neumeier, M. (2005). The Brand Gap. Berkeley, CA: New Riders

StoryboardThat (2018). Digital Storytelling. Retrieved from: https://www.storyboardthat.com/

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Project and Team Management

On the journey in my entertainment business career, I have always wanted to organize a live music festival in my hometown, where urban generations in Ho Chi Minh City, will come together under one roof, the roof of embracing their love for the city. They will create a community of sustainability, that music will be their primary connection. The Project and Team Management course I took for this month has provided me with a chance to map out my dream project in a more structural and critical approach. According to my plan of pursuing this Project Management course, I wanted to create my own structural Manpower chart for the general use in the future. Beyond my expectations, after this course, I have learned that for specific job roles can best fit with particular personalities of members. Team management methodologies based on personality assessment DiSC (123test.com, 2018) and MBTI (IDRlabs.com, 2018) help me draw an ideal organizational chart and have an advance plan with the resource recruitment. Although I had completed a similar course for my bachelor degree, where I learned how to use the Microsoft Project Management software. In this month course, I have had a whole new experience with full access to a software call Project Plan 365, from which I have acknowledged some more useful tools to manage the project's timeline and budget, the two most important fundamental aspects of all projects. The last four weeks have been a great motivation for me to put further steps to my dream project. I would say if there isn't a class like this, I would never dare myself to visualize this idea with a critical plan.

References: IDRlabs.com (2018).Take Test. Retrieved from: https://www.idrlabs.com/isfp.php 123test.com (2018). DiSC Personality Test. Retrieved from: https://www.123test.com/disc-personality-test/

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Lamborghini Urus Show (Sila Sveta, 2018)

This is an example of thinking outside the box to me. The usage of the kinetic lighting system was combined with visualization system on the back.

Reference:

Sila Sveta (2018). Lamborghini Urus | Multimedia Show [Video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKQDxi_Hprk

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Personal leadership style

Leadership plays a vital role in my development to achieve the masters level. In my journey of pursuing the Masters degree in Entertainment Business, I have been undertaking the studies of leadership from John Maxwell (1993) and Robert Greene (1998). Through the theoretical discussions of both, I have found my leadership principles more related to the teachings of John Maxwell. I have experienced the first steps of managing people when I worked as an event manager for two years in Vietnam, that helped to sketch the picture of leadership in my mind. And those leadership studies come down to me with two essential qualities that I have associated with and also wanting to improve, which are the leader's influence and vision. Influence is the most valuable trait of a leader in my opinion, which is also the best least I would strive to enhance my leadership. A true leader can be easily recognized according to his or her influence on people (Maxwell, 1993). And that helps the leader get work done more effectively whenever his or her people willing to follow their leaders; and it is also applicable for people around the leader, not only the ones whom the leader works with. And my method to develop my leadership is related to the five steps of leadership in Maxwell's studies (1993). I usually aim to win people via their emotions and make decisions about people with an open heart. On the other hand, vision is the second best trait of leadership that I want to focus. Maxwell (1993) discusses the vision comes first to identify a great leader. I truly believe the success of a leader appears thorough his or her vision. Individually, a leader can have followers but that group of people will not be going to be successful without a visionary direction. "Vision is the key that keeps everyone focused" (p. 140). However, there are several laws in Greene's studies (1998) that will be useful for me, and I tend to take them on my route of leadership. There are Law 9: Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument; and Law 37: Create Compelling Obstacles.

To sum up, I appreciate both studies of leadership from Maxwell (1993) and Greene (1998), whilst Maxwell's (1993) discussions are mainly about the fundamental definitions for a great leader, Greene (1998) teaches me how to use such principles to achieve the realistic accomplishments in leadership. I will embrace those teachings along my way to color the picture of a leader for myself, and for my people.

  References Maxwell, J. (1993). Developing the Leaders Within You. Nashville: TN. Thomas Nelson, Inc. Greene, R. (1998). The 48 Laws of Power. New York: NY. Viking Penguine.

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Mastery journey

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KFC Suppertime Stories (MarkLives, 2017)

To me, great ideas are the ones which have the closest connection to your life. Again, an inspiration of technology goes along tradition. 

KFC Supertime Stories Campaign (activation ideas, 2018)

References

activation ideas (2018), Supertime Stories [Photograph]. Retrieved from: https://activationideas.com/blog/suppertime-stories

MarkLives (2017). MarkLives #AdoftheYear2017 #7: KFC Suppertime Stories — Ogilvy Joburg & Darling [video file]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myfzspvro4o

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 2047 APOLOGUE - Weaving Machine (Raduga Design, 2017)

I love making a whole progressive combination of art and technology on my stage. This video is pretty much about my style of creativity, it has to be very close to the basic things of human beings, a little bit of traditional and technological aspects.

Reference:

Radugadesign (2017, August 1). 2047 APOLOGUE - Weaving Machine [Video file]. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/227910401

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My Logo

I have had my logo since 2014, that could tell about my work and my personality. 

Since the world has been going for green, I made my digital business card along with my logo. This is for a smartphone screen dimension, that I can carry it with me at anytime. However, I have made the QR unable for this site. QR code was created by a free QR code generator (Ho, 2018).

I am also developing a version for other fields that I may work on (out-side-the-box) and a guideline for all of them.

Reference:

Ho, T. [ (2018, May 16). QR Code Generator [Photograph]. Retrieved from http://goqr.me/

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