Mastery: The Road to Success
When starting the Mastery Personal Development and Leadership class, Professor Counsman gave all of us the project of creating a Tumblr page. Â With this page, we were asked to develop a Mastery Journal that we would build upon each month. Â After twelve months, this is the last posting. Â From month one, my favorite assignment was getting to write about someone that inspired you. Â I decided to write about my grandfather, who passed away almost ten years ago. Â While writing that assignment, I knew that I had made the right decision to come back to Full Sail and pursue my Masters degree.
For Mastery Personal Development and Leadership, my objective was to see if I was cut out to work a full-time job, freelance and go to school all at the same time. Â I can proudly say that I never missed an assignment, got one B and the rest were A or A+ and I managed to work all the time. Â This class helped me get into a positive work flow that helped me on my journey towards Mastery.
In Executive Leadership, I discovered my leadership style is fully based off of John C. Maxwell’s book, Developing the Leader Within You.  I made that decision based off of my personality.  Greene’s law of turning friends into enemies if you don’t have any enemies, is something I could never do because I value my relationships.  Also, the ideal jobs I hope to possess in the future require me to have leadership qualities like Maxwell’s book entails.  The job of a leader is to build their team up, not break them down. Motivating your team can go a long way in the growth of your business.
For me, the most vital project from this class was the leadership research paper. Â It helped me realize from a different view that a leader can be anyone if they have the passion and dream to do so. Â Writing this paper gave me the motivation to keep pursuing my dream and not to give up, even when it becomes too much.
“Learning Objective: Students will apply creative thinking, brainstorming skills to generate industry-related project ideas for a Project Management Plan.”  The beginning of what lead to be one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve ever completed across all of my schooling. Getting to start with nothing, developing an idea and watching it grow over the course of the next nine months was amazing.  Project and Team Management helped me realize that I have gifts and talents in business that I didn’t even know existed.  I remember thinking that this class was going to be a major headache, due to my non-existing business background, but I had never been so wrong.
All of the assignments that we received helped me realize how important it is to build my brand. Â Each assignment was able to assist me in completing projects the rest of the program. Â I fully intend on using these assignments as a guideline to any project I may work on in the future.
In Business Storytelling and Brand Development, we began the process of building our personal brands to help advance ourselves closer to mastery. Â Like I had stated in the previous month, Project and Team Management, I needed to work on building my brand and this class did. Â This class provided a greater knowledge of what it means to brand yourself and your business via our websites we began to create.
The, now completed, website I created, is ready to promote my personal brand in a positive and professional manner. Â Updating the website was accomplished over many months of projects. Â The most important thing I walked away with, from this class, was how vital of a role your brand plays in your walk towards true mastery.
Entertainment Business Finance was one of my favorite classes while at Full Sail getting my Masters degree. Â Growing up, I was always strong in mathematics and that strong suit played an important role in this class. Â All of the projects were great learning elements that gave me a better understanding of looking into the financials of a company. Â Unfortunately, with this class, I failed an assignment, but that was a learning point for me that helped push me to work even harder towards getting my degree.
Two projects from this class, will benefit me in the future in job searching and working on a project.  First, we took our resumes and completely redid them.  The goal was to create a professionally appealing resume and I got to do just that.  It was a very beneficial project for me due to the massive list of past works I have completed.  The second project that benefited me significantly was the Pro Forma Income Statement.  With this project, we created the budgets, figured out start-up costs and made a spreadsheet with the assumptions.  This assignment will be one that I am able to carry with me into the professional industry to further advance any project I’m a part of.
Although I had tried marketing myself over social media and the internet before, nothing was the same once I completed Digital Marketing. Â Throughout this class, we were presented with the lessons and projects to further our ability to promote ourselves and our content. Â For this month, I was hoping to explore the area of growing my brand, and company, through social media and my professional website.
For me, the most beneficial assignment we completed was the Lynda tutorial and Tumblr post for marketing. Â I completed the Instagram for Business Lynda training to help me advance my digital marketing campaign on, what I believe, has become the number one social media site. Â Since taking the course, my following and freelance work has increased. Â Instagram has become a major platform for promoting businesses and products in all industries.
Negotiation and Deal-Making gives students a greater look into the entertainment industry and how to communicate and negotiate. Â My favorite assignment of this month has been the research case presentation. Â It takes students deeper into finding out more about negotiations that have happened in the entertainment industry. This assignment was particularly my favorite in this class because of the topic I got to write about, Friends. This assignment helped us develop our researching skills through the use of EBSCOHost and other research databases. Â
Another fun segment from this month was getting the chance to take a deeper look into our negotiation styles and how each style communicates. Â We did this by taking a Buzzfeed test to help us figure out which type of communicator we are. Â This will help better our negotiations in the future in order to steer the conversation in a way best suited for the people we are communicating with. Â The knowledge that I gained from both assignments, and this class, will help further myself in my career after graduation.
Throughout the Product and Artist Management class, I discovered that I enjoy artist management over product management.  After countless hours of reading, video watching and research for projects, I believe that this class gave me a greater understanding for product and artist management.  I don’t have a huge business background and this class was a little bit harder for me than most classes have been, but I always enjoy any challenge thrown my way.
The skills that I learned from this class has helped me in the entertainment industry on my path towards being a leader. Â In addition, the digital portfolio assignment for this month helped me improve my personal brand strategy. Â For this assignment, I got the chance to share a playlist of music that I was the live broadcast audio engineer for.
Advanced Entertainment Law was the most threatening sounding class that I feared was going to doom my GPA. I now find myself with a better knowledge of the legal side of the entertainment industry. Â Through all of the work I completed and information I gathered, the biggest takeaway from Advanced Entertainment Law I gained is how to search for red flags in contracts. Â
The first discussion post helped me grow my knowledge and skills the most in this class. Â For me, the interview with Julee Milham helped me find key concepts that I will be able to take with me into the future and use professionally and personally. Â Also, I have a better sense of how to research legal liability cases in my area to help prevent anything from happening to me.Â
When starting Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution, I had goals set of wanting to gain a knowledge about social media sites that have the most popularity in the entertainment industry, learn what the best ways are to avoid distributing stolen material and to grow and learn how to distribute/promote artists work to the best of my ability. Â Thankfully, this class answered all of the goals/questions I had set.
Like every class prior, there is one assignment that stood out above the rest to help further my understanding of the subject I was learning. Â The Case Study Analysis assignment gave me the opportunity to test my knowledge of what I had learned. Â We were given multiple scenarios where potential clients had asked questions regarding the publishing and distribution of their entertainment media content.
At the beginning of Business Plan Development, I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of work set before me, but then I stepped back and remembered all that I had learned before. Every assignment in the past is what has brought me to this moment and it was time to put my knowledge to the test. Â The goals I set back at the beginning of the program, learning to successfully create and pitch my business, was met by creating a business plan and financial spreadsheets.
This course has helped me rounded the sharp edges of an idea, Contouring Production Group, I came up with just ten months ago. Â From the business plan assignment, I have learned how to pitch my business to investors and how to write professionally in a way that will positively affect my business.
Last month, two of my goals were met, but I had set the goal of expanding upon it in this class. Â Learning to successfully pitch my business, was expanded upon just like I had hoped for. Â By completing the Elevator Pitch Assignment and Business Plan Presentation, I have a better ability to pitch my ideas and business plans. Â This final class has given me the opportunity to combine all that I have learned across the past eleven months and put it to the test in finalizing my business plan.
The process of learning what it takes to start a business has come from every course that I have completed in the past. Â Each assignment, class and professor has taught me how to grow my business and grow in professionalism. Â Everything that I learned will be applied towards my personal life and professional career in the industry. Â Full Sail has taught me so much on my journey towards mastery and I will always remember what I have learned.
P.S.  If anyone is reading this, other than my professors, and you are interested in going to school for anything entertainment related, I highly recommend Full Sail University.  Always be willing to apply yourself and apply what you've learned.