My Entertainment Business Degree Experience.
Hello everyone,
Today, in my Mastery Journal I am finally telling you how things have gone throughout my 12 months of my Entertainment Business Masters program. Tomorrow at 11:59pm, I will say good bye to being a student and hello to my future as a graduate. The class I am currently in is for my “Final Project”. We had to write this very detailed business plan that I could one day use in the future if I wanted too. We got to learn about how the world works with investors and how you have to have money to put into your company before even thinking about talking to someone about getting a loan. You need your entire first, second and third years figured out and mapped out. I had a completely different view of what was going to happen within these last 12 months, but I wouldn’t regret anything.
When I first started this journey, I was just starting to recover from being in the hospital twice. Once from having two PE’s (pulmonary embolisms) and then having double pneumonia. No matter how sick I was, my goals never changed. I charged through and never quit. I remember in my first month for my Mastery Journal post I talked about my business #KayraeMedia, which unfortunately never took off like I hoped it would. I instead started a new journey later on down the road that is my own business, but I work with a team that supports me and my goals. I also talked about having an auto-immune disease and wanting to talk to kids and adolescence about how to overcome it and reach for the stars. Although, I still struggle with my disease daily, they should know it has not stopped me on reaching my goal to graduate and do it with almost perfect grades. I had also set up my LinkedIn page, getting a Logo created and taking a screenshot of my Feedly page. I also was told to pick a favorite quote that I wanted to live by and the quote was “Before you are a leader success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader success is all about growing others.” – Jack Welch. This quote will forever stick with me because I truly believe it. You as a person needs to grow and learn its true value before you can be a leader to others. I want to be a great leader, someone people can come too for advice and how to work on the things they are lacking, someone they can respect. Also, in month 1, I made a timeline on how I saw things going for the last 12 months and I have done everything I set out for myself. Finally, I did one more quote, “Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.” – Maya Angelou.
In month 2 Executive Leadership, I was told to discuss about my readings and GoTo Sessions. I talked about how the Maxwell style (which is a leadership style), was appropriate for me. Personally, I could not be as domineering as Greene’s style. In my post I state, “I have emotion and I work within a set of guidelines that I go by. I relate more to the 20/80 Principle, also known as the Pareto Principle.” This class taught me what type of person I am as well as what type of leader that I saw myself being one day. I also talk about my PM Plan. I changed it up a bit and made my assignment about YouTube. I wanted to do videos about life, hair and makeup, but I also wanted to talk about the things that I have gone through in my life and show other girls dealing with similar situations that they are not alone. Bullying, auto-immune diseases, anxiety and depression are normal things to talk about and I believe it needs to be talked about more often. If kids with anxiety talked about what made them anxious maybe it could help them control it. We are not alone, and more people need to do something about it.
The next post is about Business Storytelling & Brand Development. I expected it to be a writing class but to my surprise it was more about branding yourself and your company. In my post, I talk about how everything has a trend and at that time and still almost a year later EDM is a very popular trend. More and more festivals are starting to become popular and advertised a lot more because the target market has expanded.
After our long Christmas break, I started back up in my Entertainment Business Financials class and it was one of the hardest classes I have ever taken and I still agree on this statement. I know overall, math is something people in the business world need to deal with every single day and I was prepared for this class. I just didn’t realize it was going to be as hard as it was. I love working with QuickBooks and I wish it had more of that involved, especially since most businesses use it.
For my next month I had to post my certificate for Lynda.com on Marketing and Monetizing on YouTube. A lot of YouTubers have been talking about how their videos keep getting Demonetized and that means they aren’t making money off of them. I wanted to learn new digital ways to promote my business and YouTube was one of those ways. I soon realized that after YouTube changed a lot of their rules videos and other problems like YouTubes subscribers were not getting notified when they would post videos or YouTube was unsubscribing subscribers from YouTubers channels. It was a large mess that I started to back away from and I learned how to use Facebook Live to talk about my products.
One of my favorite classes is next, and that is Negotiating and Deal-Making. I have always loved the law side of the entertainment business world and that is what I wanted to do after school but with other things going on I am putting it on the back burner, but I am hopeful that one day I will get to learn more about law. I learned how to negotiate contracts with customers and how to not use negative emotions when in a negotiation because it could turn a good relationship into a bad one quickly.
My next post is about my Product and Artist Management class. I remember being nervous for this class and looking at it before the first day. I loved that Professor Winn let us write papers that had more of our opinions in the paper and not so much the APA format that most classes look for. I genuinely enjoyed her class and loved her as a professor. She explained everything so well and set everything up so that we could learn both subjects separately so that we wouldn’t get confused on the information.
Advanced Entertainment Law is another favorite of mine. Like I said previously, I love law, so this class was exactly what I was hoping for. This class was everything and more of what I expected. I enjoyed learning how to fill out the proper documents for copyrights and trademarks. I also enjoyed researching cases with real life liability issues. If you are a future Entertainment Business Masters student, watch all of her GoTo Trainings, read the required chapters and you will do great in the class!
One of my favorite professors taught this next class and I am so glad I got to enjoy her teaching twice. Professor Craft teaches Entertainment Media Publishing and Distribution. My main goal for that month was to take as much information in as I could. Professor Craft is very organized and explains everything so well for the students. She explained everything I needed to know, and it made it a lot easier for me to write notes. I also take a lot of what I learned personally. I believe with the right tools and the right mindset, you can achieve anything. I love writing and some of my stories I feel like I should self-publish or talk to an agent and get it published. I have an imagination that doesn’t stop, and I enjoy it. This class let me live on through my imagination and showcase it to the professor and maybe someone else one day.
Finally, last month’s class. Business Plan Development. This class started us on our business plan and getting it prepared to present it for our Final Project. It is a lot of work and it’s not something to do in one or two nights. Spread it out and make sure you give yourself enough time to do both research and writing. This class sincerely puts you right in when the final project class starts and if you get everything done the first time you will only have to fix things and final proof it for the final copy and slide show. Overall, I am so glad this class existed because it helped me spread everything out and know what I needed for my final project and what I didn’t need.
I also want to thank every professor in this program for making it the best experience I’ve had at Full Sail University.
Also, good luck to future Full Sailers!
