No finish line

Crossing the Golden Gate bridge in 2011: what the fog!

I have an addiction: epiphanies. I long for those mini-moments of truth when everything is finally going to make sense, everything will fall into place, and life will be like a sitcom from then on. I felt this when I first graduated, 12 years ago, from my Bachelors in Journalism. I remember the feeling of arriving home after my final presentation, laying down and just relaxing. I felt free in the deepest possible sense of the word, and saw everything in front of me decoded, Matrix style. There was absolutely nothing worrying me, specially because I already had a job before finishing school.

I have no recollection of having that same feeling ever again. Once you put your feet in adulthood, it seems like there is no stop, no finish lines, only a couple of stops for water. Drink it, breathe, then get back to run. Last year, I went to this Chinese doctor who told me that we are never fully satisfied with our lives because we walk in cycles, and we are always looking to the other side of the circle. Well, everybody is free to choose their kind of symbolism, but this one caught my attention. In plain English, that means that we always want more, and also that we, sometimes, end up changing our minds as we go by.

Now, as I graduate from my Masters Degree in Entertainment Business at Full Sail University (with an A, yay), I feel like when I first saw the Golden Gate bridge. It was a foggy summer in San Francisco, and I couldn't see a thing in front of me. I decided to cross it and then, right in the middle, I had this surreal vision of being immersed in a white cloud. I knew there was a bridge and that I could just keep on moving forward and would eventually reach the other side, but I had to believe in it, even though what I saw was nothingness. This is how I feel right now. I have ideas, I have knowledge, I do have some scars, yes, I do have fear, and I do have my moments of loneliness and lack of perspective. But, somehow, I create my own solid ground and keep on moving forward. Well, maybe there isn't this "other side". Maybe life is the bridge itself. Is there a finish line or not? It's actually your choice. I choose not to care about it. And, I don't know why, but this feels like a comforting thought.

This is the last post of this blog, which was part of the graded work for my Masters Degree. It was an interesting journey. From David Bowie's unusual perspective on stock markets to the amazing opportunity to interview philosopher Jon Corvino, it was all uphill. Now, I close this chapter and move on to pursue new paths in my career. I want to thank the people of Orlando, who gave me more than what I expected, and that includes the guys from The Solar Games, who offered me an outstanding internship experience. Also thanks to all professors and career advisors, who presented me with challenges that were both technical and psychological (that's my jam!). Thank you America for the hospitality and for teaching me new things about entertainment and assertiveness. I am back next year for more, somewhere on your map.

Thanks for watching and stay tuned to my website, totally refurbished and cuter than ever: www.cesarmunhoz.com

May the odds be in our favor.
César Munhoz

And here's one last song for you, guys!

Shake your moneymaker

I'm writing my business plan!

On our last post, we analyzed the views of Stanford professor Jim Ellis and legendary Virgin founder Richard Branson on business plans. For Ellis, the business plan helps you to understand internal dynamics, as well as provides an external look over your business so that you are in tune with stakeholders. Branson agrees with that and goes forward: the business plan should explain what the company is for. I know, it sounds obvious, but it is easy to find entrepreneurs leading businesses that do not have a clear purpose.

During this last month I had the chance to start writing my own business plan, as part of the Entertainment Business Masters Degree Program I am currently pursuing at Full Sail University. It was my first attempt in doing so, and Ellis and Branson helped me to narrow down my activities and understand how I would have to relate to the communities I serve.

Narrowing down sounds like a bad thing to do, but believe me, in business, it is essential. As an entertainer that provides a myriad of services that include music, video, performance, and creative writing, I found myself having to choose one or the other, and I had a couple of panic attacks. But, there there, it passed. I got it.

It’s not that I will have to just stop doing one of these services. I can’t. I live to create and my head is all over the place, and that is what makes my work special. It is diverse, it is different. Also, having experience in all of those disciplines puts me in a special position in any team or project, because if I’m composing music, I have a better understanding on how that piece of music is going to work on a video or in a performance. The thing is that now I know that I have to find a way to pack all of these abilities into one label. Not just any label, it’s got to be one that makes sense to my customer, the production company. Honestly, I still don’t know what that label is, but I’m working on it, and as I acquire more and more experience in the entertainment industry working for other companies (by the way, check out my LinkedIn profile) I know it will come, and now that is my north.

Writing my business plan was also a great opportunity to pay extra attention to finance matters. It was great to break down the “money comes, money goes” process into sequences of spreadsheets that gave me a comprehensive view on how I am actually going to make money, instead of wasting it while I have fun making art. When I have the chance to invest on other people’s businesses, I will surely start by looking at their finances (and their mission), and this is how I expect my investors to behave. That’s it, folks. I think I’m a businessman now. Let's network.

Business plan: the north of the company

Look up to your business plan.

Then take a selfie.

A mere document? A set of aspirations? A north? How much time should I spent discussing, re-evaluating and adapting the business plan of my company to the circumstances, until I am able to make solid short, medium or long-term decisions? All these questions are part of the process for the creation of a business plan, as well as to keep it alive and kicking with the daily surprises. It is necessary to go on the core of the stakeholders' desires, but, at the same time, maintaining a strong identity, one that can smoothly lead clients on the wide array of customer intersection.

For Jim Ellis, Management Professor at Stanford University since 2003, it is important to devote special care to people dynamics in a company. He sees the business plan as something that can contribute for these dynamics to work properly. He believes that building a company has to do directly with the alignment of the staff's desires, and the company's desire's. Ellis believes that the business plan has power not only as a document that determines practical, functional daily procedures, but also a "milestone" for common goals. As a sort of "Bible", only more versatile, it is a place where everybody can turn to, whenever they are in doubt.

As Ellis himself states during a lecture given at the University of Stanford (available on YouTube), "one of the most valuable aspects of creating a business plan is the fact that it forces you to look at your business through the eyes of those external constituents, and really make sure that you truly understand the core of what constitutes your business (Ellis, 2007)."

Richard Branson, entrepreneur that is known for leading the ambitious Virgin Group, has a point of view that finds connection with Jim Ellis' words. He says that the most important thing you need to know when running a company is to make sure you know what that company is for. He believes that the first step to keep a realistic and healthy business plan, is to be a great listener, understand the community that constitutes your company, and then being a great motivator to take everybody ahead with you, finally consolidating the business plan and effectively putting it into practice.

LinkedIn and the "serial endorsers"

Endorse, of course! Well, not really...

LinkedIn is my favorite social networking website. It is useful, because it is focused and because it offers great tools to stay updated about pretty much any industry. But today, I want to talk about a practice that annoys me profoundly in this virtual environment. It is widespread, it is dangerous, and it is called "serial endorsing."

"Serial endorsers" are those who, as soon as they are linked with you, they automatically endorse you for absolutely everything that is on your list of skills. Everything. Wow, that should be amazing, right? Why would that be a problem, César? It is a problem because it is neutralizing one of the most useful tools on LinkedIn. To understand that, let's make a connection with real life.

Everyday, you are bombarded by advertising pieces, trying to convince you to buy something. M&M's? Bread? Even an iPhone? Advertising can convince you to buy these products, for sure. But some "products", like human resources, are bought after a careful process that includes resumés, interviews and, sometimes, group dynamics. Word-of-mouth can be decisive in every stage, it can take people further in a selection process.

LinkedIn came up with the endorsement tool (under the "Skills and Expertise" tab) to offer an alternative to writing a recommendation. It can take some time to write a thoughtful recommendation and, let's face it, sometimes we don't have much to say about someone, but we’ve seen what they do, we like it, and we want to give them a help. So, let's endorse, of course. But there is a right way to use endorsements on Linked In.

I am lucky to have been endorsed by a considerable number of people, but some of them endorsed me for skills that I know that they have never experienced themselves before. How do you endorse something you never experienced yourself? The result is that, today, companies are not paying attention to the "Skills and Expertise" area anymore. It became this hole in your profile that means absolutely nothing. The good thing is that you can now choose which endorsements you want to show or not. Next time you edit your profile, consider clicking on "Manage Endorsements" and do some sanitizing. It's not offensive to whoever endorsed you. They made it with good intention. But remember that your profile on LinkedIn is supposed to show your real connections. I did that on my profile. What you see is what you get.

* Not convinced about endorsement etiquette yet? Hear it from Stacy Zapar, known as the most connected woman in LinkedIn.

What about hashtags?

I must admit that I have been allergic to social media lately. I have used it for a long time to promote my music, videos and shows. Using social media was useful, and it got me places, but the polluted aspect of timelines drives me crazy. It's everything at the same time, here and now. No, thank you. Thank God for hashtags, for they serve as universal concentrators of topics in the web jungle. When I mean universal, I mean that they are accepted and processed by pretty much every relevant social media website.

No matter where you post your thing, you just have to add a hashtag to the post, and it automatically joins the group of posts that are similar to yours. Hashtags not only have the function of aggregating similar content, but have also been used to measure the popularity of topics. That explains the meaning of the buzzwords "trending topics". The more a hashtag is posted, the more people get to know about it.

Hashtags.org is a website dedicated to show a panorama of hash tags worldwide. The front page brings the most popular hash tags currently, and the portal also has an extensive archive of information about how to use this tool. To conclude, I would like to leave you with what is, in my opinion, one of the smartest ways to use hashtags ever. Jimmy Fallon is using the word hashtag to name a sketch in the Late Night Show. Every now and then, he posts an unusual hashtag on his Twitter account and lets people create the content for the hashtag. They all become trending topics instantly and that is helping Jimmy Fallon to solidify his place as one of the most interesting talk show hosts nowadays. If you do a search for "hashtags" on YouTube, for example, the first 15 links that appear are to Jimmy Fallon's show. So here's my hashtag for you, Jimmy: #goodjob

Dare to agree

John Corvino: "when debating, I focus
on the message, not the messenger" 

With power comes responsibility. When an artist gains visibility, the audience often wants to know more about his or her political positions. Whenever I connect to my audience, in live shows or via social media, I take the chance to raise awareness to the causes I stand for: freedom of belief and animal welfare. In order not to be accused of being a “fake-activist”, the artist needs to really understand the causes he or she stands for, as well as to master the science of negotiation. This is why I spend a considerable time watching debates on YouTube. By doing that, I learn more about the world that surrounds me, and about persuasion. My favorite channel is that of Intelligence Squared, UK based organization that promotes Oxford-Style debates.

In the channel, you can watch full-length discussions between specialists in controversial subjects, such as religion, sexuality and politics. They talk mostly about things we would prefer not to talk about, but should. Or, at least, could. In the end of each debate, it is requested that the audience chooses a side. You have to be for or against something. I have a lot of fun watching Intelligence Squared debates, but there is something in this idea of taking sides that I find hard to agree with. Making choices is something we have to do each and every day, but rigidly sticking to a side can, sometimes, lead to an unhealthy division.

While searching for debates on YouTube, I met a very interesting person named John Corvino. I heard him speaking at a debate over marriage equality. This debate caught my attention because it was promoted by the Kansas City Atheist Coalition, in conjunction with the School of Faith. Two diametrically opposed institutions talking to each other: what a fantastic example of an effort for mutual benefit. The debate also caught my attention because of Corvino's lighthearted approach. John dares to speak of agreement, and I love the fact that he makes it clear that agreeing is his true underlying interest. Positional bargaining is not a part of his world. Right after I watched the debate, I wrote him an e-mail with questions about this powerful approach to negotiation.

As a Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, Corvino deals constantly with different positions, coming from different people. In debates, he makes a genuine effort to separate the people from the problem and focus on objective criteria. "I think this is a function of my training as a philosopher,” says Corvino. “In philosophy, the soundness of an argument is a function of whether the premises are true and whether the conclusion follows from the premises, not of who's giving the argument. Of course, arguments are also tools of negotiation and persuasion, and personal factors may be relevant to that. Yet I try to stay focused on the message, not the messenger."

In the debate organized by Atheists and Christians mentioned before, Corvino is seen speaking about positive aspects of marriage equality. He is aware of the fact that his opponent, a catholic teacher, is very unlikely to change his mind after the conversation. This is common in debates over marriage equality. On one side, we have a person who acknowledges the idea of being gay as something real, natural, and undisputable. On the other side, we have someone who doesn't. Imagine an anaerobic creature debating with an aerobic creature over the importance of air. How do you produce an agreement in a situation like that? Most of the times, you just don't. In Corvino's career, the idea of BATNA (Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement) is taken to another level: it is almost a constant. Debates about marriage equality often tend to fall into loops, because the people involved simply live in different worlds. "Sometimes opponents are simply unapproachable, and then you have to cut your losses, learn from the experience, and move on." If someone uses a dirty trick during a debate, such as changing the subject, John doesn't get railroaded. "What I try to do is to approach things calmly, and most of the time people rise to the occasion."

Discovering John Corvino's work was an enriching experience. It contributed to understand, with real life examples, several topics presented in my Negotiation and Deal-Making class, part of the Entertainment Business Master's Program at Full Sail University. Learn more about John by visiting www.johncorvino.com.

Personal interview conducted by César Munhoz with John Corvino by e-mail in April 27th, 2012. 

Performance art: pricing the intangible

Me, on stage, screaming at a fan.
Would you pay a ticket to see it?

Two months ago I did a post about the hardships of understanding Finance and Law. Guess what, I am not that lost anymore. I finally feel the love. I broke the Matrix. Yesterday I said to my loved one: "tonight you look as sweet as a spreadsheet".

Now that I get the difference between assets and liabilities, it is time to understand how they fit into my reality, that of a conceptual performance artist.