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Black Enterprise

I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to begin contributing articles based on tech and gaming to BlackEnterprise.com. Really excited thinking about the fresh new perspective I can bring to their brand online. Doesnt stop me from posting on here however. I have some great post ideas coming up this following week.

Check out my first piece which is an interview with Raheem Jarbo aka Mega Ran. A former teacher turned rapper. Why would I feature him? Find out for yourself. Click the link below to check out the article.

Continue To BlackEnterprise.com

Need A Startup Idea? Do This One Thing

Right now im building Converge. But that doesn’t stop me from researching for my new tech startup. I wanted to take a new approach, an approach that I learned from many mentors and previous mistakes. What is it? Asking questions.

Seems like common sense right? Its not. See most people come up with ideas, but those ideas aren’t validated. Thats why I don’t mind giving my ideas away, because essentially they are worthless. Whats more important are problems. You can find out an idea for your next startup by talking to your customers first. For the last 2 months thats exactly what I have been doing.

Being a game journalist for a few years has given me a huge database of contacts within the industry from many different verticals. So I decided to start emailing the PR professionals and asking them questions about their process.

Whats the hardest part of your job?

Is their something you do every day that you wish was easier?

I’d invite them to have a phone conversation with me after emailing back and forth. Whats great about this is you actually form real friendships. Most of the prospects I spoke to are really cool people, and we have much more in common than just video game marketing.

Every conversation brings me closer and closer to the problem I need to solve. One person was even ready to spend money right away. Giving me the ability to actually pre sell something I havent even built yet. Crazy right?

You’d be surprised how many opportunities are available if you just open your eyes a bit. So find a niche, and start asking questions. This will be covered more in-depth in “The Phat Startup” book releasing early 2013.

What Startup Communities Can Learn From The Black Wall Street

It’s almost common language in the tech community now that you don’t need Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs are taking a different route by creating the community they dream to be part of, right where they live. I’m aiming to do this with Newark, NJ. Using examples from those such as Brad Feld, Tony Hsieh, and of course history.

Blackwallstreet

In 1906 a wealthy African American named O.W. Gurley moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma in hopes of buying some new land. He successfully acquired 40 acres and started one of the most unknown business movements in American history with the new Greenwood district. I invite you to read up on it. I want to focus on how they grew.

First it started with a rooming house, then 3 two story office buildings, and before you knew it over 600 successful business were being incubated in this self sustaining district with 10,000 african american residents. According to research these included: 21 churches, 21 restaurants, 30 grocery stores, 2 movie theaters, a hospital, a bank, a Post Office, libraries, schools, law offices, bus systems, and much more.

So what are 3 takeaways we can use when building our own startup communities?

Make Your Weakness Your Strength

Because of the intense segregation, many of the blacks migrating used the business from the Greenwood district. You would think not having access to certain services would slow growth, but it forced them to provide for themselves. Taking advantage of the competitions prejudice was a big part of their success. Get creative and find out ways you can flip the bad into good for your community.

Keep The Money In The Area

They only used services from each other. Barbers, cabs, etc. So before you go on the internet or go out of town see if you can source the needs of your business locally. One of my favorite startups to watch is ZeroCater. ZeroCater allows businesses to cater lunch to their employees from local restaurants. We should take that model, and use it for more than just food.

Educate

Creating their own schools was a huge part of their success. Some schools required travel through the racist parts of town and didn’t provide a quality education. So they kept the schools in the district. Today educating your community has become easier than ever with platforms such as Skillshare and Eventbrite. Teaching the young and old new skills, helps companies keep their employee skill levels high. It also helps new entrepreneurs gain the tools and the know how to start a new venture.

So as you build a community in your town remember to take your biggest weaknesses head on, use and promote local services first, and teach others new skills constantly. If everyone in the community did those three things i’m sure you will start to see a difference over time.

5 Great Sites To Learn Online In 2012

As you may know, I didn’t get a chance to finish college. So I took it upon myself to get educated. Like many people, Google became my best friend. I spent hours digging through books, youtube videos, and slide presentations. This wasn’t even that long ago. Now in 2012 the internet has made it even easier to learn just about anything you may want to know. But today I’m just going to give you my personal 5 favorite sites.

Online courses

1. Skillshare

Skillshare has changed the game. Until last week it has only been strictly an online marketplace for offline classes. With the introduction to “Hybrid Classes” anyone around the world is free to join. What makes Skillshare different is they attract some of the coolest subject matter experts I have seen so far. Where else are you going to take a course on sneakers online, and for a good price?

Categories: Creative Arts, Culinary Arts, Entrepreneurship, Lifestyle, and Technology.

2. Udemy

Udemy is a site that has been about learning online from the start. I saw someone offer some free social media marketing course on the site, so I signed up. The course was pretty bad, but it did help me discover some Photoshop lessons. I still suck at Photoshop, but I’m way better than I used to be. Some classes are free some you have to pay for.

Categories: Arts, Business, Crafts and Hobbies, Design, education, Games, Health and Fitness, Humanities, Languages, Lifestyle, Math and Science, Music, and more.

3. Coursera

Coursera is college courses online for free. We are talking real college courses from the catalogs of Stanford, Rice, Princeton, Duke and many others. We are talking computer science courses, medical courses, etc. This was the site I dreamed about when I dropped out. I only took one class so far because of time constraints, but plan to enroll in this Business Growth course the top of next year. Take advantage of this one.

4. AppSumo

AppSumo isn’t really your typical place to learn online like the top 3, but they offer some great information products every once in a while. If your not familiar with AppSumo it’s a daily deals site for geeks. So everyday theres a new attraction. Most of the products are “how to’s” and “step-by-step” guides. Nothing is really free with this site, but they give you your money back if your not satisfied. Their policy: 100% money back, happiness guaranteed. We’ll refund for any reason, at any time, before you die.

5. Mixergy

Mixergy with Andrew Warner remains to be a great resource for entrepreneurs. What is Mixergy? Andrew Warner interviews entrepreneurs who have succeeded or failed at building an business. The main purpose is for the audience to learn from the best. I love it because it gave me access to people I just could not meet and have a conversation with when I was starting out. It can’t get any better than that.

More Resources: No Excuse List, a site with a huge range of places to learn online for free.

Here Is Why You Will Fail

A few months ago I saw my startup die. I worked hard and long hours putting together specs, building, marketing, and sweating with my co-founders and it just ended up not working out. When I began working on this project I made a few first time entrepreneur mistakes, especially dealing with angel investors. But the worst mistake of all was working with people who weren’t as passionate about the idea as me.

I heard Amos Windbush speak last night and he had a quote that every entrepreneur should know. “There two types of people. Those that gain you energy, and those that drain your energy.”

You will fail if you don’t have a great team, no matter how good the idea is. No matter how talented a person may be, if he/she drains more energy from you than they give, it still will not work out. This is something I learned the hard way. So when it comes to locating those good people always look for a few things such as:

1. Passion

2. Work ethic

3. Attitude

4. Role player

If it doesn’t work out, you can always put in another quarter and try again. This is a shameless plug, but we will cover most of these topics in my book The Phat Startup. Dropping early 2013.

 

Is Cory Booker’s #Waywire For You?

When I first read the TechCrunch article that Cory Booker was launching a startup, I was immediately glued to it. Truth is, I’m such a fan of Cory Booker (not because I’m from Newark, lol), I’m interested in almost anything he does. So naturally I was one of the first users when the alpha version of #waywire launched, and was able to grab a super simple vanity URL: waywire.com/anthony

So what the hell is #waywire? They describe themselves as a video network to discover, create, and share what matters to you. My first thought was; can’t I already do this on Youtube and every other social network I’m on? But there is more to it.

Every user gets a feed where they can add a video either by a rewire (retweet/reblog) from another users feed or adding it via bookmarklet. As I added some of my favorite videos to my feed, I felt like I was using a video version of Pinterest. It’s hard to really have a collection of my favorite clips in a clean and organized setup, especially if every video doesn’t come from Youtube. So it was great #waywire could do that for me.

You discover other videos on #waywire by browsing through hashtags such as inspiration, business, tech, etc. Eventually when more users fill up the site there will be an abundance of tags to sift through, sort of reminds me of subreddits on Reddit.

So far so good on this alpha version of #waywire. I’m not sure about the become your own news channel side of things yet, I’ll write an update post on this site in a few months. So is #waywire for you? It’s too soon to even be really critical, but if you love watching videos online then yes. I personally only watch inspirational and educational videos, with a bit of video game related stuff here and there. So follow me on #waywire if that’s your thing and keep it locked on my channel.

Why Aren’t Rappers Taking Advantage Of Rap Genius?

Music labels and artists are always looking for the next big thing to engage with fans. If you want to win the fight for mind share then your definitely on Twitter, your definitely making vlogs, and your most certainly on Facebook. So if everybody is doing the same thing why not add another engagement tool to your arsenal?

In comes Rap Genius. Its a new kind of lyrics site that allows fans to decipher the meaning behind their favorite rap lyrics. The more lyrics they define, the more points they earn etc. I think know that if a artist were to use this along side their other channels it would impact their numbers.

I’m mostly a browser myself. I like to go over the Joe Budden’s 8 minute songs, and check out lines I didn’t quite understand. Example: “If all i’m hearing is sounds of blackness, why am I pessimistic?” I would never understand that line otherwise.

Rap Genius already offers verified accounts to official rappers and VIP’s such as Ben Horowitz. There are many rappers already using the platform, but they could be doing much more I feel. Especially during an album release. There are millions of fans on this site every month, It shouldn’t even be a debate.

I don’t only want to pick on the rappers, some of your favorite hiphop news sites, blogs, and publications should hop in on the fun as well.

You Are What You Eat, And You Are Who You Follow

We live in a media heavy world filled with distractions galore. Instead of  the limited options of TV and Radio, the internet has given people more freedom over what media they want to consume. Theres just so much information available in today’s world, its like a menu at a restaurant.

What are you eating today?

Instead of going all over the place I want to focus on Twitter. Twitter I would say is my favorite social network. I don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers, I don’t even really tweet as much as I personally would like to. But Twitter gives me access to smart people. And most importantly it gives smart and connected people access to me. I’m 90% sure your reading this post after clicking on it through Twitter.

Everything that I have done in the past few years all comes from me connecting with the right people through Twitter. No Lie. It’s amazing who you can meet and the things you can achieve all from your phone or your PC. But beyond meeting people, its also amazing what you can learn. Reading inspirational quotes from thought leaders, business tips, links to eye opening content has all made me a smarter person in 2012.

What are you eating today?

If you read my short simple header in the upper left hand of the site you will know who I follow on Twitter. I mostly follow passionate enthusiasts, thought leaders, authors, and entrepreneurs, from either the video game, tech, or music industry.

I keep myself around what I love, so I can atleast position myself to learn something new, engage in a cool conversation or get lucky with an opportunity. So why the hell am I making this post?

To try and get those who aren’t already eating right on Twitter to start doing so now. It’s such a simple thing.

Go eat.

 

How Refer.ly Can Change Social Media Marketing

It may seem like I’m on a love fest for Refer.ly, and maybe I am. But I really understand the problem they are solving here and the potential is so great. I just had a conversation with my co author of “The Phat Startup” James Lopez about music and the way its being marketed today and it drove me to make this post.

See, when you became an affiliate for Amazon or any company online you had to go sign up, fill out a long ass form, enter tax information, and then do a bunch of other annoying 1995 stuff. Referl.ly cuts that in half, you can now just sign-up with a Twitter or Facebook login if you choose to do so.

The fact that it’s just that easy to start engaging and sharing affiliate links to quality products from quality vendors opens the doors for all types of creative campaigns. Online crowd based activity has gotten so popular recently, I think its worth a try for labels to begin using a service like this to get fans involved in selling a CD.

It’s not like you don’t get anything from it as a fan. You can earn rewards, money, etc. just by sharing a simple shortened url. And the good thing about it is, virtually nobody loses. The fan earns his/her reward, Amazon still gets their cut, Refer.ly gets a new user.

What If Rick Ross and Def Jam ran a contest via all social media channels that whoever helps to sell the most albums would get a grand prize or something? What if Fandango did something similar for movie tickets to anticipated box office hits? Worth a try if you ask me.

We have entered the new age of affiliate marketing, that actually taps into the way we already share and recommend products on the internet. No sales pitch, it’s coming from friends, family, and the people you like. Who will be the first to bite?