Friday, January 6, 2023

Do You Know? ( A College Experience )

 



DeMaster Thomas, 10/14/2002



Listening to my favorite Diana Ross tune put me into a really deep frame of mind.  Asking myself, do I know where I’m going?  Do I like the things life is showing me?  Where am I going with my future…do I know?  To be honest, I didn’t.  I knew that working one job for the rest of my life was completely out, unless I could work for myself and own a business.  And from that point on, it became my lifelong dream.

I was so intrigued by the venture capitalists.  They appeared to me movers, shakers, and big money-makers.  It appeared that they only worked as long as they needed to and they moved on to another venture.  But what would it take to get started?  Well, I did some research and found out some very interesting tidbits about venture capitalism.  According to ­Across the Board by Benno Schmidt, a firm’s mission statement should be   "We are here to invest in companies that we believe can succeed, companies with both management teams and purposes that we can wholeheartedly embrace, companies that it will be fun to work with as we build and companies of which we will be justly proud when we succeed."  So, I thought of ways to first, start a company, take the revenue and turn out an investment firm from it, that would do exactly that. 

Let the ideas begin!  I started out by drawing up a business plan that I felt would be successful.  It consisted of a parent company that would house brother and sister companies and in turn, create revenue to invest in other business and new innovations.  I created the layout of the property, the titles of each store within the property and set up a list of functions for each store to perform. 

I decided on which products would be sold where and how.  Now of course, great minds think alike.  I incorporated the ideas of my closest friends who shared my goal for making this business venture successful.  Together, we began to brainstorm many more branches of ideas. 

Then, we were faced with the final task.  Investment.  We had to find a way get money to make all these ideas come to life.  This is where my little song was not so inspirational.  It was as if there were ‘no open doors’ anywhere for those who have no money to get money to make money.  I was right back where I started with a dollar and a dream.  So, I decided to put the business plan on hold and find a way to generate the income that would be needed to give this plan life. 





Get That Money

                So, there we were.  Working to find a way to generate the money we would need to get our business venture off the ground.  We put together an independent record label that would generate income by selling the material produced by the artists.  The artists were of all kinds of music, including rock and house.  But it was mostly rap and rhythm and blues.  And of course, guess who was right there in the middle of it all, writing diligently and making songs…yes you guessed it…me.  I was doing something I had not done for two years.  I was making music and recording in the studio again.  This fit perfectly for what we were after.  You see, part of the business venture included a record company.  Another part of the venture included a clothing store that sold clothes, made and worn by the recording artists as well as other trendy fashions from other companies and designers.  There would also be a record store that sold all kinds of music and videos.  This was a ‘left hand feeds the right hand’ type of business.  Each one of the products that we created, fit in one of the stores in our shopping center.  This shopping center was more than just a flashy, trendy place for people to buy their latest and greatest favorites in music and clothes.  It was also home to a restaurant and a nightclub. 

 

Now, I’m sure that sounds like a lot, but hey, our mission was to get the money and make enough of it to rotate it over and over again.  After all, this was a career.  Not a job. 

This was something that was designed to maintain our lifestyle as well as the lifestyle of our children who would grow up to take over the family businesses. 

 

Well, two years passed and nothing had come of the ideas.  The music ventures never took off and I never really worked hard enough in researching to find an investor or list of investors that would take on such a venture.  So, my final goal of fulfilling my career interest as a venture capitalist, was far away from any length of vision I could ever imagine.  It was time to give up.  After all the work we put into our music, hoping it would sell and we would make enough money to start our businesses, we gave up.  The little voice in our heads saying, "get that money" was now saying, “stop wasting your time.”  So, I did. 

Now, all I do is look back on it and think of the “shoulda” “coulda” “woulda’s”.  It is still a dream of mine though.  I like the idea of the dream of being a venture capitalist but I don’t think I’m going to pursue it as a career interest anymore.  I guess I’ll go back to the drawing board and find another way.

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