Building a billion-dollar enterpise, 18 - In L.A., a step forward

To get straight to it: I missed the BADWest meeting Wednesday evening, mainly because the snowstorm caused my flight to be cancelled, and then the flight that I was reassigned to was cancelled, with the end result being that, instead of arriving at LAX shortly after 2 pm, I got there about 7:15 pm.

Thursday went much better.

I did speak with Joseph Collins, not in Thursday morning's meeting, but in an informal meet and greet Thursday evening. What started out as quite a small group in the lobby of the Culver Hotel, turned into an extended evening of eating, drinking and connecting in a banquet room.

Mr. Collins arrived late in the evening, and sat far enough away from me so that I had to leave my seat to converse with him. So, after a period of feeling awkward, I did, sitting next to him. I asked questions about the company and about whether or not, given current share prices and the number of shares outstanding, he anticipates doing a reverse stock split (no).

In retrospect, I fear I spoke too much, about the emotion that can attach to owning shares of a company, about the work of Paul Zane Pilzer (in particular, "Unlimited Wealth" and "God Wants You To Be Rich")...yikes. Anyway, when he spoke about growing the company, he said that he wants 100 new shows. And I took the opportunity to share the idea, not for "The Laundry," and not for a documentary about 1015 N. Homewood, but for a reality TV show about 1015 N. Homewood.

He said that he liked it, gave me his card, and asked me to call him.

I consider that a measure of success.

The overarching purpose for the trip had nothing to do with that, by the way. It was primarily for the purpose of Andrew Thornhill lining up his ducks, so to speak, for a fashion media project that will include radio, television, events and publishing.

No doubt I'll mention more about pieces of it as they roll out. For now, the first piece is an event: a mixer for fashion bloggers, to be held in New York on May 20, 2013. The thing got oversubscribed in the first week or so, so now Andrew is planning mixers in other cities. Indeed, while we were eating and drinking at the Culver Hotel, he struck a tentative deal with the hotel's events coordinator to hold one there. Cause that's how he rolls.

And how I want to learn to.

Building a billion-dollar enterprise, 8

Spoke with Andrew Thornhill today, who alerted me to the fact that the "fiscal cliff" deal worked out by Congress last night includes the extension of Bush-era tax credits for film and TV productions.

I had not known about such credits. This is the sentence from the Hollywood Reporter's story that jumps off the page:

"As extended through 2013, the credit allows deduction of production costs up to $15 million and as much as $20 million for shoots that occur in sites that meet the bill’s criteria for an economically disadvantaged area."

An economically disadvantaged area? Um, yeah, that would be Homewood.

That news nicely capped a day that started out rough, but got better.

The rough start was me having trouble sleeping last night, being highly congested and suffering fits of sneezing that caused my entire body to seize up (resulting in a kink in my lower back that still hurts). Then spending a really long time in the tub trying to steam bad stuff out of my body.

Finally got down to work some time this afternoon. I think I spent a couple of hours working on Homewood Nation's Cafe Press shop, trying to understand how Cafe Press works in its entirety. I have a couple of accounts with them, and a couple of shops. One is a beta shop; the one for Homewood Nation is...well I'm not sure what it is. I need to read their documentation again to get clear on the options they offer.

In any case, I was pleased simply to discover that the Homewood Nation page featuring the shop contains items that I created before going to Louisville, because at the time it appeared that they were not being saved.

It's time to make money. Now.

I need to do something this month to get momentum going for this year. Maybe I should make it a goal to publish "Quick Flicks," my collection of short screenplays, by Jan. 10. 

That certainly seems more doable than writing a novel in a month (sigh), just by working at it every day. And working at it every day would help to train me to work on building Luminaria Productions every day, period. Which is what I have to do to build it into a billion-dollar enterprise - work at it a minimum of six days a week.

But publishing "Quick Flicks" by Jan. 10 is not a goal just yet. I spent some hours this evening assembling and printing my masterplan for 2013. Or more precisely, the draft of said masterplan. Tomorrow (and perhaps the day after that), I will focus largely on updating it. That updating will determine what emerges as the strongest near-term goal. And what emerges as long-term ones.

A movie or TV series, set largely in Homewood and employing as many Homewood residents as possible in its production - that would change things.

That will influence the masterplan.