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.

A day of seeds

So, today was not a day of big actions. Today was a day of small actions on things that could become big.

Meetings, mostly.

A meeting with a young woman with Americorps who is working at Westinghouse H.S. over the summer and who wanted help in thinking about setting up a WHS Facebook page. That was fun because she's smart and energetic and cute and has a kind of huggable openness (no, I didn't hug her).

From what she said, I think WHS admins are way off in their approach to using Facebook: they want to not allow kids to comment, and to be able to update it about once a week. I think that such a page will lose kids' interest almost instantly. And I said so.

Then I met with James Brown and Phillip Thompson of the Lighthouse Project, the afterschool program at Westinghouse, and we laid out a basic framework for students to work over the summer on producing a series of "I Am Homewood" videos. That's pretty exciting.

Then I had a phone meeting with Andrew Hughes, president of Designing Digitally, about creating an MMORPG based on Homewood. That was pretty exciting too, for a couple of reasons: first, because online games have the potential for generating revenue at least three ways - upon initial purchase, via subscriptions, and through the sale of in-game accessories. Second, because it still sounds like something Mani Saint-Victor said earlier is still true - namely, that a prototype could be produced in time for at least a soft launch at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, a little over a month from now (Aug 3-7). Third, because online games commonly have multiple iterations and fourth, relatedly, because the Homewood game could grow through iterations to become progressively richer and deeper. Fifth, because if it takes off, it could make me enough money to live on (say, $3,000/month), or even enough money to buy investments that produce enough money to live on (say, $250,000). Finally, it could help a bunch of people learn to think differently - holy cow, this could be the path to my fantasy of coaching a community toward success - build in insights from Tony Robbins, Paul Zane Pilzer, Scripture, and everything else I'm convinced of.

(How do I learn how to run a computer game company?)

Anyway, that was fun...and this evening Janet and I met with Gene and Dee, for a relaxing and uplifting conversation in Highland Park while the girls played in a playground. That was nice.

There's much more happening. I must prepare to have my life simply explode.