Tanson Bothe

In all of my businesses, I started by putting together spreadsheets of my expenses, which allowed me to calculate how much revenue I needed to break even and keep the lights on in my office and my apartment:

- I wrote overviews of what I was selling - why I thought the business made sense - an overview of my competition - why my product and/or service would be important to my customers - and why my customers should buy it

A guy I met while I was in San Francisco in 2012 sold his company to Apple last week for over 200 million dollars.

I texted him, “Yo man, big news, congrats!”

He replied back, “thank you dude!”

It’s funny how we met.

I was outside smoking a cigarette, pacing back and forth thinking about all the glitches and bugs in our product that we had less than a week to clean up before needing to launch, when he walked outside to take his dog out.

"Hey man, how are you doing?" I casually asked, having no idea who he was.

After a few minutes of introducing ourselves, his dog taking a piss on the sidewalk, and me finishing up my cigarette, we walked back into the building and took the elevator up together when he looked at me and said…

Dont be the type of person who says they want something to happen but never actually does what's required on a consistent, day-in and day-out basis in order to make it happen.

If you truly want something in life, you owe it to yourself to do whatever it takes to make it happen for yourself. If not, that's ok, it really is, but please, stop acting like you want it. No one will be able to take you seriously.

In business, there will always be some sort of problem or challenge we have to deal with. We must learn to embrace these problems and challenges - especially in the early days of a company. If worked through correctly, they will only make the team stronger.

When pitching an idea, give your audience only the bare minimum you have to give them. Just enough information that will allow them to take the idea and expand on your vision for themselves rather than you trying to explaining it all to them. A HUGE part of selling any idea includes getting others to take on that idea as if it were their own.  

I seem to always be in a natural state of innovation. I'm always brainstorming and trying to come up with new, knockout ideas. I can't imagine someone calling themselves an "entrepreneur" who's not like this.

For every good idea I come up with, I come up with 3 bad ones. So it's crucial for me to keep all my ideas/thoughts organized so I know which ones are worth pursuing and which ones should never be talked about again.

My problem is coming up with good ideas at bad times. Such as while I'm in the shower, or while I'm out running, or while I'm shit-faced in a bar (not often), and FORGET TO WRITE THEM DOWN.

I'm already an Adderall-less A.D.D. sufferer whose mind is in a hundred places at once. If I come up with something, whatever it may be, and I don't WRITE it down, most of the time, it never comes back to me. 

Being well aware of this problem, I recently made a personal commitment that no matter where I was, what I was doing, or what I came up with, I was going to stop and WRITE it down. 

The "status update" is one of the main reasons we're all addicted to social media.

Everything we do, everywhere we go, we ask ourselves, "Is this status material?", "Would this make a good post?" If we decide that it would, we don't hesitate to get on our laptops and iPhones to share it with the world. And then of course, once we share it, we're checking within minutes to see what kind of responses we're getting out of our friends and family.

I'm no psychology major (college drop-out), but it doesn't take one to know that as humans, all of us have a desire to feel important, interesting, liked, etc. We want to know when we say something, that someone's listening. It's how we're wired. The status update is the easiest, most effective way to get our personal message out there and receive the feedback we need and want. 

I love this episode of Entourage, and not just because it's guest starring my beloved Dallas Cowboys' owner, Jerry Jones.

Watch the first 30 seconds of this video.

Days after I turned 21, I went to Las Vegas for an insurance convention. While I was there, among other things, I was fortunate to hear all kinds of successful people talk about the strategies they use that makes them so successful in the business world.

One message has always stuck with me. Some dude named Mark Sheer was talking about something simple, yet, in my mind, was never even thought about before. Mark made his millions in the real estate industry by using a simple sales strategy built around "favorable introductions."

This is what Mark had to say on favorable introductions:

"A favorable introduction is when a trusted friend contacts a referral and tells them that you can help them achieve their vision and goals. A favorable introduction insures that the referral is more likely to take your call and be receptive to what you have to say. "

I mean, it makes perfect sense. I would close more sales if I was selling to people who were introduced to me by a mutual friend of ours. Why? Well, easy. The trust that has already been established between the "connector" and both parties.

We've all seen the "Suggest Friends" link on Facebook, right? 

Not long ago, an author friend of mine was looking for a designer to design his book cover. I had the perfect person in mind, and ended up suggesting that the two become friends on Facebook. They ended up working together, and Jarius (the designer) designed Mateo (the author) one hell of a book cover. It couldn't of worked out any better.

"Social Media Matchmaking" not only works with our professional lives, but with our personal lives as well. 

For example, in a real life situation, if I was at a bar with some friends and was hanging out with a guy and a girl who didn't know each other, but they both knew me, and I knew they were both looking to "meet someone", and then took the initiative to introduce them to one another and was like, "Hey, I think you guys could hit it off, you two should talk", they would naturally have more potential to "hit it off" because I know both of them and the both of them know me so the trust that has already been established among everyone goes a long, long ways. 

So now, with Facebook such a big part of our lives, I think it is very important for us to be aware of these same opportunities we have to play this "Matchmaker" role - just more in a social media sense. 

I graduated high school back in 2005. At that time, Myspace was just then really starting to make a name for themselves. And it wasn't until after I graduated high school that I finally created my first account. Everyone was on Myspace for a couple years and then all of the sudden there was a massive movement from people using Myspace to switching over to Facebook. That's mostly because, at first, you couldn't even sign up on Facebook without having a university student e-mail address. So once Facebook was available to everyone, more and more people made the switch to Facebook.

One of the best books I've ever read was "The Power of Who" by Bob Beaudine (http://powerofwho.com). In "The Power of Who", Bob's theory is that "We already know everyone we need to know," and that it's those people who are going to help us make our dreams a reality, but only if we use those relationships correctly.

It took me a while to fully understand what he was getting at, but now, it makes perfect sense to me. 

But get this, that was before social media played such a huge role in our lives. I think he mentioned social media maybe once, if at all, in the book. So now with social media, especially for Generation Y, the people we've met and the relationships we've built with them over the years haven't gone anywhere, we're all still connected with each other in the social media world - we've never lost touch.

By now, most hip-hop fans have heard of Brandon Hampton, AKA B-Hamp/Mr. Ricky Bobby. Some people reading this, if not the majority, have known Brandon since grade school. I remember him being a talented freestyler back in the day at T.A. Howard (the middle school we attended) and him always being the class clown who was never afraid of some extra attention, so his success in the music industry doesn't surprise me a bit.

But what does surprise me, is the lack of B-Hamp's online presence. 

When you google "B-Hamp", lots of links will come up. You have some Youtube videos of him doing the Ricky Bobby. You can see his social media platforms. Facebook (he has like 3), his Twitter, and Myspace. There's a couple of different news articles on him and his music, some websites with his lyrics, and that's about all through the first 4-5 pages of Google.

Unfortunately, there is no centralized, meeting grounds for all of this content floating around the web to connect.

I guess if you get a little more specific with your search and google "B-Hamp + label", you can get to a website that has the information you might be looking for. 

But here's the thing, it's not B-Hamp's website, it's his record label's, http://ckbentertainment.com

So what's the big deal? Well, a couple of things. But I'll sum it up in just one sentence.

IT TAKES INTERESTED FANS AWAY FROM B-HAMP AND INTRODUCES THEM TO CKB ENTERTAINMENT.

What is the logic behind this? 

He is the artist, fans want to know more about him, not about his record label. Maybe if I was an aspiring artist myself, then yes, I would be interested about his label. But I'm not, I'm a fan.

The funny thing is, most of the information they have on their website is about B-Hamp. And by looking at their site, it looks like B-Hamp is the only artist they represent.

From the web's perspective, it seems like Mr. Booker (CEO of CKB) is more interested in growing his own record label than he is growing B-Hamp's fan base. 

B-Hamp needs his own website. It doesn't have to be real fancy like Lupe Fiasco's (http://www.lupefiasco.com), but he needs something along the lines of it. Lupe and other artists out there know the importance of their online image and the vital role it plays in the growing popularity of their music. 

I wonder how Lupe would react if Atlantic Records said they didn't want him to have his own website and instead all of his info would be listed on AtlanticRecords.com? I bet he would think it's some kind of sick, evil, fucked up joke.

B-Hamp.com is a registered domain name. Hopefully CKB owns it and not some random domain investor, but who knows? It doesn't really matter. B-Hamp.com or B-HampMusic.com? Same results in the long run.