This past week in class we discussed the importance of branding when starting a company. Branding is the specific look you give off for your company. It’s the advertising that lets the public know about your company and what you’re offering. In today’s society, branding is extremely important because the attractiveness is what draws a customer in. A startup with poor organization and branding won’t last as no customer will be willing to take a closer look within your company. The article “8 Reasons a Powerful Personal Brand Will Make You Successful” brought up some great key points. I really liked their first point that opportunity finds you. If your personal brand is attractive, people will end up finding you. I can relate to this so well. There’s been many times I’ve been scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and come across an attractive looking logo. This prompts me to either click on the advertisement being shown, the profile, or leads me to google what that brand is. I’ve ended up following companies or buying their product just from seeing their attractive and appealing logo. I also liked their eighth point which was to have confidence. It’s important for these companies to find a way to be authentic and unique through their branding. Branding is a fun way to show your audience what makes you different from everyone else.

Reading that article made me reflect on how active my generation (Gen Z) is on social media. I personally think that is an advantage for us when thinking about branding. We’re doing our own branding every day through our social media pages. If one were to look at my own social media pages, they would get a sense of exactly who I am. They would be able to tell that I am a student at San Diego State, that I am a cheerleader on the SDSU cheer team, and that I love sports. I think social media is a fun way to start to develop a unique and attractive brand. Through Instagram, one could do this through using presets to edit photos. Using a preset makes all your photos look similar and creates a trend for your page. The story icons you can make for your saved stories at the top of your Instagram page can also tell a story. This is something that bloggers are very big on. Overall, I think the younger generations are almost at an advantage when it comes to branding. They’re doing it every day on their social media pages. If any of them want to become entrepreneurs one day, they’d be able to do all of this themselves!

The past few classes I have learned more about some different strategies to have a successful business model. A few weeks ago, we learned about the SWOT of each building block of the canvas. In order for an entrepreneur to have a successful company, they need to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of their own company, as well as their competitors. I had the opportunity to evaluate SWOT myself in the competitive analysis assignment. After completing this assignment, I learned that it is hard work for entrepreneurs to complete this process. There is a lot of research that goes into evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It can be especially difficult when evaluating this for a competitor since you yourself don’t know a whole lot of information about the company. It’s a timely process and one that requires dedication. From the outside, many people might think that an entrepreneur’s life is sunshine and rainbows. They start a company that is successful and make a lot of money. What people don’t see is all of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to create a successful business model. I definitely learned that through the competitive analysis assignment. Although this assignment was timely, I really enjoyed learning more about my startup Cheddar and how the company came to be. 

Another aspect we’ve recently learned about is startup funding. This might be one of the most important aspects of becoming an entrepreneur besides having a good idea. Some ways entrepreneurs obtain funding is through loans, investors, crowdfunding, and family and friends. I recently met with my assigned entrepreneur, Chris Jennewein, and he taught me a lot about startup funding. For his own company, Times of San Diego, Chris used a mixture of bootstrap funding and seed funding. Bootstrap funding is when funding comes from the founders own savings. Chris was smart and had a lot of money saved up that he used for a kickstart within his own company. Since he was using most of his own money for his startup, he did everything he could to keep the costs low. He used things like WordPress, Google Analytics, and others free applications to avoid putting money into those areas. He was so passionate about stressing how important it is to keep the cost low, in fact that was his biggest piece of advice to anyone who wants to become an entrepreneur. He told me that it’s worth it to put time and research into finding an application that does the job for free than to pay a ridiculous amount of money for it. I really enjoyed meeting with Chris and hearing his story. 

Last week we had the opportunity to have Yusuf Omar as a guest speaker in class. I really enjoyed hearing what Yusuf had to say regarding his media company Hashtag Our Stories. I really like that he was our first guest speaker because his company was so unique. He is a great example of what an entrepreneur is, and I feel it was very fitting for him to speak to us right before we begin our media startup projects. I have listened to a handful of guest speakers being a journalism major and most of them tend to repeat some of the same things. They all emphasize how important it is to follow the traditional news guidelines such as AP style, telling newsworthy stories, being objective, etc. Those are definitely important, however Yusuf’s company puts a spin on that to make it more unique. His company lets ordinary people suggest stories to tell. He uses nontraditional news platforms such as Snapchat to tell these stories. What I found so interesting about Yusuf is that he has experienced traditional news companies before starting his own company. He worked at CNN News for several years. He knew he had more to offer than sitting at CNN all day following their rules. I think his story is super important for everyone to hear because it shares the story that it’s okay to not follow “traditional” guidelines. Yusuf didn’t like working at a big corporate news organization and felt he could do something more enjoyable and unique. Personally, I feel I benefited a lot from hearing about Yusuf’s unique media company compared to the traditional corporate media company stories. His company is doing very well especially with how prominent media is in today’s generation. 

Additionally, I think Yusuf did a fantastic job of answering all of our questions. He put so much thought and detail into his answers which was great to see. I was very pleased with the answer he gave me. The idea of “fake news” is so prevalent in today’s society. Some people are so critical of news organizations and always assume something is fake news if they don’t like the company. I wanted to know if Yusuf deals with people criticizing his company about fake news since it’s not a traditional news organization. His answer is one that every news organization should follow whether they’re a large corporate company or a small market. He said that everyone should engage with those comments. He suggested responding with something like, “Thank you for your response. What do you know about this topic that we haven’t stated? Do you have another source we could verify with?” I liked his answer because I think it’s so important to engage with those people instead of just ignoring them. Yusuf also mentioned that most of the time they don’t even respond after that because they do indeed know that your news is true. Overall, I thought that was a very professional way to handle criticism and a great message to us students. I look forward to hearing more guest speakers during the remainder of the semester. 

We are now a few weeks into the semester and I have already learned so much. I wanted to use this blog post to highlight some of the readings. I really enjoyed reading the Creative Confidence book. It was so interesting to read about such successful people and their stories on how they got to where they are now. Something I read this past week was the section about the difference between a job, career and a calling from chapter five. The book described a job as something that simply pays the bills and is just ‘work.’ There is nothing fun about it, and one would only look forward to the weekends. A career is a job where one focuses on getting ahead. One might focus on getting a promotion, a more impressive title, a larger office or a higher salary. As the book states, “you are focused on checking off achievements rather than pursuing deeper meaning” (pg. 156). I personally feel this is what most employees would consider themselves as. Everyone loves to work their way up to the next level. It gives people something to look forward to. Finally, a calling is something you are passionate about. It doesn’t feel like a job or work, but rather it is your identity. One might view this type of work as contributing to a larger purpose. You are contributing to a higher value or to something bigger than yourself. 

The description of the calling really stood out to me because ideally, this is the type of work that everyone wants to have. Everyone wants to be so passionate about something that it doesn’t even feel like work. It made me reflect on the career I want to go into. I thought to myself, “Is this something that is a calling?” I definitely think that journalism is my calling. I really couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else as a career. I have always been a passionate storyteller. As I’ve gone further in my education, I have found that I really enjoy interviewing people and then getting to tell their story. This semester, I am lucky enough to intern at NBC 7. This has further demonstrated that journalism is my calling as I get so excited to go into my internship each day. I am so eager to learn everything they have to offer, and am passionate about continuing to become a better storyteller. When I picture the description the book gives of the ‘calling,” I picture someone very similar like myself.  This makes me feel confident that I definitely chose the right major and career to go into.

Hello and welcome to my blog Professor Schmitz Weiss! I am very excited to be in another media class with you this semester. I am hoping to build off of the skills I learned in JMS 315 and learn even more about digital media. I have always felt that media is such an important part of our society. It is dominating our world which is why I feel it is so important to continue to learn about it. After taking JMS 315 last semester, I realized that there is a huge market for media. There are so many jobs and companies that rely on media whether it be their social media presence, infographics, video, photos, etc. I thought it would be interesting to take JMS 515 to learn more about the entrepreneur side of media. I think taking a class like this is very important for all students, not just journalism majors, because each person hopes to be an entrepreneur of some sort one day. Media is the perfect outlet for people to become entrepreneurs because media is currently dominating the world.

Something I am really eager to learn about is learning to better engage my creative side. I have always joked around and said that I am a very uncreative person, but then I look at some of the media work I’ve created that isn’t too bad. After reading just one chapter of our book, Creative Confidence, I’ve learned that every person has the ability to be confident in their creative abilities. I am excited to learn about the ways entrepreneurs use their creativity to create their innovations. Learning about things other people have done always inspires me. A project I am really looking forward to this semester is the entrepreneur profile paper. I think it will be super fun to interview an entrepreneur and tell their story. It’ll be great to learn about how they became an entrepreneur. I am even more excited because I hope to be a reporter one day and doing an interview like this will be great practice. Overall, I am looking forward to a great semester learning more about the digital media world!

Hello! My name is Amber Salas and I am a 3rd year Journalism student at San Diego State University. This website will be for all the fun stuff I am learning in my JMS 515 Media Entrepreneurship class. Keep checking in the follow my journey. You can learn more about me on the “Meet Amber Salas” tab at the top!