"Tour of Champions" 2013

[garfield]

You need to hang on to cash.

Look, I am not saying that top corps are doing any better than others in terms of cash management. They need to do better.

I am suggesting that all do better at this.... live below their means and radically diversify revenues.

Yes, you need to hang on to cash. And I would contend that if the directors didn't demand that more and more cash be paid out to them, that DCI would have the opportunity to hang on to more cash.

Instead of promoting that DCI is incompetent in their cash management, perhaps a more apt target would be those corps that demand that cash be paid out to them.

[Stu]

more like encouraged them to go whole hog

Which completely contradicts his own (D-Ray) contention, "The reality here is that the talent and experience required to maximize the potential of the DCI brand does not exist within the sphere of drum corps". Doh!

[kickhaltsforlife]

Yes, you need to hang on to cash. And I would contend that if the directors didn't demand that more and more cash be paid out to them, that DCI would have the opportunity to hang on to more cash.

Instead of promoting that DCI is incompetent in their cash management, perhaps a more apt target would be those corps that demand that cash be paid out to them.

I know it's been said many times. But this is the shortest and most on point version of this I've seen in a while.

[xbones7480]

I won't go to a TOC show unless Crossmen are there.

[Michael Boo]

Yeah, the CEO of the Susan G Koman non-profit was around half a million dollars a year. The CEO of the National Boy Scouts makes well over $1 million a year. Large salaries for non-profit executives can definitely run high.

Dan Acheson sure isn't in that ballpark, but for what he has to contend with, he deserves to be.

It would be easier to teach cats to dance the merengue.

[chaos001]

actually you've been as vague as vague can be for years, as exposing specifics blows your and others agenda out of the water. However, many ofus have said there's options to explore and discussed it, however you refuse to see it because it doesn't fit your agenda

He comes from a professional music promotion background. It's not surprising that his Weltanschuung is that music should make money and that he's probably petrified by the finances that DCI and its member corps deal with.

I'm still going to stand by my argument that DCI is a luxury good, like any other art form (symphony, ballet, museum). They should be run as well as possible but must rely on patronage. If the individual corps can come up with their own resources such as camps, business ventures, etc., then good for them.

It's sad that the Steel Curtain was lifted...hopefully it can be put back in place so those in Eastern Europe can stay there and leave us alone!

Edited February 23, 2013 by chaos001

[charlie1223]

Yes, you need to hang on to cash. And I would contend that if the directors didn't demand that more and more cash be paid out to them, that DCI would have the opportunity to hang on to more cash.

Instead of promoting that DCI is incompetent in their cash management, perhaps a more apt target would be those corps that demand that cash be paid out to them.

Do you know if DCI has increased payout to corps? If so by how much? You must know this since that's what you are arguing.

Edited February 23, 2013 by charlie1223

[Slingerland]

This might fit in somewhere here in the discussion (a little late to see all this, but it's been an interesting discussion to follow).

You often hear advice from successful people that you should "Follow your passion." That sounds about right. Passion will presumably give you high energy, high resistance to rejection and high determination. Passionate people are more persuasive, too. Those are all good things, right?

Here's the counterargument: When I was a commercial loan officer for a large bank in San Francisco, my boss taught us that you should never make a loan to someone who is following his passion. For example, you don't want to give money to a sports enthusiast who is starting a sports store to pursue his passion for all things sporty. That guy is a bad bet, passion and all. He's in business for the wrong reason.

My boss at the time, who had been a commercial lender for over thirty years, said the best loan customer is one who has no passion whatsoever, just a desire to work hard at something that looks good on a spreadsheet. Maybe the loan customer wants to start a dry cleaning store, or invest in a fast food franchise - boring stuff. That's the person you bet on. You want the grinder, not the guy who loves his job.

So who's right? Is passion a useful tool for success, or is it just something that makes you irrational?

My hypothesis is that passionate people are more likely to take big risks in the pursuit of unlikely goals, and so you would expect to see more failures and more huge successes among the passionate. Passionate people who fail don't get a chance to offer their advice to the rest of us. But successful passionate people are writing books and answering interview questions about their secrets for success every day. Naturally those successful people want you to believe that success is a product of their awesomeness, but they also want to retain some humility. One can't be humble and say, "I succeeded because I am far smarter than the average person." But you can say your passion was a key to your success, because everyone can be passionate about something or other, right? Passion sounds more accessible. If you're dumb, there's not much you can do about it, but passion is something we think anyone can generate in the right circumstances. Passion feels very democratic. It is the people's talent, available to all.

It's also mostly ########.

Consider two entrepreneurs. Everything else being equal, one is passionate and possesses average talent, while the other is exceedingly brilliant, full of energy, and highly determined to succeed. Which one do you bet on?

It's easy to be passionate about things that are working out, and that distorts our impression of the importance of passion. I've been involved in several dozen business ventures over the course of my life and each one made me excited at the start. You might even call it passion. The ones that didn't work out - and that would be most of them - slowly drained my passion as they failed. The few that worked became more exciting as they succeeded. As a result, it looks as if the projects I was most passionate about were also the ones that worked. But objectively, the passion evolved at the same rate as the success. Success caused passion more than passion caused success.

Passion can also be a simple marker for talent. We humans tend to enjoy doing things we are good at while not enjoying things we suck at. We're also fairly good at predicting what we might be good at before we try. I was passionate about tennis the first day I picked up a racket, and I've played all my life, but I also knew it was the type of thing I could be good at, unlike basketball or football. So sometimes passion is simply a byproduct of knowing you will be good at something.

I hate selling, but I know it's because I'm bad at it. If I were a sensational sales person, or had potential to be one, I'd probably feel passionate about sales. And people who observed my success would assume my passion was causing my success as opposed to being a mere indicator of talent.

If you ask a billionaire the secret of his success, he might say it is passion, because that sounds like a sexy answer that is suitably humble. But after a few drinks I think he'd say his success was a combination of desire, luck, hard work, determination, brains, and appetite for risk.

http://dilbert.com/b...w_your_passion/

It would seem to me, as a business person, that one of drum corps' weaknesses has always been that it's run by people who really love drum corps, but don't necessarily have the type of calculating minds necessary to make drum corps more viable, as both an entertainment form, and as an activity for young performers. So isn't it possible that the thing that would likely make drum corps bigger isn't to try and fix underperforming units at the bottom half of the spectrum, but to focus more energy on showcasing the best product out there, in the efforts to increase visibility for the idea of drum corps as something worth putting money into producing, and something worth doing?

If you increase the overall market for a product, you increase the likelihood that there will be more money available to those who wish to create similar products. If DCI focused more on their international-brand corps, and another two million people around the world found themselves interested in watching what they were doing, that's two million more new potential donors and customers for the sport, which makes it more likely that you'll be able to attract some of them enough to want to do it themselves, or become involved as financial backers. But right now, DCI's visibility to those who don't already know about it is pretty tiny.

The traditionalists seem to be driven by passion, not ambition for success, and while that's admirable (and some passion for your work is necessary), passion can also act like a blindfold to those for whom "tradition" is the most important thing. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Slingerland

[danielray]

He comes from a professional music promotion background.

My background is venture capital.

It's not surprising that his Weltanschuung is that music should make money and that he's probably petrified by the finances that DCI and its member corps deal with.

Not exactly sure what you mean by petrified by the finances.

I'm still going to stand by my argument that DCI is a luxury good, like any other art form (symphony, ballet, museum). They should be run as well as possible but must rely on patronage. If the individual corps can come up with their own resources such as camps, business ventures, etc., then good for them.

I very much disagree with this concept and the concept that things like the symphony or ballet are things that must be subsidized. I've actually been on the other side of this before, with my main source of income being from a full-time job playing in an orchestra (was employed as a bassoonist with Fresno Philharmonic and subbed for San Francisco Symphony).

As I have posted here before, these sort of institutions that live in a very dangerous mindset. Both the audience and patrons for the current model (orchestras or art trapped in grand halls or galleries... waiting for the audience to come to them) are literally dying. There is no new generation to take their place.

Drum corps following this even more dead model is certainly not the way forward.

It's sad that the Steel Curtain was lifted...hopefully it can be put back in place so those in Eastern Europe can stay there and leave us alone!

Um...?

[garfield]

He comes from a professional music promotion background. It's not surprising that his Weltanschuung is that music should make money and that he's probably petrified by the finances that DCI and its member corps deal with.

I'm still going to stand by my argument that DCI is a luxury good, like any other art form (symphony, ballet, museum). They should be run as well as possible but must rely on patronage. If the individual corps can come up with their own resources such as camps, business ventures, etc., then good for them.

It's sad that the Steel Curtain was lifted...hopefully it can be put back in place so those in Eastern Europe can stay there and leave us alone!

Well, your first point is wrong.

Your second point I disagree with. I think music is important enough for it to stand on its own two feet.

Your third point is, well, callous and dumb-headed. Are you talking about the Iron Curtain? The one that that Reagan finally destroyed? That Iron Curtain? And you wish it was still there because you don't like DanielRay's viewpoints? Wow. Just wow. You should make that your DCP signature. People engaging with you need to see that you wrote that.