Survival Manual on How to Make a Music Album

From the “Endurance” course I am studying, this is my 3rd and last Action Project. In the previous unit that led to my 2nd Action Project, I made a rough design of a mission I wanted to pursue throughout my life, and I experienced in a small degree what that mission might feel like. In this present unit, I extensively planned my life mission of composing and recording a full album of nine songs that would permit me to both express and share my apprenticeships and my vision with the world, and permit me to use my art as a tool through which I can serve mankind. This planning contains key points such as timelines, what if’s and the resources/materials I will need.

I compiled all of my planning in a “survival manual”, which includes the life of two individuals who approached music similarly to how I plan to do so, and a series of quotes that inspire me to walk the path of excellence. I designed this manual in order to continuously strengthen my objectivity and fervor throughout the completion of my mission.

RS, Cover of Survival Manual, 2018

To access my manual, press here

The Pitch

I am studying a course called “Social Impact by Youth Entrepreneurs”, and this is my first and only Action Project. This course guided me through learning the extense definition of entrepreneurship and its vast implications. I also learned a lot about myself, and what I truly cared about and valued. I learned how to craft a mission and a vision, a hedgehog concept, and a marketing and sales plan. Most of the activities throughout the course had to be developed around a fake or real entrepreneurship of our liking and doing, and I decided to use a small granola business my brother and I have been working on for the last 6 months for the activities. These activities clarified many things for me, and as I progressed in the course so would the effectiveness and organization of our little business.

For my Action Project I had to write a 2-minute pitch presenting my company, its market context, financial projection, competition and the barriers it may face, along with a series of other criteria. The following video is my pitch/presentation:

This is a transcript of my pitch:

Slide 1

Scoggin’s Granola breaks the unhealthy schemes that rise incertitude on whether granola is a healthy way to start your day, offering a homemade baked cereal rich in natural sugars, fats, and flavour!

Slide 2

If you  are a regular granola consumer and you like to know what you are actually eating, you’ve probably heard of the terms “ Evaporated cane juice, molasses, brown rice syrup or oat syrup solids.” These are all sources of sugar you usually find in Granola, and yes, they are bound to be healthier than high-fructose corn syrup, but there is nothing like the raw, unprocessed panela Scoggin’s Granola uses as its only sweetener, along with raisins. Scoggin’s Granola is also baked in a slow-fire-like process, which permits the variety of oats to fully absorb the flavour of the panela, accompanied by peanuts, raisins, and dry coconut, which give you the right amount of energy to start your day.

Slide 3

Joshua Scoggin and myself have been working very hard for the last 6 months, taking the companies’ first steps with firmness and commitment. Scoggin’s Granola is sold in the following presentations: 60g, for a snack while in school or at work, or after a sports activity; breakfast sizes such as 340g and 400g, and family sizes such as 600g and 1kg.

Slide 4

We believe that separating the concepts of “business” and “world improvement” is a dichotomy. Presently, our business is developing in the Galapagos Islands, where hundreds if not thousands of tons of food are imported from the mainland every week. Scoggin’s Granola is implementing a project that supports local panela, peanuts, and coconut production, directly supporting the local economy, as well lowering the ecological footprint of the Galapagos population. Our company has an amazing sense of potentiality by the simple fact that there is presently no other local Granola producer in the Galapagos Islands; all of the Granola consumed in the Islands is imported. The Galapagos community has always stood out for its constant concern for the conservancy of this wonder of the world, and growing worries of the amount of imported food & goods continue to arise. Thus, a variety of initiatives that support local production have begun to appear. We believe that Scoggin’s Granola fits perfectly with the future trends that will further value sustainable, healthy, and local production. We know our product has the potential to grow and grow fast. We have planned an intense growth campaign for the next 4 months, expecting to also grow in profit that we intent to use mostly in the strengthening of the organizational pillar of the company.
After 4 months, both Joshua and I will be gone from the Galapagos Islands for at least a year, and our next goal is to leave behind a strong team of reliable individuals who will make sure of the companies’ continuity and further growth.
We are asking for what we believe to be a reasonably small amount: $5,000. Your return? A total of 8% on interest, yearly.

Song 1: Ornamento

I am studying a course called Endurance, and this is my second Action Project. In this Unit I had to let myself dream and craft a mission of my liking. This mission could take months or years. For my Action Project I had to dedicate 12 hours to completing a task that related itself with the mission I had chosen, documenting along the way, as an appetizer of sorts for the life mission to come. I chose as my mision to fully compose, produce and masterize an album of 9 songs. Consequently, I chose as my 12-hour-task to compose a song.

The following video is the documentation I did in the process of developing my task.

 
The following video is the song I composed, called Ornamento (Ornament is Spanish)

Song Title: Ornamento (Ornament)

Song Lyrics: 

Vecino, amigo, hermano

con ese cuchillo en el pecho

Cómo es que te has levantado

sin pena a vivirla de nuevo?

Cómo es que tu sonrisa le ha ganado al sangrado?

Se ha cicatrizado.

Te he visto danzando en mis días 

cambiando de sexo y de mira

te he visto danzando en el tiempo

brindando esperanza escondida

Cómo es que yo te miro, te escucho, y de pronto confío?

Y aparece al despejar 

mi certidumbre en la ansiada paz.

Percibo el perfume divino

que viene de tu vestidura 

me atrevo a llamarte el consuelo

que adorna los días, las noches

te cuento que ahora confío, con labios partidos, y aspiro tu aroma

y mi fuerza no da lugar

a la insustancialidad.

Translation: 

Neighbor, friend, brother

with that knife in the chest

How are you getting up

without regret to live it again?

How is it that your smile has beat the bleeding?

It has healed.

I've seen you dancing in my days

changing sex and look

I've seen you dancing in time

offering hidden hope

How is it that I look at you, I listen to you, and suddenly I trust?

And, as the day clears 

my certainty for peace appears.

I perceive the divine perfume

that comes from your vestment

I dare to call you the consolation

that adorns the days, the nights

I tell you that now I trust, with split lips, and I aspire your aroma

and my strength does not give rise

to insubstantiality.

Music is Service

I am studying a course called "Endurance", and this is my first Action Project. For this Action Project I had to write the first chapter to my own autobiography, 30 years into the future. I imagined myself being 47 years old, recalling all the goals I have achieved and difficulties I have endured. During this first unit, called "Morpheus", I learned a lot about myself. I identified my strengths and weaknesses, challenged my mental and physical abilities,  and learned about how other characters in history have coped with trials and difficulties of all kinds, such as Ernest Shackleton and his crew aboard the Endurance. My autobiography is titled "Music is Service", and its first chapter is found below, titled "Melodies of my Childhood ,Youth and Adulthood"

Investing, Investing...

I am studying a course called Economics, and this is my last Action Project. For this AP I had to craft my own investment portfolio based on the imaginary scenario where I was given a sum of money, originally in a savings account created by my guardian angel many years ago ,which had been compounding annually ever since. The sum of money added up to a total of $50,556.80. I was free to invest this amount of money in publicly traded companies in any way I wished. In order to invest most effectively, I took my life goals in account, as well as my tolerance risk, investment philosophy, and a series of other considerations that gave me a broader conceptual framework.  This AP was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about myself, in all the different aspects mentioned previously (I faced so many questions I had never even considered before!).

As I continued with my project, I tried to direct all my decisions towards my investment philosophy. Investment for me is a mutual favor  between the investor and the company. The investor funds the company  through money and/or other goods, and therefore earns an asset of the company. This asset is the company’s promise of some certain or uncertain return of the funds in the future, with a potential of a higher return. But in order for this mutual favor to work, I believe that the company must be providing goods and/or services that are in a direct or indirect way improving the world. After all, I am investing for this company’s future growth!

But how can we know whether a company is improving the world? I believe justice takes a big part in answering this question. A company that is just with its employees by paying decent wages as well as with its customers by charging a fair amount for its goods/services is a necessary criteria. Responding to the necessities  of a certain community (the broader of a community the better) I believe is in addition a quality of vital importance. An environmentally sustainable company, or with an every-day improving pollution record is also a key characteristic, as well as a company with leaders who display their ethics through action. One more quality I must mention is a company free of child labor.

According to Rutgers University’s Risk Tolerance Quiz, I have a pretty low average for risk. I believe that assumption is asserted in most of the circumstances the quiz described; however, if I believe I am working to achieve a clear goal for a noble purpose, I don’t mind taking some bigger risks.

RS, Risk Tolerance Quiz

I set three financial goals in different time horizons for this project. These financial goals are much more long-term than anything else. I believe this fits with my personality and, specifically when talking about investing, is much smarter:

• 1-year goal: I’d like to visit GCE in Chicago for my graduation, and support my parents with the price of the plain tickets with $1,000.
• 5-year goal: $20,000 to pay off some of my college loans, if any.
• 25-year goal: A savings account for my children’s education, with $80,000

The two markets I chose to invest in are renewable energies and cosmetics. Out of the many companies I researched, two of them stood out from the rest: Pattern Energy and L'Oréal. They seemed to me as a good distribution to my investments because both Pattern Energy and L'Oréal have strengths and weaknesses that complement each other. L'Oréal is rich in history and counts with a strong establishment, while Pattern Energy takes part in transforming the world to Renewable Energy, something I consider a major necessity. Also, a great (near) financial  future is expected for Pattern Energy.

Here is a little more detail about these two companies:

Pattern Energy (PEGI): Pattern Energy is an independent power company, with a portfolio of 20 wind power facilities in the United States, Canada, and Chile. As they put it in their website (patternenergy.com), Pattern Energy is “transitioning the world to renewable energy”. PEGI is committed to protecting the environment and consider it their responsibility to produce clean, renewable energy to consumers with minimal impact. PEGI offers 7.3% in dividend yield (one of the highest of the sector; recently $0.422/share) and a simple financing structure.

Pattern Energy Stock Price, 2017.

L'Oréal (LRLCY): L'Oréal is the world’s largest cosmetics company. Its headquarters are located in Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France.L'Oréal offers a maximum of 0.5% in dividends to shareholders who have continuously held their shares for a minimum of two years; however its dominant position, which comes from its grand branding power and great stability leaves only a slight room for any disruption to other similar businesses.  Last year, L'Oréal was named the “World’s most ethical company” of 2017 for the 8th consecutive year by the Ethisphere Institute, a global leader in defining and measuring the standards of ethical business practices. L'Oréal works with organizations such as the Anti-corruption Commission of the International Chamber of Commerce, the Ethics and Compliance Initiative, the International Business Ethics Institute, and several others in a “spirit of continuous improvement”, as they state in their webpage.

L'Oréal Stock Price, 2017.

I have distributed my investments in 3 portfolios:

Portfolio l- 1 Year Goal

$25,148.00

56 Shares of LRLCY @ 223.88 ($12,509 total)(49.7% of portfolio)

583 Shares of PEGI @ $21.68 ($12,639 total)(50.3% of portfolio

I will benefit myself from this first investment only from dividend earnings, which sum up to $1,024.44. My 1-year-goal will therefore be achieved. The ROI of this portfolio is of 10.8%

• LRLCY has an expected ROI of 9.7%
• PEGI has an expected ROI of 12.7%
• The ROI of this portfolio is of 10.8%
• Future value of all shares: $27,966.52

Portfolio ll-5 Year Goal

$25,148.00

56 Shares of LRLCY @ $223.88 ($12,509 total)(49.7% of portfolio)

583 Shares of PEGI @ $21.68 ($12,639 total)(50.3% of portfolio)

This portfolio is similar to the first, but my plan is to cash these shares out by year 5, earning a total of $21,547.62, dividend earnings included. This meets my 5-year-goal. The ROI of this portfolio is also 10.8%, of course.

• L’Oréal has an expected ROI of 12.4% after 5 years
• Calculating the PEGI expected ROI for the next 5 years was no easy ordeal. 5 years ago, PEGI’s share value was 6.8% more than the present one. However, I think it is unreal to believe that its share value will further decrease on average for the next five years; there is a series of signals that point towards a take off from the Renewable Energy market in the next five years, for many more years to come. I came up with what I believe is a much more asserted way of calculating the ROI for the the next five years: I calculated the ROI of the last year and of the last 2 years, and I finally calculated an average between the two. The result was an ROI of 9.4%
• Future value of all shares: $42,247.74
• Dividend earnings: $4,447.88

Portfolio lll-25 Year Goal

$25,398

28 Shares of LRLCY @ $223.88 ($6,255 total)(24.6% of portfolio)

883 Shares of PEGI @ $21.68 ($19,143 total)(75.3% of portfolio)

I plan on making this investment while in parallel I cash out the previous one. Therefore, I calculated my earnings on an 20 year span, given that I will invest this portfolio 5 years after the first investment. I will earn a total of $125,227.21, which exceeds my 25-year-goal by a lot!

• L’Oréal has an expected ROI of 9.6% after 20 years
• Once again, I used 9.4% as PEGI’s expected ROI.
• The ROI of this portfolio is of 8.2%
• Dividend earnings: $39,894.9
• Future value of all shares: $154,563.59

Total Investment Portfolios Value: $50,556.8

(coming in $10.8 less than the initial amount)

A series of considerations guided me through deciding how to invest in relation to the time horizons. I decided to invest just about half of the money at first, and have it compound for 5 years. This first step will also serve me as a test run; if everything goes fine, and the markets these companies belong to don’t suffer from any sort of economic depression, I will continue with investing the second half of the money, and have it compound for a much longer time. I decided to invest on the long run, specially for this second investment, because I’m not exactly counting on this money for the near future (after all, it was a gift!), and why not? With some calculations I have noticed that time in investing makes all the difference!

In the long-term, I invested much more on PEGI. This is what the total performance of my investments looks like:

RS, My Investments.

The ROI of my portfolio’s compared to the S&P 500 looks something like this:

Evidently, the ROI of the S&P 500 is considerably more than that of my portfolios’. However, I believe I have reached larger goals with these investments that an ROI. Through these investments, besides meeting my financial goals I am supporting two companies which I feel have something most companies can learn from: both distinguish themselves in one way or another by how they apply their ethics in their doings.

These are the assumptions I made in this Action Project:

• I am assuming  in my calculations that both L’Oreal and Pattern Energy will continue to be leaders in their markets because of their continuous growth, their quality and the type of service they provide.
• I am assuming that that even though Pattern Energy’s performance hasn’t been the best on average in the last 5 years, it will grow much more, as it has been doing in the last year.
• I am also assuming that both Pattern Energy and L’Oreal highlight more than most or even rather all other companies in their markets for financial, ethic, and productive reasons.

The Chakra of the Artisan: Alternative Food & Other Goods on Santa Cruz Island

I am studying a course called “Journalism”, and this is my 3rd and last Action Project. For this Action Project I had to cover an event with a “spot” story, using the tools I have acquired during the course as a whole, such as objectivity and the inverted pyramid of journalism, among many others.

In this 3rd Unit I learned about some of the essential skills and concepts of written-journalism, specifically in the present century. I also learned about some of the values written-journalism has, and about how it has certain advantages that cannot be found in any other form of journalism.

I chose to report on the “Chakra of the Artisan”, a farmer’s market hosted once a month in Bellavista, Santa Cruz Island, Galapagos. I chose this event because it seemed to me like an interesting initiative; after all, there are only a handful of farmers markets on the Island. My brother and I were also asked to play music at the event, and that sounded fun!

This was my first time covering an event as a journalist, which made it all the more interesting. I was impressed about how much more I ended up discovering about an event when I looked at it from a journalistic point of

"In Re: "Silvio Rodriguez & Change" Podcast

I am studying a course called “Journalism”, and this is my second Action Project. For this Action Project, I had to record and edit a Podcast that would tell the story of a representative voice of the 20th Century. I decided my Podcast would revolve around Silvio Rodriguez, a Cuban singer, guitarist ,composer, and poet.

Silvio Rodriguez is often referred to as the best singer and songwriter of Central and South America,  and his general work is considered a classic from the 20th Century. In this Podcast, I am telling the story of how Silvio Rodriguez’s voice has the ability to make people grow, especially in the Latin American population. I display this story though the stories of two friends of mine who come from two different places and cultures in Latin America, but who deeply enjoy Silvio Rodriguez’s music and feel enriched by it.

I consider this story to be newsworthy mainly because I have never heard of this story being told before. Silvio is often referenced as a symbol of the Cuban Revolution and Latin American Left, which makes a great part of the Latin American population to ignore or not appreciate his art. But I believe that Silvio’s art, even though it does have a political affiliation, transcends the purely political and rather is in essence, a call for a positive change, both individually and collectively, which I think is a human necessity and a common denominator in persons of all ages.

To view the script of my podcast, please view the following document.