Musings from Project Coordinator Ming Lo...

Our endeavor is to determine whether it makes sense to set up an Asian talent agency in Los Angeles.  To that end, we are interviewing people in the industry, both one-on-one and in groups.  Truth be told, all projects want to morph and expand.  Human nature can’t resist diving into nooks or crannies, or jumping onto another path that might be a bright new idea.  And in fact, the brainstorming, the new ideas, are a critical part of the process – I mean, there might be a gem of an idea lurking in some dark corner.  Still, the challenge is to always ask, “Is this useful?  Does this take us in the right direction, toward answering our original question?”

For example, the original idea was to determine whether it made sense to set up an Asian agency.  Then there was the thought, “Perhaps we should really be setting up a management company,” which is a very valid question.  Then we had a focus group conference call, and another idea came up – “Why don’t we set up a national online database for Asian actors that acts as agent for such actors across the country?”  Both very good ideas.  But now the execution problem.  If you think about it, this is actually three different business plans, three different business models. There’s some overlap between the agency and the management company ideas, but that would mean running two different financial models.  And the national online database is an altogether different animal.  Don’t have time to run three financial models.  But, you still have to make some effort to answer the question.  Hmm… perhaps we run three very rough models, not as much detail in each.  But that would be very back-of-the-envelope, and would the back-of-the-envelope be accurate enough to be useful?  Okay, that falls into the TBD pile.  Also known as, Tune in Later To Find Out.