Episode 1. The Carnegie Mellon Lecture.

Episode 1 of the Hustlenomics Way. Hip-Hop + Business 101 covers the definition of the word Hustlenomics  by the coiner of the term Damola Idowu. He created the term in 2002 and has since register a trademark for it, to define how he went about building his Hip-Hop Business magazine Owners Illustrated and several subsequent titles. Basically creating his own press pass for his team and printing 5000 flyers they descended upon the Funk Master Flex car show where several hip-hop luminaries were present along with their vehicles. He will network with many of them and take several pictures that will populate a website for Owners Illustrated Magazine. The concept of the website was to document the entrepreneurial ventures and the lifestyle of hip hop artist and their business partners. There was a question posed on the website, “Who will be RAP’s first billionaire” as to suggest one of these luminaries will eventually use “Hustlenomics” to achieve a billion dollars in wealth. Damola Idowu is introduced by Dave Mawhinney head of the Swartz Center of Entrepreneurship, the give the lecture at the distinguished Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He uses visual aids to describe Hustlenomics techniques and also provide context to business success by hip-hop artists. On our main page of Hustlenomics.com you can find the video of the lecture and see some of the slides used during the presentation. There were questions at the end and plans for future lectures at the University.  Damola Idowu is also an international recording artist under the moniker Da Great Deity Dah and he uses that experience as an artist out of Washington DC in the Mid 90’s to detail how his approach to building his career was also “Hustlenomics”. He started with just 40 tapes at the Million Man March in Washington, DC on October 16 1995 and will release an EP on Vinyl internationally by February 1996. As a teenager with a young family including a son born in August of 1996 he will go on to release several albums using a comic book image instead of a picture to also build a comic book brand. He will sell T-Shirts with the comic book image and in the process introduce his son to many aspects of creative arts space inspiring his so to also utilize his artistic gifts. In the lecture this approach is discussed as his son Wole Idowu began Carnegie Mellon University at 15 and will graduate at 20 with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering along with 2 minors in business from the Tepper School of Business. Damola and Wole will go on to found a technology startup at the Swartz Center of Entrprenuership on the Carnegie Mellon campus where they held hackathons to increase diversity in the creative fields thru a student organization founded on campus by Wole called, Toyz Nation Gaming League. The lecture is interactive and spans almost an hour and twenty minutes in length. Watch this trailer to see Damola in action. [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7bizREi7qc[/embedyt]

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