You’ve had great success in your first year at Power 105, but came from a management and consulting background. What lessons did you learn in switching career paths?

I’ve quit a job one time because I was going to make more money somewhere else and I was miserable [at the new job]. I really did like the job I quit, but I was looking at it like, “Well, I’m going to go here and make more money.” Sometimes, in the long run, it’s best to make less money, which is what I did when I left working at a clothing line to go work at Shade 45. I wasn’t happy where I was working and I took a crazy $30K pay cut to start all over at Sirius where I made way less.

What impact did that pay cut have on your quality of life?

That’s probably where the debt started from, having so many bills that I had to pay. I worked the first month without getting paid because it was a probation period to see if it was going to work because I had never done radio [at the time], so they definitely took advantage of me. It was a struggle for me for so long but the next year I got a $20K raise and a bonus and I got a raise every year afterwards. I think sometimes you do have to go backwards to get further in the big picture. Now I make more than double what I made at Sirius.

Is that when you started to manage your money better?

If I didn’t get this job at Power 105 I would still be in debt. Being in debt is a depressing thing. Right now it’s amazing to me that I can go out and buy what I want and still be able to save and now I’m saving to buy a house. That’s a realistic thing for me, before it wasn’t even something I could fathom happening. I have a good base going and I feel good about it.

How bad did it get before you got your finances back on track?

The most I ever owed was about $30,000 in credit card debt. I’ve never been at a $0 [balance], but that was the most I ever owed. A lot of that was from being a manager and having to pay for rooms and flights. It was taking forever to get reimbursed and it definitely piles up.

What are some of the steps you took to get out of debt?

Usually they say you should pay off your most expensive bills first, but what I did was paid off the small bills first to get them out of the way. A lot of those were store cards because I have a Neiman Marcus card, I have a Saks card, I have a Bloomingdales card, etc… Those were just little bills, like a thousand dollars or so each and they had the highest interest rates. It made it easier for me to get those out of the way. I also have three American Express cards. After paying off the store cards, I paid off two of them first and then the one that had the highest balance was paid last, but I stopped using all of my cards and that was the only one I would use. So it was really only one bill I had to pay and that was the one with the lowest rate.

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]]> http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/how-radio-personality-angela-yee-dug-herself-out-of-debt/feed/ 0 http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/7-signs-that-you-are-a-woman-behaving-wealthy/ http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/7-signs-that-you-are-a-woman-behaving-wealthy/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:03:19 +0000 admin http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/7-signs-that-you-are-a-woman-behaving-wealthy/

Are you behaving wealthy? (Image: Thinkstock)

As 2012 begins, you are probably reflecting on different facets of your life and may even be drafting a plan to make improvements.  In fact, you may be making a renewed commitment to get your financial life in order this year.  If financial independence is your goal, let me suggest the following quick assessment to get you started on your journey to wealth.  Grab your purse and answer these seven questions to assess whether you are a woman behaving wealthy.

1.  How many different credit cards do you have in your wallet?

Count the number of credit cards (exclude your debit cards).  If you have more than one credit card, then you are likely overspending and incurring debt.  Debt is the enemy of wealth and financial independence.  By spending tomorrow’s money today, you are giving up your future freedom.  On the other hand, financial freedom is built from consistently spending less than you earn.  Thus, a woman behaving wealthy spends on the basis of what is important and pleasurable to her on her current income.  Are you on the road to achieving wealth?

2.  What is the value of your purse and its contents?

Add up the value of your purse and its contents.  For example, if your purse costs $500, your smart phone costs $350, your wallet costs $200, your cosmetics cost $250, and your iPad costs $750, then the value of your purse and its contents is $2,050.  Now, ask yourself if you have invested that amount into savings or retirement accounts over the last month?  In this example, if you have invested at least $2,050 in the last 30 days, then you are building wealth.

3.  Is your cash organized by denomination and facing the same way?

Open your wallet or purse and look at how your cash is organized.  Cash arranged orderly is characteristic of a person whose financial life is organized.  However, cash bills in disarray reflect a disorganized financial life.  As you know, focusing through clutter and chaos is difficult.  Be a woman behaving wealthy and organize your cash, financial files, documents, and accounts.

4.  Do you have an up-to-date daily, weekly, or monthly to-do list in your purse?

Whether you maintain your to-do list in a traditional day planner or in an electronic gadget is not important.  What is essential is that you have a plan for what you would like to achieve.  A current to-do list reflects that you have identified, quantified, and prioritized your financial goals.  Researchers have proven that you are 45% more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down.  Are you on the road to achieving your goals?

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]]> http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/7-signs-that-you-are-a-woman-behaving-wealthy/feed/ 0 http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/3-ways-to-achieve-your-financial-new-year%e2%80%99s-resolution-in-just-30-days/ http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/3-ways-to-achieve-your-financial-new-year%e2%80%99s-resolution-in-just-30-days/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:03:18 +0000 admin http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/3-ways-to-achieve-your-financial-new-year%e2%80%99s-resolution-in-just-30-days/

(Image: Thinkstock)

Thirty days.

That’s roughly the amount of time the average American sticks to his or her New Year’s resolution.

If we’re honest about our financial New Year’s resolutions – like saving money, organizing our finances better, or laying off the credit cards – many of us will admit that we might not even make 30 days.

But what if there was a way to jump-start your finances in 2012 so that even if your willpower waned after a month or so, you’d still be enormously ahead of the game?

Actually, there are several steps you can take to greatly improve your chances of achieving your financial goals in the coming year.

Here are three powerful ways to turbocharge your finances in 2012. These strategies can also help you make the most out of just 30 days in the New Year.

1. Give yourself a one-month challenge

Behavioral experts say it takes about three or four weeks for you to do something repeatedly, and have that action turn into a habit that lasts. So give yourself a one-month challenge to do, or stop doing, something in order to improve your finances.

If you want to start a good habit, try logging your expenses daily to better track your spending. Alternatively, you could carpool to work or even just put every dollar you get into a savings jar each day. Remember, you only have to do it for one month.

At the end of 30 days, you can always stop or tweak what you’re doing. But you will likely be so satisfied with the benefits of your newfound habit that you will decide to stick with it for the long haul.

To eliminate a bad habit, like overspending, consider not visiting your favorite retail store for 30 days, not carrying your credit cards with you each day to avoid impulse shopping, or not eating out at all for one month.

]]> http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/3-ways-to-achieve-your-financial-new-year%e2%80%99s-resolution-in-just-30-days/feed/ 0 http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/12-tools-to-manage-social-media-like-the-pros/ http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/12-tools-to-manage-social-media-like-the-pros/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:03:17 +0000 admin http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/12-tools-to-manage-social-media-like-the-pros/ For many business owners, becoming more active on social media was a business resolution you made for 2012. We’ve showed you how to approach your social media content and how to use social media to attract new customers. But once you are active on different social media sites, it can be difficult to keep up with all of the online mentions of your brand, and managing your online presence can become overwhelming. Worse yet, you may be missing opportunities if you’re not measuring social media effectively.

I reached out to four social media professionals who manage social media for clients around the world. Here are some of their favorite tools to manage, monitor and streamline social media.

James S. Walker (@JayWalk1)

Manager, APCO Online and Founder The Social Diverse Project http://sociallydiverse.posterous.com

“Hootsuite is a Twitter based solution I love. Its capabilities have expanded over the last few years, but I have been able to manage personal and client Twitter accounts from this platform without issue. A big plus is the ability to schedule tweets. When I’m on the go and working across timezones, the ability to share information  (when I want to share it) regardless of my location is priceless,” Walker says.

“Manage Flitter can be an important tool for those of you who know exactly who you are targeting, Once you start to build a base of users, it takes work to maintain a connection with everyone, and you might lose a few followers along the way. Manage Flitter will help you get a sense of light and heavy users (in terms of Twitter activity) and it will also let you know who among the group of people you are following is not following you in return. You may have provided great value to a follower at one point, but now, they’ve lost interest. Using this too, you can see who you might need to reach out and touch directly to build their interest again.

“TweetStats is an oldie but a goodie. This Twitter analytics site pulls up several charts to help you understand the network of any given user. The section most interesting to me from a business perspective is when a user tweets during the day. If you have a few targets on Twitter and are able to view their data via TweetStats, you can see when it’s the best time to get your message on their screen. ”

Meredith Leigh Moore (@Meredith_MCD)

Director, External Relations and Brand Outreach for McDonalds Corporation

“I’ve used Cotweet and Radian 6 as part of our official McDonald’s Twitter team,” says Moore. “There are pros and cons to both, but the ability to analyze a user’s influence on the public and history with your organization is a crucial benefit for both. The feeds for both are easy to understand and are good for a business with multiple administrators behind the scenes to make it seamless for the audience.”

]]> http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/12-tools-to-manage-social-media-like-the-pros/feed/ 0 http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/how-marketing-can-bring-your-brand-back-to-the-top/ http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/how-marketing-can-bring-your-brand-back-to-the-top/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:03:17 +0000 admin http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/how-marketing-can-bring-your-brand-back-to-the-top/ As the Vice President of Marketing for Cadillac, Don Butler leads product planning, marketing, advertising and promotion for General Motors’ luxury brand.  A 30-year industry veteran (he began his career in 1981 while still a student), he initiated the first sponsorship deal for the Survivor reality series in 2001. He also pioneered the use of the web for blogging and social interaction in support of a brand launch. As chairman and managing director, General Motors Egypt, Butler led the all-time sales records in that country.

BLACK ENTERPRISE spoke with Butler at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit to talk about the future of GM and how marketing will play a role in the company’s efforts to re-attain dominance.

With all that GM has gone through over the last few years, how would you encapsulate the marketing strategy for returning the company to where it used to be in terms of dominance?

Don Butler: The public face of GM to our consumers will be through our brands—Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac. That is how we’re going to communicate. There is no longer going to be any GM advertising. Because, number one, let’s be fair: there’s a stigma associated with General Motors. There still is.  There’s not so much that same stigma associated with each of the brands.  That’s how people engage and interact with us. They engage and interact with us through Chevy, through GMC, through Buick, and through Cadillac. They don’t interact with GM.  They interact with the [individual] brands.

The second thing is knowing that that’s how we’re going to go to market. This had existed in the past.  But we’ve refined it even further. Each of our divisional brands now has a swim lane. What do I mean by that? Cadillac means certain things. We will stay true to that. It’s different than what Buick is. It’s different than what Chevy is. It’s different than what GMC is. In a sense, we need to be our own company. We need to be our own idea and our own aesthetic. So, Cadillac is all about what we describe as red-blooded luxury. Passionate, assertive, confident, charismatic, maybe even a little bit swagger, shall we say.  Contrast that with Buick. Very warm, luxurious, and a sense of being understated. Cadillac is not understated. Chevrolet, for the people.  GMC, professional grade.  Professional level of engineering and excellence.

So, that’s how we separate the brands and that’s how we go to market.

How are you using social media to get to that younger audience?

Butler: We leverage Facebook extensively.  That is our primary social space platform.  We find it to be quite useful in terms of presenting the brand and being able to have branding that is not obtrusive. So, on our Facebook page we have gone from 200,000 fans to over 700,000 fans [over the  last year]. We do that through engaging content that causes people to stop and take a look.

For instance, with ATS, we’ve been featuring a video series that we call The Journey, which has documented some of the development of ATS, including the engineers at the Nurburgring in Germany. Filming them actually doing the testing. We put that content on the web. That’s content that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. It’s engaging, it’s relevant, it’s also social. So, that’s how we engage and connect with our consumers there. We also have a presence, obviously, on Twitter. We make extensive use of YouTube as well in terms of our own video channel and then things that hopefully people can engage with and that we can promote virally as well.

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]]> http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/how-marketing-can-bring-your-brand-back-to-the-top/feed/ 0 http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/ubr-spotlight-producer-leon-huff-on-success-in-the-music-industry/ http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/ubr-spotlight-producer-leon-huff-on-success-in-the-music-industry/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:03:17 +0000 admin http://freshdesignz.net/2012/01/14/ubr-spotlight-producer-leon-huff-on-success-in-the-music-industry/

Legendary songwriter and producer Leon Huff (Image: Courtesy of Subject)

This week on The Urban Business Roundtable, UBR Contributor Renita D. Young kicks off the first new show of 2012 with producer and record industry entrepreneur Leon Huff who, along with partner Kenneth Gamble, make up the prolific Gamble and Huff songwriting duo. Gamble and Huff pioneered the Philadelphia Sound when they formed Philadelphia International Records, leaving a lasting impression on the music industry. At it’s peak, their company rivaled Berry Gordy‘s Motown Records in the size of their company and the popularity of their music. Both were once among the nation’s largest black-owned companies.

Gamble and Huff have written over 3,000 songs, including numerous top R&B and pop hits, working with renowned artists such as Patti LaBelle, the late Teddy Pendergrass and The O’Jays, just to name a few. The duo has earned more than 300 gold and platinum records, BMI Songwriters Awards and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, among other honors. Huff joins Young to share his insights on the music industry and how his passion for music paved the way to entrepreneurial success.

Film exec and entrepreneur Arthur Wylie (Image: Courtesy of Subject)

Also, UBR Contributor Samantha Pass speaks with Hollywood executive and serial entrepreneur Arthur Wylie, author of Only The Crazy and Fearless Win Big!: The Surprising Secrets Success in Business and In Life (BenBella Books). An executive at Global Entertainment Holding’s Film Fund, Wylie also oversees his own wealth management group, specializing in helping companies through business planning.

In addition, in my first “Alfred’s Notepad” segment of the new year, I share some advice for those first-time entrepreneurs starting new businesses in 2012: Don’t become isolated. I share why it’s critical to actively network with other entrepreneurs in your city and industry by joining local business organizations, networking via social media and attending events such as the Black Enterprise Entrepreneurs Conference, which will be in Chicago, May 23-26, 2012.

And finally, every week on UBR, you’ll get motivation and inspiration from author and entrepreneurial icon Farrah Gray, a weekly wrap-up of business news from USA Today business correspondent Charisse Jones, our Patient Investor Report from Ariel Investments and key economic intelligence for small business owners from our UBR economists Derrick Collins and Rasheed Carter.

If you have a question you want answered or a topic you want addressed on The Urban Business Roundtable, connect with me at BE Insider, the social media network for people who are serious about Black Enterprise. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.

Alfred Edmond Jr. is the senior VP/editor-at-large of Black Enterprise and the host of the Urban Business Roundtable, a weekly radio show, sponsored by Ariel Investments, airing CST Wednesdays at 8:30 a.m., Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. on WVON-AM 1690, the Talk of Chicago. You can also listen live online at WVON.com. Check back each week for UBR Spotlight, which features additional resources, advice and information from and about the topics, entrepreneurs and experts featured on the show.

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The value of one local stock was unchanged.

GlobalSCAPE was the local stock leader on Friday. The stock rose more than 6 percent to close out at $1.91.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 49 points on Friday, or 0.39 percent, to close out the day at 12,422.

Friday’s closing tally:

• Abraxas Petroleum Corp. (NASDAQ: AXAS) — $3.16, down 3…