The Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship hosted Transcendent Enterprise owner Chris Alvarez for the latest installment of their “Lunch & Learn” panel series.
In a virtual panel on Oct. 19 titled “Learning to Keep the Entrepreneur’s Sword Sharp,” Field Center Program Coordinator Gary Smalls welcomed the guest. Alvarez shared advice on entrepreneurship and the rapid growth of technology in the video production industry.
Transcendent Enterprise is a corporate video production company that Alvarez founded. On is the general manager, working with big brands in video production.
“It was always a dream of mine to have an office in the city,” Alvarez said. “As a minority-owned producer, I haven’t really seen many other business owners of color, especially having office space in the city, so it’s always been a dream of mine to have that identity.”
In addition to corporate video production, the company produces videos for conferences, healthcare and medical environments, higher education, non-profit groups and virtual events. Transcendent Enterprise also offers editing, live streaming and photography services.
Since its founding in 2004, the company has worked with institutions such as Carnegie Hall, Columbia University, Mount Sinai, New York University and the United Nations. He also worked with well-known brands such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook, owned by Meta Platforms Inc..
Transcendent Enterprise’s tagline is “Corporate video doesn’t have to be boring.”
He brings a new style of marketing to the corporate world, specializing in a variety of media productions through emerging technology.
“I’ve always had a knack for technology with multimedia tools, and for some reason it came easily to me,” Alvarez said. “That’s how I decided to get into the media business. From [I was] At 15, I started doing media production at my church. That was in the 90s.”
Alvarez said seeing offices closed during the pandemic taught him not to pursue risks that can close a business.
“Since having the office in Manhattan, you see a lot of companies open and those companies close,” Alvarez said. “I never took risks that would allow me to close a business. I had to have skills to enable, to take my business forward to be here today.”
He emphasized risk assessment as a characteristic that an entrepreneur should obtain in times of instability in business.
“I’m also in situations where customers don’t pay as quickly as they used to,” Alvarez said. “It’s about understanding the landscape, looking at the risks while making certain decisions.”
Alvarez further emphasized the importance of risk assessment while running his business, highlighting how he made certain decisions to invest capital in some clients who asked to invest thousands of dollars in risks before a result.
“I could have tried to work at work and that could have hurt me on so many other occasions, like putting capital into my payroll and other things to keep the business going,” Alvarez said.
“In a business like mine, things are changing,” Alvarez said. “Technology is changing. Customer needs are changing. Expectations are changing. You have to be able to offer the latest services, which is one of our models, and be able to be adaptable and flexible to the market, because the market is not fair”.
Alvarez said the title of the event is like the movie “Bullet Train,” in which actor Brad Pitt fought with swords. He made a connection about how to keep the entrepreneurial sword sharp.
“In business, you’re going to go through a lot of challenges, and your mind has to be sharpened to overcome basically any challenge that’s in front of you,” Alvarez said. “Some of the swords that are very important [are] to be able to be very adaptive, to be able to adapt to what’s in front of you and go from there.”
He also emphasized the importance of having mentors and networking with them in order to gain opportunities.
Alvarez said that using search engine optimization is very helpful in starting a business. This way, potential customers see the business prominently in search engine results and can contact the business for work.
He shared some of the literature and resources he reads and listens to daily to stay informed of the latest updates.
He recommended The Wall Street Journal and Morning Brew for keeping up with financial and business news. He also said he listens to them on Audible while driving to work every morning.
Alvarez is currently working with the National Urban League on video production for a feature-length animation.
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