What entrepreneurs can learn from Lady Gaga’s career

Read the rest here!

Lady Gaga's career is drowning!

Quick!  Someone throw her a life raft!  Predictably, Lady Gaga's knight and super fan, Anthagio (Anthony Ashcraft) came to her defence.  Which makes the read even more hysterical. There's nothing funnier than watching him writhe in pain as his idol falls off her perch.  

Read the rest here.

Thank you Sun Ra for the link.

Be sure to read Recovering Monster's post "Parade of Celebrities Come Out Against Gaga".

Lady Gaga's Mother Responds to Born This Way Foundation Scrutiny

Straight from HuffPost Blog and sounding like the seasoned politician weaving his or her buzz words to get your votes.  

In other words, all that money donated still went toward nothing except an online map, online games, a few Tweets and Facebook posts, and spreading awareness.  The bill is still too high. Cynthia states that they're not a grant maker to fund other charities even though they gave $5000 out of the millions to something or someone. She also states that they conduct their own charitable work directly.  So people donate funds to the tune of millions of dollars; and she further claims that they fund their own work.  Which raises another question - if they fund their own work, where is the donation money and what are they doing or are going to do with it?  Is it sitting in a bank account somewhere collecting interest and dust?  Is what Cynthia claims the foundation is doing worth the costs?  Does she want us to believe that posting a few social media messages and other vague initiatives costs $2.1 million? Great story Cynthia! You should write a book. It seems the only people benefiting from the foundation were the lawyers, publicists, consultants and of course Stefani.

The Born This Way Foundation was busted, plain and simple. Clearly the foundation isn't having that much of an impact otherwise the media would have been "kind" to overlook their mass spending and lack of work.

Lady Gaga had no problem posting an open letter to slam Kelly Osbourne for choosing a less passionate path in life but she couldn't post a letter defending her own foundation and it's actions. Her mother had to do it for her.

Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation Spends Money On Anything But Bravery

Last month I wrote an article questioning the Born This Way Foundation's charity outreach program and Lady Gaga's latest attempt to get donations.  The main question being "what exactly does the foundation do?".  The latest antic was a tier-level donation pyramid suggesting that the more money you donate, the better a fan you are.  Your donation is then entered into a contest with the grand prize being a dinner with Gaga and her family at her family's restaurant.

Another good question - what exactly has the Born This Way Foundation done? No one knows for sure - until now.

Lady Gaga's foundation spends more money on marketing, lawyers and consultants than actually combating bullying, inspiring bravery and breeding compassion.

According to a report from ShowBiz411, Lady Gaga, her mother Cynthia and the foundation spent 1.5 million dollars of your donation money on legal fees, publicity and a website.  In addition to that, they spent $348,000 on the Born Brave bus  in 2012.

I'll take this a step further than quoting a celebrity website.  Here's the actual tax return!  The first page shows a side-by-side comparison of expenses from the previous and current year.  The expenses more than doubled.  

Here's where some of the donations went:

• $362,921 on web design and consulting.
• $348,000 on event production
• $406,552 on legal fees
• $72,752 on salaries
• $79,862 on accounting
• $808,661 on other expenses
• $9203 on office expenses
• $77,923 on travel
• $150,000 on philanthropic consulting

I guess we now know what the impact of your donations are! Oh and it's still not clear what this charity does aside from spending your money on anything but bullying. I'll say one thing, bravery is indeed being inspired and Stefani and her mom are the ones being inspired; because it takes some very big balls to call yourself a charity, spend donation money frivolously while you sip champagne with fashion designers on a private jet wearing a fur coat.

Remember these figures the next time you buy something on eBay and you see this.

Thank you Leo for the ShowBiz101 article and thank you Brandy for the eBay screenshot.

Afterward:  I should point out that it's unknown if these expenses were paid from the donation pool, out of pocket by Gaga or a combination of both.  The monetary amounts seem excessive so my hunch is that Gaga's own personal expenses are being written off through the foundation.  

UPDATE!

Jennifer O'Neill, Lady Gaga's former assistant (or someone claiming to be her) is on Reddit right now holding a Q&A session!!  CHECK.IT.OUT. Part one is here.

Some snippets

This one is interesting.

Jennifer O'Neill answered that question.  Her answer was "he thought she was involved in a death" or something to that effect.  Jennifer removed her reply before I could screencap it but I promise you it was there.  Thank you Alexa for the tip!