FOMA, Inc. A 21st Century Business

By Keith “Nickel” Langevin

It was sometime in July, Los Angeles, California 1997… I had moved to LA from Marin County (San Francisco Bay area) pursuing my dream to be a studio musician about 5 years prior and was pretty settled into my work routine of cutting demos in Studio City for $50-$100 per track. Since I played both Bass and Guitar I could sometimes make $300-$500 in a single session. It seemed like good money at the time but I still always seemed to be struggling to get rent together at the end of every month. 

To make a little extra cash on the side I would gig at night clubs and write songs with other musicians hoping to create a “hit”. This particular day ended up a pivot point in my life. 

I had always had an interest in printing and publishing, even as a child. It started with a visit to the Hearst Castle on the Central California coast. I wondered how someone could have such an amazing house? I asked my dad what William Randolph Hearst did to be able to make so much money. He said he was a publisher. I thought to myself, “one day I’ll be a publisher”.

Now, almost 20 years later I ended up getting a song used in a WB TV show. When they paid me $5,000 for ten seconds of the song and then asked who my publisher was so they could write them a check for $5,000 as well I quickly answered “Foma Publishing”. I then ran home and called a friend who new a little about starting a business. I contacted the accounting lady at the WB and gave her the info for the publishers check. It came in the mail a couple days later. I was now officially a publisher!

Soon after “starting” Foma Publishing I began to realize that being a studio musician wasn’t exactly what I had expected and was proving to be a much less creative pursuit than I had hoped. I realized that I wanted to be more involved in the creative process and quite working in the studios all together. The $10,000 was running out fast and I needed a “real” job. So, I started working at a printing service bureau doing graphic art layout and color separation. It was fun and I learned a lot about the printing and graphic arts industry. After about 5 years of managing that company I moved on to a bigger printing company where I worked many positions from customer service, to graphic artist, art department manager and finally general manager. I lasted there for about 5 years as well and suddenly realized I was working as hard as I could at making someone else rich. I gave it a quick thought and decided since I had the publishing company set up I might as well work for myself and make the printers work for me!

I was in need of a loan to buy a digital printing devise when I discovered that Foma Publishing was not really a company yet and I only opened a 2nd personal checking account with the nickname “Foma Publishing”. I had to get a DBA and open a business checking account to get the loan. So my business education began.

It was now 2003 and Foma Publishing was a real business. I leased a studio space in Santa Monica, set up a publishing office in the front room and put a music recording studio together in the back area. I contacted the city and got my business license and started selling digital printing out of the front office along with brokering other printing jobs, plus any other publishing and graphic art related services people would hire me for along with continuing to pursue pitching songs to TV, Film and Commercials.

After a few years of growth at this location the time came to move due to new building ownership. I decided to keep the business in Los Angeles and move back to my home town in Northern California. After looking around for the right situation I settled on the current Beverly Hills office, staffed with helpful reception and customer service, and I started to work from home in Marin County. After working from home for a while I began to pursue more business education and joined an online coaching program that teaches marketing techniques and core principles, (MaverickMoneyMakers). I was quickly introduced to the idea of legal structure for business and decided it was time to form an LLC. I am now in the process of expanding Foma Publishing into a full blown corporation and plan to be reaching my milestone of $5,000,000 in annual sales in the next year or so.