Vanessa "V" Fune - CEO of Tribe Unity
By Jessica Klausing
Vanessa "V" Fune.
Meet Vanessa “V” Fune. An entrepreneur, a philanthropist, an entertainment guru and the founder of Tribe Unity. The company responsible for the production behind Hollywood Music in Media Awards, TBOZ unplugged, City Gala reaching all aspects of the entertainment industry from Film, Music to being a world changing influencer.
V created Tribe Unity with the sole purpose to change the world through people’s passions.
“Life is just too short to not live your passion. Everybody has a passion within them that I believe was instilled into them by the universe as their purpose. Even if your purpose is to play video games, if it makes you happy then that happiness puts out this positive vibration that spreads to others,” explains V.
V developed her passion for the entertainment industry growing up in the Philippines.
“My grandma had a restaurant in the Philippines where my mom used to sing. She used to force me to get onstage to sing with her. My mom was actually a famous radio DJ in the Philippines known as ILYJ. I used to go with her to work to answer the phones and take down song requests.”
V knew she wanted to do something within the music industry so she enrolled into the Musicians Institute to study Music Business.
In order to pay for the tuition V helped book gigs for many local artists at prestigious Hollywood club venues. V set out to learn as much as she possibly could within the business side of the industry. Her ambitious work ethic spread like wildfire around the campus with many students wanting to get involved.
V recalls, “I knew I was good at business but I did not exactly know what I wanted to do. But the most common job on the business side was managing. So I started managing an artist. While living out of my car. The only way I would shower was to sign up for free week gym memberships around town. I lived out of my little two door BMW. I would just go door to door to all these club venues and get to know these bouncers and then I would meet the managers and befriend them and would just inquire how to get my band on the stage. They would tell me how and I would just book them, and because I would book them so much the school found out and wanted to know how I was able to book them. So, while people were in class learning how to book artists and tours, I was already out there doing it because I had to. I had no choice. I knew I wanted to get into the industry and I knew I had to make money somehow. And as I kept booking the artists I just had all these students come up to me to ask how they could help me out and they just wanted to be a part of that. That’s kind of how Tribe Unity got started.”
V’s strong ambition led her to a promising internship with AEI Development, who represented top acts such as Miley Cyrus. V who started off as an assistant brought friends and other students into the projects she was involved in. Which led to building a tribes for Amber Melody and MIDI Mafia. V recalls spending many sleepless nights with her tribe of thirty-five people to help represent these projects like a small independent label.
“We weren’t called Tribe Unity in the beginning, I just referred to them as a tribe and it was only because this guy gave me a book called “Tribes” by Seth Godin. He said that I reminded him of that book. I called them all a tribe and we just started building different tribes.”
V helped develop different Tribes specifically for marketing, social media, and content developers. After seeing how competitive the industry was, V felt that it was more important for all of the tribes to work together rather than against each other.
“I was interested in just helping everyone build up their projects. What sets us apart is that we really are all about unity. We really are about uniting all of the different tribes and really realizing that it’s not about competition anymore. It’s all about making a difference and the only way to make a difference is for us to come together where it’s not about money and it’s not about who’s on top or whatever, it’s really just us coming together to make a difference together. I knew the only way to truly be successful in this industry is to work together with these other tribes and build with people I respected in the industry,” explains V.
Since 2010 Tribe Unity has built Tribes for artists, producers, film production companies, publishing companies, events, seminars and more. Current and past clients or Chiefs include mydiveo, City Gala, Island Block Radio, Lyrica Anderson, MIDI Mafia, Young Fyre, Art Ford Publishing, The Hollywood Music in Media Awards, TBOZ (TLC), Divya Creative, Conscious Media, REL-Event Series, Lyrica Anderson,Sonyae Elise, Kristine Mirelle and more.
V considers herself a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ working relentlessly with clients to help fulfill their dreams whether it be producing a music video, directing, photography, booking gigs, coaching, event production or managing the project her experiences has allowed her to creatively work with all aspects of the entertainment industry.
“Creative entrepreneurs are coming up with new innovative ways on how to succeed in the entertainment industry. Even the successful ones want continuous growth so tribes are needed more than ever. But this whole thing Is really about us using our passion to make a difference in the world and start using our voices to influence each other in a more positive way. It’s the only way to defeat the subconscious brainwashing we’ve been living in. Tribe Unity is not a normal company. We’re really just out here uniting tribes.” says V.
Big things are on the horizon for the Tribe Unity team.
Recently V and X Factor finalist Christina Mirelle embarked on a 27 city tour to schools across America spreading messages of positivity and helping the youth find their passion.Tribe Unity is also in the process of launching an app called TRUpassions.
“It’s not a money app. It’s energy for energy. This app allows people to take away that block that people have thinking that they can’t fulfill their dream because they don’t have money,” explains V.
With this app, V sees a world where people will be able to live their passions for purpose by creating unity and supporting people to live the life they dream of.
V shares her main advice for anyone wanting a career within the entertainment industry.
“Realize that it really is all about co-creating and manifesting things. You can manifest things all on your own. We are all very powerful and can manifest incredible things but once you start having a common goal and manifesting with others it definitely happens a lot quicker and easier and it’s a lot more fun. Just be open to opportUNITY and surrender to the calling of your TRUpassions..”
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