The Business of Music

Business Brain, the Entrepreneurs podcast number 394. And yes, Gigg, the podcast for working musicians, episode 355 for the week of Monday, August 22, 2020. Greetings, folks, and welcome to this crossover episode of two podcasts that are joined at the Dave business brain at businessbrain show and giggab for working musicians, episode355@giggabpodcast.com coming together as a meeting of the minds. My two co hosts that I do shows with every week are here. Paul, you want to say hi?

Hi. From Nipomo, California.

Oh, I love Nipomo. This is Shannon Jean from Lafayette, California. Glad to be here. That music is a little hip for our Business Brain audience, but I'm sure we can handle it.

That's right.

I'm actually picturing a Venn diagram of two circles with a smiling Dave Hamilton in the middle.

That's good. That. That could be a good logo.

Sure. You know, whatever. Could be worse. Hey, if I'm smiling, something's going right, so I'll take it. So you. That is Paul Kent, for those of you who are Business Brain listeners and don't know Paul. Paul is a musician. You are, of course, my co host with Giggab, which giggab and Business Brain have an interesting history. They launched on exactly the same day because. Really? Yeah, like three or four weeks or maybe more. Six weeks, whatever. Prior to that day, two of my friends came to me and said, hey, I have this idea for a podcast we should do together. And it was the two of you, unbeknownst to one another. Yeah. It was like, wow, the universe is really conspiring. Okay. Yeah. So here we are. It's how it's cool.

Seven years later. Yeah.

Seven years later. That's seven and a half years later. That's right. Yeah. For both shows. Yeah. Yeah. We've skipped more episodes with Gig Gab than we have for Business Brain. That's why there's a 40 episode delta between the two shows. But yeah, it's very cool. It's how it is. Yeah. So we're going to talk about the business of the music business or the business of being a musician, I think is probably the best way to talk about this, which is something, Paul, you and I have talked about quite a bit.

You know, we kind of talk about it, but I always feel like we're being careful when we talk about it because even though we use this term weekend warrior, we're always kind of cautious not to alienate the people who are pure. You Know, not wanting to talk about business and really want the creative stuff from us. And so I've never felt like we've like, been hardcore, like, all right, musicians are sucky business people. I mean, we've never really dove into it and been really direct about it. So tonight's the night.

Tonight's the night. Well, it's an interesting thing because like on business brain Shannon, when we talk about people going into business, most of the time there's a safe assumption that people are going into business primarily, or at least with one of the primary reasons to make money and. Yeah, right. And in fact, I talked about a business venture of mine that blew up in like a lawsuit of flames because it turned out that one of the partners was not prioritizing making money. They were prioritizing serving some, you know, wrong that had happened previously in their lives and thought that this business was the right way to prove that they could do it. And all of this, that it wasn't about money. And the whole thing fell apart. It was a disaster. Oh God, it sucked. But with music, oftentimes the primary goal is to just go out and play gigs and making money would be nice. But often, not always. But often is secondary.

Yeah, well, that's like when I was putting notes together for the show, like I said, I came up with more questions than answers. And one of those was, well, how do you define success as a band member, a founder of a band and you know, how it all works? I mean, I have no idea. I think I'm myself as a creative business owner, but I know nothing about the music business. And I would imagine there's tons of people that just love getting up there and playing on the weekends or whatever, getting together with everybody and that, that has a huge value. Right. You can't put a dollar sign on it.

No, you can put a dollar sign on it. And actually our audience, our audience is kind of two people. They. People who. This is what they do for a living. In my band, a ten piece band, half the guys, fully half the guys in my 10 piece band make their living from playing music. Now also a huge part of our listenership are the, what we call the weekend warriors. They have a day job. This is a. Anywhere from a passive to active hobby. But it's kind of interesting. I've observed a lot of conversations about those people who are weekend warriors who have a lot of opinions about the financial parts of things, about what they think the value of the services about, you know, and so a, it's two audiences. There are Definitely professional musicians where they have to consider all of the formal business things that they have to, that they have to consider. And I tip my hat to the. Again, I learned a lot from the guys in my band who are that way. They made a decision that who they are as a human being is a musician. They realize they won't make Zuckerberg money being a musician. Likely, however, it is their profession and they treat it as a profession. They wake up in the morning, they rehearse, they practice their craft, they take care of their taxes, they take care of their bookings, they take care of the invoicing. I mean they do the business things. They are absolutely professionals in every sense of the way. And then there are, there are people who are another part of our audience that are like, well, you know, it's not my living. And I get, yeah, there's money involved. But you know, it means different things to different people in different ways. And so there's two parts of our audience that listen to giggab at least.

And I want to highlight something that I know our listeners at giggab know. But Shannon, you and everybody at Business Brain doesn't know what Paul described where 50% of his band is professional musicians is absolutely not the norm and is also a credit to the fact that Paul himself runs his band like a business and makes sure people make money. That's the way to attract people who want to make money. Right, the pro musicians. Most bands, I would say it's somewhere it's not 50% of the people. Rarely is it 100%. More likely it's somewhere between 0% and 20% of the members are full time musicians.

Okay, so one of the questions then that, that prompts me is like when we talk about yo, you could start as a side hustle and then evolve it into a business. I imagine there's another subset of those people that are not doing it as a working musician, full time gig that would like to right that, that want to aspire to that.

Yeah, there's a, there's a quote. And Paul, I'm going to hope you can attribute this and I'm ashamed that I can't. But paraphrasing it, the, the quote is, so you want to be a professional musician. If you can imagine yourself doing anything else for a living, then do that instead. If you can't, then, then go be a musician.

Because it's absolutely described the guys in my band like they have a lot of great capabilities. They have made a choice that this is who they are. This is in the fiber of their soul, they need to create this product called music and, and they live their life accordingly.

But yeah, you're, you're right, Shannon. This whole idea of how do you define success is interesting because for most businesses you define success by, you know, making money and hopefully being cash flow positive and then eventually being profitable and. Yep. And that's actually something we talk about a lot on Business Brain at Businessbrain show, is that there's a difference between being cash flow positive sometimes and being profitable. And we've found, at least in our lives, Shannon, that you got to do the cash flow positive thing first in order to stay alive to the point of being profitable. But a lot of musicians, they don't worry about it. In fact, what drives me crazy, and it doesn't really drive me crazy, this part, there's parts of it that do. But the part that flabbergasts me is the people that are, you know, the weekend warriors out there, you know, earning hopefully, you know, a market wage for the, for the gigs that they're playing and we should talk about that. But then not taking advantage of the business side of it. Like, if you're a musician, you, it at some level, it is something you love, right? It is a hobby for you. Even if it is a like bona fide full time employment thing and all of that, there's a part of it you love and it started as a hobby and probably some part of it, it's still a hobby. So you're buying gear, all of that stuff. And 100% of that is tax deductible, right? Or most of it anyway. You got to talk to your accountant. And so many guys are like, oh yeah, I don't bother to, to, you know, log all that stuff and write, write it down. And it's like, are you crazy? Like, I mean, you can offset all of this and even sometimes take a loss that helps the other things you do. Like, what do you. Wow. It just flabbergasts me when I run into people that are like, yeah, I don't bother with that. Wow. Wow.

And that's what I asked. Like, you know, this how you define success. How do you get, you know, Paul, so you've got this ten piece band and there's some people that are, you know, this is their, you know, they're working musicians, it's their career. Other people are not. How do you manage that? It seems to me that that would be challenging to bring the, the two together, if, you know, if you will, and, and to kind of create a system to where everybody gets something out of it. You're booking enough gigs and stuff to generate enough revenue for the full time people, but still leaving time for the people that are like the weekend warriors. How does that work?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I would say that the big. I learned a lot of lessons over this path. I didn't know, you know, what I was getting into when I started this. I put the guitar down for a few years, picked it back up, wanted kind of got the bug and wanted to have a band. And I thought it was a. I thought it was a nice hobby. And I happened to get the opportunity to play with the guys who are a bunch of pros. Pros again, meaning they pretty much teach, either teach private lessons, teach at some level of public or private school, or run marching bands or whatever it might be, and then they gig at night. And the combination of these things would create a living. And me, I, as much as I would love to see myself as this kind of soulful, groovy, creative person, if I had to be honest with myself, I'm more of a business guy than I am a musician. I mean, I love playing music and I love running my band, but at the end of the day, the way I approach the problem solving is way more from a business person's perspective than it is from a musician's perspective. And they are different. How do you do it? Well, what I found is continuity is the one thing I learned early. And the way you keep continuity, keep the same guys in the band so you don't have to keep, you know, reintroducing labor staff to your company is to keep them working. Fortunately, when we started, you know, we started out playing Wednesday nights, Thursday nights for a year from 9 to 1:30 in the morning and still having to go to work the next day. But it was a regular gig. And you know, it started to demonstrate that we were going to be a working band. So being a working band was the first hurdle to get over. Find gigs, keep your guys busy with your project. And then, you know, and that didn't even pay that well because it was a Thursday night. And then over time we built it up. We built a, you know, we, we, we built a fan base, a customer base, and we built it up and the gigs got better pay and you know, the, in the number of people coming to see us. So it was, it was satisfying from a creative level that you got to execute your craft to appreciative people and you started to get paid for It. But it took a long time. The pros were willing to accept that risk once they saw that it was a viable thing because there's so many non viable things. You know, Dave, you can speak to this, right? I mean, how many bands never get out of the gate?

Oh yeah. I mean that even getting to the point where you play that first gig is something that is not a guarantee. You know, you need to be able to pull the band together. You need to have someone that's going to go and book the gig and then the band needs to go and, and actually put themselves on stage. Now once you've got a band of people that have done that once, that's different than a bunch of teenagers trying to figure it out too. Although there's a lot of bliss in the ignorance of youth and especially in this regard. You think you're ready and you go play and you realize you weren't. But hey, you did it, so you're moving on. Another thing I just wanted to highlight is as you were talking, Paul, it hit me that in our circles this is sort of a known. But for the benefit of Shannon and everybody on that side of things, very few musicians are full time employees. And I use the term employees as a term of convenience. Very few musicians are full time employees of one band. Even a band that works a ton like Paul's band, everybody that's there is a contractor and doing all the other things that Paul mentioned, teaching lessons, doing whatever they can do and playing other gigs. So Paul's got to negotiate. And I highlight Paul here because I have done a lot of work to not be the guy who runs the bands. I am. I Dave bang drum, right? Like that's, that's my thing. And it's because I run everything else in my life. I like being, I like showing up and just worrying about the music side. I mean, I, I get involved in the business stuff. Obviously I can't not. But there's usually someone else. It's not, it doesn't like the buck doesn't fall with me, but I'm very sensitive to the person to whom the buck falls because the rest of my day, the buck stops with me. Right. But yeah, this, this thing you're managing subcontractors almost no matter what. It's. It's rare. In fact, the only times I've ever experienced people who play in one band are when you're like, you know, 18 or 17 or something and it's like, oh yeah, this is it. We're going to, you know, this is the band. And we're going to take it all the way. You know, all of that. It's.

So they've got. A typical working musician has a revenue stack.

Yeah.

Like we talk about on business. Brain of various income streams. And that's what allows him to do or allows him or her to do what they really love.

Yeah. And even, I mean, and that goes all the way up the chain. Like, we interviewed a guy named Kenny Aronoff a number of years ago. I'll put the link in the show notes for everybody. You may not know Kenny's name, but you've definitely seen Kenny, certainly on TV and possibly even in concert. He's this bald drummer, wears sunglasses. He famously was with John Cougar Mellencamp in the early days. He plays with Fogarty now and lots of other people, too. But that's the thing, is he plays with lots of other people, too. Right. He's playing at the top level. I think he was the one who played drums for Paul McCartney's 70th birthday celebration and all that stuff. This guy is an A lister. And the way we got him on the show, this was fascinating to me. This taught me a lot about the music business. One day we finished the show, I didn't know what we were gonna do the next week. I thought, you know, wouldn't it be cool? Like, that guy, he's a working musician. He just happens to be working at a different level than, you know, me. And so I shot him an email and, you know, six hours later, I get a reply. He's like, hey, look, I'm sorry. I'm on my way to Japan to play a gig. And as I'm reading this, I'm thinking, okay, this is a no, right? And he's like, but I'm back on Saturday. I've gotta do a thing in LA on Sunday, but if you guys can record on Monday, I'll do the show with you.

And it was like, that's cool.

Wait. Holy crap. Like, this is a guy that hustles and just does every. He says yes, probably more than he should because he gets himself into trouble where he, like, double books himself sometimes. And he talked about that on the show. But, yeah, I mean, this is everywhere, you know, even people who are members of, you know, large bands that, you know, a lot of them are working and doing other things on the side. It's crazy. Yeah.

Fascinating. Yeah.

It's a tough life. You got to hustle.

Yeah.

You got to be willing to pay the price, I guess. Right. And figure that out.

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So how does it work out who rises up to run the band? You know what I mean? I had this note in here, can you run your band like a startup or. And then I was like, wait, that's going to get you like thrown out, you know, because nobody will like you in the, in the group or you know, is there, I mean, is that a manager position if you get start getting things going or is it always typically one person in the band that has some business skills that does it?

I would say more than any other conversation Dave and I have had is about that, that kind of like organizational process of bands. Like we use that. We've come up with this term benevolent dictatorship, right? Like a group of guys. And here's the deal. This is be one of those examples of where my business brain doesn't map very well. And it took me a long time to learn this. Musicians and creative people just think differently. It's not like a employment at will type of situation. A if you want to keep something together, you know, you got to learn to like allow a certain amount of what a business person would consider outside the box, you know, communication. Right? Musicians are independent contractors, many of them at heart. Some of them want to be a part of a band and are grateful. Like Dave is saying. Dave, bang jump. They want a leader who'll do something. Show me where, tell me how much I'm going to get paid. I'll show up and I'll give you everything I have. And that's extent of the relationship I want.

And to be clear, there are nuances of that too. I am someone who really enjoys being part of a business, a true band. Like, I like being a band member. There are a lot. I don't mind doing the sub thing here and there because I like the challenge of having to show up and play songs that I'm not prepared to play, like that kind of thing. But you know, I very much like being a band member. There are other people who definitely do not ever want to be committed to one thing. They want to, you know, okay, this, this week I'm doing this, next week I'm doing that. And they like just being lone wolves and then there's, you know, things in between. But.

And let me qualify that because the biggest lesson I've learned, it's kind of like when you hire a plumber. A lot of guys go into those kind of trades because they want to work for themselves. They either don't have the social disposition to work for somebody else. I find musicians are often like that. They're Dave. Bang drum type guys who tell me where to go, but once they feel they're being managed or told what to do, they're the tenor. The nature of the relationship can get very weird. A lot of musicians are like that, right?

And I was like.

My business brain was like, no, no, no. I run this band, I manage this band. I'm in charge. Right?

Yeah. Or so you think.

So many times. It blew up in my face so many times. And that was one of the hardest skills that I had to learn. How to, like, grit my teeth and smile and find that kind of sweet spot to keep the guy showing up, but kind of how to move them to the thing that I intuitively or instinctively knew was better for the whole enterprise to move forward. Very, very tough. Very crazy tough skill.

It seems like it's very challenging and you just. There's no straight line, especially for a.

Guy who's just like, all right, you don't like it, you're fired. Right? So when you come from that discipline, when you come from that perspective of having to get stuff done, having to get. Meet a number, having to get something done by a certain time, and that's not what this is. It's just not what this is.

Interesting. So, you know, I had. I just keep looking at all these questions I have. So, I mean, everybody provides their own gear, so you don't have to, you know, finance stuff is just like, hey, you've got a guitar, you're going to show up, you plug into. I mean, you have your own amp. I mean, I guess.

No, that's a.

At some level.

That's a. At some level, it does. But at that level, you've already kind of gotten to that point, right? Like when. When you're bringing somebody into the band. Listen, if you're James Taylor, you hire people and then, you know, their people deal with your people on what gear they'll need for your tour and all that stuff magically happens. But there's a massive budget, right?

I can't imagine.

But. But, you know, but effectively, James Taylor hires someone and doesn't worry about whether or not they're gonna have the right gear to play the show. You as a. You know, as a weekend. Running a band at the weekend warrior level, you also, like, you have to worry about that on day one. Yeah, but then it's not your concern. No, every, like. And that's one of the things about the audition that I've always paid attention. It's like, okay, what kind of gear are you coming in here with? Am I gonna be sweating it every gig wondering if your amp is going to melt because the thing is, you know, older than dirt and held together with duct tape. And also I take a look in the driveway and what did you drive to get here? Does that, is it reliable or are you like oh yeah, well it's fine. Don't worry about the window that's broken. It's you know, like that kind of thing matters.

Craigslist, right. When people put an ad on Craigslist looking for a band member or people put an ad on Craigslist advertising their services, they actually will put. I have my own transportation.

Reliable transportation.

Yeah, like something you wouldn't think of if you were hiring someone for another role. Right?

Yeah, like of course you have reliable transportation.

Exactly. You got to get to work. You got to get to work.

Yeah, I'd be fired. I think on day one.

Shannon, I should have asked this question 20 minutes ago, but I think we've all made an assumption here. Do you play in any musical instrument at all? Have you ever? No. Okay.

No. Oh, I have when I was a kid.

But okay, you know, what'd you play.

When you play guitar? Played drums and guitar like amazing, you know, but I'm left handed so I had to flip the guitar upside down because my parents were wisely didn't go buy me a left handed guitar.

And that worked for Jimmy, man. So yeah, yeah. Jimi Hendrix did fine with a ready guitar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's fascinating. I think it's a, there's a lot of people that. It's a calling. I think it's probably for people that want to be maybe beyond a weekend warrior. The technology and the way you present and connect with fans must have changed dramatically over the last like 10 years. Like everything else. Right, right.

It used to be, you know, when I think back to my like the bands I was in in high school and college that both did fairly well though. But when I was in college, did extremely well. And if it weren't for interpersonal issues, probably would have taken, you know, a couple more plateaus before it wound up. But back then you gathered people's snail mail addresses. We didn't call them snail mail addresses, they were just your address. And we would send out before every gig or it got to the point where it was once a month we'd send out 2,500 postcards. I learned how to navigate postage pricing and doing the whole pre sorting so that you can get lower rates and all that stuff at the post office. And I even Printed my own barcodes, which now seems so trivial, but I had to build a filemaker database that actually could do that. Yeah, of course I did. Yeah. But, but that was great because people got it in the mail and you could be really creative with it. Not that you can't be creative with an email, but people are inundated with email, right? They are. And the email still works. I don't want to. Just like it does in every other business, it is the one thing most people forget about how valuable email is. It's super valuable for, for running a band. It's far more valuable than just announcing your gigs on social media and anything like that. Like, email is just like every other business, right. Like if you can get directly to someone, it's better. But snail mail was amazing. And you know, I saved all the little postcards I got from the other local bands that were around at the time because you'd get like little messages from the band and it really helped connect you and that, that level. Even though we have social media, which technically puts us more directly in touch with each other, it's less personal or less interesting, maybe is the word. It's. Yeah, yeah.

So.

But yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah.

And so, Paul, I've got a question for you. You were talking about how your band and, and you know, started on a Wednesday or a Thursday night and then got more fans, it got better and were able to move into, you know, better time slot or whatever. In on business brain, we talk about this 1000, a thousand true fans concept where, you know, if you find a thousand true fans, you can make a living at whatever you love to do. How many, you know, fans do you have to have to kind of help move you up is so to speak, to where you could pick when you play or play.

An interesting question. That's a great question. And again, that's one of those things where the business lessons are so absolutely applicable. So it's not a thousand. So, you know, in the market in Silicon Valley, where the house rockers have played, there are a contingent of hardcore music fans. They go out four or five nights a week and they have their favorites and they go. And that's a nice foundational group of fans that, you know, will buy a glass of wine wherever you're going and, you know, wherever you're playing will certainly make the number. And then there's the great unwashed of people who we've found to be fans and they come up and say hi when they come. And I've always known as A business person that if I can always go to a venue or a festival or a club and say we have a good draw, you'll make money if you hire us that we could write our own ticket. So we invested a lot. I see. Yeah, so we invested quite a bit in many different ways of getting a following. And it's worked, it's been very effective. You know, when a festival who, you know, they hire the. They hire the bands, but they make their money selling at the beer booths. Right. And the bands that sell the best. And it's actually, there's a side effect to that in. That kind of complicates all this is that there's lots of bands that are not very good, but they're pretty good at getting a fan base. And so they will sell the beer. But the quality of the music isn't that good. There's that dynamic as well. And so we should probably talk about the kind of semi professional to outright amateur aspect that is unique in the music business as some kind of a consideration.

But sure, I have two things on that because I want to come back to this. The quality of the product and then what is the product? Right. Because that's the real question. But that Thousand True Fans thing certainly for. It's different for a cover band or what you might call a top 40 band for somebody who's not. Doesn't use lingo in our terms. A band that plays other people's music, right. That's. That's a cover band and then an original band, a band that plays, you know, largely their own music. If that Thousand True Fans concept absolutely can be the key to turning your life into a full time living for an original artist. You know, I mean, you look at somebody like. I'm thinking of two women right now. Joan Wasser, AKA Jonas Policewoman, she was the fiddle player in a band here in Boston called the Dam Builders. I actually went to high school with her. But she evolved that into a solo career where she calls herself Jonas Policewoman. And that Thousand True Fans concept is the thing that she employed to have a living that, you know, has extended for decades. And at another level is Amanda Palmer, who does the same kind of thing. I mean, she really just went in on this. Okay, you know what? I'm weird. I'm gonna be even weirder. I wanna find the people who want my weird. They want to have access to my undercooked songs that are in the process of being written and all of that. And if I can get them to pay this whole patreon style model has worked amazingly well. Amazing for her and lots of other people and, and many of them whose names I'm assuming neither of you knows. Jonah's policewoman. Right. She is a world touring full time musician operating at a very high level. You don't know her name because she doesn't market to you.

You don't need to.

Right, that's it.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. She markets to, you know, maybe 2% of the population and then gets 30% of that. And that's pretty good when you start doing the math. Yeah.

Good numbers.

Yeah. But she doesn't even care about the rest of the other 98% aren't even. She doesn't even attempt to pull them in because she doesn't have to.

You wonder the cause and effect of that, Right. Whether she learned the business lesson of that or whether it just became that and she realized, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna pay attention to my people. So I'm looking for more people.

We should get her on the show. It's been a long time since I've talked to John. We used to play an orchestra together in high school, but she was always the rocker. Like, she always had like the purple hair and you know, it was like, okay, she's gonna go a different direction. She's already going a different direction.

Well, we always say, right, the Riches are in the niches.

That's it.

Yeah, it's a perfect example of that. And that one of the other questions I have is as a band, I mean, do you have to have a competitive advantage? And you know, to Paul's point is, hey, we're not that great musicians some, some of these bands, but we should bring a lot of guys that like to drink beer or whatever or wow, we're really well known for being great musicians and we, you know, the X. I mean, do. Do different bands have that niche or do they promote their competitive advantage over, you know, book us instead of somebody else?

Well, it like that's the other side of this that I wanted to highlight is what is the product and it depends on who you're selling it to. When you embrace this thousand true fans concept, you are selling directly to your audience. And then you might book some shows that your audience is going to come see. But when you're certainly as a cover band and even, you know, original band, like the Bitter Pill that I play in, we are marketing to our fans for sure, like really heavily. We are also marketing to clubs and telling them we can bring people in. They don't some of them actually care that we play good music and that we're decent musicians? But to be fair, that's probably not the thing they can. That concern themselves with. First they concern themselves with, are people going to come in the door and buy booze or buy tickets or whatever the, you know, the success metric of that particular venue is, is that gonna happen when that band plays? And then the rest is gravy and it's just.

Well. And the flip side of that is the fans perspective of it, right? So if you hire a plumber, you know, if he has not done a good job and you're not happy about it, if you go to see a band and they're just okay, there's probably about 20 other reasons. Well, 20, maybe 10 other reasons. Were there other men or women there for me to meet and be social with? Were the beer prices good? Was it a nice place? You know, does this band attract the type of people I want to hang out with? To the point the relative effect of the music you play is one of the factors as to whether that fan is going to be a customer of yours. Different than if you're a plumber?

Yeah, very much so. Because you're creating a certain part of the environment, but not all of it, Right?

Yeah.

And it's art. Yeah, it's all subjective art.

I heard Steve Tyler, the singer from Aerosmith, say. He's like, you know, it was early on that we realized our job was to throw a party every night. And he's like, our job is no different today than it was the first day we realized it. He says, the only difference is now we have 15,000 people at our parties as opposed to it's bigger parties. And he's like. And that meant we had to get a bigger light show and better sound. And, you know, like, they had to change. They had to evolve their part in it. But really, they still know that when Aerosmith goes and plays a concert, they are throwing a party. And it's not about them. It's about the 15,000 people that came. And Fish is another one of those that totally understands. I think they. They are a band that absolutely embraced that thousand true fans concept because they're weird. They're not for the mainstream. That's right. You know, and they know there's a. There's a. We've talked about this on the, on gig gab, but there's a. A joke in the music industry that there's 75,000 fish fans and they just all try to go to Every show.

Yeah.

I don't know that.

Travel all over the world to go, right?

Correct.

Yeah.

And that is the only part of that statement that might be false is the number, but otherwise it is true and it is their business model. Now it might be 500,000 people. I don't know that it's a million. Man, like Fish knows the answer to this. I don't think they share it, you know, because they know how to monetize that number, whatever it is, and it works out great for them. They're weird.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good. That's our niche.

So what?

Exactly.

So coming from the technology business, and I got into it because I loved it and I fell in love with the Mac and it changed my life. And, you know, then everything kind of came after that. But sometimes that. That love kind of, you know, can turn a bit as you get it turns into a business, right, where you're focused on making money and maybe some of that art gets lost. Do you see that? I mean, where you lose your love of it because you focus too much on the business side of it.

I've actually heard more. More people complain about it, but never heard of someone losing their love of it. Like. Like it gets frustrating when you bang your head against the wall where you just want to express creatively for a while.

Yeah, yeah.

And like myself, I would get frustrated when the things that are so clear to me from a business sense couldn't get translated into the artistic thing. I was trying to do simple things like, you know, suggest to the guys, hey, we need a little more show in what we're doing. It would delight our customers, our fans more. So maybe every once in a while we should dress this way or something like that. And then you get right into that. You can't tell us what to do, you know, so it's that type of thing. So, you know, it's a hard. But I've never heard of anybody giving up entirely. I've heard of people getting. Getting sad, you know, I've heard of people hitting a wall and being disappointed that their visions. And these are the hardest people, right? Like, Dave is one. It's interesting that Dave doesn't want to. Want to lead a band. Although knowing Dave as well as I do, I get it. But for me, there's no choice. Like, I could get hired to go be the guitar player and just show up and not say a word and understand my role as that. But really my head is spinning with ideas all the time and I need to get those ideas Out. And so my primary mode is creating and expressing. And so I definitely get bummed. Often. We've had whole shows about me being bummed, but never enough that I would say, you know what? I'm not doing it anymore. I've never heard of anybody getting so dismayed that they literally had to walk away from their instrument.

To your point, I've been thinking a lot lately, Paul. I don't know why. I guess Fling has. Fling is one of the bands I play in. I play in two original bands, Fling and Bitter Pill. And as Fling has been sort of retooling itself and rekindling and building itself back up, I've been a little more self aware of the things that I enjoy. And you're right, I still have no desire to lead this band, but I do enjoy having my role. Right. And in Fling, my role in the past, one of them was always like crafting the set list that we were gonna play for the upcoming gigs or whatever. And recently I've gotten back into that. Cause we've been more gigs. And it's like, oh, yeah, I forgot how much I like this. And it's like my little world, you know, I think about it sometimes at the last minute, I'll throw it out after I've spent hours like crafting this list. But that's fine. You know, it's like those kinds of things when you can delegate. And you know, to Paul's point, you have to be really careful how you delegate. It needs to. The more organic it can be, the better in many bands and with many people. And that's true in any business. You know, if somebody can. Can take on a responsibility that they want to take on as opposed to something that they are being saddled with that, you know, it's very different. Yeah, sure, you know, but. But there, there is. Yeah. Yeah, there is. And yeah, it's interesting.

I love the aspects of what, like, Paul, you're talking about, you know, these people that are just fiercely independent. And I mean, one of the questions I wrote in my notes tonight for tonight was, well, what is a music entrepreneur? And hearing you guys talk about your jobs, the revenue stack, the independence. Don't tell me what to do. It sounds like you're talking about me, you know, but I don't know. But I'm not a musician, so it's. It's very similar to a regular entrepreneur. Somebody wants to do their own. Do their own thing, express themselves their own way and.

Well, the line though is, Shannon, is that a lot of them, whether it's it's fixed abilities, courage, whatever it might be. A lot of them don't want to go out and make the sale. Right. So a lot of them want the independence, but they don't want to book the gig. But I'll tell you, you know, in my band, it's kind of interesting because I've. There are two guys in my band who I would have considered that great musicians, but fiercely independent, you know, definitely would push back when I would try and quote, unquote, manage them. And then through the pandemic, when there weren't gigs to have, they found a different skill set which they went out and booked their own gigs and now they do that. And so, but that I say would, would essentially be the difference is that they're independent, but a lot of them expect somebody else to do the. Create the opportunity. I see which in my business brain is like. But that's everything and nothing happens unless the sale happens, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So that's the difference is like, don't manage me, but create the opportunity and I'll show up and I'll give you a great baseline or something like that.

We talk a lot about people like that too on the business brain.

Yeah. The difference is when we talk about those people on business brain and I want to make it clear there is a place for the entrepreneurs, for the lone wolves and for the employees. It is an ecosystem and it all has to work. But when we talk about those people on business brain, they are employees, right? They are the people you hire because they don't want to take the risk. They don't want to, you know, do the sale. They don't want to, you know, they don't want to build the business. They just want to work in the business. And that's not the case. Every as I was putting together my notes for this, it sort of hit me. Every single musician is, is self employed. Right. Is an entrepreneur, is a, a solopreneur. And that's right. And most people aren't going to have great success by themselves. And that's true of, of most people in, in other businesses too. You need to bring other people in. That's where you amplify what you're able to do and you can do it in a different way and be more efficient and you know, in scale and all of those things. And that's absolutely true. When you're building a band, you know, a one man band, there's, you know, Paul, you go and play a bunch of acoustic gigs and solo acoustic gigs and that Works for you, but it's not the same as when you play with the band. And the opportunities are different when you have a band that you can bring in. So you kind of need each other. And most musicians know this. Dave, the drummer, definitely knows this because most people don't want to hire me to go play drums for three hours without bringing anyone else with me. That would be less interesting to their crowd of people hoping to buy beer and wine. Right?

Yeah.

And net.

Net.

This is one of the things why we have to. I often give. Give major props because being the managing guy in a creative endeavor is a whole interesting set of skills. Intuitive HR skills. Right? Intuitive motivational skills. You know, the way to keep that whole range of guys who are fiercely independent to show up. Because, like I said, my belief is that the magic sauce, the element of it is continuity. To have the same 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 guys show up who know how to play together, who put out a quality product together. Keeping that stitch together is a. It is a superpower that band leaders will have to have. I mean, literally, one thing we talk about in gigab often is like, yes, you can sub guy. No one in your band is not replaceable. You can sub people. It's never as good as when it's a rehearsed, polished presentation of your music. So it's a really interesting thing. I would say one thing we three business guys should do is acknowledge kind of the patron saint of business guys turned musicians. So if I say the name Roger McNamee, would you guys know who I'm talking about? Nope. Oh, my gosh. Shannon. So Roger McNamee is the managing director of a venture capital firm called Elevation Partners. He made million dollars.

Yeah, I know Elevation Partners, but all.

Right, Apple, Google, Facebook. He's invested in all of them. And he. And in his heart, he always wanted to be a musician. And he. And he's been a working musician for 30 years. He has a working band called Moon Alice. I'm going to paraphrase some of my understanding of the story, but, you know, Roger is a huge Grateful Dead fan. Moon Alice is a jam band in the Grateful Dead vein of things. But being the incredibly smart guy that Roger McNamee is, he looked for interesting ways. So a. You know, he hired some interesting people in his band. He had Pete Sears from Jefferson Airplane, you know, know, like. Like interesting people in the Bay Area that kind of molded what he wanted.

And he hired him as employees.

Oh, no, no. Let me be careful about that. I have no idea what the.

Okay, okay. Got it, got it, got it.

He hired them to play in the band. That's all that means when you say, oh, I hired this guy to play in my band. You didn't put a ring on him, you know, you just hired like paid him.

I'm trying to get the lingo here.

One night. Yeah, no, it's a fair question because it's very different. Right? You know?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

But him being a guy who understands how markets work and the world works and consumerism works, that type of thing. They did all sorts of interesting things like streamed shows, even when no one knew who they were hiring. Really, really super well known artists to create posters of their shows that became collectibles. I mean, just all these kind of nuanced things that made them different. And him not just some crazy wealthy guy who put together a band. And they're good. I mean, they're really good and he's really good. But you know, you run the risk when you're, when you're that successful in your business life and you know, you put together this thing of just being the business guy who, you know, needs to get his ego out there. Moon Alice is not that and Roger is not that. They're a real band and they've been a band for 30 years. They are such a fascinating and he is such a fascinating story for the. I don't know if they ever started, I guess you could say they started as a weekend warrior because he's still a venture capital to this day. Venture capital.

He's the ultimate weekend warrior. That's right.

I guess so. Right. But they also tour, you know, for months at a time and do that. Would this have all been possible if he wasn't probably footing the bill in the beginning? Don't know. Doubt it. But don't know. He would be the ultimate guy to get on a crossover show like this.

Yeah, no kidding. Well, I'll make sure as always, that anybody we talk about on the show knows about it. Or at least I try to make sure they know about it.

Like I said, the patron saint of weekend warriors. How's that?

Yeah, that's great.

I like it.

Very cool.

Do we have anything else to talk about in this episode? It sounds like. Folks, send in your questions to us feedbackigabpodcast.com or feedbackusinessbrain show. We want to hear from you. A, did you enjoy what we just did here tonight? And B, do you have any questions? Because this is an interesting thing kind of tying together and really shining a light on the fact that we're in business here as musicians, and it's worth it to say that out loud.

At whatever level, at whatever level, you're still in business. You still have to, you know, be accountable at some level to be able to play in front of your fans.

Right?

A lot of levels. You got to pay taxes, you gotta, you gotta pay people. You gotta take money, you gotta, you know, give something that's worth the money there. There's so many business fundamental things that are applicable lessons that musicians often, either, either they're people gets kind of a shade of. What Dave's saying is like, I do it all day in my day job. I would like to shy away from that in my hobby. So that that's one dynamic that takes place. Or there is just people who are just totally blind and clueless to the business responsibilities and opportunity. But literally, if you're going to play in a restaurant and that restaurant is open for business, you have some responsibility. Whether that responsibility dribbles down to how you dress professionally, how you engage those, those patrons of that restaurant professionally. I mean, it is a business. And business rules often apply. They're not always the same. They're not entirely the same. There's so much to learn if you're not a business person. There's a lot to learn if you are a business person, as I was. There's just so much to learn about the nuances of making it successful for a creative endeavor.

Yeah, it's fascinating. Those that can manage creative people I think could be very successful because listening to both you, how it's structured or unstructured, it's fascinating how you, you know, to get things done the way you need to manage them. So thank you.

Yeah. There are some people that are unmanageable and unable to perform at a professional level. And some of them are names that, you know, and they just had enough people around them to keep them propped up long enough. But, you know, and the sad part is a lot of the most talented, not all, but, you know, a segment of the most talented musicians are people that, you know for one reason or another. Often mental illness is something they suffer from, but. But that's not always the reason, but they just can't hold their lives together and can't even comprehend holding a business together. And that's, that's the worst part about it for sure is those, you know, when, when you see somebody like that, I've.

Hey, Dave.

Yeah, man.

For tonight only. Just for tonight. I will quote the great Bachmann Turner Overdrive when I say always be taking care of business.

I like it. That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we say on the, on business brain, we often say, you know, keep living that charmed life. In fact, I say it at the end of every episode, and there's a lot of things that you can do is as you're running your business, to leverage your business activities into a charmed life. One of our favorite ones that Shannon and I talk about is, you know, rewards, credit cards and, and, you know, using those to pay for things so that you can then get, you know, hotel rooms or airline flights or whatever, you know, for you or your family. And there's so many things that. That musicians can take advantage of on the, you know, on the business brain side and leveraging that business brain. So thanks so much for listening, folks. Thanks for, for hanging out with us. Giggabpodcast.com is where you're going to find that show. Businessbrain show is where you're going to find that show. Always be performing and keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.