A new music library for video producers with Adam Forgione

G', day folks. It's Wednesday, time for another episode of the podcast. So we have moved to Noosa, which for anyone who doesn't know Australia is in a place called the Sunshine coast, which by its name would suggest is quite sunny, which is very nice. That's why we moved there. This week we are doing the third part of our three part conversation with Adam Forgione. I've really loved having Adam on the show and he's really keen to do more with us. He's great, great talent and very experienced businessman and brings a lot of value to the show. But one of the new projects Adam's working on is a music library called Select Music Library. He comes from with a background of being a musician and he started this with a business partner and it's fantastic. I've used a lot of music libraries in my time and the thing that kind of frustrates you with Music Library is you've got to troll through lots of crap to get the good stuff. And Adam's whole philosophy with select is that it should grab you in the first three seconds. And I've got to say, I've had a listen to some of the music and it really does. It's very, very emotive, strong music for video production. So please do check it out after the podcast, but let Adam tell you all about it. See you in this episode, folks.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scal video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

Adam. We've had a couple of great chats now and you've been sharing absolute gold and I'm very grateful that you're willing to be so abundant with your knowledge. But I really want to talk about your new project, the Music Library. What was it about music licensing that you thought was a great idea? I know your background is music, but presumably there's a lot of competition in that space. What is it that's different about this new project?

So, yeah, I mean, I'll start off by saying music was my first love as a piano player and a keyboard player in many bands. So I left that to. To make films, to be a, you know, video producer. And I've always missed it. I've always missed music and I've always taken music very seriously in the filmmaking aspect too. And a lot of people know that about me. And I think this Select Music Library was born out of frustration. It was born because I got so frustrated for so many years, spending so much time looking for good tracks on libraries and even in good libraries. Good music, but not usable. You know, I'll give you an example.

Bohemian Rhapsody is an amazing song. It's probably one of my favorite songs. And it's not because Queen is popular now. I was a huge fan back in the 80s when I first started getting into Queen. But my point though is this. It's very difficult to sync Bohemian Rhapsody, you know, to a project. It's, it's, it's a great song. So just because a song is great doesn't mean it's sinkable. There's songs that are great and then there's sinkable songs. So now with all that being said, I'm getting a call here. Hold on one second. Okay. So with all that being said, what I set out to do was. It was a joke. If they're not going to do it, I'm going to make my own library. I know 100 a caliber musicians in New York that I know from back in the day with the old circle I used to run in. I'm going to start a library with them. They're going to make music. It's going to be great. And a couple of years went by and it was just a pipe dream. And then I jumped on that thing again and this time I actually put out an emailer to about 300 musicians that I knew. And I got a lot of great response. Hey guys, I'm making a library. You guys would be great. Send me your music. And one of the guys that I sent out an email or two is today my partner Carmine, and he's the best partner in the world. And he basically, or long story short, said, you know, I'm really into this. I can't stop thinking about this. And after a couple of weeks of talking, I'm like, you're really into this. Like, like, would you be interested in being in this? And he's like, absolutely. And then we talked about partnership and we, we went in as a partnership on this. And that was in the end of 2016. We launched in February of 2018. And what drove us to build this library was just a few things. Number one, we, we only wanted gems, no fillers. We feel like almost every library has fillers. Hey, we have 30,000 songs in our library. Like, that's a good thing. That's a horrible thing. I would, I would run away from libraries that are 30,000 songs deep. I don't want nearly that many songs in my library. I want gems because I don't want somebody going, oh, good. Okay, okay, now, now, now, now. Okay, okay. Oh, that's a good one. I want somebody to go, that's a great song. Oh my God, that's a great song. That's a, that's even a better. Oh, my God. These are all great songs. So why can't there be a library like that? That means you have to be extremely strict. We have a 2% approval rate. So out of 100 composers, and we get, we get auditions every single day. And out of 100 composers, 2, 2 will make the cut. That's how strict we are. And on top of that, it's about. So let's talk about the drill. Right? Here's the drill. Do people care that I have romantic wedding music or that I have cinematic music? Right. Those are features. That's the speed of the drill. That's the color of the drill. People care about one thing. Get in, find great music, get out. I want to get back to editing. I don't want to kill my momentum. I don't want to spend an hour or five hours or two days looking for music. And we've all pulled our hair out over this, including myself. And this is right. So I wanted to build a library that only had gems. And that's it. Get in and get out. And that's why it says it right there in the beginning of the website. It says find great music fast. You know, perfect music fast. It's always fast, fast, fast. And it's because there's good gems there. It's easy to find good stuff. Anyway, that's the basic premise behind the library. I'm really excited about it. We're still the new kid on the block, but it's growing every day and I'm excited about it.

But the other thing, presumably that is a massive feature is that you've been a filmmaker for 20 years. So I'm guessing those, those, those bits of music are ready to go into, you know, underlay on edits.

So I'll give you my process, I'll give you our process and I'll tell you what the two major parameters are for any song that even is going to be considered to make the cut at select music. Number one, it needs to sound visual. Number two, it needs to be emotional. And we have a five second test, just like the record companies used to do back in the day. There was an old line, it said, There was an old, it was an old saying. It says don't bore us. Get to the chorus and rest. Record execs would always just play a demo for five seconds and go to the next tape and go to the next tape and go five seconds. So for us, when we're listening to music, if it doesn't sell us in five seconds, doesn't capture our attention, it's not even considered. It gets a no. We have four music supervisors. And here's how it works. The song gets listened to by four people.

Four yeses is an automatic yes into the. Into the. The library, which is great, means it appealed to four different types of people who all have experience in understanding how to sync music. If it gets three yeses, it gets considered and it's a pending. If it gets two yeses or one yes, there's no discussions. It's out and it's out. That's. It doesn't even get a second chance. So most songs get ones and twos. The some songs get threes. And very rarely do we get four yeses across the board. So that. That's how we decide what gets into our. But again, it goes back to two things. It's gotta be visual and it's gotta be emotional. And yes, you are damn right. I utilize my background as a filmmaker to think about every single track that gets into that library. And if it's syncable, 100%.

Now you have a busy production company. Cause in previous episodes we've talked about the number of clients you're working with and. And you have a music library. And.

I get the sense you're not doing this all yourself. How important is team. How important are systems processes for enabling you to scale two businesses simultaneously?

That's a great question. And it's extremely important.

I believe that businesses should have carefully scheduled meetings with stakeholders or with managers. So let's take a step back. And.

I don't know if you've read the E Myth or have listened to the myth, but you know, one concept in the E Myth, which, if anyone doesn't know what E Myth is, it's one of the, you know, it's a very. A very famous business book. One of the classics that a lot of people go to. But anyway, with E Myth, one of the concepts that they share is the idea that we're broken up into three different types of people. There's entrepreneurs, there's managers, and there's technicians. So the entrepreneur is like a Steve Jobs. He's the visionary. And I feel that in myself. Like, I'm not trying to compare myself to Steve Jobs. But what I'm saying is I'm the idea guy. I've always been a creative idea person. I've always been a big picture. Create the concept, create the army, create the circle of people and create this idea. You know, I've always been there. Managers take the concepts, the crazy off the wall ideas that the entrepreneur comes up with and they make it happen by utilizing the right technicians to physically manifest that. And the technicians are the people who do the work. Technicians are filmmakers, they're editors, Right. So there we're actually, if you look at it, the lowest person on the totem pole. But it's not, it's just, it's just in a hierarchy to understand how I think businesses should work. And I agree with the E myth 100%. So take that concept now with me. If you think about the block system I shared earlier with the three parts to every company, well above those three blocks, the C, the sales and marketing, cmo, the operations, the CEO and the financials and analytics, the cfo. Above all three of them is the visionary, the CEO. So it's their idea and they're, they're the one that's got the steering wheel of the ship. And your ship is out to port. I'm sorry, your ship is out to sea, your ship is your business. Most people go sell ship, they're like, I want to do videos. This is going to be great, I'm going to make a lot of money. And they go sell into the water, they have nowhere to go. Everybody sails aimlessly. But rarely do you have people that actually have a port, a destination. And that's your Legacy, that's your 20 year plan, right? Where is your port? If you don't have one, you gotta think of one, you gotta come up with one. So the CEO's job is to steer the boat to the port and not let it go off course. And he utilizes those three blocks, those high level executives to manage other managers who manage technicians and get the job done. And the communication and the meetings are very important. So go back to the meetings. I believe that every company that wants to be successful and starts to grow numbers of people that work with them, they need to have weekly meetings. And not just any meeting, I mean a weekly meeting where it's on the same day at the same exact time and no one is allowed to miss it. It's locked. You can't miss it unless you're sick. You can't get out of that meeting. Everyone who's supposed to be there is supposed to be there. And it doesn't have to be everybody, it's people who control, who take responsibility, who manage. So let's just say you have three people at a company meeting because you're a smaller company and there's like six people that work for you total. So the three people, the stakeholders or the managers show up at the meeting. Maybe it's the CEO and then two other people. And you go through most of what's happening over the course of the last week and you review the, then you spend 90% of the time in the meeting reviewing issues. Everybody brings up issues. When you bring up those issues you have to either decide are we going to take care of it and decide right now how we're going to handle the issue or do you assign the issue or do you delay it for later, for next week or the week after or the quarter after? Once you decide you're going to sign it, somebody needs to have ownership of that. So one of the three people in that room have to take ownership and responsibility of that issue. And next week they have to come back with a solution to that issue. And the cycle repeats over and over again. And then you have quarterly meetings. Those meetings are 90 minutes long, quarterly meetings are two hours long, I'm sorry, four hours long, a half a day. And that's where you include more people. And you talk about higher level goals like one year plans, making sure you stay on course. And then the one year annual meeting is an entire day or two days with everybody, the whole entire company and you go through all the major concepts and issues and goals and, and 1 year and 3 year and 5 year and 10 year and 20 year plan, the whole port, the whole 9 yards. And every single time you have these meetings it's like you're looking at the compass and you're making sure you stay on course. If you don't have the meetings, you veer off course and you never get to your port. So I know it was long winded, but I believe in that and that's I love it.

It's consistency, it's mastering the Rockefeller habits. Verne Harnisch it's how JD Rockefeller planned his companies.

And I'm going to be the first one to say I try it and I do it, but it's not easy and I it up every time, but allowed.

The curse thing is the frequent, the but the frequency of the meetings and the consistency of checking in on the bottlenecks in the business and assigning responsibility. It's that gentle course correction which I think Keith Cunningham is Referring to in his book the Road Less Stupid, he's saying you've, you're constantly adjusting. You've got to keep doing every day, but monitoring, progressing and measuring. Are we on target? Are we off target? Do we need to adjust 1 degree left, 1 degree right?

Yeah.

And I love the analogy of a big tanker ship because it's just that.

Yeah. And what's also important in those meetings is to go over KPIs key performance indicators. So every company should be measuring something to measure, measure progress. And I know it's a big term that corporate uses, but it's important. So. So you know, for small businesses you can be measuring key performance indicators can be. How many Facebook likes did you get this week? How many comments or engagement did you get on Facebook? How many retweets did you get on Twitter? How many likes did you get on Instagram? How many leads did you get this week? How many leads booked this week? You know, you can come up with as many as you want and you start measuring them. If they go down, you discuss it in the meeting and find out why is it going down. If it goes up, you discuss why it went up and you keep continuing that way. But when you have all these heads and everybody's in the same place and everybody wants the same thing, you know, there's amazing things going to happen. One plus one equals three, I believe. And also. Go ahead.

No, look, I just going to say the other thing is, you know, even in simplest terms, for video business owners who are just starting out, just having a scorecard for inquiries, leads and sales. Yeah, those three things start simple. It's great if, you know, the other thing is that I find certainly less experienced business owners, as soon as someone calls them and they do a quote in their brain, they're like, well, that's, that's a possible job. Not, not allowing for the fact that they may, the client may have gone to three different companies. And I think there's a tendency, particularly with freelancers who are just migrating into business where they think, well, I've got three quotes out, so even if two of them drop, I'll make X. And of course you might win one in four jobs. I mean, the average sale conversion is between is usually but one 1 to 4, 1 to 2 and 4 conversations will result in a sale which is a 25 or 50% close rate, which is pretty high. I think if your marketing's good, if you, if you're using a referral strategy, then absolutely, you know, the chances of a referral converting into work is much higher than cold traffic.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Referrals are gold. I mean, think about this. I'll give you a quick analogy. So you. You have your. Your. You have plumbing done at your house, and you hire someone, and they're horrible, and they. They make a disaster out of it, and you got to go hire another plumber. He comes in, he's like, oh, man, you hired this guy. But look, he actually. Let me show you what he did. He used this one, and you shouldn't use this coupler. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna. I'm gonna put this one in, because this one's gonna save you, and it's gonna last for 10 years. And you really shouldn't be using this PVC over here. You should be using this over here. And he goes and he fixes it up, and he sounds like an expert, and he. He's reasonable, and he puts you back to where you're supposed to be, and you're like, oh, my God, thank you so much. You were great. And then he goes his merry way. And then a week later, you get a call from a friend. Yeah, I'm just. I'm driving myself crazy. I'm looking for a plumber. You're like, hey, I got a guy for you. There's this guy Bill. I just used him. He's amazing. Go use him now. Who do you think he's going to consider? Who do you think he's going to most definitely hire? That referral is worth so much gold, it's just not even a comparison. Referrals are the best.

Listen, I want to just ask you a bit of a curveball question here. This might be a difficult thing to answer in one question, but what's the best advice you've ever received around business?

The best advice I've ever received in my life is not something that anybody wants to hear.

Patience.

That's the best advice I ever got, and it sucks. So true.

But, you know, I'll give you. You love analogies. I love analogies. Here's an analogy.

So we're. We're an airplane. I'm not a fight. Not a jet fighter this time, just a regular airplane.

And our business, when it's successful, it means we took off the Runway and we're in the air, and we're flying high, and we're. We keep. You know, once. Once you get that momentum, you just float, and you get higher and higher, and it's easier to elevate. But the very beginning, you got to go like, you know, a certain amount of miles per hour or kilometers per hour to lift off, to get off the ground. And I think a lot of business owners, you know, let's say if you need to get to 80 miles an hour before you lift off, a lot of business owners kind of drag across the Runway at like 30, 40, 50 miles an hour, and they try to take off because they believe they can take off and they can't. And you give up easy. And that's why most businesses fail. So I think the trick here is to be aware that if you keep going and keep building the momentum, it will get easier. And this analogy leads to one of my favorite analogies, which is the bamboo story. And it goes like this. It's very simple. And this goes with all business. Bamboo grows 1 inch the first year, and then it grows 1 inch the second year. So you planted this bamboo, and it's only 2 inches high. And you're sitting there like, man, I thought I was gonna have a big bamboo tree or whatever they're called.

But the third year, bamboo skyrockets 30ft into the air. And the reason bamboo grows like that is because the first two years, it's building its roots into the ground 30ft deep, and you don't see it. So you only see 2 inches, but you don't realize how much is actually being done. And I think we lose sight of that as business owners. So if you don't give up, you will break the air and get into. Get. Get into the air, I should say. And then once you get. And lift off, the elevation is a lot easier because you have the momentum, you have the speed.

Western economic data.

States that it takes an average of 7 to 10 years to build a million dollar business.

Wow.

And there's another great phrase, which I think it was Tony Robbins that said most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year, but wildly underestimate what they can achieve in five years. And, and it's and it's just, as you say, business is a long play. It is.

And a lot of people look for that, that quick thing. And I think most of us when we're younger look for that quick win. And we believe in it. And we, we see our idols. And, you know, there are a lot of people on the Internet who fake their success, and we believe it. So we, we do what they say, what they're not really walking the walk. And so I think we need to all be honest with ourselves and just be careful about, you know, who we trust and don't Just buy into anything that sounds good. Use. Use your logic. And look, if it's gonna happen quickly, you're gonna get very lucky. And it's not normal, it's not common. So if anyone gains success quickly, it's because they got lucky. And. And there's a good chance you're not going to be that lucky if you go into life like that. It goes back to what I just said before. Patience. That's all we have.

And success is a terrible teacher. Failure is a wonderful teacher. You talked about reading a lot of books and I also listen to a huge amount of books. What books would you say are must reads if you could pick five.

All right, five. Thinking grow rich.

Napoleon Hill. 1930. 1927. I think that was written.

Was a long time ago.

Time ago.

I The e. Myth.

Michael Gerber.

Michael Gerber.

I love this book. I think this is my favorite book.

Traction by Dino Wickman.

Ah, I've not read that Traction.

Four Hour Work Week. Used to be, but I'd have to. I have to listen. It's been a. Been a couple of years. I got to relisten to that again. I'm not gonna include that in the top five. Maybe next year. Let me think of another one here.

I know it's corny. It's from. It's from your area, but it's real. The secret.

Secret's a big deal. The law of attraction. That's a big deal. I don't. I forgot her name, but she's Sharonda or something. She's.

I forget. But yeah, look. Energy. Energetically. The world is changing and I believe people are being a lot. Are tapping a lot more to. I'm a great believer in vision boards. And when I put a vision board together, that shit comes real.

It's a. Yeah.

You've got to be careful not to think too small because that stuff happens.

Another. Another good book. How to. I'm gonna say it wrong. How to Win and Influence Friends. Am I saying it wrong?

Dale Carnegie. How to Win Friends and Influence People.

There you go. And then another one would be Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That's another good book.

Stephen R. Covey. Yeah, we. We've read the same stuff.

And.

And there's a reason for.

These are the classics. Like, these are like the. Yeah, you know, I know you know these books. These are the classics. Like for those who don't know these books, like, this is like 101 college. Like start with these and your mind will be blown and then you can. You can break out from there because there's a lot of other ones. I mean, there's heavy ones like the master key system. And my brother's got me reading one called the Edinburgh Lectures, which is way above my head. And I have to like. It just keeps going deeper and deeper.

But yeah, no, well, you know, they say readers are leaders, you know, and people say to me, I have no time. I'm like, stop watching TV and get up earlier.

Well, I mean, for me, it's in the car all the time. When I'm in the car. That's my office, man. It's just audio books. It's every time I listen to an audiobook in a car, I'm learning, I'm growing. I love to learn, I love to grow. It's great.

You know, it is, it is, it is such wonderful fuel for the brain. And I think, you know, no business is actually different. The only part that's different is the operation. And the operation is the creative part. And I loved your analogy of the three boxes of the cmo, the marketing division, who are responsible for getting the message in front of the right people at the right time and then converting those people into sales, which produces cash, which is the oxygen which fuels the production, and then making sure that money is being used effectively to redistribute into marketing or education. And do you use any other sources for education? I mean, are you a member of any mastermind groups? Do you, do you have any mentors?

How do you kind of get support for you?

So currently I'm mainly audiobooks, but.

For.

About three or four years it just, it hasn't been for about a year or two. But up until that point I was involved with a very small, I'll call it mastermind group. It was three people but very high level thinkers. And you know, all these books and 50 more, you know, and we'd throw concepts and ideas against the wall from all these different books and we would share our problems with our business and.

We would share our problems with our business and we would, you know, help each other come up with solutions and think about it in different ways. And it was, was really powerful and it just, just a scheduling thing between us that it just broke apart. But I'm sure it's something we may revisit in the future. I will actually, I will say I forgot. I am involved with.

Two groups. I'm sorry, I was involved with two groups. I'm involved with one now, but I was involved with a group called tab, the alternative business. And there's a couple of different business models, organizations that do this. This is just one example. But basically it's a board. You have to pay like four or five hundred dollars a month and you meet once a month with eight people and a moderator and you block out four hours once a month on a certain day, it's scheduled, you show up. If you don't show up, you still got to pay, doesn't matter. And you discuss your issues, your company issues with the board. And they own their own companies and you own your company and there's no conflict of interest. They make sure they vet who's going to be in the meeting, who's going to be in the group. And you know all different types of businesses, small, medium and large sized businesses and your CEOs helping each other. So there's several groups that are like that. I belong to one for about a year and it was good, but I felt like after a while I wasn't getting this stimulation that I wanted out of it. And I just said, let's take a break, I'll come back. And I still haven't come back. And then there's another one where I belong to an association that's local to me, but it's an industry, I'm sorry, an industrial park association near me. It's one of the largest industrial parks in the country, which is great. It's a lot of companies that are in there and it's just like a business organization association that I belong with also. I don't belong to one right now, but I did and I would advise people to join their chamber of commerce. Now I don't know if you have that same thing in Australia. I don't know. But yeah, those are, it costs money usually, but it's, you're, you're getting together with other business owners usually and you're sharing, you know, your, your issues and you're learning from each other and it's your networking and it's good, it's, it's.

A major part of Think and Grow Rich. Napoleon Hill is the idea of the mastermind where you bring other like minded businesses or business owners from different industries together. Because when you have other people looking in on your problem, they can help you get breakthroughs. And I'm a member of a couple of groups and I also invest substantial amounts of money in it because I know that any money I vest in myself comes back at me. Maybe not straight away, but the long play is always what I've been interested in.

That's a great point. And those who buy gear a lot. You know, should probably.

Attempt to take a step back and take 10 or 20% of that money you're going to spend this year on gear and spending, spend it towards education, you know, or, or I still consider what you just said, education, you know, whatever, whether it's a mastermind group or you know, paid, you know, educational courses or something that, that I think we all, you know, everyone invests in gear and they don't invest in education. And it's man, with the right education, you could do magic with an iPhone. You don't need the tools.

And if you're making, if you're investing in yourself and your business, you'll make more money than you ever need. You can buy whatever you want. Except when you get into high level business, you don't buy anything, you lease it because it's far smarter. Adam, I'm going to wrap this up now. This has been an incredible three episodes. I feel we could go on for hours. You've been so generous with your time. I want to say thank you very much and I hope that we can have you on again to share the growth with the music library and the growth with Penny Lane. And we'll make sure we link your organizations beneath and I just want to say thank you.

Thank you too, Den. This was great. I love talking this stuff. It's very fun.

You've been listening to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast with your host, Dan Lenny. If you are a video business owner who is tired of going it alone and would benefit from mentorship, support and weekly accountability, then mouse over to www.videobusinessaccelerator.com to learn more about how the accelerator program can help you today. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review.