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He Took the Company Card on a _15_000 Vacation · NO FILTER

0:00
Speaker 1: This is the Bad Hire, the show with the best
0:02
Speaker 1: stories about the worst employees. We fired him.
0:05
Speaker 2: Of course, people are crazy. It's like an hr nightmare. Right.
0:09
Speaker 1: One bad hire stole all of.
0:12
Speaker 2: It crazy stuff. She got what she deserved.
0:15
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and every week we
0:19
Speaker 1: dive into real life stories from the wild world of
0:22
Speaker 1: work and what can happen when the wrong person gets
0:26
Speaker 1: the job. These stories aren't just crazy when their cautionary
0:30
Speaker 1: tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started.
0:35
Speaker 3: First off, I love just to hear more about you.
0:38
Speaker 3: I know we've already talked a little bit, but if
0:39
Speaker 3: you want to introduce yourself. I know you have some
0:42
Speaker 3: interesting stories just about your life and just like what
0:45
Speaker 3: you do, and I'd love to hear a bit more.
0:47
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I'm Steve Stewart. I'm the CEO and co
0:50
Speaker 2: founder of song Hub. My background's in the music business.
0:54
Speaker 2: Used to be in management. I managed a band called
0:56
Speaker 2: Stone Temple Pilots for the first ten years of their
0:59
Speaker 2: career five records with them. Had a bunch of other
1:03
Speaker 2: artists signed to major labels and publishers in that meantime.
1:08
Speaker 2: Really caught the last part of the CD era of
1:13
Speaker 2: the music labels situation, before that streaming came in, before
1:16
Speaker 2: file sharing came in, and it was kind of the
1:19
Speaker 2: last vestige of the old school record labels where you know,
1:22
Speaker 2: they could really make some money. They would sell a
1:24
Speaker 2: CD I think retails about eighteen dollars and they probably
1:27
Speaker 2: made ten dollars, so they got there's a lot of
1:30
Speaker 2: fat there before streaming came in and said you're going
1:33
Speaker 2: to get point one zero zero zero zero one cent
1:36
Speaker 2: per stream. So caught a lot of that and then
1:40
Speaker 2: saw that those deals. Because of that, the record labels
1:43
Speaker 2: start doing what's called three sixty deals. They would come
1:46
Speaker 2: in and take a piece of your publishing, you're merchandising,
1:48
Speaker 2: your touring. They wanted all of it because they were
1:50
Speaker 2: losing revenues on the record side, like they couldn't make
1:54
Speaker 2: money selling actual records anymore, which made the deals really
1:57
Speaker 2: onerous for artists. A lot of art artist could not
2:01
Speaker 2: make a living because they would rely on a separate
2:04
Speaker 2: publishing deal or separate touring income, and when they had
2:06
Speaker 2: to start sharing that with the labels, those income streams
2:09
Speaker 2: kind of dried up a little bit, so it was
2:11
Speaker 2: not really a good time labels, cut their staffs back,
2:14
Speaker 2: cut their rosters back, and to the point where we've
2:18
Speaker 2: got what we've got today, where you know, there's a
2:21
Speaker 2: very thin layer of artists that do very well, and
2:24
Speaker 2: then there's a lot of artists that don't do very well,
2:27
Speaker 2: and it's it's very difficult to get traction. There's always
2:31
Speaker 2: going to be superstars and big names that do very well.
2:34
Speaker 2: But at the same time, there's it's easier to make
2:37
Speaker 2: music right. Everybody can download a pro tools rig or
2:40
Speaker 2: fl or. Now you've got Suno and Udio. You can
2:44
Speaker 2: make music and get music out and distributed through Spotify
2:47
Speaker 2: or Apple Music or Deezer much more easily than you
2:50
Speaker 2: ever could before those platforms existed. So there's a lot
2:54
Speaker 2: of opportunity on the tech side. And I got into
2:56
Speaker 2: music tech I don't know, ten years ago, years ago
3:00
Speaker 2: and start building fractional rights platforms and song lub right
3:04
Speaker 2: now is basically a platform that started as a collaboration
3:08
Speaker 2: a registration platform. We're moving into serving some of the
3:11
Speaker 2: AI community with actual rights management and registration, so determining
3:16
Speaker 2: which rights are human and which rights are AI and
3:18
Speaker 2: then letting people register those to collect royalties. So it's
3:22
Speaker 2: an interesting little niche. There's a lot of artists that
3:26
Speaker 2: need to get paid properly. There's a lot of inefficiencies
3:28
Speaker 2: in the music royalty system, and that's kind of my
3:31
Speaker 2: mission is to solve some of that.
3:33
Speaker 3: That's super cool. Even just your story or just your
3:36
Speaker 3: background of being with a Stone Temple Pilots is super cool,
3:40
Speaker 3: very interesting like that. That's awesome. I'm sure you've got
3:42
Speaker 3: some great and probably very interesting stories just from those days,
3:46
Speaker 3: but from your background. So now you know, obviously you're
3:49
Speaker 3: at this kind of blend of business and music, and
3:52
Speaker 3: that's where it sounds like you've been for the last
3:53
Speaker 3: few years. Like, what's your background of besides that piece
3:58
Speaker 3: of your story that I know with some typical Pilots,
4:01
Speaker 3: would you say that your background, you know, even back
4:05
Speaker 3: into college days and then from there is your story
4:10
Speaker 3: starting with music or starting with business or have they
4:12
Speaker 3: been together the whole time.
4:14
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I was in a band in high school.
4:17
Speaker 2: Out of high school and through my college years and
4:20
Speaker 2: really picked up and I ended up kind of managing
4:23
Speaker 2: them and booking them and doing all the stuff on
4:25
Speaker 2: the business side. We made a record, so there's a
4:28
Speaker 2: lot of the business stuff that I was handling at
4:30
Speaker 2: that point, and then right out of college I started
4:34
Speaker 2: working for iced teas manager as an assistant. And when
4:38
Speaker 2: I was in school, I was working for Echo and
4:40
Speaker 2: the Buddyman B fifty two's manager also as an assistant.
4:43
Speaker 2: So I kind of just started on that path and
4:46
Speaker 2: got into management, which I wasn't I was a drummer.
4:49
Speaker 2: I was kind of a hack drummer, and I knew
4:51
Speaker 2: that wasn't my future. But I enjoyed the business. I
4:54
Speaker 2: enjoyed music, and I really was taken by how you
4:58
Speaker 2: could get something, you know, at a very ground level
5:02
Speaker 2: entry point and then build it. And when I started
5:05
Speaker 2: working for iced T's manager, I started networking and made
5:08
Speaker 2: contacts with attorneys and A and R people in the business,
5:11
Speaker 2: and guys I grew up with with my band in
5:14
Speaker 2: high school had a band and they kept asking me
5:16
Speaker 2: if I could help sign them or get them signed,
5:18
Speaker 2: and I took their tape around as a cassette tape
5:20
Speaker 2: back in those days and shopped it for about a year,
5:23
Speaker 2: I don't know, probably two hundred denials and Atlantic records.
5:28
Speaker 2: So they were interested in nineteen ninety two and made
5:30
Speaker 2: a deal with them, so it was kind of moving
5:34
Speaker 2: from the performance and being in a band and appreciating music,
5:37
Speaker 2: which I've always done, into that management and business side,
5:41
Speaker 2: and then start my own management company when I signed
5:43
Speaker 2: them and ran with that for you know, fifteen twenty years,
5:47
Speaker 2: so it kind of naturally morphed into it. It's interesting
5:52
Speaker 2: the creative there's definitely a difference between the artist and
5:55
Speaker 2: the business minds. The creative mind sometimes doesn't really pay
6:00
Speaker 2: attention to some of the business guide guardrails, and it's
6:04
Speaker 2: hard to explain to when artists, you know, sometimes what
6:06
Speaker 2: their rights are and what they're doing and sometimes what
6:09
Speaker 2: they're not do right. Sometimes they think, oh, I've done this,
6:12
Speaker 2: you got my song on the radio. I should be
6:13
Speaker 2: getting millions of dollars. It's somehow it works all the time.
6:16
Speaker 2: So knowing how that stuff works, being able to bridge
6:20
Speaker 2: that gap and explain and communicate that properly to creatives,
6:24
Speaker 2: I think it's super important. Something has always been a
6:26
Speaker 2: part of my life.
6:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's that's what brought you to
6:30
Speaker 3: where you are. I feel like you're in the perfect
6:32
Speaker 3: spot because, like you said, since there's different people with
6:35
Speaker 3: different wired brains. Some are like you know, more of
6:38
Speaker 3: the creative type. Some are more of like the I
6:40
Speaker 3: guess type A, or even just like business type, and
6:43
Speaker 3: sometimes they miss or they don't understand the other side, right.
6:47
Speaker 3: And so now that you've kind of come from both,
6:50
Speaker 3: you can apply a lot of like the actual strategic
6:52
Speaker 3: management business side of things, but you still understand the
6:57
Speaker 3: creative side of what they want and what they really
6:59
Speaker 3: needed today too, which is awesome.
7:01
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I'm recalling a story that we met with
7:05
Speaker 2: the CEO of Time Warner, guy named Jerry Levin back
7:08
Speaker 2: in the day, probably nineteen ninety ninety one, I think
7:12
Speaker 2: maybe ninety two, was during the body count Iced Tea controversy.
7:17
Speaker 2: And it was interesting because he was probably Time Warner
7:20
Speaker 2: at that point was one of the biggest media conglomerates
7:23
Speaker 2: in the world. He was their CEO. He had an
7:25
Speaker 2: accounting background, and he invited us to come out to
7:28
Speaker 2: New York, actually flew us out on one of their
7:30
Speaker 2: Gulf streams. And I was invited to that meeting and
7:34
Speaker 2: it was four people, and he was he was he
7:39
Speaker 2: was an accountant and I remember, you know, Ice Tea's
7:42
Speaker 2: kind of an original og gangster rapper from the West Coast.
7:46
Speaker 2: And he was playing in a CD changer in these
7:49
Speaker 2: iced ta songs like Yo Yo yo and all this
7:51
Speaker 2: cuss words. And I looked at this guy and thought,
7:54
Speaker 2: he has no idea where iced tea is coming from, right,
7:58
Speaker 2: He's coming from like the streets of LA kind of
8:00
Speaker 2: his background was, you know, it was not a polished
8:04
Speaker 2: pedigree as Jerry's was. And he's running this record label,
8:09
Speaker 2: he's running a music company, a media company at that
8:11
Speaker 2: point multi you know, multinational, billion dollar media company. And
8:16
Speaker 2: here is one of his key artists. And he's from
8:18
Speaker 2: a completely different background and upbringing it and it has
8:21
Speaker 2: a different perspective. But I thought it was interesting that
8:24
Speaker 2: he was making every effort to understand and to relate
8:28
Speaker 2: to an artist. And that was the first, one of
8:30
Speaker 2: the first times I saw that. And then I was
8:32
Speaker 2: always you know, that was in my mid twenties, dealing
8:35
Speaker 2: with fifty sixty year old CEOs and the music business
8:38
Speaker 2: that are music business is very shoot from the hip
8:41
Speaker 2: that used to be. It's become a lot more corporate
8:43
Speaker 2: in the last fifteen or twenty years. But back in
8:46
Speaker 2: those days, you didn't have to have a degree, you
8:49
Speaker 2: didn't have to go to school. It was literally who
8:52
Speaker 2: could get the best stuff on the radio, or the
8:54
Speaker 2: best sales or get things done, and pretty rough and
8:57
Speaker 2: tumble compared to corporate America in many respects. So seeing
9:02
Speaker 2: a lot of those guys like om at Ertigan and
9:04
Speaker 2: Doug Morris and Danny Goldberg, the business was it was rough.
9:09
Speaker 2: Those guys used to go into radio stations and break
9:11
Speaker 2: stuff and say, you know, if you don't play my record,
9:14
Speaker 2: I'm going to break all the other records in your
9:17
Speaker 2: library right now. Crazy stuff that was. You know, some
9:21
Speaker 2: of the basis for the music business goes back to
9:23
Speaker 2: those days, and a lot of those guys experience that.
9:27
Speaker 2: So it was a very loose shoot from the hip
9:30
Speaker 2: kind of culture. And to see that at twenty and
9:32
Speaker 2: to be able to sit in a room with the
9:34
Speaker 2: CEO of you know, one of the biggest record labels
9:36
Speaker 2: in the country and the world probably and negotiate I
9:41
Speaker 2: learned that I had something they wanted, right I had
9:44
Speaker 2: an artist that was very interesting to them and they
9:46
Speaker 2: saw the potential to make money from and with that
9:50
Speaker 2: type of desire and they wanted to be in business,
9:53
Speaker 2: you could use that as leverage to negotiate it. It
9:56
Speaker 2: was kind of crazy for a kid to get in
9:59
Speaker 2: that space, But that's what I learned early on.
10:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really cool, Steve. And I'm sure that some
10:06
Speaker 3: of those things that you saw at that point of
10:08
Speaker 3: your career where just like that level of excuse me,
10:12
Speaker 3: that level of empathy, being able to see something from
10:16
Speaker 3: somebody else's perspective, in your case or in that case,
10:20
Speaker 3: you know, somebody who's in management be able to try
10:23
Speaker 3: to understand some of that I see, or one of
10:25
Speaker 3: the musicians. Again, there's a generational gap, there's a background gap,
10:30
Speaker 3: there's a cultural gap. But then some I feel like
10:32
Speaker 3: there's some and this is speaking generally, there's some people
10:36
Speaker 3: in management executives who just don't care. They're like, there's
10:39
Speaker 3: a big gap. Whatever, I'm just going to keep working
10:41
Speaker 3: and you guys just do what I say. But I
10:44
Speaker 3: think like the best people who are in hiring, who
10:47
Speaker 3: are in management, who have to do with other people
10:51
Speaker 3: under them, they actually try to make that conscious step
10:54
Speaker 3: of trying to connect, because the better you can connect
10:57
Speaker 3: and make somebody feel understood, typically the best results you
11:00
Speaker 3: can create.
11:02
Speaker 2: Nathan, that's really a good point because there's a layer
11:04
Speaker 2: at record labels called A and R it stands for
11:06
Speaker 2: artists and repertoire, and they're the actual people that are
11:09
Speaker 2: scouts and go out and find artists and sign them.
11:13
Speaker 2: And their ethos and their personalities are completely different from
11:17
Speaker 2: business affairs, which are the lawyers, HR which is the
11:19
Speaker 2: hiring side, and even the accountants and all the other executives.
11:24
Speaker 2: They're almost the same kind of creative mindset as an artist,
11:29
Speaker 2: and they relate to them. They take them out to dinner,
11:31
Speaker 2: they wine and dine them. But it's interesting to see
11:34
Speaker 2: where that line is and once they get hooked. Once
11:37
Speaker 2: an artist is impressed by that, A and R person says, yeah,
11:40
Speaker 2: I want to sign with War Brothers. Then the business
11:42
Speaker 2: affairs guys come in, then the lawyers come in, and
11:44
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, that nice, hey, we'd love
11:47
Speaker 2: to sign you. We're so excited turns into deal points
11:51
Speaker 2: and legal contracts and there's some negotiation. Sometimes you're not
11:54
Speaker 2: going to get everything you want, and it's interesting to
11:58
Speaker 2: see both sides. And I know you guys are coming
11:59
Speaker 2: from an H and R background, HR background, You're right.
12:03
Speaker 2: I think the intake the HR managers that are hiring
12:08
Speaker 2: and interviewing perspective employees. They have to be a little empathetic.
12:13
Speaker 2: They have to have a different face than maybe some
12:15
Speaker 2: of the other executives or management levels in that company,
12:19
Speaker 2: because they're relating to someone coming in off the street
12:21
Speaker 2: many times, or they're trying to retain somebody, or they're
12:24
Speaker 2: trying to recruit somebody that is coming from another company,
12:28
Speaker 2: maybe it's a higher level talent. They have to present
12:31
Speaker 2: a company in a different way that listens to who
12:34
Speaker 2: they're sitting next to, that sells the company to them
12:37
Speaker 2: kind of maybe more than than other people in the
12:40
Speaker 2: company might have to do. So. Yeah, it's interesting that
12:43
Speaker 2: intake side, where you're looking to build a team and
12:46
Speaker 2: bring the best people into your organization. How do you
12:49
Speaker 2: attract them, how do you retain them, and how do
12:51
Speaker 2: you express the strengths and potential of the company to
12:55
Speaker 2: them in a way that works.
12:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, and especially on the point of rich handing people,
13:00
Speaker 3: I think when somebody feels understood and valued, I mean
13:06
Speaker 3: that's the kind of those are kind of things that
13:09
Speaker 3: keep people around, you know. And there's there's one whole
13:12
Speaker 3: whole conversation I'm sure you and our CEO can well
13:15
Speaker 3: we'll have here in the future. But with background checks
13:19
Speaker 3: in particularly you know beat checks. They do background checks,
13:21
Speaker 3: And one kind of big point that he's made it
13:23
Speaker 3: several times is talking about, you know, viewing somebody not
13:28
Speaker 3: just as a piece of paper as their background check
13:31
Speaker 3: and almost saying like you are not your background, You're
13:33
Speaker 3: not your background, and almost like with background checks, giving
13:37
Speaker 3: the people I guess a full content. I guess it's
13:39
Speaker 3: context based background screening, because you know, there's a big
13:42
Speaker 3: difference between person a who made a mistake one night
13:47
Speaker 3: in a bar, they got into a fight, and then
13:49
Speaker 3: the police came and then they just kept doing more
13:52
Speaker 3: stuff like that for ten years since it happened and
13:55
Speaker 3: just never showed any improvement, versus somebody who had a
13:58
Speaker 3: night in a bar, they made a mistake, the police
14:00
Speaker 3: showed up, and then they changed and then they got
14:03
Speaker 3: a job, and they had a family that went to
14:05
Speaker 3: church and like you know, did all the different things.
14:07
Speaker 3: And it's like, but two companies might look at that
14:09
Speaker 3: one incident just the same, or there's those two people
14:12
Speaker 3: just the same. And we talk of a lot about
14:14
Speaker 3: having the understanding, the empathy, you know, and just things
14:17
Speaker 3: like that. I think those are some of the strengths
14:19
Speaker 3: again of like the best people in business, The best
14:21
Speaker 3: people are in hiring and the best managers too.
14:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you, I think alluded to you are
14:27
Speaker 2: not your resume. And someone could look amazing on paper
14:30
Speaker 2: and they present like wow, I person couldn't hold a conversation,
14:35
Speaker 2: they had nothing to answer with one of you know,
14:37
Speaker 2: one syllable answers. And conversely, somebody could come in with
14:41
Speaker 2: a terrible resume and be really impressive. I've seen both
14:44
Speaker 2: of those as well. I think it's important that you
14:47
Speaker 2: connect with the person right. People nowadays, especially with AI
14:50
Speaker 2: and all the all the tools and resources, you can
14:53
Speaker 2: make someone look amazing on paper and you go, wow,
14:56
Speaker 2: this person click click click click click, they chuck all
14:58
Speaker 2: the boxes. But they come in and and they're they're
15:01
Speaker 2: nothing like you would imagine them to be. So I
15:04
Speaker 2: think that in person, that face to face is still
15:07
Speaker 2: critical in the hiring process.
15:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are some of the stories that we come
15:13
Speaker 3: across a lot at the bad hire where somebody will
15:16
Speaker 3: have an amazing background, you know, they look great on
15:19
Speaker 3: a resume and then they show up and like who
15:22
Speaker 3: is this person? A lot of times they're either they're
15:23
Speaker 3: faking it, they fake their whole resume, or they might
15:27
Speaker 3: have done some amazing feats, but there they actually end
15:29
Speaker 3: up pretty much being a terrible person. It's like you
15:31
Speaker 3: kind to look at the whole picture when you're trying
15:33
Speaker 3: to build a team, you know, I mean.
15:35
Speaker 1: Before we dive back into the chaos on the bad hire.
15:38
Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by b checks. Hiring
15:41
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16:19
Speaker 2: Just reminded me of an STP story, and maybe this is
16:22
Speaker 2: an interesting one for your podcast, for your for your
16:25
Speaker 2: I don't know, for your files, whatever you're compiling. We
16:28
Speaker 2: had a tour manager who was a good tour manager
16:32
Speaker 2: up to a point, but he started partying with the
16:35
Speaker 2: band and that's kind of a no note, you don't
16:38
Speaker 2: want to cross that line. It's kind of like managers
16:40
Speaker 2: and employees, and you know, there's definitely guardrails that should
16:44
Speaker 2: be in place. And I got a call from the
16:46
Speaker 2: band and they said, you know, we'd like to get
16:49
Speaker 2: rid of him. And they of course were friendly and
16:52
Speaker 2: they're not going to make any kind of you know,
16:54
Speaker 2: they're not ever the bad guys. They don't want to
16:55
Speaker 2: have that conflict or that face to face. So I
16:58
Speaker 2: fly out, I think it was Kansas City and and
17:01
Speaker 2: I take, you know, after the show, I get in
17:04
Speaker 2: the elevator with him, I said, you know, I need
17:05
Speaker 2: to let you go. And he's like, what are you
17:08
Speaker 2: talking about? I said, well, I've gotten reports and I've
17:11
Speaker 2: been watching what you're you've been doing, and you know,
17:13
Speaker 2: it's just not the right thing that you are socializing
17:17
Speaker 2: with the band the way that you are. Your jobs
17:19
Speaker 2: to be management. You're running this tour, you're responsible for
17:22
Speaker 2: the production, the finances, everything, all the logistics. It's just
17:26
Speaker 2: not the right look and it's and it's it's not
17:28
Speaker 2: going to happen. And he goes, so what do you mean.
17:31
Speaker 2: I said, well, I've got a guy here already who's
17:33
Speaker 2: taking you over tomorrow morning, so you know, I just
17:36
Speaker 2: pack your stuff and fly back to LA. So I
17:40
Speaker 2: go back to La. It was fine, it was amicable,
17:43
Speaker 2: and and then I get an alert from my credit
17:47
Speaker 2: card company because he was you know, he had a
17:49
Speaker 2: he had a company credit card, and they said, did
17:52
Speaker 2: you authorize this charge for like fifteen thousand dollars? I'm
17:55
Speaker 2: like no, And it was two plane tickets to the
17:59
Speaker 2: Career Ribbean and a hotel for like three nights, and
18:04
Speaker 2: a bunch of other like a bunch of other stuff.
18:08
Speaker 2: And I called him, I go what And then I
18:10
Speaker 2: realized it was his card And I called him, I
18:15
Speaker 2: said what do you you know? What is this? And
18:17
Speaker 2: he goes, oh, well, you know, I felt like like
18:20
Speaker 2: you guys owed me, you know, some type of severance,
18:24
Speaker 2: and I just thought I would, you know, I met
18:26
Speaker 2: a girl. I thought, I take her down, Like, are
18:29
Speaker 2: you kidding me? I said, number one, if you if
18:33
Speaker 2: you just went home and did like I asked, I
18:35
Speaker 2: would have given you some severance. But you literally left
18:39
Speaker 2: the meeting that we had and bought two tickets to
18:41
Speaker 2: the Caribbean and took a girl down there for like
18:44
Speaker 2: a week or a weekend. What are you doing. I said,
18:47
Speaker 2: that's theft. Yeah, well I don't you know, I don't
18:51
Speaker 2: see it that way. I said, look, here's what you're
18:54
Speaker 2: gonna do. You're gonna you're gonna put that money back
18:56
Speaker 2: in my bank account within twenty four hours, or I'm
18:59
Speaker 2: going to call the credit car company and they will
19:01
Speaker 2: come after you. I said, that's enough money that it's
19:04
Speaker 2: grand larceny or grand theft, whatever it's called called. And
19:07
Speaker 2: I said, I'll just let them come after you. And
19:11
Speaker 2: he goes okay, and and I had the money back
19:14
Speaker 2: in twenty four hours. But it was it was someone
19:16
Speaker 2: like that who I had trusted to be my tour
19:18
Speaker 2: manager generally the hierarchy as manager tour manager and then
19:22
Speaker 2: everybody else on the tour. But he was my representative
19:26
Speaker 2: on the road for months and to and trust him
19:31
Speaker 2: with that responsibility and then see that, you know, he
19:34
Speaker 2: just threw that away in a way that was weird.
19:37
Speaker 2: It was shocked to me.
19:38
Speaker 3: But it was like, I'll just paying myself, I'll just
19:43
Speaker 3: taking I'll just take care of it myself without telling anybody.
19:46
Speaker 2: Not asking, not telling anybody. And it was it was
19:49
Speaker 2: a shock, and I had never seen any behavior like
19:52
Speaker 2: that before. I thought, wow, how could I have missed that?
19:55
Speaker 2: And and he was fine up to that point. But
19:57
Speaker 2: I think he just took that the heart way and
20:00
Speaker 2: and you know, sought to scratch back some way and
20:03
Speaker 2: it didn't work. Well.
20:04
Speaker 3: I'm kind of surprised that he even picked up the
20:07
Speaker 3: phone again when you called. I feel like, typically I
20:10
Speaker 3: would think that that story would be you saw that
20:13
Speaker 3: fifteen thousand dollars charge and never heard from the guy again,
20:16
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So it sounds interesting that
20:18
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, yeah, this is just what I did.
20:19
Speaker 3: I just stole from you and hoping it was okay.
20:22
Speaker 2: Maybe he thought he'd get more it was. It was interesting.
20:25
Speaker 2: He had a very arrogant attitude about you know, we
20:28
Speaker 2: owed him something. I said, you're being let go for
20:31
Speaker 2: cause it wasn't like we ran out of your job
20:34
Speaker 2: or you did great. It was the end of the term.
20:36
Speaker 2: The band didn't want you to be their representative anymore,
20:39
Speaker 2: and it was my job to terminate you. So that's
20:44
Speaker 2: it was.
20:45
Speaker 3: It may have been a better choice, yeah, it made
20:47
Speaker 3: have been a better choice. Those types of things are
20:49
Speaker 3: always hard, you know. Even we talk a lot about
20:52
Speaker 3: hiring and firing and we you know, recognize it's somebody's
20:56
Speaker 3: life and it's somebody's choice. And even even the whole
20:58
Speaker 3: point of the podcast, we've we've had a little bit
21:00
Speaker 3: of criticisms like, oh, I don't want to laugh at
21:02
Speaker 3: somebody's misfortune, and it's like, you know, stuff happens in
21:06
Speaker 3: business and work and in life, and it's more just like, okay,
21:09
Speaker 3: when stuff goes down, how do we how do we
21:12
Speaker 3: deal with it? And also for anybody listening, hopefully, how
21:15
Speaker 3: do we prevent stuff like that? All the crazy things happening?
21:19
Speaker 3: You know, because there's some crazy things that happen in
21:21
Speaker 3: business and some managers and hires who don't turn out.
21:26
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that most of the real stories and stuff
21:28
Speaker 2: that is not for cause is probably not going to
21:31
Speaker 2: be on this podcast because it is sad and then
21:33
Speaker 2: it's not that interesting. And if if you know, finances
21:36
Speaker 2: are in a certain place or the market goes a
21:37
Speaker 2: certain way, you have to cut sometimes and that's not
21:40
Speaker 2: very pleasant at all. So I don't I don't know
21:43
Speaker 2: that those are outrageous stories or that you know that
21:46
Speaker 2: interesting sometimes, but the ones that take advantage of you,
21:51
Speaker 2: I think those should be brought out too, because you're right,
21:53
Speaker 2: No one talks about that, and it happens to everyone
21:56
Speaker 2: that hires anybody. They have to beware and some times
22:00
Speaker 2: you can't predict that stuff. Like I said, this guy
22:02
Speaker 2: was an employee for a couple of years, seemed fine,
22:05
Speaker 2: and it just turned out one day he did something wrong.
22:09
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's the hardest thing, well, a lot of things.
22:12
Speaker 2: When I talk to people that are getting into business
22:16
Speaker 2: hiring and firing, you're not really I'll just say, you're
22:19
Speaker 2: not really grown up until you've had to hire and
22:21
Speaker 2: fire people's It is a it's interesting and it's brutal.
22:27
Speaker 2: And you know, the hiring part's fun and exciting because
22:30
Speaker 2: you're giving someone a chance and you're giving them an opportunity,
22:33
Speaker 2: and you're hopefully compensated them and you're going to you know,
22:35
Speaker 2: work with somebody. But the other side, when you have
22:38
Speaker 2: to let someone go, is definitely very difficult, especially if
22:42
Speaker 2: it's not for cause. And I've seen that many times.
22:45
Speaker 2: I've seen people cry, I've seen people, you know, not
22:49
Speaker 2: be able to handle it very well. I've seen people
22:51
Speaker 2: handle it very well actually too, but it is life
22:55
Speaker 2: changing and it is something that's beyond their control. Many times,
22:58
Speaker 2: and sometimes there's much notice. Sometimes you might get a
23:01
Speaker 2: couple of weeks, sometimes you might get a week. But
23:05
Speaker 2: it is a life changing event and if you're handling it,
23:11
Speaker 2: I think for me the best. And I've had to
23:13
Speaker 2: teach people because I've had to have other people let
23:16
Speaker 2: people go too, and they came back and were crushed
23:19
Speaker 2: by it, especially some of the younger people. And I said,
23:21
Speaker 2: you know, it just somehow doesn't work out sometimes and
23:24
Speaker 2: it's no one's fault, and you have to look at
23:26
Speaker 2: it like you were the employer, and you need to
23:29
Speaker 2: make this right and the best way that you can
23:31
Speaker 2: usually at severance, perhaps recommendations, perhaps even getting them another
23:35
Speaker 2: job somewhere else. But you have to be very sensitive
23:39
Speaker 2: to it, and you have to be upfront about it,
23:41
Speaker 2: and you can't beat around the bush. You can't make
23:43
Speaker 2: an excuse or say it and no, just you just
23:45
Speaker 2: have to say, look, this isn't working out. Let's have
23:47
Speaker 2: a discussion and figure out the right way to resolve
23:50
Speaker 2: this or the best way to resolve this, so that
23:52
Speaker 2: we can both walk away, you know, feeling somewhat better
23:54
Speaker 2: about it.
23:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it sounds like that's the way that you're
23:57
Speaker 3: describing it is the best way to it and really
24:01
Speaker 3: hopefully the only way to approach it when you're trying
24:03
Speaker 3: to do it well. And you know, obviously there's a
24:06
Speaker 3: common disconnect where a company, a manager, a boss just
24:13
Speaker 3: will lose all of that sensitivity and just be like, well,
24:15
Speaker 3: this is how it is, you know, and just those
24:18
Speaker 3: people skills don't really come into play. And so, okay,
24:20
Speaker 3: this is already an unpleasant thing that happens commonly throughout businesses.
24:25
Speaker 3: So how is it handled with care and handled like
24:28
Speaker 3: the best that can be, you know, and with the
24:31
Speaker 3: bad hire And like all the stories you kind of
24:33
Speaker 3: talk about on the podcast, pretty much all these are
24:36
Speaker 3: with cause. And like there's stories even about interviews of
24:40
Speaker 3: people who didn't pan out. I was just talking to
24:43
Speaker 3: somebody today who's kind of made their story for the
24:45
Speaker 3: for the podcast, and like somebody came in for an
24:48
Speaker 3: interview and like wanted to use the restroom, and when
24:51
Speaker 3: they said it was like a private, secure building, so sorry,
24:54
Speaker 3: we don't have a public bathroom right here? They win.
24:56
Speaker 3: They peed in the parking lot in front of in
24:58
Speaker 3: front of, in front of the people there about to
25:01
Speaker 3: try to work for It's crazy and it's okay. Sometimes it's
25:05
Speaker 3: like not even a firing, like you're not even you're
25:07
Speaker 3: not even in the in the team yet, you know,
25:09
Speaker 3: And that's with cause, you know. And so we talk
25:12
Speaker 3: about all sorts of stories there.
25:14
Speaker 2: I had one of those too. It was a it
25:16
Speaker 2: was a kid who came in looking for a tech spot,
25:21
Speaker 2: and he literally went from high school to a ninety
25:24
Speaker 2: day coding camp. He never went to college, never got
25:28
Speaker 2: a job, never worked anywhere, straight out of high school,
25:31
Speaker 2: three month coding camp. I had an interview with him.
25:34
Speaker 2: He wanted one hundred and forty thousand dollars to start.
25:36
Speaker 2: This is eight years ago. Wow, and even today that's
25:41
Speaker 2: as a starting salary. I think one forty's probably on
25:44
Speaker 2: the high side. And I said, look, I'm not doubting
25:48
Speaker 2: that you're able to do this, but you've never had
25:51
Speaker 2: a job. I said, I don't know how you're going
25:54
Speaker 2: to be as an employee. You have zero references, you
25:56
Speaker 2: have zero experience, and you look good on paper, you
26:00
Speaker 2: check all the boxes you know regarding software development. But
26:03
Speaker 2: I just in good conscience, I can't hire you right now.
26:07
Speaker 2: And he's all about you know, days off and can
26:09
Speaker 2: you work from home? And I said, look, the other
26:13
Speaker 2: thing you should be aware of is when you come
26:15
Speaker 2: into an interview, it's going to be slanted towards the employer.
26:18
Speaker 2: You're there to kind of serve their needs initially at least. Yeah,
26:22
Speaker 2: they're going to compensate you, but that's the balance. You
26:24
Speaker 2: do the work, they pay you, and it can't be
26:27
Speaker 2: if the first thing out of your mouth is what
26:29
Speaker 2: are my days off? Or can I work you know,
26:31
Speaker 2: certain days from home. He didn't know, And again I
26:33
Speaker 2: didn't hold it against him personally. I'm just trying to
26:35
Speaker 2: help him. But I said, you keep straight out of
26:38
Speaker 2: high school and you have zero experience with a work
26:41
Speaker 2: with a job, and you went to a coding camp.
26:43
Speaker 2: You don't even have a degree, and the money you're
26:46
Speaker 2: asking for is pretty healthy. I said, I'm not going
26:49
Speaker 2: to hire you. I might hire you at half that,
26:52
Speaker 2: but somebody else might and maybe you can come back
26:54
Speaker 2: in six months or a year when you've got something
26:56
Speaker 2: under your belt. But I just can't do it. It
26:59
Speaker 2: was shocking to me that that that's where we are
27:02
Speaker 2: and this is you know, la and it's it was
27:05
Speaker 2: you know, kind of the tech stuff, but uh, it's
27:08
Speaker 2: amazing it's amazing what's out there. And and again your
27:13
Speaker 2: choice as a company, as a as a hiring person
27:15
Speaker 2: to bring somebody on your team, you don't always have
27:18
Speaker 2: to say us.
27:19
Speaker 3: And similar similar to that, and uh, Steve ought to
27:22
Speaker 3: show you out to send you the I think we
27:24
Speaker 3: have one of these recorded on our on our YouTube
27:27
Speaker 3: or somewhere like on our social media. And there was
27:30
Speaker 3: one story and it was for a software engineer, some
27:34
Speaker 3: coding kind of job. And he kind of goes through
27:37
Speaker 3: the interview process and I guess, you know, gets his
27:41
Speaker 3: way through. I guess I don't know if he lies
27:44
Speaker 3: through it, because somehow gets the job, uh, and then
27:48
Speaker 3: gets on his first day and he's assigned to do
27:51
Speaker 3: some you know, complicated coding project, and then it kind
27:54
Speaker 3: of gets delayed. He kind of procrastinates, and then they've
27:57
Speaker 3: come knocking on his door again like hey, where is this?
28:00
Speaker 3: And then the truth comes out. He's like, I actually
28:02
Speaker 3: I don't know how to code. Like I thought I
28:04
Speaker 3: could learn on the spot, like I've seen I've seen
28:07
Speaker 3: some YouTube videos about it. I thought I could teach
28:09
Speaker 3: myself in time. And so he actually got hired for
28:13
Speaker 3: a coding job without knowing how to code, and so
28:15
Speaker 3: that's the kind of stuff we're talking about. Hate, Like,
28:17
Speaker 3: it's okay to give some people some assignments on the
28:21
Speaker 3: way there before you're actually giving them the official job offer,
28:24
Speaker 3: instead of having the pain of oh, sorry, we accudentally
28:29
Speaker 3: just hired you for a job that you don't even
28:30
Speaker 3: know how to do.
28:32
Speaker 2: It's it's interesting because you know, usually you kind of
28:35
Speaker 2: put them on a on a contingency basis for a minute,
28:38
Speaker 2: or maybe you give them a trial like you said,
28:41
Speaker 2: but yeah, some people, coding is interesting because most people
28:45
Speaker 2: don't understand it right. If you're non technical, they can
28:49
Speaker 2: say I've got all these qualifications, how are you going
28:51
Speaker 2: to know? And a lot of companies will test you.
28:53
Speaker 2: A lot of companies will bring in some of their
28:55
Speaker 2: dev team and say, hey, sit with this guy for
28:56
Speaker 2: thirty minutes and tell me if he's real. Because an
29:00
Speaker 2: average HR person or average other executive may not know
29:04
Speaker 2: those kind of technical details right, And I don't speak
29:07
Speaker 2: to I'm no technical myself, and it's difficult sometimes when
29:11
Speaker 2: someone says they have those resources, they have that capability,
29:15
Speaker 2: they've done it before, and then, like you said, you
29:18
Speaker 2: find out, oh, and that's the extreme, But the most
29:22
Speaker 2: common that I've seen is where they say they can
29:24
Speaker 2: do something and they don't know that part of it,
29:27
Speaker 2: like maybe it's Jason's or maybe it's it's back end
29:30
Speaker 2: dev or whatever it is. There's something they don't know,
29:32
Speaker 2: but they don't tell you that, and then when you
29:34
Speaker 2: assign it to them, they shop it out and they're
29:37
Speaker 2: just like, Okay, I'm going to take your you know,
29:39
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars an hour gig, and I'm going to
29:41
Speaker 2: go pay somebody in India forty dollars an hour and
29:44
Speaker 2: make that sixty dollars difference. I'm like, let's not his job.
29:47
Speaker 2: If you don't know, just tell me you don't know, right,
29:50
Speaker 2: and I'll hire someone that has that other skill set.
29:53
Speaker 2: That makes sense. But to profess in an interview that
29:56
Speaker 2: you have all this ability and then for someone to
29:59
Speaker 2: find out later that you won't you don't know this
30:01
Speaker 2: chunk of it over here, it's a little deceptive. Yeah.
30:05
Speaker 2: That happens a lot. On the tech side, it happens
30:07
Speaker 2: a lot.
30:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think companies and teams more and more
30:11
Speaker 3: are valuing communication, and especially as there's more remote teams
30:16
Speaker 3: that are built, and that starts at the start of
30:19
Speaker 3: somebody's employment where it's like, hey, just just tell me,
30:22
Speaker 3: tell me things, and just tell me what's going on.
30:25
Speaker 3: Just be truthful. If you're with your skill set, if
30:27
Speaker 3: you don't know how to do something, just let me
30:28
Speaker 3: know if something's delayed. You know, I don't just don't
30:32
Speaker 3: just buy your buy yourself some time, but just let
30:34
Speaker 3: me know what's going on. And I think, like, that's
30:36
Speaker 3: that's really valuable.
30:38
Speaker 2: It's about being real. And I sometimes I see these
30:41
Speaker 2: hiring processes where it's done by a machine, or your
30:44
Speaker 2: your resume is at the first couple levels are sometimes
30:47
Speaker 2: handled by a machine, and I'm like, they're missing out
30:50
Speaker 2: on probably a lot of good people because maybe you
30:53
Speaker 2: didn't your resume didn't exactly have the right stuff in
30:56
Speaker 2: the right place, and the machine scanned it and put
30:59
Speaker 2: something else in there, or they thought they were looking
31:01
Speaker 2: for something. And I'm sure there's times and I haven't
31:03
Speaker 2: really seen it, but I'm sure there's times in HR
31:05
Speaker 2: where you talk to someone and go, Wow, you'd be
31:07
Speaker 2: right for this job, right we're looking you came in
31:10
Speaker 2: on this job, but we're looking for somebody over here,
31:13
Speaker 2: and we think we'd put you over here because you're
31:15
Speaker 2: the perfect candidate, whereas the candidate might not even know
31:17
Speaker 2: that because they're just looking at one entry point. The
31:20
Speaker 2: hr person understands I'm looking for, you know, five or
31:23
Speaker 2: ten different positions. But I think meeting the person, I
31:27
Speaker 2: think the zoom thing is that's okay. I'd rather meet
31:31
Speaker 2: them in person. There's so much where you can get
31:32
Speaker 2: from someone, just their posture, the way they move coming
31:36
Speaker 2: into the interview, leaving the interview, stuff that you may
31:38
Speaker 2: not see on camera. That is probably if you're going
31:42
Speaker 2: to hire somebody for a long term position, the least
31:46
Speaker 2: you could do is, I think meet them in person.
31:47
Speaker 2: I mean, that's so weird now that everything's done by
31:50
Speaker 2: you know, electronics and zooms.
31:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, Steve, tell me a little bit about a
31:56
Speaker 3: little bit more about song Hub. I'd love to hear
31:58
Speaker 3: a little bit more about the business. This you told
32:01
Speaker 3: me some earlier, but I'd love to hear more about
32:04
Speaker 3: how it came to be, you know, how long it's
32:06
Speaker 3: been going on, and then as you've been building the company,
32:10
Speaker 3: as you've been building your teams, especially on the hiring side,
32:13
Speaker 3: like building those teams. I love to hear more about
32:15
Speaker 3: the business. It self and how it's been going, and
32:17
Speaker 3: how you've been building it up and building the teams
32:20
Speaker 3: around it as well.
32:21
Speaker 2: Sure, my co founder Joe Berman was in uh, well,
32:25
Speaker 2: he's got a Batique music publishing company. He's been in
32:28
Speaker 2: the music business for almost as long as I have,
32:31
Speaker 2: if not longer, and he's got relationships with a lot
32:34
Speaker 2: of writers in different parts of the world, and he
32:37
Speaker 2: was getting calls to put them together. Hey can I
32:39
Speaker 2: meet this guy in New York? Can you hook me
32:41
Speaker 2: up with a guy in London? And he's but you're
32:43
Speaker 2: all signed to music publishing companies, right, like majors like Sony,
32:47
Speaker 2: and they're like yeah, but they don't help us. So
32:49
Speaker 2: we realized that there's a huge group of writers and musicians,
32:52
Speaker 2: most of them actually, that are not getting treatment. They're
32:56
Speaker 2: not getting services by their publishers or labels, even though
32:59
Speaker 2: they're signed to major labels and publishers. So the initial
33:03
Speaker 2: iteration was match dot com for songwriters. We just said,
33:07
Speaker 2: let's just get a list of a bunch of writers,
33:09
Speaker 2: put in metadata on what they do. If someone's a
33:12
Speaker 2: top liner or a guitar player, or they're writing folk songs,
33:14
Speaker 2: whatever it is, and let them connect because they didn't
33:18
Speaker 2: have a way to do that, and songwriting is a
33:20
Speaker 2: collaborative sport. Usually music's definitely collaborative, but it's hard to
33:25
Speaker 2: find people to work with that you can trust, and
33:27
Speaker 2: maybe if they're in a different country, it's very difficult.
33:29
Speaker 2: So we built that and then we decided it was
33:32
Speaker 2: important also to bring a registration component into it, so
33:36
Speaker 2: that once you are starting to work on a project,
33:38
Speaker 2: you can assign your song splits, you can get the
33:40
Speaker 2: rights done, and then you can register them with your
33:43
Speaker 2: pro publisher, US Copyright Office, etc. So we built that
33:47
Speaker 2: component in, and then we added a blockchain component because
33:50
Speaker 2: we thought, you know, having the rights in some immutable,
33:53
Speaker 2: totally accessible and accurate state that everybody can see globally
33:58
Speaker 2: instead of it sits at your publisher and the other
34:00
Speaker 2: publisher has a difference out of data. So we put
34:02
Speaker 2: everything on blockchain, which was an interesting endeavor because there's
34:06
Speaker 2: a lot of coins and crypto and tokens associated and
34:10
Speaker 2: we thought and we first the first time we put
34:11
Speaker 2: it out, we included that stuff and said you have
34:14
Speaker 2: to have a wallet, you have to go in and
34:15
Speaker 2: get gas fees, and we realized most creatives have zero
34:20
Speaker 2: savvy as far as how that stuff works, and the
34:23
Speaker 2: companies have nothing to do with that. So if your
34:25
Speaker 2: Warner Brothers or Universal, they're not going to touch a
34:28
Speaker 2: touch a wallet. So we put all that back of house.
34:30
Speaker 2: We made it frictionless, and all the downsides to blockchain
34:34
Speaker 2: we just did that in back of house. So right now,
34:37
Speaker 2: when you register a song, you literally click a button,
34:41
Speaker 2: a blockchain block is created with the information, and then
34:44
Speaker 2: every time you add a file, every time you had
34:46
Speaker 2: song splits, that's all written ont of the chain. But
34:49
Speaker 2: we did that away from everybody else, and it's there's
34:52
Speaker 2: a couple of companies that are doing blockchain stuff and
34:55
Speaker 2: it's very tokenized. It's you know, here's this coin you
34:58
Speaker 2: can exchange for this coin, which you know. It's like
35:02
Speaker 2: it's like Intel in your laptop. Right most people don't
35:04
Speaker 2: care what chip is running their laptop.
35:07
Speaker 3: They just want to does it work?
35:09
Speaker 2: Does it do what I needed to do? I don't
35:11
Speaker 2: care what the chip is inside, but a lot of
35:14
Speaker 2: you know, PCs have Intel inside or AMD or whatever
35:17
Speaker 2: the chip is. No one needs to know that there's
35:21
Speaker 2: a blockchain wallet attached. And that's so we got rid
35:24
Speaker 2: of that and then we start getting attention from schools
35:30
Speaker 2: early on, with pros performing rights organizations like gascat BMI.
35:34
Speaker 2: So Can's the Canadian one. So Can was originally our
35:37
Speaker 2: initial launch customer and they didn't have a tech zero
35:41
Speaker 2: tech guys. It was crazy they did not And a
35:44
Speaker 2: lot of the music companies are like this. They just
35:46
Speaker 2: don't have to build technology, so they don't and and
35:50
Speaker 2: in some respects having that obscurity with information and transparency
35:57
Speaker 2: allows them to take advantage. So they kind of don't
36:00
Speaker 2: want to be the coolest, quickest, you know, highest technology
36:07
Speaker 2: possible because it opens up certain windows that they may
36:09
Speaker 2: not may not want opened up. So we we went
36:13
Speaker 2: through a bunch of developers. This is back to hiring
36:16
Speaker 2: and stuff. You know. CTOs are in my experience, it's
36:23
Speaker 2: hard to define them. It's hard to find good ones.
36:26
Speaker 2: We went through a couple of hires that just were
36:28
Speaker 2: not qualified. They're either very good at at coding, or
36:34
Speaker 2: they're better at or there, or they're good at managing.
36:37
Speaker 2: But it's very hard to find someone that's good at
36:39
Speaker 2: managing and coding, someone that can actually, you know, look
36:43
Speaker 2: at someone and go, hey, this skill set is excellent,
36:45
Speaker 2: but this guy's better than that person or this woman's
36:47
Speaker 2: really sharp. I mean, to assess and manage staff is
36:53
Speaker 2: one set of skills. To code is another, and a
36:57
Speaker 2: CTO typically has to have both of those skill sets
36:59
Speaker 2: and there's same head. So and like we said before,
37:03
Speaker 2: some of them don't know different areas and there's different
37:06
Speaker 2: specialties and development and maybe a guy's really good at
37:09
Speaker 2: front end but knows nothing about back yet. But yeah,
37:12
Speaker 2: again you expect them to know it, and they come
37:15
Speaker 2: in and you find out six months later they don't
37:17
Speaker 2: really know it, and they're either faking it or they're
37:19
Speaker 2: getting information from somewhere else. It's a really tough hire.
37:25
Speaker 2: So yeah, we found a really good solution after we
37:29
Speaker 2: started this maybe five years ago and we've kind of
37:31
Speaker 2: bootstrapped it, but I would say three years ago we
37:36
Speaker 2: found a really good solution. It was an onshore US
37:40
Speaker 2: based management, but offshore developers developers are in India, so
37:47
Speaker 2: they're on a I think fourteen hours away from us,
37:51
Speaker 2: so we could put stuff in like I got something
37:54
Speaker 2: into them today and by tomorrow it'll be finished. So
37:58
Speaker 2: our day is their night, their night is our day.
38:00
Speaker 2: It actually works pretty well cycle wise. And the management
38:03
Speaker 2: again is here, so if we got to communicate at
38:06
Speaker 2: a higher level, we deal with them on our they're
38:08
Speaker 2: in our same time zone actually, so that works out
38:11
Speaker 2: super well for us. We recommend them to others, and
38:14
Speaker 2: we've brought in, you know, as references because I get
38:17
Speaker 2: a lot of founders calling me saying, who you guys
38:20
Speaker 2: using because we just spent you know, half a million
38:22
Speaker 2: dollars and got nothing, and that's not uncommon in startup
38:27
Speaker 2: in tech startups, tech startup land. So finding good talent
38:32
Speaker 2: that again can be honest and tell you what their
38:34
Speaker 2: capabilities are and not fudget like, hey, we don't know how
38:37
Speaker 2: to do this, or we do know how to do this,
38:39
Speaker 2: and then they solve it. And yeah, since we've gotten
38:42
Speaker 2: into this little groove of we've had very good experience
38:46
Speaker 2: and very good luck with them. So yeah, it's it's
38:49
Speaker 2: it's a learning process. And you know, startups are different
38:54
Speaker 2: than big corp big corporations. I could always tell when
38:57
Speaker 2: I'm speaking with somebody from a big corporation because they
38:59
Speaker 2: go just send it out to it or just send
39:01
Speaker 2: it to marketing. Like you you're used to having you know,
39:05
Speaker 2: a hundred people doing things for you and your job
39:08
Speaker 2: is like this, you're just doing this and you know
39:13
Speaker 2: sometimes in a startup well not sometimes a lot of
39:15
Speaker 2: times you're wearing different hats. And yeah, you'll hire a
39:20
Speaker 2: marketing person, but you need to be able to manage
39:21
Speaker 2: them and relate with them and get in the trenches.
39:24
Speaker 2: And maybe you've built a marketing strategy, go to market strategy,
39:27
Speaker 2: and now they're coming in to handle that or make
39:30
Speaker 2: it better. But it's there's a lot more chances to
39:34
Speaker 2: get your fingers in more pies. And I think, you know,
39:37
Speaker 2: coming from a I've met people that you know, Ivy
39:40
Speaker 2: League schools, Fortune one hundred companies, and God bless them,
39:45
Speaker 2: that's a great spot they have, they have a lot
39:48
Speaker 2: of Yeah, for them to shift gears into startup culture
39:52
Speaker 2: is I've never seen it work right. It's very difficult
39:55
Speaker 2: to come out of that place where everything's available at
39:59
Speaker 2: a push of a button and the resources are unlimited
40:02
Speaker 2: and the budget it's like, oh, we will just do
40:04
Speaker 2: that campaign. We'll call our a ad agency. Are you paid?
40:09
Speaker 2: You know that cost? No, that's handled by you know finance, Like, yeah,
40:15
Speaker 2: you're spending right, It's it's crazy.
40:17
Speaker 3: No, I totally agree. I probably at this point spent
40:20
Speaker 3: over half of my career with startups, and I totally
40:23
Speaker 3: agree with everything you're saying. And it's funny because even
40:27
Speaker 3: within a startup, you know, you could say, oh, I'll
40:29
Speaker 3: just have the social media person do it. Was like
40:31
Speaker 3: I'm the social media person and all the designer to
40:34
Speaker 3: do it. Well, I'm kind of the designer too, like
40:36
Speaker 3: you know, like you said, everybody wears multiple hats. At
40:39
Speaker 3: the end of the day, if you want something done,
40:41
Speaker 3: a lot of times you just have to do it
40:43
Speaker 3: because there's so many less resources, whereas the big corporation, Yeah,
40:47
Speaker 3: they can just sit up to whatever agency or whatever department,
40:50
Speaker 3: We'll get it done. I'm just focusing on this one
40:52
Speaker 3: thing with there's actually I'm I'm thankful that I've spent
40:56
Speaker 3: a lot of time at the startups because there's a
40:57
Speaker 3: lot more ownership that's kind of into you, into just
41:01
Speaker 3: how you approach things. You know, But then you will
41:04
Speaker 3: collaborate with other people at different sized organizations, and sometimes
41:08
Speaker 3: that's a little bit lost because like, oh, that's not
41:10
Speaker 3: my job. I do this, But sometimes the startups, everything
41:13
Speaker 3: kind of at the end of the day becomes your
41:15
Speaker 3: job because your whole team is ten fifteen fifty fifteen
41:20
Speaker 3: X people you know much smaller.
41:22
Speaker 2: I was in a meeting well it. It was a
41:25
Speaker 2: panel with some Universal Music guys a couple of weeks ago,
41:29
Speaker 2: and they were, you know, and if the labels have
41:31
Speaker 2: always been tough, they've always been more opaque than typical corporate.
41:35
Speaker 2: Like if I want to find they had a marketing
41:37
Speaker 2: at Nabisco or wherever, I could probably find them with
41:40
Speaker 2: an email somewhere. But if you want to find they
41:41
Speaker 2: had a market at Universal Records, there's layers that trying
41:45
Speaker 2: to protect them. But these guys, one of their big
41:48
Speaker 2: their complaints was, well, no one knows what we do,
41:51
Speaker 2: like like, when you come to us, you should know
41:54
Speaker 2: what our job is. And I thought, there's five guys
41:57
Speaker 2: sitting up there, and all their jobs seem like business development, strategic,
42:03
Speaker 2: you know, planning, Like like what does that mean? Because
42:06
Speaker 2: there's five of you guys that are all senior vps.
42:09
Speaker 2: You all have kind of the same title, maybe one
42:11
Speaker 2: or two words are switched.
42:13
Speaker 3: What are you doing over there? Yeah?
42:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, what exactly are you doing over there? Because one
42:17
Speaker 2: guy sounds like he's your boss, and you guys are like,
42:20
Speaker 2: but but your title is the same as his. It was,
42:23
Speaker 2: it was it was almost it was funny to me
42:26
Speaker 2: because I thought they're so arrogant and they just expect
42:30
Speaker 2: everybody to know everything about what they do. But they're
42:32
Speaker 2: it's opaque and they don't explain it. And there's five
42:35
Speaker 2: of them that are kind of doing the same thing
42:37
Speaker 2: and you can't tell what they're doing, and but they
42:41
Speaker 2: expect you to know, right And like you said, there,
42:44
Speaker 2: it's very channel. If you hit them up and say
42:46
Speaker 2: I'm looking for this to be like, well that's I
42:47
Speaker 2: don't do that. Okay, Well you're the head of business development.
42:51
Speaker 2: I would think you know, you might have a bigger
42:54
Speaker 2: I don't know, a bigger scope where you could or
42:56
Speaker 2: you could tell me who to go to that does
42:58
Speaker 2: that little thing. But it was interesting to see that,
43:01
Speaker 2: and it's not unusual. I've seen that for many years,
43:03
Speaker 2: but seeing it on stage in one place where they actually,
43:06
Speaker 2: you know, because someone asked, you know, what's the best
43:08
Speaker 2: way to approach you guys like, well, first understand what
43:11
Speaker 2: we do, know exactly what our channel is. Like, Well,
43:15
Speaker 2: I've been here for an hour watching this. None of
43:17
Speaker 2: you explained anything about what you do. I've got a
43:20
Speaker 2: slide on the screen that shows your job titles and
43:22
Speaker 2: they all seem like the same thing.
43:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I guess you know. As we're wrapping up,
43:28
Speaker 3: I love to hear because I love everything that you're sharing, Steve.
43:32
Speaker 3: I think you've got so much great insight as I
43:34
Speaker 3: want to talk more and hopefully we'll get you on
43:35
Speaker 3: with Cannon because I think you guys would connect over
43:37
Speaker 3: a lot of different things. It's great just to be
43:39
Speaker 3: connected with you, but as you're close, like I think
43:42
Speaker 3: there's a lot of people hopefully listening to this right
43:45
Speaker 3: now who are in hiring, or they own a business,
43:47
Speaker 3: or they're in a startup, whatever kind of position they're in.
43:49
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot that you're sharing that's really relatable.
43:52
Speaker 3: But what would you say is like the best piece
43:55
Speaker 3: of advice you'd pass on to anybody who's I guess,
43:58
Speaker 3: building a team building a team right now, whether if
44:00
Speaker 3: they're just a hiring manager or they're a business owner
44:03
Speaker 3: or somebody who's trying to grow something. Because I think
44:07
Speaker 3: you've been growing what you're growing, and I see it
44:10
Speaker 3: continuing to grow, and I think there's a lot of
44:12
Speaker 3: insight you could pass on.
44:14
Speaker 2: I guess at the end of the day, I would say,
44:17
Speaker 2: look at the person, right, meet the person, have them
44:21
Speaker 2: into your office, maybe go to lunch, but sit down
44:24
Speaker 2: with them and try to understand them. Forget the resume
44:27
Speaker 2: for a minute, forget all the technical skills. Is this
44:30
Speaker 2: someone that can work within your organization? Is this someone
44:33
Speaker 2: you want on your team? Is it someone that can grow? Because,
44:36
Speaker 2: like you're mentioning with growth, today, this company looks like this.
44:39
Speaker 2: Tomorrow it's going to look like this, and they might
44:42
Speaker 2: be two different things, but I think having people on
44:45
Speaker 2: board that have kind of the same mindset, kind of
44:49
Speaker 2: are open to moving with the company. And my smaller
44:52
Speaker 2: startups have always been high growth and it's like this
44:55
Speaker 2: potential is here, and there's equity deals and you know,
44:58
Speaker 2: it's a little different than getting higher at a huge company.
45:02
Speaker 2: But I think looking really at the person rather than
45:05
Speaker 2: the resume and then thinking about how they could evolve
45:09
Speaker 2: a year, three, five years down the line, because hiring
45:12
Speaker 2: them at this job today is different than they're going
45:14
Speaker 2: to be in five years, and they will probably be
45:16
Speaker 2: in a supervisory position in a short time period at
45:20
Speaker 2: a high growth startup. So look at them, is are
45:22
Speaker 2: they going to be able to understand the vision. Are
45:24
Speaker 2: they going to be able to carry forth? Forget you know,
45:26
Speaker 2: the exact job title and the job description. That's that's
45:31
Speaker 2: important to get people in the door. But do they
45:34
Speaker 2: work across the organization as a team member? And that's
45:38
Speaker 2: probably the best thing I could I could say right now.
45:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that's that's great advice. We say a lot
45:43
Speaker 3: of the same thing where it's it's not just skills
45:47
Speaker 3: based hiring, you know, but it's it's like, I guess,
45:51
Speaker 3: cultural fit based hiring, you know, where sometimes somebody can't
45:54
Speaker 3: have enough of the skills, but they the way that
45:58
Speaker 3: they lift up all the other people around them is
46:00
Speaker 3: way bigger factor versus somebody who has all the skills.
46:03
Speaker 3: You can imagine, but they're they're they're not passing the ball.
46:08
Speaker 3: They're kind of selfish, They're they're poisoning the whole culture.
46:11
Speaker 3: They're taking other people down. It's like, okay, that's not
46:13
Speaker 3: worth it. We talk about that a lot. It's like
46:15
Speaker 3: you kind of have to focus on not just the
46:17
Speaker 3: skills on paper by itself.
46:19
Speaker 2: That's a really good point, the level of energy and leadership.
46:22
Speaker 2: And it's a kin to a sports team, right, I mean,
46:25
Speaker 2: there could be some guy who has the best stats
46:27
Speaker 2: in the world, but he's not a team player, or
46:29
Speaker 2: he's not a leader, and you get in there and
46:32
Speaker 2: his mood is always sour, and you want someone that's positive.
46:36
Speaker 2: You want someone that's building, someone that's going to inspire.
46:39
Speaker 2: It's probably the biggest word is inspire, because yeah, there's
46:42
Speaker 2: always gonna be differences and resources and levels of skills,
46:46
Speaker 2: But if someone's inspirational to somebody else, that's hard to beat.
46:51
Speaker 2: Right If they can bring up everybody on that team,
46:53
Speaker 2: even if it's not their skill set or their channel,
46:56
Speaker 2: that works across the board every single time.
46:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree. Okay, before we close, do you
47:01
Speaker 3: have any last bad hiring stories you want to rattle
47:04
Speaker 3: off that were on your mind. I know you already
47:06
Speaker 3: shared a couple along the way.
47:07
Speaker 2: I'll give you the one that I spoke with you
47:10
Speaker 2: guys on earlier. We at my startup before this one,
47:16
Speaker 2: we had an investor and we were looking for a
47:19
Speaker 2: CTO and he goes, oh, I know exactly who you
47:22
Speaker 2: guys should hire. Blah blah blah. Guy's amazing. He's run this,
47:25
Speaker 2: he's run that, he's done this, and this guy is
47:28
Speaker 2: going to invest in our company, and he actually made
47:30
Speaker 2: his investment contingent upon us hiring this guy. He goes, yeah,
47:35
Speaker 2: you guys got to hire him, and we're like, okay,
47:37
Speaker 2: how much is He's like three hundred and sixty thousand.
47:39
Speaker 2: I said a second, how much three hundred and sixty
47:43
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year? And I was like, startup right,
47:49
Speaker 2: this was a seed, It was a pre seed. It
47:51
Speaker 2: is like an angel round. Yeah, it was. The number
47:55
Speaker 2: was shocking, but I looked at my co founder and
47:59
Speaker 2: we we got no choice. If we don't hire this guy,
48:02
Speaker 2: we're not getting the investment. And you know, we just
48:05
Speaker 2: have to do it. So we said fine, sign the
48:08
Speaker 2: guy on. Went back and forth with him for probably
48:12
Speaker 2: thirty He was in New York, we were in LA,
48:14
Speaker 2: and we had we had a couple of in person meetings.
48:17
Speaker 2: We flew out and sat with him. He spent one
48:19
Speaker 2: whole day with us doing a whole white board and
48:21
Speaker 2: showing us a roadmap and said, here's how we should
48:23
Speaker 2: build this tech stack, here's how we should do this.
48:26
Speaker 2: Spend good five hours of them great whiteboard, and then
48:30
Speaker 2: we went back to LA and we checked in with
48:32
Speaker 2: him a couple times a week, and I think a
48:36
Speaker 2: couple of weeks later, we were in one of our
48:39
Speaker 2: check in calls and at the end of the call,
48:41
Speaker 2: like just off the cuff. Informally, he's like, oh, I
48:45
Speaker 2: forgot to tell you guys, I took a managing director
48:48
Speaker 2: position with Goldman Sachs. But but that'll be a good thing.
48:53
Speaker 2: And I was like what. And we got off the
48:57
Speaker 2: call and my co found a Abert Menendez. We're like,
49:01
Speaker 2: do we just hear that? And he's like, I don't know.
49:04
Speaker 2: We should probably ask him again, but I go, this
49:07
Speaker 2: guy took a full time position with Goldman Sachs and
49:10
Speaker 2: he's under contract full time with us for three hundred
49:13
Speaker 2: and sixty thousand dollars as our CTO. I go, that's
49:17
Speaker 2: and he tells us it was a good thing because
49:18
Speaker 2: he's going to have time at night to work for us.
49:20
Speaker 2: And I thought, this is insane. And to that point
49:23
Speaker 2: we had zero deliverables for him. That whiteboard is the
49:26
Speaker 2: only thing he ever did for us, and had not
49:28
Speaker 2: delivered anything on paper, nothing as far as hires, nothing.
49:32
Speaker 2: We had made one payment to him, his first payment
49:34
Speaker 2: of thirty thousand dollars, and we called the investor and
49:38
Speaker 2: we said, look, this guy, I don't know if he's
49:40
Speaker 2: a fraud. I know you vouched for him, I know
49:42
Speaker 2: he's your friend, but we got nothing from him. And
49:47
Speaker 2: he just called us and said he took a full
49:48
Speaker 2: time managing director position with Goldman Sachs. I go, that's
49:52
Speaker 2: like a slap in the face. And he was really apologetic.
49:55
Speaker 2: He's like, guys, I'm so sorry. I will fix this.
49:59
Speaker 2: Don't worry about I'll take care of it. But yeah,
50:02
Speaker 2: going in that was our That was probably the biggest
50:04
Speaker 2: slap in the face I've had, and a shock. Someone
50:07
Speaker 2: that was vetted and and vouched for by our lead
50:10
Speaker 2: investor who turned out to be a fraud. And his name,
50:14
Speaker 2: his first name was Sashin. So Robert and I made
50:17
Speaker 2: that a verb and we would call that Sashind. So
50:20
Speaker 2: every time we heard from another company or a founder
50:22
Speaker 2: that had had an experience that was and we go,
50:24
Speaker 2: you got sus Shind.
50:26
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, that's crazy.
50:28
Speaker 2: Man.
50:29
Speaker 3: Ken has a similar story and now just a bit
50:31
Speaker 3: of it. I always call it like his Batman origin story,
50:34
Speaker 3: where he was in the finance industry essentially, and you know,
50:39
Speaker 3: he was helping raise funds for all these different startups
50:43
Speaker 3: and things. He can explain it better, but essentially, they
50:45
Speaker 3: brought on one guy who's supposed to be an advisor,
50:48
Speaker 3: who somebody else vouched for him. This guy was supposed
50:50
Speaker 3: to be super legit, and he threw a Ponzi scheme
50:53
Speaker 3: essentially stole one hundred million dollars of of all the
50:57
Speaker 3: all the different money that was raised. And then you know,
51:00
Speaker 3: the way that Ken tells it is like, you know,
51:02
Speaker 3: a thirty dollars background check would have prevented the whole thing,
51:05
Speaker 3: and that's kind of what propelled him into the background
51:08
Speaker 3: check industry. Which is which is I think a cool story,
51:10
Speaker 3: even though it's a terrible, a terrible origin story. But
51:13
Speaker 3: sometimes it's like, man, just a little bit of vetting
51:16
Speaker 3: goes a long way, and sometimes it happens even when
51:18
Speaker 3: you have somebody vouch for the guy. But that's crazy.
51:22
Speaker 3: And obviously you're here now hopefully you guys have recovered.
51:24
Speaker 3: But that's that's got to be painful on multiple levels.
51:28
Speaker 2: It was more shocking than painful. It was just like
51:32
Speaker 2: is he kidding? It was it was like fraud happening
51:35
Speaker 2: right in front of your phone, and it was he
51:38
Speaker 2: was saying that stuff like this will be better for us,
51:40
Speaker 2: and we're like.
51:41
Speaker 3: Okay, you say so, yeah, just because treated like like
51:44
Speaker 3: night school. I guess just like a couple hours between
51:47
Speaker 3: twelve and two for you guys at night. I don't know,
51:49
Speaker 3: that's probably not gonna plan.
51:51
Speaker 2: And you know, and and a managing director at Goldman,
51:53
Speaker 2: I'm guessing you're earning probably six fifty seven hundred thousand
51:56
Speaker 2: dollars a year, so this guy's going to be a
51:58
Speaker 2: million dollar a year ago. I yeah, So it was.
52:02
Speaker 2: It was. It was shocking. And yes, a background check
52:06
Speaker 2: would have well in that case, I don't know, because
52:08
Speaker 2: he had he had a pretty good resume. We didn't
52:10
Speaker 2: do a full background check, but again he was coming
52:13
Speaker 2: from our lead investor, and and it was contingent, so
52:17
Speaker 2: we really hadn't. It was almost like you got to
52:19
Speaker 2: hire my guy.
52:19
Speaker 3: Or I'm not going to invest So man, that's crazy.
52:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, crazy stories man.
52:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I'm sure I'm sure you have even more.
52:27
Speaker 3: I do. I am happy that we're connected. So thanks
52:30
Speaker 3: so much Steve for your for your time and just
52:32
Speaker 3: for being on the show. You know, I said this
52:35
Speaker 3: was just gonna be one one snippet for this you know,
52:37
Speaker 3: for the for the podcast. I much just ended up
52:39
Speaker 3: putting this whole thing out because I love the conversation
52:40
Speaker 3: with you so really appreciate your time, and yeah, we'll
52:43
Speaker 3: keep you on a loop when even when this goes
52:45
Speaker 3: out and things like that.
52:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me know, Nathan, happy to be part of it,
52:48
Speaker 2: Happy to support you guys are doing. I think it's
52:50
Speaker 2: really really important to get these stories out. And it's
52:53
Speaker 2: not the sexiest part of business, but it's super important
52:56
Speaker 2: for people to understand some of where this comes from,
52:59
Speaker 2: maybe get something from it. Go I should use a
53:01
Speaker 2: background check every time, or never do this, or in
53:04
Speaker 2: the case of this, this is how I should look
53:06
Speaker 2: at things. But just I think knowing that others are
53:09
Speaker 2: in the same pot sometimes makes it easier and that
53:13
Speaker 2: pre knowledge. I think what you guys are doing getting
53:15
Speaker 2: this out is super cool. So yeah, happy to help
53:17
Speaker 2: you anyway I can. It's great to be on.
53:19
Speaker 3: Appreciate it be thanks so much. We appreciate it all right, Steve,
53:22
Speaker 3: thanks so much. Talk I'm talk to you soon.
53:24
Speaker 2: Thanks sir.