Up and Running: Management Techniques for Musical Entrepreneurs

by Amadeo Richard Meitin

We all know that the major record companies are on the ropes. We are entering the age of the musical entrepreneur. For the last 23 years, I was involved with highly successful musical entrepreneurs in New York City. First, I was as a music supervisor for a major ad agency, and I constantly hired companies that created music on commission. Those companies ranged from solo operations to significant 8-figure income companies with 20 or 25 staff composers. Then, I became a custom music supplier myself, and ran two such small companies. I also worked with many other creative entrepreneurs - engineers/studio owners, film mixing companies, film editorial companies and the like. Along the way, I learned many lessons from these terrific colleagues about the nature of running a creative business. Now, as an educator, I want to share this knowledge - the collective wisdom of these entrepreneurs. This article covers principles I learned about staying in business, remaining in tune with a rapidly changing marketplace, and running a creative company that is satisfying to all its stakeholders and clients.

Every creative entrepreneur faces the kinds of challenges described below. Most of those challenges are at least metaphorically helpful to contemplate, though our respective businesses may be different (studio owner vs. composer, for example). I hope that you find the examples helpful to your unique business situations.

- CEO FOCUS

1) Ask yourself: what business are you really in? My first entrepreneurial venture was (on the surface) the business of creating music for high-end commercials and network TV. But day-to-day, my business was also about educating clients about how to use music better, and helping non-musical clients feel more secure about making executive musical decisions. I had to get them to feel comfortable and confident. If I had been unaware of this underlying nature of my business, I might have done the opposite: I could have asserted my musical authority, or challenged their un-musical suggestions, making them feel even more insecure. Clients don’t return to companies that operate that way – no matter how good the actual music.

Even working within the same client team, I learned the need to articulate musical issues from different angles, depending on the exact client at-hand. For example, when I was dealing with advertising agency producers, they were usually more concerned about feeling secure with budgets and timetables. But when I was dealing with advertising agency copywriters, they were usually more concerned with feeling good about creative decisions. It was very helpful to be aware of these nuances.

2) Are you functioning just well enough, or are you functioning optimally?
When our business (or an aspect of our business) is humming along without much trouble, we feel no impulse to question what’s going on. But every now and then, it is very helpful to ask not “is this getting done without cauing problems” but rather “can this be done better?”

3) Leadership styles lend themselves to specific leadership tasks. Which of these tasks best suit you? One of the most enlightening metaphors for business thinking that I have ever encountered compared the tasks of entrepreneurship to the movement of hands around the clock. In the first quadrant of the clock, noon to 3 PM, the basic leadership task is to come up with big ideas - like what new business move to make, or the next major business mission, or the optimal business strategy for a situation. The results of this brainwork feed directly into the second quadrant of the clock: From 3 PM to 6 PM, your task is to take the big ideas that were generated in the first quadrant and to articulate an action plan. If your business mission is the creation of a rock band, is it going to be a studio band, a touring band, or both? What style of music? How will the band be marketed? In turn, these questions lead into the 6 PM to 9 PM quadrant – where business is actually conducted and managed. This is the “up and running business.” This quadrant calls for management skill, high energy, the ability to set and meet goals, and the like. This in turn feeds into 9 PM until 12 - the evaluation quadrant. The mission here is to analyze everything that has been accomplished, figure out how it might be done better, look for flaws, project budgets and the like. Of course, once this evaluation has been completed, it drives us right back to the first quadrant – the need for the next big ideas, based on the 4th quadrant result.

This is a very useful model, even on the surface. But there is a deeper level that you get to by asking “which of these tasks am I best at, and which should I delegate to others?” For example, I really enjoy quadrant number one, because I love to play with new ideas. However, I know from experience that I am better at quadrant number two, because I have analytical skills, can spin out into action plans quickly, and can see alternatives flowing from them. As for quadrant three, the quadrant of continuing management, I do not find it as stimulating. (I crave the game-like, unsettled quality of quadrants one and two. So I am better suited to entrepreneurship than to general management.) As for quadrant four -- I actively dislike evaluation. I want somebody else to do it. I just want to know the results.

So, certain tasks are best handled by people with consonant inclinations. In what quadrants do you belong?

4) Rework your business plan periodically. Let it be your compass. Certainly, your business plan is useful when you are first clarifying your basic direction and looking for investors, etc. But it is arguably even more useful to you and your company as time goes on. It is all too easy to cock your rudder off by just a few degrees. And after 6 months or a year, you discover that you are hundreds of miles off course. Continuing referral to and refinement of your business plan – a living document – can prevent this from happening. Having a plan in writing is also extremely useful for communicating a clear, inspiring mission to the other people on your team, at any point in time.

5) Don’t chase after the shiny pennies. In conversation with Tim Westegren, the president of the fabulous music-discovery / internet radio site, Pandora.com, I mentioned several B-to-B applications of the Pandora engine that I could imagine. I asked him why he had focused only on his consumer web radio application. He said that he and his staff had, in fact, identified a number of other applications for Pandora. But when they did financial projections, none of these applications would earn more than about 10% of the income of their web radio brand. So, he wanted to remain focused on that, despite the considerable appeal of some of these other “shiny pennies.” He said that if his company grew big and strong, and he had a little pool of cash left over, he might give some of these other opportunities a try. But not until then.

- FORWARD MOTION / FORWARD THINKING

1) Constantly ask: Why are we doing what we are doing? Go deeper. It is invigorating to put yourself in the insatiable mindset of a wide-eyed child, by continuing to ask: “But why?” This inquiry can lead to surprising reversals; even to abandoning some very common-sense notions of running a business. For example: In my commercial music company, I already had good music on my sales presentation reel. Would it be worth the effort to spend some time and money out-of-pocket to create some unusual or exceptionally great music, just for the sales reel? Common sense says this would be a good idea, right?

Then I asked myself: “But why?” - Because my sales prospects who hear the reel will be more interested in using my company. “But why?” – Because if the music is better, the prospects will be more impressed. “But why?” - Because my prospects will be able to recognize truly outstanding creative talent when they hear it. [Insight happened here – perhaps I was wrong about this conclusion!] What I suddenly realized by following this series of inquiries is that quite a few of my sales prospects simply were not capable of distinguishing good music from great music. (For example, many of my sales prospects were only capable of responding to styles – they either liked a musical style or they didn’t.) My prospects often needed to experience something other than music in order to be favorably impressed, such as a list of celebrities that we have worked with, or a list of recognizable major projects that we have completed. So, maybe a good reel plus an appealing credit list is a better pitch than only an outstanding or unusual music presentation. By initially focusing exclusively on music quality, I had failed to notice the difference between my prospects’ perceptual abilities, and the perceptual abilities of fellow musicians. I needed to adjust my pitch accordingly.

Another reason for asking the “but why?” question is to make sure that you stay connected to your central mission, goals, and underlying philosophy. Southwest Airlines wanted to stop serving food on their flights, but was concerned that passengers would rebel. “But why?” - Because SW passengers expect full service. “But why?” - Hmmmm. Good question. Do they expect full-service? Well, perhaps SW passengers expect low fares even more than they expect fancy service. Low fares: that’s our brand. Not fancy meals. So, let’s continue to guarantee the lowest fares and not spend money on the food our particular customers do not care as much about. Let’s remain connected to our central mission.

2) Companies that become cultural icons are often tuned-in to public desires long before the public itself fully grasps those desires. Nike understood that the key to getting a widespread fitness movement off the ground was communicating the urgency to “Just do it.” (In other words, it’s not just about knowing that fitness is good. It’s about overcoming the resistance to get off your backside.) Victoria’s Secret understood the unexpressed desire to make sexiness an everyday experience.

What is your version, in your business, of this kind of insight into incubating desires?

3) When looking to the future, see if you can spot a trend that is inevitable, even though distant. If so, ask yourself what you can do to move that inevitability forward and capitalize on it. In supplying music to my clients, I started working with the internet long before almost any of them had bandwidth to handle FTP service. But – I let them all know that it was available, and that I was ready to help them get up and running. So, I acquired a reputation for being forward-thinking. A bigger and better example: Steve Jobs recognized very early-on that computers, which up to this point had only been used for commercial applications, would eventually be used at home for personal creativity … therefore they would need to be simple and fun to use. Seeing that inevitability, he worked to move it forward, with tremendous success.

- TEAMWORK

1) Your entire team must be in tune with your company’s fundamental values. Does your team know, understand and buy into those values? (It’s even better if these values are developed collaboratively). If they do not, they will not be rowing in the same direction. Never presume that every team member understands your fundamental values or mission. Find out.

2) Your suppliers are your lifeblood. Nurture them, and treat them with respect. Who are your suppliers? In my business, my suppliers were audio engineers, studio musicians, and studio singers. These people took my ideas and turned them into music. So, I took their needs very seriously, even though I was their nominal “boss.” This extra consideration was frequently a lot of trouble. For example, sometimes the people who did my demo productions were not available when I needed them to work on the final productions. In such circumstances, I did everything I could to rearrange my schedule and even my client’s schedule in order to accommodate the talent.

My respect for suppliers led me to a certain philosophy of being a studio talent director. When you are directing a singer or instrumentalist, you are not trying to impose your will on them. Rather, you are trying to collaborate with them to make their contribution the best it can be. You should “meet” that person where they are, and then try to elevate their performance to a slightly higher plane. It’s almost like being a psychotherapist. You’re not trying to get someone to do something as you would do it. You’re not trying to turn them in to someone else, or into yourself. You’re trying to lift them up to being a better version of themselves.

In your business, what is your version of being a producer?

3) Consider creating an advisory “Board of Directors.” My businesses were too small to ever call for a real board of directors. But a board of directors is a useful thing – it is wonderful to draw upon the talents of successful people who come from different disciplines, for the purpose of making suggestions about improving your business practices.

I got together with other small business practitioners, to meet every so often and serve as each other’s “board.” We would convene for several hours, and each of us would have half an hour or 45 minutes to put one or two problems on the table. This was extremely helpful, and also a lot of fun.

Ideas within a company become stale. An advisory board is an easy way to inject a company with fresh ideas. Also, in many circumstances, there are problems within your company that you might not want to actually discuss within your company, for example, an issue of conflict between two partners. An advisory board is the perfect place to air out this kind of conflict without generating internal emotional blowback.

- CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS

1) Job #1 -- believe in the necessity of marketing. Some very creative and talented people think that the world owes them fundamental, automatic respect. This is a mindset for failure. It amounts to a belief that sales and marketing is grunt-work, beneath the talent of creative people. Instead, embrace the creativity of good marketing – and then get to work on it. Marketing is central to every business.

2) In some creative businesses, it is easy to become irritated with your clients because they are not very creative themselves, or because they might communicate so poorly about creative matters. Be aware of and work through this irritation emotionally. Otherwise, it will sabotage you. If you are a web designer, composer, arranger, copywriter, or other creative person, most of the time you will be hired by people who do not have your level of creative talent (or at least your special expertise). Often, they will ask you for revisions, changes or specifications that will seem utterly misguided, because they really don’t quite know what they are asking for in the first place. I remember the day when I was producing an expensive track in a fancy recording studio with a large orchestra when an account manager in a business suit came running up to me and said “what your music needs is more eighth notes.” I wonder to this day how I avoided strangling him in that very moment. But a strange calm came over me, and I was able to ask him to explain what he meant. As it turned out, he had a very good musical idea. He just didn’t know how to express it.

I used to resent having to deal with bossy, nervous people who often knew so little about music. One day, I had a helpful epiphany. I realized how uncomfortable it must be for them, who know so little about music, to be thrust into the position of having to supervise a music job on behalf of a major client, like Coke or IBM. What a terrible position to be in! How would I feel if, for example, I suddenly found myself in charge of a $200,000 gardening project, and it had to turn out great. I know absolutely nothing about gardening, and I’m certain that being thrust into a position of authority would make me feel miserable and insecure, too. From that day on, I felt a lot more compassion for my clients, even the irritating ones.

3) Sometimes, you are both the authority and the subordinate. Be aware of how tricky this situation is to manage. A perfect example of this is when you have been hired to produce someone else’s demo or record. On one hand, you really need to run the show. You need to make executive decisions and creative decisions. On the other hand, you need to make your client happy. And sometimes, your client is going to want to do the wrong thing. It’s not very easy to both lead and take orders at the same time. So, be prepared with a tactful strategy for those kinds of situations, which are not uncommon.

4) Under-promise and over-deliver – never the reverse. Managing client expectations is key to repeat business. Frequently, we are inclined to be over-optimistic in a pitch or a forecast. Such a stance might occasionally help the sale. But, when reality fails to keep pace with the initial pitch, your credibility is shot. Since long-term relationships with clients are a critical consideration for most small businesses, it’s easy to see why the inflated pitch / deflated result combination is a disaster – but one that’s easily prevented.

Watch top politicians in election races. They generally under-sell the poll-predicted result, then celebrate like mad when they merely do as well as the experts expected. The reverse is true, too: if the politician loudly predicts a big victory and gets a narrow one, the win seems disappointing.

- EMOTIONAL WISDOM

1) The creative and fun part of many small businesses occupies a smaller percentage of your time than almost any of us would prefer. Be prepared for that. I left the law and went into a creative business because I love to write music. As it turned out: On a good week, writing music was maybe 50% of my workload. Frequently, it was as little as 0%. The good news is that over time, if you build strong, systematic and codified company functions, and if you train/delegate well, you can have a big impact on these percentages. You can spend more time doing the things that you love to do. But don’t expect that for a while. Perhaps a good long while.

2) Balance your work and the rest of your life. One of the great things about being an entrepreneur or creative person is the feeling of authenticity that you have. As I see it, I practiced law, but I am a writer. Huge difference. But in the excitement of this authenticity, it is easy to lose track of everything else, from health habits to love relationships.

3) Have a mechanism in-place for resolving partnership problems from day 1. This is particularly important when you have an even number of partners, so a tie must be broken through an agreed upon procedure. The procedure should be articulated in the partnership agreement.

4) Choose carefully when you assert authority. When I was a lawyer, I was cloaked in authority. Clients would say “I want to do XYZ,” and I would say, “no, you can’t do that, it’s against the law.” I didn’t even have to be persuasive. On the other hand, when I went to work as a music supervisor at the ad agency, even though supposedly I had been hired because of my musical expertise, I had virtually no authority. In other words, the creative teams inside the agency were under no obligation to abide by my opinion. I was there to advise them, and they would accept my advice only to the extent that I was persuasive and respected. In fact, if I tried to exercise any “authority,” I would quickly get into trouble.

In this context, I learned that persuasion and inspiration are less abrasive and more powerful tools than authority, especially over time. I had a wonderful boss who could accomplish tremendous results just by asking a question. For example, if we were in a recording session and a client blurted out “Hey, what about if we put a clarinet solo in here,” and that was a dreadful idea, my inclination would have been to say “no that’s not going to work, because it’s inappropriate for the musical style.” My boss’s inclination would be to say “Okay, sure, we could try that. And, what would you think about an electric guitar solo?” Usually (after the right idea sank in), the client would say something like “Hey, that sound’s great. Let’s try it.” I was still coming from a place of authority, and my boss was coming from a place of persuasion – really, more like suggestion. And with this minimalist style, he was stunningly successful with his producer-ly abilities. He was able to get the desired result without friction or resentment.

Eventually I learned: Unless it’s a crisis, or unless you don’t care about the underlying relationship, never use authority (even with subordinates or suppliers) when influence will do. Only bring out the hammer when the feather hasn’t worked.

Dr. Amadeo Richard Meitin is a multiple national and international award winning composer, arranger, sound designer and producer who has been in the music industry full-time since 1986. He owned and managed two music and sound production companies in New York City, as well as being a music supervisor and radio director for Lintas:NY, then a billion dollar advertising agency. His specialty is creating original music and sound design in the studio for national TV, film, theater and advertising clients. He has also closely supervised the work of over 200 accomplished composers, and produced tracks regularly with the top NY studio musicians and singers. He has created work with celebrity talent including Billy Joel, the Pointer Sisters, Bill Cosby, Michael Bolton, Mark Cohn, Richie Havens, Len Cariou, Hal Linden, John Forte, the Miami Sound Machine and the London Symphony and Chorus. He has composed a wide variety of instrumental and vocal jazz songs (including lyrics) that were recorded by artists including Bill Evans, Clifford Carter, Elements (Mark Egan and Danny Gottleib of the Pat Metheny Group), Carmen Lundy and Lew Soloff (of Blood Sweat and Tears). He currently serves as Director of Music Industry, Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Email Dr. Meitin at Amadeo.Meitin@mnsu.edu