Lessons - From Paper Boy to Music Industry Mogul | Benny Pough, CEO of Def Jam

Welcome to Lessons episodes of Success Story, part of the HubSpot podcast network. These lessons episodes will be shorter conversations with past guests, valued members of the success story community, and myself. They'll be focused on teaching you actionable, insightful takeaways that you can use to upskill your personal and professional life. Paperboy to CEO to president, actually that's multi-stage because it was not even his paperboy. It was like paperboy to enter and then enter into CEO. So why start as paperboy and then how do you do paperboy to enter and then we'll go from there? Paperboy was my first job and it actually came out of a very unconditional method. We used to travel to South Carolina every summer, up until I was 11. My father went to school and he would take us to visit our grandparents on a farm in Orangeburg, South Carolina so school ended on a Monday. We left that Friday at school and ended on Friday. We left Friday night and we dropped 12 and a half, 13 hours to get to South Carolina for the summer. I realized I was definitely not a Southern kind of guy. I was more of a metropolitan kid and it didn't quite fit for me, right? But I enjoy the experience and all the lessons that I learned. But when I got 11, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore. And I'd actually obtained a paper route. So I had a conversation and negotiation with my dad if I leave my paper route, then I'm going to lose that opportunity. And he realized that at that point, the opportunity did mean something to me. And that was the genesis of my true work career. And in doing what I learned from doing that at 11 was managing up, managing down, right? Because you're dealing with adults and you realize in life that everything's not easy and everyone's not a good person because just the real real general concept of you give someone a product and they have to pay you. And if you're a child, you should pay a child. Adults don't necessarily just in those particular instances follow the code. So I realized giving the paper that everyone's going to pay. Now the paper company advanced you their product. So since they advanced you, you're on the hook for what they give you. They don't care what you do with your business. All they want is their return on what they're giving you. And that was an early introduction for me in the sales aspect and the business aspect of learning like, okay, life is not going to be easy, but they're rewards if you do it the right way. And you know, that was the opening moments for me, then I obviously worked several different jobs along the way. My total career, I've a mass, a grand total of 60, damn, 60 different W9s is lifetime. So I've done everything so it was, it was an experience. How I actually got into the music business came out of another unlikely circumstance. During college, I was a stand up comic when I went to St. John's University and at the end of the show, the woman who booked me worked for Motown Records and she asked me, you know, what were my plans? And I hadn't even quite put together what the next steps were for me in life. So she said, why don't you come on down to Motown and be my intern. Needless to say, where we come from, no one knows what an intern is. But since I was a sales guy, I was like, yeah, I can be your intern, all right, we'll figure that out when I get there. So when I got to Motown, you know, prior to that, you know, historically what I've done was sales. So I showed up at a record company with a three-piece suit on, at the shake-aise and wing tips and everybody looked at me like, is he, you know, the FBI. The audit us? What's going on here? What's going on right now? The auditor and somebody, you know, obviously on the wrong floor because the record companies are equivalent to like tech companies, then and now, meaning, you know, very free spirited, you know, dress down, cool, fly, sexy, on and on and on and on and on and on and on and all stuff. No one does that. Yeah. But that was my discipline. So okay. So then you start working in the music industry and how do you move up? Like there's a lot, I feel like you're very self-aware of the stuff that you needed to know to succeed because you spoke about managing a book of business, managing sales. Like you're very aware of like the lessons that you took to the next level. So as you go through the different roles that you had at all these different record labels, what are those key things that are like this is this is necessary to make it in life, make it in the career, make it to the next level, get the next promotion. So wherever you work, whatever you do, you have to become a student of the game, 101. It's just 101. If you saw the job, you need to know that particular job and that company in and out, information is powered. That's what's going to move you forward. You know, smiles are good, you know, obviously, you know, for those who like to kiss ass, I don't know that, but you know, that can move you. So whatever these different means of, of, of will move people up fairly and unfairly, the business is going to be paramount. So those who are really, truly successful are people who have a handle on the business of the business that they're working in too. Always, for me, as I moved into management was assembling great teams. Never about you, right, unless you're doing something that's only about you, which in business, it's very rare that it's only about you. So finding, you know, successors and also great mentees that you can pour yourself into to that ultimately will alleviate a lot of work on your plate. If you're giving people the opportunity to grow inside of the organization and that they believe in trusting. When you, so when you start to move up, then what's, walk me through like as an executive at, or actually tell me why you moved from Motown to Def Jam to MCA, and then you were epic, then you were rock nation. So you're jumping around too. So you're knowing the game, but like you're playing the game a little bit too. I'm not sure if that's the case, but I'm wondering why you switched labels. Was it, in my experience, at least, is because sometimes, sometimes a business or an organization, it's harder to move up in an organization than to move into a higher role in other organization. Is that the case? Or was it just pure right time, right place, right opportunity? I think it's a gumbo of all of that, but for me, there are a couple reasons. My mother worked and loved the United States Post Office. She worked her whole career until she retired there almost 40 years, and she enjoyed that job. For me, I never had the desire, I mean, I stated in the beginning, I worked 60 jobs, so I never had, for me, once I've matched all that I can get, or all that I can give, then I got to move on because I need to make room for others to grow and also for myself to grow. So it's always about amassing the information, education, and also moving on to what's next. Had I stated any of those companies, one day longer, I would never be at this point in my life to have this interview, because everything would have changed. So I always, I'm very self aware, both personally in business, when my time has expired, and when it's time to move on. And what it is that fits into my goals of what I ultimately want to achieve. So I think it's kind of like a divine, order thing, being very, and tuned and understanding the frequency that I'm connected with.