Lessons - Leading Def Jam & Roc Nation | Benny Pough, Music Executive, Music Exec, Entrepreneur & Author

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. What does it actually take to find talent to put out a hit to actually market the shit out of it? Because that's what you're doing. You're building this persona of this incredible talent, and there's a lot of talent that's out there that's incredible doesn't make it. So I'm super curious as to like behind the scenes into what building a star looks like. So the behind the scene executive, you know, my, my superpower was radio promotions. So I made my bones growing in the business, you know, the guy who, you say, I hate hearing that record on the radio over and over and over again. Well, it's because of people like me, right? Like we, yeah. We pitched in Seoul, you know, the program director who was responsible for the records going into rotation in a very, you know, root, root perspective. But what we do at record labels is identify talent and we give the artist the best opportunity to be exposed to the masses. And obviously the talent is what really drives the business and the executive's enhanced, you know, the experience as well as pushed through all of the different gateways that are known to exploit, you know, the music or expose the music globally. So, you know, when you think about the artist that you mentioned that, you know, our team worked on and that, you know, I've worked with is that they were super talented individuals. So they had to actually cut through the rise up to get to people like us that will help them fulfill their destiny and their dreams and their goals. What, even if you compare it to like pro, pro athletes, what's the percentage of people that actually make it in a music career? There was a stat and don't quote me, but it's, you got to feel, I think it's far less than 5%. And it is all, it's all relative though on how you view success though, right? There are the mega superstars, which are the very small percentage, right? And then there are people who are making a living actually in their field of artistry and being able to sustain themselves. So, you know, there's the superstars, stars, and then there are kind of like people who are making living doing it and then there are people involved, you know, it's really like a hobby. So it just depends on what you want from it, but, you know, the commercial end of it, that's dictated by, you know, the people who come and buy. That's the only way you can look at that. The big sell is big talkers. Now, I'm actually curious because even after working at all those labels, you started your own company, diverse, diverse media. So I'm curious, what was wrong in the industry? What were you trying to change? Like you've been in the industry for 30 years. So what are things that aren't working? Is it the supporting talent? Like I know I don't want you to talk shit about the places you work, because you're working a lot of great people. I'm not. You'll put a hit on it. Yeah, I know 100%. But there's things you're trying to solve for as what I'm saying or else you wouldn't be doing this. Absolutely. So what's important for me is the 30 years of being in the business is you realize that there's an unbalance of information that's given, right? You see people come in and on both sides, the executive end, as well as the artisan, they make millions of dollars, and they can potentially, you know, a decade, two decades being flat broke, just because they've never prepared. And they haven't prepared it because no one has introduced them to different options on what they can do with their money. Looking at their career, both in the now and in the future and how you have to prepare yourself for that. So if you think about a child or a kid or a young adult that now gets a hit record and you get a half a million dollars, million dollars, two million dollars, well, you might never even have a checkbook. So what's important for you the day that you become successful is the team that you surround yourself with. And unfortunately, you may not have those resources or avenues or ideas. You only know what you know. So what my goal is at this point is to provide as much information as possible. And that's why I created the It's Your Time Conference, which, you know, my inaugural conference will hit. And Martin Luther King weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, the 12th, through the 15th. So we're going to give artists an opportunity or addition, which will give somebody $10,000 to bet on themselves, not some hoping for a deal. Like because you know what, at the end of the day, someone may need money to pay their engineer, you know, they might need money to, you know, retain an attorney. They may need money to clean up their books. So giving you a deal doesn't solve your problems. Giving an opportunity to bet on yourself and your art is more important. And then we're going to have two days of panels, which will give that information on how you can provide and provide for yourself in your livelihood as an artist. So we'll do a stake, we have a panel and a stake planning. We have a panel on, you know, how to get hot and invest in real estate. We have, you know, panels on cryptos, you know, the, the 101's of, if you're interested, how do you get involved in a whole host and array of other different things that are educational, whether you're in music or not, that's valuable for entrepreneurs, artists, makers, influencers, et cetera. How do we, how do we better serve people? Like now the, the, the, the owner has to be on the rock nations and the epic records and the, of the world that when they're onboarding talent, they're like, they're setting them up with the right people or else, or else if you're, if you're not, if you're just, if you're just a marketing house and that's, you're just marketing and you're making money for somebody that may not be able to manage it or know how to manage it or be aligned with a shitty manager or something like that. So how do we sort of do better because this is a plaguing anybody who comes into money real quick? So I mean, you're a part of the process and, and the solution, you know, I hope to be that as well as we have to push the information out. There's also incumbent on the individual to do the work as we stated earlier in this interview, like you have to become a student of the game, like you can't expect people to do for you more than you're willing to do for yourself. And, and I think that just becomes very naive. If you're going for, you know, heart surgery, you're going to have, you know, I would hope a minimum of, of two different opinions, like depending on how bad it is, you know, you, if you've got time, get three, but you know, just like go sit with the first doctor and go, I, cool, and never ask him how many heart surgeries have you done? All right. Oh, no, that's my first, that's my first, ah, nah, that's not a good idea. You know what? I'm going to, I'm going to give myself this whole week. I know you said it seven days. I'm going to give myself seven days because I can't really bank on you. And you have to look at it, you know, that's in a light note, but seriously, you have to look at your career, it's serious, as a heart attack. Right? Yeah. You got a serious self. Right. If your heart's not in good condition, you want to make sure that you're getting the best care treatment and person that can work with you because you can change it. Right. You can change your outcome because now you already know the prognosis and the diagnosis. So therefore, it's incumbent on you. So if you walk into a music business or any business, knowing what, what, what wakes ahead and you choose to go down that road, then who's fault is it?