Scott Rubin has spent nearly 25 years in the music business as a publisher for Reach Music, handling artists like John Mayer, Lisa Loeb, Common, Nate Dogg, and others. Scott found his love for music working in a record store and tried to make it as a producer until being convinced to get into the world of publishing by his now-partner (and childhood friend) Michael Closter.

A true music lover, Scott serves his clients with integrity and transparency – an approach that can be hard to find in the music business sometimes. Scott credits the success of Reach Music to the way they’ve been able to stay consistent over the years and maintain a reputation of doing what they say they’re going to do and working within the best interests of their clients.

In this conversation, we get deep into publishing, what artists need to understand from a royalty perspective, and why having a good team around you makes all the difference in the world.

It could be said that Jason Jordan was born into the music business. That’s not exactly the case, but for someone who started their first record label at age twelve and has been working in the industry ever since, it’s pretty much all he knows. As a career music industry executive, Jason has seen all sides of the industry from A&R at major labels and running his own publishing company to artist management, distribution, and tech resulting in the discovering and working with talent with sales in excess of 20 million albums.

Though a true pioneer for the modern-era musician, Jason remains punk rock at heart and always has the artist’s best interest in mind. He believes everyone should retain as much freedom with their art as possible, and should always try to own their own masters – an ideology I wholeheartedly agree with.

Ken Lewis is a 25+ year music industry vet who’s made a name for himself as a producer, mixer, songwriter and musician. To date, Ken has racked up an astonishing list of credits with A-list artists like Eminem, Drake, Alicia Keys, Kanye West totaling 19 Grammy winners, 56 Grammy nominations, 99 Platinum and Gold Records, and 70 Billboard #1 hits.

It’s no surprise that it takes hard work and dedication to achieve the level of success Ken has seen but what keeps Ken at the top of the heap is a relentless pursuit to stay consistent in his growth, remain innovative and constantly reinvent himself no matter what he’s facing. This is evident in not only the fact that he’s still extremely busy after 25 years, but also that he’s branched out into online education, mentorship and offering free mixing advice during his live “Mixing Night” on YouTube.

 

Connect with Ken:

Website | Instagram | Mixing Night (YouTube)

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Ben Moss has a Rolodex of famous musicians, athletes, and entertainers as clients but he didn’t start out that way. For Moss, a luxury real estate agent and national director of the sports and entertainment division at Compass, he built his career one day and one relationship at a time. Ben’s commitment and prioritization to success coupled with his integrity, genuine desire to help others, and his true-to-self nature has landed him at the top of Miami’s real estate business, boasting over 400 celebrity clients. In this conversation, Ben shares his systems he’s used for years to keep him performing at the top of his game and executing on his goals.

You may not know Chris Schwartz by name but surely you’ve heard of either Ruffhouse Records (one of the most successful hip-hop record labels of all time) or the roster of artists he introduced to the world, including The Goats, NAS, The Fugees, Cypress Hill, Lauren Hill, Wyclef Jean, Kris Kross, Cool Keith, and many others. Throughout his career, Chris has been the recipient of many awards celebrating his success, including 250 gold and platinum records and a plaque on the Philadelphia Music Alliance’s Walk of Fame.

To add another notch on his belt, in 2019 Chris released his memoir, Ruffhouse: From the Streets of Philly to the Top of the ’90s Hip-Hop Charts

This interview is special for me since Ruffhouse Records was the hometown label (Philadelphia Suburbs), I grew up listening to all the Ruffhouse Artists, and was fortunate enough to record at Ruffhouse Studios with my band in the early 2000s. 

“All respect to Chris Schwartz. He is a great visionary.”―Nas

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Bill McCullough is An 11-time Emmy Award winner and is recognized as one of the industry’s leading creative executives. He’s currently the Vice President Head of Content Development at the National Football League (NFL), and prior to that he was an executive producer at Go Pro. Before GoPro he was responsible for the overall creative direction and brand management of HBO Sports and its franchises which included HBO Boxing, 24/7, The Fight Game, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, HBO PPV, HBO digital and documentaries.

In this conversation, we tackle the age-old question of how to create a career around your passion while maintaining your artistic integrity and creativity. Bill has struck a balance with both of these over his career and shares his thoughts on how you can too.

Leigh Steinberg is a legendary sports agent. In fact, he’s regarded as the original super-agent and created the entire sports agent industry at a time when most athletes were represented by their fathers or other family members. You may not know him by name, but maybe the name Jerry Maguire rings a bell? Steinberg was the real-life inspiration for that Cameron Crow movie released in 1996.

Leigh started his sports representation career in 1975 with Steve Bartkowski, the #1 pick in the 1975 NFL Draft, as his first client and went on to build a 40+ year career representing over 300 athletes in football, baseball, basketball, boxing, and Olympic sports. With a client list ranging from Steve Young, Warren Moon, and Troy Aikman to Patrick Mahomes and Tua Tagovailoa, Leigh has represented a record eight #1 picks in the NFL Draft and 17 first-round picks.

After a widely public fall from grace due to alcohol addiction, Steinberg lost everything only to rise from the ashes, rebuild his agency and work his way back to the top as one of the premier agents in the industry once again. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, from the start of his career he’s built his business on ethics and integrity. His philanthropic efforts have raised over $800 million for charity and he chooses the athletes he represents based on both their ability and desire to be a role model and give back to their community.

In this episode, Leigh details his 40-year career as a sports agent representing everyone from Steve Young and Warren Moon to Patrick Mahomes and Tua Tagovailoa and offers advice for rebuilding your career and life.

Follow Leigh
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Follow Steinberg Sports & Entertainment
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I met Lou through a mutual friend and he is hands-down one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. Let me give you a little background…

In 1994, he became a founding engineer of Netscape Communications and programmed the networking code for the first versions of the Netscape web browser. He’s also the creator of website cookies, client pull, and push (aka push notifications), animated GIFs and a ton of other technologies including the blink element, and HTTP proxying. You don’t necessarily have to know what all of that means, but rest assured, you benefit from those inventions every time you use the internet. 

Lou has been widely recognized for his work and was one of only six inductees in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame announced at the First International Conference on the World-Wide Web in 1994. In 2002  he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. 

Not only is he a brilliant engineer, he’s also been a successful entrepreneur since 1994 as the founding engineer of epinions.com (which was sold to Shopping.com),  2004 as co-founder and CEO of Memory Matrix which sold to Shutterfly, 2008 as the founder and CEO of cloud-storage company Zetta.com and his latest company, JetInsight, which he started in 2015. 

Lou’s ability to dream up an idea and execute that vision is second to none and we unpack those skills and more in this episode.

What we cover:

• Lou’s initial interest with computers and programming 
• His thougths on focus and hard work  
• Talent VS Skill 
• How to learn
• Surrounding yourself with the right people 
• Creating your own narrative 
• Building feedback loops for success
• The invention of cookies (the internet browser cookie, not chocolate chip cookies 😉 )
• The quest of becoming a better human 
• The amazing fish cam
• Much more…

Follow Lou:
Website  | Twitter | Instagram

We live in a world of dabblers. A place where people pretend to know everything but only have enough surface knowledge to merely get by. A place where people’s skillsets tend to be“good enough.” A place where people aren’t committed to their craft and make excuses about why they didn’t “make it” or why they stopped pursuing their goal, dream, etc.

The truth is, they’re dabblers. Newsflash – we all are.

What separates the greats from the not-so-greats, the legends from the forgotten, the strong from the weak? One word: Mastery

mas·ter·y
ˈmast(ə)rē/
noun
full command or understanding of a subject

Make no mistake about it…the reason why most people dabble is because mastery is difficult.

We want instant gratification.

The easy way out.

The get-rich-quick plan.

But mastery is a long, arduous, lonely process. And when people hit roadblocks or plateaus, negative thoughts creep in:

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’m working on the wrong things.”

“I’ll never get better.”

“This is pointless.”

After that, they quit. Never reaching their full potential because the road got tough.

Mastery lies in the minutia…the repetition…the analyzation…the complete comprehension of what you’re studying and then compounding the small amounts of progress over long periods of time.

Unfortunately, measuring small amounts of progress is extremely difficult.

Think of it like this: If you go to the gym today for a few hours, how different will you look in the mirror? Not at all. But if you went 100 days in a row, the progress would be apparent.

So, no, practicing something for two hours today won’t make you noticeably better. But if you string enough days of practice together, push through the roadblocks, have faith that you’re getting better with each hour of practice and keep an eye on your long-term progress, you’ll be on your way to mastery.

“If you show yourself progress, the need for motivation becomes non-existent”
-Benny Greb (Drummer’s Resource Podcast #52)

Forget “surface learning.”

Go deep.

Study everything there is to know about your chosen subject.

Learn the nuances of that instrument you’re trying to learn.

Understand the history of the business you’re in.

Respect the craft.

Pursue mastery.

Although my dad told me this years ago, it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I’m a “starter.” This may sound like a good character trait, especially if you’re looking to throw around buzz words in an interview. But being a starter means you’re not something else — a finisher.

I love starting new projects.

I love starting new businesses.

I love starting a new workout routine.

You get the point.

Before starting Revoice Media, I bounced around from idea to idea, trying to figure out the most exciting and novel project to tackle next.

Once the novelty and excitement wore off with those new ideas, the work began…and I didn’t like that part. In fact, most people don’t. I would get excited about a new idea for a few weeks and get distracted by another “great idea” because it seemed cooler, more profitable or easier to accomplish. This would create a hamster wheel effect where I’d go from one idea to another without ever really digging in. I would work on something for a few weeks (maybe even a few months), and as soon as it got tough I’d tell myself some sort of lie to convince myself I should be working on something “better.”

The result was a string of half-finished projects that never got out of the starting gate. Those failed attempts would then haunt me and trick me into thinking I couldn’t achieve my goals and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So, why was I like this? My guess is because it’s the easy way out. I’m human and humans always want the path of least resistance.

It’s easier to design a logo for a new business than to make 100 sales calls for your current business.

It’s easier to design a new workout plan than getting off your couch, driving to the gym and doing the workout plan you already have.

Excitement is easy.

Novelty is easy.

But easy doesn’t create results.

What creates results is consistent effort over time and as soon as I committed to this, everything changed for me.

Did the success come pouring in? No.

What came pouring in was a wave of clarity and focus and with that, the ability to shut out everything else. I realized that one half-decent idea executed well beats five great ideas sketched out in my mind. I also had to accept the fact that the work was part of the process. Everyone successful has done the hard work.

You can’t go around it.

You can’t skip it.

You have to go THROUGH it.

So how’d I do it? I’d be lying if I said I had a fool-proof, systematic way of moving from being a starter to being a finisher (or at least someone who doesn’t jump from idea to idea) What I do have is some advice on how I got here.

The first step was to be honest with myself. Was I less excited about the project because it was a bad idea or was I less interested in the project because it was starting to get hard? The answer was always because it was getting hard. I realized that I was struggling because I was at the edge of my abilities and I needed to grow. Growth is difficult and I was subconsciously avoiding it.

I also had to stop fooling myself into thinking other people had it easier than I had it. I used to think other people were better, smarter, more connected, and luckier than me. The truth is, other people who I admire were just working harder than I was. They were challenging themselves – failing, learning, and repeating far more than I was. They were myopic on their focus and dedication to see it to the end. I was looking for a short-term, easy fix.

I took some self-inventory to understand the root of the cause, which was fear of failure. If I gave up after a few months, I was convinced that it wasn’t a failure, but a decision I made to try something else, which meant I was in control.

But what if I went all-in? What if I spent three years working on a project day and night, told everyone what I was going to accomplish and ended up failing miserably for the whole world to see? These thoughts were crippling me.

So, I challenged myself.

I made a decision to work on my project (Revoice Media) for three months without distraction. Any time I had a new idea or project I wanted to start, I wrote it down in a notebook and told myself I’d take a look at the ideas after the three months are over. After three months, I challenged myself to do another three months. Those six months turned into a year, which turned into two, we’re now approaching year three.

I still have those other ideas swirling around in my head, but they’re happening less and less.

Remember, in the doing comes the learning and in the learning comes the progress.

Progress feeds your excitement.

The excitement keeps you interested and focused.

The cycle repeats.

It’s a process.

So, to simplify everthing: Do the work.

Do hard shit. You have to MAKE yourself. And that’s only going to happen if you toughen the f*ck up and get to work. At some point it really is just about one thing — what you demand from yourself. -Tom Bilyeu

Jeff Goins is a writer, speaker, and entrepreneur. He is the best-selling author of five books, including The Art of Work and Real Artists Don’t Starve. His award-winning blog Goinswriter.com is visited by millions of people every year. Through his online courses, events, and coaching programs, he helps thousands of writers succeed every year. Jeff lives with his family just outside of Nashville, where he makes the world’s best guacamole.

This is the second conversation I’ve had with Jeff and yet again, Jeff didn’t disappoint.

What we cover:

• How Jeff went from Marketing Director to full-time author
• The importance of daily practice
• Why you have to “do the verb” if you want to do the noun
• Believing who you are before you become who you are
• The power of mindset
• Creating the habit of practice
• How big does your business need to be for you to do what you want to do?
• Advice for growing your craft into a side-hustle and eventually a full-time job
• Much more

Follow Jeff:
Website | Facebok | Twitter | Instagram