Speaker 1:

Welcome to today’s episode of David vs Goliath, a podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem Business Software, a free time Inc 500 recipient and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam Degraide.

Adam Degraide:

Hey, everyone. It’s Adam Degraide from the David vs Goliath Podcast. Welcome to a short edition of DVG. Today, we’re going to be discussing music and the entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a conversation I have with my brother. It’s dear to my heart. I love music as the watchers and listeners know. I am a musician as well, and so is my brother. And I really believe that music, especially the music business we can learn a ton from, and my brother’s success in it as an independent artist, has been amazing. And now as I’ve been working as an independent artist as well, we’ve been learning so much, and music could be a big part of that in your life.

Today’s episode is brought to us by AutomateMysocial.Com, where you can automate 90 to a hundred percent of your business’ social media, and never have to think about it again. Our recent business saved $48,000 a year in benefits, by the way, plus benefits switching to Automate My Social. Check it out. Visit us online @davidvsgoliathpodcast.com. There you can subscribe to get our newsletter and also apply to be on the podcast. Well, let’s get right to it. Check this out. You’re going to enjoy this. Here it is with Neil Degraide from Dirt Poor Robins.

Neil Degraide:

So a very few people are happy in the music industry doing music. It’s a very small percentage of people that are killing it out there, and they don’t even know why it works sometimes when it does, so it is an iffy business. I mean, with the intelligence people have, most of the time, they do themselves a favor to get into a more reliable industry than the music industry, but it’s a alluring, it’s sexy to be a part of music, so people get sucked right in.

Adam Degraide:

And clearly with the mustache, it’s very sexy.

Neil Degraide:

Thank you. Well, what’s funny too… I guess, let me give them a little background, you just gave a little extra background there with the lessons. I had totally forgotten about the clock we used to abuse. But one of the first things we had as a musical experience was my dad used to bring home records, and I think you’ve heard me say this before, Adam, but my dad brought home two records. Do you remember the two records he brought home?

Adam Degraide:

I think so. It was Kiss.

Neil Degraide:

Yes.

Adam Degraide:

And then it was Queen.

Neil Degraide:

That’s right, and you got to pick first.

Adam Degraide:

Of course, I went with a Kiss because I’m a marketer.

Neil Degraide:

You went with Kiss and I went with Queen. Well, I was going to go with Queen either way, so it wasn’t even like we had to pick. We were just going to go our directions. And so part of the difference in our two paths in life is that I think, Kiss’s motto wasn’t that… They weren’t like every other band trying to be the Beatles, they were trying to be Coca-Cola. So I think that you like the branding, the marketing around that. For me, I was more wrapped up in the cinematic, theatrical side of music, the emotive side, so that’s one of the differences in what we ended up doing. And it’s interesting to see what you’ve done because you’ve been able to hang on to music as… Obviously, you haven’t put the time into it, I have. But it’s still a huge part of your life-

Adam Degraide:

Oh, huge.

Neil Degraide:

… as you can see behind you.

Adam Degraide:

Clearly, a huge part of my life, and I’m actually looking forward to this weekend. We’ll be playing together for the first time in years. That’ll be a lot of fun.

Neil Degraide:

Yeah. It’ll be a blast.

Adam Degraide:

And when you think about David vs Goliath, Neil, you think about the giant music industry or the entertainment industry, in general. What I think is so interesting about your story is that after the independent label thing, we had mild degrees of success. You stayed at it with DPR, which is Dirt Poor Robins, and you have continued to refine that and find a space in a market that gives you hundreds of thousands of fans on a relatively low budget for you to be able to produce and distribute your music because art is so important to you, the music is so important to you. And talk to people about what that challenge is like. You don’t have the hundreds of millions of dollars of budgets like a Katy Perry would have. Yet, your fans in some ways are just as dedicated and even in some cases, even more dedicated to the brand. Talk about the music of DPR in the beginning and how it’s evolved over time to where you are now.

Neil Degraide:

All right. Well, something that was a side hobby for us for a while was turned into over a million streams a month with Dirt Poor Robins, and that happened without really a marketing budget or a big budget. So everything was done out of pocket and in my own studio. So when you and I started making music, I mean, we were in the recording studio when I was 13 already, and we were actually… It’s long enough ago that we were recording and putting things on tape, but I was hungry to learn everything from the engineers. I mean, a hunger to learn is really going to go a long way when it comes to an education, so I would just drive the engineers nuts. I would ask them questions, I would try to organize their effects and it was a problem, but it was also a good problem I was causing because I was learning at their expense and patience.

Adam Degraide:

And we’ll be back in a second. Here’s a quick break from our first sponsor. Automate My Social.

Speaker 1:

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Adam Degraide:

Let’s get back to the interview with Neil Degraide, now.

Neil Degraide:

But we had to adapt a lot. So we started out like your ’80s hair band stuff and on the edge of metal sometimes, or if Kansas was around still in the late ’80s, that was our sound. And what happened is Grunge came along, and right away, I had a little bit of a disgust reflex to Grunge because it was sloppier, it had more energy and it was a little rougher around the edges, which was cool. But there was something about it where I had worked on this pristine technique and it just didn’t have a place in Grunge. But that was my first encounter with a major change in style of music where it’s like, “I’m doing one thing,” and the thing we were doing was dead in a year as soon as Grunge. No one was signing any of these hair bands.

I mean, we were super young, so it wasn’t like we were in trouble, but they weren’t signing these bands. And I got really curious because I started to focus on my favorite songs and favorite Grunge bands and what that new genre that emerged, what kind of opportunity afforded me. And so I started wearing corduroys and flannel shirts and stuff, and grew my mullet out, and people I was doing music with were making fun of me for the adaptation, a lot of times. So it was funny because within a decade going back, and those other people that refused and just hung onto that discussed reflex by the new thing. They were still listening to the same stuff. This is not a bad thing, but the ones that stuck with music were music teachers. I think that’s a wonderful profession. It wasn’t my goal, and that wasn’t their goal either.

So everybody had settled into something less just because this new thing came along and they defended their old thing for the sake of the chance to grow. Now, Grunge didn’t last forever either, so that was great. So there’s been probably about 30 times I’ve had to adapt my approach over the years, but it wasn’t like a forced adaptation. It was something I had learned about how to see the new thing for what it was and what opportunity it gave me. Meaning that whenever there was a new thing came along, it’s because there was an older thing that was getting a little played out, and the new thing had more to do with the energy where people were at, and also offered me something new and fresh to dive into. So adaptation was key to get to this point. Now-

Adam Degraide:

Adaptation is the key to everything. I mean, even in small business, if you’re doing something and you’re banging your head against a wall and the markets moved on from that, you have to find that space that is yours that people want to be a part of. And I was talking, Neil, a couple of weeks back to Aaron… Not Aaron Lane, Jessica Kendrick. It was last week actually.

And she said that she created her business out of a lifestyle that she wanted to have. She thought it would only be her. What ended up happening is other attorneys wanted that lifestyle. Because she found a space, created the space, they wanted to join her in that space, and they did join her in that space. And there you have it. Before we close out the show, great advice from Neil, by the way. You have to adapt. You have to adapt to market conditions. You have to adapt to changes. You have to not have blinders on. You have to see what’s going on around you and change, and adapt your business to be successful. And in closing, I’d love to leave you with a little segment of one of Dirt Poor Robins songs. Enjoy it and we’ll see you next week on David vs Goliath. And we’re back. That was awesome. The song that you listened to there was, All There Is. And then the solo came from, It Tore Your Heart out. Thank you for joining us on today’s episode of David vs Goliath. We’ll see you next week. Have an awesome day.