April 3, 2025 • 13 mins
Join Justin Richmond and Ben Walter, CEO of Chase For Business, for a special conversation about finding success in the music industry through non-traditional means. Ben shares his insights on balancing risk while scaling a business, as they talk about how the indie label XL Recordings built a sustainable business model by making unorthodox business decisions. He also shares how artists often have an edge in creating original business ideas like when music titans Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine built Beats by Dre and later sold it to Apple Music for $3 billion.
This episode was made in partnership with Chase for Business. Listen and subscribe to Ben Walter's podcast The Unshakeables here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This is Justin Richmond here with the bonus episode of
Broken Record. It's a little bit of a different episode
than we typically air, but I think it's one that
the musicians that listen to the show will be excited
to learn from. This is one where it's like, you know,
you'll get some joy out of this too, I imagine,
but also put on your thinking cap and think about
(00:39):
how some of this relates to you and how you
can use some of this. It's a conversation about finding
success in the music industry through non traditional means.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
You know. It's about artists and.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Independent labels who found ways to forge their own paths
to success outside of massive record.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Sales, big ticket tours.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Thinking the Taylor Swifts here of course, right, and how
you can innovate within the music industry giving indie artists
a way to thrive. This episode is sponsored by Chase
for Business and I'm joined by Ben Walter, who is
the CEO of Chase for Business in the host of
his own brilliant podcast, The Unshakables. Ben, thanks for joining
us for this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Justin Thanks for having me. I love all things music,
so this is this is an exciting moment for me,
I'm really glad to be with.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
You, good man.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
This is like a really you know, as media continues
to evolve, this is something that I think is front
of mine for everybody, and in this creative spaces, like
like a broken record, we don't often have these kinds
of conversations about business, and I think they can be
really insightful for creatives and for artists and musicians. So
thank you, I hope so so, Ben, I'm so for
(01:49):
those reasons.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm happy to have you on to talk about this.
You know, I think most people think about.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The artists they love, you know, we just had like
a Will Smith on right, you know, even Billy Corgan
on right. They're more often than not a part of
a larger system like a major label, a major label group,
Universal Music, or Sony. But when you learn more about
the industry and smaller artists, you realize there's a lot
of other ways to make money and be successful in
(02:14):
the industry, to make money on what you're doing and
provide a living for yourself. People always think about the
art of business, right, but we don't spend as much
time I think thinking about the business of art, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And I think that's a great line. Yeah, it's true,
but you cannot sustainably have one without the other.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
There's a label called Excel Recordings out of England and
we had its founder, Richard Russell on the podcast in
its early days. One of the problems that Richard Russell
felt he was solving when he started Excel Recordings was
he looked at independence and he realized, well, you know,
the people running these labels, they have a lot of
(02:54):
heart and soul and they really want to see their
artists succeed and they're identifying unique talent. But where he
realized major labels for succeeding was obviously having the budget,
being able to drive distribution and marketing, and he thought,
well those are you know, I guess there's a natural
tension between those two things, but maybe there's a way
to solve this. And the way he thought that if
(03:14):
I sort an indie, the way he would solve it
was just to sign less artists. That way he'd have
a bigger pot of money to distribute amongst a smaller
number of artists and be able to grow sustainably. Does
that seem like a sound first principles for starting a
business of that sort.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah. I think look in any business, when you think
about the top line of the business, you know the
revenue coming in. You always got this issue between product
and distribution. In the case of music, content and distribution.
But content is the product, So you pick your wording,
but you know you have stuff to get to market,
and then you have pipes that get it to the market.
And in different industries at different times, at different points,
(03:53):
different parts of that value chain have more and less
leverage over one another. So I think you know, in
the case of Excel, what they did that was smart
is they realized they had great product but limited leverage
on the distribution side. And so what they really did
in essence by cutting it down is said, I am
(04:13):
willing to take a bet on my product, and by
limiting the product, I will maximize the number of resources
I can throw my real challenge, which is distribution. And
so that's a really smart way in their case. Now
they were betting big, right, because if the talent wasn't
as good as they thought, they wouldn't be where they
are today because they basically went all in on product.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Now you can do that when you're just starting out
because you have very little to lose.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, and it's funny, I mean, to your point, when
you're that small and just starting out, you don't have
a ton to lose, but it's still risky. But you know,
adjusted for adjusted for the amount of money you're kind
of making, and that you know, it's that risk can
feel big.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
And they really were niche.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
To start, like they were a rave and dance label
right as that stuff was starting to kind of come
out of clubs and maybe just touch the mainstream a bit.
But one of their early artists was the group Prodigy,
and you know, and then the label starts in nineteen
eighty nine and by nineteen ninety four they have a
you know, the Prodigy, you have a number one album
in the UK. By nineteen ninety seven they have a
(05:15):
number one album in the UK and the US, right,
And so that pot of money I think starts to
get bigger at the label and then they are What
they did was reinvest back again, same principle, thinking let's
take the money we have invested into a small number
of artists. They just took that money, reinvested into the
artists and eventually they grow that to you know, like
until they're releasing Adell's album twenty one and Vampire Weekend
(05:39):
Records and White Stripes Records, and Radiohead and Tyler the Creator,
you know, like artists who are really shaping modern culture.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Oh the White Stripes. Yes. Well, look, I think a
few things. One is it's always good to know where
you think you have an unfair advantage. And by unfair
I don't mean a monopoly. I mean in this case,
their unfair advantage is they could pick talent better. Yeah,
that was like clearly they had an eye for it
that the market didn't have because they could bet on
(06:06):
a few artists who were better. But that is a
concentrated risk. And so what I tell many new business
owners is it's easy to forget this, but ultimately, managing
a business is primarily about managing risk, even when you're
in the growth phase. It's not like only big companies
that have something to lose have risk, because even small companies,
(06:27):
as you said, starting out, you know, if they only
got so much money in the bank, they have risk too,
And so I encourage them to think of a triangle.
You know, whatever you're doing doesn't matter I'm promoting a
new artist or I'm doubling down on my existing artist,
or I'm launching a new label, or I'm promoting a
new album. Whatever you're doing, you're trying to balance a
three legged stool, because everything you do has some level
(06:47):
of financial risk, some level of brand and reputational risk,
and some level of operational risk. Right, Because even you
might say, well, there's financial risk if I take this
bet and it goes bad, but there might be operational
risk if I take the bet and it goes really
well and I don't have the resources to fulfill on
what I just sold, or both of those things go
really well, but then you know the way it's received
taints my brand in a way that I'm on come.
(07:09):
You're always balancing sort of those three legs of the
stool and trying to manage those. So that's one is
to really think of when you're running a business. You're
taking bets, and you've got to manage the risk around
all of those things. And I would say the second
one is know when you're playing to win versus playing
not to lose. You know, as a small brand, they
were playing to win, right, they were going to bet
on a few artists. You know, they were betting the farm,
(07:32):
and they were playing to win when they got bigger.
My guess is now often they don't put quite as
many eggs in one basket because there's a few places
where they think they can bet big and play to win,
and some other places they'll take a smaller bet not
to lose. I don't know their strategies per se, but
as companies get bigger, they start to think in those terms.
Because you're making resource trade offs and investment tradeoffs all
(07:52):
the time.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
That's interesting, so you start to think of the certain
big bets as possibly subsidizing the riskier bets.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
That's right, because you because one of the obligations you
always have, you have to make money today and tomorrow.
You can't. You can't just say well, I'll bet it
all for tomorrow, because then you don't eat dinner. And
you can't just you know, take all the profits today
because then there'll be nothing paying you a dividend in
the future. So you owe it to your business, your investors,
and yourself to make money for today and for tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Speaking of unfair advantage, this next one I want to
talk about beats by Dre, which of course is started
by Jimmy Ivan and doctor Dre. I mean, the unique
advantage is the unfair advantage here is fairly obviously.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
There are two guys who.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
He's doctor Drey, He's doctor Dre.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I mean, yeah, it's like, you know, in terms of
sound and audio quality and production and Jimmy Ivy and
the same, you know, working on John Lennon records and
the Tom Petty records and then starting Innerscope. It's like,
these are two guys that know music, they know quality sound,
you know, and they start in two thousand and six,
so you you know, even though they're d eightying around
(08:59):
two thousand and four, two thousand and five, not too
long after Napster's kind of up. Napster up ends and
peer to peer file sharing and iTunes kinds of kind.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Of secord business overnight.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, there it.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Goes, right, And so Jimmy and Drey start to think, well,
what are ways other ways we can make money still
in music, and they realize, well, not only are people
stealing music, but like the quality of the music they're
stealing is terrible. We should give them headphones so they
can actually hear what you're playing is terrible, and start
(09:30):
to train train the audience to recognize good quality and
so they start beats by Dre.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I'll tell you what's really interesting about that, justin look,
it's not quite a complete analogy, because no one's worried
about either of those two guys. Next meal, however, we
see typically in economic downturns, when there's a recession, new
business formation goes up, not down. It's countercyclical. Why because
(09:58):
people lose their jobs. And when they lose their jobs,
they say, hmm, I can't seem to find a job
I want. I'm going to go start a business and
I'm going to do that idea that I always came
up with, or I'm gonna I'm a going to take
the plunge and see what I can do. And so
a huge number of the entrepreneurs that we see on
our show In My Business are people who you know,
(10:20):
something went wrong, something went in a way they didn't expect,
and the next thing they know, they're starting a business.
That is not uncommon.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I think this is a question a lot of
people find themselves running into, and especially artists too, is
the idea of needing to take on a lot of
roles or jobs or gigs in order to make you
know the income necessary to satisfy your lifestyle. Oh yeah,
when you're talking to small business owners, how do you
(10:49):
help them navigate? Well, you know, yes, you can take
these ten things and all ten things will let you
x amount.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
But maybe that's not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Ultimately, you know, how do you know where to really
reinvest your time?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah, I would say a few things. One is you
have to take the first do no harm view, which
is you know, and if I take that to a
music artist, you know, if doing anything else is going
to is going to degrade the quality of your music,
your music, whether you're a singer songwriter, you know, you
write your own material or you're just a performer of
other people's material. Either way, if it's going to take
(11:22):
away from that, then you're you're eroding your core activity
for something else. And you better have awful conviction, an
awful lot of conviction. And what that other thing is
if you're going to undermine that, you know, So imagine
you know, if you're a sports star and you start
a brand, a clothing brand, and in the process of
focusing on that clothing brand, you become a much worse athlete.
(11:44):
That's probably going to have not just an impact on
your athletic career. It's going to have an impact on
your brand. So you might have just released a great
album and you think, you know what, I can trade
on this album for a year, and I've got more
content in the waiting, and so I can go focus
on some other things because I feel good about where
the music is for a period of time, and I
commit to coming back to it in this time so
that I don't let an atrophy. You know, you can
(12:04):
make decisions like that, but ultimately, if you're going to
take you know you you are going to be distracted
no matter what you do, and so you really need
to think about, of all the activities I have, which
one is gonna protect my interests and which one's going
to grow my interest and how can I split my
time between those things.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
That's that's sage advice. That's sage advice.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I mean, it's easier. Look, it's easier said than done.
I wish, I wish I could tell you there's a
mathematical formula for it. There's not. I'm afraid even a
banker will tell you. Judgment wins the day.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You know, judgment wins the day.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I mean, probably everyone should trust their judgment but artists
are people who are who work on their judgment every day.
That's what they're doing, you know, They're creating things and
trusting their gut. And so hopefully we can, you know,
those of us who don't have business degrees, we can
still figure out how to make how to make things
work for us.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I agree with you justin no one ever made a
great piece of music by you know, just repeating someone
else's music. People make a great piece of music because
they have the guts to do something original.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, absolutely, well, Ben, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
This is you know again, I don't spend a lot
of time thinking about the business of music, but it's
it's really instructive, you know. I mean, frankly, I'm even
thought I spent a ton of time thinking about it.
I'm doing it every day, you know, and so it's
nice to actually spend some time prioritizing the business side
of things.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Well, look, I appreciate you having me on. I think,
you know, I don't know a single person who doesn't
love music, and music makes our lives richer, and music
can't thrive without a successful business model underlying it. We
need sustainable business models to help great artists make great music,
so the more we can encourage and support artists having
really sustainable, good business models, the more we all get
(13:37):
to enjoy the richness of that music.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Well, Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business, thanks so
much for doing this.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I really really appreciate.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
You justin this is a lot of fun. Thanks a
lot
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This is Justin Richmond here with the bonus episode of
Broken Record. It's a little bit of a different episode
than we typically air, but I think it's one that
the musicians that listen to the show will be excited
to learn from. This is one where it's like, you know,
you'll get some joy out of this too, I imagine,
but also put on your thinking cap and think about
(00:39):
how some of this relates to you and how you
can use some of this. It's a conversation about finding
success in the music industry through non traditional means.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
You know. It's about artists and.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Independent labels who found ways to forge their own paths
to success outside of massive record.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Sales, big ticket tours.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Thinking the Taylor Swifts here of course, right, and how
you can innovate within the music industry giving indie artists
a way to thrive. This episode is sponsored by Chase
for Business and I'm joined by Ben Walter, who is
the CEO of Chase for Business in the host of
his own brilliant podcast, The Unshakables. Ben, thanks for joining
us for this episode.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Justin Thanks for having me. I love all things music,
so this is this is an exciting moment for me,
I'm really glad to be with.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
You, good man.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
This is like a really you know, as media continues
to evolve, this is something that I think is front
of mine for everybody, and in this creative spaces, like
like a broken record, we don't often have these kinds
of conversations about business, and I think they can be
really insightful for creatives and for artists and musicians. So
thank you, I hope so so, Ben, I'm so for
(01:49):
those reasons.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm happy to have you on to talk about this.
You know, I think most people think about.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
The artists they love, you know, we just had like
a Will Smith on right, you know, even Billy Corgan
on right. They're more often than not a part of
a larger system like a major label, a major label group,
Universal Music, or Sony. But when you learn more about
the industry and smaller artists, you realize there's a lot
of other ways to make money and be successful in
(02:14):
the industry, to make money on what you're doing and
provide a living for yourself. People always think about the
art of business, right, but we don't spend as much
time I think thinking about the business of art, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And I think that's a great line. Yeah, it's true,
but you cannot sustainably have one without the other.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
There's a label called Excel Recordings out of England and
we had its founder, Richard Russell on the podcast in
its early days. One of the problems that Richard Russell
felt he was solving when he started Excel Recordings was
he looked at independence and he realized, well, you know,
the people running these labels, they have a lot of
(02:54):
heart and soul and they really want to see their
artists succeed and they're identifying unique talent. But where he
realized major labels for succeeding was obviously having the budget,
being able to drive distribution and marketing, and he thought,
well those are you know, I guess there's a natural
tension between those two things, but maybe there's a way
to solve this. And the way he thought that if
(03:14):
I sort an indie, the way he would solve it
was just to sign less artists. That way he'd have
a bigger pot of money to distribute amongst a smaller
number of artists and be able to grow sustainably. Does
that seem like a sound first principles for starting a
business of that sort.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah. I think look in any business, when you think
about the top line of the business, you know the
revenue coming in. You always got this issue between product
and distribution. In the case of music, content and distribution.
But content is the product, So you pick your wording,
but you know you have stuff to get to market,
and then you have pipes that get it to the market.
And in different industries at different times, at different points,
(03:53):
different parts of that value chain have more and less
leverage over one another. So I think you know, in
the case of Excel, what they did that was smart
is they realized they had great product but limited leverage
on the distribution side. And so what they really did
in essence by cutting it down is said, I am
(04:13):
willing to take a bet on my product, and by
limiting the product, I will maximize the number of resources
I can throw my real challenge, which is distribution. And
so that's a really smart way in their case. Now
they were betting big, right, because if the talent wasn't
as good as they thought, they wouldn't be where they
are today because they basically went all in on product.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Now you can do that when you're just starting out
because you have very little to lose.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, and it's funny, I mean, to your point, when
you're that small and just starting out, you don't have
a ton to lose, but it's still risky. But you know,
adjusted for adjusted for the amount of money you're kind
of making, and that you know, it's that risk can
feel big.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
And they really were niche.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
To start, like they were a rave and dance label
right as that stuff was starting to kind of come
out of clubs and maybe just touch the mainstream a bit.
But one of their early artists was the group Prodigy,
and you know, and then the label starts in nineteen
eighty nine and by nineteen ninety four they have a
you know, the Prodigy, you have a number one album
in the UK. By nineteen ninety seven they have a
(05:15):
number one album in the UK and the US, right,
And so that pot of money I think starts to
get bigger at the label and then they are What
they did was reinvest back again, same principle, thinking let's
take the money we have invested into a small number
of artists. They just took that money, reinvested into the
artists and eventually they grow that to you know, like
until they're releasing Adell's album twenty one and Vampire Weekend
(05:39):
Records and White Stripes Records, and Radiohead and Tyler the Creator,
you know, like artists who are really shaping modern culture.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Oh the White Stripes. Yes. Well, look, I think a
few things. One is it's always good to know where
you think you have an unfair advantage. And by unfair
I don't mean a monopoly. I mean in this case,
their unfair advantage is they could pick talent better. Yeah,
that was like clearly they had an eye for it
that the market didn't have because they could bet on
(06:06):
a few artists who were better. But that is a
concentrated risk. And so what I tell many new business
owners is it's easy to forget this, but ultimately, managing
a business is primarily about managing risk, even when you're
in the growth phase. It's not like only big companies
that have something to lose have risk, because even small companies,
(06:27):
as you said, starting out, you know, if they only
got so much money in the bank, they have risk too,
And so I encourage them to think of a triangle.
You know, whatever you're doing doesn't matter I'm promoting a
new artist or I'm doubling down on my existing artist,
or I'm launching a new label, or I'm promoting a
new album. Whatever you're doing, you're trying to balance a
three legged stool, because everything you do has some level
(06:47):
of financial risk, some level of brand and reputational risk,
and some level of operational risk. Right, Because even you
might say, well, there's financial risk if I take this
bet and it goes bad, but there might be operational
risk if I take the bet and it goes really
well and I don't have the resources to fulfill on
what I just sold, or both of those things go
really well, but then you know the way it's received
taints my brand in a way that I'm on come.
(07:09):
You're always balancing sort of those three legs of the
stool and trying to manage those. So that's one is
to really think of when you're running a business. You're
taking bets, and you've got to manage the risk around
all of those things. And I would say the second
one is know when you're playing to win versus playing
not to lose. You know, as a small brand, they
were playing to win, right, they were going to bet
on a few artists. You know, they were betting the farm,
(07:32):
and they were playing to win when they got bigger.
My guess is now often they don't put quite as
many eggs in one basket because there's a few places
where they think they can bet big and play to win,
and some other places they'll take a smaller bet not
to lose. I don't know their strategies per se, but
as companies get bigger, they start to think in those terms.
Because you're making resource trade offs and investment tradeoffs all
(07:52):
the time.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
That's interesting, so you start to think of the certain
big bets as possibly subsidizing the riskier bets.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
That's right, because you because one of the obligations you
always have, you have to make money today and tomorrow.
You can't. You can't just say well, I'll bet it
all for tomorrow, because then you don't eat dinner. And
you can't just you know, take all the profits today
because then there'll be nothing paying you a dividend in
the future. So you owe it to your business, your investors,
and yourself to make money for today and for tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Speaking of unfair advantage, this next one I want to
talk about beats by Dre, which of course is started
by Jimmy Ivan and doctor Dre. I mean, the unique
advantage is the unfair advantage here is fairly obviously.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
There are two guys who.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
He's doctor Drey, He's doctor Dre.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I mean, yeah, it's like, you know, in terms of
sound and audio quality and production and Jimmy Ivy and
the same, you know, working on John Lennon records and
the Tom Petty records and then starting Innerscope. It's like,
these are two guys that know music, they know quality sound,
you know, and they start in two thousand and six,
so you you know, even though they're d eightying around
(08:59):
two thousand and four, two thousand and five, not too
long after Napster's kind of up. Napster up ends and
peer to peer file sharing and iTunes kinds of kind.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Of secord business overnight.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, there it.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Goes, right, And so Jimmy and Drey start to think, well,
what are ways other ways we can make money still
in music, and they realize, well, not only are people
stealing music, but like the quality of the music they're
stealing is terrible. We should give them headphones so they
can actually hear what you're playing is terrible, and start
(09:30):
to train train the audience to recognize good quality and
so they start beats by Dre.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I'll tell you what's really interesting about that, justin look,
it's not quite a complete analogy, because no one's worried
about either of those two guys. Next meal, however, we
see typically in economic downturns, when there's a recession, new
business formation goes up, not down. It's countercyclical. Why because
(09:58):
people lose their jobs. And when they lose their jobs,
they say, hmm, I can't seem to find a job
I want. I'm going to go start a business and
I'm going to do that idea that I always came
up with, or I'm gonna I'm a going to take
the plunge and see what I can do. And so
a huge number of the entrepreneurs that we see on
our show In My Business are people who you know,
(10:20):
something went wrong, something went in a way they didn't expect,
and the next thing they know, they're starting a business.
That is not uncommon.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I think this is a question a lot of
people find themselves running into, and especially artists too, is
the idea of needing to take on a lot of
roles or jobs or gigs in order to make you
know the income necessary to satisfy your lifestyle. Oh yeah,
when you're talking to small business owners, how do you
(10:49):
help them navigate? Well, you know, yes, you can take
these ten things and all ten things will let you
x amount.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
But maybe that's not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Ultimately, you know, how do you know where to really
reinvest your time?
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Yeah, I would say a few things. One is you
have to take the first do no harm view, which
is you know, and if I take that to a
music artist, you know, if doing anything else is going
to is going to degrade the quality of your music,
your music, whether you're a singer songwriter, you know, you
write your own material or you're just a performer of
other people's material. Either way, if it's going to take
(11:22):
away from that, then you're you're eroding your core activity
for something else. And you better have awful conviction, an
awful lot of conviction. And what that other thing is
if you're going to undermine that, you know, So imagine
you know, if you're a sports star and you start
a brand, a clothing brand, and in the process of
focusing on that clothing brand, you become a much worse athlete.
(11:44):
That's probably going to have not just an impact on
your athletic career. It's going to have an impact on
your brand. So you might have just released a great
album and you think, you know what, I can trade
on this album for a year, and I've got more
content in the waiting, and so I can go focus
on some other things because I feel good about where
the music is for a period of time, and I
commit to coming back to it in this time so
that I don't let an atrophy. You know, you can
(12:04):
make decisions like that, but ultimately, if you're going to
take you know you you are going to be distracted
no matter what you do, and so you really need
to think about, of all the activities I have, which
one is gonna protect my interests and which one's going
to grow my interest and how can I split my
time between those things.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
That's that's sage advice. That's sage advice.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
I mean, it's easier. Look, it's easier said than done.
I wish, I wish I could tell you there's a
mathematical formula for it. There's not. I'm afraid even a
banker will tell you. Judgment wins the day.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
You know, judgment wins the day.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
I mean, probably everyone should trust their judgment but artists
are people who are who work on their judgment every day.
That's what they're doing, you know, They're creating things and
trusting their gut. And so hopefully we can, you know,
those of us who don't have business degrees, we can
still figure out how to make how to make things
work for us.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
I agree with you justin no one ever made a
great piece of music by you know, just repeating someone
else's music. People make a great piece of music because
they have the guts to do something original.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Yeah, absolutely, well, Ben, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
This is you know again, I don't spend a lot
of time thinking about the business of music, but it's
it's really instructive, you know. I mean, frankly, I'm even
thought I spent a ton of time thinking about it.
I'm doing it every day, you know, and so it's
nice to actually spend some time prioritizing the business side
of things.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Well, look, I appreciate you having me on. I think,
you know, I don't know a single person who doesn't
love music, and music makes our lives richer, and music
can't thrive without a successful business model underlying it. We
need sustainable business models to help great artists make great music,
so the more we can encourage and support artists having
really sustainable, good business models, the more we all get
(13:37):
to enjoy the richness of that music.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Well, Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business, thanks so
much for doing this.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I really really appreciate.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
You justin this is a lot of fun. Thanks a
lot
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