Building a Company, Building an Organization: Lessons from Sam McNeil

This is Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. We will accomplish our goals through sharing experience, improving tech skills, increasing business knowledge, and embracing life. Let's dive into the next episode. Well, hello and welcome back. We're continuing a season of interviews and today we have a really good treat. Today in the next couple of parts, we're going to be speaking with Sam McNeil. He is a general manager for Song Division for the UK and Europe. He is actually voted as a top five speaker in Spice Magazine's top 100. And you're going to find out really quick why. He has quite a personality, just a real fun time talking to him. And I'm going to dive right into it. Even though he's in a different industry, I think you will find there is a lot to learn about building a company, building an organization, finding the job that makes it so you never have to work another day in your life. That being said, hope I didn't sell it too much or over sell it. And here we go. Let's talk with Sam. Talking with Sam McNeil, I'm going to let you first welcome Sam and thank you for taking some time out of your busy schedule to spend this time with me and have a little bit of discussion. I think it's a little bit odd to do a technical kind of podcast where we talk to technical developers and leaders and entrepreneurs and talk to somebody that is maybe 180 degrees different in the music and arts and entertainment industry. But I think we're going to find a lot of stuff that's very similar and hopefully be a really good conversation. I guess I'll start with allowing you to, in your words, give me some background on you where you're at and what you're doing. Introduce yourself to the audience. No problem. And Rob, thank you for having me. I do appreciate it. Yeah, I'm excited about this. Like you said, I think possibly a slightly different audience or I'd be a different guest to what you're used to having on here. So hopefully I don't waste anyone's time and I can bring something to the conversation through my story. So personally, I started singing and performing and acting super young. I was one of those kids that the parents pushed me into the child acting and advertisements and ads and things like that from a very young age, from about three. But I definitely wasn't pushed into it. I think I took to it like fish to water and very much loved it from the get go. It's kind of all I've done. Ever since I had a choral scholarship at school, all throughout school, in quite a well-known or like a world famous cathedral choir, if you can be a world famous cathedral choir. In my youth, again, I was lucky enough to perform with Opera Australia. I did five seasons with Opera Australia between the ages of 10 and probably 13 or 14. And then after I finished school, I went and got my degree in music studies majoring in voice, in classical voice. And it was probably then when I finished that degree or not long after that and I was playing in a band that was trying to get signed and I was working part time for my parents' family business and that was when I had my first introduction to Song Division where I'm now obviously the general manager in the UK and Europe, but at the time I was in Sydney. And a mutual friend of mine and the owner of Song Division said to him, you should come check out this band, come see them. So he came to the gig. I imagine Song Division at this point is three or four years old, if I've got my years correct. And they enjoyed the gig and he said, I've got an event this next week. It's with Microsoft and we're going to be creating an original song with the employees as they walk into the building in the office in the headquarters car parks. And obviously I'll explain a bit more about what Song Division do down the track, I'm sure. But that was the event and I said, that sounds completely bizarre, but I love it and I'm in. And at this point, I'll just add that I was, you know, early twenties, rough around the edges. I was there just to help really, I think, just to, you know, tidy set up, help where I could. But I really just loved the experience, couldn't help myself but to get super involved and really enjoyed it. And Song Division weren't, you know, crazy busy at that time. So that was sort of it. But I said to the general manager in Australia and to Andy, the director, I said, if there's any more opportunities to get involved, I'd love to get more involved. That was it. The odd gig and or Song Division event popped up over the next few years. I ended up doing lots of bachelorette parties where the same thing would happen. I would come with my friend and we'd bring a pop up studio and we would write a song with all the bachelorettes about how the bride and groom met about, you know, and have some fun with them, which was a lot of fun. Once they got over the disappointment that I wasn't a stripper. And slowly, slowly got back more involved. And then, yeah, they came back and said, you know, you've always been so up for it and wanting opportunities, which we love. You know, we want to give the Australian business a bit of a kick up the bum and get back into really active sales and marketing and growing the business again. Do you want to take that role on? And I said, again, I'd love to be involved in any way. I've got zero skills or experience in sales. And I've never had a proper job apart from working for my parents' company. So Andy said, no problem. I can teach you sales. All I need is someone who's passionate about music and believes in this product or this organization, which I had zero issues there. So fast forward five years, I, you know, grew the Australian business, worked my way up that that business ended up being the creative director. You know, revenue tripled over those five years. Everything's great. Andy says, do you want to move to the UK and set up the business? There was no UK office. To which again, I said in my naivety and arrogance and ignorance, yeah, I mean, how hard can that be? I'll do it. And I have a British passport. So my mom's from Northern Ireland. So that was the next adventure. And that was 2016 January. So it will be seven years this January. It's just been the most incredible ride and I won't sugarcoat it. It's been incredibly difficult, incredibly rewarding at times, incredibly hard at times questioning if I'd made the right decision, questioning if I should move back home to Australia where I grew up and all my friends and family are. And it's just been I just wouldn't change anything for the world, the highs and the lows. And that is where we are today. Excellent. That's that is an awesome story in itself. That's very that's really cool to see, especially in a conversation like this, where we started off saying, well, we may be in different areas, but it sounds like that's sort of your life. You started in the entertainment, the front side, I guess, the front end, the entertainment side of the entertainment industry. And now we've sort of gotten into the the business side of it. Yeah. Which is an interesting step to take. And I guess that's a couple of places, ways we could go off this now. I've got a lot of I've got tons of questions just excellent. But I guess we'll start with building. I guess we'll start with the more recent stuff is some of the experiences you had, you already touched on that you had some real highs and some real lows of building this business. And of course, you did come into this is the first time you'd really done it. I mean, you'd sort of done it in Australia. Yeah, we had some some initial ideas of what was going to need to be done and what some of the highs and lows and what some of the obstacles were going to be. But how did that and maybe even some of your your overall background that was not, you know, an MBA or something that people would normally say, oh, this is a person that needs to build a business. But where your your background and your experiences did help you and allowed you to take these steps and also to sort of soldier through on some of those when you have those, you know, those bad days. Yeah, I think you I think you've hit the nail on the head. I got to do a lot of great things when I was part of the Australian business and I was selling, delivering, designing experiences. But I had a lot of support. There was a there was a general manager. There was support from from the global team. And and there were things like, you know, registering business names, setting up bank accounts, setting up the organisation over in the UK, things I had zero experience with, again, obviously plenty of support, but actually doing it and going through the steps is is is is difficult. But even the the the the boring side of all of that, I've I've I've thoroughly enjoyed. You know, it's all been an experience. I've set up a business, something that didn't exist at all in the UK and Europe now exists and is doing is doing really well and not. And there's so much stuff that's not glamorous that has to be done day to day, week to week. You you you get it, obviously tax and legal fees and bank fees and all kinds of stuff, international trademarks and IP law. And again, I don't I don't I'm not involved in all of that either. But yeah, there's there's there's a lot there's a lot more to it when you say I'm going to start a business or start a start, open up a new region, the stuff you don't even think about or contemplate that you're going to have to do. So like I said, I've just really enjoyed the learning curve, to be honest. And how much of that is how much that goes back to you being passionate about them from the start? You there was something about song divisions you liked from really from moment one, how much of that has has helped drive you and that you maybe still maintain? I would say, you know, I don't have to put a figure on, but I would say close to all of it. I I am very, very passionate about music, obviously. That's all I really know. And I'm acutely aware of the power of music. And I've played in bands and on stage. And you know, there's no better feeling than having the power to affect how other people feel individually and then as a collective, you know, at a gig. So I've always been passionate about music. And then I've become almost passionate to the point of obsession about song division because we all agree with all of that. And we we we through the experience of what we've done, I've seen how that the power of music has to change mindsets and bring people together and strengthen social bonds and, you know, and learning more about the science behind it all, which has been so interesting. So I don't think and I would have been able to do it otherwise. I think if you know, there would have had to have been a lot of money involved, put it that way. But no, if someone said, oh, you know, hey, I've got this business. I know you started song division. You've done it before. I'd like you to do it for us. And it's a whatever the company is, it's something completely different. I would probably say, you know, thanks, but no, thanks. I don't think I can go through that emotional roller coaster or, you know, exhaustion for something that I'm not completely obsessed with. So that that that would be my answer. And then on top of that, another thing that makes my job so awesome is that, you know, I've done sales, I still do day to day sales. I'm still lead the sales team. I'm still love sales. And I love sales because it's not it's not sales when you just are talking about something that you are completely passionate about. And I know I'd like to think that that travels over to your audience. You know, it doesn't have to be yet. Oh, yes, I get to, you know, tell people I travel around the stage performing. It's really not about that. You know, I've met people that have run tech startups. I've met people that have. Started their own accounting firm, and they show the exact same passion about what about why they're doing it, because they love it and they're obsessed with it. And that's made me never have to do sales like I and it's a cliche, but I couldn't call people and tell them about a life insurance policy. I just wouldn't be in me. I would be obviously having to act out a role unless I really was obsessed with this particular policy, whereas I'm not doing that. Like people I call I cold call. I call people. I go, yeah, hey, can I, you know, you got 45 seconds to spare. I'm not going to waste your time telling you what I do on the phone. But I run this organization. We use the power of music to blah, blah, blah. Can I can I drop you an email? That's not a tough call for me. That's just like, you know, and people, they say, tell me all the time or I meet them in a networking event or a party and like I just what do you do? That question, like I just light up like I just I physically light up. So I've never I do a lot of sales, but I've never done sales. If that makes sense. Oh, that makes perfect sense. And it is it is something we talk about on a regular basis. We go back to the idea of being brands and personal brands in particular. Yeah, you know, sort of rolls into sales and marketing. And when you're when you are authentic and when you truly when you're selling the when you're not selling something, but instead you're really just telling somebody a story that you are invested in. It makes the whole process so much easier and honestly more more effective. I think everybody is attracted to conversations with people where it's where they are, as you say, where they light up about it. If it's something that they're enthusiastic about and excited about, it makes it that much more easy to to listen to it. And sometimes there's a there's a draw to that. You want to know why is this person so happy or excited about topic X, whatever that topic happens to be. And sometimes there's it could be something as boring as all get out to you or I. But because somebody just loves it, you still are happy to listen to them talk about it because that excitement is, you know, just sort of like spills over to the audience. Yeah, yeah, there's nothing better. There's no there's nothing better than chatting to someone and hearing how interesting they find what they do is. It's so refreshing. And then, like you said, people are so receptive to it. And I I have no doubt that people don't just work with song division because of the musical ability and the quality of our experiences and everything we strive for. I think they generally go, I'm going to have fun when I work with these guys. I'm going to I'm going to feel better. They're going to brighten my day from from from the first call through to the the pitch. And then if we're, you know, working with them, people seem to look forward to every interaction with all of us team because we all we all share that passion for what we do. And it just it yeah, you become a bit of a magnet. People people people. I have this I told this story before, but I have this one woman who never answers my calls. And she always calls me back. And I and finally one day she said, you know, I never answer your calls because you leave the best voicemails like you always say, hey, Rebecca, I hope you're awesome. Sam here from Song Division. Give me a call. And she's I just love your voicemails. So I'm like, OK, cool. Call me back here. So like, yeah, that's infectious. That's that's that's what I bring to the game. And people, you know, people want to people are attracted to that kind of positivity. And there we have part one. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. We're already getting into some great points to make, particularly, I think this that latter part, obviously, Sam's very interesting individual. But as you get into the latter part about how he has found his his joy, in a sense, the job that he really loves working with people he enjoys working with, he is he's all in. And you can hear that in how he talks. And there's so many little nuggets that he throws in there that are an outgrowth of that that enjoyment. Obviously, his personality as well. The fact that you can have people want you to leave a voicemail message just because it's that good is is in its own way a testament to being a positive voice for your organization, for your brand. And we're going to keep going with this. We've got a lot more of Sam to talk to a lot more of that discussion ahead. So I'll get back to your day and we'll pick it up next time. As always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the developer podcast for more episodes like this one. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon and other podcast venues, or visit our site at developer.com. Just a step forward today is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together. There are two things I want to mention to help you get a little further along in your embracing of the content of developer. One is the book, The Source Code of Happiness. You can find links to it on our page out on the developer site. You can also find it on Amazon, search for Rob Broadhead or Source Code of Happiness, but you can get it on Kindle. If you're an Amazon Prime member, you can read it free. A lot of good information there. That'll be a lot easier than trying to dig through all of our past blog posts. The other thing is our mastermind slash mentor group. We meet roughly every other week. And this is an opportunity to meet with some other people from a lot of different areas of IT. We have a presentation every time we talk about some cool tools and features and things that we've come across, things that we've learned, things that you can use to advance your career today. Just shoot us an email at info at developer.com. If you would like more information, now go out there and have yourself a great one.