Building Better Developers, Season 15, Episode 509

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. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season where we're going through a bunch of interviews. This episode, we are into part two with Sam McNeil. He is with Song Division and we will get right into his story. We've talked about it. We got sort of set up the first episode and this time we're going to dive right into some of the things he's learned and some of the things that have made him successful and how maybe some of these things that he's done, some of the skills that he has naturally that he has parlayed into business success will give you some ideas of where you can do the same, where you can take some things that maybe weren't initially geared towards whatever your career is, whatever your goals are, and yet find that they will help you along. Again, this is a great conversation, so I don't want to take any more away from it. We'll get right back to it. Yeah, and in the music business, something actually being here in Nashville, we've got lots of musical acts of varying levels and it's one of those places where you just, you have people trying to start out. You've got people that have just sort of plateaued and they've found their niche or whatever and you've got people that are on their way up or maybe on their way back down or retired. But that's one of the things seeing so many acts and then also I grew up in Memphis, which is another lots of live music town. It's interesting that that is an industry, at least for me, that is very obvious that you can take something that's, we'll call it mediocre, but average or not world class, but dressing it up or having that excitement makes all the difference in the world. I think probably you can think of bands or groups that maybe their albums aren't super great or anything, but don't ever miss a show. Those kinds of things, they bring that to it. Exactly right. I've told you when we first spoke, I was lucky enough, my last proper holiday actually before the world went crazy, I did a road trip from Nashville to New Orleans via Memphis and Song Division have offices in Nashville so I got to meet some of those musicians as well and I thought, oh Nashville's going to be so many musos that they're just going to be over there doing their thing and a bit sort of disinterested and exhausted, but it's the complete opposite because if you want to make it in Nashville, well even the guys and girls who don't make it, you've got to be there. You've got to give it everything every night. You've got to be on time. You've got to be receptive. You've got to bring a good attitude. You've got to be like a professional business owner, which is why I love this conversation. There's so many crossovers between great session musicians. Just to clarify, I'm not talking about the guy, the front man or the guy that's got the record deal and not to say that they're not the same, but I'm not really talking about your Bieber's or your whoever, your Sting's. I'm talking about the guys all around that band who you would never know their name. They're what we call session musicians and it's what Song Division's one of our sort of points of difference is when you work with us, all the musicians are full time touring and recording session artists, so they too are with those big stars. To be that level of or to have that level of success, there is a certain level of technicality that you obviously need and experience, but that is actually a much smaller portion than what you realise is what you really need is a I'll take every opportunity I can get. I will be early. I will have learnt my parts, which is a big one. I will bring the energy to the gig if it's one person or 100,000. I know this gig is not about me. I know this is about that front person or that artist and I'm there to make them look amazing so there's that level of teamwork that's required and if you're a diva in that world you will be chewed up and spat out and no one will want to work with you. So many parallels with the tech world but just the business world in general. I find it so interesting but I did go there and go wow this is a crazy level of musicianship and professionality. That's an interesting thing I've found as I've also managed to meet a lot of session musicians and some of them very, the resumes for some of these people are just astounding. Ridiculous. Like you say you don't know them but then you find out about what they've done and you realize that some of these people have had decades of incredible careers touring with huge acts but also doing small things here and there and there is a lot of similarities I see in the tech world particularly in those that either move around jobs a lot or particularly consultants because that's really more like a session musician kind of gig where you've got to come in, you've got to understand what you're coming into, you've got to bring all your professional skills. You don't just check them at the door when you get a new contract or a new customer. You've got to go in and part of it is you understand them. You understand that they are the one that needs to be served by your skills or your work effort. It's not about you and boy the diva comment is perfect. If you come in and you're a diva then there are very limited places for you. You're really not going to be able to fit that. You're not a team member at that point. You need to either be a leader or go away because that's sort of the diva role I think. Yes well there's room for one diva but the diva's role has already been taken. That's why you've been brought in as a session musician because that artist is big enough and famous enough and making enough money that they can hire a session musician. That role's taken buddy, sorry. That other thing which I find another great little crossover is about not burning bridges. We all have clients that are a pain in the butt and session musicians have to tour with divas. Most of them actually are generally lovely, the ones that I know of through our musicians. I know people like Rod Stewart, incredibly kind. I know Ed Sheeran's Down to Earth. I know for the most part they are but I'm sure there are some absolutely horrible ones and you can, if you're being treated wrong or treated badly that's a different situation but if they're just a pain in the butt and you want to kick up a stink about it then you're going to lose that job and that might be fine with you as well but you are going to get a reputation as someone who can't work with anyone or can't work with a diva or can't sort of bite their tongue sometimes and go well they're the boss, they're the ones that are the reason we're all here and you just won't get used. Yeah, that's exactly it. The flip side I actually want to lead to a good question is where, because I know it's like every business, you got your good clients and your bad clients or your ones that are easy to deal with and the ones that are very difficult and I would assume in your period of time now that you've had some very difficult ones and probably some that you've worked with and you haven't just said okay we're just going to get through this thing. And sorry maybe if you can give an example or two, not necessarily naming names, just sort of examples where you worked through it and particularly where it turned out to be worthwhile because I bet you've got a couple of those. I mean I've got a pretty fresh one if you like from about an hour ago. I don't know if you can tell, my voice is, I'm pretty shot, I'm pretty exhausted if I'm completely honest. And we don't have bad clients, like one in a hundred, almost one a year sort of thing, really a client who doesn't respect our expertise and knowledge and tries to micromanage. Most of them see our experience, see the 18 years and we've worked in 36 countries and hear all the big clients we've worked with and they go you guys are the experts at what you do, this is our objectives, help us design something. And 99.9% of all of these relationships are super healthy and professional and another reason I love my job. But yeah we got a last minute inquiry, not inquiry, last minute, okay let me set this up. So we'd been asked to pitch on for a big virtual event months ago, months ago to be involved, writing songs with the company, a virtual four day conference, thousands of people, we'd be embedded in the whole program. And as often with these things happen, things fell by the wayside, disorganisation on their side, staff, I think some of the decision makers coming and going, it all just fell by the wayside, we just assumed we weren't involved or needed, which is fine, that happens more often than not, we pitch and we don't win the job. And then last week they said, you know what, we've obviously run out of time to do all the writing, but we still want you to provide entertainment at a pre-recorded virtual gala awards ceremony, so all we would be doing is in between the awards be playing a song, like a cover. And that's what we call a broadcast band, and it can be live or it can be recorded, but it's a broadcast band, no interaction, none of that, which is all the stuff that makes Song Division so amazing, not even shout outs to like, hey Rob, I know this one was for you, you requested it on the event form, none of that, so very easy from our part, but so rushed, and one particular probably decision maker who was in charge and was making decisions and calling shots without probably the right knowledge or experience, and they said we want it in a studio, I said that's great, we do broadcast bands, we normally do them from world famous recording studios, like Abbey Road or wherever it might be, that was fine, everything was so, so rushed, no real brief, no like look, this is what we're going for, a couple of mentions of just keeping it drapes and things like that, and not to say that we didn't make mistakes either, but it all got pushed through and rushed very, very quickly, I'd come back from being away from my partner's birthday, I had to come back early to get this footage done because they needed it recorded on Sunday, edited by the Tuesday to go out to be cut together with the whole show, so come Wednesday morning, this particular person, and no one else had any issues with what was created, but this particular person said this is unusual, unusable, why are there rugs on the ground and why are you not using music leads everywhere? And in fairness to them, didn't know that a famous recording studio, the studio The Killers did Sam's Town there, Nine Inch Nails have recorded there, it's a famous studio in London, but she didn't know that a recording studio isn't meant to look like a clean production or television studio, the room is set up acoustically, so the rugs are there to absorb sound, there's obviously going to be a lot of leads everywhere because you've got a drum kit with 12 mics on it, you've got whatever, vocal mics, so we just said not using it, not usable, and I'm sort of there going does it matter, it sounds great, but no, insistent on it not being usable and having to be reshot and everyone on every other side going this is just one of a million problems with this whole event, this always happens, nothing's good enough, but no one's communicating to stop it happening before it happens, so all this time and money has been wasted because they're in a hurry and now everything's got to be redone, so what's happened is something that should have been quick has taken double the time. So yeah, we all had to come together, us, the production company who had no time to, you know, in their availability in their studio, videographers, editors and we had to basically two days ago make it all happen this morning, so I've been at the studio since 7am this morning, it's 3pm here now, I just walked in before the interview started and we've been recording upbeat covers and for me, yeah, a lot of that had to do with someone who was particularly difficult and not easy to communicate with, but thank God every other person involved in this event, the production company, the other people in the events team, are all been incredible to work with and go, hey, we're all the same, we're solution based organisations, let's just fix it, let's sleep when you're dead and everyone shattered, but we got it done and it looks amazing, we made sure they were streaming in so they could see what was being filmed this morning and gave everything the okay so that there's just no more room for error like that, so still a really wholesome experience, we didn't get it right the first time, we got it right the second time, everyone no matter who was to blame came together to make it happen, which was nice, but as you can probably hear, I'm a little bit, my voice is shot. Luckily we're not going to try to push it too much here during this conversation, so allow it to maybe to relax a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Mitch, a couple of times your insta hits and this, I refer to it as your improv skills that you've had for creating music that's been with you, sounds like almost forever, how has that played into your leadership style and your ability to build out this business? That's such a good question, I might need a second here. That's okay. No, I love that, I love that. I've been writing songs, you know, properly or trying to write songs properly since I would say about year 2000 and not good songs I might add. What I've found mostly with creatives and songwriters and anyone who's, and entrepreneurs and people in the tech world, anyone who's able to have nothing and create something from nothing is going to probably also be someone who can think outside the box, who can solve a problem in a way that other people wouldn't have thought of and comes up with all kinds of weird and wacky marketing ideas as well or ways to, like you said, to lead the business, to grow the business. We've, yeah, like I mentioned, there's been ups and downs over the years. I don't know about you but I feel most jobs are just, you know, is just a series of obstacles and how we're going to overcome them and solve them and problem solving. And especially working in events and entertainment, the best laid plans are what we all agree is what the goal is but most of it goes out the window within five minutes of an event because of, you know, the opening speaker goes too long or if it's, you know, during a meal, the meal's not ready or it's ready earlier than anticipated. And yeah, there's, we, Song Division have a very, very, very big on processes and planning and contingencies and making sure that everything that can go right should go right. And one thing which I think I particularly am strong with is when that basically goes out the window, I like to be the one in charge. And normally I'm the emcee and fronting the band and the person behind the success of the Song Division element and I really cherish that role because if someone else, if it starts unraveling and someone else tries to take control or I see them starting to panic, I start panicking. So yeah, I would pride myself on and I think in answer to your question, the ability to create music and collaborate but lead from the front has allowed me to be that person when everything goes out the window, all the timings, the agenda, what the plan was to go, okay, boom, no, we're doing that this way now. No, cancel that bit. We can do that later. Cut the next section by five minutes. We'll get that five seconds. I love that part. I love that part of my role and I love that that is my role because I, yeah, I seem to be more myself when there's a sense of chaos going on. So does that even answer your question? Gosh. Yeah, it does. And actually that brings up another great point is, well, there you go. How is that for a cliffhanger? We've got a good follow-up question. Yes, we have a part three that will be coming in a matter of days here. If you're listening to this after the initial drop, then you may be able to go right into that next episode. We continue our conversation with Sam. It's, we go into a lot of different places as you've already seen, but I found that it was very useful to go down a couple of those paths. We can talk about a few things that were maybe a little different from some of the technology and entrepreneurial things that we've hit upon in the past. But I think it's very interesting to, especially when you consider the rock and roll true diva kind of role, and yet we know that we've got divas in our industry and how it matters to be professional and putting together a team and understanding your role. There's a lot of really useful items that he dropped there. I hope you're taking notes. If not, go back, listen to him again, take some good notes because I think there was a lot that came out of that little conversation and we're just getting started. We've got plenty more, but that's for next time. So until then, go out there, 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 Noor 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 developernoor.com. Just a step forward a day is still progress. So let's keep moving forward together. One more thing before you go. Developer Noor podcast and site are a labor of love. We enjoy whatever we do trying to help developers become better. But if you've gotten some value out of this and you'd like to help us, be great if you go out to developernoor.com slash donate and donate whatever feels good for you. If you get a lot of value, a lot. If you don't get a lot of value, even a little would be awesome. In any case, we will thank you and maybe I'll make you feel just a little bit warmer as well. Now you can go back and have yourself a great day.