Rob Pasbani: Building Metal Injection, why metal is its own worst enemy, and turning jealousy into fuel

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. And now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM Podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners. And if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out, and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too. So please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levy urm audio. And let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

(00:00:55):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now let's get on with it. Well, everybody, welcome to the URM podcast. My guest today is someone that I have known for a very, very long time, who I'm super proud of for what they've built and what they've endured to get to this point. Rob Paani is a metal writer and enthusiast who's best known as the creator of Metal Injection, which is one of the greatest resources for metal on the internet. He's also one of the co-owners of the Pete Network, which is basically an advertising network that's partnered with Metals, sucks as well, that runs ads nearly 10 million visitors monthly, but they run ads to sites like Lamb, goat gear. Gods heavy blog is heavy and many, many more. I mean, they're everywhere. And I'm very, very proud of those guys. And Rob is a huge part of why this all worked out and I'm very happy to have him on. So I introduce you, Rob Pasbani welcome to the URM podcast. It

Speaker 2 (00:02:29):

Is an absolute pleasure to be here with you, Eyal.

Speaker 1 (00:02:32):

It's been a minute.

Speaker 2 (00:02:33):

It has. I mean, I guess quarantine has prevented us from seeing each other on our annual NAM excursion.

Speaker 1 (00:02:41):

Yeah, I can't say I miss Nam though. I do hanging out with friends that I only see once a year. I can't say that I feel like my life is missing something without it, but I imagine that NAM is pretty important for you.

Speaker 2 (00:02:57):

It's pretty important, but I'm with you. I don't, I just miss the nighttime stuff. I don't miss the daytime stuff. I don't miss the Grove. I don't miss the walking around the convention center, but I do miss just hanging out with people high school reunion. Yeah, exactly. Business-wise though, yeah, it's pretty good. But I mean, it's one of those things where it's hard to even really quantify. You meet someone and it could end up being a huge life-changing business relationship all because of just running into them and being introduced at ba. So that's really kind of the benefit of it.

Speaker 1 (00:03:29):

The thing I wonder though, because I agree that it's hard to quantify, it was even hard to quantify the year we had a booth. I still don't know if that did anything for us other than make people realize we were an actual company and not just farting around with a camera kind of thing. But besides that, I don't know. I wonder sometimes if it helps if I could have approached those people on my own anyways or through an introduction elsewhere, if things would've developed anyways,

Speaker 2 (00:04:02):

I would say yes, probably. But the in-person meeting just accelerates all of that because just in person, you get a sense of who somebody is and you vibe and you're like, oh, I wouldn't mind working with that person. So it's much easier than a email introduction because I feel like with email you always just kind of create a face for the person.

Speaker 1 (00:04:22):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:04:23):

It's never what you think. So an in-person thing just makes that all easier, makes the process smoother.

Speaker 1 (00:04:29):

When I went to Berkeley, I took a music business class. It was the one legit class, and the guy had done a lot, and the first thing he said is that the music industry is the most social industry in the world, so make friends, you're going to fail.

Speaker 2 (00:04:46):

Yeah. That's really the only way to get ahead is to be out at these parties and kind of meeting people. And then it's not a big strategy of I'm going to go out to this party, I'm going to network and I'm going to find what this person is doing. People actually can see right through that. Yeah, exactly. That's what you don't want to do. It's actually the opposite way that things happen. People just casually, Hey, what are you working on? And blah, blah, blah. And you're just riffing and bouncing ideas and like, oh, we could help you with this maybe. And just organically a conversation arises where you start doing business. That's happened so many times at NAM or just any kind of social gathering in the music industry, really. I think way more business gets done at a bar than in a boardroom, especially in Heavy Metal.

Speaker 1 (00:05:37):

When I met you guys in 2006 or something. That's got to be when it was. I mean at that point, I don't think anybody foresaw how big metal injection would get or blast network or any of that stuff. But I do remember, other than just liking you guys as people, that you guys had the right friends always, and you guys were just inserting yourselves into the conversation, but not in an annoying way. You were just present and people liked being around you guys for the most part. And I think about that as compared to other video blogs at the time, there were a bunch that were kind of doing similar-ish or sort of things, not as well as you guys, but there were a bunch trying and you guys just kind of rocket shipped past everybody. And my take on it, and I know there's a lot more to the story, but just my take as someone who's known you guys forever and who observed it from the outside is that in my experience on tour, whenever I'd come to New York, you guys would be there and it would always be really, really cool.

(00:06:45):

And if you guys interviewed me, it would be fun and I wouldn't feel like I was wasting my time. And the other video blogs from the time period didn't have that sort of vibe. They're kind of annoying. They would write shit you didn't say they would punish publicists in weird ways. They didn't handle it the way you guys did. And then also there was nothing like the Scion Fest or whatever you guys would actually travel to go to make shit happen. You guys put yourselves out there a lot more than the competitors. And I definitely think that all those things combined had something to do with why you guys shot pass everybody. But why do you think you guys shot past everybody?

Speaker 2 (00:07:32):

Well, that's a loaded question there.

Speaker 1 (00:07:34):

Well, yeah, but let's be real. You guys did. So

Speaker 2 (00:07:37):

No, I mean there's a lot to cover. There is what I mean by the loaded question. First of all, thank you for the kind words and I do want to say that I want to acknowledge that you were a huge cheerleader for us personally, and you gave us a lot of good advice from the artist perspective. You were the one that kind of told us you guys need to be going to NAM and working with these instrument companies, we were just riffing about record labels and limited budgets and you were like, you should talk to these instrument companies. And so that was all you, was it? Okay, cool. To get to your question, it was very organic. We did hustle really hard during that time and still hustle a little slowed down at this point a little older. But we would go to four or five shows a week.

(00:08:20):

It wouldn't be whatever shows were in town. We were like, oh, we should get this content. The thing about us is we were so fucking dumb, we didn't know. We just thought if we kept working really hard, and I'm not exaggerating here, this is basically what we thought someone would come and save us and be like, you're doing a great job. MTV or something would be like, we're buying metal inject. We kind of just had this sugar daddy, or I don't want to say I had this idea that the sugar daddy would come and rescue us, but at the time, what we just had to do to get to that point, which I just want to say was the silliest thing, at any time we interacted with a person that I put that personality to where we get burned really badly. But the idea was just build it up as much as we can and make it as valuable as we can so someone will see the value in it and eventually we realize, oh, the only person that sees the value in this is ourselves. So we have to just build on what we have.

(00:09:22):

But to what you were saying, it was a very organic process and we would just go out and meet everybody and meet all the bands. And like you were saying, I took a lot of pride in not doing interviews, but having more conversations and just having more of a hang. I really liked watching old head bangers ball clips, and I was very much into the late nineties, early MTV stuff where it's just like they're not talking to the band about their songwriting process or how they wrote the riffs or how long they've been playing guitar. They've just been hanging out, making jokes. I really liked getting to know an artist's personality, and that's kind of how we did those interviews. And then like you said, artists would see that it would be a comfortable thing. We're not coming for them, we're not hitting them with gotcha questions.

(00:10:17):

And really if an artist had some sort of controversy about them, we probably wouldn't really want to hang out with them anyway. So it was a very comfortable thing. And then the word kind of got around and not only did Word get around, our content got around and artists would see how much fun their friends were having on these shows. And there would be occasions where artists would request to be interviewed, which was a very flattering compliment to us. And so basically the more you do stuff, the more you establish yourself, the more you work with people, the more people see that you're legit, that you're not a Punisher, that you're not just doing this to get tickets or a guest pass or get backstage and drink all the beer or whatever people think backstage is. It's just a fucking room. And the more you do that, the more you have better relationships with these artists and these labels and the more opportunities come to want to work with them. You asked how we surpass all the other video blogs. And what I would say to that is we weren't just a video blog, we were always a multimedia thing. Even when we started Metal Injection, we started as a public access show and the website was just going to promote the public access show.

Speaker 1 (00:11:26):

Public access tv, Wayne's World.

Speaker 2 (00:11:29):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:11:29):

So I didn't even know that.

Speaker 2 (00:11:31):

Oh yeah, that was the first iteration of metal injection was I was just getting high with a few friends and every Tuesday night at midnight, there would be a metal show on our Brooklyn Public Access channel and it was awful. And we would just watch this and shit on it. We would roast it. And one time I just remember one of us going, we could do this so much better. And then I was like, oh, why don't we do it? And it was around this time I met Frank, who ended up being my business partner with Metal Injection. Shout out Frank. He had an interest in video production and I told him my idea of wanting to do well originally it was like a half hour show we were going to do. And the idea was like SNL meets Teddy Banger's Ball. There would be bits interviews and then music videos and live footage. And Frank had a shit ton of old VHS tapes. He would actually buy those Century Media video compilations and all that, or concert footage. He had so much great archives that we could use. This was before YouTube. This was before you could rip a video.

Speaker 1 (00:12:32):

Death is just the beginning, stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (00:12:34):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we would email labels and we were like, Hey, we're starting the show. And they were like, okay, show us. And we're like, well, we need Content Doesn't exist yet. Yeah, there was only one George Valley I'll always remember. He was the only one that was like, yeah, sure. And he sent us some Century media comps. He worked there at the time, and then we had the first few episodes. So we showed it to the other labels. We were getting more, so we would have to get VHS tapes, rip them into digitize them, and then bring them back into super VHS tapes, what the Public Access channel accepted. So as we started the site and the show, we started January 1st, 2004, I remember. And so as we started it, we quickly realized we were getting way more attention online than we were on our local public access channel because also our slot was 3:00 AM on Saturday.

Speaker 1 (00:13:27):

Who the hell is watching?

Speaker 2 (00:13:28):

And well, what's funny is that we still promoted the hell out of it. And I remember the public access channel at the time had a live stream, and to give you an idea of how long ago this was, the live stream was in a Windows media player format. Oh wow. We crashed their live stream just by sending our, because I'm assuming five people typically watch it, but we were sending at the time maybe hundreds of people, so we would always adjust. So that wasn't working out. So then we started posting the episode online, and that was such a big undertaking, having to learn video codex. And this was very, internet speeds were significantly slower back then, so I had to encode into this real media player. It's like a half hour video file under a hundred megabytes. It's

(00:14:14):

Terrible quality looking back. It's awful, but it's what worked. And then eventually it was like, well, why are we spending all this time putting together half hour show video kind of evolved to a more on-demand format. So then we switched to doing on-demand clips, but at the same time also building out the rest of the website because the video stuff takes a lot to produce. Frank was just dedicated on that and he was spending night and day editing and it was like, well, there's metal news, there's other things that metalheads want that we could do. And then blogging and podcasting exploded. So we ventured out into more of that stuff and kind of built all these other facets to the site and to the brand so that there's always something for people to check out. And so I think that's why we lasted. And a lot of the other video blogs didn't because first of all, they started probably much later than us and they were only on YouTube.

(00:15:10):

They weren't, weren't going through the trouble of figuring out how to fucking afford video hosting in 2007. So I think all of that is what really helped us stick out and really longevity. The longer you're around, the more people take you seriously that you're not a joke and that you're really something. And then also I feel like a new generation comes along that spent time watching the previous generation. They want to emulate it. We would get bands. That would be all my favorite bands I learned about through metal injection. I'm like, how old are you? What's going on? I'm like, I'm 28. How are you saying this to me? But it really did have an effect after four or five years, a new wave of bands come up and Metal Injection isn't some entity they never heard of. It's an established brand. And so the longer it kind of sticks around, the more established it is to people who might've not known a heavy metal scene without it.

Speaker 1 (00:16:01):

One thing that I find interesting though is it sounds like you guys always had your sights set on doing it for real.

Speaker 2 (00:16:08):

Yes. It was always what we wanted to do. I can only speak for myself, and I mean I'll speak for Frank too. It was our main priority. Everything else in my life did not matter to a fault. I realized I had to reel that back after a few years, but it was my number one priority. Any job I had, if I had a computer, if I had computer access, I was working on the site, I was updating it. I was not doing my work. I had a full-time job and I want to thank them because half the time I was making it so I could quit to do metal injection.

Speaker 1 (00:16:42):

I wonder if a lot of the competitor sites had that kind of ambition from the get go.

Speaker 2 (00:16:49):

And I think it really has to do with how we were brought up. Frank and I kind of both come from sort of lower middle class families and our families worked hard, but we didn't really have startup Cap. We had no money, we had nothing. We did all of this with no investment. Our only investment was our own money. And so I think just having that kind of upbringing and that kind of hunger to, and really living in New York, I think is a big part of it. In New York, everyone kind of has this, I feel like Chip on their shoulder like, oh, I'm only two steps away from making it. I know somebody who knows somebody who ended up being super famous or something. So it feels much more within Grasp. And the other thing that being in New York was very lucky for us because if we started this in Ohio or somewhere in the middle South Carolina or whatever, we wouldn't have access to all these artists. Artists don't come around to these smaller towns, whereas New York, every tour came around. Sometimes it was just one-offs just in New York. So we had the access to it and it just all worked out.

Speaker 1 (00:17:59):

Do you believe the Mark Cuban philosophy of the first day you take investment money is the first day you fail?

Speaker 2 (00:18:06):

That's a good question. For me, I was always hesitant to do it. We're very risk averse. We take very small steps moving forward, any expense we think about it and yeah, I can't imagine taking somebody else's money now. I will now. Yes, now I'm much more secure in what we can do. And I do have ideas of ways we could be bigger if there was some proper investment in the site.

Speaker 1 (00:18:37):

I think he meant it in initial stages.

Speaker 2 (00:18:40):

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think because we only had ourselves and what we could do, it made us work so much harder because it was our own money. It was like we really had to be sure of what we were doing would work. I just remember, I laugh about it now. We did a video shoot and spent 700 bucks on the shoot. I just remember the video didn't go insanely viral and I was just like, oh my God, we blew 700. We burned through. I was so sad for that. And it's like, relax. It's a video budget, it's fine. It happens. Just every dollar was very precious. We didn't have much at the time, so it was much more calculated risks and even buying gear, we would save up to buy HD equipment at the time or whatever it may be. It was such a big process. Whereas thankfully now we're much further along in the business where it's not. It's not. And eventually we got to a breaking point where we quit our jobs and it became a full-time thing. And then after a year or two, it actually did start being successful enough where you can exhale and be like, all right, this is working.

Speaker 1 (00:19:49):

We didn't take any investment either over at URM. We did it a hundred percent off of cashflow to this day. And I'm very proud of that. And I actually think that if you're starting a music company, unless you have to build physical products or you're developing some crazy ass technology that requires a hundred people stuff different than what we do or you guys do that you probably should do it yourself at least until it's profitable over a long period of time because music is so unstable, so inherently fucked up. I think you need to prove out stability on your own before you get in bed with anybody else. I really, really strongly believe that. And I've had people come to me with business plans for stuff similar to what we do where they're trying to get a million dollars upfront before making the site. And I'm like, guys, you're going to fail. That is a bad fucking idea. I know how sexy that sounds, but it is a bad idea.

Speaker 2 (00:20:57):

We've seen a lot of people come and go in the industry of just people thinking they could just, I feel like a heavy metal in specific is such a small insular industry. There is a finite amount of people that work in it. There's a finite amount of budget. There are certain levels of budget and you're really not going to crack that ceiling. So we've had entities come and be like, we're looking to start up a website. We're going to blow all this money and we're going to do this and we're going to get these ad. And we're like, guys, we've been in the space, these budgets, no one's going to give you this money. And we've seen it happen time and time again. They come in, they talk a big game. Some people are so desperate for anybody, any sort of mainstream attention in this heavy metal insular little space that they're like, yeah, we'll work with them.

(00:21:46):

These people get burned. They're like, oh, they're total. This is all, everything they promised isn't coming true. It's not happening. And then after six months, the whole thing collapses never to be heard from again. And it's like a footnote that we're like, Hey, what happened to that site? It's happened so many times. And we got burned a few times very early in metal injection. Someone came in and were like, we're starting a new entity to change the metal MySpace. This was what MySpace was having. And I bought in, I was like, this is it. I think I remember that. Yeah, I think you know who I'm talking about, but we don't have to mention any names. No, no, no

Speaker 1 (00:22:18):

Names. But I know what you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (00:22:21):

And this was that sugar daddy that I thought would come and rescue.

Speaker 1 (00:22:26):

I'm amazed you thought that was going to work. Maybe you wanted it to work.

Speaker 2 (00:22:29):

I wanted it to work exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:22:32):

I saw it and was like, there ain't no way this is going to work. Well,

Speaker 2 (00:22:35):

The thing is, I was very quickly brought back down to Earth. We left the project. We were not involved with what it ended up being because it was like this is all just talk. There's no actual money. And it was such a great lesson for me because it was at that point that I remember even having plans for big projects and be like, well, let's hold off. We're probably going to be bought out by this entity that it's so stupid to think about. But it was a very valuable lesson because after that I realized the only person that will make metal injection happen is not some fucking sugar daddy, but it's me and Frank. And the only way this is going to work is if we make it work and we find a way to work, and I've said this before, but I feel like getting jealous about other people's success or getting jealous that I didn't have rich parents that could just fund all the equipment that we thought we needed to make it happen, all that stuff.

(00:23:33):

It was pointless. I shouldn't be jealous. I shouldn't be in competition with other websites who might've succeeded because of whatever situation they're in. The only competition I really have, the only person I could really compete with is myself and just make sure that today is better than yesterday. We're further ahead on whatever our goal is than we were before because that's the only thing you can't control. You can't control how well someone else is doing other than some nefarious means. So you can only control how well you do what you do, and then the opportunities will come. And I found that's a centered approach to business, and it's a good way to not lose your mind as to why you're not as successful as somebody else. You can't control their success. You can only control yours.

Speaker 1 (00:24:20):

I think that those feelings of jealousy or anger or whatever are a very natural thing to feel, but that doesn't mean that you should just let them run rampant. I remember once in 2015 when URM was just a podcast, but I had the plans for turning it into what it is now was working on it, but there was, I don't want to say a competitor, but someone who did something kind of like us in a whole different space, totally different, but it got covered in Forbes or something, and they said how much he was bringing in a month, and my thoughts were not like, fuck him or anything, nothing like that. But it was more like, that should be us. That will be us. It's a little bit different than fuck that guy for succeeding or anything. It's more like self-directed, like you're fucking up. There's no reason for why you shouldn't be in that spot.

Speaker 2 (00:25:23):

Yeah, yeah. Why aren't you in that magazine? Yeah, that was a big thing for me too. I really wanted to have some print publication acknowledge us that should be us, is a very powerful mind frame. You can take it. Either I'm a failure, I'm never going to get that and just beat yourself up. Or you could ask, what can I do? So that will be us. And I feel like it's a fork in the road where you either sulk or you're use it to empower yourself and be like, I'm going to finish this thing and turn that heat into fuel. Well,

Speaker 1 (00:26:01):

Yeah, because human, you're going to get those feelings.

Speaker 2 (00:26:05):

Jealousy is a very natural feeling,

Speaker 1 (00:26:07):

I guess within reason. I think if someone has pathological levels of those types of feelings, they probably need to get some help. But I think that there's a certain amount that only people say they don't have lying or there's something misfired about them. They're very natural feelings. So what you do about them is what's most important, not necessarily having them or not having them, I think because anytime you want something, if someone else has got it, if you really, really want that thing or something kind of like that thing, how can you be neutral about it?

Speaker 2 (00:26:44):

That's a good point.

Speaker 1 (00:26:45):

I don't know if that's possible, but not because you want to tear them down or anything, but just because you care about that thing. You want it, they've got it. It's going to cause some sort of reaction. So when you had that, that should be us. Sounds like you told the story to yourself in a positive way. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:27:01):

It was like how could that be as,

Speaker 1 (00:27:02):

Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (00:27:03):

What am I doing? It's very important for me, I try to be in tune with my feelings when I'm feeling shitty. I ask myself, why am I feeling shitty? What caused this? And sometimes it's just like, all right, just sulking it for a second. Or sometimes it's just like, okay, well it's just this isn't a big deal or with the, why isn't it us? It's just like, well, how can I improve on it so that we would make ourselves visible enough to get that recognition kind of thing, whether it be grow our social media or whatever. But yeah, it's very natural to feel that way. And I think another way to deal with that kind of stuff is when you do have a victory and you do have that dopamine rush of success, acknowledge it and remember it

Speaker 1 (00:27:53):

How I'm, I'm asking for personal reasons because I'm really bad at that.

Speaker 2 (00:27:57):

So something great happened and you're like, wow, this is so awesome. This is my job, this is my life. It happened. It happened, but bookmark it, cinema marker in your brain so that when you feel shitty and when you're like, oh, I'm a piece of shit. Nothing is, this business is never happening. Look at how successful these people are, blah, blah, blah. Take a step back and be like, wait a minute. I have that marker of like, no, no, no. I've been doing well too. I've had my own successes. I'm just looking at these other people's stuff. And so it's a good way to fake out the jealousy.

Speaker 1 (00:28:33):

Something I'm doing. I just moved into a new apartment and I've never done this before. You walk into some people's offices and there's platinum records lining the walls and them shaking hands with the president and 98 degrees that they've gotten from all the different Ivy League schools they attended from the time that they were five years old, that kind of stuff. I've never put up any sort of memento or achievements or any sort of anything for anything that I've done. I have nothing like that. I don't collect things, I don't collect memoirs, nothing. And I was thinking maybe that's why I don't feel like anything's happened a lot of the time and still feel like I did exactly the same as I did at the very beginning. So why don't I make a wall in my new office dedicated to the cool things? So put a couple plaques and tour posters and URM achievements and just see if, when I get that weird ass feeling like the, I'm a loser feeling, if I can look at that wall and have proof that something's gone, okay, it's a running experiment. I don't know yet.

Speaker 2 (00:29:48):

That's something I've struggled with as well, is recognizing my own achievement. I always put an asterisk by any issue like, oh, this only happened because of this, or this only happened because of that, but it's like, no, it happened. I got it. I can't take that away from myself. I'm always undercutting myself and it's something I try to stop doing. I remember I was telling somebody about some award we won, and I was like, oh, but it was just whatever. And he was like, no, it's still a big deal. You don't have to qualify it. You can just say, you could say it. You could celebrate this moment. And it hit me like, oh, I always do this. Why do I do this? Why I should be proud of my accomplishments? As opposed to just saying, oh, it could have been something more or it only happened because of this. No, ultimately it happened.

Speaker 1 (00:30:38):

Do you think it's, you don't want to become one of those people that basically huff their own farts?

Speaker 2 (00:30:45):

Yeah, I think that's certainly a part of it. There's certainly a certain type of person in our industry that does the exact opposite where they inflate their success. That's so scary and I'm so aware of it, and I'm just so like, oh my God, I'm embarrassed for them that I am very self-conscious to not put myself out there in such a way where another person would interpret that way.

Speaker 1 (00:31:13):

It's very off-putting. And my fear is to never let myself be that way. It's just one of those things. I never want to be that person. And so I think I err on the other side, but I think that something that person has that I'm jealous of is almost like this blind confidence, which I do think helps them out. It's a good thing. I want to learn how to get that, but without the fart side of it,

Speaker 2 (00:31:41):

It's a process. It's something I have to deal. I'm right there with you

Speaker 1 (00:31:46):

Question. So you know how we're talking about how this is all about relationships. One thing that I was told coming in was don't burn any bridges. Be friends with everybody, et cetera. But in reality, that's impossible. You can't have a sustained career without burning a few bridges. How

Speaker 2 (00:32:06):

You're going to burn bridges even while trying to avoid burning, you can't control it.

Speaker 1 (00:32:12):

Yeah, it happens. You're not going to get along with everybody. You're going to have falling outs with some people. I think that while that idea of trying to be cool with everybody is a great idea, you should definitely keep that in mind. I also think that people shouldn't beat themselves up because certain things didn't work out. It's impossible in an industry that's this passionate and this unprofessional to not have those kinds of problems with people sometimes.

Speaker 2 (00:32:41):

And also I feel like with heavy metal, there's a lot of leeway. There's a lot of forgiveness of, I feel like the music industry is the only industry where you are almost expected to show up to work drunk, not to the office, but if you're working the show, people are tanked working and it's fine. No one is stopping to have an intervention unless it gets really out of hand. And in a way, I got almost to a fault. It's like unless you're affecting business, no one's going to stop you from indulging in your vice for better or for worse. For better or worse. Exactly. And it's like sometimes people make a complete ass of themselves, and it's almost like there's a sense of forgiveness, just it's like, oh, it's heavy metal. So there have been instances where we've burned a bridge and I beat myself up over it and I'm like, oh no, what are we going to do?

(00:33:31):

But we also, we're kind of lucky that we don't necessarily need to directly work with people. Our audience is just fans. We don't our audiences and other musicians or other labels. We could bypass those. It's easier to work with the labels, but we don't need to work with the labels. And also it's like what I was going to say is you may burn a bridge, but eventually you'll get so big that the bridge is just going to get reconstructed. That person will need to work with you, even if they don't. There have been some publicists where I'm like, wow, this person is very rude and I don't want to work with them and whatever. And then they lose their job and then they start being an indie publicist and then they're suddenly a lot nicer. Yeah, they're so much nicer to you because they need, you need the coverage. So time heals everything, and the more established you are, the less that bridge burning is going to matter because someone else at that company is going to be like, why aren't we working with this person or this entity? We need to be there.

Speaker 1 (00:34:30):

Yeah. I can tell you from my perspective, we've had some people on nail the mix artists that I don't particularly like on a personal level for whatever reasons, not necessarily producers so far that I don't personally like. But let's just say we've worked with a few people here and there that I don't have the best personal feelings for, but I didn't care. I thought it would be a great nail to mix month. Why should URM suffer because of some drama I have with this dude in 2011 or something. It's stupid.

Speaker 2 (00:35:05):

Stupid. Yeah, I agree. I've had the same kind of thing. I'm not going to name band, but there's certain bands that are very, very popular that I don't really like, but before I would write kind of snarky, like, oh, great, a new song from this band. But then I realized based on the comments, the only people really reading this post are fans of this band. So why would fans of the band find snark talking about how shitty this band is? They wouldn't find the humor in that. They're not coming to read me shitting on this band. They're coming just to hear the song and they like the band. There's no apprehension. So why should I take that away from that? I want these fans on my website, and so I shouldn't mock them for their musical taste. It was a big learning experience for me at that moment, which this has been five years ago.

(00:35:58):

So now it's like, yeah, it's like ultimately I want the genre as a whole to succeed. I might not like all the bands. I might not like the most popular bands, but those popular bands are bringing in new fans are bringing in young kids that will eventually fall down the rabbit hole and become the elitist snobs that will make fun of that band. So I very much acknowledge that. And I had a very big about face about seven years ago, I want to say 2013, and I stopped doing that, and I realized we should collectively try to not tear down these bigger bands, but work together and rising tides with the ships and all that.

Speaker 1 (00:36:40):

The rising tides make it easier to drown.

Speaker 2 (00:36:42):

Yeah, whatever it

Speaker 1 (00:36:44):

Is. No, I'm just kidding. No, it's lifts all boats.

Speaker 2 (00:36:46):

Lifts all boats. Thank you. If Five Finger Death Punch gets big, they're going to play a festival. They're going to have five bands under them. A kid's going to show up and get into five new bands. That's a new fan. And that's something that as a genre, we should be aiming to do because I feel, whereas Heavy Metal as a culture culturally and stylistically is very popular. The music itself isn't in the pop culture mix. And I feel that's kind of stagnating our growth.

Speaker 1 (00:37:11):

First of all, lemme just say for the record, I've always loved Slipknot when they came out, metal people were shitting on them hardcore. You could get your ass kicked pretty badly if you wore a Slipknot shirt to the wrong show. Violence could happen to you. And I thought it was so stupid because Slipknot were doing things like taking Shuga on the road. They were taking Slayer on the road. Slayer has been big for a long time, but they were not as big as we think of them now, especially not in the year 2000. They were legendary, but they were not playing stadiums and arenas as a headliner like they did when they finished out their career.

Speaker 2 (00:37:56):

They weren't fucking slayer yet.

Speaker 1 (00:37:57):

No, they were not. And bands like Slip Knot helped make Metal Big again. Basically we need those bands.

Speaker 2 (00:38:06):

Right. MTV gave them attention. Yeah, I agree. And I think there's something so important to that for the scene because like you said, they took out all these smaller bands, and I have so much nice to say about Slipknot, and also another band I pointed to is Metallica. People shit on Metallica for what they do, but such an easy target, so stupid people don't realize how they're keeping the industry alive. An example is that movie that they did through the Never. It was a Total Bomb. Sure. But it was one of our largest ad budgets of that year was that movie that's them directly giving back to that movie Paid for me being able to cover tiny bands. You know what I'm saying? Yes. It trickles down into the whole scene. Metallica are so good with that. They're so good with giving back to their old publicists or these smaller Bay Area bands that they try to prop up and give them a rub from their massive success they're getting. They're pop stars, Metallica, and they don't need to do any of this. Exactly, exactly. They didn't have to do the Big four tour. I think that was another reason that Slayer became Slayer.

Speaker 1 (00:39:17):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:39:19):

Because Metallica acknowledged them as they're right there with us, which is not to say that they weren't already very, very established,

Speaker 1 (00:39:26):

But there was a substantial growth in Slayer in the last few years.

Speaker 2 (00:39:32):

And also just with merchandising and all that, people getting better at online stuff like e-commerce. But I think that's a very overlooked thing, and people are so easy to hate on these bigger bands, not realizing how much they affect these industries. Metallica, another example is that festival Orion, I have never been treated better at a festival as a member of the press than I have been at that festival. I don't want to say it like I was being bribed, but they were feeding. I've never been fed before by a festival, lunch and dinner. They were giving us drinks. We were totally taken care of, and all the artists were like, this is the best festival I've ever played. And again, they've lost so much money on that festival, but they want to treat everybody right? They're fucking billionaires and they don't want people to be uncomfortable. They're not stingy.

Speaker 1 (00:40:25):

I've heard also from bands that tour with them that it's the best experience. I've thought about that. Also, another aspect to these huge bands. So Avenge Sevenfold, I'm not a huge fan, never was. However, I've always acknowledged that they're good at what they do, and I always found it super weird that people hated on them as much as they did because they're exactly what metal fans were saying they wished metal bands would do. We want metal bands to write their own songs. Why can't metal bands play anymore? Where did guitar solos go? I wish bands sounded a little bit more old school. All these things basically go down the checklist of everything that metal fans in that era hated about modern metal. And then you got a venge sevenfold that basically every single item that they wished a metal band would do. However, they were huge and a bunch of girls liked them and

Speaker 2 (00:41:18):

No dice. Just a quick aside on that, at Orion Festival the second day, avenge Sevenfold were playing and we were kind of walking around doing a video thing and we'd walk up to people and be like, what's your favorite Metallica song? Any person that we walked up to in an avenge sevenfold shirt we're just like, oh, I don't know Metallica. I'm here for Revenge Sevenfold. They brought in an entire new generation of rock fans, and I feel like people don't understand how big of a deal that is for the scene.

Speaker 1 (00:41:45):

Do you think that metal is its own worst enemy?

Speaker 2 (00:41:47):

Yes, totally.

Speaker 1 (00:41:49):

Metal

Speaker 2 (00:41:49):

Never celebrates success. Celebrate the elitist attitude. Only harms us, only keeps us insular. Whenever any artist shows success in hip hop or hop or any other genre, they're celebrated. All their peers are like, hell yeah. Isn't this awesome? Whereas I feel like everybody's so quick to tear success down in Heavy Metal, do that thing that you and I do to ourselves where it's like, yeah, but they're doing it to this successful metal band.

Speaker 1 (00:42:18):

Why do you think that is?

Speaker 2 (00:42:19):

I think it's because the kind of tropes of metal is to be an elitist and to find the most obscure band and to find the heaviest band and the least accessible band. So it's almost like I feel like a self-preservation thing of, I feel with metal, people identify their own personality too much to it. It's too closely associated to your personality. You aren't the bands that you listen to, but with Metal you are. And there's this thing, I was watching that thrash documentary Murder in the Front Row.

Speaker 1 (00:42:57):

Never seen it. Is it good?

Speaker 2 (00:42:59):

It's good. I highly recommend. It's a great look at the Bay Area thrash scene from the photographers who were there to capture it all as teenagers. But the thing that kind of stuck out to me is these 50-year-old guys talking about going to shows when they were 18 and being like, posers must die. And it's like if you were in a Motley Crew shirt, that shirt would be ripped up by the end of the show, man. Yeah, and it's like, I remember there was a point in my life where I was like, oh, that's awesome. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Fuck Poser. You can't listen to punk here. But now I'm just like, that's so stupid. If this punk kid was like, oh, my friends are into metal, I'll go check it out. Let me see what this is all about. They show up in a fucking Green Day shirt, and then they get harassed by these people for, it's like, why would they ever want to come back?

(00:43:44):

And it's like, you're just fucking up your scene. The scene needs, people need to come to shows, there needs to be transactions. The bigger the scene, the better it is for everybody. So I feel like with Metal, like you said, we're sometimes our own worst enemy where we don't allow people in or new sounds in. And that's another weird thing. I feel like Metal is the only genre that, I guess maybe electronic as well, where you can bring in any other style of music into it and it would work, but at the same time, there's certain things are off limits. If something sounds too new metal, that's it. It's dismissed.

Speaker 1 (00:44:21):

Yeah, conversation over.

Speaker 2 (00:44:22):

Yeah, or whatever. Throw in some folk metal, that's totally fine, but if someone's rapping, that's too far. No, we should be open to all of it.

Speaker 1 (00:44:34):

Do you think that it's gotten any better thanks to streaming?

Speaker 2 (00:44:39):

Yeah, I do think so. And I think yes, streaming and the New Generation, the Zoomers, I feel like genre restrictions aren't as big of a deal to younger, younger people, like people under 20 just because when we grew up, we would listen to radio stations or stuff that's only programmed to the specific genre that we like. Whereas with streaming and people don't have those classifications, I like everything people say, and it's just like it's, Hey, if the song slaps, I'll listen to it.

Speaker 1 (00:45:14):

There were for instance, record stores that only carried a specific kind of death metal. So you had access to limited supply of everything and it was always predetermined by somebody else.

Speaker 2 (00:45:26):

Right, exactly. But now with streaming, the boundaries are gone. And I really noticed it going to a horror show, HO 9 9 0 9, that Ben Horror. They are honestly, I really see them as the future of music. I might be giving them too much credit, but I was very much blown away at first of all how it wasn't rap and it wasn't metal. It was both. Sometimes it was both. Sometimes it was just one of those things. Sometimes it was going from one to the other and the crowd were so diverse. I've never seen these people at any other show. I felt 15 years older than everybody, and I'm 37. Everyone was so young and not only into it, but knew every word and it was just something is happening here. And it's so exciting to see that. And it was skaters and people that look like, I'm obviously assuming here, but people that look like hip hop heads, people look like Metalheads. It didn't matter. It was just like, oh, we just like this band.

Speaker 1 (00:46:31):

Interesting. So basically this band is capturing the countercultures kind of all collectively. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (00:46:41):

Which is pretty powerful. They're taking what's out in society and reinterpreting it back to, and the energy in the room. I cannot emphasize enough how blown away I was by the, it was like the sickest show you of your favorite band that you've ever been to. People were going wild, and it was something to see

Speaker 1 (00:47:03):

What genre do they classify under? Is there one

Speaker 2 (00:47:06):

There, a hip hop, hardcore punk group? That's their wiki.

Speaker 1 (00:47:09):

Okay. I was going to say though, it's a great thing though that there is somebody who is on the heavy music side of the fence that's capturing a wider audience. We need that.

Speaker 2 (00:47:22):

Ghostie Maine is another one.

Speaker 1 (00:47:24):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:47:24):

I'm very intrigued by what he's doing because it's basically taking industrial, he's ripping off old Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails sounds and wrapping over them or whatever, or however he performs. I'm not trying to diminish what he's doing, but it's like, oh, I've heard this before. But it's like for a new generation. So for that,

Speaker 1 (00:47:45):

It's got a very modern kind of intensity to it. It feels dirty.

Speaker 2 (00:47:50):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (00:47:51):

Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast, then you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy. URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration and information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is. The beginning of the month, nail the mix members, get the raw multi-tracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God, angels and Airwaves. Knock loose eth shuga, bring me the Horizon. Go Jira, asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others over 60 at this point. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song on the album and takes your questions live on air.

(00:48:43):

And these are guys like TLA Will Putney, Jens Bore, Dan Lancaster, toy Matson, Andrew Wade, and many, many more. You'll also get access to Mix Lab, which is our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics as well as Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use in your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those of you who really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhance, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain, staging, mastering low end and so forth. It's over 500 hours of content. And man, let me tell you, this stuff is just insanely detailed.

(00:49:37):

Enhanced members also get access to one-on-ones, which are basically office hour sessions with us and Mix Rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes and fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step. So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills in your audio career, head over to URM Academy to find out more. So I feel like that danger element kind of got removed from heavy music for a little while there, and that danger element is part of what was, I think keeping it going among the people who were going to keep it going. I guess it was inspiring and really spoke to people, and I think that for a minute there it softened up. And what I think is that that vibe, the danger vibe, is now in the trap scene where the music sounds dangerous, feels dangerous, it's intense. Not to say that there aren't metal bands that bring that out, but that's where I'm noticing that that vibe went. So it's almost like the metal kids from 20 years ago, the people who would've been going to metal shows 20 years ago or death metal shows are now those kids, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:50:54):

That's a great point. I 100% agree with that. And it brings up another issue I think with Metal, because we don't have these younger fans. The median age of an average metalhead is, I would say significantly older today than it was 10 years ago because we're not making new fans. It's just the same fans listening to the same artists that they liked 10 or 20 years ago and only listening to them with a few bands getting through like Ghost Broke Through and old people like Ghost. There's only so many bands like that, and I think that's a big issue. A few years ago, there were all these who were the metal headliners of a decade from now. Right now, Slayer's Gone. They were basically the go-to headliner for any metal festival for now. Good point. But even then, okay, Slayer, how long are they going to be able to even functionally play? True. True. So it's like who are these new bands? Who's going to headline chose, I guess five figure Death Punch slipped on, but even Slip not, that's

Speaker 1 (00:51:55):

Not going to last forever. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:51:57):

It's not going to last forever. There's no new bands. The late nineties was such an exciting moment, the late nineties early aughts with Slipknot and those new metal bands and then that new wave of American heavy metal. And I feel after that everything just kind of segmented and there aren't those massive bands that everybody agrees on anymore. All the big bands, everyone shits on Five Death Punch Ghosts. They have their haters. There's no band that everyone universally agrees on. It felt like in 2005 everyone loved Lamb of God.

Speaker 1 (00:52:26):

Yes. I think that's accurate.

Speaker 2 (00:52:28):

Everyone agreed. Those guys are waving the flag for us and we're all going to support them and get them to that pantera level. There's no band like that right now.

Speaker 1 (00:52:36):

What role do you see yourself playing as it evolves in this direction? Which I agree with. Where do you see you guys in this?

Speaker 2 (00:52:44):

Well, it's very difficult because I feel social media and specifically Facebook has completely changed online publishing. People don't visit our main page anymore. Our homepage used to be our most traffic page by tenfold, whereas now it's our most traffic page by twofold or something like that because people just are on social media and they'll see a story and they'll just click on it. And that's how we get our traffic. So our traffic is determined by what Facebook is willing to show our fans on that service. And so Facebook gives certain weight to certain types of stories over other types of stories. So we find ourselves having to write more of those types of stories, what Facebook would serve as opposed to just writing what's good. Now, we do write about small artists. We have 15 posts a day, but all 15 posts aren't being shown to our Facebook fans.

(00:53:45):

Our Facebook fans are just seeing that one post about John Schafer being arrested, and then they're just like, why are you just writing about John Schafer being arrested? How about some new music? And it's like there's 15 posts about music on the website. I'll sometimes actually go, because I anticipate this kind of negative feedback for these type of granular, not essentially music story, it's more of a crime story. I'll just be like, Hey, if you're coming in here to complain about how we don't write enough about music, here's 10 stories about Small Bay. Here's 10. Preempting it, preempting it, and then I'll start a thread of like, you could check out this band, you could check out this band, you could check out this band. If we could write about the best band in the world, but Facebook isn't going to show it to anybody unless it's it's, I don't know, a girl with her top off or whatever. You know what I mean? So something beyond the music, some hook beyond the music. Otherwise that band isn't going to break through. So to answer your question, it's very difficult to assist in making these bands, which absolutely I try to do as much as possible, while also covering these larger bands and their silly drama.

Speaker 1 (00:54:51):

You have to do the bigger bands and their silly drama in order to keep the vehicle

Speaker 2 (00:54:57):

Moving. Writing those dumb stories, people don't get that. Writing those dumb stories is what's keeping us in business enough to cover these small bands. We're not going to make any money interviewing a tiny band on, I don't want to call anybody out. That's a loss for us. But we want to do it because we support the band and we want, it's important people to see them important and it's important and it's investing in band. To go back to what you were saying earlier is we got very lucky. We started at just the right time, where a lot of these bands that ended up being popular were still very tiny and hungry themselves and willing to do media coverage like Lamb of God is the perfect example. And we established such a good relationship with them that to this day, they're always willing to work with us and it's very, very helpful. And now it's the other way around where they're very much helping us and so we have to keep doing that. We have to keep looking for these bands and looking out for them and who knows who the next big band is. And then the favor is sort of returned in a way.

Speaker 1 (00:55:57):

Yeah, we do a similar sort of thing. We have some huge bands on now The Mix, but we'll also we'll put on a band like Ark Spire or something, which I think are, they're doing well in their scene, but they're not bring me the Horizon huge or anything. We'll put bands like that on or Loath or whatever, just they don't have to be big. But the reason we can do that is we have the huge bands on, but I think that it's important for us to keep doing bands that we think are cool regardless of their size. Because if you can expose them to an audience of thousands of people that are going to get intimately familiar with them, that definitely helps. If discovery of new bands is a big problem nowadays than anything that helps in my opinion,

Speaker 2 (00:56:44):

And I feel because the homepage is dead, our influence to be able to be like, Hey, you should listen to this band. It's a much smaller, in that regard, a band like The Faceless, I feel like we had a big part in kind of preaching about their talents and their success. Yeah, you did. And bands in that era. And even with doth, I feel, honestly, I feel like we kind of championed you guys.

Speaker 1 (00:57:13):

You guys were awesome. You guys were one of the few that were really cool to us.

Speaker 2 (00:57:21):

And it was generally because I fucking loved, I still listen to the counselors and I feel like I could see the effect it was having. There was a very, oh, we wrote about this band. Now people are paying attention to them.

Speaker 1 (00:57:37):

Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:57:37):

Whereas I feel like now, because our homepage isn't as powerful, we don't have that much say, we don't have that much power to make a band. I feel like bands are now made almost, not before we get to them, but they do it on Spotify. That's where you go to breakout is on these streaming platforms, which didn't really exist in the way they do now 10 years ago.

Speaker 1 (00:58:01):

What I think is cool though is that you guys have adapted, it sounds to me like that's your whole story from going from public access to focusing on the homepage. For instance, every move that you've made seems to me like you're adapting to the ever-changing landscape.

Speaker 2 (00:58:20):

You can't be too stubborn about your business model if something isn't working. And I think that's another reason for not taking investment, kind of going back to earlier is we didn't have anyone to answer to but ourselves. We didn't have to convince people. So you could just pivot. Yeah, we could just pivot. And we did pivot at the Snap a Finger. An example is we had the absolute dumb idea to think that we could compete with YouTube. And to be fair, this is before Google bought them out. This was just as they were. We predate YouTube. YouTube came out, I believe 2006. We started 2004, and we thought we can compete with 'em. So in 2007, 2008, we launched our own video hosting platform. People could upload their own videos to our site. I mean, YouTube didn't own the world yet. Yeah, YouTube didn't own the world quite yet, and people could upload, and we hosted our own video and we were spending thousands, thousands of dollars a month.

(00:59:18):

We were blowing so much money on this with the idea. We figured, oh, we'll just have video ads and it'll pay for itself. And the thing is, video ads were way too new at the time. No record label had video ads, so it just didn't work. All of that hosting was left monetized and we were just burning through money and we gave it a good six months a year. And then I was just like, we can't afford to keep losing all this money. We were going through tens of thousands of dollars a year. That's money that we could just be paying ourselves with. It's showing no return. So we just decided that's it. We're not going to do self-hosting. We have to move all of our stuff to YouTube. And it was a headache for a month to transition, but it was the best decision we ever made.

(01:00:01):

Our profits skyrocketed after that just because we stopped the bleeding and there were so many instances where we were like, this is what we're going to do, and it's just not working. And we just said, okay, that's it. We're going to stop. Or this is working. We should do this more. When we started the blog, it wasn't the main focus. The video was the main focus. I even remember on the main page, the videos were up center and there was a tiny corner with the blog. I remember when you introduced the blog, I was like, Hmm, there's a blog. Yeah, exactly. But then we noticed that, oh, it's the videos we're only updating three times a week, whatever. But the blog, like I said, 10 times a day, so it's like we should give that a little more weight. And now it's kind of transformed into everything is just within the blog, the videos and everything. So yeah, pivoting is very important. Not being, don't be stubborn and being like, no, this will work. The evidence is in front of you that it's not working, something else is working. Do that. Instead.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):

We've had a few things where we were sure it was going to work and we invested pretty heavily into it. Like a beginner course. URM is good for people of all levels except for people who literally know nothing. So we were figuring, good idea. Let's try to help those people too. Those people are not interested in what we have to offer. If you're interested in what we have to offer, you already know how to plug in a USB cable into an interface. But we definitely tried. We put a good eight months into it, we got fluff to be the instructor. We put a lot into it. I mean, it profited a little bit, but not in terms of opportunity cost in terms of you factor that in. It was a loser, but I still think it was a good idea and I still think we should have tried it and maybe in the future there's another way to do it. We've had a few things like that where luckily because we don't have investors like you guys, we can just have a meeting and say, alright, no more onto the next thing. We thought it was going to be cool. We tried. Nope. The end.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):

And I think that's very important in business and it's a very good trait to have to be able to let something go and to just like what you said, acknowledge the success of it, acknowledge the shortcomings of it, and just decide the best way forward is just to move on. Without this, sometimes it's a very difficult decision to make too.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):

Well, because you work hard on something, you want it to work and in your head, well, you wouldn't have tried it and taken a risk on it if you didn't think it was going to work. So you have to reconcile reality with your head, which is weird sometimes, but the evidence is the evidence.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):

I think another thing is sometimes people stretch themselves too thin. Something that we've certainly done ourselves, we're only two people, which is amazing. It's very tight budgets, and we do have freelancers, we have writers and everything like that, but two people running the ship. So it's like any cost is just cost out of our pockets. You have to be very careful with that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:03:04):

Yeah, spreading ourselves too thin. I call that the entrepreneurs curse. Finn actually taught me about that. I think entrepreneurs have this idea that they can do a million different things and it's because something worked and they know how to make things work and there's no shortage of ideas and they get excited about these things. And so I want to do this side hustle and that side hustle, and we can start that site and this site and we can do these 25 different projects with the main site all at the same time. And he taught me to focus on one thing. That's why when URM was establishing itself, I had one side hustle metal beard club, but it only took up 10% of my time. And I think that had I continued producing, had I continued playing guitar, had I tried to launch multiple URM style things, would've failed, had to focus on the one thing.

(01:04:05):

And URM has stayed. We do a ton of things now, but we still stay very much in our lane. And it's because what happens when we don't do that is we'll have a good idea, but it'll just be underserved because we don't have the resources for it. We've learned that, and I've learned personally that it's better to do the things that you can actually focus on and complete and execute at the highest level. And then once that's out of the way, then you can move on to the next thing, but not try to do them all at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):

I learned this lesson too myself. You

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):

Kind of have to, right?

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):

I was just like, oh, I'm going to start this website, I'm going to do this, and it'll just take care of itself. I won't have to update it. But then the server crashes and you have deal. Yeah, you have to deal with, and it was just like after a week or two, I was like, why am I doing this? This is just taking away any side idea that I have takes away from time that I could be working on metal injection. So five years ago or a little shorter, I was just like, I'm done. I'm just doing metal. I'm not going to take on any freelance projects. Early on, I would do web design stuff on the side just because we weren't making that much money and it was just crazy money to turn down. But it felt so great to get to a point where I was like, you know what?

(01:05:26):

I do not need to take on those freelance jobs. I would much rather spend that time just watching TV or just relaxing or not have some downtime in between working on metal injection. And I thought it made me work better and metal injection to not have those distractions. So I will say though, it's a balance. There might be some situations where you're like, oh, I could try this and I might not be spread too thin and it might work. So I would say give it a shot. But if you see that it's not happening, how you envision and it's kind of taking away from your main gig, then you should try to get out of it is don't commit too much to it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):

Well, with Metal Beard Club for instance, I thought it was a good idea. We made good quality stuff. It was better than the mass market stuff. It was good branding was on, it was good, it was done well, but the amount of time it would've taken to build it up to not be losing money constantly would've taken away so much time from this thing I've got that's like a market leader. The creativity required to run something and also just the energy required to run something is a finite resource. You have to replenish it every time you go to sleep. Those people that just can go for 16 hours a day, full power, they're rare. They're super, super rare. I know a few, but they're not normal. Normal people have a finite amount of mental resource to work with,

Speaker 2 (01:07:07):

And you shouldn't beat yourself up about it for not being that kind of person. I used to do that too. I should be hustling more. I shouldn't be relaxing right now. And it's like, no, I shouldn't longer feel guilty about that. I think when you feel like that, you just, I said, have to take a step back and remember that last joke. Remember the success that you've had and the success you've created and allow yourself to enjoy. Because if you're not enjoying it, then why are you doing it?

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):

Also, we're talking about other people who have this seemingly endless supply of mental resources, but then again, we're just assuming that about them. What would they say if they were in this conversation?

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):

Yeah, and I'm sure as we're saying this, there's probably some people watch it be like, how could you say that? Exactly. That's exactly my point. You work way harder than I do. And that's what I realized too, is why we are successful at why you're successful. URM, why I'm successful at mental injection is just because we took the initiative to actually do it and then follow up and continue doing it until it's successful. Because I realized the hardest thing for most people is starting. I would get questioned, what's your advice, man? How do you do it? What's your advice? Just start. Just do it. Yeah. Just go and do it. Learn from your mistakes. Do it better next time. And people are like, no, no, no, no, but really, how do you make it? How do you make it? I'm like, I'm telling you, that's how I made it. No, it wasn't like a snap of the fingers. You just got to keep doing it and it'll happen. Either it happens or it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):

Well, I think that's kind the way that you had this fantasy of the sugar daddy coming in. I think people have this fantasy of a secret or a solution for success, or there must be some formula I can apply that will make this work some sort of way to make it make sense to where they can just follow a recipe and materialize their dream. If that were true, that would be a whole lot easier and more relaxing than you just have to fucking do it and do it and do it some more and then just do it and then do it even more for a long time, a really long time, years and years and years and years and just keep doing it. Maybe it'll work.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):

It took us six years until we even started making real money also just because we didn't know what we were doing the first three years.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):

Well, I mean, that's part of it. Not knowing what you're doing is part of it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):

And it took us six years, like I said, and then another year until I could quit my job and even then a few years until it was like I was making the money that I was making at my old full-time job. It was a very slow process. And the reason it was is just because we were doing it ourselves. We had no boosters. We couldn't skip the line or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:10:07):

So when people come to you and want the secret and you tell them the truth, do you find that they ever get mad at you for you're like, you're holding something back?

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):

Yeah. This conversation. I had backstage at a festival once with this, a guy with his shitty camera doing interviews just coming up to me and being like, bro, I love you. I love what you guys have done. I love what you do. What's your secret? And I'm just like, you just got to keep doing it and put your stuff out there and build relationships. And the more you do it slowly but surely, it'll build up and yeah, yeah, but how do I get to where you are? I just told you. Yeah. What I realize is he's not going to listen to me no matter what. And those people, if people have that mindset, they're not going to make it. They're just looking to jump ahead. They're looking to jump the line, not do the work.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):

I don't think they even realize there's a line,

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):

Right? Yeah, exactly. And I mean, certainly for some people there is not a line. If you have a famous parent or a rich parent, you could certainly buy your way to the front of the line.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):

But you know what? I don't think that having a rich parent could buy your way into having a longstanding success like metal injection.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I've realized that resentment I had early on about not having rich parents is what actually drove me. I imagine if I did have rich parents, I would've abandoned metal injection after a year because it would've been like, oh, we sunk all this money into it and we haven't seen it come back. I'm done.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):

So do you remember once there was a label who started a site that was going to be, they were going to take down metal sucks, I guess. I think they were also coming after you guys, but there's this one specifically where they put a bunch of money into it and they tried to get a bunch of the guest bloggers from Metal Sucks to write for them, including me. I didn't want to, but they had a little bit of power over me and me not wanting to kind of ruin my relationship a little bit with them. It was like a mafia kind of thing,

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):

Which is so silly because all those people are no longer at that label. They're so on God.

Speaker 1 (01:12:21):

And that site was never going to do anything. But that's what I mean by the rich parent can't buy the success. They can buy the site, they can get some people involved with it, but no amount of money can make it something that the audience will embrace and keep going to over and over and over that's built organically.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):

And that person that they hire would be nowhere near as passionate about doing it as I am about my site, my site. And we've had a lot of things pop up like that try to come in on our territory. We've had metal labels start their own video content farm and cover bands not even on their label. And we're just like, what are you doing? And the way I look at it is when we thought we could start a label or when Metal Sucks, thought they could run their own festival, we don't know what we're doing in those spaces. It's the exact same thing. They didn't know, don't know how the internet works, they don't know how websites work. They know what they're good at, which is selling music and getting publicity for their artists, but they weren't in the business of retaining an audience to come back for content every day. I guess now labels are slightly better at that, but at the time it was just they were going about it all wrong. And you're right, they were just throwing money at it not knowing what they were doing and not knowing what is worth throwing money at.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):

Yeah. So I really don't think money makes a difference. It's kind of like also a rich parent behind a band or something. There's a lot of rich parents behind bands that failed. So if a band succeeds and one of 'em happens to have a rich parent, they didn't succeed because of the rich parent. They succeeded because the audience embraced the band. It's like when people will look at the kid of a Hollywood star who got into movies and say they got in because of their parents. Maybe there's some element of truth that they knew people because of their parents, but how many children of Hollywood stars wanted to be in movies and don't have a movie career? I think that's the grand majority.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):

Yeah, exactly. How many failures are there at that? You still have to be a relatively good actor or at least good looking, right?

Speaker 1 (01:14:36):

Yeah. Look for me saying this, people are going to figure out the one or two people that slipped the cracks,

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):

Right? But generally

Speaker 1 (01:14:45):

You have to be good at it. There has to be a reason for people to put money into you, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):

So you said that you had a full-time job. Was the internship at Roadrunner, where does that fall in?

Speaker 2 (01:14:59):

So that was before my full-time job. So the internship, I had an internship at Roadrunner, and funny enough, the only reason I had that internship was because of metal injection. I was handing out flyers to kind of give you an idea date when Metal injection launched, that was still going out handing out flyers at shows because there wasn't social media to promote your site on. And I gave my flyer to somebody who worked at Roadrunner Records, a publicist, Amy Reto, bless her heart, shout out Amy. And she hit me up and was like, Hey, this looks really cool. I'm a publicist. Do you want to interview Slipknot? Yeah. Great. And I was just like, I'm a big fan of the label. I built metal injection. Are you guys hiring? And she's like, we don't have any positions, but we have an internship, but it's you're probably way too qualified for that.

(01:15:51):

I was like, I'll do it. I don't care. I have nothing. I just dropped out of college. So I was like, I have nothing going on. I'll do it. And it was the best thing ever. But it was also a wake up call because for the first few months it was great, but then it was, and I was essentially their webmaster. I was running the website I was building out, and I volunteered for all of it. I'm not saying I didn't, but after a while I was like, I'm working here. I'm doing work. I should be paid. And it was kind of this impasse where just the bureaucracy of the company, there was no budget to hire somebody else, which I didn't really quite get at the time. I was like, they can make budget. It's like, no, this is just the budgets are set at the end of the year.

(01:16:35):

This is what we have. I mean, they could, but they could. But right. It wasn't that much of a priority, I guess. And I even created this whole pit. I was so set on it and I was so like, this is, I'm going to get this. And it just didn't happen. They were nice enough to be like, you are doing work for us that is outside of the realm of what an internship is. And in the future, if you do something where we would've otherwise hired a freelancer for it, we want to hire you as a freelancer to do those projects. So it was fair. It wasn't like they completely left me out on a lurch. They did hire me for projects, but it left a really bad taste in my mouth. And I built up this loyalty to the label, and it was at a very exciting time in the label. But also on the other hand, one thing I was still also aware of is it provided me access to all of those bands that were the biggest bands in metal at the time, and really helps me get metal ejection ahead. And also when we would interview the band, I would post on Roadrunner's website that the interviews that, so I'm sending traffic, so I got all this free marketing out of it kind of. So it wasn't a total waste.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):

I was going to just say, don't you think it's a blessing they didn't hire you?

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):

Yeah, it really was. It really, really was because it was my first wake up call that the record label side of things sucks and there's no money in it. And then I actually ended up getting a job. One of the product managers there left, got a job at a smaller label, like a bigger position at a smaller label. And he was the one person there that acknowledged the work that I was doing and how good I was at it. And he was like, Hey, why don't you come actually work at this smaller label? It was a boutique label, DRT Entertainment, but they had some cool bands. They had GU, clutch Power Man, 5,000. And I went there. It was my first actual job, and I negotiated a part-time job for full-time pay. Needless to say, this label didn't last too long, but it was such a mess. It was such a shit show from the top, and it was like, wow, this is so disorganized.

(01:18:49):

It was depressing. And it was just like, I need to get out of the music business. I assumed like, oh, with metal injection, it could lead to some sort of full-time job at a label or whatever. But then I quickly realized all these labels are not paying money for web designer. I wanted to be the website guy. And this was also just as MySpace was starting, so it was still called New Media and nobody cared about it. They didn't give it the respect that it should have had. They should have been ahead of the curve and had MySpace profiles for all their artists and all this stuff. But that came a year or two after I left. So this shitty job was like, I can't work in the music business. I'm obviously still going to do metal injection. That's something under my control. And I love it.

(01:19:38):

I put too much. It's my life's work. I don't want to quit that, but I need a job. I need money. I need to live, and I have this skill so I could just work, should work at a web design firm. So I lucked out and I found a kind of web design firm ad agency, and that was my full-time job for a few years. And it was a great job. I immediately got paid so much more and got benefits and got treated well, and it was like, oh, it's so great not to work at a fucking dingy record label anymore. And it was a big, it was like, oh, I'm never going into that side of the business again. That side of the business is not for me. Yeah. And this job was actually very helpful for my kind of the web design kind of aspect of my skillset and learning. I learned more in six months of working there than all my life of doing web design, which was being self-taught. But there they were like, oh, you don't want to do it this way. And it was great because it's like I have no insane college debt. I lucked out in that. I just learned myself along the way and I basically stayed there as long as I could until the very last minute, until we all kind of decided to quit our jobs and do this stuff full time.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):

So had you been hired by Roadrunner, it's entirely possible that your skills wouldn't have developed fast enough to stay ahead of the curve because the Roadrunner website and everything would've been as good as you were, but there would've been no one to help you develop, whereas this job helped develop you. And also I think that we were talking about limited resources, brainwise that could have taken up all of your music energy doing the Roadrunner site.

Speaker 2 (01:21:26):

Yes, a hundred. That's a great point. And the skill set thing is, I'm glad you touched on that because I consciously realized that myself working at the smaller label, I was the only web design guy there. It was all on me. I was the most, not just the only, I was the most computer savvy. I was also just the default it, I was just tech support whenever everybody's email went down and it's like, I don't want these responsibilities. I don't want be the smartest guy in the room. I want to be at a mid-level where I could learn from people smarter than me. And that's what this other job provided because it was very, I have very fond memories of working there because everyone was so talented and everyone was uniquely talented at a specific thing. And so we all kind of taught each other about these. I learned from them, they learned from me. And you were totally right that my skillset would've been totally hampered. And I absolutely applied stuff. I learned with the technology on the technology side to building a metal injection.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):

I think it's interesting about losing the job or not even getting it. I remember there was an intern 10 or more years ago who was there when my band was signed and this intern had really hoped to get a job there and did not. And this person went fucking crazy online, like tirades against Roadrunner, just crazy. And that person really hasn't done much in the industry since. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because through URM, I get to see a lot of people at the early stages of their career. Obviously most of our students are not going to have careers, but there are people who are going for careers, and I get to see the mistakes that they make. And one of the things that I think people do often, and I wish they didn't, is they take unquote losses way too hard without stopping to think about how it's not really actually a loss. And I realized that in hindsight, you can spin a story however you want, but point is you didn't get the job you wanted. You didn't go on some tirade and completely burn the building down and burn yourself down in the process however you felt personally is your thing. But the point is

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):

Right, I would never express it outwardly. Ultimately I realized it would be of no benefit to me.

Speaker 1 (01:23:52):

Exactly, exactly my point. So maybe you didn't get the job, but you still made that work for you, and I wish that people would be better about rejection. It sucks, rejection sucks, but there's always a way to turn it into something that's in your favor. In my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):

I absolutely agree. You do have to look at the bright side of rejection. It never hit me that not getting that job was the best thing that ever happened to me. I resented that for so long, but it really all worked out. I feel like until you kind of are able to look back a few years later and just kind of laugh, I was so silly. You really do need that kind of hindsight to see that, but also try to tell yourself in the moment not to be so bitter.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):

Nobody likes to get rejected, whether it's romantically or professionally or whatever, going for a loan, nobody likes to get rejected. There's a way to handle it in a way not to handle it. The way not to handle it is to make a spectacle out of it. Don't let them see you bleed, basically.

Speaker 2 (01:24:57):

Yeah, exactly. By doing that, you just tell not only the people that you used to work for, but everybody else that you cannot be trusted with bad news because you're just going to go and be historical about it. You know what I mean? The way people take bad news, people are very, and like I said, metal is a very small, very insular community, and word gets around very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):

It's crazy how true that is. People always used to say that to me, but has it gotten in smaller?

Speaker 2 (01:25:26):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):

Or have I just been around a while at this point?

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):

Well, both, but I do think it's consolidated right now. There's not really touring, there's not opportunities for new entities to come around, but also it's just there's only certain, you really have to accept that you're going to not make a shit ton of money. You really have to love it, and not a lot of people have that much passion for it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:51):

Where do you think that passion came from for you?

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):

Well, I think it was just that it was a combination. This job that I've created for myself is a combination of all the things that I enjoy and all the things that I'm good at. I've always been interested in broadcasting since I was a kid, and I would take classes in high school. It was my major in college, and I was always interested in building websites from, even when I had a OL, I remember even they had a OL hometown webpage builder. I built little wrestling websites, and that's how I started it is how I started with websites, just through my passion for wrestling and through my passion for wrestling. I got into heavy metal just based on certain bands being entrance themes for wrestlers, and then just discovering those bands. And then I got cable at 13. My entire neighborhood was not wired for cable until I was 13.

(01:26:54):

It was very disappointing for me growing up. It sucked. But then I finally got MTV and I was obsessed with MTV. I was obsessed with the culture. I was obsessed with the type of content. It was the coolest thing for me. And so taking all of that knowledge and all of that interest, I applied it to metal injection and before metal injection, I had a wrestling website as a teenager. Basically what metal injection is like a wrestling blog essentially, but as a teenager, and it was during the dotcom bubble. So at age 15, I was making two or three grand a month.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):

That's kind of crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):

Just for a few months during this insane bubble of advertising, when advertising revenue was ridiculous, it collapsed immediately and I stopped getting LoJack. It was just total luck. I mean, it wasn't just luck. I was a talented web developer or whatever, but that kind of gave me the taste of what it could be. After I closed the wrestling website, it was like not being in a band. I needed to get a new band, so I needed to have a new, it was my hobby, so I needed a new website to be a hobby, and then I just kind of fell into it all just snowballed with what I was saying earlier with how metal injection started.

Speaker 1 (01:28:04):

Sounds like you're perfectly suited for what you ended up doing.

Speaker 2 (01:28:08):

Exactly. So what I was getting at is it's all the, I never wanted to work for having that job that I had made me realize I want to be my own boss. I don't like having a boss. I want to do whatever I want. I enjoy making websites. I enjoy creating content. I enjoy being in front of a camera or being in front of a microphone. So all of this stuff, it basically pushed all of that stuff into what metal injection became. I molded it based on what my interests were.

Speaker 1 (01:28:35):

That makes sense. That's another one of the reasons that I think you can't buy your way into this sort of thing because the people who do these types of things, it's like they're, it's not predisposed for it, but they're uniquely suited for these types of things. For instance, with URM, it's possible because of my experience, the reason that I'm able to book these bands is because of the context that I've made and dating back to 2005 and the fact that I know how labels work. I know how bands work, but I also know how production works. I know so many of these different facets of the industry because I've been in it, that it kind of made this soup of a unique ability to make this kind of site. It just worked.

Speaker 2 (01:29:24):

You know what you're not good at and you know where you need help, and that's when you bring in someone like Finn, who I'm sure was very instrumental.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):

Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):

And that's kind of how me and Frank worked. We knew what we each were good at and what the other person was good at, and we knew when stuff was out of our realm of knowledge and where we'd have to either hire a freelancer or something like that. And I think that's very important, and it's much easier to start something with a partner than to do it all on your own.

Speaker 1 (01:29:53):

Some of our early competitors who have fallen by the wayside, their problem, in my opinion was they were greedy and tried to do it all themselves rather than maybe make a little less money, but have a fucking team. They started off taking more money home at the beginning than any of us because they weren't splitting it with anybody, but we quickly pass them because they couldn't compete with a monolith basically. They just couldn't match our firepower. We had too many people with good brains working hard.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):

Exactly. That's the thing. You can't buy that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):

No, you definitely. You definitely cannot. Okay, last question. I just want to know your thoughts on this. So you're talking about hiring freelancers, but at the same time we're talking about learning new skills, like what you got from your full-time job, learning how to do things that you didn't previously know how to do in order to advance your business. So where do you draw the line? How do you know the difference between I should just hire someone to take care of this versus I should develop this skill for myself?

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):

That is a great question, and the answer is constantly evolving. I would say if you asked me 10 years ago, if you asked either of us 10 or 15 years ago, we would say, we just do it ourselves. That was what was so exciting about metal injection. Early on, I learned how to do so many things just because we were like, oh, we need to do this. I learned after effects or whatever, just like, oh, we need some fancy graphics, and I was so much more motivated to learn to sit there and trial and error and figure it out. I think now I am a little older, a little less intrigued by learning new things. So a lot less now

Speaker 1 (01:31:42):

You're also a lot more established,

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):

A lot more established, and we're a lot more successful, so it's much easier for me to part with money where it's like, I will still be able to eat if I hire somebody to do this certain thing. Ever since quitting that job, when I was at that job, I was such a fucking killer developer. I knew all the latest shit I was up on all the latest technology, all that stuff. When I left that job, I wasn't coding as much. It's like if you don't play guitar every day, you get shittier at guitar. Oh, yes. My skillset was waned and also the technology was moving forward and I wasn't learning all the new stuff. That's kind why I wasn't really, I realized I'm not that into developing. I realized I'm more of a producer. I understand how it works, and I would much rather hire a developer that is up on all that stuff and tell them what I want because it would take less time than if I were to sit there and have to read three hours of tutorials, trial and error.

(01:32:39):

Why isn't working? It would just take me way too long, and it's not that I don't have the time, it's just my time. I realized this was another big realization. My time is being wasted, essentially doing that because it could be better spent creating profit for the company, whether it's writing, there are certain things where only I can do it, but the development, anybody can do it essentially. So I think that's kind of, to answer your question, you have to ask yourself a few questions. Do I have more time on my hands or do I have, or is my time more valuable and I have more budget to do this? How valuable a skill is this where I need to learn it myself and will I be able to apply it enough in the future where it's worth the five hours or whatever to learn it and whatever.

(01:33:29):

Early on, I would say I have all the time in the world to do that stuff. Now I have a life. I try to not be on the computer 18 hours a day, so I am much more likely to hire out and you can't do everything. It really was a big step for me to learn to ask for help and to delineate and give people, there are certain things I realized anybody could do this, anybody could. We have a social media manager now who posts to Instagram or whatever. I was very protective of our visual image, but it's like I could just create a template and they could just run with the template and then I don't have to do that. That's 20 minutes at a time that I save that I could be doing something else. So it's a balance. I would say you have to figure out what only you can do or what you want to do. There's certain things where I could certainly hire someone else, but I'd rather do it and what anybody can do, and it's more valuable to just hire out and focus on the stuff that only you can do.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):

Another thing that I want to add, I agree with everything you said is earlier on in your career, when you're learning how to do everything, the kind of people who you could afford to hire as freelancers probably won't do as good of a job as you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:47):

Great point. Yes,

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):

Exactly. Now, you can afford people who you can trust, and that's same with me. The kinds of people that I hire now are awesome, but I couldn't afford them. I couldn't afford Finn at the beginning. It was a few years before we got Finn involved. I couldn't out pay creative live straight up, but then eventually I could, and I did at the beginning. It was better for me to learn how to do the marketing than to hire some lame ass copywriter guy that doesn't know anything about production metal or the stuff we talk about.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):

You're going to end up doing twice as much work anyway with them because you're going to have to correct them and explain to them, and you're like, I should have just done this myself.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):

Exactly. But as we grew and we're able able to pay for things like for instance, why not finally get Finn involved, he's way better at that shit than I could ever hope to be. Our web developer, Chris Smith, he's great. We were finally able to bring him on a retainer. We couldn't have ever done that at the beginning, so we had to duct tape our shit together.

Speaker 2 (01:35:53):

Funny enough, Chris and I, Chris worked at the company that I worked for.

Speaker 1 (01:35:58):

Did he?

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):

My last full-time job, yeah. We were in different offices, so we never, that's, I don't think we ever interacted, but we realized that we worked. He's awesome. The same company. Yeah. Great guy. I mean, I've only texted with him. I haven't met him in person, but

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):

It doesn't surprise me that you guys share a background.

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):

Yeah, that was a funny little thing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:16):

Alright, well, Rob, I think you a good place to end the episode. It's been a pleasure catching up with you.

Speaker 2 (01:36:21):

It's been so great talking to you. I have so little social interaction now that I very much hold dear, these kind of conversations and I always enjoy talking to you, Al. You're genuinely one of the, not just smartest people in the music business, but thank you. You also have a level of self-awareness that I feel a lot of people miss out on, and I feel we could very much connect on that kind of level.

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):

Knowing what you suck at has served me very well. Not knowing what you suck at, knowing what I suck at. Thank you, by the way for saying that. Knowing what, I don't have the capability of being the best in the world at, for instance, guitar, I worked with people who did have the capability of being the best in the world. It was just right there in front of my face. No matter what you do, you will never be as good as this person. So you can be pretty good, for sure, better than most, but can you have that number one spot? No, ain't happening. And the thing is, I want that number one spot more than I want a guitar and same with production. No matter how hard I worked, would I ever be as good as Josh Wilber? Nope. As good as Will Putney. Nope. Just not going to happen. And those guys deserve to be in that number one spot that they are in, but this, I can be in the number one spot and can be the market leader. It has served me very well to realize I'm not the guy for those things, and it's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:37:48):

It's a very big step to come to that realization. Same with me with motion graphics. I was like, I'm never going to be good at this. Not that I'm wasting time, but I'm just not going to. You just have to know when

Speaker 1 (01:37:58):

You're not that guy.

Speaker 2 (01:37:59):

Yeah. When you've hit that wall and it's like with something, it's like, I'm not that guy, but I'm going to keep learning. You'll know when you have the fire to attempt get to be that guy. Yeah, I hear you. You have to know when to put down the guitar.

Speaker 1 (01:38:15):

Yeah, exactly. You have to know also what your motivations are. If you don't have that wiring in you to be market leader or something like that, that's fine too, but be aware of that. If you do have that motivation and you're not trying to make that happen, you're going to be fucking miserable If you don't have that motivation and you're cool with being a b plus at something, which is totally fine. I'm not judging. That's cool too. More power to you. I'm jealous, actually, but I don't have that in me, so the choice is either be severely unhappy and hate myself and hate my life, or find a thing that I can do better than anyone. That's it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:56):

You just have to find it, that's all.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:59):

If you care.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:01):

Yeah. Some people just want to make money and then go into finance, go be a dentist. Yeah, which

Speaker 1 (01:39:05):

Is totally cool.

Speaker 2 (01:39:07):

Yeah, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:39:08):

Know thyself is pretty important. It bums me out. I see a lot of people in music who don't have the awareness and they torture themselves with things that are just never going to happen, and they want them so bad where they could take a sidestep and make something happen and be perfectly happy with their lives. Just would take a little bit of awareness.

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):

Isn't that the lesson? Here

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):

It is. It's

Speaker 2 (01:39:34):

Take a step back. Reassess the situation.

Speaker 1 (01:39:37):

Yes. Well, Rob, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:39:39):

Thank you. This was very fun.

Speaker 1 (01:39:40):

Okay, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at al Levy URM audio, and of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.