How LinkedIn Changed My Life

Posted by Pinky on May 31, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

Spoiler alert! LinkedIn.com didn’t actually change my life. I changed my life, using LinkedIn. This is the story of how I moved 2,200 miles across the country without missing a beat.

As I mentioned in this post back in January, my wife and I decided to move from Nashville, TN to Portland, OR to be closer to family by this Summer. That’s all well and good, but the practical realities of moving across the country are daunting, to say the least. It takes a lot of patience and tenacity just to deal with housing choices, let alone transportation and the logistics of getting from Point A to Point B. But as many people can attest, those are merely details to work through as long as you know that you’ll be gainfully employed once you get there. And THAT is where most people stumble. Without a guaranteed source of income on the other side, most people can’t afford to move in the first place. And landing a job in a city 2,000 miles away can seem like an impossible task. Thanks to LinkedIn, that was actually the easiest part of the entire process for me, and I’m going to tell you how.

Know Your Industry

It may go without saying, but unless you know what you’re looking for, it can be awfully difficult to find it. In my case, I went in search of small-to-mid-sized businesses with an entrepreneurial flare, programming, creative and marketing services to compliment my skillset, and the courage to hire a Southern transplant with a stupid name like “Pinky Gonzales” to top it all off. Portland is full of web design shops, major ad agencies and boasts one of the highest percentages of entrepreneurs per capita in the Nation.  But those are just stats. Connecting with real people in those places is the name of the game. So where did I find them?

Blogs

Anyone worth their salt in my space is an avid reader of blogs. TechCrunch is one of the more popular destinations, and most importantly, includes a comprehensive database of all of the companies they have ever mentioned, available online at CrunchBase.com. This was square-one in my search. Their “advanced search” feature allowed me sort and display only companies in the Portland area, which returned an initial list of about 90 companies. I widdled this list down to about 20 that fit my criteria, and then began researching each one in-depth.

Enter LinkedIn

It’s easy to get a sense of the size and vibe of a company by viewing founder and employee profiles on the site. Is there a long list of “former” employees? Too many “new hires?” Are the founders well-connected and actively updating their profiles? It doesn’t take long before the have’s and the have-not’s sort themselves out, and in the end I was left with about 10 that I felt were worth reaching out-to.

‘Add To Your Network’

Many people fail to use LinkedIn to its fullest potential because they think you need to be a “premium subscriber” to send messages to people you don’t know. While it’s true that paid members can do so, the real trick is to introduce yourself in a meaningful way while asking strangers to join your network. This is an example of the messages I sent to people that I was interested in meeting:

“Dear soandso,
My name is Pinky Gonzales and I found you in a round-about way through CrunchBase.com. I too am a brand marketing guy, and my wife and I will be relocating to Portland this Summer, so thought I would reach out and introduce myself. Hope you’re off to a great week!”

The thing about using this method is that your messages have to be brief – just 300 characters total. This forces you to get to the point while still being pleasant and inviting. If they accept your invite, you are then free to write them a long-form message, which I did. When the time was right, I would mention that I was looking for a great professional fit as I made plans to start this new life. Because I did not limit my search to “help wanted” ads, I had no idea if they were even hiring! But I figured that if they liked me enough, they could potentially open something just for me, or at least refer me to others that may be on the hunt.

And that’s exactly what happened. Of the 90 companies I started with, 20 looked pretty good, 10 looked great, and one of them was a direct hit. I will be making a formal announcement about my new position on July 1st, but it’s a good one, with a great group, and I couldn’t be more excited. What’s important to know is that they had no intention of hiring someone like me. It simply made sense once we all got together.

I did end up flying out to meet with them once during this process, which also gave me a chance to do some house-hunting and trip planning, but I hadn’t even purchased a plane ticket before there was a strong line of communication going and everyone felt that it would be a good use of the time and money.

I’ve got a few more LinkedIn tricks up my sleeve, but at 1,000 words, this post is already a lot to take in. The takeaways for today are these…

When moving to a new city:

• Search for companies that fit your needs first. You may find blogs, databases, “Best Places to Work in…” sites – you name it. Make a list.
• Find employees of those companies on LinkedIn and take note of the apparent culture. Big? Small? Fun? Corporate? The way an employee describes their position says a lot about the company itself.
• Reach out using the “Add To Your Network” button. Make your introduction friendly but brief, giving context to the invite itself.
• Once you’re connected, provide more detail about who you are and why you’re connecting. It’s ok to mention that you are seeking opportunities in the area, but approach it from a position of, “I would love your advice about local companies that may be interested in someone with my skillset,” rather than simply, “I want a job… Are you hiring… etc.”

And finally, stay at it until you land your dream job. Or at least your next job. It’s often said that job hunting IS a job, and I completely agree. I don’t know how many hours I spent on this endeavor, but it gave me a chance to learn about my new home town, and now I’m connected to a few dozen people that I have every intention of taking out for a beer, without any need or expectation for a job. We all share common interests and live in the same small city, so my professional network had already begun to expand before I even made the move.

Happy hunting!

Portland Bound

Posted by Pinky on Jan 25, 2011 in Blog | 17 comments

The year was 2000. I was 23 at the time and had little idea where my life was headed, except to Nashville, TN.  What had begun in San Francisco had taken me through Los Angeles and on to Music City, where I hoped I would find my true place in this world.

And so I did. I worked hard. I took risks. I drank a lot of beer. (A LOT of beer.) And in time I developed some of the closest friendships I have ever had. I have built or been a part of building 9 businesses, invested-in, cheered-on and consulted-with many others, and have seen more highs and lows in the last eleven years than I can count.

And I am sad to be saying goodbye to the only place I have truly called “home” since I was a kid.

This past Christmas I got lost in the snow-covered mountains of Washington state. My mind was erased by towering redwoods, glacial rivers and the joy of spending quality time with my niece and four nephews. In a word, I remembered. This is what life is about.

My bride and I knew at the same time, while driving through Astoria, Oregon, that this was where we wanted to be. We had always talked about moving to the Pacific-Northwest someday, we just didn’t expect for someday to be “today.” It’s a bitter-sweet feeling to know that great adventure lies ahead, while the sadness of missing our friends has already crept in.

How lucky we are though, to live in a time when everyone’s online, seemingly all of the time. Heck, I’ve got quite a few “Nashville friends” that haven’t lived here for years! I’m glad to have a blog that will allow me to catalog the experience, and business partners that trust that they are still in good hands, even though it means working from afar.

This will surely be the first post of many, but know this, Nashville… These have been the best days of our lives and we’ll be back to visit often.

And LOOK OUT, Portland! A fresh blast of awesome is headed your way.

Long Lost Pinky

Posted by Pinky on Jan 15, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

Hello good people of the Internets! I have just returned from a winter hiatus, achieved my goal of gaining 5 pounds over the holidays and got to catch up on some much-needed sleep. There are some major things in the works this year that I’m looking forward to being able to share publicly, but in the meantime, I just wanted to wish you all a happy new year! Thanks for stopping by and keep an eye on the site as I crawl out of hibernation mode. Hope you’re off to a fabulous 2011.

Written Communications Strategies

Posted by Pinky on Nov 23, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments

In today’s class we covered the fine art of email communication.  It’s easier, and harder, than it looks.

http://pinkygonzales.com/blog/written-communications-strategies/

Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

-Pinky

Passion: A Self Portrait

Posted by Pinky on Nov 10, 2010 in Blog | 24 comments

I hated school more than anyone I know.  From the 4th grade on, I fought with teachers, ditched class, refused to do homework, switched schools, and but by the grace of teachers that knew I would be better served by a D- than an F, I miraculously graduated from high school without having to repeat a grade.  Which is good, because I wouldn’t have done so anyway.  In fact, I tried to get my parents to allow me to take the G.E.D. when I was 16, going so far as to begin the process of legal emancipation so I could make the decision myself, then predictably quit that too.  When all was said and done, I had attended twelve different schools between grades 6 and 12.

I landed my first “real” job at age 15, working in the paint department at Sears.  I was fired 5 months later for stealing money from the register. And while my criminal career ended there, I went through nearly 50 jobs before I was 21. From most, I was fired, and from the rest, I quit.  Some were temp jobs, others were not.  And I did everything from pizza delivery to customer service to retyping medical insurance manuals. (I was pretty good with a keyboard.) I had problems with authority, a knack for arriving late, and often quit by simply not showing up to work at all.  I was quite a catch.

On paper you would have assumed that I would end up as some transient, thieving, burnout. Yet somehow I ended up a millionaire at age 30 (and no, it wasn’t from some crazy pyramid marketing scheme ). I have been teaching at Belmont University for three years now and was given the Adjunct Professor of the Year Award this past Spring.  I just married the love of my life and look forward to having kids myself someday. All around, life is pretty good right now.

You’ve heard this story before, right?  Bill Gates famously dropped out of college, as did his nemesis Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and my favorite, Albert Einstein.  (For a ridiculously long list of others, click here.)  Unfortunately, dropping out does not guarantee success, but there is something you don’t hear often enough…

Passion Hurts

We love to think about these guys just gushing with energy and enthusiasm for the things they love, earning unfathomable fame and fortune along the way, but let me tell you what it feels like to see your mom break down in sobbing tears after you have been caught ditching school just hours after a deep heart-to-heart about making a true effort to get through the end of the school year. What it’s like to wonder how you’re going to pay the rent because of your own stupid actions… again.  Wondering how you can possibly survive another 30, 40, 50 years of being hired and fired from an endless string of jobs, and most seriously, wondering if suicide might literally be a better option than putting yourself and your family through the pain of watching a life perpetually crash and burn. In fact, I tried when I was 17… and you guessed it… failed at that too.

How’s that for a downer?

But you know what? That’s what passion does.  It COMPELS.  It FORCES us to move in mysterious ways, seemingly against our own will at times, and opens impossible doors at others.

I’ve blogged about this before, but my world turned right-side-up the day I met Strangewood, the band that got me started in the music business.  Six months to-the-day after seeing their first concert I was in Zurch, Switzerland managing a 13 country tour for a group that had just come off the road with No Doubt.  When I met my destiny, everything clicked, and suddenly my need for constant stimulation and ability to adapt to any social situation were my greatest assets.  The funny thing is that I was terrible at the job.  Too young, unorganized and impulsive to handle the responsibility, but I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I had found my path, and I think anyone who knew me at the time would tell you that they could visibly see the change in me.

It’s nearly noon on a Wednesday afternoon and there are 100 things I should be doing right now, but I came into the office today jet lagged and unmotivated to do much of anything.  I scanned through job listings at facebook and Google just for fun, dreamt about moving to the beach with my new bride and opening a coffee shop or a tourism marketing agency to pay the bills, popped on a little Zac Brown Band and wondered what it must be like to make your living making music, and then I remembered…

Music is the greatest expression of passion there ever was.  There is a reason we like sad songs.  Angry songs.  Sweet, loving, emotional songs.  They remind us of what passion is. What passion does. What life is all about.

I’m not great at anything I do, except for one thing.  I let passion lead the way.  It’s really the only choice I’ve got.  I have the joy of working with artists, musicians, entrepreneurs and a long list of “creative types,” and if there’s one thing this world can use a little more of, it’s people like them that channel their energies into creating new things.

If you hate your job, your school… your life, I’ll refrain from telling you to throw in the towel on any one or all of them, but do remember this – life sucks for everyone, but those that thrive are often the ones that direct their inspiration into creating things.  Write, paint, sing, design, invent, construct… do what you’ve got to do to get those juices flowing, and watch, actively, for opportunities that allow you to spend more of your time on the things you genuinely love.

And give your mom a hug.  She probably deserves it.

Artist Management 101: A Manifesto

Posted by Pinky on Oct 19, 2010 in Blog | 14 comments

My very first “real” job in the music business was managing a band from Petaluma California called Strangewood.  They were a pop/rock outfit that played around the Bay Area on a regular basis.  Zach Hammer and Jed Friesen, the vocalist/lead guitarist and drummer respecitvely, are still playing together in a group called Five AM.

I had no idea what I was doing.  I wasn’t sure if my job was to book the band, get them a record deal or drive the van. (The correct answer was ‘yes.’)  I just wanted to be of help as we all stumbled our way through this great and mysterious business of music.

That was many years ago.  Since that time I have had the joy of working with people in all facets of the business – agents, promoters, publicists, publishers, licensors, label execs and the like.  Twelve years on, I think I finally have a handle on what it means to be an artist manager.  Though ironically, it was working OUTSIDE of the business that taught me to think like a ring-master.  These are some of the lessons I have learned along the way.

Lesson One: Don’t call it commission.

Managers are famous for taking 10% – 20% of the gross revenue from the artists they represent.  This is considered a fair sum as the manager is ultimately responsible for the overall strategic direction of an artist’s career, including the hiring (and firing) of additional team members.

In business, we call that equity.  If I was hired to run a new company that had very few resources and required a great deal of my time, it would be perfectly appropriate to take a piece of the business as part of my compensation.  HOWEVER: It should not be confused with “commission,” which is a percentage of whatever you went out and sold.  When you’re a business owner, you are responsible for sales, but you’re also responsible for marketing, infrastructure costs, HR issues and the overall performance of the company.  None of that earns a commission, but all of it matters to the bottom line.  You must think holistically about your artist’s business or you’re missing the entire point.  If you want to avoid all of those headaches and just get paid a piece of what you sell, become an agent or a promoter.  It’s a much different gig. (And an important one at that.)

Lesson Two: Experience Matters.

This one hurts if you’re in the position I was in when I started out.  I had enough passion to light up the city of San Francisco and absolutely no idea how it should be directed.  The resulting insecurity led me to ask my artists to sign multi-year management contracts just so a “big-time” manager couldn’t swoop in and take me out of the picture.  How sad is that?  I was limiting my own friends in the name of personal security… which in the end, those contracts did not provide.  They created animosity and frustration on all sides when I couldn’t deliver the holy grail of indie super-stardom – a major label record deal.  The paper was worthless and made us all feel trapped.  Don’t do it.

Lesson Three: What your professor doesn’t want you to know…

There didn’t used to be such a thing as a college degree in “music business.”  The very notion was so uncool you would literally have been at a disadvantage up to and through the ’90s if you had one.  But as this ship has begun to list, the rules are changing and the roll of the artist manager is as well.  I am very fortunate to teach at Belmont University, which is famous for its music industry undergrad and graduate programs.  But if I may be so bold, I don’t think that we are teaching the skills required to succeed in the music business.  We’re teaching the mechanics.  We’re teaching WHAT it is, not how to bend it to our will.  Our students should out-perform anyone that lacks a formal education in our industry, but the fact is, it’s mostly trial and error, and you pretty much start at the bottom and work your way up with or without a degree.  It’s called “on the job training,” and it has historically been the only way to make it in this business.

But there is a solution.

Today’s managers should learn how to develop talent.  To refine performance.  To create a spectacle.  To produce a show. And to sell tickets to high quality entertainment events.  Those are things that can be taught.  And in tomorrow’s world, where CDs no longer exist and the only reason to buy a download is out of sympathy for an artist, tickets to shows and souvenirs are all that will sustain us.  If a manager doesn’t know how to produce an event that is worth paying for, they don’t know the first thing about the business they’re supposed to be “managing.”

Mötley Crüe knew that 30 years ago.  The Grateful Dead knew it 40 years ago.  And Lady Gaga will make a billion dollars in the next decade because she knows it now.

Let me rephrase that…  It works in heavy metal, it works in psychedelia and it works in pop, and it always has.  Don’t tell me it won’t work for your artist.  If it doesn’t, you’re in trouble.

Lesson Four: Be bigger than the sum of your parts.

Even the best manager in the world would be worthless if it weren’t for the team of people and companies that surround them.  The most important thing a manager can do is hire the right people to play their parts.  This is a basic list of the professionals a manager needs to be able to wrangle:

• Booking Agent – Everybody knows this but most artists will hire anyone that promises to book shows.  An agent that believes you’re the next U2 will put dollars in your pocket.  An agent that doesn’t know what they’re doing will waste your time and give you 100 excuses for why the shows aren’t coming in.  A great agent has connections and calls in favors for their most important clients.  A manager that doesn’t have access to serious agents isn’t a serious manager.
• Promoter – These are typically selected on a tour-by-tour basis, but developing acts don’t have to wait until the 80 city world-tour to find and take advantage of the skills a promoter brings to the table.  Re-read “Lesson Three.”  A promoter should know what an audience wants, what they’ll pay and how to advertise and evangelize an event.  This can be an individual or a major corporation, but they should be just as excited about your events as you are.
• Road Manager - This person is your protector, your babysitter, your travel agent, your assistant, your best friend, worst enemy and often times, your driver.  Trust me when I say that you don’t want just “any” road manager.  They should be 5x more responsible than you are on 1/5th the sleep.  They should also smell nice.  (You’ll thank me later.)
• Publicist – Be careful with this one.  Many publicists think that their job is to write press releases and send out mass mail to journalists that get 400 requests a day and don’t give a rip about your new album or local event. A  great publicist, above all, knows people.  They get ink.  They get blog features.  They work with you to develop a market-by-market strategy.  If yours doesn’t do ALL of those things, you’ve got an expensive spammer on your hands.
• Business Manager – The money miser.  This person handles everything from taxes to pay roll to long term investments.  They are your financial advisor and very best friend.  This is the scariest position for a manager to hire, because they have direct contact with the artist and can tell them if a manager is acting irresponsibly – either in terms of what they’re being paid or what they’re turning down.  Never trust a manager’s “best friend” to be your business manager.  It’s a highly skilled occupation and is best managed by a firm such as Flood Bumstead McCready McCarthy.
• Attorney – Where would the world be without lawyers?  Ya can’t live with ‘em, and you certainly can’t protect and/or defend yourself without them.  Yours should have gray hair.  They should understand intellectual property.  They should be respected.  And your manager should know several and give you the choice of who to work with.
• New Media Manager – If you’re really lucky, your manager will be an HTML 5 wizard, a social media guru and have drinks with Steve Jobs every Thursday night.  What’s more likely however, is that your manager knows who to call when it’s time to build an effective web strategy.  There are several reputable companies out there to choose from and I’d be glad to make a recommendation if you need one, but your manager should have a 100% solid grasp on the importance of digital media in today’s music industry.  (Hint: It IS today’s music industry.)
• Oh yea… and a record label.  Yes, they still matter.  If any of the above-listed professionals are going to get paid, you need to be famous.  You’re only going to get famous if zillions of dollars are spent marketing you to the masses.  Record labels are the only investors stupid enough to risk millions of dollars on 20-somethings with no clue about how the business works and zero interest in anything but hot chicks and guitar licks.  It’s quite a model.  There are 101 ways to get a deal, but the more people your manager knows, the easier it is to get a serious shot at a contract.  No one knows EVERYONE, but a manager that can assemble a solid team will know someone that knows everyone.  And everyone is everything.

So now that I’ve written a 4,000 word essay on what management *should* be, let me take it all back and say this…

If you are a developing artist, you need to be your own manager until someone fits the description above.  You need to build, book and promote your own shows. (Just like Mötley Crüe did way back when.)  You need to create a spectacle.  There is nothing more attractive to a hot shot executive than an artist or a band that is already making money.  You want them competing for you.  You want to be their priority.  You want to find someone who has been around the block but isn’t over-worked with their existing commitments.  This person is nearly impossible to find, but they will find you if you’re building a scene.  If the idea of managing your own career does not appeal to you, I’m really sorry, but you should quit now.  There is a profound difference between crafting emotional works of art and making a living selling them.  Anyone can make music but very few can make it their living.  And that’s what makes those who do so special.

Happy hunting!