He Took the Company Card on a $15,000 Vacation [The Bad Hire Ep. 19]

00:00:00 This is The Bad Hire, the show with the best stories about the worst employees. We fired him, of course. People are crazy. It's like an HR nightmare. Right? One bad hire stole all of it. Crazy stuff. She got what she deserved. Oh. I'm your host, Ken Monroe, and every week we dive into real-life stories from the wild world of work and what can happen when the wrong person gets the job. These stories aren't just crazy, they're cautionary tales about lessons learned the hard way. Let's get started. First off, I'd love just to hear more about you. I know we've already talked a little bit, but if you want to introduce yourself, I know

00:00:40 you have some interesting stories just about your life and just like what you do, and I'd love to hear a bit more. Yeah. So I'm Steve Stewart. I'm the CEO and co-founder of SongHub. My background's in the music business. I used to be in management. I managed a band called Stone Temple Pilots. For the first 10 years of their career, made five records with them, had a bunch of other artists sign to major labels and publishers in that meantime. Really caught the last part of the CD era of the music labels situation before streaming came in, before file sharing came in. And it was kind of the last vestige of the old school record labels where they could really

00:01:22 make some money. They would sell a CD. I think retail's about $18 and they probably made $10. So there's a lot of fat there before streaming came in and said, you're going to get 0.10001 cent per stream. So caught a lot of that and then saw that those deals, because of that, the record labels start doing what's called 360 deals. They would come in and take a piece of your publishing, your merchandising, your touring. They wanted all of it because they were losing revenues on the record side. Like they couldn't make money selling actual records anymore, which made the deals really onerous for artists. A lot of artists could not make a living because they would rely on a separate publishing deal

00:02:03 or separate touring income. And when they had to start sharing that with the labels, those income streams kind of dried up a little bit. So it was not really a good time. Labels cut their staffs back, cut their rosters back. Um, and to the point where we've got, we've got today where, you know, there's a very thin layer of artists that do very well. And then there's a lot of artists that don't do very well. And it's, it's very difficult to get traction. Um, there's always going to be superstars and big names that do very well, but, um, at the same time, there's, it's easier to make music, right? Everybody can download a pro tools rig or FL, or now you've got Suno and Udio. Um, you can make music and get music out and distributed through Spotify or Apple music

00:02:47 or Deezer much more easily than you ever could before those platforms existed. Um, so there's a lot of opportunity on the tech side. And I got into music tech, um, I don't know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago and start building fractional rights platforms. And song hub right now is basically a platform that started as a collaboration to registration platform. We're moving into serving some of the AI community with actual rights management and registration. So determining which rights are human and which rights are AI, and then letting people register those to collect royalty. So it's, it's an interesting little niche. Um, there's a lot of artists that need to get paid properly. There's a lot of inefficiencies in the music royalty system.

00:03:28 And that's kind of my mission is to solve some of that. That's super cool. So even just your story or just your background of being with the stone temple pilots is super cool. Um, very interesting. Like that, that's awesome. I'm sure you've got some great and probably very interesting stories just from, from those days, but from your backers. So now, you know, obviously you're at this kind of blend of business and music and that's where it sounds like you've been for the last few years. Like what's, what's your background of besides that piece of your story that I know with some temple pilots, would you say that your background, you know, even, even back into college days and then from there was, is your story starting with music or starting with business or have

00:04:11 they been together the whole time? It's interesting. I, I, I was in a band in high school, out of high school and through my college years and really picked up and I ended up kind of managing them and booking them and doing all the stuff on the business side. We made a record. Um, so there's a lot of the business stuff that I was handling at that point. And then right out of, right out of college, I started working for, um, ice teas manager as an assistant. And when I was in school, I was working for echo and the bunny man, B 52's manager also as an assistant. So I kind of just started on that path and got into management, which I wasn't, I was a drummer. I was kind of a hack drummer and, uh, I knew that wasn't good in my future, but I enjoyed

00:04:53 the business. I enjoy music. And I, I, I really was taken by how you could get something, you know, at a very ground level entry point, um, and then build it. And when I started working for ice teas manager, I started networking and made contacts with attorneys and A and R people in the business and guys I grew up with, um, with my band in high school had a band and they kept asking me if I could help sign them or get them signed. And I took their tape around as a cassette tape back in those days and shopped it for about a year. Got, I don't know, probably 200 denials and, uh, Atlantic records. So they were interested in, in 1992 and made a deal with them. So it was kind of moving from the performance and being in a band and appreciating music, which

00:05:36 I've always done into that management and business side. And then started my own management company when I signed them and ran with that for, you know, 15, 20 years. So it, it kind of naturally morphed into it. Um, it's interesting, the creative, there's definitely a difference between the artist and the, and the business minds. Um, the creative mind sometimes doesn't really pay attention to some of the business guide guardrails. And it's hard to explain to an artist, you know, sometimes what their rights are and what they're due and sometimes what they're not due, right? Sometimes they think, oh, I've done this. You got my song on the radio. I should be getting millions of dollars. It's not how it works all the time. So knowing how that stuff works, being able to, to bridge that gap and explain and communicate

00:06:21 that properly to creatives. Um, I think it's super important. It's something that has always been a part of my life. Yeah. And I think that's, that's what brought you to where you are. I feel like you're in the perfect spot. Cause like you said, since there's different people with different wired brains, some are like, you know, more of the creative type, some are more of like the, I guess type A or even just like business type. And sometimes they, they miss or they don't understand the other side. Right. And so now that you've kind of come from both, you can apply a lot of like the actual strategic management business side of things. But you still understand the creative side of what they want and what they really need at the end of the day too, which is awesome. It's interesting.

00:07:01 I I'm recalling a story that we met with, uh, the CEO of time Warner guy named Jerry Levin back in the day, probably 1990, 91, I think. Um, maybe 92 was during the body count ice tea controversy. And it was interesting cause he was probably, you know, time Warner at that point was one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world. He was their CEO. He had an accounting background and he invited us to come out to New York actually flew us out on one of their golf streams. And I was invited to that meeting and it was four people. And he was, he was, he, he was an accountant. And I remember, you know, ice teas kind of an original OG gangster rapper from the West

00:07:44 coast. And he was playing in a CD changer, these ice tea songs. I was like, yo, yo, yo. And all this cuss words. And, and, and I looked at this guy and thought he has no idea where ice tea is coming from, right? He's coming from like the streets of LA kind of his background was, you know, it was, it was not a, not a polished pedigree as, as Jerry's was. And he's running this record label. He's running a music company, a media company at that point, well, the, you know, multinational billion dollar media company. And here is one of his key artists. And he's from a completely different background and upbringing and has a different perspective. But I thought it was interesting that he was making every effort to understand and to relate

00:08:26 to an artist. And that was the first, one of the first times I saw that. And then I was always, you know, I was in my mid twenties dealing with 50, 60 year old CEOs in the music business that, that are music business is very shoot from the hip. It used to be, it's, it's become a lot more corporate in the last 15 or 20 years. But back in those days, you didn't have to have a degree. You didn't have to go to school. It was, it was literally who could get the best stuff on the radio or the best sales or get things done and pretty rough and tumble compared to corporate America in many respects. So seeing a lot of those guys like Ahmed Erdogan and Doug Morris and Danny Goldberg, the business

00:09:07 was, it was rough. Those guys used to go into radio stations and break stuff and say, you know, if you don't play my record, I'm going to break all the other records in your library right now. Crazy stuff that, that was, you know, some of the basis for the music business goes back to those days. And, um, a lot of those guys experienced that. So it was a very loose shoot from the hip kind of culture. And to see that at 20 and to be able to sit in a room with the CEO of, you know, one of the biggest record labels in the, in the country, in the world, probably, um, and negotiate. Um, I learned that they, they, I had something they wanted, right. I had an artist that was very interesting to them and they saw the potential to make money from.

00:09:47 Um, and with that type of desire and they wanted to be in business, you could use that as leverage to negotiate. It was, it's kind of crazy for a kid to get in that space, but that's what I learned early on. Yeah. No, that's really cool, Steve. And I'm sure that some of those things that you saw at that point of your career, where just like that level of, excuse me, that level of empathy, I'll be able to see something from somebody else's perspective in your case, or in that case, you know, somebody who's in management, be able to try to understand somebody like I see or one of the musicians, which again, there's a generational gap, there's a background gap, there's a cultural gap, but then some,

00:10:30 I feel like there's some, and this is speaking generally, there's some people in, in management executives who just don't care. They're like, there's a big gap, whatever. I'm just going to keep working. And, uh, you guys just do what I say. But I think like the best people who are in hiring, who are in management, who have to do with other people under them, they actually try to make that conscious step of trying to connect because the better you can connect and make somebody feel understood, typically the best results you can create. Nathan, that's really a good point. Cause there's, there's a layer at record labels called A&R. It stands for artists and repertoire. And they're the actual people that are scouts and go out and find artists and sign them.

00:11:11 And their ethos and their personalities are completely different from business affairs, which are the lawyers, HR, which is the hiring side. And, and, and even the accountants and all the other executives, they're almost the same kind of creative mindset as an artist. And they relate to them. They take them out to dinner, they wine and dine them. But it's, it's interesting to see where that line is. And once they get hooked, once an artist is impressed by that A&R person says, yeah, I want to sign with Warner Brothers. Then the business affairs guys come in, then the lawyers come in. And then all of a sudden that nice, Hey, we'd love to sign you. We're so excited. Turns into deal points and legal contracts. And, and there's some negotiation.

00:11:53 Sometimes you're not going to get everything you want. And, and it's interesting to see both sides. And I know you guys are coming from an HR background, HR background. You're right. I think the, the, the intake, the HR managers that are hiring and interviewing prospective employees, they have to be a little empathetic. They have to have a different face than maybe some of the other executives or, or management levels in that company, because they're relating to someone coming in off the street many times, or they're trying to retain somebody, or they're trying to recruit somebody that is coming from another company. Maybe it's, you know, a higher level talent. They have to present a company in a different way that listens to who they're sitting next

00:12:34 to that, that sells the company to them kind of maybe more than, than other people in the company might have to do. So yeah, it's interesting that intake side where you're looking to build a team and bring the best people into your organization. How do you attract them? How do you retain them and, and how do you express the strengths and, and potential of the company to them in a way that, that works? Yeah. And especially on the point of retaining people, I think when somebody feels understood and valued, I mean, that's the kind of, those are the kinds of things that keep people around, you know, and there's, there's one whole, whole conversation. I'm sure you and our CEO can, we'll, we'll have here in the future, but with background checks,

00:13:18 and particularly, you know, B checks, they do background checks. And one kind of big point that he's made several times is talking about, you know, viewing somebody, not just as a piece of paper, as their background check and almost saying like, you are not your background, you're not your background. And almost like with background checks, giving the people, I guess a full con, I guess it's context-based background screening. Because, you know, there's a big difference between person A who made a mistake one night in a bar, they got into a fight and then the police came and then they just kept doing more stuff like that for 10 years since it happened and just never showed any improvement versus somebody who had a night in a bar, they made a mistake, the police showed up and then they

00:14:00 changed and then they got a job and they had a family that went to church and like, you know, did all the different things. And it's like, but two companies might look at that one incident just the same, or those two people just the same. And we talk a lot about having that understanding, that empathy, you know, and just things like that. I think those are some of the strengths, again, of like the best people in business, the best people are in hiring and the best managers too. Yeah. And like you, I think alluded to, you are not your resume and someone could look amazing on paper and they present like, wow, I person couldn't hold the conversation. They had nothing to answer with more than, you know, one syllable answers. And conversely, somebody could come in with a terrible resume and be really impressive.

00:14:42 I've seen both of those as well. I think it's important that you connect with the person, right? People nowadays, especially with AI and all the, all the tools and resources, you can make someone look amazing on paper and you go, wow, this person click, click, click, click, click. They check all the boxes, but they come in and, and, and they're, they're nothing like you would imagine them to be. So I think that in-person, that face-to-face is still critical in the hiring process. Yeah. Those are some of the stories that we come, come across a lot at the, at the bad hire where somebody will have an amazing background. You know, they look great on a resume and then they show up and like, who is this person? A lot of times they're either, they're faking it.

00:15:23 They fake their whole resume or they might've done some amazing feats, but they're, they actually ended up pretty much being a terrible person and it's like, you got to look at the whole picture when you're trying to build a team. You know what I mean? Before we dive back into the chaos on the bad hire, this episode is brought to you by B-Checks. Hiring shouldn't feel like rolling the dice. Background checks should come with great tech, seamless integration, and customer service that delivers. That's B-Checks. Lightning fast results, unmatched accuracy, built in fraud prevention. We help you hire the right people. Now, B-Checks plugs into over 100 HRIS and ATS systems. So your background checks run smooth, fast, and backed by top level service.

00:16:08 Protect your team, protect your reputation, protect your sanity. Go to B-Checks.io. That's B-C-H-E-X dot I-O. You just reminded me of an, of an STP story. And maybe this is an interesting one for your podcast, for your, for your, I don't know, for your files, whatever you're compiling. We had a tour manager who was a good tour manager up to a point. And, but he started partying with the band and that's kind of a no, no. You don't want to cross that line. It's kind of like managers and employees and, you know, there's definitely guardrails that should be in place. And I got a call from the band and they said, you know, we'd like to get rid of him.

00:16:51 And they, of course, were friendly and they're not going to make any kind of, you know, they're not ever the bad guys. They don't want to have that conflict or that face-to-face. So I fly out. I think it was Kansas City. And, and I take, you know, after the show, I get in the elevator with him and I said, you know, I need to let you go. And he's like, what are you talking about? I said, well, I've gotten reports and I've been watching what you're, what you've been doing. And, you know, it's just not the right thing that you are socializing with the band, the way that you are, your jobs to be management. You're running this tour. You're responsible for the production, the finances, everything, all the logistics. It's just not the right look. And it's, and it's, it's not going to happen. And he goes, so what do you mean?

00:17:32 I said, well, I've got a guy here already who's taking over tomorrow morning. So, you know, just pack your stuff and fly back to LA. So I go back to LA. It was fine. It was amicable. And, uh, and then I get an alert for my credit card company. Cause he, he was, you know, he had a, he had a company credit card and they said, did you authorize this charge for like $15,000? I'm like, no. And it was two plane tickets to the Caribbean and our hotel for like three nights and a bunch of other, like a bunch of other stuff. And I called him. And I go, what? And I, then I realized it was his card and I called him.

00:18:15 I said, what do you, you know, what is this? And he goes, oh, well, you know, I, I felt like, like you guys owed me, you know, some type of severance. And I just thought I would, you know, I, I met a girl. I thought I'd take her down. I'm like, are you kidding me? I said, number one, if you, if you just went home and did, like I asked, I would have given you some severance, but you literally left the meeting that we had and bought two tickets to the Caribbean and took a girl down there for like a week or a weekend. What are you doing? I said, that's theft. Yeah. Well, I don't, you know, I don't see it that way. I said, look, here's what you're going to do. You're going to, you're going to put that money back in my bank account within 24 hours, or

00:18:59 I'm going to call the credit card company and they will come after you. I said, that's enough money that it's grand larceny or grand theft, whatever it's called. And I said, I'll just let them come after you. And he goes, okay. And I had the money back in 24 hours, but it was, it was someone like that who I trusted to be my tour manager. Generally the hierarchy is manager, tour manager, and then everybody else on the tour. But he was my representative on the road for months and to entrust him with that responsibility and then see that, you know, he just threw that away in a way that was weird. It was shocking to me, but anyway.

00:19:39 I'll just pay myself. I'll just take, I'll just take care of it myself without telling anybody. Not asking, not telling anybody. And it was, it was a shock. I, and I'd never seen any behavior like that before. And I thought, wow, how could I have missed that? And, and he was fine up to that point, but I think he just took that, uh, the, the hard way and, and, you know, sought to scratch back some way and didn't work. Well, I'm, I'm kind of surprised that he even picked up the phone again when you called. I feel like typically I would think that that story would be, you saw that $15,000 charge and never heard from the guy again. You know what I mean? So it sounds interesting that he's like, oh yeah, this is just what I did.

00:20:20 I just stole from you and hope it was okay. Maybe he thought he'd get more. I, it was, it was interesting. He had a very arrogant attitude about, you know, we owed him something. I said, you're being let go for cause. It wasn't like we ran out of your job or you did great. It was the end of the term. The band didn't want you to be their representative anymore. And it was my job to terminate you. So that's, it was. It may have been a choice. Yeah. It may have been a better choice. Those types of things are always hard. You know, even we talk a lot about hiring and firing and we, you know, recognize it's somebody's life and it's somebody's choice. And even, even the whole point of the podcast, we've, we've had a little bit of criticism

00:21:02 like, oh, I don't want to laugh at somebody's misfortune. It's like, you know, stuff happens in business and work and in life. And it's more just like, okay, when stuff goes down, how do we, how do we deal with it? And also for anybody listening, hopefully, how do we prevent stuff like that? All the crazy things happening, you know, cause there's some crazy things that happen in business and some managers and hires who don't turn out. I'm guessing that most of the real stories and stuff that is not for cause is probably not going to be on this podcast. Cause it is sad and then it's not that interesting. And if, if, you know, finances are in a certain place or the market goes a certain way, you have to cut sometimes. And that's not very pleasant at all.

00:21:42 Um, so I don't, I don't know that those are outrageous stories or that, you know, that interesting sometimes, but the ones that, that take advantage of you, um, I think those should be brought out too, because you're right. No one talks about that. And it happens to everyone that hires anybody. Um, they have to be aware. And sometimes you can't predict that stuff. Like I said, this guy was an employee for a couple of years. Seemed fine. And it just turned out one day he did something wrong. Um, but yeah, it's the hardest thing. Well, a lot of things when I talk to people that are getting into business, I'm like hiring and firing. You're not really, I'll just say, you're not really a grownup until you've had to hire and fire people.

00:22:22 It's, it is a, it's interesting and it's brutal. And, um, you know, the hiring part's fun and exciting because you're giving someone a chance and you're giving them an opportunity and you're hopefully compensating them. And you're going to, you know, work with somebody. But the other side, when you have to let someone go is definitely very difficult, especially if it's not for cause. And I've seen that many times. I've seen people cry. I've seen people, you know, not be able to handle it very well. I've seen people handle it very well actually too, but, um, it is life changing and it is something that's beyond their control many times. And, uh, sometimes there's not much notice, right? Sometimes you might get a couple of weeks.

00:23:03 Sometimes you might get a week. Yeah. But it's, it is a life changing event. And if you're handling it, um, I think for me, the best, and I've had to teach people because I've had to have other people let people go too. And they, they came back and were crushed by it, especially some of the younger people. And I said, you know, it just somehow doesn't work out sometimes and it's no one's fault. And you have to look at it. And you have to look at it like you were the employer and you need to make this right. And the best way that you can usually at severance, perhaps recommendations, perhaps even getting them another job somewhere else. Um, but you have to be very sensitive to it and you have to be upfront about it and you can't beat around the bush. You can't make an excuse or say it.

00:23:45 And no, or you just, you just have to say, look, this isn't working out. Let's have a discussion and figure out the right way to resolve this or the best way to resolve this so that we can both walk away, you know, feeling somewhat better about it. Yeah. And it sounds like that's the way that you're describing it is the best way to approach it. And really, hopefully the only way to approach it when you're trying to do it well in, you know, obviously there's a common disconnect where a company, a manager, a boss just will lose all of that sensitivity and just be like, well, this is how it is, you know, and just those people skills don't really come into play. And so, okay, this is already an unpleasant thing that happens commonly throughout businesses.

00:24:26 So how is it handled with care and handled like the best that can be, you know, and with the bad hire and like all the stories you kind of talk about on the podcast, pretty much all of these are with cause and like their stories, even about interviews of people who didn't pay out. I was just talking to somebody today who was kind of submitting their story for the, for the podcast. And like somebody came in for an interview and like wanted to use a restroom. And when they said it was like a private secure building, so sorry, we don't have a public bathroom right here. They went and they peed in the parking lot in front of, in front of, in front of the people they're about to try to work for. It's crazy. And it's like, okay, sometimes it's like not even a firing, like you're not even, you're

00:25:08 not even in the, in the team yet, you know, and that's with cause, you know? And so we talk about all sorts of stories there. I had one of those too. It was, it was a, it was a kid who came in looking for a tech spot and he literally went from high school to a 90 day coding camp. He never went to college, never got a job, never worked anywhere straight out of high school, three month coding camp. I had an interview with him. He wanted $140,000 to start. This is eight years ago. Wow. And even today, that's as a starting salary, I think 140 is probably on the high side. And I said, look, I'm not doubting that you're able to do this, but you've never had a job.

00:25:53 I said, I don't know how you're going to be as an employee. You have zero references. You have zero experience and you look good on paper. You check all the boxes, you know, regarding software development, but I just in good conscience, I can't hire you right now. Now, and he's all about, you know, days off and can you work from home? And, and I said, look, the other thing you should be aware of is when you come into an interview, it's going to be slanted towards the employer. You're, you're there to kind of serve their needs initially, at least. Yeah. They're going to compensate you, but that's the balance. You do the work, they pay you. And it can't be the, if the first thing out of your mouth is what are my days off? Or can I work, you know, certain days from home? He didn't know.

00:26:33 And again, I didn't hold it against him personally. I was just trying to help him. But I said, you straight out of high school and you have zero experience with, with a work, with a job. And you, you went to a coding camp. You don't even have a degree. And the money you're asking for is pretty healthy. I said, I'm not going to hire you. I might hire you at half that, but somebody else might. And maybe you can come back in six months or a year when you've got something under your belt, but I just can't do it. It was shocking to me that, that that's where we are. And this is, you know, LA and it's, it was, you know, kind of the tech stuff, but it's amazing. It's amazing what's out there. And, and again, your choice as a company, as a, as a hiring person to bring somebody

00:27:16 on your team, you don't always have to say yes. And similar, similar to that. And, uh, Steve, I'll have to show you, I'll have to send you the, I think we have one of these recorded on our, on our YouTube or somewhere like on our social media. And there was one story and it was for a software engineer, some coding kind of job. Um, and he kind of goes through the interview process and I guess, you know, gets his way through, I guess, I don't know if he lies through it, but he kind of somehow gets the job, uh, and then gets on his first day and he's assigned to do some, you know, complicated coding project. And then it kind of gets delayed. He kind of procrastinates.

00:27:57 And then they come knocking on his door again, like, Hey, where is this? And then the truth comes out. He's like, I actually, I don't know how to code. Like I thought I could learn on the spot. Like I've seen, I've seen some YouTube videos about it. I thought I could teach myself in time. Uh, and so he actually got hired for a coding job without knowing how to code. And so that's the kind of stuff we're talking about. Hey, like it's okay to give some people some assignments on the way there before you're actually giving them the official job offer instead of having the pain of, Oh, sorry, we accidentally just hired you for a job that you don't even know how to do. It's, it's interesting because, you know, usually you kind of put them on a, on a, on

00:28:37 a contingency basis for a minute, or maybe you give them a trial, like you said. Um, but yeah, some people coding is, is interesting because most people don't understand it, right? If you're non-technical, they can say, I've got all these qualifications. How are you going to know? And a lot of companies will test you. A lot of companies will bring in some of their dev team and say, Hey, sit with this guy for 30 minutes and tell me if he's real because an average HR person or average other executive may not know those kinds of technical details. Right. And, and I don't speak, I'm on, I'm non-technical myself and it's difficult sometimes when someone says they have those resources, they have that capability, they've done it before. And then, like you said, you find out, Oh, and, and that's the extreme, but the most common

00:29:23 that I've seen is where they say they can do something and they don't know that part of it. Like maybe it's Jasons or maybe it's, it's backend dev or whatever it is. There's something they don't know, but they don't tell you that. And then when you assign it to them, they shop it out and they're just like, okay, I'm going to take your, you know, a hundred dollar an hour gig. And I'm going to go pay somebody in India, $40 an hour and make that $60 difference. And I'm like, that's not their job. If you don't know, just tell me you don't know. Right. And I'll hire someone that has that other skillset that makes sense. But to, to profess in an interview that you have all this ability, and then for someone to find out later that you don't, you don't know this chunk of it over here, it's a little

00:30:04 deceptive. Yeah. It happens a lot on the tech side. It happens a lot. Yeah. And I think companies and teams more and more are valuing communication and especially as there's more remote teams that are built and that starts at the start of somebody's employment where it's like, Hey, just, just tell me, tell me things and just tell me what's going on. Just be truthful with your, with your skillset. If you don't know how to do something, just let me know if, if something's delayed, you know, don't just, don't just buy your, buy yourself some time, but just let me know what's going on. And I think like that's, that's really valuable. It's about being real. And I, I, sometimes I see these hiring processes where it's done by a machine or your resumes

00:30:45 at the first couple of levels are sometimes handled by a machine. And I'm like, they're missing out on probably a lot of good people because maybe you didn't, your resume didn't exactly have the right stuff in the right place. And the machine scanned it and put something else in there, or they thought they were looking for something. And I'm sure there's times, and I haven't really seen it, but I'm sure there's times in HR where you talk to someone to go, wow, you'd be right for this job, right? We're looking, you came in on this job, but we're looking for somebody over here. And we think we'd put you over here because you're the perfect candidate. Whereas the candidate might not even know that because they're just looking at one entry point. The HR person understands that they're looking for, you know, five or 10 different positions. But I think meeting the person, I think the zoom thing is, that's okay.

00:31:31 I'd rather meet them in person. There's so much where you can get from someone, just their posture, the way they move, coming into the interview, leaving the interview stuff that you may not see on camera. That is probably, if you're going to hire somebody for a long-term position, the least you could do is I think meet them in person. I mean, that's so weird now that everything's done by, you know, electronics and zooms. Yeah. Well, Steve, tell me a little bit about, a little bit more about SongHub. I'd love to hear a little bit more about the business. You told me some earlier, but I'd love to hear more about how it came to be, you know, how long it's been going on. And then as you've been building the company, as you've been building your teams, especially

00:32:12 on the hiring side, like building those teams, I'd love to hear more about the business itself and how it's been going and how you've been building it up and building the teams around it as well. Sure. My co-founder, Joe Berman, was in, well, he's got a boutique music publishing company. He's been in the music business for almost as long as I have, if not longer. And he's got relationships with a lot of writers in different parts of the world. And he was getting calls to put them together. Hey, can I meet this guy in New York? Can you hook me up with a guy in London? And he's, but you're all signed to music publishing companies, right? Like majors, like Sony. And they're like, yeah, but they don't help us. So we realized that there's a huge group of writers and musicians, most of them actually,

00:32:54 that are not getting treatment. They're not getting services by their publishers or labels, even though they're signed to major labels and publishers. So the initial iteration was match.com for songwriters. We just said, let's just get a list of a bunch of writers, put in metadata on what they do. If someone's a top liner or a guitar player, or they're writing folk songs, whatever it is, and let them connect because they didn't have a way to do that. And songwriting is a collaborative sport. Usually music's definitely collaborative, but it's hard to find people to work with that you can trust. And maybe if they're in a different country, it's very difficult. So we built that. And then we decided it was important also to bring a registration component into it so

00:33:36 that once you are starting to work on a project, you can assign your song splits, you can get the rights done, and then you can register them with your PRO, publisher, US copyright office, et cetera. So we built that component in, and then we added a blockchain component because we thought, you know, having the rights in some immutable, totally accessible and accurate state that everybody can see globally instead of it sits at your publisher and the other publisher has a different set of data. So we put everything on blockchain, which was an interesting endeavor because there's a lot of coins and crypto and tokens associated. And we thought, and we first, the first time we put it out, we included that stuff and said, you have to have a wallet, you have to go in and get gas fees.

00:34:17 And we realized most creatives have zero savvy as far as how that stuff works. And the companies have nothing to do with that. So if you're Warner Brothers or Universal, they're not going to touch a wallet. So we put all of that back of house. We made it frictionless. And all the downsides to blockchain, we just did that in back of house. So right now, when you register a song, you literally click a button, a blockchain block is created with the information. And every time you add a file, every time you add song splits, that's all written on a chain. But we did that away from everybody else. And there's a couple of companies that are doing blockchain stuff. And it's very tokenized. It's, you know, here's this coin.

00:34:58 You can exchange for this coin, which, you know, it's like Intel in your laptop, right? Most people don't care what chip is running their laptop. They just want to organize it. Yeah. Does it work? Does it do what I need it to do? I don't care what the chip is inside. But a lot of, you know, PCs have Intel inside or AMD or whatever the chip is. No one needs to know that there's a blockchain wallet attached. And that's it. So we got rid of that. And then we start getting attention from schools. Early on with PROs, performing rights organizations like ASCAP, BMI, SOCAN is the Canadian one. And SOCAN was originally our initial launch customer.

00:35:39 And they didn't have a tech. They had zero tech guys. It was crazy. They did not. And a lot of the music companies are like this. They just don't have to build technology. So they don't. And in some respects, having that obscurity with information and transparency allows them to take advantage. So they kind of don't want to be the coolest, quickest, you know, highest technology possible because it opens up certain windows that they may not want opened up. So we went through a bunch of developers. This is back to hiring and stuff. You know, CTOs are, in my experience, it's hard to define them.

00:36:25 It's hard to find good ones. We went through a couple of hires that just were not qualified. They're either very good at coding or they're better at or they're good at managing. But it's very hard to find someone that's good at managing and coding. Someone that can actually, you know, look at someone and go, hey, this skill set is excellent or this guy is better than that person or this woman is really sharp. I mean, to assess and manage staff is one set of skills. To code is another. And a CTO typically has to have both of those skill sets in their same head. So like we said before, some of them don't know different areas and there's different specialties in development.

00:37:08 And maybe a guy's really good at front end but knows nothing about back end. But again, you expect them to know it and they come in and you find out six months later they don't really know it and they're either faking it or they're getting information from somewhere else. Just it's a really tough hire. So, yeah, we found a really good solution after we started this maybe five years ago and we've kind of bootstrapped it. But I would say three years ago we found a really good solution that was an onshore U.S.-based management but offshore developers. Developers are in India. So they're on a, I think, 14 hours away from us.

00:37:52 So we could put stuff in like I got something into them today. And by tomorrow it'll be finished. So our day is our night. Their night is our day. It actually works pretty well cycle-wise. And the management, again, is here. So if we got to communicate at a higher level, we deal with them. They're in our same time zone actually. So that works out super well for us. We recommend them to others and we've brought in, you know, as references. Because I get a lot of founders calling me saying, who are you guys using? Because we just spent, you know, half a million dollars and got nothing. And that's not uncommon in tech startups, tech startup land. So finding good talent that, again, can be honest and tell you what their capabilities are and not fudge it.

00:38:37 Like, hey, we don't know how to do this. Or we do know how to do this. And then they solve it. And, yeah, since we've gotten into this little groove, we've had very good experience and very good luck with them. So, yeah, it's a learning process. And, you know, startups are different than big corp. Big corporations. I can always tell when I'm speaking with somebody from a big corporation because they go, just send it out to IT or just send it to marketing. Like, you're used to having, you know, 100 people doing things for you. And your job is like this. You're just doing this. And, you know, sometimes in a startup, well, not sometimes, a lot of times you're wearing different hats.

00:39:19 And, yeah, you'll hire a marketing person. But you need to be able to manage them and relate with them and get in the trenches. And maybe you've built a marketing strategy, go-to-market strategy, and now they're coming in to handle that or make it better. But it's, I don't know, there's a lot more chances to get your fingers in more pies. And I think, you know, coming from a, I've met people that, you know, Ivy League schools, Fortune 100 companies. And God bless them. That's a great spot. But they have a lot of, yeah, for them to shift gears into startup culture is, I've never seen it work right. It's very difficult to come out of that place where everything's available at a push of a button and the resources are unlimited and the budget.

00:40:03 It's like, oh, we'll just do that campaign. We'll call our ad agency. Are you paying, do you know what that costs? No, that's handled by, you know, finance. It's like, you know what you're spending, right? It's crazy. No, I totally agree. I probably at this point spent over half of my career with startups. And I totally agree with everything you're saying. And it's funny because even within a startup, you know, you could say, oh, I'll just have the social media person do it. It was like, I'm the social media person. And oh, what's the designer do it? Well, I'm kind of the designer too. Like, you know, like you said, everybody kind of wears multiple hats. At the end of the day, if you want something done, a lot of times you just have to do it because there's so many less resources.

00:40:46 Whereas the big corporation, yeah, they can just send it off to whatever agency or whatever department. We'll get it done. I'm just focusing on this one thing. Actually, I'm thankful that I've spent a lot of time at startups because there's a lot more ownership that's kind of built into just how you approach things. You know, but then you will collaborate with other people at different size organizations. And sometimes that's a little bit lost because like, oh, that's not my job. I do this. But sometimes at startups, everything kind of at the end of the day becomes your job because your whole team is 10, 15, 50 max people, you know, much smaller. I was in a meeting. Well, it was a panel with some Universal Music guys a couple of weeks ago.

00:41:30 And they were, you know, and the labels have always been tough. They've always been more opaque than typical corporate. Like if I want to find the head of marketing at Nabisco or wherever, I could probably find them with an email somewhere. But if you want to find the head of marketing at Universal Records, there's layers that try to protect them. But these guys, one of their big complaints was, well, no one knows what we do. Like when you come to us, you should know what our job is. And I thought there's five guys sitting up there and all their jobs seem like business development, strategic planning. Like what does that mean? Because there's five of you guys. They're all senior VPs. You all have kind of the same title.

00:42:12 Maybe one or two words are switched. What are you doing over there? Yeah, what exactly are you doing over there? Because one guy sounds like he's your boss and you guys are like, but your title is the same as his. It was almost – it was funny to me because I thought they're so arrogant and they just expect everybody to know everything about what they do. But it's opaque and they don't explain it. And there's five of them that are kind of doing the same thing and you can't tell what they're doing. But they expect you to know. And like you said, it's very channeled. If you hit them up and say, hey, I'm looking for this, they'll be like, oh, that's – I don't do that. Okay, well, you're the head of business development. I would think you might have a bigger – I don't know, a bigger scope or you could tell me who to go to that does that little thing.

00:42:59 But it was interesting to see that. And it's not unusual. I've seen that for many years. But seeing it on stage in one place where they actually – because someone asked, what's the best way to approach you guys? Well, first, understand what we do. Know exactly what our channel is. Like, well, I've been here for an hour watching this. None of you explained anything about what you do. I've got a slide on the screen that shows your job titles and they all seem like the same thing. Yeah. Well, I guess, you know, as we're wrapping up, I'd love to hear – because I love everything that you're sharing, Steve. I think you've got so much to create. And so, honestly, I want to talk more. And hopefully, we'll get you on with Candy because I think you guys would connect over a lot of different things. It's great just to be connected with you.

00:43:41 But as we close, like, I think there's a lot of people hopefully listening to this right now who are in hiring or they own a business or they're in a startup. Whatever kind of position they're in, I think there's a lot that you're sharing that's really relatable. But what would you say is, like, the best piece of advice you'd pass on to anybody who's, I guess, building a team, building a team right now, whether if they're just a hiring manager or they're a business owner or somebody who's trying to grow something? Because I think you've been growing what you're growing. And I see it continuing to grow. And I think there's a lot of insight you could pass on. I guess at the end of the day, I would say look at the person, right? Meet the person. Have them into your office.

00:44:22 Maybe go to lunch. But sit down with them and try to understand them. Forget the resume for a minute. Forget all the technical skills. Is this someone that can work within your organization? Is this someone you want on your team? Is it someone that can grow? Because like you're mentioning with growth, today this company looks like this. Tomorrow it's going to look like this. And they might be two different things. But I think having people on board that have kind of the same mindset, kind of are open to moving with the company. And my smaller startups have always been high growth. And it's like this potential is here. And there's equity deals. And it's a little different than getting hired at a huge company. But I think looking really at the person rather than the resume and then thinking about how they could evolve a year, three, five years down the line.

00:45:12 Because hiring them at this job today is different than they're going to be in five years. And they will probably be in a supervisory position in a short time period at a high growth startup. So look at them as are they going to be able to understand the vision? Are they going to be able to carry forth? Forget the exact job title, the job description. That's important to get people in the door. But do they work across the organization as a team member? And that's probably the best thing I could say right now. Yeah, no, that's great advice. We say a lot of the same thing where it's not just skills-based hiring, but it's like, I guess, cultural fit-based hiring.

00:45:53 Where sometimes somebody can't have enough of the skills, but the way that they lift up all the other people around them is way bigger factor versus somebody who has all the skills you can imagine. But they're not passing the ball. They're kind of selfish. They're poisoning the whole culture. They're taking other people down. It's like, okay, that's not worth it. We talk about that a lot. It's like you kind of have to focus on not just the skills on paper by itself. That's a really good point. The level of energy and leadership, it's akin to a sports team, right? I mean, there could be some guy that has the best stats in the world, but he's not a team player or he's not a leader. And you get in there and his mood is always sour.

00:46:35 And you want someone that's positive. You want someone that's building, someone that's going to inspire. It's probably the biggest word is inspire. Because, yeah, there's always going to be differences in resources and levels of skills. But if someone's inspirational to somebody else, that's hard to beat, right? If they can bring up everybody on that team, even if it's not their skill set or their channel, that works across the board every single time. Yeah, no, I agree. Okay, before we close, do you have any last bad hiring stories you want to rattle off that were on your mind? I know you already shared a couple along the way. I'll give you the one that I spoke with you guys on earlier. My startup before this one, we had an investor and we were looking for a CTO.

00:47:21 And he goes, oh, I know exactly who you guys should hire, blah, blah, blah. This guy's amazing. He's run this. He's run that. He's done this. And this guy's going to invest in our company. And he actually made his investment contingent upon us hiring this guy. He goes, yeah, you guys got to hire him. And we're like, okay, how much is he? He's like $360,000. I said, hold on a second. How much? $360,000 a year. And I was like, startup, right? This was a seed. It was a pre-seed. This was like an angel round. Oh, wow. Yeah. The number was shocking. But I looked at my co-founder and we go, we got no choice.

00:48:02 If we don't hire this guy, we're not getting the investment. And we just have to do it. So we said, fine. Signed the guy on. Went back and forth with him for probably 30. He was in New York. We were in LA. And we had a couple of in-person meetings. We flew out and sat with him. He spent one whole day with us doing a whole whiteboard and showing us a roadmap and said, here's how we should build this tech stack. Here's how we should do this. Spent a good five hours with him. Great whiteboard. And then we went back to LA and we checked in with him a couple times a week. And I think a couple weeks later, we were in one of our check-in calls. And at the end of the call, like just off the cuff, informally, he's like, oh, I forgot to tell you guys.

00:48:47 I took a managing director position with Goldman Sachs. But that'll be a good thing. And I was like, what? And we got off the call. And my co-founder, Robert Menendez, we're like, do we just hear that? And he's like, I don't know. We should probably ask him again. But I go, this guy took a full-time position with Goldman Sachs. And he's under contract full-time with us for $360,000 as our CTO. I go, that's. And he tells us it was a good thing because he's going to have time at night to work for us. And I thought, this is insane. And to that point, we had zero deliverables for him. That whiteboard is the only thing he ever did for us.

00:49:28 And had not delivered anything on paper, nothing as far as hires, nothing. We had made one payment to him, his first payment of $30,000. And we called the investor. And we said, look, this guy, I don't know if he's a fraud. I know you vouched for him. I know he's your friend. But we got nothing from him. And he just called us and said he took a full-time managing director position with Goldman Sachs. I go, that's like a slap in the face. And he was really apologetic. He's like, guys, I'm so sorry. I will fix this. Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. But yeah, going in, that was probably the biggest slap in the face I've had. And a shock. Someone that was vetted and vouched for by our lead investor who turned out to be a fraud.

00:50:14 And his first name was Sachin. And so Robert and I made that a verb. And we would call that Sachin. So every time we heard from another company or founder that had had an experience, we'd go, you got Sachin. Oh, my gosh. That's crazy. Man, Ken has a similar story. I always call it like his Batman origin story where he was in the finance industry, essentially. And he was helping raise funds for all these different startups. He can explain it better. But essentially, they brought on one guy who was supposed to be an advisor who somebody else vouched for him. This guy was supposed to be super legit. And he, through a Ponzi scheme, essentially stole $100 million of all the different money that was raised.

00:51:00 And then the way that Ken tells it is like a $30 background check would have prevented the whole thing. And that's kind of what propelled him into the background check industry, which is, I think, a cool story, even though it's a terrible origin story. But sometimes it's like, man, just a little bit of vetting goes a long way. And sometimes it happens even when you have somebody vouch for the guy. But that's crazy. And obviously, you're here now. Hopefully, you guys have recovered. But that's got to be painful on multiple levels. It was more shocking than painful. It was just like, is he kidding? It was like fraud happening right in front of your face. And he was saying this stuff like, this will be better for us.

00:51:41 And we're like, what are you talking about? If you say so. Yeah, just because you're going to treat it like night school, I guess. Just like a couple hours between 12 and 2 for you guys at night. I don't know. That's probably not a good plan. And a managing director at Goldman, I'm guessing you're earning probably $650,000, $700,000 a year. So this guy is going to be a million-dollar-a-year guy. Yeah. So it was shocking. And yes, a background check would have – well, in that case, I don't know. Because he had a pretty good resume. We didn't do a full background check. But again, he was coming from our lead investor. And it was contingent. So we really had no – it was almost like, you've got to hire my guy or I'm not going to invest.

00:52:21 Man, that's crazy. Yeah. Crazy stories, man. Yeah. And I'm sure you have even more. I do – I am happy that we're connected. So thanks so much, Steve, for your time and just for being on the show. I said this was just going to be one snippet for the podcast. I might just end up putting this whole thing out because I love the conversation with you. So really appreciate your time. And yeah, we'll keep you in the loop even when this goes out and things like that. Yeah, let me know, Nathan. Happy to be a part of it. Happy to support what you guys are doing. I think it's really important to get these stories out. And it's not the sexiest part of business. But it's super important for people to understand some of where this comes from. Maybe they get something from it and go, I should use a background check every time.

00:53:03 Or never do this. Or in the case of this, this is how I should look at things. But just I think knowing that others are in the same pot sometimes makes it easier. And that clear knowledge I think that you guys are doing getting this out is super cool. So yeah, happy to help you any day I can. It's great to be on. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks so much. We appreciate it. All right, Steve. Thanks so much. Talk soon. Talk to you soon. Thanks, everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye.