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Leadoff: Prepare For Impact! 2021’s Impact 50 Honorees Find Another Gear
– Prepare For Impact
“Great executive leaders know how to rise above overwhelm, get out of the weeds before going back into them, and maintain their vision,” says Megan Jo Wilson, an executive coach and program director for the Miracle-Minded Coaching program who also runs Rockstar Camp For Women. “Flexibility. Adaptability. It’s cliche but great leaders don’t panic when things go wrong. We don’t see failures as an ending. Failures suck, but we keep adapting until something works.”
It’s an apt introduction to Pollstar’s 2021 Impact 50 special issue. In this year-plus of “overwhelm,” far from turning in “failures” that “suck,” this slate of live industry honorees instead found another gear. They assessed the situation, formulated strategies, inspired their team, and created crucial initiatives for our industry and beyond which will endure long after vaccine passports are in the rearview.
Look at Jonathan Azu, founder and CEO of Culture Collective, an entertainment company, who in his self-penned entry entitled “My Journey to ‘Making It’—But More Importantly Making a Difference” opens with the desultory line “The second year of business is supposed to be easier than first.” But rather than pull up stakes on his new business, Azu goes harder and elevates further: Two artists on his roster, Luke James and Emily King, received 2021 Grammy nods; he began teaching music business at USC; and, crucially, he launched Diversityinmusic.org, a powerful new initiative advocating for diversity and inclusivity in the entertainment industry.
Coran Capshaw, too, is a quiet force of nature in this business. His Red Light Management has some of the most successful and diverse artists of our time, perhaps best known for Phish and Dave Matthews; but there’s also a wealth of diversity, including Brandi Carlile, Brittany Howard, Enrique Igelsias, Chris Stapleton, ODESZA, Marren Morris, My Morning Jacket and many others.
In this challenging year, he not only leaned into livestreaming, e-commerce and, yes, NFTs (which he called just “another bridge to the artist/fan relationship”) but also went to unexpected places. This included everything from investing from renewable energy and carbon offsets to creating affordable housing and helping to set up mass vaccination sites—that is impact. And that extends far beyond the live industry and the usual pivots.
Executive coach Wilson explains the best leaders also possess a deft balance of humility, wisdom and discipline enabling great decision making, which she compared to musicianship. “Timing and rhythm. This is one of the skills I learned as a musician and it’s entirely relevant when you’re leading an organization. You have to know when it’s time to go fast and when it’s time to slow down. Is it time to step up for a solo or is it time to support the band/team? It’s related to deep listening which is also an essential leadership skill.”
This year’s Impact 50 eschewed cookie-cutter write-ups and instead offered honorees this platform to try new formats to better understand what makes these executives tick. This could mean tentpole moments, foundational stories, a Reddit AMA transcript, business philosophies, mentors & mentees, and far more. This in turn offered greater insights into these accomplished executives’ successful business pathologies.
Lesley Olenik, VP of U.S. Concerts at Live Nation, for example, explains how her wine-making father’s personal approach to business and clients informed her business philosophy. This trait manifested in her above-and-beyond-the-job-description work ethic which includes bringing rescue animals (and a tarantula) to Billie Eilish on tour, creating museum days for Childish Gambino’s family, and other creative concepts for her impressive client list. This includes Lizzo, Anderson .Paak, Janelle Monáe and Ashley McBryde. For Olenik, family and relationships are paramount and her life/work tentpole moment she shared, seeing the Rolling Stones at an underplay at The Echoplex with her father, fiancée and his father in 2013, is the perfect alignment. The picture and smiles from that tentpole evening say it all.
The same could be said for CAA partner and head of music Rob Light, who writes eloquently of the show that changed his life.
Oliver Furrer / Getty Images – Finding Another Gear:
Jonathan Azu, founder and CEO of Culture Collective, who this year taught a USC music business class, also launched Diversityinmusic.org, an initiative advocating for diversity and inclusivity in the entertainment industry.
It was August 1975 and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band played New York City’s Bottom Line. “That was the night I knew I’d have to be a part of this world,” he wrote. “I realized that there was nothing that moves people, touches people, and inspires people like a live music experience.” Light also writes achingly of the “15 months into the pandemic—the longest period in my adult life without a live show.” This, however, he sees as an opportunity to reflect on what this period has taught him. That is leadership.
So is WME’s co-head of music Kirk Sommer’s entry, in which he writes about his days as a New York City club promoter, which began while in college. That never would have happened if he hadn’t stumbled upon a Japanese restaurant in The Village desperately needing customers. And that became the foundation of his live industry career. In this supposedly “dormant” period, Sommer expanded his roster, recruited executive talent and helped take young artists to the top of their careers.
Finally, Wilson, spoke of the manifold opportunities this challenging time provides. “It’s a beautiful time to rewrite the rules for ourselves and our teams,” she says.
“The world has been insane for a long time – particularly in terms of equity and recognizing that all human life is… valuable. We are now seeing that in technicolor. The opportunity in a tsunami of change is always to create something radically new. It’s easier to experiment and rewrite the rules when everything is in chaos because there aren’t as many rocks to cling to or excuses to say, ‘This is how it’s always been done so we’re going to keep doing it…. Just because something is normal, doesn’t mean it’s good.”
Nearly everyone on Pollstar’s 2021 Impact 50 list recognized the need for greater diversity and inclusivity in our industry. This, and the need for greater sustainability in touring, are the issues this industry is most actively engaged with in a time when changes can be implemented.
The decision, then, to put Lance “KC” Jackson and Bill Reeves, the co-founders of Roadies of Color United International, on the cover was an easy one. The two accomplished tour production veterans, who will appear at this year’s Pollstar Live! Conference in June, faced discrimination throughout their storied careers and led the call for greater inclusivity and diversity in our industry long before the pandemic or folks putting black boxes on their social media pages. In an interview with each other, Jackson spoke of his involvement in this important issue over a decade ago.
“For me, it was pretty simple,” Jackson said. “There were the trade magazines, but social media was something in 2009 that was relatively new to the industry. We were talking and we noticed that there was only a smattering of people of color in those groups. And we both agreed that there was a need to create a place where people of color could be welcome.”
The two formed an inclusive and diverse social media hub for the live business that would eventually morph into the Roadies of Color United International. “We knew that there was a bunch of us, that’s why we decided there needed to be some kind of an organization or some way of gathering these people of color in the industry together,” Reeves said. “We thought there was a need for something like it, because it didn’t exist.”
That is “rewriting rules” and creating something “radically new” that takes flight on the wings of immutable truth that over time proliferates far and wide. It is the embodiment of impact.