How to Identify and Develop Talent as an Entrepreneur with J Erving

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Side Hustle Pro. Today, we'll be breaking down how to identify and develop talent as an entrepreneur. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Jay Irving into EO Fire Studios. Jay is the founder of Human Resources and Talent Management Mogul. He's a driver of culture at the intersection of music, media, sports, and technology, and has powered and helped break musical acts such as Brent Fayaz, Pink Sweats, and Ray.

0:36Today we'll be chatting about creating long-term success, driving culture, searching for talent, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jay and our sponsors. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more. One of my favorite recent episodes is titled, How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into.

1:11Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts. Jay, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. For starters, John, thanks for having me. Shout out to the nation. I'm happy to be here. I've definitely tapped into a lot of the stuff that you've done. Thank you. And I'm a fan of the platform. What first comes to mind is the fact that you can move with integrity and have values and still have a high level of success. I think that's the first thing that comes to mind. And I think that people oftentimes feel like, you know, you, those folks that would sell their mom out for, you know, the right deal or opportunity, you don't have to go that route.

2:02I think you can move through business and building businesses and have success, having integrity, having values and ultimately being honest with folks. I love that. And Fire Nation, as you heard in the intro, we're talking all about how to identify and develop talent as an entrepreneur. And Jay, you've done a lot of cool things throughout your life. But one thing that's really special is your founding story. Share that with us now. I started with my parents. My dad was from Hempstead Projects and ultimately went on to play basketball in the NBA. My mom is from North Carolina and has those kind of southern values and work ethic.

2:51I think between the two of them and what I pulled and what I learned kind of growing up was that, you know, hard work is, you know, what it's going to take in order to have a certain level of success. I actually dropped out of college and I don't encourage anybody to do this, but I actually dropped out of college my last semester and decided to start a music management company. and part of the reason that I did that was I kind of knew what I didn't want to do or couldn't do and I didn't want to go I couldn't I wasn't set up to go to more traditional route of like a nine to five type job and I wanted to do something entrepreneurially and little did I know how how hard it was going to be but ultimately in the end you know paid off but you know I started out in music management there's a guy named Charles Soot who was a close friend and he encouraged me to start in management because it was a good way to figure out where in music exactly you know I would want to be because I was dealing with every aspect of an artist's career so you know making an album touring finances dealing with the record label marketing it was kind of dealing with all things related to that those respective artists he felt like that would be a good way for me to learn you know exactly where I want to be in the music business and I ended up staying a music manager for for over 20 years um about five years ago my partner and I shut down our management company and I took a look at the landscape of you know and throughout those years we were able to sell our management company uh twice over um and throughout that uh when we when when i shut down the management company we would i was thinking about what i wanted to do next and ultimately decided to start a music distribution company called human resources and i self-financed the business got to work you know put a small team together put some points on the board and ultimately was able to do a deal with sony and the Orchard in 21 to come in and acquire my business, which I'm currently running inside of Sony in the Orchard.

5:11Now, Jay, people have a lot of opinions about how to create long-term success in business. Your opinion is based around driving culture. Tell us more about that. I think if you move culture, everything else moves along with it. We had a saying at our management company, which is very simple, do dope. You ultimately are able to move, move culture. You know, everything else falls in line, you know, with, when, when we're putting out, um, when we're signing acts, when we're putting out music, it all starts with, with, with the music. It all starts with the content. It starts with getting something that is super sticky and, you know, whether it's playlisting or, you know, share, shareability or, you know, like, folks on socials, reposting, posting, you know, all of those things kind of fall in line with the product being really good.

6:08So to me, if you move culture, you know, everything else kind of flows along with it. Now give one other real world example of how you did this and saw results by just really focusing on driving culture. The music business has changed a lot, you know, over the time that I've been in it. And, you know, the more recently, the, the cool thing about where the music industry sits currently is the culture and the gatekeepers are, are young folks on, on social platforms, um, that are consumers that are listening to music on the digital streaming platforms. Um, the, the, the youth and, and they're controlling the culture, right there was a time in which you had radio and you had you know all of these other kind of even even the record companies at times were determining what the singles were what the you know what we were focused on what was ultimately had the best shot for success and the cool thing where the business since currently is that um the kids are determining that you know you look at records that are that are you know jumping off a tiktok 10 years that are 10 years old.

7:25Miguel is actually having a hit right now with this Short Thing record. And I was able to speak to him recently about it. And my comment was that there's no expiration date on great. And he put out a great song a decade ago. And young people decided that they were going to make it a hit again now. And he affected and moved the culture and ultimately turned into a number one record at radio going on six weeks currently. So there's a lot of different ways, I think, that you can touch culture, but the community and the culture is going to tell you if you got it right. I love that one phrase that you shared, there's no expiration date on a great.

8:14That could be a line in an upcoming hit song just for anybody listening out there because that's a killer line. And we have a lot to talk about, Fire Nation, around this topic when we get back from thanking our sponsors. If you're anything like me, then you're looking forward to a lot of outdoor time this summer. I'm talking about hitting the pool, going on epic hikes, and maybe even getting in a few pickleball matches. But in order to do all that, you and your team need to work smarter, not harder. That's why we're so excited about HubSpot's integrated AI tech. It's helping teams automate the more tedious parts of running a business.

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9:57Team up with a hiring partner who understands what you need. ZipRecruiter. It's no wonder four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Just go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter.com slash fire. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash F-I-R-E. ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire. Jay, we're back and you believe that finding talent is paramount, more important than anything else. So what are the attributes that you look for when searching for talent? For starters, I'm working off a gut, right? I think that now a lot of companies have the benefit of analytics, which I think is important and a very useful tool.

10:46But I'm from the old school, right? And I think we had to, you know, we didn't have the benefit of analytics. We didn't have the benefit of social numbers and those kinds of things that people can look at currently. So we had to operate off gut. But I feel like a happy kind of medium is a combination of analytics and gut, where you hear something and immediately it cuts through the noise. when you think about the amount of songs that are that you know it's 90 ,000 songs that are uploaded daily to Spotify so when you think about the amount of music that's out you have to have something that cuts through so it could be an artist's voice it could be their tone it could be the melodies it could be the lyric but ultimately when you find that combination of all of those things and then someone has a very unique personality and persona, you know, those are the makings of a real superstar.

11:51But ultimately, it's going to take, you know, all of those things combined, plus, you know, an artist that's really ready to work and that understands what their North Star is and what the trajectory is and the plan is in order to get there and how they can, be a good partner to us and ultimately break them as a superstar. So you did mention hard work as one of those attributes, among some other things. But what's another incredibly important attribute that you're looking for when it comes to your search for talent? I would say passion, because I think passion leads to the work. I think artists that are willing to do what it takes to go all the way.

12:37When you think about competing on the highest level, when you're talking about a superstar, a global superstar, you're talking about competing on the highest level in the world. and when you compare to other fields, whether it's the best doctors in the world or the best basketball players in the world or the best executives in the world, it's a very, very small group of individuals that are highly skilled and that work really hard. So I think that it's that passion to want to win combined with the talent, combined with the work ethic. So another one of your beliefs is that empowering talents can create new opportunities as well as success stories.

13:30How do you do this at your company? And give us a real world example or two. So for me, it's like, I didn't want to be one of the, and I don't want to be one of those old guys that is, you know, thinks they have it all figured out, right? And it's like, we did this like this, and this is how this works. And, you know, the music business is a young man's and women's sport. And we in order for me to stay in it and stay current and stay relevant, I have to empower the young people around me as much as I possibly can. And the goal for me is to learn as much from them as they could potentially learn from me.

14:11but you know to give you an example we have we have an artist that's currently having writing a real you know really big hit record and has an amazing album and you know she came to us and with an album done and she presented the first time I met her she presented this album to me and the record company that she was previously signed to had heard the same album that I heard but they heard it and they saw her in a very different way and they didn't see it as something doing in the album that she had made. And ultimately it turned into a real success story. You know, she has a single that's gone platinum and multi-platinum in multiple countries, you know, is setting herself up as the first female global, you know, pop superstar that's done it independently.

15:04So, you know, and, and, and, you know, the, the trick for me was to, to, to support her and support her vision and support what she brought to the table, not try to change it or make it sound like something else or send her back to the drawing board. She had done the work. And I like to, to, to take the same kind of approach with, you know, my team. Whereas, you know, I'm a, I'm, I'm a servant leader, right? I'm listening to and working for my team. You know, I'm here to support them. And when they come to me with ideas that sometimes feel a bit radical or sometimes feel like something that I don't necessarily see or agree with, I try to do my best to support them in it and give them opportunities for me to learn, right?

15:54Because, you know, worst case scenario, it doesn't work. Best case scenario, it doesn't. we all learn something. So I feel like that's the approach that I've taken is to support people's vision and especially young people and try to support them as much as I can. Jay, take a step back. We talked about driving culture. We talked about searching for talent. We talked about empowering your talent. What is the one thing you really want to make sure our listeners get from our conversation today? It boils back down to putting the work in. I oftentimes will refer back to a Kobe Bryant interview when he talks about where and how he feels like he got his strategic advantage.

16:46and you know it happened for him at a very young age but he you know in simple math and in layman's terms he he figured he took the approach that if he worked three times as hard as everybody else and he put in three times as many hours as somebody else or the rest of the the pack that he would start to creep up and become as good ultimately become better than and then he would there would be so much of a gap between him and the rest of, you know, the, the, the rest of the players that it would be tough, if not impossible for them to catch up to him. You know, so that was, that was kind of his, his thing is like really put in the hours.

17:29And as an entrepreneur, you know, it's, it, it, you don't always see the results right away, right? You don't get, especially when you're starting out, you don't see, there's not a check that shows up in your mailbox every two weeks. So as an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to work overtime. And sometimes when you don't, you don't see a direct result. And, you know, the hope is that it pays off big in the end, but you got to put the hours and you can't cheat the work. You know, you have to put the hours in and anybody who, you know, and the other thing that I would, you know, say is paramount in terms of a takeaway is building a really solid network, You know, and going out and building with people that are like minded, people that are going to press you still really start sharp and steal, you know, and that old cliche, your network is your net worth.

18:22It's real, you know, and I've built an amazing network of people that are having success in and around entertainment. And, you know, a few of them happen to be my closest friends. and it's fun and it's rewarding to be able to have success with people that you really are friendly with and ultimately a family. Jay, if Fire Nation wanted to connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? What is your call to action for our listeners today? Yeah, reach out. human-read-sources on Instagram. We are super engaged there. I would love to hear what people are listening to, what people are excited about, what artists we should maybe be paying attention to.

19:15And also, if folks have ideas for marketing, job opportunities, all of that stuff is consistently posted on our IG. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with J-E and J-L-D today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit EOFire.com. just type Irving in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And Jay, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John. Appreciate you having me, man.

19:53Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Jay for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for, you guessed it, free, freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. The Gold Digger Podcast, hosted by Jenna Kuchar, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The Gold Digger Podcast helps you discover your dream career with productivity tips, social strategies, business hacks, inspirational stories, and so much more.

20:27One of my favorite recent episodes is titled How I've Built an Unmatched Team Culture, an insanely important topic for all business owners to dive into. Listen to Gold Digger wherever you get your podcasts.