Episode 37: Relationships Matter: Being Truthful Goes A Long Way With John Wiseman
No matter what industry you are in, every business is a relationship business. No one can build one’s career on one’s own. We all need people who can support and guide us in different ways. Amy Vetter’s guest for this episode knows this to be true, learning this very valuable lesson across every step of his career. John Wiseman is the senior vice president of Production Resource Group. Here, he shares his entrepreneurial journey from selling fireworks as a teenager to working with the biggest bands in the music business. His early learning of how to network and build relationships shaped his career and created the success he has had in his business and personal life. Always one for telling the truth, John shares with us the many instances that showed how truth could go a long way both in our professional and personal lives. While making smart business decisions are important, it is equally necessary to have some heart and soul in it, which goes back to knowing how to maintain relationships against it all. At the end of the day, being successful is all about going beyond the money but also the human side of helping and connecting with others.
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Relationships Matter: Being Truthful Goes A Long Way With John Wiseman
I interviewed John Wiseman, Senior Vice President of PRG Music Group. John began his career in live event production in 1979 as the concert chairman at California State University Sacramento. He managed local bands there and also toured with some of the biggest bands at the time, such as Kansas, Hall & Oates, and The Who. When the band that he was managing broke up in 1985, John began renting sound and lighting gear to local and national shows. During this time, John was drawn to the technology sector of the production world and joined many different companies as an executive. He saw lighting and video merge and start becoming one. He was instrumental in launching Catalyst, the first computer-based media server and forerunner of many to come.
Although it was a valuable learning experience, the manufacturing and sales end of the business was not on the front lines of delivering actual shows and John began to look for an avenue back to where he began his career. His passion brought him to excel touring video in Los Angeles. After four years, he felt the need to create his own company, Chaos Visual Productions. In December of 2008, Chaos was acquired by PRG. In January, 2015, they became a part of PRG Nocturne. During my interview with John, we discussed the importance of his entrepreneurial journey from selling fireworks as a teenager to working with the biggest bands and music. Learn how his relationships with all of the different people that are involved in the music production industry helped him throughout his career.
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I am with John Wiseman. He is the Senior Vice President of PRG Music Group. John, do you want to give a little background on yourself?
I am an out of control young man, a child that ended up in the music business, which segued from my ability to entertain people by throwing parties. I was the party guy. I did it to make money and have fun. That segued into the music business. We have a lot of happy accidents along all of our lives like, “How did I end up here?” My accidents were smart, tested and great. I did very bad in school. I was the class clown and spent a lot of time sitting out in the hallway instead of in the classroom. That was what they called disruptive. I was lucky enough to be able to channel that disruption into an entrepreneurialship through my genes. My father was a top salesman. My mom was a well-loved, great lady. These are two World War II veterans. My mom was a flight nurse in World War II and landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, plus five as a nurse.
When you said your dad was in sales, what did he do?
They were both in the Army and my mom was going off to Europe. My dad lied about his age so she would go out with him because he was younger. He fell madly in love with her and proposed marriage because he didn't want anyone else to steal her away. They got married and then they both went off to war. He went off to Africa and Italy and she went off to the UK. She ended up being one of the nurses and went through the Battle of the Bulge and all that stuff. My father was a Lieutenant. He was an engaging, warm, fun and friendly guy. I remember as a kid, he would light up the room when he walked in. I remember large, famous people at that time gravitating towards him, which I thought was odd as a ten-year-old because these are all the people that were famous. I come to find out is that he ended up his career in the Army taken around the guys from the Memphis Belle.
He took those guys on the USO trip around and then they both got discharged. It went into post-Army in Virginia. My father was a salesman for a sash and door company, which is now called windows and doors. He got transferred to the Reno, Nevada on the West Coast. They built the life out here. He was a top sales guy who ended up on his own company and being a manufacturer's representative. I got that in the genes. My mom was always friendly. My dad was always outgoing and friendly. The parties in Reno, Nevada happened at our house a lot. I remember being a kid observing all of this, the golf tournaments and all that stuff. It was in my DNA. As a kid, I would bring fireworks out from my summer trips back East and sell them in Reno. I would bring Coors T-shirts and I had a whole price list.
How did that even start? Why were you selling it? What was it about the money? Was it that you needed the money or was it more like could you get the money?
It was the game. It was social interaction. It was my inability to fit into a box in school. I wanted to be successful somewhere. I don't want to be popular, but I could run with everybody in my classroom. It didn't matter who they were. I was not stuck in one camp. I liked everybody and you either love me or you hated me. If you hated me, I worked harder to make friends. When you're twelve years old and you're selling a Budweiser and Coors t-shirts, which is what I did and fireworks, which were illegal at the time. That was how I kicked that door open and made myself different.
Was it watching your father being a salesperson?
I don't think it was anything that I contrived, it was the gist. I went to my zone where I was comfortable and where I could be successful socially. I didn't mind having the money because I buy stuff as a kid. It was never about the money. It was about the win and comradery. I don't know where I got this from. It must be my DNA. At the end of a deal, whether that was selling a firework, a big rock concert, t-shirts or whatever was happening, I used to sell Christmas cards door-to-door and Easter cards. I’ve seen them at the back of the comic magazine and went, “You can get that toy by doing this.” I bought them and I'm down the street. For me, everybody won at the end of the day. The person who bought the product was happy. They were treated properly. I won because I made a customer.
My customers are not customers. It seems very odd to call them customers because my business is a personal relationship business. I got sued for $33 million in 2008 because I was the CEO of a company in America. This is how I leave the company. The company that I left asked me to remain on the Board of Directors for two years and paid me my salary for two years to manage relationships with Princess Cruises, Disney and a bunch of rock bands. It was a handshake deal. I left but I stayed with that company. The new company that I was running in America was close to bankruptcy. I was able to turn that around completely 100% with relationships. The first artist that was going out was Beyoncé, the second one was Mötley Crüe and the third one, it snowballed.
I took them from the edge of bankruptcy to wildly successful in America, which is what all the Europeans dreams are. They want to be successful in America. It’s the place to be successful. I got sued. The long story short, I went through an eight-week long jury trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. I had 38 witnesses that not one of them was subpoenaed. This is a test of the relationships. I had to call them and say, “These guys are saying this. You know it's not true. They're using you to beat me up. This has been going on for eighteen months and 55 days of depositions. I'm at about $2.8 million out of my pocket. I'm not going to settle. I'm going to fight. I didn't do this.” They all showed up without a subpoena, every single one of them.
That goes from an NBA All-Star to Tommy Lee. Mötley Crüe took the stand for me and all the people that design and put their shows together, it was a relationship. The company that was suing me, I was able to prove that customers have a choice of where they spend their money. This was a very high-profile way to say. “Walmart, you can't have a customer that decides to go to Kmart on a different day and sue Kmart because they're providing a better service.” That was an expensive test and culmination of relationships.
I would say as an entrepreneur and to many audiences who are running businesses, there's nothing worse when a legal issue hits. Besides the relationship side, which is a great lesson, to fight is hard to a lot of times in business.
Sometimes you're not given a choice. These guys wanted to take my home and everything I worked for, for many years. When the judge approves them to come to inventory your house, appraise your daughter's car, wife's wedding ring and furniture, I say to the judge, “Why are you doing this?” He says, “If you lose, I want to know what you’ve got. I don't want you hiding anything.” I'm like, “This is how this works.” It's a big part. You could do six months of horror stories on the whole legal issue. It was a David and Goliath thing too. These guys were big and we were small. At the end of the day, they spent $6.2 million suing me. I spent $3.8 million defending myself which you don't get back. I won and they're bankrupt and I am not.
Let's go back to your story because you've got an interesting journey to be doing what you're doing now in the music world. You started off selling fireworks and so forth. You did this through high school. Did you finish high school? Did you go to college? What ended up starting taking you on your journey was this entrepreneurship side?
I was never good at school unless I liked the teacher and the subject. I'm street smart, not book smart. When you’re a kid, they diagnosed you as hyperactive. Later on, that became ADD and ADHD and all that other stuff. I've been through all that crap. I see things and do things differently. I never read directions from anything. That's probably most men. I did eventually graduate from high school. I remember having a chat with my high school Algebra teacher on my third or fourth time taking pre-Algebra. His name was Mr. Gardella at Reno High School. I said, “Mr. Gardella, if you don't pass me, I'm not going to graduate. It's a math problem. There are letters in it. There should not be letters in a math problem.” I remember saying this. I can tell you vividly and walk to the room at the school. I said, “I can add, subtract, multiply, divide. I can get a percentage. That's all I need to know because other stuff, if I need it, I'll hire somebody to do it so I can get out of here.” He said, “Okay.” He passed me. That was me doing sales.
I got in a little bit of trouble in my high school years. I got kicked out of school a few times and then I got kicked out of the State of Nevada when I was about 16. I was a wild kid. It had to do a lot with my father dying in a car accident when I was thirteen. It pissed me off and I was angry from that point on. I have never seen him again. That was a lot more traumatic than I ever realized it was. I found out that because I was always like tough it out, go. You learn a lot more about yourself when you drink too much, you end up using drugs and you end up in rehab. You get that 30 to 40-day time out. You join an AA program, which I'm a proud member of. I'll be clean and sober 25 years on June 15th 2020.
There weren't as many programs at that time. I volunteered at a place here in Cincinnati when I was in college called Fearnside. It was developed by a woman whose son had died in a car accident. The whole place was for the kids of family members that died. One night would be for things car accidents and sudden, versus suicide and cancer.
Now, it's more common and accepted. My alcoholic version years ago was, “You must be a loser.” I'm not going to admit defeat. I'm not going to stand up in front of the world and say, “I need help.” That's something that you didn't do. I look at it completely counterintuitively the right way. There's nothing wrong with raising your hand. I was on the cusp because I was in the rock and roll world. It was a little more accepted than not. When I went into rehab, I was surprised there were a lot of airline pilots, nurses and insurance people. There were a couple of rock guys in there that I was with. It's a little more accepted now. I went in without any insurance. I paid cash for it. I didn't want it following me for the rest of my life. My best thinking got me into that situation. Getting back to school, the trouble that I got in Reno was defiant. Long story short, my mother remarried and moved to Sacramento. I ended up living in Sacramento with my mom, my new stepsister and my stepfather who was a wonderful man. They were all about, “You’ve got to go to college.” I was like, “Okay.”
Relationships Matter: Customers have a choice of where they spend their money.
I got Social Security because of my father's death, so I got paid to go to school. I did well the first year to junior college and then I transferred to another college. While I was there, my girlfriend worked at the student union. The director of student activity is a guy named Rich Shippers. He’s a big kid. He was about 6’2” and 220. He said to me, “We were going to unload some trucks because we're going to start to do some shows. Why don't you come to help us?” I said. “What are you doing?” He said, “The last show here was Jimi Hendrix X number of years ago.” He lit his guitar on fire in the gym, which the school didn't like. I ended up working that one particular show with my girlfriend's boss. We were both students. He said, “You've got the gift of gab. We want to kick this program in. Do you want to learn how to do this?” I'm building custom room additions in houses. I was about nineteen years old at that time.
I worked summer’s construction, so I was doing little jobs putting skylights and that kind of stuff. I said, “Can I run my little construction business out of the student union?” He said, “Sure.” My whole objective was to take my construction business bigger. I have an office for free and have them answer the phone, which I worked all that out. He hands me a big book and he says, “This is a list of all the agents in the world. Start calling them, see who they've got. You would look up and they would list everybody they represented in film, lectures and all these other ones.” I went to the music section and I started calling the agents. I picked up the phone and called them because I didn't know that you weren't supposed to do that.
They answered because no one's calling.
I got through because I was representing California State University in Sacramento. These guys knew that all the colleges had money. We were a college that was not on their radar because we hadn't been doing shows. The college down the street, the University of California at Davis had better facilities and they were doing lots of shows. I started sniffing around. I went back to my hometown. I had some friends that worked at the radio station there that were in college doing the college promoter thing. Through networking and then calling people, I put together a deal where I could sell three schools. I'd say, “I can give you a Sacramento, Fresno and Reno. It's a good stop between San Francisco, which is an A-market, and Salt Lake City which is a B-plus market. I can give you these B-minus and C-markets right in the middle. Instead of buying one show, I'll buy three.” I represented the other colleges and I would buy all three then sell it off to them. How did I know to do that? Going back to the Christmas cards I sold and the t-shirts, buy one for $3 and two for $5.
It makes the better use of their time if they're going to travel out there.
This is what I did in high school. I used to buy kegs. I take them up in the mountains and sell tickets. That goes back to the fake ID mustache.
You wear a fake mustache because you weren't 21 to buy the keg. How good was this mustache?
It was horrible. We use some stuff to stick it on. I grew up in a casino town. They had these uniforms and places.
What did you buy though?
It was the spirit of gum or something like that. We would stick it on with that and then we would use some other thing to take it off. I went to the high school Art Department and we did a 4x8 sheet of plywood, painted it to look like the brand-new Nevada driver's license, which was coming out in $0.75. The ones before didn't have a picture on it or anything. We painted the little blue spot in the corner. We hang it up on the wall. It looked exactly like it. We had some kids from our department make it. You would stand there with your fake mustache on. You would take the picture and then you would laugh. I use that to open up a line of credit at a couple of the local beer distributorships. Why they let me do that? I don't know. It was a different time back then.
When I heard that story the first time, I was like, “Why would someone buy into this mustache?”
It’s because I was spending money.
You might look silly, but I don't care.
I remember them doing the double-take. You’ve got to remember, I was sixteen years old. I was the smallest kid in my class. I only got big later. When I was sixteen, I got my driver's license. I was 5’6”, 140 pounds, big rosy cheeks, curly like Robert Plant long hair with this mustache style. It was bad but it worked. Quite frankly, I was the kid that had the balls enough to walk in there and do it.
The worst that can happen is someone says, “No.” I'm not in that situation but in your other sales situation where you were talking about calling these agents and having the three schools, a few times in, salespeople take it personally and you have to be ready to not take it personally.
Let's face it, I'm a salesman and I run companies. I've always said, “If you don't have sales, you get thrown out of the company.” If you can have the greatest processes, operations, delivery and product but if you don't have anything to sell, you don't have any income. You don't have anything to build on.” Every company I've ever started has been with thought of mine like, “What's my revenue potential here?” I backed into the operation stuff.
You started getting bands coming to the school. You started to bring them in. What kinds of bands?
Mid-level bands. I booked Elvin Bishop back in the day. He had a hit that got already come and gone. I Fooled Around and Fell In Love, that was the first big show I booked myself. What's funny about that is I booked that with a guy named Rob Kahane. Rob Kahane was an agent at ICM. He was one of the guys who took my call. He was probably five years older than me. I worked with Rob off and on since then in a deep sense because he ended up managing George Michael. I ended up doing George Michael tours. I booked Elvin Bishop and a band called The Babys. Jonathan Waite was the lead singer. Jonathan Cain went on with Journey. He was the keyboard player. They were great men. They had a couple of mid-level hits at that time.
I booked Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Rockets. From there, I started a CalState University Sacramento got on the map as a competitive force in this area. Because of that, I made friends with the kids of UC Davis or the University of California Davis which had great facilities. I was a pain in their ass because they were doing big shows. They were doing The Knack and The Pretenders, and all these big shows. Those guys are all graduated and went on to be promoters. The people that were left behind, there was a guy over there named Mike Ledesma. Mike worked for Santana. I saw him at a show because I still do Santana. Mike called me up and said, “They are going to open a Caesar's in Lake Tahoe.” I remember wearing UC Davis which is Sacramento about two hours away. He said, “If they've offered me a job, I'm going to go up there.”
“None of the kids over here have a clue what's going on. You're kicking ass over there. Why don't you come over here and take this over?” He was also friends with a band that I had started to manage in town called Steel Breeze. I managed them because they asked me to and I didn't have any idea what it meant. I’m like, “Why not? We were all hanging out.” I went over to UC Davis and I ended up having some success over there, but the big promoter was a guy named Bill Graham. He was one of the biggest promoters on the planet. He was based out of San Francisco. He had started with a Fillmore East, Fillmore West, Winterland and then he would do the Days on the Green which was Oakland Coliseum. I bought a ticket to one of his shows, Led Zeppelin in 1979. I had the worst seats possible but I had a great time. I thought this is amazing.
I called his office and got him on the phone and said, “We've got better facilities.” At that point, there was nothing bigger than the Rec Hall at UC Davis on the campus. It was 8,500 seats. He said, “What do you want kid?” I said, “A couple of things. You guys have the money and you have the connections.” This is a stop between San Francisco and Denver or San Francisco and Salt Lake City or San Francisco or wherever you're going routing-wise. If you're on your way to Seattle, you can swing through Sacramento. I said, “It's an extra date for you.” He started booking the dates, but I said, “Let us produce the shows because we have the college stage and crew. We know the local radio stations. Let us continue to be involved.” I remember him saying to me, “What else do you want?” I said, “I want to learn how to do this. I know you're going to do the Rolling Stone shows in Northern California because you're doing a world tour. I want to work on those shows.” I parlayed myself into being the assistant director of Backstage Ambiance.
Relationships Matter: You can have the greatest processes, operations, delivery, and product, but if you don't have anything to sell and you don't have any income, you don't have anything to build on.
Bill Graham was brilliant about making it a scene backstage because he was selling himself to the bands. We want to go back to that guy because he knows what he's doing. I ended up working at the shows at Candlestick Park with the Rolling Stones on a Tattoo You, renting shrubbery, AstroTurf, big circus tents, caterers, hot tubs and all that stuff. That was where I saw how a real company and how a real guy would do it. That guy changed the way shows were done. I was lucky enough to beat it. Not even a tiny piece of it, I was around to watch it. That's my college career. The band I was managing at that time ended up getting a record deal with RCA Records. That was because I had driven their little single around to the radio stations, got them to play it at midnight, and they started getting some traction. I could put it on consignment at Tower Records and Record Factory. We were outselling in three cities. We were outselling the Rolling Stones’ single Start Me Up. This single was selling more than that. RCA Records got on the radar. I had no idea what I was doing.
One thing that you did know is creating scarcity. That's one thing as salespeople or entrepreneurs, we're trying to get quantity versus quality.
To segue to that thought, let the audience know what that's about. When they asked me to manage them, I put them on as the opening act of The Babys at the Cal State Gym. They did a great job. We had a great time. It was a lot of fun. It was a big party. They asked me to manage them. I didn't know what that meant, but I did know how you had a certain amount of tickets for a show. You could charge a certain amount of price. You wanted to create a vibe. You didn't want to make it. I learned from the big guys that Rolling Stones didn't play in San Francisco every three months. They played every three years because there was a demand. When I started managing this little band, they were playing five nights a week. There was a rotation of bars in Northern California. There were 3 or 4 in Sacramento, a couple up in Marysville and South Lake Tahoe. They were through this rotation. These guys were playing five nights a week, Tuesday through Saturday.
They were doing four sets a night, which wasn’t enough for the singer. The guy can't sing that much. The first thing I did was sat down with all the nightclub owners immediately and renegotiated what they were going to do. It was a ballsy move as I looked back on it. I said, “Are you sure you want to do that?” I knew inherently. If you can go see them on any night and show up at any time, who cares? What I did was I wanted to make it more of an event. I brought some production to their show by up in the sound system and up in the lighting system. I took them from five nights a week to three nights a week. We would do Thursday, Friday, Saturday and then we only do two sets a night. I would put an opening act on there and I would make it any event. I hijacked the local bars media budgets and they were doing an ad for their bar that week. I made them put in one of our songs that we had cut and recorded and then play that as the background.
Taking little bits and pieces of everything that I've learned over the years. I'll tell you how the pay scale went. They went from $800 for five nights, four sets a night to three nights, two sets a night. From $800 to $2,500. I got thrown out at one guy's bar. We almost got in a fistfight. He said, “I don't know who the fuck you think you are kid.” I said, “I'm trying to help you too.” He's my stockbroker now and has been for years. His name is Russ Martinez. He's a big shot at Morgan Stanley, but I remember Russ looking at me and go, “Why don't you let me keep the door? I'll collect the money. You can have a guide there checking IDs.” When he said, “I don't want to do that.” I knew that I was fine with my number range.
He sitting there and didn't want you to know what was coming in. From managing bands, do you do set designs?
I don't do the set designs. My company does. I've been either a minority partner, a majority partner or a top sales guy with a piece of the action through my career at all the different companies that I've worked with and for. They follow me because I have those relationships. The best way to put an exclamation mark at that is that the last witness in my trial was Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe. Tommy was walking in and Tommy said, “John, what are they going to ask me?” I said, “Tommy, here's the thing. Tell the truth. Whatever they ask you, tell the truth. I don't want to prep you, my lawyer is not going to prep you. They're going to come at you and try to make me look bad. If I look bad, I look bad but tell the truth.”
At the end of the day, the opposing counsel said, “How did John find out about the shows you were going to do?” Tommy said, “We promote the shows. How did he find out about it earlier?” The guy goes, “What do you mean?” He said, “I don't even know where he works now. I don't know the names of these companies that you're talking about, XL Video, Chaos, Vari-Lite. I don't care where he works. Pam and I and the kids go down to John's house. We go off the rope swing and we have a barbecue. He's the best in the business, I trust him. He's been with me for every single show I've ever done. I don't know where he works.” That's the key. If you can maintain a personal relationship and professional relationship, that means everybody's winning every day. I'm not getting one over on him. He's not getting one over on me.
You can trust each other.
He knows that I have his best interest at heart, but my company has to stay alive and make a profit. If there's not a profit, I can't be there for him next time.
Going along this because there was something else I heard you say, which is important. In business school, they had us watch this video called Give 'Em the Pickle. It was all about this little ice cream shop. This guy takes his family there. He didn't get a pickle with his meal, and the waiter says, “It will be $0.50.” The guy blew up. The guy's principle was, “Give them the pickle.”
I would have given the waiter $1, told him to keep the pickle and he’ll never see me again.
You would talk about this whole relationship thing, there are things all the time that goes wrong in business and how you have to maintain those relationships as most important even if you think you're right.
If you think you're right, you owe a duty to your customer and friend to always tell them the truth. I have never had a problem telling somebody bad news. The minute you try to sugarcoat it or you're doing it for all the wrong reasons, you're protecting yourself and you're trying to make yourself look better, you're not circling the project or the thing that you're involved with for the best interest of that outcome. It's about saving my ass which is completely not going to save your ass. I had the most difficult situation I've ever dealt with in my whole career. We launched new products and new technology. I was with a company called Vari-Lite, they were majority shareholder. It was a bunch of engineers and there was the band, Genesis, Phil Collins and those guys. They invested the money to make it work. The launch of brand-new technology is painful because there's always an issue.
What did the technology do?
This was moving lights. Before a light would always sit still, it was in the same color, beam, focus, intensity and that was it. You can add a piece of gelatin in front of it, they've made the color. These engineers in Dallas are brilliant. They did internal color-changing, then they automated it. You can move it around and then you see them. The young kids think that's all normal. That was revolutionary. Fast forward to a lot of those type of product deliveries over the years, we're doing a tour with Ariana Grande and the design was by a guy named LeRoy Bennett. He was one of the best in the world and the design was very complicated. We were using a lot of new technology on it and we were having a whole lot of trouble.
Twenty-hour days, the rehearsals were a disaster, it was the worst thing I've ever been involved in my life. I had too many smart guys that had put stakes in the ground and were all defending their position. I had to get them all in one room and go, “This is not about what you think, you being right or wrong. We can talk about all this later. We'll do a postmortem on this after, but we're in a lot of trouble.” During that time, I was out with Nicki Minaj and I got a phone call. I didn't even know what was going on. None of my guys had let me know. I ended up flying into rehearsals and walking into this absolute disaster.
The production manager says, “John, this is unbelievably bad.” His name is Zito. I said, “Zito, I'm drinking from the fire hose here. I'm not exactly sure. Let me have a day to find out what the hell is going on. I'll tell you how we're going to fix it.” He's like, “Thank you.” At least, he had other departments he had to deal with. He knew I wasn't going to lie to him. We got through that. This is a show that you're chasing. It's moving every day. You have doors at 7:00 PM. This technology was projector focusing technology on 3D objects on the stage. There was a lot of math going on.
When this thing was taking place, you couldn't have any movement in the arena at all. No movement at all. I remember we were at Boston Garden and we'd finally overcome. We were right about where we needed to be. You had to make sure all the janitors didn't come around the corner or nobody was in the luxury suites. For 30 minutes, it had to sit completely perfectly still while it did all its laser measuring. Twenty-eight minutes into it, we're sitting there watching it and all of a sudden, there’s a bird inside the Boston Garden because there are sparrows that live in the building, I looked at my partner and my partner looked at me and he goes, “It sucks the soul right out of your body.” The point is we stayed with it.
We didn't lie. It costs me and my company about $1.5 million to fix it. At the end of the day, those guys looked at me and they said, “John, that was the worst experience of our life.” I said, “I understand.” They said, “We would rather be in the trenches with you than anybody else because you never wavered. You never lied. You never said we can't spend that money.” I looked at him and said, “We will fix this. This is going to be painful. This is going to be horrible. I'll tell you what you need to do for me.” If you need to hold doors for 30 minutes, every night we had 18,000 people. If that doesn't happen, my $1.5 million throwing money at the problem would have been $10 million or $100 million. You have to stay with your word. You’ve got to decide, are you in this for the long haul? Are you passing through this business?
I love to hear your perspective. You've taken many ups and downs in business and your life. I'm a business owner. Many people are dealing with things that they've never experienced before and how to pivot. What is some advice that you've learned through downturns before?
Relationships Matter: If you can maintain a personal and professional relationship, then everybody's winning every day.
There are a few phrases that are pertinent right now that I hate and despise. We're all in this together. If I hear that again, I'm going to throw up.
It’s time that you have to save yourself.
Unprecedented or state the obvious. Those phrases are accurate, but I'm tired of hearing about it because it's like, “Let's get on with this.” We've defined what it is, it's bad. My business is particularly bad these days. You’ve got to understand. I built my company and I sold it. I built another company and I sold it. The last one I built, I sold to a company called PRG, which is who I'm with now. I manage a group of clients for them. I did a five-year deal when I sold my company. I renewed it in December 2019 because I'm happy with the guy that owns it. They're good people. My stuff was mostly rock and roll. These guys do 80% of the Broadway market, 70% of the London West End, 50% to 80% of all of the truck and bus tours that go out of Broadway or that type of thing, 60% to 70% of all the music events in the world. They have 70 offices, 3,500 full-time employees, 5,000 contract guys.
Around March 18th, 2020, it stopped everything. We do car launches like the new BMWs, a new Ford, a new Chevy, Amazon has a big party every year that we do. Everything you can think of that's a big, large scale event, we do the halftime at the Superbowl. We do the opening ceremonies for the Olympics around the world. There’s nothing happening right now. We have a call. I don't have a roadmap to it because a lot of this is above our pay grade. Part of how we're getting through this, and the advice I would give anybody is, in our situation, you can't do a show without a permit. I commented an executive call with all my guys where Bruce Springsteen or somebody of that ilk needs to say, “Enough of this, I'm doing a show at Giant Stadium for five nights. I'm going to donate all the money to the local stagehand union, to the people and the food bank. I'm doing this.”
One of my friends said, one of my guys on the call goes the Wiseman, “It doesn't matter what Bruce Springsteen thinks or does. If the mayor says you can't have a permit, then you can't use the stadium. Yu can't get a permit unless you have liability insurance.” You're not getting that. I'm watching this stuff go on every day on the TV and the Republicans are saying no more money until we have liability indemnification protection for all the businesses because you can't go to a movie, get COVID the next day and sue the movie house. That's what's going to happen. The Democrats on the other side, and not being political at all, they're supported by the Trial Lawyers Association. They won all those trials. That's how they make their money. I've come to the conclusion that my business is not going to kick back on until it's beneficial to the politicians. That means that the Democratic National Convention or the Republican National Convention are those two events which have yet to be decided along with Coachella, which we are involved in helping produce from the visual aspect part of it.
Coachella got moved from April 2020 into October 2020. The conventions are coming up in September or August 2020, whatever. That's what we're watching because I got the Foo Fighters, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard on hold. I've got shows being planned for 2021 with a couple of major artists but until the government gets it together or until it's to their benefit that trickles down to us, which is completely backward of how they're supposed to be acting but that's the reality of the situation, we're stuck. We have calls. We talk about what we're going to do. Paul McCartney canceled his tour. He filed an insurance claim under the force majeure clause, which is Act of God and the insurance company declined it.
Thank God we have a guy with beetle money and beetle attorneys, they’re going to take them to the task. What's going to happen there? We don't know, but you can bet that these insurance companies are going to write this stuff out. What we're doing right now is we're doing a lot of virtual studios. I don't know if you saw American Idol, the grand finale. Katy Perry came to our studios in our offices in Los Angeles. We had created a virtual reality studio. She did a video where she's in the forest and it looks like she's there. That was all done in our studios in Burbank. We've shifted to that and we're doing a lot of that, but we're $1.2 billion in revenue a year.
Many people are struggling with the human aspect in the leadership of having to lay people off. How have you been able to deal with that piece of it and stay open to the people that are working for you there of what the actual situation is?
The gentleman that bought my company and owns my company that I work for is a guy named Jerry Harrison. He's a good human being. Through a series of a lot of different discussions because it's an ever-changing thing. The 8,500 people that we work with much daily, 5,000 of those guys are independent contractors better known to you guys as roadies. They're able to get unemployment. They’re able to get some of this other stuff. We're too big to get any help. That's our problem. Those guys are filing unemployment and they're dealing with it a lot. They're all friends of mine, let me talk to them. I'm rarely ever in a position where I feel helpless because I can't give 5,000 guys loans. The other 3,500 that were full-time employees, I believe we laid off a few with the exception of the ones that we deemed critical to keep the lights on because we have to have a business to call people back to.
The first thing that the executives did was we all took significant pay cuts immediately. It was a no-brainer. We need to keep more people. We've got X amount of outstanding collections we can do. Jerry deals with the banks. He deals with the multilevel layers of financing. He does all that. I'm not involved in any of that, Thank God. I asked him, “How are you doing?” He goes, “They're coming up the castle wall and I'm picking them off and dropping them in the moat but they keep coming.” Every guy is in those situations, in that same deal. We've taken major salary cuts, which is fine. We've kept on as many people as we can. In Los Angeles for example, we have one building that's about 200,000 or 300,000 square feet.
We can only put eight people in that building by County Ordinance. I wanted to go to the office and they said, “You’ve got to take somebody out of the office for you to go to the office.” I said, “I’ve got to put someone out of work for me to go in there. Forget it. I'll work from home or I'll go to the library.” The people that were furloughed, we were able to continue to pay their health benefits. There are different sections. There are the guys that are completely out there on their own with unemployment. There are the guys that are furloughed. There's the rest of us who are completely blessed to have some income.
It comes back to the side of you want people to know you have their back. You can't be short-sighted at this because there will be an end where you're going to need people again in order for the businesses to succeed. You can't operate as you've always operated for yourself.
You have to make smart business decisions, but you also have to have some heart and soul in this as well, which goes back we're all relationship guys. All the guys at the top of the company, we all have the same clients, same friends and the same thing. We've been at war with each other in the marketplace, but we go out and have dinner together. I've tried to fuck those guys every way I could and they've done the same to me. When you're in the battle, somebody wins, somebody loses and you’ve got to be able to move on. It's heartbreaking to see and not be able to do more. I'm impressed with what my company is able to do for anybody. How do you go from $1.2 billion in income to zero in one day? This is worldwide.
It happens at the smallest business to the largest. It's out of your control and they think a couple of things we've talked about with relationships. When you're talking about Ariana Grande's story of stopping and pausing, you can't react right away. You've got to take in the situation and consider all angles of it. Knee-jerking decisions doesn't help you in the long run.
We're leaders too. I've never been a panic guy. Most of the guys at our level aren't panicked guys. We use like, “How are we going to get out of here? How are we going to get this mess?” I tell people, “We're taking actions, we're waiting on governments and some other people to do certain things before. We're preparing ourselves to be ready to go.” I would think it would easiest to get rid of all the sales guys. We're the most expensive guys to keep around. These guys are smart enough to know, and other businesses are smart enough to know that when this thing does flip back on, it's going to flip back on in a big way. You're going to need us to show the money back in the door.
You can't be shortsighted.
You can't panic. You have to be a leader in a lot of different ways. I'm not only leading myself, but I'm leading others by example, without even knowing it.
I like to end with some rapid-fire questions where you pick your category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Let's talk about family and friends.
Things or actions that I don't have that I want?
Nothing.
Relationships Matter: This is just a passing event. It's longer and more brutal than it needs to be, but we're one day closer today to be back to what we want to do.
You have everything that you want.
More than I should have.
Things or actions that I do have that I want?
I already have them, why do I want them?
They should always want more.
I'm the kid that couldn't pay attention in class to set out in the hallway. They got kicked out of a state that was a drug guy. I’m coming up on 25 years, clean and sober. I have more money than I've ever thought I'd ever do need. I enjoy working with others and helping people. I always answer my phone. It doesn't matter what time it is or who it is, I'll talk to anybody about anything. Two things, I remember the assholes, they never called me back when I was a kid. I said, “I'm never going to be one of those guys,” and I’m not. I hate to say lucky because you make your own luck. I'm blessed.
It's also perseverance. You either have it or you don't where you've got the wherewithal.
I'm right where I should be, personality-wise, intelligence-wise and family-wise. I've been married three times. My first wife was a wonderful woman, my high school sweetheart, great girl, but I ruined it with drugs and alcohol. My second wife, I can't say enough great things about her, wonderful person, yet at the end, it didn't work out. I think the lawsuit put a lot of stress. I had opened a new business and I'd been sued all within about a year. That broke her back. I couldn't be there because I was in the fight. I was running a business and I was fighting to save our lives. Third wife, high school guidance counselor, which I never had. She got three kids. They're wonderful parts of my life. My daughter from my second wife is about to have a baby. That's a big deal. There's nothing that I need. I'd like to get back to work and I'd like to bring people back to work. That's what I need.
Is there anything that you want to make sure people have a takeaway or action that you didn't get to say that we've talked about?
Don’t worry. Somebody said, “How are you dealing with this stuff?” I said, “I've been blessed.” I don't have a fear gene or a worry gene because I've always thought like the Ariana Grande situation that we briefly talked about. My being locked up in a rehab, drug addiction with in bankruptcy and having nothing, I never feared, “How is going to get out of this?” You’re either going to do this right or you're not. There was never you’re not. That sane and other sane and I hate to put one step, one foot in front of the other and keep walking forward. At the end of this day, I'm going to be one day closer to going back to work, calling people back to work, doing good work that we like to do and getting back to normal, not the new normal. I'm telling you that if we're doing rock shows and everyone is sitting ten feet away from each other, we'll be in rock shows and everyone's going to be jammed down in the front. This is a passing event. It's longer and brutal than it needs to be, but we're one day closer to be back to what we want to do.
Thank you so much for this interview. There are lots of things for people to take away. I appreciate you doing it.
Nice to meet you, Amy. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
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For my Mindful Moments from my interview with John, which had so many great nuggets in it and you may even want to read this a few times. I know as an entrepreneur, we have had ups and downs in our businesses, whether it has to do with a pandemic or every day running a business. It's important to understand our beginnings and what drove us to be business owners is what creates our unique ability to run a business. The theme of this interview is all about creating relationships. When he was young, he noticed that in order to create a sale, the relationship was most important not only with the vendor but also his customers so that there was a win-win in the transaction, and so that person felt happy from the purchase.
If you're in it for just the money and there's no human side of the business, people feel that. What keeps people coming back is the fact that when you have a relationship with them, it matters to them. They care about giving you the business. They want to make sure that they feel good with whatever product or service that they're walking away with. One of the things that we talked about is how we get shaped by the events that happen in our life. He had some extreme events happen with his father dying in a car accident when he was thirteen years old, how that shaped him as a person, his feelings growing up and the route that he took. What he saw he was good at, even though he was smart, was not school but was in the sales area from all the different experiences he had along the way.
When he got that break in college to start bringing bands into the college, I thought it was interesting rather than looking at the job for what it is that he stepped back from it and decided how could I offer something more to that customer that they wouldn't get with any other college that they talked to. When he started creating relationships and networks with other colleges in the surrounding area, what he had to offer that potential customer or agent was something unique and also was helpful to them. That's important that we don't look at a product or a service as something that we are pushing, but we also have to understand what pain point is it solving and how we are helping.
When he developed that network of schools where these bands could pass through and be able to make more money because they had more bookings during that period, it made a lot of sense. Those relationships that he developed at that time carried through his career and personal life all along the way. Another important piece is when we're trying to learn a job or a business is when we step back and observe how others are doing it. When he was talking about Bill Graham and working with him at Backstage Ambiance with the Rolling Stones, what he was talking about was he wasn't worried about what job he had or any kind of gain in his career. What he was looking to do was to learn to step back, watch what was happening, how it was all coordinated so that he could gain those insights for the things that he wanted to do in the future.
We also talked about the band that he managed and how he started shifting it so that they would make more money and be more desired. Those kinds of decisions are hard sometimes to make that. We can go toward what everybody else is doing. As he said, they were booked five nights a week and so forth or we can create scarcity where the customer and that relationship starts viewing it as special. Those outliers when we're doing business planning is important that we step back and we think about what can we do that would create a unique experience and also that someone would pay more and view this as a quality service or product. Sometimes it's the things that aren't obvious, but we have to look at what we're doing, make sure it's serving us and start making some hard decisions, but testing them. Not every decision we're going to make is the right one. It's important to test along the way in order to create something different than everybody else.
When we got back into the relationships and his case that he went through and the musicians that were coming in to testify with him, what the big takeaway in that was that when we talk about relationships, sometimes there's a line between business and personal. What John was talking about is how you balance both. Someone knows that you have their back, they can trust you and you're not trying to get over on them. This goes back to early on in his career, what are you solving for? What are those pain points you're solving for and how do you stick to your word that people don't question what you're saying, that they believe in what you're saying because you've got a track record of being truthful and being there for them? Even when it costs you money or it's not most advantageous that you are thinking about that relationship, not just for the moment but for the long-term.
As we talked about pivoting especially in times that we're in, things he's learned along the way, and some of his very hard business decision. One of the things that we ended with was about not panicking. This is important when we talk about change management. Our first thing is to have uncertainty and fear, but we need to make sure that we don't panic and make knee-jerk decisions. We are pausing and looking at the situation and making sure that we're considering all different angles of it but be prepared to be ready to go at any time. The important point is that we don't want to step back and say that things will never be the same. We've got to look at conditions and say, “What if they were? What if they weren't?” and so forth. We need to be prepared for the answers that we want so that we can jump when we need to and get our businesses back to where they were and thriving into the future.
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About John Wiseman
John began his career in live event production in 1979 as the Concert chairman at California State University, Sacramento. He also managed local bands in the area and owned a small production company. RCA Records signed Steel Breeze to a recording contract with John as their manager and executive producer of the self-titled debut album which launched two top 10 singles. This was the big break that opened the door to the concert touring industry for John as Steel Breeze supported national tours for Kansas, Hall & Oates, and The Who.
When the band broke up in 1985, John began renting sound and lighting gear to local and national shows. During this time, John was drawn to the technology sector of the production world and joined Vari-Lite as Vice President. John stayed in the manufacturing and sales of automated lighting and control products. He helped usher in Coemar automated lighting products to the US. In 1996, he joined High End Systems and Flying Pig Systems as executive vice president, running their worldwide sales force and was also a member of their Board of Directors until 2006.
During this time, John saw lighting and video merge becoming one. He was instrumental in launching Catalyst, the first computer-based media server and a forerunner of many to come. Although it was a valuable learning experience, the manufacturing and sales end of the business was not on the front lines of delivering the actual shows. John began to look for an avenue back to where he began his career.
This passion brought John to XL Touring Video in Los Angeles. After four years of unprecedented success there, he felt the need to create his own team and Chaos Visual Productions was conceived in December of 2008. Chaos was acquired by PRG in January 2015 becoming a part of PRG Nocturne.
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