How 10 Years in Baltimore's Punk Scene Prepared me for Life as an Entrepreneur

Last week I received a call from a guy that I went to high school with. He had started a company, and wanted me to help him with social media marketing. His company is called Above the Pads, and their purpose is to help preserve youth football programs by showcasing the values highly successful people learned by playing youth football. I highly suggest you check them out.

As I combed through their website and social media profiles, gathering information and coming up with some ideas for their marketing campaign, I couldn't help but feel a little jealous. I mean, sure, I played soccer, and I was on the swim team, but football is a totally different animal. Around here, football is more than a sport, it's a lifestyle. I started wishing that I had participated in something that gave me that kind of sense of community, those invaluable life lessons that created so many successful people.

And then it hit me.

I did have that.

I was in a band.

To be more accurate, I was in many bands, but only one of them really got anywhere worth mentioning. In my senior year of high school, my life long friend Dan (who I had been playing music with since we were 11) gave me a call and asked if I wanted to jam with a couple of guys he had been playing with while I was away in boarding school. They needed a singer. Up to that point, I had been a drummer and a guitarist, but never a frontman. I said yes, and that weekend Dan, Reza, Marteze and I set up shop in my mom's basement and started jamming. That day we wrote every song that ended up on our first demo, and Daynovo was born.

Over the next 10 years, we got pretty big in the Baltimore music scene, we recorded 2 full-length albums, a ton of demos and officially released one 5-song EP. We played on some of the biggest local stages, including BCBG, the 9:30 Club and Sonar. We did all of this on our own, with no help from a record label. Eventually we decided to call it quits due to kids being born, marriage and general exhaustion, but we all walked away with some important life lessons that would help us down the road.

Four years after the band broke up, when I decided to start JEL Marketing Strategies, I drew from many of those lessons learned while I was busy trying to become a rockstar. I'd like to share some of those lessons with you today.

I had to figure out how to stand out from the crowd.

Baltimore is saturated with punk and metal bands trying to get noticed. While this provided a great sense of community, it didn't exactly make it easy to get people to shows (other than friends and family. Thanks Mom!), or get venues to notice us. We had to find a way to stand out, without looking too cheesy. It turns out that we didn't have to try that hard. While other bands were portraying images of being hard, mean and aggressive, we stayed true to ourselves and became known as the fun loving, approachable band that venues loved to work with, other bands loved to play shows with, and fans loved to talk to.

With JEL Marketing Strategies, it was much of the same. Online marketing is a saturated field, and it gets increasingly harder to stand out from the crowd. It's even harder to not get lumped in with the many scammers out there who are just trying to make a quick buck. Thanks to my experience in the music scene, I was able to stay true to myself, let my personality shine through in my company's image and stand out as a business that truly wants to help it's clients to achieve success. 

If I want success, I need to go out and make it happen.

Daynovo didn't exactly play the type of music that would get played on the radio, save a small segment on a local station called Noise in the Basement, and even that was hard to get played on. Without the help of commercial radio, it was up to us to build relationships with venues, other bands and fans, or else we would end up dying out well before our time.

Fast forward to running a business. JMS was bootstrapped, so it was up to me to find the clients and land the sale. If I wanted to succeed, I had to take action. Nobody was going to do it for me. That drive to succeed has to overpower all else, or else we'll become just another startup that failed to make it anywhere (we're in year two now, so we're already beating the odds.).

Don't listen to the people who say you can't do it.

Every parent wants to see their child grow up and be successful. Imagine what would happen if you told your parents you weren't going to college because you wanted to try your hand at being a musician. If you're anything like me, you don't have to imagine. My dad was not exactly the happiest person. I don't blame him, really. It's not exactly easy to make it in the music business, especially when you're on the music side, rather than the business side. It was strongly suggested that I go to college, get a secure job and live the american dream. I didn't listen, and I don't regret it for a second.

I was met with some of the same suggestions when I decided to start my own business. There was a lot more support than when I started a band, but many people still thought that I should just stick with having a secure job. Again, I didn't listen. Again, I followed my dreams. Again, I don't regret it for a second. Besides, in this day and age, having a job is about as secure as owning your own business anyway.

Surround yourself with supportive people.

There's been this horrible rumor going around for decades that the punk scene is full of violence and hate. This couldn't be farther from my experience. Daynovo was met with a community of bands and fans that were nothing but supportive. Sure, there was the occasional troublemaker that would put you down in order to portray some kind of dominant image, but for the most part, the sense of community that we found is unlike anything I've ever experienced.

When I started JEL Marketing Strategies, I almost expected to be laughed out of the marketing game. I felt I was late to the party, that other people in my field would tell me to quit. Fortunately, that is far from the truth. I have gotten the chance to have conversations with other successful marketing professionals and entrepreneurs that have given me advice, encouragement and support. I am forever grateful for all those that have helped me become a better business owner.

To sum it all up...

Work hard, dream big, and don't take any crap from people who don't support you. I learned those lessons over my 10 years in the music scene, and I carry them with me today.

What lessons have you learned that helped you in business? Where did you learn them? I'd love to hear your stories in the comments.

PS: In case you were wondering, the answer is yes. That blurry fellow in the picture above is me.