00:00:00:02 – 00:00:16:19
Unknown
And on my way out the door they said, by the way, we know we owe you a bunch of money, but we’re not going to pay you. Come and get it. And I’m like I said, you know, I said, I think you forgot one of the reasons you bought our company. Well what’s that? And I said, I never fucking give up.

00:00:16:19 – 00:00:43:02
Unknown
And you’re going to pay us. On Creative Assembly’s The Spark podcast. Our mission is to amplify Nashville’s diverse creative voices, foster growth through shared journeys, and inspire a city that thrives on collaboration. And now, here’s the spark. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the spark. I’m Mark Scrivener, your host. And today I am joined by a famous entrepreneur from Nashville, Mark Montgomery.

00:00:43:03 – 00:01:03:25
Unknown
Man, you’ve been around for a long time and you’ve helped so many businesses as I’ve watched along the way. Investor, entrepreneur and long time national business. Troublemaker. Catalyst, catalyst, troublemaker, whatever you want to call it. Good to be with you, Mark. Well, Mark, it is great to have you on. It’s an honor. I really appreciate you making time for us and the audience.

00:01:03:25 – 00:01:27:23
Unknown
And maybe just to kick us off, man. When did you figure out like that? You probably were better suited to work for yourself than maybe working for somebody else. Because you’ve you’ve been in a lot of your own startups throughout the year. Well, so so I guess what I would there was a moment. So when I moved here, I moved here with 800 bucks to be a session guitar player.

00:01:27:27 – 00:01:55:04
Unknown
Okay. Bad idea, horrible idea. One of many of my horrible ideas. And so when I realized that that was a huge mistake. I went to work for a guy named Jimmy Lenihan Senior, and I started sweeping the floor, and I wanted to be in the music business. Right. And that’s a whole other conversation about that, but I so I wanted to I needed a, I needed a day job.

00:01:55:04 – 00:02:15:16
Unknown
So I started sweeping the floor of the warehouse. And then about four months later, I started, I became a bin loop mastering engineer. So I worked the second shift making back in the day, cassette Masters didn’t know how to do it. Learned. Right. Which is a hallmark of kind of troublemakers like us, right? You just figure it out as you go.

00:02:15:22 – 00:02:38:24
Unknown
And a couple of months I was there probably six months. And I’m and I’m watching what they’re doing and I’m like, I can probably sell what we’re doing. And at the time, what they were doing was CDs were brand new and they were telling their customers, so they made cassettes. Would you like some CDs? And so I was watching this and I and I recognizing, number one, they aren’t making them.

00:02:38:26 – 00:02:58:19
Unknown
They’re bringing them in from Canada and then they’re assembling them, but they’re making them. And they had a head of sales who was you know. And so I went to the boss and I said, hey, I’d like to I think I can sell this, so can I do this along with my other stuff? And they’re like, sure. So pretty quickly.

00:02:58:22 – 00:03:24:25
Unknown
I could and pretty quickly I realized that I was outselling the head of sales, and I kind of, you know, I was okay having the gig, but I was also not okay with the fact that I was still writing the city bus, and the head of sales was driving a Jaguar. And so I went to the boss and I said, hey, I think I, I think I made a bad deal and we need to change the deal.

00:03:24:25 – 00:03:47:02
Unknown
And he’s like, you can go make love to yourself. So I did. I quit on the spot. Wow. And I bought a mac color classic, which I still own and still works. And I ran an 800 number into my apartment, and I started competing against them because I figured out they weren’t really touching any of it. They were only packaging these this final product.

00:03:47:02 – 00:04:07:09
Unknown
And this is back in the day when those when the margins on those deals were huge, they were enormous. And that was the last time I worked for anybody until we sold to Live Nation. And then I went back inside as a EVP of some I can’t even remember. I had a five year earn out and I lasted two and a half years.

00:04:07:09 – 00:04:31:18
Unknown
I didn’t I didn’t do well working for other people. I talked back, I have my own opinions. It just didn’t work out. So that’s how I first got to know you was just know of you actually was through Echo Music. I mean, you built a pretty substantial what maybe back then you would have thought as a digital agency back in the day, that was a component.

00:04:31:19 – 00:04:56:15
Unknown
You know, it’s interesting. Paramour Red was the first digital agency in town, and kid Red actually became my partner later in flow. Okay. So they kind of owned the title of First Digital agency. What we did is bolted on agency services to what was sort of an underlying SaaS platform that when we exited the business, seven was the second largest database of music consumers in the world.

00:04:56:15 – 00:05:21:08
Unknown
We had built Salesforce before Salesforce existed, and it was focused on music. So like if I had been not so intently focused on remaking the music business and I had been able to go like this and go, oh, you know what? Abstractly, this probably works for a lot of other kinds of businesses. It might have been Salesforce, but it wasn’t.

00:05:21:09 – 00:05:49:18
Unknown
And we, you know, it was the for me, the passion there of of building that came out of launching direct to consumer sales of CDs on the public internet in the mid 90s. So I had this moment we were solving our own great, you know, the hallmark of entrepreneurs are they’re solving their own problem. And I saw this problem and felt like there was a solution to it.

00:05:49:18 – 00:06:22:10
Unknown
And back in the day telling, remember those guys, they were running this internet service business, and I kind of convinced them that we should enable e-commerce. And we were their client. And and Scott Sears in particular would, would attest to me standing on their desk all the time, like, when are we going to get this done? And on April 20th at midnight, we launched this direct to consumer basically platform for a band called The Floating Men.

00:06:22:12 – 00:06:43:20
Unknown
Remember those guys? And we sat there for the first two hours and I watched these orders pour in. And this is back in like the mid 90s. They were running ads in, in in newspapers, magazines. Don’t put your credit card on the internet. And we’re watching these orders come in and I’m like, I don’t know what the fuck this is, but this is what I’m going to do.

00:06:43:20 – 00:07:34:24
Unknown
And and you could, you could just see the disintermediation and, and taking the supply chain from here to here. And that for me was really the next 20 plus years of my career was working against that problem. And, and the, the those building that business for me was kind of in retrospect, it’s it was there were a lot of lessons in it from starting with three people to going to over 100 with offices in five cities, going from, you know, working with and I like I love some of the some of the artists that we started with, Guy Clark and some of these amazing sort of heroes.

00:07:34:27 – 00:08:03:04
Unknown
And then moving up, up, up the chain to Bon Jovi and Kiss and working with these huge artists and sitting, sitting in meetings. I said in this meeting with at the time, a guy named Lee or Cohen, who was the head of Warner and trying to help these purported brilliant businesspeople understand that the internet was not their enemy.

00:08:03:05 – 00:08:30:01
Unknown
Right. If there was a moment in the music business where they were, well, let me put it this way. Legislation and litigation of your customers is a bad plan, right? Suing your customers. Hello? What? But they were they were they had a completely different mindset. So it was a really interesting moment in time. And I was really lucky to kind of be in and around a lot of that disruption.

00:08:30:02 – 00:08:56:27
Unknown
And there’s it’s interesting. There’s a lot of folks in this community who were part of that. Like Sam Saturn jumps to mind. You should have Sam on, you know, like the, the that period was was a really interesting moment. And I think we were all believers in what, the internet, the promise of the internet. Turns out, perhaps that promise is maybe not quite as interesting as we thought it was.

00:08:56:29 – 00:09:19:14
Unknown
But nonetheless, that period was was a tremendous time of learning. I was really proud of the group of people we put together. I loved our clients. I brought Alison Krauss on the internet, like, I got to do some really cool shit. And under the guise of there was this perception of what we were versus what we were actually building and doing.

00:09:19:15 – 00:09:43:28
Unknown
Yeah. You know, you mentioned, I mean, so many people that went on and did other things. And I was going to say, I don’t know. I mean, you know, you came to town musician $800, you started this company. And I don’t know if you’re just really good at hiring people or you develop these people, but, you know, out of that echo music, I saw so many people that are, you know, that went and made big names for themselves.

00:09:43:29 – 00:10:06:01
Unknown
That’s my greatest source of pride. Yeah. Right. And and I think the answer was it was both. I think we were really good at hiring. You know, it’s interesting. I was talking to a founder, a friend of mine that I’m working with right now. And when you when you make the first hire that’s making more money than you, you’ve really sort of arrived in that spot.

00:10:06:01 – 00:10:24:23
Unknown
Because if you if you’re doing it right, you, you as the founder have more, you have more to gain at the end. And it’s your job to bring people around you that are smarter than you. As soon as you recognize that, your success will be tied to the success of the people around you. And for a long time, frankly, it wasn’t.

00:10:24:23 – 00:10:49:16
Unknown
I had a huge I had a huge ego. I wanted it to be all about me. And there was a period where I recognized that I was becoming the limiting factor, and we started making better hires. And like I think about, I mean, there’s just too many out of that crew. Any Meyer jumps to mind who’s gone on to do amazing.

00:10:49:21 – 00:11:20:11
Unknown
It’s just a really interesting group of people. And recognizing that my job was to put the team in a position to be successful. And that’s really your your role as you, you know, when you go from three people to 15 people to 25 people to 45, there’s these cultural cuts and you as the leader, need to adjust your behavior to help facilitate the growth of the business.

00:11:20:15 – 00:11:43:17
Unknown
And I was lucky to have mentors around me who were willing to tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, you need to this. This is a moment where where there’s a there’s going to be a cultural shift. Iowa tremendous debt of gratitude to a woman named Liz Allen Fey, who became, she wrote my first strategic plan in 1999.

00:11:43:17 – 00:12:08:11
Unknown
And she still I see her every quarter. She’s retired, but she’s kept me. I don’t even know if I’m a client and we’re just friends. But but she still advises me, and she has really seen me through every season. You know, when you make that transition from founder to CEO, that’s a big shift. And then when we sold, that was a big shift.

00:12:08:14 – 00:12:36:16
Unknown
It’s it’s it’s a and if you’re doing it right, you’re taking what you’ve learned back here and bringing it forward. And then you’re also discarding the things that didn’t serve you well. And it is truly a journey. I mean, you know, you’re in the same you’re in the same boat. You’re exactly right. Yeah. I was actually going to ask just because as we start to get into the show, I mean, you’ve left there and you’ve helped so many entrepreneurs along the way.

00:12:36:20 – 00:12:57:18
Unknown
I know you mentor a lot of people, and I was actually going to ask you who your mentor was. So I assume Liz Allen. So Liz Allen Fay was was a was a big one. Frank Bumstead, who’s passed on who ran one of the partners that flood Bumstead McCarty McCarthy. Man I have a whole I just have a whole bunch.

00:12:57:19 – 00:13:38:15
Unknown
I, I consider myself really lucky to have had the folks around me that I have and and I’ve continued to seek people out that have what I want that that for me, some of that has has changed as as I have gotten older and had some of the things that have happened to me in life. When you sit, when you sit in a room with deaf and I’ve done it twice, I was there when my I was I helped my wife move on, and then I helped my mother move on.

00:13:38:17 – 00:14:02:09
Unknown
Within a couple of years, after you start to recognize that what you were hanging your hat on, what you thought was important isn’t really that important. That, and then having a daughter really woke me up. And so my mentors now are more spiritual in nature. I’m not a religious man, but I consider myself to be a spiritual man.

00:14:02:13 – 00:14:32:01
Unknown
And, you know, I’ve developed a pretty strong meditation practice, and I’m in the middle of reading the Upanishads, and I’m reading a lot of Marcus Aurelius and recognizing that, that, you know, this is a river and and it goes past very fast and it’s never the same again. And that we’re all the Marcus Aurelius says, it’s my favorite quote I’ve found of of his so far.

00:14:32:07 – 00:14:55:15
Unknown
We’re all rotting bags of meat. It’s like, wow, you know, and you think about these things, you think about legacy and you think, and the reality is, is there’s no such thing, right? And what’s what? You read this text, which in my mind is a journal to himself. And you recognize this, this is happening thousands of years ago.

00:14:55:15 – 00:15:22:04
Unknown
And it’s like it was written for me today. So some things just don’t really ever change. You know, there are things changing, but in some ways things are very much the same as they’ve always been. And you learn, I’ve learned to take comfort in that, that that a lot of this is just happening and how it cuts and breaks and does what it’s going to do is just part of the process.

00:15:22:04 – 00:15:44:29
Unknown
Part of the logos is, is he refers to it, this great consciousness that we all exist in. Well, and I’m glad that you you treaded into that. And, you know, it was very impactful for me when I heard the news. And, you know, I’m sure a lot of Nashville entrepreneurs. So I appreciate you speaking about it. And maybe we can maybe we can talk about it a little more.

00:15:45:00 – 00:16:13:04
Unknown
I’m happy to dig in down the road, but like, I would just, you know, you’ve mentored a ton of people. You’ve actually helped a lot of founders start up. And I guess I would ask you, like, what is what do you think is the mindset that it takes to build something from scratch? Because a lot of people want to either, hey, I want to raise a bunch of money from somebody and let me use somebody else money, or it’s like, I want to step into something that’s already successful.

00:16:13:04 – 00:16:37:14
Unknown
But what does it take to the mindset to build something from scratch with nothing? Well, what I would say is, is so my favorite kind of definition comes from Yvonne Canard, who founded Patagonia, still still owns it, privately held B Corp. Weirdly, I don’t know if you are familiar with that whole thing. That’s a that’s a side road we can go down.

00:16:37:14 – 00:17:17:02
Unknown
But Yvonne describes the the, the the entrepreneur is a juvenile delinquent. Right. We’re we are solving a problem that we’re outraged about. It’s a problem that we see and we want to solve it. And it’s that it’s that thing that that is sort of intrinsic that you’re looking for. You’re looking for a troublemaker. You’re looking for somebody with a chip on their shoulder or something to prove someone who’s not afraid to jump off a cliff, someone who has no plan B, those are kind of hallmarks, you know, if, if, if you’re.

00:17:17:04 – 00:17:58:26
Unknown
That isn’t a guarantee. But it’s certainly a good indicator that that the raw material is there. And then the other big thing and you know, I just watched an interview with Sam Davison, who, if you haven’t had on you should have on the other big piece of it then is coach ability. Right. And not so much that, that they’re just going wherever they’re being coached to go, but enough that they’re willing to take the input even if, if the the interaction is uncomfortable and even if it takes a minute for them to come back and go, okay, I see what you’re saying, but coach ability has to be in there.

00:17:58:28 – 00:18:19:11
Unknown
And and I think if you have the right mix of those things, you have, you have all the potential, then you can’t, then the rest of it’s the market, right? And you can’t really control any of that. All very, very good points. I mean I always say like the burn your ships, you said there’s no plan B, but it’s like, hey, you burnt your ships.

00:18:19:11 – 00:18:36:03
Unknown
There’s nowhere to go back to versus some entrepreneurs that say, well, I’m going to try this out nights and on the weekends be a little side hustle for me. And and nothing wrong with that. Right. But but the other side of that is, is in order to really do it, you have to you have to be both boots in.

00:18:36:09 – 00:18:54:23
Unknown
You can’t really half ass this that part of the work. It just has to happen. You probably watched Sam Davidson on my shows. I might have, yeah. Yeah. Did he here? Yeah. Yeah. He’s great. Yeah. He’s so great. I’m a huge fan. Good stuff. Yes he is. Nashville community too. So you’ve seen a ton ideas over the years.

00:18:54:28 – 00:19:18:19
Unknown
Good ones. Bad ones. What do you think? Like what? What’s the difference between a really a good idea and maybe a great one that you go, man, this has a lot of opportunity. Well, you know, what I would say is, is, is some of that honestly is geographic in nature. Right. So I don’t think.

00:19:18:21 – 00:19:51:21
Unknown
I spent in kind of the early 2000, I spent a ton of time in Silicon Valley. And the mindset there is just wildly different than it is here, right? And so the people with the really big crazy ideas go there. Yeah. And and not that we don’t have good ideas here. And we do have some big ideas here, but there are fewer and farther between because the things that help support those crazy ideas don’t really exist here in the way that would be necessary for them to germinate here.

00:19:51:24 – 00:20:22:01
Unknown
You know, we I got to be careful here. I was going to ask you, what would it actually, I don’t have to be careful. Yeah. What it would take is if you’re if I’m going to, I’m going to go down a little side road. You stop me when we need to stop. If you look at the roots of Silicon Valley in kind of the mid 60s, Silicon Valley was born out of a revolution, and it was born out of the psychedelic era.

00:20:22:04 – 00:21:01:06
Unknown
A lot of these early, a lot of the guys at the front of that were tripping their balls off on LSD. They I mean, they were they were they were opening doors in their mind that created stuff like this. Yeah. Right. And that mentality coupled with the working cap. So I got to sit multiple times in rooms with guys like John Door who funded Google and like, those guys don’t think like the national investor community, right?

00:21:01:07 – 00:21:28:27
Unknown
They just they’re just a different breed. And so for me, and actually, you know, when we sold the company in 20, in 2007, one of my mentors at the time was Michael Bertram. And Bertram said to me, he said, look, he said, you got two choices at this point. You can pick your shit up and move to Silicon Valley and go play Big boy ball, or you can stay here and become the king of Nashville.

00:21:28:28 – 00:21:38:04
Unknown
And and I chose the latter because I had kind of deeply rooted myself here at that point, and I.

00:21:38:06 – 00:21:52:19
Unknown
I don’t, you know, we all have some degree of imposter syndrome. So there was a little bit of me going, I don’t know if I want to go like, that’s a that’s a big fucking jump. Yeah. Pardon my French. And, and so the, the.

00:21:52:21 – 00:22:16:05
Unknown
Some of it is truly geography. And if you look at the US compared to the rest of the world, there just isn’t the mentality that it takes to do what this is doesn’t exist anywhere but here. And the home base, the kind of the epicenter of it, whether we like it or not, is the valley. And and you add to that, I mean, look at Y Combinator.

00:22:16:12 – 00:22:43:20
Unknown
You want to talk about the Mack Daddy accelerator on the planet and where is it based. And you look around who’s involved in it, Paul Graham and these guys are like, they’re just another breed. And we we don’t have that level of crazy, and we don’t have that level of tolerance for risk here. And so the, the, the idea that we could germinate, that kind of.

00:22:43:22 – 00:23:02:17
Unknown
Opportunity, I think is just not that realistic. That doesn’t mean we can’t build the I mean, the the EC has been part of funding $300 million worth of deals, right. Like it can be done elsewhere. But you want to go, you want to you want to do the game changers. You got to go to the valley, I think.

00:23:02:24 – 00:23:30:12
Unknown
Yeah. Well, after you, you know, you sold Echo Music and took some time. And I know you helped entrepreneurs for a little bit of time. We met at that point. That’s right. And as we were kicking snapshot off and so appreciated all the, you know, support and help you gave and ideas and thoughts and, and then you I mean, take us through that journey from there to, you know, then I know you open or you started another business flow Co.

00:23:30:14 – 00:23:54:00
Unknown
Yeah. So so the I’ll, I’ll give you kind of the I’ll try to give you the shortcut version. So in in 2006, I was in a set of meetings that that birthed the notion of the center for entrepreneurship. And, and during that period, we were selling the business. I got an MBA in selling a company, and we built echo out of cash.

00:23:54:00 – 00:24:12:02
Unknown
Until the last year, we had no outside investors until about 18 months before we sold the company. And when we sold the company, I wouldn’t say we sold that accidentally. There was some intent underneath, but what we had done was actually hired an investment bank, and we were going to go raise a huge chunk of money and grow.

00:24:12:04 – 00:24:39:12
Unknown
And when we did that, the M&A offers started coming in. And at that point I was in a partnership, a 5050 partnership, which I would never recommend and never do again. And I want it out. And so the choice was take more money, stay in this relationship or sell the business and start over. And I chose the latter.

00:24:39:14 – 00:24:45:19
Unknown
So we sold the company and I got my MBA there then about.

00:24:45:21 – 00:25:15:07
Unknown
Literally four months after we sold the company, we had signed up for this plan, which was basically to we were going to we were building a replacement for a record companies. And this was this is where Live Nation came in and Ticketmaster and they were they were part of a holding company structure that was buying, I think they made nine acquisitions during that period to string together a discovery to delivery ecosystem for music, which was the replacement for record companies.

00:25:15:07 – 00:25:44:05
Unknown
And so we bought into this idea, and during that time. I was continuing to work around the idea of how do we stand up some kind of center for entrepreneurship, and I’ll land this plane, I promise. So after we sold, the business, couldn’t have been it wasn’t six months. Hey, you need to get on a plane and come to LA.

00:25:44:06 – 00:26:10:28
Unknown
You’re part of the wooden group. Okay, what’s the wooden group? Well, you’ll know when you get here. So nice. Yeah, I, I was I didn’t feel good about it. I get out there, I’m in this audit. We’re sitting in this auditorium. All the other founders of all these other companies that have rolled up are all we’re all sitting together and a bunch of other corporate suits, and I’m like, this is not going to end well.

00:26:11:00 – 00:26:39:07
Unknown
And sure enough, hey, guys, remember that plan? We were going to do that discovery to delivery plan. Yeah. We’re not doing that anymore. That’s all out the window. Instead what we’re going to do is this other thing. And so go back to your respective corners and we’ll be in touch. And what they were going to what they basically decided to do was to recap the holding company, which was called IAC, and they were going to spin out all these individual businesses.

00:26:39:07 – 00:27:03:07
Unknown
They owned 65 internet companies. Wow. And they were going to spin them all out. They were going to merge Live Nation and Ticketmaster. That deal had already been consummated. They were already working on it. You know, like it’s like so I so I went back to my respective corner and just kept whittling away at my work, and it became obvious that they were going to dismantle everything.

00:27:03:10 – 00:27:27:26
Unknown
And so then I got an MBA and getting fucked over by a multinational corporation. And so while that was happening, so basically I was they were they were going to do and you know, you take it really personally when you’re in it. It wasn’t personal. They were just doing what they were doing. I was just I was just in the way me and a bunch of other people.

00:27:27:26 – 00:27:57:15
Unknown
And so as that was going on, they were beginning to start these conversations about the center for entrepreneurship. And so I ended up it was there were there were it was it was Mike Schmidt, Bobby Frist, Clint Smith, me there were there were probably 20 of us. Right. And the people who had the biggest mouths, which in this case I did ended up with pieces of big pieces of work.

00:27:57:15 – 00:28:22:11
Unknown
And so Bobby and Mike were kind of shaking the private capital markets to create this public private partnership, which inevitably kind of enabled the EC. Yeah. And part of my work was looking at the best in class accelerators globally to see what should the model be. And there was a lot of argument around the table about who are we, who do we serve, right?

00:28:22:12 – 00:28:47:26
Unknown
And I think that argument has gone on the entire life of that entity. It’s probably never going to be over. And and so I was looking at Y Combinator and like these really amazing accelerator programs. And that was so that idea was developing in my head while I was essentially we mutually agreed two and a half years into my deal that I would leave.

00:28:47:27 – 00:29:09:20
Unknown
So I had a five year earn out two and a half years in, we we sort of both agreed, I’m going away. And on my way out the door they said, by the way, we know we owe you a bunch of money, but we’re not going to pay you. Come and get it. And I’m like, I said, you know, I said, I think you forgot one of the reasons you bought our company.

00:29:09:23 – 00:29:32:14
Unknown
Well what’s that? And I said, I never fucking give up and you’re going to pay us. And so I had a full time job during during the day, which was basically fighting them. Wow. 14 months later, they did pay again. They didn’t pay what they owed, but they did pay again. And in that period I was working on the center.

00:29:32:16 – 00:30:13:00
Unknown
I was getting divorced, which is expensive and worth it. And and I was working for John Chadwick and Don McLemore as the first year at Clara. And I started working with Mason at a, at that in that company, which we sold to AOL. So I was learning all this stuff while I was battling these motherfuckers. Yeah. And during that period, it became obvious to me that two things, one, that I was a founder, I was not going to be I was not going to be a I was never going to be a corporate executive.

00:30:13:03 – 00:30:30:14
Unknown
And that I was also not going to be a traditional venture guy. Right. Because in sitting with those guys, I was sitting on the other side of the table and the entrepreneurs over here and the meetings over and were walking out, and they’re tackling me because they see that I have every scar that they’re ever going to get.

00:30:30:14 – 00:30:56:19
Unknown
And and so I really started kind of coming to this idea that my job is to support founders, because I know I own the t shirt, and so you can’t really talk to someone as a peer who doesn’t have what you want. And I had gotten it, whatever that was, right? You become a hit songwriter, you sell your company and everybody thinks you’re a fucking genius.

00:30:56:22 – 00:31:32:05
Unknown
My genius? No. Will I outwork you? Yes. Can I see a little bit around corners? I seem to be able to. I’ve also seen around corners and then run into a frickin wall. Maybe just happen now. Just happen. It’s happening to me literally as we speak. So the the for me, that whole period, including helping stand up the EC and kind of looking at how public private partnerships work and the dynamics there is to kind of land the plane at flow.

00:31:32:08 – 00:31:58:18
Unknown
By the time I had gotten through the, the, the kind of Live Nation thing, we had stood up the center. I had gotten divorced. I had met my second wife. We kind of disappeared for a minute, went to the beach, and I had still been writing down because, you know, I mean, it’s constant idea flow. It’s several kind of books full of ideas.

00:31:58:18 – 00:32:18:15
Unknown
And by the and we’re at the beach and I’m like, three piles are developing. That’s a really stupid. That was a stupid idea. Well, that’s an interesting one. And oh, what about that one? And that was flow. And flow was a.

00:32:18:17 – 00:32:45:21
Unknown
Flow was a cloak for a venture accelerator. So we had an agency that sat on top. It was a consulting platform. It was a high dollar. We had Google, we had Nissan, we had under armor, we had big blue chip clients that were paying us a lot of money. But underneath we were developing ideas to fund. But we didn’t tell anybody we were doing that.

00:32:45:25 – 00:33:10:01
Unknown
So for the first year, we basically looked like something that we weren’t. We were, but we weren’t. Yeah. And then we raised some money and funded. The goal was to start 12 companies in 18 months. Okay. What what happened in that timeline that that I would say was the end of it before it began, was we we launched flow in November of 11th December.

00:33:10:02 – 00:33:38:04
Unknown
First, our daughter Magnolia was born. And five days later they told my wife she’d live one year. And if you had known my wife, she basically said, I’m going to beat this. Go do what you’re going to do. And and so we went off on that trail so that I should have known better, you know. But I thought I was Superman, I thought I could do anything.

00:33:38:06 – 00:33:42:25
Unknown
And so.

00:33:42:28 – 00:33:53:08
Unknown
We, we we should have never attempted what we were attempting. We got nine companies out of the ground.

00:33:53:10 – 00:34:06:14
Unknown
By by 2016. So she lived four years. She passed in July of 2015. And.

00:34:06:16 – 00:34:28:18
Unknown
Probably by mid 16, it was obvious that about half of those companies weren’t going to work. And I had stepped away. And John Ingram was our biggest investor. And you know, we had a talk and he said, look, you know, we need to fix this. And so I went back in and put a bullet in five companies and rejigged the deal and converted flow to a holding company.

00:34:28:18 – 00:34:59:22
Unknown
So now flow is just a it’s an entity that owns assets okay. We own interest now in I think there are four left I wished I had better news. None of them are doing very well anymore. And we had several really nice exits. We returned on one deal. We returned 44 IRR. Wow. So we weren’t wrong, but we were.

00:34:59:24 – 00:35:43:14
Unknown
We were. We were just trying to do too much simultaneously with this other thing that was incredibly distracting and inevitably was fatal. And so it again, you know, probably the most one of the one of the most creative and productive times of my life was kind of that late 11 to 14 era. We built the Inc building. At that point, we were we were finding a place to house all this stuff, and we built that crazy ass building, you know, and right next to the homeless shelter and everybody’s like, what are you doing?

00:35:43:17 – 00:36:12:16
Unknown
Like, that’s a homeless shelter. And I’m like, have you been to any other city? Like, there are homeless people. There’s no what’s the issue? You know? And that was that that whole project was anyway. So, so like it was an incredibly it was an incredibly creative time. And I had never planned to be a dad. And that has that has become, I think for me, my, my, my most important work is my family.

00:36:12:17 – 00:36:35:20
Unknown
And that really came out of losing my wife, you know, and things are better. It’s ten years later, I’m remarried. I have an amazing wife who tolerates tolerates me, who’s in her own right, one hell of a baller. And our our daughter is thriving. And that’s really for me. The measurement is how’s our family doing now? It’s not.

00:36:35:22 – 00:36:52:28
Unknown
Did I get nominated? Did I get an award? Did I do this? Did I do that? It’s how are we doing at home? How am I doing in in having some sense of balance? How am I.

00:36:53:00 – 00:37:26:26
Unknown
Contributing in a way that is meaningful that that whether there’s recognition or compensation is not relevant to me? It certainly doesn’t hurt. I’m happy to have it, but I’m also not tied to it like I was. Yeah, I guess this is called maturity. Yeah. We you know, I think a lot of people would look at you and your trajectory and look at it as this hockey stick up and, you know, and you’ve won every award there possibly could in Nashville.

00:37:26:27 – 00:38:07:17
Unknown
I know, because I’ve been in a lot of the competitions with you and, and, you know, just knowing you, you know, had your daughter, your wife came down with that with the cancer and ended up passing away, but fought it for four years. People don’t really see that. And some that struck me when that happened is I don’t know if it was an interview you did or were something shortly after and you kind of you cocoon back in and said, you know, I’ve got one thing, one focus that is the most important and that I just would want you to know that stuck with me of just what kind of person you were of you

00:38:07:18 – 00:38:37:12
Unknown
could have stayed on the hunt for all this success, and you took a step back and spin it to ensure that your daughter was well. Yeah. Well, I mean, I appreciate you saying that. And what I would say is, is I to say I did that far from perfectly. I can, I can if I, if you if you zoom into that timeline after she passed until call it you know, even recently I would I would say that I made I made many mistakes in that.

00:38:37:12 – 00:38:54:01
Unknown
But in the in the overall when I look at how she’s doing and I look at where we are overall, I’ll give myself a good grade and I do. I remember.

00:38:54:04 – 00:39:21:13
Unknown
Being advised that I shouldn’t do that by some. Some of my mentors were like, you’re going to pay a, you can’t afford the professional price, you’re going to pay for walking away. And basically what I said is I don’t really I, I don’t see that as a choice. I if I don’t have my if I don’t if I don’t have this core piece of the puzzle, what does any of the rest of this mean?

00:39:21:15 – 00:39:38:00
Unknown
And, and I would also tell you that it’s been a struggle. There are moments that I look around and go, you know, had I not stepped off and I look at kind of my peer group, some of my peer group has done financially a lot better than I have.

00:39:38:03 – 00:40:04:28
Unknown
But I don’t, I don’t I mean, good for them. And I made the right choice. Yeah. Well fast forward to today and I guess, you know, you’re in some new things. I mean, what what tell give us an update of what? What are you working on now. What are you most excited about? So so so I would say.

00:40:05:01 – 00:40:35:14
Unknown
In kind of this. So what I’m most excited about is I’m really excited about my, my, my wife has is doing something I think she’s, she was put here to do. She’s working. She’s the interim director of the Tennessee Historical Commission. And she’s the federal state historic preservation officer, first female in either of those chairs ever. Whether she takes that job or not, I won’t even I’m not even uncork that can of worms.

00:40:35:16 – 00:41:01:29
Unknown
Whatever she does, I will support. Our kid is thriving. She’s, I think, exceptionally creative. She’s very she’s got a real strong empathy. We have lots that we are dog people. Right now we’re down to two. But we’ve been we’ve had as many as five. She’s a great dogma. Like it’s so all that’s really good. So that big bucket I would say I’m good.

00:41:02:00 – 00:41:27:27
Unknown
Good to go. I told you I moved here to be a guitar player and I haven’t I haven’t ever really talked a lot about this. But I have always continued the pursuit of of what I hear in my head as a musician. And so when, when, when part of why I got into music in the first place is music saved my life.

00:41:27:29 – 00:41:48:20
Unknown
And what I mean by that is, is when Jim Morrison makes more sense than your parents do, you know? And you’re living in this chaos at home, and music is your your retreat. It’s your safe place. That was how I that was what got me going on music. Guitar was a way to express it. And so.

00:41:48:23 – 00:42:11:08
Unknown
When my when my wife passed, a bunch of my friends came around me and we started playing music just to play it because they knew it, it soothed me. And so that kind of continued. So I have this project we call Skin Knees, okay? And we have been writing, recording and releasing music every week for three years. Wow.

00:42:11:09 – 00:42:32:27
Unknown
And about a year ago, a film and television company approached us and said, we really like these masters. We’d like to sign this. Wow. And I’m like, really? Yeah. 50. I’m 58 years old. And now this is happening. Now it’s going to be a river of nickels I’m never going to make. I mean, it’s never going to be any I mean, who knows, maybe knock on wood, maybe it will be.

00:42:33:02 – 00:42:59:04
Unknown
But there actually were actually finishing up our second master for them and the first ones out. And, and so I have continued to stretch those creative muscles. And I’m really happy with that work. And it feeds me. And then and then the third big bucket is is continuing to work with founders. And I have been working with founders.

00:42:59:06 – 00:43:22:11
Unknown
I started and I would put in that bucket teaching. So I also teach a class called The Minor. In reality, I taught it for Bev Keele at MTsU for ten years. And then I recently was asked to bring it back, and I teach it now for a university on the East Coast. And they send their kids here, they send 16 kids here for a semester, and they live and work here.

00:43:22:14 – 00:43:44:22
Unknown
And I teach the entrepreneur track. There are four tracks and I teach entrepreneurship. So that is and dude, I freaking love teaching these 22, these 20, 21, 22 year old kids are just I, I get the better end of the deal, right? I learned more than there ever going to learn from me, because what I teach is actually pretty simple.

00:43:44:22 – 00:44:03:10
Unknown
I just have to beat it into their heads for 16 weeks. And so the, the, their in a, in a way that’s the same kind of thing. Founder working with founders, mentorship, teaching they’re all the same bucket. And what that is, is using this notion of take what you like and leave the rest, because I don’t know everything.

00:44:03:10 – 00:44:25:00
Unknown
And certainly there are more ways to do it than my way. But I put forth what has worked for me. And if it works for you, great. And if it doesn’t, that’s great too. And so in that path I added here a couple of years ago, a friend of mine said to me, have you ever thought about working with nonprofit founders?

00:44:25:00 – 00:44:43:05
Unknown
And I was like, no. And he said, you should really. Right. So and this is a God thing or a spiritual thing or call it what you want to call it thing. You know, within a week, I’ve been on the board of W Smith School of Music for over 20 years, on and off that board. I love that our work there and I get a phone call from the board chair.

00:44:43:07 – 00:45:05:14
Unknown
Hey, Jonah Rabinowitz is leaving. He’s been there 30 years. He’s not our founder, but he’s practically our founder. Would you lead the transition committee? So I say to the universe, I want to work with a nonprofit, and one shows up. And so I spent a year working on that transition. We have a new, wonderful executive director. Valerie’s killing it.

00:45:05:16 – 00:45:37:25
Unknown
That school is continuing to do amazing work. So I worked on that project. I work with a guy named Gooding on a project called Funding the Future. Crazy idea of Making Financial literacy a requirement. Every state in the union for that to be taught. In high school, he’s been in front of 350,000 kids over the last period of time teaching this, and that’s a whole other we could spend the entire podcast on that.

00:45:37:25 – 00:46:06:24
Unknown
You should have him in. Yeah. And then I worked with Will at corner to corner spent. I still work with we still we maintain that relationship. But I spent about 18 months with him helping him think through board strategy, getting his appeal correct. You know, tuning that up. And then on the other side, working with several for profit founders and then and then here, and I think we talked about this a little bit before we started.

00:46:06:26 – 00:46:12:21
Unknown
One of those is a guy named Charlie Jordan who called me.

00:46:12:23 – 00:46:34:09
Unknown
You know, and he said, hey, you know, and I had backed him in a previous deal that did not end well. It was Covid killed it. Right? And I mean, it went straight into the ground. And he said, I got the other problem. And I’m like, do tell. So I, I started working with him. There was a little bit of cleanup to do.

00:46:34:12 – 00:46:55:05
Unknown
I could give you the list, but I’ll spare you. Other than domiciled in Wyoming, don’t even get me going on why. And so I spent a kind of a quarter with him kind of just getting, getting, hardening his core and getting that kind of getting that right. And then it’s healthcare and I don’t I’ve never done a healthcare project.

00:46:55:05 – 00:47:12:02
Unknown
So I brought a couple of friends in Todd Feathering and then David Clements, and by May June, my fractional five hours had turned into 50. Wow. Because the company was growing so fast. And.

00:47:12:05 – 00:47:45:00
Unknown
You know, we we are now just about a year. We’re a little less than a year and a half old. And it’ll actually, I think it’s announced today that we’ve taken a large investment from a Silicon Valley investor, not a national investor. And now my job is basically whatever needs to be done. I have an official title, but but I sort of span the organization and I was there like the company started October 1st and I started November 15th.

00:47:45:00 – 00:47:51:02
Unknown
So like and it is.

00:47:51:05 – 00:48:16:22
Unknown
I have I have only seen one other company go this fast and it was my own. Right. So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a rocket ship. And and what goes up quickly can come down quickly if you’re not careful. And so, you know, Mark, honestly in a way my, my entire world has been turned 180 degrees. I’m usually the one driving the car off the cliff.

00:48:16:23 – 00:48:37:26
Unknown
Yeah. And now I’m the one going. Are you sure we want to do that? And. And yet, I also recognize that my job is to be there to support the vision. And my job is to say what needs to be what I think needs to be said. And then it’s not my decision. Yeah. And it’s pretty interesting. Right?

00:48:37:27 – 00:48:59:15
Unknown
It’s it seems like you’ve you’ve all grown up now I know it’s it’s weird, mature and I’ve matured. Although if you talk to my wife she’ll tell you I haven’t. Well, well Mark, thanks so much for taking us through your journey. It’s been fun to watch and and hear all about it. And I guess there are anything, as we wrap up, anything that maybe we.

00:48:59:15 – 00:49:26:11
Unknown
I didn’t ask you that you want to share, I would just say, well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate this. The fact that you’re shining a light on people and exposing people to because you’ve had some amazing guests. So I appreciate the invite. No, what I would say is, you know, I think, you know.

00:49:26:14 – 00:49:52:06
Unknown
I’d go back to what I said earlier, right? You think everything is fixed and you think that that this is and will always be. And the reality is, is that everything’s always changing and acceptance of this idea that change is the only constant and that if you believe.

00:49:52:08 – 00:50:17:24
Unknown
That if you, if you, if you look across the span of time, it all matters and none of it matters. And so why not try to do the best you can? And why not jump? Right. And and what do you really have to lose? Because what does it really matter? And such a powerful message Mark. Man. That’s it’s amazing.

00:50:17:25 – 00:50:41:05
Unknown
Yeah you’re right. What do you have to lose? You can always go back and get a job if you had to. Yeah I suppose. Yeah. If you’re employable. Yeah. You, you may not have. I don’t think I’m employable. Well, Mark, thanks so much for being on the show. Thanks for all you do for the Nashville entrepreneurial startup, for all the founders you’ve worked with over the years and for everything you’re continuing to do.

00:50:41:07 – 00:51:01:11
Unknown
Really appreciate you being a big part of Nashville’s like on the rise. And well, thank you. You’ve been a huge part of it. So thank you. And thank you all for joining us today. This has been a great conversation with Mark. I hope you hope you got as much out of it as I did. Some very good leadership and entrepreneurial lessons came out of today.

00:51:01:13 – 00:51:26:09
Unknown
Until next time, we’ll see you next time on The Spark. Thank you. And that’s a wrap on this episode of The Spark from Creative Assembly. Thanks for spending time with us and exploring the minds shaping Nashville’s creative future. If you’re walking away more inspired, connected, or energized, that’s exactly the point. A big thank you to our sponsor snapshot and the incredible team behind the scenes who make this show possible.

00:51:26:13 – 00:51:43:11
Unknown
Your support feels every conversation and keeps collaboration alive. So if you haven’t already, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. Thanks again for tuning in and till next time, stay creative, stay curious and keep that spark.