EP23 - Essence of Entrepreneurialism to support an ESOP transition and sustainability - Interview with Eleanore Rue from the perspective of a singer/songwriter from Nashville, TN

Welcome back. Thanks for tuning in. I'm the ESOP guy and we are on this journey to an ESOP. This podcast was created and produced to help. Folks think about and consider how they might use an employee stock ownership plan in their business. So it's been a podcast that we've been doing for about a year and a half. We are in season 2. If this is your first time checking out the podcast, please go to our website at journey to an ESOP.com. I also wanted to announce our ESOP Guy live webinar series. We are on #4. We are gonna have that in the middle of July. So be looking for that if you would like to register. You can do that through our website at journey to an ESOP.com. So with that, I wanted to kick off this podcast with this song, and I hope you recognize it. Just a smile in the night sky. Constellations. Artificial I can't remember the last. the So this song is called Lightbulb, and we're going to feature this song because today's episode is entitled Entrepreneurialism to inspire future leaders of ESOP Companies. We are going to take and have the privilege of interviewing one of the greatest real time, real-time entrepreneurs that I know. She is and is in the process of pushing into the realm of the, of uncertainty by writing and recording original songs in the Nashville area. I'm super proud proud to have her on this podcast. Eleanor Wu, my oldest daughter. I believe this podcast should inspire all of us to push forward into the unknown and go for it, which really is the spirit of what I would say is founding and expanding companies as there is transition in businesses from selling shareholders to the new generation. I want to use this episode to really talk about what it takes to move a business into the future, having a vision and trying new things. So with all of that, I would like to welcome Eleanor to our podcast. I have to tell you that without a doubt, she's my favorite guest on this podcast so far, sorry everyone, but this is my daughter and she's awesome. Eleanor, welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. So, let's just start off with um a little bit of background on yourself. This is where you get to just kind of tell everybody about who you are. Um, you know, how long you've been writing songs. Um, you know, I know that um everyone is thinking, well, why is her dad asking her these questions cause he should know this already. But it's not for me, it's for you guys. So with that, um, Ellie, tell us a little bit about your, your history. Yeah, so my name is Eleanor Wu. My artist name is Eleanor Ruu, um, but most people just call me Ellie. Um, I was born in Florida and then um moved up to Nashville when I was about 19. Um, I had been writing songs and singing and well, I've been singing performance since I was very young, very young, probably like 3 or 4 in church and stuff like that, um, musical theater, um. And then when I was about 13 or 14, I started realizing that I could create songs. I started putting chords together and started writing lyrics and just found a very deep love for for songwriting. And so after I graduated college, I took A bit of a gap year and just was trying to kind of figure out what I wanted to do with my life and then found a program in Nashville, Tennessee at Belmont University for songwriting and decided that that was what I wanted to do with my life and so I came up here, y'all moved me up here and. Yep, and then I said, OK, I'm going to do this songwriting thing, and I came kind of, not kind of, I came very, very naive and didn't really know what, you know, what I was getting myself into and didn't really, I think, understand the music industry, didn't understand what it, what it meant to be a songwriter, didn't understand what it meant to be an artist, and then I got up here and realized, oh, this is pretty intense this is. A little bit more than than what I think I'm cut out for. So after about a year of being in the program at Belmont doing songwriting, I decided that this just wasn't what I wanted to do, decided that I wasn't brave enough and I wasn't the right personality, and decided to stop and I changed my major to English and just honestly kind of stopped writing and stopped singing for a while. Um, but then at the beginning of 2020 I had some just major major changes in my life and really turned around and realized how much I enjoy music and how much I just have a passion for writing and I think I realized I actually had something to say. I think that's been a big theme for me is realizing that music is so powerful and it gives us a platform and an opportunity to actually speak truth and speak life out. And for the first time I think I had an actual purpose behind what I what I wanted to do. And so at the beginning of 2020, I decided that I was going to try again and try to be an artist and try to be a writer, and then in October I had the opportunity to to record two of my songs. So those are the ones that are out now, Lightbulb and then 21. And how and how are those, you know, for people that don't write songs, um, how does it work? And I know that you, you know, you have to put them on certain things, but just tell us kind of the process it takes. I know writing the song is the creative part, but then recording it and then getting it out, and then how do, how do you get it out and then how do you track whether or not, you know, it's been successful or whatever you think. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's there's a lot to that and it's interesting being an independent. Artist, what we would call like an independent musician artist because you're wearing a lot of different hats doing that because you do, you have the creative side which is the actual writing of the song, um, creating the song and even recording the song is usually pretty creative. I worked with a producer and And so that was helpful to have someone else's input and expertise in the recording process, but even that is, you know, you bring in this song that you've written on the guitar, the song that you've written on the piano, and then it just gets to come to life because you get to add drums to it. You get to add, you know, synth sounds, you get to add whatever you want to make it this this beautiful um. This beautiful full song and then from there um you, you know, you usually have to upload it to a third party distributor. I use like DistroKidd, there's another popular one, CD Baby, and they kind of are just the third party between you and then the streaming services, and so they help you upload it to all the different streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music. Um, and so then you know there's that whole process. There's also just the process of marketing yourself, so social media is a big is a big tool for that that I've used Instagram, you know, you do photo shoots and then you put your photos up and you say, Hey, I'm releasing this song in a month. I'm releasing this song in a week, just trying to reach as many people as you can to listen to it. And then you have your release day, which is when the song actually comes out, and the song goes live and people can listen to it and you know it's an interesting thing like trying to measure the success of a song and what makes it successful. Obviously streaming how many times you can get people to stream it and how many. Um, especially within the first couple of days, it's very important because if you can get a lot of streams in the first couple of days, you can get um put on bigger playlists like bigger playlists on Spotify, which then helps, um, helps to get more followers and get more listeners, um. Yeah, yeah, I think that's good. I think it's some, some people, obviously not a, not a lot of people, and especially on this podcast, probably listening, don't do what you're doing. Um, but, and again, I wanted to connect like the idea behind it, like what you're doing is creating um some type of product that people that you hope that people will buy when you get down to it, and it takes vision and it takes some creativity, um. 11 thought I have behind, you know, just this idea of being entrepreneurial, as this is really the theme, is that you really have to love what you're doing, simply because it's going to be hard. And it takes time, it takes commitment, um, it takes resources. I mean, I know you've put your own money into this as well. Um. How have you seen your love like of writing music really propel you towards, you know, taking these kind of chances? Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of comes back to Um, what I was saying earlier about just having your purpose, um, behind whatever you're doing, um, and, and to know, like, sometimes it's kind of Cause sometimes I love music, sometimes it feels like a chore, you know, there's days when I'm like, oh, I don't really want to, I don't really want to play the show. I don't really want to go to go do this right right now, um, but really remembering what your purpose is behind whatever you're doing has been very important for me. Um, and, you know, for me, it's, it's really the like, Loving Jesus and wanting to spread his message further that has made me, um, want to do music even more so, um, that's, that's what's behind it for me. That's because I think sometimes, you know, especially because you have no idea what this is gonna, what's gonna happen from this, and I think some people are taking that type, those types of chances in life, um, it's just difficult, you know. Um, let's, let's talk about like from that, I know there's probably been deeper inspiration, but, um, and I, and I would again compare this to coming up with a new product idea, but just how do you get your ideas for the new songs? And then also connect that to how do you kind of like imagine marketing cause marketing to me is, is so important, fundamental to Um, say a product release, and you're really in marketing, you're just trying to message out like something really important and you're using social media like you explained. Um, so how do you get the new ideas and what, what's your creative process? Yeah, I think um. I think it's something I'm still working on that I still struggle with sometimes. I really believe that creativity is a muscle that has to be exercised, and sometimes we enjoy exercising, sometimes we don't enjoy exercising, but for me, I think a lot of times I start with um song lyrics. So I'll just get an idea for a song, or I'll be thinking about a topic and I'll I'll think like, oh, something needs to be said about this. Um, so most of the time for me lyrics come first, and then the music will come after, and I'll just kind of take whatever I'm whatever I'm trying to talk about and put music with it that makes that makes that idea come alive and makes connects emotion to it. And then obviously sometimes I co-write so that that will, that always is fun because you get to kind of bring 22 or three writers together and you see everyone's different style kind of combined and some people start with music and then go to lyrics. Some people have topics that I would have never ever written a song about, but it's very important to them to say, oh well, this could be a great song then. um. So that's kind of a little bit about just the actual writing of the song. Um, and then what was your second question about marketing, you know, and I think marketing, the idea is like you know you have written something. Well, I have another question too, but I'll I'll ask it and segue to this. So I, now that you have a product, like which is your song, we go back to the songs that you wrote, you wrote. Um, and you released Lightbulb and 21. So those were all released this, this last year. And when you went to market those, um, you had really kind of gotten some help from people like on some of the graphics that you wanted to use. Um, so the concept behind the the writing the song and then creating like you said you kind of went through the process of creating. The song with um a producer. And then the other side of the process is, well, now I'm going to have a marketing plan and I'm gonna get, I'm gonna message it out. So just how, how did you do it with like say lightbulb and 21 and is there, is it very common the way you're doing it or are there other ways that people do it? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different ways you can approach it, and it can be a really, it can be very daunting when you're an independent artist because you are doing it all by yourself, but it can also be really fun because you get to kind of choose, you know, am I going to do it this way, am I going to do it that way, other people have done this. I think for me, I relied heavily on, like I said before, Instagram and Facebook some too. Um, and really like, I had, I had a photo shoot done, um, and so I had, I had pictures. I also had, like you were saying, um, an artist, a graphic artist do a cover for Lightbulb and then a cover for 21. And so I, I was, I was using all those things and then posting a lot on Instagram about 3 weeks before I would release a song and I would share, you know, posts about what the song was about. I would try to do some more interactive posts to get people excited about the song, to get them to share the song with their friends. When I released Lightbulb, I did, I did this release party where I Like took my car and took one of my roommates to film the whole thing and filled my car with balloons and I drove around Nashville and picked friends and friends of friends up and we would drive around their neighborhood and just listen to the song, um. So that was, you know, just the one way to get to get people excited about the song, to get people sharing the song, because that's really for me that's kind of been a big strategy is, you know, you start with the people that you know because the people that you know know even more people and so if you can get the people that you know excited about what you're doing, then you can expand that and they can go share it with the people that they know and then those people can share it with the people they know and it just kind of, it will grow from there. Um, and you can, you can grow more of a following. I know that firsthand. Your mom and I had the fun of taking that song and sharing with everybody and she, your mom obviously shared it with like everybody she knew on this. You know, on the planet. But, so I think that's really cool. I think, I think the idea of like just spreading the word or having other people spread the word for you. Um, and, and the other thing I was gonna, I was thinking about is how that builds on itself. So, um, it, it builds on itself because now you have, you have this graphic, and I know the graphic itself. It has now a connecting point to the new graphic for say light bulb song and then the 21 song. So there's similar, there's similar imagery and the graphic, um, so it all kind of connects to with even the, um, some of the photo shoots and things that you've done to kind of promote, you know, promote it and move it. And then, and then you said like other people picked up your song for their playlist. How does that work? Um, that, um, so part of that was just before the song was even released. I was submitting it to some playlists. There's there's some playlists who have a lot of followers that a lot of times they'll let you send in your song and they'll listen to it and I'll see if they like it and if they like it they'll put it on your playlist, which can help grow a following as well. Um, so some of it was was just me doing that before the song was released. Some of it was just friends putting it on the playlist on Spotify and Apple Music. Some of it was, you know, my one of my really close friends up here who's also an artist had just released a song the week before I did and had submitted it to this playlist and she got put on the playlist. And the girl who was on the playlist started following her on Instagram. Well, the following week, my roommate or my close friend who's an artist, Dakota Crespo. She put the song on her on her Instagram to share it, and then this playlist curator saw that she had shared it, listened to the song, and said, Oh, I really like this. I'm going to put it on a couple of our playlists. So there's a lot of different ways you can, you can get put on playlists, but playlists are very helpful because they, they just expand your audience and expand the people that would normally listen, listen to your music. No, I think that's, it's interesting as we as we get in. That I wanted to kind of, um, think about, you know, again, the idea of, I think a lot of companies are, are going, they go through this process of, of creating a business plan, and some of them maybe never have to really deal with the, the, the, the root element of, of just marketing and putting out a product. Um, but at some point, they, they, they probably need to if they start expanding their business and looking at the potential for what their business could. Um, sometimes they're just, they just get business the way that they're doing things. So I think it's, it's the challenge behind all this for an ESOP company is to be thinking about how would they promote, um, how would their new team transition, you know, the founding members of the company that are selling, how would they transition into that and become, you know, more marketing minded and more, you know, creative in terms of new product development. So that there again, I'm really connecting it. So, So wanted to kind of, first off, jump into like the process that you started with two songs, we're also now you're moving into um an EP and you have a name for the EP now and what is an EP? Because when I, as I grew up, we call, we all call it an album. Now I'm saying we all right. um Well, OK. And how, and how that work. No, go ahead. Yeah, well, so an EP, I should Google it because it actually it stands for something and I don't know, I don't know what it stands for off the top of my head, but an EP is basically just a compilation of 4 to 5 songs usually where an album would be anywhere from like 9, 10 to 1314 songs. So basically it's just like a mini album. OK, I think I think I Googled it for you. It stands for extended play. And um so, so, so basically, it's a smaller um grouping of songs that you can get out. Instead of just a single, you can have like a multiple, multiple songs, like 4 or 5 songs. OK. Right, which right now, you know, because music is just always changing and it's always The way that it's best marketed is always like up and down and right now really the best, the best way to get music out there is usually through releasing singles because then your music isn't competing against each other because if you're just releasing one song at a time, then the listener is only going to. Listen to that one song when it comes out. So for me, I'm, I'll I'll be releasing an EP, but I'll most likely be releasing each song separately and then when I have them all out, combining them to be all together on an EP if that makes sense. Yeah, and so do you want to tell us what the name of the EP is, or did you settle on that? Um, I'm still, I think I'm settled, but I'm not 100%, so I'm gonna. We're gonna I'm gonna keep it hush hush on it, OK. Um, and then, so that's cool because you're, you're the artist. I respect that. Um, the, the other thing I wanted to ask you was just this, so you have something coming out new, um, you co-wrote with a gentleman by the name of Brendan, um, Abernathy. Um, can you tell us about like the song itself and, and how much can you tell us about it and when is it coming out? Yeah, so the new song is called Leave Stains, and it was written, so I wrote it with my friend Brendan Abernathy in January of 2020. So it's been a while since it was actually written, but we wrote it and then decided to record it, so we recorded it last summer and it's now being released at the end of this week, on July 2nd. Um, so it'll be out on all streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple Music, all of it. Cool. So be looking for, it's called Leaf stains. Tell us what the song's about. Just give us a little bit of like, Background on the song. Yeah, I think um we can't play it, right, because it's coming out. It's it's not, it will be the podcasts listening, but it's like I would call it um a bit of a pop duet, and it's really uses like the metaphor of um mountains, um mountains high, valleys low, um. And just kind of goes through, you know, how relationships go up and down, um, and how we have to fight for each other. It's cool. All right, well, I think sounds it sounds cool. Sounds interesting, and, and I've heard the song, so I know it's really good, but I'm not. All I could tell everybody is like, you know, be looking for it on Spotify, um, leaf stains, and then you've got plans to record some more music this year. Um, you did graduate from college, so you're done with school. Um, how many songs do you think you'll, you'll record this, the rest of 2021? What's your plans there? Yeah, my hope, um, so my hope and my plan right now, which, you know, it sometimes it's your plans change, so we'll see what happens, but, um, right now my plan is to record about 4 to 5 songs, um. Most likely starting in August and then hopefully releasing the first one in November, um. And then, yeah, probably doing a release a month after that. Yeah. Nice. Well, I'm excited about it for you and um so thank you. Is there anything that you, let me just kind of throw this out to you, is there anything that you would say that might help people in terms of being more inspired to be more creative, more, um, taking that, taking more chances when it comes to, you know, moving into things that are, or more on on the unknown or the uncertainty. So, what would you say to them? Yeah, I mean, I think finding, finding your purpose, finding your why behind whatever you're doing has been so important for me, and I think that's a really important thing. I think realizing, I think I've heard a lot of people, you know, at shows or they'll come up to me and they'll they'll be like, Oh, you're so creative. I wish I was that creative, da da da, and I really believe that we were all made to be creative. And we were all made to create things and that might look differently like for some people it might not be songwriting. For some people it might not be even in the arts at all, but I think we were all made to be creative. So realizing that you do have what it takes and you you can be creative and just going for it and realizing that we only get to live once. And so if you love something, This is your only chance to do it. So I would say, go, go ahead and do it. Do it. Go ahead and do it. Get her done, jump in there and you know, so, so I really appreciate that. Let me, let me just say this at the very, as we close out this, this podcast first, is that I'm, you know, really, really proud of, of you, Ellie, and what you've done and what you're doing. Um, many people are like, you know, I had thought, and I told you about this before, but the idea of interviewing a young entrepreneur, um, was, was exciting for me. I mean, it's obviously more exciting because you're my daughter. Um, but the whole point is, is that I, I was thinking about this from, from the standpoint of where you are in your career. You really, you're really right at the beginning of your career. And so had I interviewed an on trip. that had gone through a lot of success. It's really hard to get the raw sense of what it really feels and looks like. So that's one thing I wanted to kind of offer as insight and say, you know, I really appreciate, you know, being able to interview you. Of course, you're my daughter and you kind of had to, but um I didn't have to. I wanted to. I know you didn't have to, um, you know, not just because I'm proud of you, because I do say, I do see that you jumping into doing something that you really don't know how it's gonna work out. And I think that's the, the bottom line. And I think every company that is thinking about what they're going to be doing in the next 5 to 10 years, I, I fundamentally believe you should have some level of entrepreneurial plans, um, not doing the same old thing. Because who knows what's going to last and who knows what's gonna really work out. So, so I hope that that really does impart some, some thoughts and, and a spirit of creativity and in companies and thoughts about the future and that, um, you know, that's one thing I will say too about ESOPs. I love so much is that what you're Able to do with an ESOP company is, is keep the key managers, keep the key people that are part of it, grow the talent and allow your company to, to continue to be creative and resourceful and innovative so that you can meet the challenges of the future. And The, the, the downside for a company that sells to a big company or a private equity group is they usually get it just gets stripped apart and all of those components of innovativeness can, can sometimes just, you know, be dispersed. And so, Um, that's why I really feel like this is such a good connecting point to, um, helping companies think about their future as an ESOP or going through that process. So, so again, I wanted to say thank you so much for, for being doing this podcast with me. I know you didn't have to. Yeah, thank you. Um, no, it was fun. It was a lot of fun. And so for everybody else, you know, be looking for Eleanor Wu, um, it's on Spotify. Her first two songs are Lightbulb and 21. And then be looking for leaf stains coming up July 2nd, and then all the other stuff that she's gonna be doing over the next year. So, thank you, thank you again. And so with that, I wanted to say um for the, for the podcast listeners, um, if you like what you hear, please subscribe and share it with a friend. Um, have a great day and we look forward to our next step on this journey to an ESOP.