Koula Callahan 0:00 

Hey everybody, it's cooler from three more questions. Today's interview with Eric Church is on believable you're gonna love this episode hearing about how Eric has stayed committed to who he is and stayed committed to his vision to achieve success, not only as a songwriter but also as an entrepreneur. Before we get going with the interview, though, I also want to tell you that this is the second straight week that David's new book how leaders learn has hit the USA Today bestseller list, we are so pumped that this book is getting into the hands of leaders everywhere. And if you haven't grabbed your copy of how leaders learn, go to Amazon and grab your copy today. If you love the book, which I know you will, be sure to leave a review so that the book gets into the hands of as many people as possible, grab how leaders learn today, and enjoy.

David Novak 0:53 

Welcome to how leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Our guest today is Eric Church, a 10 time Grammy nominee and a CMA Entertainer of the Year. He's one of country music's most respected songwriters and performers. Definitely a leader in the industry. And he's also a very successful entrepreneur, get this, he owns Field and Stream magazine, his own whiskey brand, a bar in downtown Nashville called chiefs. And he's even an owner of the NBA franchise, the Charlotte Hornets. But whether he's making music or building brands, one thing is for sure, he commits to vision. Great leaders have to have the courage of their convictions, win or lose. When you have that vision and really own it. Let me tell you, nothing inspires people more. You're about to see how it's done from one of the greats. Plus Eric's got stories on everyone from Michael Jordan to Taylor Swift. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Eric Church.

Eric Church 2:17 

I want to start by taking you back to the beginning. Tell us a story about your upbringing that shaped the kind of leader that you are today. I grew up in a small town, North Carolina, I mean, blue collar town, furniture factory kind of town. My grandfather was the chief of police there 35 years, I had a pretty normal all American upbringing, I played sports, went to church with everybody else, I did the whole thing. And I got into music, somewhere along that path. But for me, the biggest part of my upbringing was everybody needs a grounding rod. And North Carolina and Granite Falls, North Carolina, specifically has always been kind of my grounding rod. And it's always the thing that I go back to as things happen in my life success failures. That's always the place that I go back to I go, Okay. Am I being representative of those people and how I was raised and where I'm from? Makes sense. And you're also known Eric, for just going up against the grain, you know, not following the rules thinking outside the box. Where does that come from? Well, I think a lot of it comes from just a journey. Sometimes the journey defines you. And then you react to that definition. And, for me, as we started out in music, we tried to do things our own way. I mean, I started at a time when it was a very, I would say, quotations soccer mom based country music scene. And I was doing something pretty masculine at that time. And it was lukewarm received. Probably the best way to say it, but I believed it was right. And then I got crossways with a few tours and rubs some people the wrong way. But I didn't rub them the wrong way. Because I was trying to rub them the wrong way. I rubbed them the wrong way, because I was trying to be me. And I was trying to be respectful and representative of where I was from and how I was raised. And it's just, it's just who I was. Yeah, that streak of that courage. That conviction, you knew which, you know, is, is something that every leader needs to have. Because, you know, it's hard to do new things if you don't have the courage to really follow what you believe. To me it was all it's always been about vision. I mean, there's a lot of people that will help you along the way but I always knew the kind of artist I wanted to be the kind of songs I wanted to write the kind of records I wanted to make. And I saw that I heard that and then you have to have enough conviction in that, that everybody else gets on the boat.

David Novak 5:00 

with you and rose the same way. Yeah, I want to ask you about that area, because you talk about what you believed in. What did you want your music and yourself to really stand for? How would you describe the Eric Church brand, so to speak?

Eric Church 5:16 

Well, I think it's unique. I think a lot of times it's against the grain, but it's not against the grain trying to be against the grain. It's just trying to provide a unique perspective creatively, that maybe other people aren't providing at the time. I'm a big believer in, in free speech, and a lot of the things people weren't talking about in music. And our first record centers like me, we had a song called to pink lines, it was about teen pregnancy. And that went over exactly like you think it would go over, you know,

in the commercial marketplace, and I had another song called lightning about the death penalty.

And those things weren't things that you would normally, if you're a major label, and you're trying to make money. Those are not songs that you're going to, you know, put at the forefront. But that was important to me, because it was a perspective. It's what people talk around around their dinner table. And I think what people talk about around their dinner table should be the songs we write should be the records we make. And I've always wanted to be the guys that I've loved. Whether it's Waylon, whether it's Bruce, whether it's Willie Nelson, guys that are mentors of mine, Bob Dylan, they've always talked about that, and they've never shied away from that. And that's always been my compass, I feel like that every artist has a musical compass.

Speaker 1 6:38 

And throughout time, you're going to be challenged of whether or not you follow that compass. And the greatest artists have always followed that compass. And even when other people say go this way, you know where your true north is. So for me, it really came back to who you are, their perspective, what you want to say, and having the vision of the artists you want to be. And you really stuck to your your guns on this vision, way before you had any commercial success. You just talked about a couple of things that didn't really go over well, your teenage pregnancy song and you know, how did you stay true to yourself and then ultimately break through, because you probably didn't have a lot of people rooting for you back then, well, you have less and less the more failures you have.

Eric Church 7:23 

I think at the end of the day, I was okay with win or lose.

This was the hand I wanted to play. And I didn't want to win, not play in my hand not being true. I think if I look back on it, and I had had commercial success doing it another way,

it would have bothered me at night when I lay down, and I wanted to win or lose. I'm at least going to do this my way. I'm going to make sure my perspective is involved in this. And I think that that's where the vision comes from. And that's what I see now. I see a lot of young artists, I'm an old guy now. But I see a lot of young artists that, you know, they go to tick tock or they go to these things. But they've never really the way I was brought up is you plug in a guitar, you go on the road, you play 250 shows a year. You play your songs for people. And you walk out there and you you do it, you do it the way the stones did it. You do it the way Dylan did it. You do it the way Willie did it. It's a tried and true thing. And technology is great. But there's a lot of shortfalls with technology. So for me, it was always about you got to see that you got to live that you got to go through that you got to react to that creatively. And I think that's something that's defined our career and our position where we are now in music. You know, speaking to react he didn't you know, when I was reading about you and learning more and more for this little conversation, we

Speaker 1 9:00 

found out you had a lot of odd jobs in college. We both like picked up the trash and did all that kind of stuff to get to school. One of them. You worked at a ski resort and as I understand it that actually helped you launch into the music business. You know, tell us that story. It's a good one. I've been fired a lot, David in my time, but I was in college. I was in a band at the time. We just started a little local band but picked up a job at Appalachian ski mountain. I mean I did everything I went from cleaning bathrooms to I worked in the kitchen. Like I learned how to peel a boiled egg like you can't believe I feel about 1000 Those things man I can I'm a machine and then I moved into the ski part. And I was adjusting skis, you know, working on people's skis and one of the days I probably been out too late the night before playing music. I read the chart wrong. And one of the guys that went out your skis are supposed to pop off when you have

Eric Church 10:00 

altercation with the mountain and the ski didn't pop off and the guy got injured and they had to take him out. And they came in and looked at who would adjust his skis.

It wasn't me.

So I didn't get to work there anymore.

From there, I was like, okay, you know, so like, I feel like, you know, God's telling me at this point in time, you're not meant to the iski adjuster, you need to go do something else. I've had that happen many times in my life.

David Novak 10:27 

As painful as it is, in business, sometimes getting fired takes you to a better place. And you said, You've been fired a bunch of times. And I understand you got fired by Rascal Flatts, which actually turned out to be another good thing for you. And an even better thing for Taylor Swift, maybe tell us a story about how that happened. So I was out on the flats tour at that time, that was the biggest tour in country music. And the hard thing for me is we were we were playing bars, we were playing clubs, we get this tour. And the way the flats tour would work is you would play. You know, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the we would play Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, we would have like one day off in these bars and clubs. And we were joined their big tour on the weekend.

Eric Church 11:15 

And it just didn't work for me. I mean, we got out there and we had 15 minutes, which I've never done really well with. And it just wasn't a great fit. And I don't do real well. Never have when people started playing more rules to what I'm doing. So it just was a bad fit. I got fired at Madison Square Garden, you're gonna go down, that's the place to go down.

And I got I got irritated that weekend, we had an altercation with the band and I decided that it Madison Square Garden. I didn't know if I'd ever be back there. So I was gonna burn my one chance. And I told the guys, I said we're not playing 15 minutes and that we're playing 40 minutes tonight. And I went out and we played it was a great show. And

I actually read about the next day. They didn't call me I read about it in the press that you know, they've been replaced by Taylor Swift. So Taylor's great and interesting part of country music history Taylor came up after and she was real sweet. She's I hope there's no hard feelings as of now. So this crowd is gonna be great for you. This is exactly where you should be. I said, I'll ask you. She was a brand new artist, like she had just put her first single out. And I said, All I ask is that I get your first gold record. And honestly, God, David, it was like, two weeks later,

she walks up on the bus, we were playing some festival and she had her first gold record and said to Eric, thanks for playing too long and too loud on the flats tour. I sincerely appreciate it Taylor. And it's now it's now in the Country Music Hall of Fame. So she went on to do some pretty good things. But what was interesting about that is it it comes down to perspective. It comes down to vision. That just wasn't what I wanted to be. And we got banished rock clubs, we got banished to places that nobody wants to be banished to. But what I found there were a lot of people like me, that country music wasn't talking to, we're gonna play these rock clubs at 10 o'clock at night. And I saw, you know, 40 or 50 guys. And at that time, it was a very soccer mom driven format. And they're in there, listen to classic rock and roll when we would come out and play. And they started to get it. It started to grow. Nobody knew it was growing because it was growing one fan at a time. But it started to kind of grow at that time. And then I got a call from Bob Seger out of the blue. You know, I picked up the phone and was Bob. And I'll never forget it. He goes he's got this real like raspy like Michigan, you know, accent and he goes, Hey, Eric, he goes Bob Seger. Here he goes, you really get fired from the flats tour? And I was like, Yeah, I did. And he said, You know, I'd love for you to come out and play with us. And he said, All I can offer you is 45 minutes to open for and I was like my first this time I had one album, my album was 37 minutes long. So I was sitting there going, Man to figure out how to extend songs. You know, so it was a lifeline by a guy who's a musical hero of mine. That was like, it's going to be okay. I like what you're doing. I want you to come out and play in front of our crowds. And that led to a whole different world for us when we saw what that was. So you quickly really realized who you were, what really you wanted to do and nobody else necessarily wanted to do and you you started developing this personal identity that makes you there at church you are today. What advice can you give leaders on how to grow into their own personal identity? If you don't have a vision of who you want to be what you want to be about?

out what you want to make what product you want to make.

If you don't have that, there's no way for anybody to help you get to that. That's not something you can develop along the way. And for me, I always had a really clear vision of this is the artist I want to be. These are the songs I want to write songs I want to record. And these are how we record them. And then these are how we play. And there's a ton of challenges alone that way. But that vision, if you have the vision, and you have the conviction, that vision, everybody else will get on board and help you get there. And I go back to the Bob singers and people like that they know it's interesting business, music, it's all the same. It's all about getting to where you want to go. And for me, that has been clear throughout my entire career. If you don't have the vision, you can't expect anybody else to have it for you. I've built everything we've done on that. You know, Eric, first and foremost, you're arguably one of the very best songwriters in the world. And I'd like you to tell us a behind the scenes story of how you wrote one of what happens to be one of my favorite songs of yours, which is mistress named music. You walk us through the process of writing a song like that, initially, the whole Mr. Misunderstood album, which is my favorite album and ended up winning an album of the year and all this stuff. But initially, I was going to write that album. And this is really inside baseball. I don't think I've ever told the story. Initially, it was going to be a collaboration album. I had contacted Willie I contacted Kris Kristofferson, I had contacted Bob Seger, Billy Joe, and all these people, and I said, Hey, I want to do this album where we get together, and we make an album about what we all share, which is this journey in music. And that's really kind of where mistress started, is. That's my journey. When you do this for a long enough time.

Everything else you do, is trumped by music. I love my wife, I love my kids, I love everything. But they also have learned over time that music has this siren effect on me. And that's initially what that song was about. And I started with where I grew up in a Baptist church. And it starts with, you know, Miss Bessie, play. And that feeling of the first time I felt music,

and how that has affected my entire life. And it was never radio single. But it's a song that has been a defining song in my life. And that's another thing, David that we did really well early on a lot of artists at that time. And even now, they get on stage. And they get insecure in their own art.

And they want to play a cover. They want to play somebody else's song. I understand it. That's how you make the crowd cheer. But the more you develop your own art, the more that becomes the thing, they'll cheer for down the line. We've done whatever we've done, but we've not had the commercial success, like a lot of people are surprised I have some buddies in the industry who are contemporaries now. And I don't have half the number ones they have, right. But when you go to a show, they're gonna sing these boots. They're gonna sing centers like me, they're gonna sing pledge allegiance to the hag, they're gonna sing mistress named music, and none of those songs ever saw radio. So it's about committing to that vision of what you want your path to be. You know, Eric, the thing that strikes me about your lyrics is they're simple, but there's so much complexity in them. You don't have the little singsong anything. I mean, you got got your heart and your soul in there. I mean, it's unbelievable. And one of the things that I've heard you say is what really matters most is showing your heart. You know, and I think that's something that all leaders need to do is show people their heart. How do you get people to see and feel your heart? When you write your songs? Well, you got to know your heart, EMS. The first thing you have to know what you're trying to write about. I think what was interesting for me is I was very fortunate within songwriting. So I came to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2000. And I came to the place that all my heroes had came, I went to Broadway, and Broadway was where the ramen was. It was where Tutsis was. It was where Ernest Becker shop was. And what I found out really fast is

they didn't want me there. They didn't want original songs. They didn't want my guitar. They didn't want my voice. They didn't want my bartending. They didn't want me there at all. So I had to find my tribe. So I went about three

blocks away to this real seedy place on printer's alley.

And who I found there was all the people that got kicked off Broadway just like I did. And they were songwriters that are written for George Jones and Waylon Jennings and Conway Twitty. And there was this guy one night in the back corner, a little corner booth. And as I walked in this bar, they were like, Hey, that guy's been doing it for 30 years, he drove for a while, and he wrote this song for George Jones, he wrote, notice walked up, new kid, you know, introduce myself.

And he took a liking to me. And he started introducing me to all the old dogs in town, the guys that were really committed to their craft, it wasn't just about writing a song and releasing a song, it was about crafting a song. And even if it never made any commercial success at all, knowing your craft, and being the best at your craft, and working at that craft, allows you a chance to have so much more success. And he introduced me to all these old writers that had been doing it forever. That was my workshop. That was my woodshed every day, I would go right with these guys. And I got better. And I got better. And I got better. And I learned that it's not just about sitting down right now I did. It's about craft in that. It's about about understanding the craft of songwriting and understanding the business that I was in with the best in the world. And it was invaluable to me to be able to have that time and go in rooms with these guys, and learn and watch and be involved in it. And it was the as I look back on my life and my career. That's the maybe the greatest thing that ever happened to me is a lot of new guys. Now. They skip that process. They go on tick tock. They write a song, it's out, right? They never go through the craft part. Is this the best that I could write this idea? Is this the best song that it could be. And in those rooms with those guys, they challenged every line, they challenged every idea. They challenged every turn of the phrase. And it taught me how to look at things a different way than I would have if I had taken a different path.

Koula Callahan 22:22 

Hey, everyone, its Kula co host of three more questions, and I have some exciting news to share with you. We just launched a breakthrough app that will help you become a better leader in less than two minutes a day. It's called how leaders lead. As you know, on the podcast, David spends about an hour each week interviewing some of the top leaders in the world, people like Tom Brady, Condoleezza Rice, and Jamie Dimon. But we know that leaders like yourself are pressed for time. So we've taken the very best clips from these conversations and put them into an easy to use mobile app that you can learn from and less than two minutes a day. If you want to become a better leader started daily leadership habit with the how leaders lead app, it's available now for free and the App Store, download it today.

Eric Church 23:16 

Eric, I gotta ask, you know, how do you get yourself in the right frame of mind and in the right place? To really maximize your creativity? That's a great question. I think for me, I try to find every artist every creative person has muses. And for me, I try to find a location. So I wrote the chief album in North Carolina, I wrote the Mr. Misunderstood album in North Carolina, I wrote the heart and soul out and the whole thing in North Carolina. So I tried to put myself in a place that's where it's always been up. North County has always been a touchstone or cornerstone for me, where I try to go back and I when I look in the mirror, I try to find that kid at 2122 years old, who was leaving everything behind.

Secure life, college education, fiance, all these things. What made that kid look in the mirror and go, No, I'm going to Nashville.

And I try to put myself in that place of

I owe it to that kid.

To make this record, it's really a frame of mind. I write songs all the time. I'm constantly doing it. But when it's time to make a record, and time to write a record, I'm in a different mode than I am if I'm just writing so

explain that a little bit more for me. Well, so for me, when it's project based, right now, if I relate it to business, you have a new product you haven't whatever it is, you can stumble across genius all the time, but in my world, one song would be that it's about developing the idea

it's gonna allow that song or that thing to flourish. So I have to get in a headspace for that. I've never written a record that I just went over time went well, I've just got the songs and this will be the record. I've always committed to, I'm going to write for the next however many months, I'm going to hold up somewhere, I'm going to immerse myself in that headspace, that heart space, that culture, I'm going to write that record. And if those songs ends up being better than what I had, it'll start to formulate this album, you know what it is, when I when I wrote the Miss misunderstood album. The first song I wrote was Mr. Misunderstood. And I didn't have a concept until I wrote that song. The second song I wrote, was knives in New Orleans.

And I knew that I had Miss misunderstood, and I had knives in New Orleans. And I had a pretty good field to play between the two of what I thought this record could be. So I had my anchors, I had my bookends, and it started to formulate what an album is, I think a lot of guys now. And it's a mistake in music, they don't know they're making a mistake it but they are, you have to make albums, nothing has changed. I read a ton of books, I don't understand what the art or the book is trying to do by reading one chapter of that book, you got to read the whole book. And that's the way I look at records. You can have a great song, chapter one, chapter five, whatever. But you don't understand the writer unless you read the whole book. So we have built our entire career on album based stuff and writing albums and making albums. That's very interesting. And you're so creative. This may have never been a problem for you, Eric. But have you ever gotten into a creative law where it just wasn't coming in? Did you have any panic set in when that happened? A lot of mine comes from after I go through the record making process when I commit myself to an album, and I'll commit it timewise and everything. After that, I don't write songs for a while. Like I usually get away from it. It's like all of a sudden, I've gave all I can give so wise, I guess you just clean it out mentally, I don't ever get freaked out I've had a couple of times, you know where I was like I you know, it will go come to me. But the best thing, best thing there is I just I listened to a lot of albums, I go back. And I've always been a guy that if I'm a Bob Seger fan. And I am,

I want to know who Bob Seger was a fan of.

So I'll go back to the older stuff, and then I'll chase it back to the older stuff. And he ended up chasing your way back on this chain of stuff that inspired them, they will end up I've always had it inspire me when chasing it back that would just use being a student, it's been a student of the craft, it's been a student of the history of the craft, and that applies to everything that doesn't just apply to music. That's everything. And when you have that commitment to it, it ends up usually working out in your favor, couldn't agree more. And you got a marketing degree and you are a real marker, no question about it. You know, you'd never worked at Procter and Gamble, you didn't have to you just are a marketer, you got into phones, you got fired.

Unknown Speaker 28:18 

And

David Novak 28:20 

Eric, I've worked with a lot of creative people over the years and advertising agencies and you know, different kinds of people that really had to bring forward that creative product. And, you know, you find the best of the best, you know, they make your bones but they certainly made by there's no question about that. But I've learned that when you deal with really creative people like yourself, letting go of their baby is really hard. You know, this is their baby, they see it, this is how I see it, this is how it needs to be. It is very difficult at times to receive any kind of suggestions or feedback. How do you feel about your ability to get feedback? Or do you even want it?

Eric Church 28:58 

I think you got to qualify that with who you're getting feedback from. And if you're getting feedback from people that you respect, because I think a lot of people, they get sideways and whatever they're doing, and they're a little bit desperate. And they'll just take feedback. Feedback when you have vision is a very dangerous thing. Because visions that supersede feedback, you should use the feedback to help develop the vision. If you don't have the vision, that feedback can send you down some really, really, really bad roads. And I think that for me, it all comes back to vision. If you know who you want to be, win or lose by the way, that's the key. That's the hard part. You have to be okay. If your vision didn't succeed, I've had that happen. We've all had that happen. You have to be committed to that vision, regardless of the feedback, or there's no other way for anybody to help you along this journey. And specifically in my world with fans. Your fans won't prospective fans won't

A unique way to look at something, they can listen to anything, There's music everywhere, you have to be able to provide something that's a unique perspective that you're committed to. Even when the whole world has beaten the hell out of you, you have to be able to look back and know it's still. That's who I want to be. That's where I want to go. If I lose fans on that, that's fine. That's still my vision. And I think a lot of that is just the conviction in that, which is probably the hardest thing to do. And music, business, anything is being committed to that conviction. When I was growing up, artists would put their very best songs on the A side of the vinyl. Yeah, yeah. But I've found, interestingly, with you, some of your biggest hits are deeper into the record. Yeah. Is that that storytelling of the album driving that or what's your thinking on that? It goes back to writing the whole book, I know The world's changed a lot, I will never not make an album that I can show you. In that album where I was in my life. I can show you the change from centers like me to Carolina to Chief to outsiders, to Mr. Misunderstood a desperate man, I can show you, you can hear the change in me. You can feel me age, you can see when I get married, you can feel the kids, you can feel the challenges, you can feel those things, the triumphs. You can feel all that if you put it all on and you listen to it. And that discography is so important, musically, you know that you can go back and look at that, and put that on a shelf. I mean, I always gauge myself with, I have, you know, eight or 10 guys that are my Mount Rushmore guys, right. And girls, I have to be proud to at least put my record up somewhere on that wall. Or don't make that out. For me, it's always been about seeing what that piece was, in this part of my life. And being okay with, maybe you don't have the number ones on it that the label wants you to have or people want you to have. But those don't matter as much.

The people matter. The people in front of you matter. The consumption matters. It doesn't matter whether or not radio can play it. It doesn't matter where the label likes. It matters what the people think. And when you go out and play that song, like I had a young artist recently that thought we never released these boots. And it was a song of our first album. And I can't get out of many shows these if I don't play these boots, they'll riot. And these boots was never a song for us. And I had a young artist that was like, How many weeks was that a number one song. It wasn't even a single, you know, but he in his mind, as a young artist, he had came to shows, he thought that was one of our biggest songs. And it was never that way commercially. But it was that way to the fans. It was that way on consumption. And I think that, you know, a lot of people, they lose their way a little bit because they'll look at metrics, metrics matter, that if you don't have the vision to see past the metrics, you're going to lose yourself in that process. That's where the feedback comes in. You got to see where you want to be at the end. And you got to set a path to go there. You know, Eric, most people don't really understand the business side of music. Could you give us an overview of the business model? And how musicians make a living these days? How long is this podcast? Yeah.

David Novak 33:36 

Give us the cliffnotes.

Eric Church 33:39 

The hard thing is you have you have it's multifaceted. So you have the songwriting side, the creator part. And they make a fraction of what they should make. And then they write with an artist or they don't write with an artist and an artist splits that with a record label, who splits that with a publishing company? Who splits that within Performing Rights company. And what it really comes down to is if you're the songwriter, which is what I came to town to be, it gets split a lot. That egg gets divided up a lot of different ways. But

I still think it comes down for my part, as the world changes. Technology is not a bad thing. It allows more people access to music, which is a good thing. It removes some of the gatekeepers, right. But the downside is, I see a lot of young artists today, and I've voiced this, I believe this and they'll write a song on a Tuesday, and they'll put it on tick tock on a Wednesday, and then write a song on a Friday. And they will put on tick tock on a Saturday. Song could be great. But I don't know you any more than I did before unless I know how to get to know you, which is to put in an album and go that way. So I think for me from a music standpoint, it's a complicated business. It's a rough business, but it still goes down to if you're a young artist, and you know who you are.

You know, the kind of music you want to make. There's a lot of people out there and a lot of assets that will help you make that. If you know, the music you want to make, you know, you have your own publishing company. And I wondering, it's a tough business, as you just described, you know, how are you making your publishing companies stand out from every other publishing company on Music Row and in you and I both know there are a lot of them. Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to the songwriter. I've never chased a songwriter that I thought was the commercial songwriter. When I evaluate a songwriter it's Do they just like when I learned? Can you craft a song? Regardless of whether it goes number one, is that a great song? Did you turn every lyric the right way? If you think about how that who kits? Did you think about that chorus? Did you write it the way when I listened to Kris Kristofferson album, there was not a line in any of Kris Kristofferson his albums, that you don't go down, you know, maybe it's written to the wall. And that's the way I have a with a songwriter is write it to the wall. And if you do that, you're gonna have some things that work or don't I'm okay either way, but the songwriters that we have, that's the way that we evaluate a songwriter, we've turned down some songwriters that have went on to be massive six, it would have made us a bunch of money. But it's just not the kind of place we wanted to be. And what we wanted to be about, for what our publishing company was. So again, it goes back to David, as I've said it a lot, I want to say it goes back to the vision of what you want to be, you know, you got it you got to do to execute that. You don't want to shift gears now to some of your other business interests. There's a lot more now than it used to be. No, I know that. And you know, they say you can learn a lot about a person on the golf course. And I've kind of gotten a glimpse of your, your business mind and how you think through things and tell everybody why you're so excited about your acquisition of the Field and Stream brand. Well, so I grew up when I was a younger man, my grandfather, so my greatest memories with my my mom's dad was he had this old white, late 60s Chevy pickup truck. And this is like back before you had to buckle up, it had the bench seat in the front. And he had eight or 10 Field and Stream magazines that were just, they are rolled up and weathered. And he would just stick them around. This is no cell phones back then. Right. So when we would be on a break fishing, and we beat and lunch in the truck, I would read those filters, and I read those articles. I knew them by heart, because for whatever reason, those were the ones we had in the truck. So that became my Bible growing up Field and Stream magazine. And when I had the chance within the last year to purchase filled in string. And here's the thing for that, for me. It's an American icon. It's been around since the 1800s 1871. And to be able to have a chance at that and bring that back to what it was for me when I was 10 years old. And a pickup truck was the most exciting thing because I wanted to see that be that for future generations. We're running away from a lot of magazines. Now it's all online. Everything's closing up shop. And one of the first things I said when we we purchased Field and Stream was I don't care what it costs, we're going to put a Field and Stream magazine out, we're going to have something that you can hold, you can read, you can put in a truck, you can put on a coffee table, whatever, we're going to have that or I'm not interested. And we talked about what it meant. Not only the outdoor space, but to America meets one of America's oldest brands. And to be able to have a chance that that was just a stroke of good luck and good fortune. And it's been a ton of fun. I mean, we're new at it, but it's doing really well. And it's going to do really well. So it's something that I'm committed to making sure we get it to where we need to get it to. And once again thinking against the grain you're I'm gonna get that physical property in people's homes and in their pickup trucks that magazine, I think that's fantastic. David also thought I mean, when everybody else is running away from it, I mean, that's always been a thing. I'm always the first one to the fire, you know, so is they were leaving the space that you know a lot of people run back to you're taking in people who give you analysis. And their analysis is always Well, everybody's getting out of this space. And that's the first place I like to be in.

David Novak 39:33 

So I said, Well, I said everybody's getting out. We should get in, you know, because nobody else is in that space. You're also in the whiskey business and you launched this whiskey Gypsy, and again, this is a very, very crowded category. How are you applying your creativity here to win? Same thing it was when we did this. I was like I'm not interested in just a bourbon or whiskey. Right. I said if we can be creative with the

Eric Church 40:00 

Each release of this, where we go in like this, this newest released because I'm from North Carolina, we aged everything. And Appalachian oak, which is from right where I'm from. I said, if we can take every one of these releases, I'm not interested in one release. I said, if we can take each of these releases and be creative with them, and make them very good, but give them a story, almost like an album. First one's and our second one's and our third one's an album. And there's a through line there that interests me. Otherwise, I'm not interested, you know. So I think that a lot of that was just being able to, to have the creative vision to go this is what separates this from all the other stuff that's that's going on. And then you've become a recent owner of the Charlotte Hornets. And how did that come about? And what do you bring to the party there? My sport was basketball, play basketball is pretty good basketball player. I'm a Tar Heel. So I was a Tar Heel fan growing up, and the Charlotte Hornets came, you know, in the late 80s, to Charlotte, first time, we had an NBA team, and I was a big fan, you know, early on. And I actually got into that through Michael Jordan, I got to know MJ a little bit. And when MJ started trying to get out, he called. And he was like, hey, you know, a lot of this ownership group is not North Carolina based. They're not local. And I want to make sure we have a field there. First of all, it's a frightening call when MJ calls you.

And I never thought about a pro team, and frankly, was terrified when he said I want you to do this. I was like,

oh shit, you know, what does this mean? But after talking to MJ,

and after talking about, he's a North Carolina kid, we're both Tar Heels. And he talked about how important it was to have local ownership.

I thought about it.

And then I stretched a little bit, then from what I could do. Now, I think we all do that sometimes financially. But

I thought you know that I liked this, I liked it back to my Touchstone back to the cornerstone of what North Carolina means to me. I like it. I like it for the journey. So I did it, join the ownership group. I like their vision. I like where they're trying to go. When I was young, the Charlotte Coliseum at that time, before they built the new arena was rockin when the Hornets were there, you know, and I got two young boys. And it was it's been fun to take them to games and do some of that, you know, so it was just an opportunity that came that I wouldn't have got to look at, you know, if it wouldn't have been for MJ and and the relationship that we had. So I said yes. And that's been a whole that's been a whole different journey. But I love journeys. Yeah, and you're bringing the North Carolina, you know, what you bring that passion that you have for the state to the franchise as well, which makes a ton of sense. Michael Jordan, he's the goat. I mean, there's no doubt about it. What have you learned just by getting to know him as a friend that's inspired you, man. He's a perfectionist in a lot of ways. And a lot of people don't realize that he's, he's committed to whatever craft he's doing, whether it's golf, or tequila or basketball, and

he's a perfectionist, you know, and I think that a lot of people wouldn't think that about MJ. But his commitment to whatever he's doing is 110%. There's no other there, and we open our chiefs bar in Nashville. And you know, he committed to coming up and hanging out with us for our first night there. And it's been a thing for me mean growing up a TARIO going up North Carolina, and Michael Jordan is he's a defining figure for a lot of people in the world. But it was a really defining figure of excellence for me when I was a young man, and to have him involved in some of the stuff that we're doing, when we're trying to do the same thing. We're committed to excellence. We're committed to being different than everybody else. To have him support that has been just a

David Novak 44:21 

dream come true for Carroll Granite Falls North Carolina boy, about a month ago I was at that same opening Eric You know that MJ was was that and I didn't have anybody coming up and asking me for any autographs or anything like that. But that night I didn't either.

But I'll tell you what chiefs has an incredible, incredible experience and an incredible space and you say it's storytelling through space. Tell us about it. Then weapon who's my partner there who's my best friend in the world? Who's the greatest person in the world in my

Eric Church 45:00 

opinion at telling stories through real estate. Ben Stiller, a young man, that he is the best at it in the world. And I've seen a ton of them. And I was always wary about getting into that world. There's a lot of other artists Broadway, Nashville was never interested unless I could do it my way. And the way that I want to do it is you're committed to, there's got to be a venue there that young songwriters can play. Young artists can play. young musicians can play people that when I came to Broadway, and I wasn't allowed to be there, I want those people to be allowed there. So I said, we may not be built, like the other bars are where it's all about, let's serve as much alcohol as we can serve and make as much money. That wasn't the way that we did this. It needs to be a place that's going to be there. 50 years, not five. And Ben and I went in. And instead of doing a lot of the bars on their license deals with artists, we bought the building. And we brick by brick, we built that building to the vision of what I wanted chiefs to be and define for future hours. My favorite thing right now is you know, two or three days a week, and our what we call the neon steeple, which is our venue, which separates us from everything there. It's like a mini ramen, it's all wood.

We have young artists come in at Texas out of California or whatever. And they get to come play Nashville, on Broadway, and sell tickets and do what they do. show who they are play original music. They're not playing brown eyed girl, they're not playing Sweet Home, Alabama, they're coming in and play and who they are. And that was what I wanted this whole thing to be with chiefs. And it's been one of the greatest things that I've done creatively and successfully. It's doing really well.

Ben Weprin 47:02 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Eric Church in just a moment. When Eric wanted to open his music venue chiefs, he only wanted to partner with Ben Weprin, the CEO of AJ capital and the founder of graduate hotels. That's because Eric believes and I have to agree with him. Nobody understands the power of storytelling in business quite like Ben, you know, we're mission driven, we're going to execute this business plan that doesn't have any cops, right, we're building something as in the future, you have to be able to believe my story, or you're not going to invest in that being part of that journey. And so the story is, is everything and you know, think about a songwriter, I mean, the writing of the song is then comes into life, they manifest that through the chords and the lyrics and the person singing, we do the same thing, but in physical space. So we're telling that story. And you know, hopefully people connect it and some people won't, you know, a lot of people think I'm out of my mind, or they think that, you know, this product in this looks like a living room. And I'm like, well, that's great. Because what we're doing is not for everybody, all of those obstacles or opportunities and workflows, that's okay. We want to build something that's differentiated and to be differentiated is actually very difficult. One, it's hard to bring it to life and then to, it's not for everyone, that's okay, if he's the people that like it will really resonate with us. Listen to Ben's episode, and see how to put storytelling to work for your organization. It's episode 143 here on how leaders lead.

Speaker 1 48:39 

You know, in the music world, you've become a superstar by seemingly not caring too much about the commercial nature of what you're doing or making a ton of money. Has that perspective changed as you stepped into into these other business ventures? I'm not saying for music, but when you think about these other ventures, how much is making money, a big part of what drives you? Mad? I don't, I don't think you ever make money unless you're committed to the vision and the commitment of what you're doing. That doesn't happen, you know, so I think for me, you don't go into going we're gonna make a lot of money. You go into committed to the idea and the vision of what you want it to be. And sometimes you make money and sometimes you don't. But if you don't have that as your cornerstone, you're never going to make money. So I think for me, win or lose, you have to have this is what I want it to be. This is what I see. This is what I get my heart behind. And if it wins, it wins. If it doesn't, it doesn't I can lay down at night and be okay the way I think that the things that always make money are the things that you love. Things you enjoy doing things you think about when you go to bed things you think about when you wake up and you don't think about them because of how much money you can make you think about them because that's what you love doing.

Speaker 1 50:00 

And that's how musics been for me. And every business venture that we've done outside of music. I've always kept that as the main cornerstone of, this is how I want to do it. And if it works, it works. If it doesn't, that's okay too. being focused on your customers is critical in business. And you're very focused on building your fan base, the Eric Church fan base, and I've heard you say about your songs, they're mine until I release them, and then they're not mine anymore. You know, whose do they become, they become theirs, they become the fan. I mean, my favorite time with an album is the not before release. And every album I've ever made. I get in my car, I put the CD in,

Eric Church 50:47 

and I drive around. And that's the last night that those songs are mine. Because the next day, they're not mine anymore. They're everybody else's. We did that the night we open chiefs the same thing the night before you were there. Not before we opened, I went down with Ben, my wife, his wife, we were the only four people there. Because that's the last night it was ours.

And the next day, when we open those doors, it didn't become about my story anymore. It became about their story. And the memories they make there. And I think that's exactly what

I mean. That's what fires me up. I love those little small moments. That you know, when you walk out of that place, or you know when that album's done,

that's it tomorrow morning.

Speaker 1 51:39 

It's theirs to go be the soundtrack of their life. Right. It's theirs to go play. It's no longer mine. I've I've lost my time with it. But where my story ends, there's begins. And that's the best thing about music. That story about you had villager your wives had gives you goosebumps, you know, you talk about the importance of being left footed, and never wanting your fans to know what's coming. Give me a for instance, that how you make that happen? Well, we've done that a lot in our career, we're about to do it again, by the time this airs, it'll be it'll have happened. But we're going out to play stagecoach, which is a big thing in California, it's 80,000 tickets.

Eric Church 52:22 

It's one of the bigger shows that the festival kind of show. And this particular year, just to give you an inside baseball of this, but I've done it seven times. I've headlined it five times, as I get older, they were saying all these acts that are before us. And it's you know, all these rock and roll rock and roll fire cannons, you know, all this stuff, all this noise. And so my idea was, I want to go back to the cornerstone, the kind of the foundation of where I started. So I'm gonna go to stage coach, breaking news here, myself with an acoustic guitar, and a 40 person choir

for 90 minutes. And I'm gonna sit there and I'm, we'll play, we're gonna do all spiritual stuff, we're gonna do a bunch of covers, I'm gonna work my songs into it. But we're not going to stop for 90 minutes. And we'll play with a choir, it's going to take it back to kind of where music is. But it's the antithesis of what everybody out there is trying to do. You know, they're trying to be bigger, bolder fire, rock and roll, you know, and my thing was, that's not doesn't have to be halfway. So I'm going to go out and I'm going to do just an acoustic guitar and acquire. And so we've done that a lot in our career. But I've always found that that perspective of taking it back to where it started back to when I talked about earlier about chasing who Bob Seger loves, who Springsteen loves, who Willie Nelson loves, you chase it back to the origin. The origin of all that is still the purest form of it. And we don't do that as much anymore. So by the time this airs, this could have been a really horrible mistake, but it feels good right now to go back and just take a choir and do it. So Eric, you have a hell of a good time. Just disrupting yourself, don't you? Yeah, I love it. No, I think honestly, I boredom is the biggest thing. You know, when you have success. It's really easy just to continue to show up and do what you do. And you know, it's just it gets stagnant it gets. I think if you're not challenging yourself, I don't care what business you're in. If you're not excited about what you're about to do, by pushing boundaries, you are not doing what you should do for your craft, for your business for your art. And I think for me, it's always been something with records with performances. I've always been the one that's like, let's do something really, really strange and weird and take a chance sometimes it doesn't work, but it's okay if you're living on that edge because that edge that cutting edge, is where all the new guys are going to gravitate to anyway. So if you can always challenge yourself that way, it always cuts sharper than any other edge. You

Speaker 1 55:00 

Think your the way he came up with music and all those failures maybe are not failures, but just the difficulty of all that just allows you to live with it more. Yeah, I actually I think those failures are just critical, you're gonna fail a lot, you know, but as long as you're failing with the right mission in mind, with the right vision in mind, it's why you fail is the thing if you're failing, because you're taking chances that's worth failing for. And I think with anything you do, if you're really putting yourself out there, and it's got to come from here, the thing where this gets complicated is, you know, people will come in and go, you should take a chance here, because that's what you should do for your career. No, it's got to come from here, you got to know that this is what we should do. Because you believe it, because you feel it. And if you do that it's worked out more often than not, at least for me. You know, Eric, this has been so much fun. And I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions with you. Are you ready for this? I'm ready to the three words that best describe you convicted, passionate,

Speaker 1 56:03 

spiritual, what's the one word that best describes your wife, Catherine, devoted? What's the one word that best describes the relationship your two sons have with you? I hope it's respectful, but I hope it's also loving. I mean, I come from a generation where I gotta tell my kids every day, you know, we pray in the morning when they go to school, and I tell them I level. And that's, that's something that I think it's important in this day and time. If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be and why? One person I would probably be, I always goes musical for me, but I would probably be Willie Nelson. Because as we'll see what that day looks like, Okay, what's your biggest pet peeve? I think my biggest pet peeve is the lack of. I'm a passion guy. So when people do things, and they don't have that element of passion, whether it's sports, or music or whatever, that really annoys me, you know that they're just kind of going through the motions of it. That's an annoying thing for me, who would play you in a movie?

Eric Church 57:07 

Not more than wall and

Unknown Speaker 57:10 

I was.

Eric Church 57:12 

It was a good buddy of mine. I would say. Well, I tell another good guy who's really good actors, a friend of mine, Matthew McConaughey. I would love to see Yeah, he does that. Well. He's a hell of a lot better. Look at the new though. Yeah, he absolutely. Absolutely. Your favorite memory on stage. My favorite memories, probably I I've had a bunch of them. I'll give you three. So I got a chance a few years ago to play with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson. And we did three or four songs together. And just what those guys have meant to me and to be on stage with them. And it was acoustic. So it was a three so the acoustic guitars. The other one would probably be I played the last show, George Strait did Dallas stadium or Jerry world there when he does retirement tour, and we played a couple songs together. And then my top one, I got a chance to play with Springsteen we did working on a highway to acoustic guitars, and we just went out and played the song it had benefit thing for him Madison Square Garden. That was something that was great. What's the favorite song you just love to perform. And he centers like me is something that I don't perform all the time that I really like doing. And it's something that's it's always special for me that one and hold mon is the other one because it's one of my favorite songs because it talks about kind of where I am in my life at that time, and still am at this point in time. So those are the two, your dream concert venue. I've already played Red Rocks, Red Rocks is the best in the world.

Now, I've never been to a place like that and played a place like that. So that that will forever be my thing. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Right now you'd hear Sports Talk.

But you're normally you're I go off my phone a lot some I'm not using as much like I do some satellite radio stuff. But I'm usually listen to what's on my phone and stuff that I grew up with. How much do you listen to your own records? Never Very little was something about you? Few people would know. I'm actually pretty funny. I think a lot but I don't do a lot of interviews. I just I never have I don't do interviews because a lot of people do. And pretty reclusive in that way. I kind of try to let my music talk. But one of the things has been interesting that the chief shows because we restricted when I did the residency shows there. There's no cellphones. So I get to tell stories that I've had in my career, that nobody, I would want that on the internet. So I get to tell things and some funny stuff that's happened with other artists that I think people would be surprised with. So if you get to those shows, you get to hear some stuff that I'm not allowed to tell outside that room. All right. That's the end of the lightning round. I just got a few more questions and I'll let you go. You spoke about gun control after the Las Vegas shooting. And you received a ton of credit

This is what did you learn as a leader from that experience? Well, it still goes back to conviction. For me, I was a part of the Vegas show, which is now the deadliest mass shooting in US history. And to be there, and to have some fans that died there. We had a number of fans, church choir members that were buried in their choir shirts, you know, when they were buried. So I learned that everybody's going to have a perspective on that. But you know, for me, I thought it was the right time to go, Hey, we should think about this. You know, this is not, I understand you get to political lines, I get it. But I'm going to tell you my thought on that. And we'll tell you what I believe on that. One of the most interesting parts of that David did not a lot of people knows the next show we had after I did that, and Rolling Stone was at Sturgis, the biker festival in South Dakota. And I had a lot of people going, oh, man, you can't walk out there on stage. And Sturgis, you know, you got about people on bikes, it'd be a lot of NRA hats and all this stuff. And

I said, I can't not walk out there, you know. So it was one of those shows that you really learn about your conviction, when you walk out there in that setting. You got a lot of bikers, or guys who just heard what you said, but I was like, hey, what I believe is what I think, you know, and I walked out there and played the show. It was a little nervy at first. But you know, it was something I believed in. I think that with music or with life, right? If you believe something, you're convicted by something, I don't believe you should just not say that. Because you're worried about the consequences of it. I think that if that's what you think, then you should say it and let the chips fall where they may, you know, the up and coming stars in the music world. And as I'm told they literally worship the ground that you walk on, and they often come to you and ask for advice. What do you tell them about how to be successful in a star driven, celebrity, heady world that you live in? I mean, it's you got everything coming at you, you know, money ever? Anything you can imagine? Is there. What do you tell these young artists like Morgan Whelan, and you pick the guy, the big thing I still come back to is, I always go back to the album part of it, you know, and I go back to what we talked about earlier. And I was like, if you want people to learn who you are, you can't do that song by song. You know, you got to figure out and release an album and put out a piece of art a piece of work that defines this point in your life. I've said that to everyone who's ever asked, you know, advice of me is it's always worked for me. It's always worked for all my heroes, and all the people that I, you know, look up to. So I know technology has changed things. But that's still the core, I give them a lot of advice. But that's still the core advice I try to give them. You know, over a decade ago, you and your wife, Katherine started the Chiefs cares fund. Tell us about it, and why you're passionate about giving back in this way. Yeah, it's a Christian based fund. I mean, what I loved about it is, you know, in the world we live in, there's a very organized way to give money. And you can do it church base, and they'll build a new door on the front of the church. And it's never really intrigued me, I wanted to see the money working. Do we do a lot of stuff overseas, we do a lot of stuff in Nepal, we do a lot of stuff in Asia. And the biggest thing for me with given like that is I want to see that actionable, and actually affect people and affect their lives. So we've created a fund there that that's its mission statement is we try to make sure that the money that we give is actually going to people that can benefit from that. You know, I understand that your wife, Catherine worked in the music publishing business, when you all first met, what kind of role has she played in your career the past 15 years.

I mean, when I first came to town, she was one of the top music publishers, I mean, she was the one you would try to get a medium with to be a songwriter. So she's been invaluable over time, just from her knowledge of songs and songwriting and the craft of it. Her compass is really, really, really strong. So the number of times that I go to her and go, Hey, I got an weird idea here. How does this hit you? I would not be where I am today, if she didn't have that compass and be able to have that conversation about where we're heading and where we're going. You've accomplished so much, Eric, and you have your hand in so many things. Now. It's so exciting. What do you see as your unfinished business? I think a lot of it is vision for where the format can go. I mean, you get to a certain you have a certain success level in anything you do, whether it's business or music. And you've been given an incredible and very lucky opportunity to get to do that and to be a voice for it. I think it's about showing the next generation. The same things that I was shown when I made my albums and I played my shows and it's paying homage to, you know, the same guys that I look at as my heroes and

I think that we always have to go back to that touchstone of the Ryman the mother church of what country music is of the storytelling of our relationship within that storytelling with our fans, is something that I want to make sure we don't lose touch with, I get that times change, I get that music changes, but you still need to have people that are going now this is still the way it should be done. Last question, what's one piece of advice you'd give to someone who wants to be a better leader, we've already done it a bunch. Number one thing is vision. And your conviction to that vision

Speaker 1 1:05:36 

is going to define whether or not you're a good leader, you're not a good leader, because there's going to be times that people challenge that there's going to be times that you don't have success. And if you don't continue to have that conviction to the vision, then you're not going to be able to lead them through the rough times with the times when that's very challenging. I think if you see the end result, you know where you want to get, it's not ever going to be this way, it's going to be this way. And I think that by having that vision of seeing the end result is is the best thing any leader can possess. Eric, I gotta tell you, I have loved this conversation. I knew I would always love spending time with you, you are a hell of a leader, it's easy to see why you've separated yourself in such a competitive field. You're the real deal. And I thank you very much for taking the time to be with me. Thanks for having me, David, I appreciate it very much.

David Novak 1:06:33 

For you really can't miss the big idea in this conversation. Eric's commitment to vision in whatever he's doing comes through loud and clear. He thinks it's the single most important thing that a leader can have. And that makes this a big learning opportunity for you today. It's your job as a leader to give people a clear vision, something that will ignite their hearts and minds and get them excited about the future. But let me tell you, it all starts with you. If you're not fully committed to the vision, why would anyone else be when you are though it is powerful. It's a booster that will help you overcome big obstacles and do incredible things together. This week, I want you to consider the power of vision. One of the things we've done at how leaders lead is create a free new app. It's called how leaders lead not surprisingly, and we've created a playlist on this app that you can go to that will help you really think about vision and learn about vision in the right way. It features insights about vision from the very best leaders. So what I want you to do is download the app if you haven't already and head to the playlist section. Then just hit play on the vision playlist and start learning. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we've learned today is that great leaders are committed to vision. Coming up next on how leaders leaders are best of quarter to episode where we play back some of the best content from the podcast the past three months, like this insight from the CEOs of Warby Parker strategies what you say no to that's something that we've really taken to heart and often counsel other entrepreneurs, other founders that they can become so tempting to chase shiny objects. And yeah, I think the advice would be to really define who you are, and maintain ruthless focus just on that and say no to everything else. So be sure to come back again next week to hear the entire episode. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be