Drew Holcomb 0:00 

The most important thing I can do as a business person, as a musician, is to super serve my core fan base, to sort of over deliver what they love about what we do from a touring and from a recording perspective, if we can super serve that core fan base, they stay with us forever. You

David Novak 0:25 

Do you know who the heavy users are in your business, and do you know why they matter? Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. My guest today is Drew Holcomb. He fronts a beloved Americana band called drew Holcomb and the neighbors, and their music has been featured on over 150

TV shows, including Gray's Anatomy and parenthood. His music has also been featured in my life. I absolutely love his band, and I can't wait for you to get a glimpse into how drew leads, both in his music and the business behind it. Drew knows something that a lot of leaders don't. You can waste a lot of time and a lot of energy chasing after customers and fans that won't really impact your business in a big way if you want to start 2025 with more focus and efficiency, this conversation is going to help you do it, plus it packs a real punch of creative inspiration. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Drew Holcomb.

Drew it's so great to have you on the show. It's

Drew Holcomb 1:44 

really great to be on the show, a big fan of the show. Listen to it all the time, and a big fan of you. So looking forward to this.

David Novak 1:51 

Well, I'm a big fan of yours because we played golf a few weeks ago and you made like, a 20 foot putt we win the match, and I felt like I won the Masters with you, big guy, I was a big punch.

Drew Holcomb 2:07 

That was a lot of fun. You're fun to play with. I love your competitive spirit. It leaks out onto me, which is fun. You know,

David Novak 2:14 

we're gonna have some fun with this podcast. And I learned that you post unsolicited advice videos fairly often. So, so let's hear one of us, you know, one of them, give me some unsolicited advice. Well,

Drew Holcomb 2:30 

they often. Sometimes they have a lot to do with travel. I travel all the time, so I post these videos about, you know, how to properly exit an airplane. You know, teaching people that, hey, everybody wants to get off this airplane, please wait for the people in front of you, and you know, be ready. Have your bags ready. But I also have unsolicited advice about sort of funny things, like one of the first ones I ever posted was don't fish upstream of Sam Holcomb, or you might get hooked in the penis, which is a true story about a,

Unknown Speaker 3:08 

is that your brother? That's

Drew Holcomb 3:10 

my younger brother. Yeah, he were fishing one time growing up as kids, and sure enough, I got, I got hooked through the pants, right in the pecker. But it was just, it was sort of a, you know, I'll be honest, it was when, when Instagram started doing the reels, and that was a new thing for them. And they came to a bunch of people like myself, musicians, you know, artists, etc, and said, Hey, we're trying to get people to do this, so we all do it. And they said, Well, you know, we'll pay you some money to make, like, 30 of these. And I'm honestly a bit of a Luddite. I don't I'm not super technologically savvy, and so I didn't want to have to learn how to edit them. So I said, Can I just make these, these one off unsolicited advice videos? And so I came up with 30 of these things and put them out over the course of time, and they've become sort of a calling card, and it's a way that I've learned to both share my grievances with the world and also my funniest stories.

David Novak 4:01 

I love it, you know. And I can't wait to get into how you lead. Drew because you are a great leader. People are inspired by you and but I want to take you back. What's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today?

Drew Holcomb 4:17 

I was very influenced by my my my father and my grandfather. I grew up five doors down the street from my grandfather, and he's my mom's dad, and he just included me in everything, and he taught me a lot of curiosity. So I mean, I can, I went hunting with him probably 30 times in my life. I went fishing with him probably 20 times my life. I played golf with him a number of times, and what I what I learned from him was that character is something that you can pick up on by spending a lot of time with people. You know that that character is mostly taught through spending. Spending time with people and watching them live their lives. It's not something you could read about character in a book, but you experience character when you see how help somebody that you respect treat someone, or you learn what, what, where character is not when you spend time with somebody and learn how they treat people in a poor way. And so my grandfather always treated everybody, no matter their station in life, with a lot of kindness and with a lot of value. And whether that was, you know, stopping at the place to buy crickets on the way to the morning fishing, or, you know, how he treated caddies on a golf course. He was a, he was a retired surgeon, and so he, he, he lived a very interesting life. And then my father was, it was one of the biggest memories I had in my life. Was I was a sophomore in high school, and I had written a song with a friend. It's probably the first song I ever wrote, and we were playing it at the talent show, and what I didn't know was that he had gotten a call that morning, unrelated from my math teacher, about how disrespectful I had been that week in class. So I get up there and I play this song. I'm very excited about it, and it's my first song I've ever written, and I get in the car with him afterwards, like I said, I'm 15, I get in the car, and we're driving home, and I'm waiting on him to say something about this song I just performed in front of the whole school. And so what'd you think about the song? And he said, we'll talk about the song later. We have another conversation to have about a conversation with your math teacher. I had today. No son of mine will get a call about being disrespectful to his teacher. We'll, we'll get back to your music. But all that, none of that matters if you're, you know, if your character is not there. And so those were two sort of anchor and, you know, rudder. Realities for me growing up was that I had, I had strong leadership in my sort of development as a human before I before I had any sort of idea of what my calling in life was going to be. You

David Novak 6:51 

know, I've read where you described your dad, HAMP as a dream encourager. You know, what kind of influence did he have on your career? I think, more than anything,

Drew Holcomb 7:01 

he just gave me permission to to try a lot of different things. I was a very curious kid. I was pretty, pretty bookish in a lot of ways, but also was like an okay athlete, and I was interested in, you know, I did the scouts, and I played some sports, and I was in some play, like, just kind of played with everything. And he gave me a guitar when I was young. I think his father had discouraged music. His father, in the early 60s, considered, or late 60s and early 70s, had considered it, you know, sort of like, you know, something that the hippies do. And he discouraged him from from doing that. And so I think he he had some, some wounds from that, and wanted to sort of write that in, his story as a father, so he bought me a guitar when I was young and encouraged me to learn how to play. He basically said, Look, if you work hard and you treat people well, I don't care what you do with your life. When I told him I wanted to do music, most of the people that in my life were pretty surprised that I chose music. I think they thought that I was headed towards a more sort of standard career path of, you know, corporate world or lawyer or something along those lines. So everybody you know, they knew I liked music, but it wasn't I wasn't that kid that sat and played songs all the time. And growing up, I had other interests and other hobbies as well, but once I decided to give music a go. I wanted to make sure and kind of get his his blessing on it. So I took him to get coffee, and he said, I said, Dad, I just graduated. I said, Dad, I think I want to give this music thing a try. I want to, I want to, want to give it a go. And he just asked me, he said, Are you going to work hard at it? And I said, Yes, sir, I am. He said, Well, this is a really, really hard business, and if you promise me you'll work hard at it, I'm in your corner. And he said, and also, if you'll promise me that if you know it's not going to work, that you'll you'll be honest with yourself and move on to something else. And I said, I'll make that promise to you. And he said, All right, great. Let's go to let's go to the guitar shop. And he bought me a $3,500 awesome guitar. And so that evening, I told my mother the same thing I you know, I want to, I want to go be a musician. And she said, Well, you make me one promise. I said, Yeah, she goes, Just promise me that I can always understand the

David Novak 9:10 

lyrics. Well. You You definitely came through on that promise, because there's nobody that sings lyrics clearer than you, you know. And I guess, you know, you wanted to cover your best to a certain extent, because you just didn't go straight into music. I know you went to college, and I understand that Peyton Manning helped pay for you to go to college, or paid for you to go. To tell us that story, yeah,

Drew Holcomb 9:32 

yeah, yeah. Well, I went to University of Tennessee, and when I was applying to college, I was looking at a lot of different spots, and Peyton had graduated, I guess he graduated 98 or 99 I can't remember, 1998 and when he left, he endowed a leadership scholarship. Obviously, it was not an athletic scholarship, because I'm not, was not any sort of great high school athlete, but I interviewed for for the scholarship, and I there's only one where. Recipient, and I was lucky enough to get that scholarship. And so basically, I went to the University of Tennessee, not only for free, they covered everything, room, board, books, travel stipend, and then you had to study abroad, which was really great. And to his credit, he stayed in touch with me and a lot of the other recipients through the years. And as I started doing music and touring, he would, every once in a while, have a note sent my way, and, and, and then, you know, fast forward 1520, years when my career was really taken off. We actually became friends. And, but, yeah, it was a, really, it was, it was a, it was a great start to to my college career, to be able to go into, go into college with with no sort of financial obligations, but with a hefty weight on my shoulder to sort of live up to the expectations put

David Novak 10:48 

on me. So you got a leadership scholar scholarship, you know, have people always put you in that category? Yeah,

Drew Holcomb 10:55 

I think so. I, you know, I was a classic leadership kid in high school. I was like President student body and Eagle Scout. And, you know, and, you know, sort of checked a lot of those boxes when I was young. But I also I always had this personality trait where if I had an issue with somebody or a problem with somebody, I would go straight to the source and just talk it out. You know, now, when I was young, that that had it was a little more brash and than it is now, and I think I've learned how to do that well and with kindness and with sort of the velvet hammer, if you will. But never been, just never had a lot of fear, and always was quick to help people make, like, make, make decisions. And so even jumping into a music career, it was like a lot of people who have talent sort of wait around for someone to tell them to give it a go. And I just thought to my I didn't really wait on anybody. I said, I love this. I'm going to give it a try. And so it's a different sort of form of leadership, obviously. I mean, I do lead a team. I've got band and crew and all these things, but there's a lot more emotional leadership in music than there is sort of, you know, nuts and bolts. You

David Novak 12:02 

know, your band is called drew Holcomb and the neighbors, and you've been playing music together for 20 years or so. And what's the key to making working relationships last as long as yours have? Yeah, you know, the music

Drew Holcomb 12:14 

business is very interesting, because a lot of what people hear on the radio and what they hear on records. Most artists don't use their touring bands for their recording. They use these studio players, these really professional guys. And I remember I just started playing with sort of a consistent group of guys, the neighbors. This is, you know, 20 years ago, and I was going to go in and make my first record, and the producer said, Okay, we need to hire a band. And I was like, I didn't, I didn't understand all this. What do you mean, hire a band? I have a band, you know. And he said, Well, no, no, you're gonna, we're gonna use these professionals. They're better. It's quicker. We'll get it done. I'm like, Yeah, but these are, these are my guys. I want these guys to play on my music. They helped me arrange it, and they have sort of bought into it already. And he said, Well, we'll give them a try. We'll get in the studio, see if they're see if they're good enough. And they were all pretty young. I mean, Nathan was 21 rich was 22 I was only 24 and recording in the studio is much different than playing live, because there's, there's a sort of as close to you can get as perfection as sort of required in the studio, versus much looser less perfection is is necessary on the road. And he looked at me and he said, Oh, you know, these guys are pretty good. So I fought for them early. I fought for them when they were, when they were really young, and gave them ownership. And then Practically, this is another thing that most artists don't do. I gave my band points on the record, meaning I gave them permanent royalties. And so I just, I think, I invited them to the table creatively, and I invited them to the creative to the table economically, in a way that most songwriter artists don't do and that has, I think, created a nice loyalty. We've now been on the stage together, some of us, for 20 plus years. Hey,

Koula Callahan 14:09 

everyone, it's Kula. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though, I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't take 20 seconds right now. Go to the App Store search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app. In the app, every day, you'll get a two minute video that'll give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your work day. So go to the App Store, search how leaders lead, download the how leaders lead app, and start your day, every day, with two minutes of leadership wisdom. It'll take 20 seconds. Go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead. I

David Novak 14:55 

want to go back to what you said earlier. I thought it was interesting. You said that. You kind of specialized in emotional leadership versus the nuts and bolts leadership. Draw the differentiation for me, I

Drew Holcomb 15:09 

think music is is so so magical, because a couple things, one, it soundtracks people's best and worst moments. You know, you know when you, when you when you graduate in high school, and you're driving around town with your friends and you're listening to the music, those songs that are on the radio with that era in your life are permanently etched into your story. When you fall in love, when you have your first heartbreak, when you get married, you have your first dance, you have your father daughter dance like there's all these little moments of life that are soundtracked by music. And so that's sort of, to me, is sort of the the backdrop that music gives people emotional language for their best and worst moments, right? And so you're, you're trying to help people. And example I'll give, when I started thinking about making music, I went through a personal tragedy. I lost a brother when I was in high school, and all of this sort of philosophical, religious language that people were trying to encourage me with about, you know, about that experience didn't connect nearly as much as the music did. The music was what gave me a frame for my grief, and that's the moment where I went, Man, I would love to be able to do this for other people someday, and it just kind of planted a seed in me as a songwriter, your job is to try to give people a language that they may not have on their own, for their own experiences. And so you can, you can do that in a way that that challenges people to be a better version of themselves, or that, you know, I can think of lots of different songs of mine. The song like another man's shoes, for instance, is a, is a, it's there's a bit of a call to action to people to take a deep breath and to remember that the people that they interact with on a daily basis, whether they know them or not, are also humans with their own story. So take care.

Speaker 1 17:11 

Everyone's got their own set of troubles. Everyone's got their own set of booze. Everyone's got their own set of struggles, walk a mile in another niche,

Drew Holcomb 17:29 

and music did that for me. It sort of gave me language for my own life. And so I think that's sort of the emotional leadership part of music making that's different than, hey, you know, this is your team. This is your job. And so I'm my actual, like business team is, you know, probably less than 30 people, but I have 55 million people listening to my music in and out of different years, you know. And it I only get three minutes with them. But a lot of times that three minutes can be really important.

David Novak 18:03 

Yeah, your music has been very, very important to me in my life. I can tell you that for sure, and I've heard you say that your music does not belong to you. Explain. Yeah,

Drew Holcomb 18:16 

I was, I got into an argument with a friend who's a self starter. He started his own law practice and, and he, he was saying, you know, really, at the end of the day, it's those, those of us who are entrepreneurs, that took the chance that we're responsible for all this stuff. And I was like, Man, I could not disagree with you more like, you know, and that, that that was, I said that to him, and we had this long argument. So I got to thinking about this idea that the creative act is a shared Act, the act of, I sort of think about music in three as a play of a three act play. So the first act is the songwriting. It's where the idea percolates a lot of times. For me, it either happens alone or maybe with one or two other people. But also in that room are the ghosts of all the music that I've listened to my entire life, you know, and the guitar maker and his creative energy and and then this the second part, which is the most collaborative for me, is the recording of that song. And so for us, what we do is we get five or six musicians in a room in a studio. We also have a sound engineer and a producer, and typically a runner who's like a young kid who wants to get involved in the industry, all making this process happen in real time. And there's this collaborative piece. And so not only are the and then you have all the ghosts of all the music that that broader eight people have listened to their whole lives and their knowledge, and their teachers from college and the and for me, whoever wrote the song, maybe I wrote a song about, you know, a book from a book that I just read, and the creative energy that took to write that book, and then all the equipment in the studio, the architect who built the studio that makes it sound great, the designer of the drums, the builder of the drums. Was, there is so much creative life that's happened in these different processes. And then the third act is where you then take that recorded thing, put it out, and you'll play a live show and experience that. And the same thing happens with the live show. You have the security guard, the sound guy, the person who designed that building, the dream of, you know, creative, creation involves so many people that are tangential and, you know, direct and indirectly influencing that creative expression. And then the experience of it, live, the experience of it on record. And I basically just did a TED talk about how dreams don't belong to you, put them out there into the world, and then they also get interpreted in ways that maybe you didn't know they would be. And I think that's a beautiful thing about creativity, is that it it's alive, it's vibrant, it changes. And I think that's a really that idea, I think is sort of translatable, transferable to almost anything. You know, it's sort of a little bit of a stance against the great man idea that while I do think it does take somebody with the courage to sort of lead the charge, leadership, in and of itself, is a collaborative experience. And I think that's true in the creative space as well. And I think so many creative people tend to think of, you know, music making or fiction writing or acting as these sort of the sort of great man, great woman idea. And yet I still think that's very collaborative.

David Novak 21:41 

You know, I listened to your TED Talk. DREW. It was a great TED talk. I mean, you know, I love, I love a lot of them, but this is really good one. And you talk about a dream being both a guide and a gift. Can you share a pivot moment in your life when holding on to a dream helped you navigate some uncertainty or challenges. Because, you know, people can chip away at your dream a lot.

Drew Holcomb 22:11 

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of external forces on dreams, you know. There's, there's oftentimes this economic, you know, and then criticism, both legitimate and illegitimate criticism of your work. And then sometimes your your great ideas just don't connect with an audience like like you expect them to. And so there's there's these external forces I'll never forget. We probably about sixth record was a record called souvenir, and at this point we I started making records in 2000 forward. So fast forward to 2017 so I'm 13 years into this career. It has far surpassed all of my dreams, of my expectations, of it, and I'm really living a dream. But it had also become a business. It had become full of stress, it had become full of financial obligations, it had become full of creative expectations that were sometimes unmet. So anyways, I put this record out called souvenir that I really loved and worked really hard on, but no one cared. Like for the first time in our career, our trajectory sort of went from this constant, steady, you know, growth, to just less than a plateau. It was like it was it was turning the opposite. Was turning downhill, and I built out the tour expenses, expecting growth and but we weren't. We weren't selling more tickets, and so I was losing money on the tour. The Record wasn't selling, and that was in a financial pickle, and and then also creatively, was feeling very sort of outside of myself, because no one cared about this music for the first time, and I realized how much of my identity was held up in that. And I, you know, just I wasn't in a good spot, had a little break on the tour, and I go play golf with Vince Gill, and he says, you know, Drew How you doing, you know. And he's, you know, legendary artist, made a million records, and, you know, won a pile of Grammys and this and that. And I tell him, I said, you know, honestly, I'm not doing great. Put out this record, and it's just really tough. Nobody seems to care. And it's just kind of weird. We've always had this growth, and now it's not happening. I'm just kind of wondering if it's like if this is the beginning of the end. And he started laughing. He goes, No, no, just go make another record. And it was such a it was such a light bulb moment for me, where I was letting so much of my own history and my own story and my own expectations tell me that this thing was almost over, and he just was like, No, it's not over. That's ridiculous. Just go back

David Novak 24:34 

another record. Hey, Drew have you? If you ever had an idea that was so big that it just scared the hell out of you. I mean, you know, you talk about, you know, what are your flops? But how about, did you ever have an idea where you go? Oh, my God, this is like magic. Well, we had

Drew Holcomb 24:50 

this idea of starting a music festival 10 years ago that my poor managers, you know. I knew that I was telling them about it, and they're looking at me like, I can't believe you're going to ask us to do this with you. But they are also a bit of, you know, dreamers as well. And so we started, I mean, with nothing, no financial partners, just with a couple of sponsors, and through this festival in Memphis. And ended up doing it for a couple three years there, and then moved it to Chattanooga, took on a partner, and it grew to be pole star, which is like the, you know, the big music business, sort of business magazine, touring magazine, ranked at the best small market festival in the country. Within six years of us starting this thing, and it's just a wild hair idea, we had no idea what it would grow into and and what it would become. And it was, you know, there was definitely some foolishness involved in it, but I like a good, a good, foolish challenge. My My wife laughs though she's, she's, she gets a little, I mean, obviously I travel a lot for work, but she gets a little nervous when I'm home too much, because if I'm home from, you know, more than a couple weeks at a time, she's afraid. She knows that I'm going to come up with some other dream, because that's just what happens, you know. And I'm a bit of, a bit of a dreamer, and I'm okay with that. That's

David Novak 26:09 

funny, you know, I I used to say the same thing, the worst thing that happened, if I get a day by myself, I'd come up with, come up with ideas that were way ahead of where we needed to go, you know, move on to something else versus focus on what we really needed to get done in your business, songs of the engine that that make the whole thing go. You know, how do you cultivate your own creativity?

Drew Holcomb 26:32 

Yeah, yeah. It's changed over time. When I was young, it was very much a sort of wait for inspiration, sort of model where I would have these seasons where I would write very intentionally, and I would just kind of, you know, get into a zone and write every day for a little while, and and there's a there's a hunger that drives that, I think, both hunger to prove yourself, but also a financial necessity of man, if I don't make this work, I'm gonna have to get a real job, you know. And as you know, I, you know, a lot of musicians, all of us are sort of really, really, really trying hard not to get a real job,

Speaker 2 27:15 

you know, I think that's what Warren Buffett. I think Warren Buffett looks at his job the same way, you know, he says he tap dances to work. You know, it's it because he loves what he does, you know. But

David Novak 27:24 

you know, one of the things that really strikes me about your songs is that the lyrics are simple and at the same time, very complex. I mean, use use words in your songs that you'd never hear in any song. It's kind of surprising if you haven't listened to Drew Holcomb, listen to Drew Holcomb, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Do you have a process you use to define these words that help you with your lyrics? Yeah,

Drew Holcomb 27:58 

I do. I have journals sort of strewn throughout my writing space here in my office. What I do sometimes is I'll go buy an actual physical newspaper, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, whatever, and just go word hunting. So I'm not even necessarily reading articles. I'm just looking for words so or, let's say, Oh, this guy got a book of poetry here. Okay, let's see. Okay, celebrate. And I'll write that down soul, write that down blood, write that down overhead, wind, silence, and then I'll go back and for every word I'll find, make myself find five or six words that rhyme with that word. So I have a song called American Beauty. I had the word Canyon companion, and so then I had this little riff, you know, I got a little guitar here. Why not just pull it out so, so

Speaker 1 28:59 

it's like, okay, she she was a good companion. She was a good companion. Okay, that's cool. What eyes like the Grand Canyon and they're

Drew Holcomb 29:08 

like, oh, that's kind of cool, you know? So what I always say is that the enemy of creativity for me is an empty page. I never start a creative project just looking at a blank page. I have this, these journals full of words and ideas, and I have voice memos full of musical ideas. So I just make myself sit down and play guitar and just practice and play and play and play all the time. Like you said, tap dancing to work. If I see a guitar, I just want to play it. It's like, it's like, you just gotta, I gotta put my hands on it. So I have this well of of musical ideas and then lyrical ideas. They're always just sitting there waiting to be married together into a song.

Speaker 1 29:55 

She was a good companion, eyes like the ground. Care. She was an American Beauty. She was a long goodbye. She was the best. She was American Beauty with a waivers on in the summer sun, her touch felt like a loaded gun. Wish I had held her longer. Wish I had held her long.

Drew Holcomb 30:37 

So I wrote a song earlier this week with a guy, a Country Songwriter named Larry fleet that I really like. And I just had this, one of the things about journalists, this the phrase seat at the table, you know. And so we wrote a song about it. Everybody wants to have a seat at the table. Everybody wants a piece of the pie. And there's just, there's sort of a never ending supply of creative ideas out there, but at this point in my life, I have to, I have to, you know, block the time and force myself to get away from kids and and life and financial responsibilities and and get away from the golf course and get back into the studio and write. I still love that writing piece, but it also still scares the hell out of me every time, because it's hard. Sometimes you sit down to write and you come up with nothing, and you feel like, Yep, I finally got figured out I'm an imposter.

David Novak 31:34 

Have you ever had is there been a musician in your life that really pushed you to become even better and how so well, I'll

Drew Holcomb 31:42 

put that in two categories. I mean, I would say, practically speaking to musicians that have pushed me the most are my band. They're both especially Nathan, my guitar player and rich my bass player. They've been with me a long time. They really pushed me to write songs outside of my own sort of historical lanes, to Drew, you should try to write a soul song. Drew, you should try to write a song that's in, you know, in B flat, because you've never done that. And maybe that would be, it'd be a stretch for your voice to get up there and sing. But really, like my Mount Rushmore is sort of a bit of a sort of standard, the best of the best songwriters. It's, you know, it's Dylan Springsteen petty, John prime. And I think John prime, more than anybody, when you ask the question about the lyrics, I mean, he has a song. Here's a line in a song that called Life is a blessing. It's a delicatessen. So when you hear me, when you hear me, you know when you when you hear me, try to, you know, rhyme, shell, Silverstein in a song, That's me trying to put on my John pride hat, to a degree. But then Tom Petty does a great job. One of my favorite things about his writing is that if you, if you take a Tom Petty song and you print it out, pretty much every single line or stanza stands up on its own as an interesting sort of piece of prose, right? And so there's an editing you're always learning from the best at how to edit and how to keep things sort of simple and and there's so many of my peers as well that I respect. I just went and saw this guy play last night, named Stephen Wilson Jr, who's written one of the most sort of beautiful records I've heard in a long time, called Son of dad. It's an album about his dad passing away young so I'm still really inspired and energized by the work. I really enjoy all three parts of that music making that I talked about earlier. And so I really love it. You know, I just, I love what I do

David Novak 33:49 

that's awesome. You know, your wife, Ellie, is also a musician, and you two singing the wine we drink. It's one of my favorite songs. I love it. It's incredible.

Speaker 3 33:58 

It's in the wine we drink dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and the lights go out till the sun comes out. We are not alone in the miles we drive, never having to say goodbye, some things we tell each other, without saying a word, you are the one thing.

David Novak 34:32 

What's the story behind that song? Yeah,

Drew Holcomb 34:33 

we were. We had been married just a couple of years, and that's an older song for us. And I was, I was I was really blown away by how different marriage was than what everybody told me it was going to be like. What I found was that the some of the most mundane moments where I felt the most known and connected, right? And I think that's. Essentially, what the that's the possibility that marriage offers is to be known and to have some and to know someone you know. And so I was thinking about the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. There's, again, another one of those word exercises to why we drink dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. And my favorite line in the song is, I'm not a sunset or a hurricane or Vincent van Gogh, this idea that it wasn't all exactly picture perfect that I imagined it would be, but at the end of the day, I'm so confident in in that connection and the possibility of that connection, that that's where I'm sort of hanging my hanging my hook, you know, is on, is on that. And so my, one of my favorite moments about this song is I played it for another songwriter. This will give you, like, a little insight into my personality. I played it for this, this friend of mine who's a songwriter, and he heard it, and he goes, Man, I really, I really like that song. He's like, What if you change this? And what if? What if, instead of they made the chorus? And he started, like, kind of, give me some I said, Oh, his name is Ben. I said, Ben, I was just playing the song for you because I because, like, I want you to hear it. I'm not asking for your input. I said, the song is finished, and I love it as it is. And I'm glad, I'm glad I did that, because it's become one of our most sort of popular songs. Over the long run, I've had to that's like, I'm sort of an instinct. You know, person

David Novak 36:28 

is a leader. You got and creative person, you got to have that conviction, right? Absolutely. Yeah. How do you, how do you get rid of the two too many cooks in the kitchen? I can easily see that happening. Oh, for

Drew Holcomb 36:38 

sure. Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a there's a big, I think there's a big learning curve in in our world, where everybody's really nervous to prove themselves as a songwriter, as you know, in the studio and on stage as well. And it's, it's, it's very easy to let a lot of voices in. And there's a fine line between the wisdom of learning from people who are better than certain things than you, but then also the other side of the coin is people can push you off your path, and I think that's a really dangerous thing for creatives, especially because you can chase success. I'll give you a great example for me when I was young, my first record, I've had a lot of success on TV and film. We've had about 150 different TV shows use our music in the in their background, you know, anything from house to parenthood to Grey's Anatomy to, I mean, just all these different song you know, shows have used our music. But my very first TV sync, I got, I was, we were broke, and I got this, this show on, on, I remember what channel was on Lifetime, used a song of mine, and they paid us, like, $3,000 which is the time I was like, Oh my gosh. This is amazing. This is incredible. You know, 24 years old, got a $3,000 check, so I started chasing songs for TV and film, and trying to write song. I'd listen to a song on TV, and then I try to copy it and kind of write my own, write something that sounded similar, and that whole thing dried up. And then one night, I'm sitting at home, and my sister had called me that day. At the time, and her three kids were very little, and they were sort of our, our biggest cheerleaders in the world. They didn't care that our career was in the tank, because this is when nobody was coming to see us play. I mean, 10 to 15 people a night, it was not going well. And I got really sad that night because my sister told me that they were leaving Nashville and moving to Panama to my to go do sort of a mission, mission work down there for three to four years. Ended up being longer. But I got really sad about my nieces and nephews leaving, and they were little, and I sat down and just for three chords, wrote this song called live forever. And I wrote the song straight from the heart. It was not for TV, wasn't for radio. It wasn't for success. I wrote this song as just a gift as a to my nieces and nephews, and that song gave us a career. It it was it was incredible. It did all this work for us that all of my striving and trying to be commercially viable when you what I found, what I sort of taught myself in that moment, is that if you're, if you're, if you, if you sort of work from the heart, and you do something because you love it, that's the only way it can really work in a way that's meaningful, you know, to The world and to yourself.

Speaker 3 39:40 

Some people say faith is a childish game

Unknown Speaker 39:47 

play all children

Speaker 3 39:50 

like it's Christmas Day. Sing me a song. Sing me a merry.

Unknown Speaker 40:02 

Me say out loud, you're

Speaker 3 40:11 

so funny. The sky so blue.

Drew Holcomb 40:23 

A funny story about that. There's a line in the song that says, some people say faith is a childish game play on children, like it's Christmas Day. So after I wrote the song, I played it for Ellie, and she loved it, but her one criticism was, she goes, I don't really love that line about Christmas day. Well, a little background on her. She grew up in the music business. Her dad is a very successful music producer. He found Amy Grant and has done a bunch of great things in his career. And she sort of, he's the gold standard and critic, and sort of, you know, production criticism. So I said, Oh, okay, I really like that line, so why don't we just play it for your dad and see what he thinks? You know, I was willing to, sort of willing to, put myself on the line there, I said, and if he doesn't like that line, I'll change it, but if he does, I'm leaving it in. So he comes over a couple days later and I say, I got a new song I want to play for you. I play it for him. He's closing his eyes and he's listening to it, shaking his head at the end of the song, he goes, Wow, I love that song. He goes, You know what? I really love. I love that line about Christmas Day victory.

David Novak 41:33 

That's great. You know, you're not only an incredible artist, you really have branched out and done well in business, you know, tell us a, you know, we already talked about the Moon River Festival, which you created. And you know, you know, got outside of your comfort zone and pulled it off. And tell us about the Magnolia record club. And the biggest lesson you learned from that experience, yeah,

Drew Holcomb 41:56 

yeah. Started a subscription record club business was basically, the idea was, I would pick a record every month that I liked that was a new release and and get some sort of unique pressing, whether it was a colored vinyl, or get it signed by the artist, numbered and hand numbered and stuff like that. And we would offer it was a subscription model. And, you know, we originally thought we'd get like, you know, 3040, 50 people to do this every month. And then we'd make a little spread on the on the whole, you know, on the retail piece, retail side of it. And in 18 months, we ended up where we got to, like, 2000 subscribers and but then we were, but then I learned some hard lessons on that too. Also I realized, you know, we got to have 2000 square feet of air conditioned pallet access space to pull these records, and we need three employees, and we got to have new new no one tells musicians, David that they're starting a business. You know, we're just a bunch of dreamers. And all said we learned all these really tough lessons the hard way, but it was really successful. We end up selling it to dual tone records, and that was my first experience in sort of starting a new business and selling it, and getting a little bit of money and going, Oh, this is kind of fun. I my, my business school has been 20 years of, you know, just starting all these random LLCs and learning, learning the business and but it's been, it's been really fun. And I think the other sort of, the best thing I've done as a business person who's a musician is not signing a record deal. I own all my own recordings and master rights, and we've all, I don't know if many of your listeners know this, but the music business basically flips every 10 to 15 years, you know, it was records, or, well, it was singles, then it was full length records, then it was, you know, eight tracks, then it was tapes, and then it was CDs, and then it was downloads, and now it's streaming. And every 15 years, these whatever happens, it just flips the whole thing into a disarray, and I've lived through two of them as a professional. And the most interesting thing is, when streaming started, most of us had I started in the CD era, and we were all really hesitant about iTunes, because we thought it was going to ruin our business, because people were paying $15 for an album. Now they can pay $1 for the one song that they like. You know, it was pretty problematic. But then we also realized we didn't have to pay. We didn't have to distribute physical product to, you know, 50 states and 500 stores and and hopefully, if they didn't sell, then they, then they send them back to you. And, you know, you got to pay them to send it back to you. So the the download era sort of, you know, put a band aid on the whole thing, but then streaming, everybody was afraid that it was going to tank the whole thing, because now, not only are they not going to pay $1 they're just going to pay $5 to listen to whatever they want all the time, but for those of us who owned our own music, it's been really interesting to see it's actually added a lot of really great long term value. To the place now where you have these, you know, huge money firms like like Blackrock that have, you know, funds really go out and buy rights. And it's been fun because it's given us a lot of stability financially to do what we do, because the back catalog has all this sort of permanent value. And there was an accidental, great decision that was caused by nobody wanting to sign me when I was 25 years

David Novak 45:26 

old. And, you know, you've, you've learned how to start up all these companies. You said your business is just sort of business of Business, School of Hard Knocks and it, you know, what do you think has been if you had to pick one thing? What do you think it's really been the key to you being able to figure it out, because you've done well,

Drew Holcomb 45:46 

yeah, yeah, that's a great question. I think curiosity for me has been my best weapon. And then good partnerships, I've been really fortunate to have good partnerships. My manager and his wife, they're both management, Paul and Samantha Steele, and we're attached to the hip on a lot of different things. And then, you know, I've been, I've been really lucky with, honestly, David, from the time I was 10 years old until now, I've been the luckiest guy in the world with older, thoughtful people who have been willing to walk out my questions with me that started with in scouts. My scout master was really thoughtful. His name was Michael Kearns, and he was willing to meet with me to talk about school and where I want to go to college, and this and that, and then fast forward through college, I've got those kind of mentor figures, and I've got that now in my life through people that I've met through golf, who are in business, that I can call and say, Hey, I've got this idea. What do you think about it? Am I stupid? Am i Great? And they can tell me, that's a great idea. But have you thought about it like this? And so that curiosity that I've had of being a I think I'm I think I'm good at asking questions. I like I like people. I like learning from other people. And just have sort of an insatiable appetite for for for learning new things and being around interesting people. And it's put me in some really fun rooms, and it's given me the a great palette to paint on as a creator as well as a songwriter, especially, and then, and I'm also, I'm willing to learn, you know, when I, when I, when I told my dad I was a history major, which, you know, a lot of people say, Well, what are you studying history for? You can't do anything with that. And I told my dad, I said, I think I'm gonna be history major. He goes, that's great. You if you learn how to learn, you can do anything you want with your life.

David Novak 47:41 

God, you had a he had a great father. You know, you're blessed. You know this guy, he's given you so much good advice. You're also a co owner of sweetens Cove golf course and bourbon alongside with Peyton Manning and a few other friends, what's something that you've learned as a musician that you carried over to try and grow that brand.

Drew Holcomb 48:06 

So owning a golf course is tricky, right? Because it's high cost. You know, weather can change your cash flow. We, you know, we're a public course, but we sell these day passes, and we've got great, we've got a great niche market. One of the things that somebody told me when I was a young artist was, Don't chase everybody as your audience. You only want your fans. You don't want everybody else's fans. There's a lot of ears in the world. You gotta go find your ears as a musician. And I think that's definitely translated to Sweden's Cove, like we're not for everybody. We are. We have a niche that is really unique. It's really special. And so it's like to super serve those fans. The most important thing I can do as a business person, as a musician, is to super serve my core fan base. So to deliver great VIP options, to communicate clearly when there's tours, to give them early access to tickets, to make sure that they know about things before the general population does, to tease songs to them, to sort of over deliver what they love about what we do, from a touring and from a recording perspective, if we can super serve that core fan base, they stay with us forever. So experience. What that means experientially is that I love it when I see somebody bring their kid to my show, because kids always remember their first shows. And what's interesting about this is, most of my favorite artists were making music before I was born. Like I said earlier, Dylan Springsteen, Tom Petty, John Prine, both those guys were at the peak of their careers in the 70s. I was born in 1982 so when I right now, which I feel like maybe I'm at the peak of my career as a 40. Two year old. When I look and see 789, 10 year olds, I plan on doing this till I'm 7580 years old. On stage I saw Chris. Christopher sent the Ryman as a 75 year old before he got sick. And I thought to myself, This is my true north. I want to be on stage still playing my songs. I'm 75 and so that translates to super serving like the golf community, super serving the bourbon community, that is our community, and not trying to be all things to all people, but to really serve the people who are already bought in, and then they will continue to grab and loop other people in with them. And that's what we've seen with our with our with our career. I'm really proud of that. I feel like our fan base is not just they're not casual drew open, the neighbors, listeners, they're fans. They're our music is a part of their life. That's

David Novak 50:49 

such a great insight. And you know, it's a key to any successful business, but not many people get it. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Drew Holcomb in just a moment, as you've heard us talk about Drew is both friends and business partners with fellow ut alum, Peyton Manning, and in this episode of how leaders lead, Peyton talks about the importance of being curious and asking questions. Most

Peyton Manning 51:14 

of the coaches that coach me would tell you that I asked a lot of questions, and to me, I was the first to admit if I don't know something, tell me what's happening here. I'm not sure what this defense is. If a quarterback doesn't ask questions, I think he's going to be in trouble. And I've asked more questions in the second chapter about all these different ventures, because I'm not an expert. I don't know the answers. Let me be around somebody that knows more than me and pick their brain and try to get smarter in these ventures. Go

David Novak 51:43 

back and listen to my entire conversation with Peyton, episode 104, here on how leaders lead. You know, I also read drew that recently you said you're moving and I quote, out of the left lane going 90 miles per hour, okay, to do something a bit different for you and your band, you know, where are you headed and, and what was it that really drove that, that changing course?

Drew Holcomb 52:12 

Yeah, yeah, just to sort of get into the nuts and bolts of of it, there's with touring. You know, for us, people might come see us play, and they might come see us play, you know, at a big theater, and we sell out a nice, big theater and have a good show in one town. Let's say, you know, we're in Dallas, and we play this big venue and have a nice night, and everybody feels great about it, but then two nights later, we're in a, let's, let's say, like in Oklahoma City, and we're there on a Tuesday, and it's, you know, the crowd's 50% sold, and, you know, it's just a it's not very even we're not because we didn't make it on radio. We made it through this sort of through TV and film, through opening for other bands, through people's playlisting, through family and friends, sharing music, where we have bigger fan bases is often very organic. So we could be in Seattle and sell 2000 tickets, and then maybe we go over to Spokane and we only sell 500 tickets. And so it's does nothing, doesn't really make that much sense. And so for a lot of years, I've chased, I've been chasing evening that out, trying to bring everything up to that. And what I've learned is, and you know, all due respect to the people of let's say Des Moines Iowa. If I'm playing in Des Moines Iowa on a Tuesday night, and I'm probably losing money, I've been doing that kind of trying to build, like intentionally, build, build, build, for a lot of years, and I've probably reached a place where I need to not do that as much. I need to be home with my family and be writing music, recording music. What I basically figured out is I was averaging 8090 shows a year, and if I cut the bottom 2030 shows a year, I'm actually going to make more money, and I'm going to be home more, and at this point in my life, that's a high value to me. And so sort of just taking a little bit more of a laser microscopic approach to the to the sort of nuts and bolts of the business, so that I have more time to be a neighbor, a friend, a husband, a wife, but also to be a better have more time for songwriting and recording. And so it's just a matter of slowing down my travel. I said, you know, I'm still gonna be going 74 in the right lane, like I'm still going after it, but the 90 miles an hour, you know, breakneck speed all the time. Go, go, go, build, build, build, build, tour, tour, tour. I just don't need to do that anymore. And there's also really figuring out the the cost on the other side, both practically, like I was saying, financially, but also the cost to my body and to my family. It just it was time to make a to make a shift and a turn. And I've really been enjoying trying to do that. I'm not necessarily succeeding, but I'm trying. You

David Novak 54:57 

know, that's so interesting though, Drew because he. In every business, the heavy user is key. You've got 20% of your you know, that makes, that makes 80% of your money, you know. And you know, you intuitively, that's really what you're doing. You're, you've really figured out, you know, how you can maximize your time and your your profitability by by being so be more focused, you know, which makes a hell of a lot of sense.

Drew Holcomb 55:22 

We came up with this thing this last year that was really, really, was really fun. So again, because I'm known for being a bourbon enthusiast, you know, just like everybody in a lot of businesses, the costs over the last four years have gotten pretty you know, have gotten gotten gone up a bit. So let's say, for instance, the tour bus costs have really gone up. What I've also found, because I've super served my fans for a long time, is that they, a lot of them, really kind of know me, know my story. And so we added this sort of hyper VIP piece to our touring called bourbon on the bus, where we sell 10 very high dollar tickets to people that can come. They want to see if they're curious about what busses like, they come sit on the bus for 2025 minutes, and they do a Q and A with me, and we have a bourbon. And I was really nervous about this, because that's a pretty long period of dedicated time to potentially have some awkward experiences with people you don't know. David, it was so much fun. My fans are just very interesting people. They brought great questions, they had great stories. And I would start it off and say, All right, I'm gonna start off. I'd love to know how everybody heard my music in the first place, you know. And somebody would say, Oh, my, my cousin played it for me at Thanksgiving, or I heard you on the I heard your song was the March Madness theme song last year, and shazam did. And somebody said, I heard it at a wedding, my niece got married, and y'all were the first dance. And so it starts this storytelling thing. And we had this great experience again, we super serve these people. They had a really a great story to tell and a photo to take home. About this time, they got to hang on a bus one of their favorite musicians, and we got to pay for our tour bus. You know, it was just like, it was a great, it's a great trade off, and it was just a very practical, thoughtful sort of way to go. How can we take some of the things that we know, I love, that I'm known for, that our fans know that, and meld them together to help solve a practical problem that we're having with rising costs? And it was a it was very successful. We're going to do it again for the next tour. Great,

David Novak 57:17 

great story. You know, this has been so much fun Drew and I want to have some more with you with my lightning round of questions. So you ready for this? I'm ready. I'm ready. All right, what three words best describe you? Grateful,

Drew Holcomb 57:30 

relentless and

David Novak 57:35 

energetic. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Can

Drew Holcomb 57:40 

I pick a time as well? Gonna be like Tiger Woods, 1999 you

David Novak 57:43 

can pick it all. Okay, there you go. What's your biggest pet peeve? Oh,

Drew Holcomb 57:48 

bad travel etiquette. I just can't I can't abide bad travel etiquette in the airport. All the people could hear the thoughts in my head in an airport, nobody would like me anymore. Who would play you in a movie? Well, I'd like to think it would be somebody, you know, like, like a Brad Pitt, but that's not that's probably not going to happen. What's the guy says now that I'm going bald, I'll go with Jason Statham. Okay.

David Novak 58:12 

What's something only a Tennessee vol would appreciate? Well,

Drew Holcomb 58:17 

you can't see it right now, but I'm holding up the checkerboard Tennessee orange wallet that I carry in my pocket that reminds me all the time where I come from.

David Novak 58:28 

What's your favorite venue to perform in the United States?

Drew Holcomb 58:30 

Without any hesitation, it's the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Now

David Novak 58:34 

you and Ellie do kitchen covers series on Instagram. What's a song you've got in mind to perform next. I'll

Drew Holcomb 58:41 

be honest, Dave, the song I want to perform next is always the song that I've written the most recently, which is a new song. It's not really a cover, but it's but I want to play it for everybody. It's called anyone. Could have been anybody. I like that.

David Novak 58:55 

What's your most prized possession from one of the many things you collect?

Drew Holcomb 58:59 

Oh man, my guitars. My guitars are my babies. They all they all have stories. They have songs. If there's a fire, I am running to this room and opening the window and hoping somebody's down below to catch them all.

David Novak 59:14 

Speaking of collections, you, I understand you have over 400 bottles of bourbon in your home collection. What are your top three bourbons?

Drew Holcomb 59:23 

Well, I've got a bottle of Weller 107, from 1963 which is when the original pappy, Van Winkle was still making it that I've never opened. That's that's one that was given to me. That's my, my top one. And then, of course, sweetens Cove, because it's our bourbon, which I love a lot. And then there's a bottle called Jefferson's 16, which is the one that started my collecting and started this expensive hobby. So that one will be, the would be number three, I'm gonna

David Novak 59:49 

send you a bottle of our Valhalla bourbon so you can give that a shot. You know, see, if you like, oh, I would love to, yeah. What's the biggest lesson you've learned from being a pilot? You

Drew Holcomb 59:59 

don't have to. Be anywhere, meaning, you know, as a safety thing. It reminds you that you don't have to be anywhere if it means risk in your life. You know, so it's a it's a good thing to remind yourself that anything can be missed if it means, you know, protecting yourself

David Novak 1:00:11 

to live another day. What's the one thing you do just for you? I

Drew Holcomb 1:00:15 

mean, it's probably, it's probably golf. It's pretty much just a completely selfish endeavor.

David Novak 1:00:23 

What's something about you that few people would know

Drew Holcomb 1:00:25 

almost died in 2016 from meningitis, and while it was publicized that I was sick and in the hospital, that what I experienced and the perspective I gained, and how close I actually was to not making it through, I think is pretty is something most people don't know about me.

David Novak 1:00:47 

Can I ask what that perspective was? If you could boil it down, yeah,

Drew Holcomb 1:00:51 

I think that's where the gratitude started, and sort of the ambition got a nice sort of pad around it. I went from just hard charging all the time to really look learning, to stop and take inventory daily of what's good and what's right and and

David Novak 1:01:13 

how lucky I am. All right. DREW That's the end of the lightning round. And thank you very much for sharing that. And just a few more questions, and I let you go tell me about your annual State of the Union trip. Yeah,

Drew Holcomb 1:01:26 

this is one of my favorite things that my wife and I do you know, we live very busy logistically challenging lives, like, like most people do, especially you know, people who are in leadership, who are probably listening to this. And what we found was that taking an annual trip for three days to do sort of a reset, has been an absolute must for us, and so we typically do it in January. We go somewhere warm, and we have big conversations. And so the conversations kind of fall into three categories. One is a look back. So we look back at last year, we talk about the challenges of last year, what was great about last year, what was difficult about last year, both professionally, personally, as parents. And then the next one was we look forward and talk about what we're excited about, about the next year, what we're afraid of for the next year. And then we do a practical third conversation, where we talk about, you know, basically finances and state of our, of our, of our life, practically speaking, and all the details with that. And then the the fourth thing we do is, at meals, we ask each other questions, and the only rule is, every you rotate who asks a question, and you both have to answer it. So you have to answer your own questions as well. And it's been a it's been we've been doing it now for about 18 years. We've been married almost or 17 years. We've been married 19 years. So it's been a really important piece of the pie. And I think for me, I would say that that, you know, having Ellie and keeping that relationship sort of healthy is the most important indicator of how well I'm doing. I'm better songwriter we're doing well. I'm a better band leader when we're doing well. I'm better businessman when we're doing well. I'm a better dad when we're doing well. And that trip has given us a lot of fuel and a lot of sort of vision for what life could be.

David Novak 1:03:22 

I love that. I love that what would be your unfinished business Drew.

Drew Holcomb 1:03:27 

I have so many dreams that I've decided to put away because I I'm never done making the record that I that I dreamed I could, I could make. I think there's always, even when I finish one and I'm really proud of it. It always, it always feels like the work is never done. You know that there's always new stones to Unturned, new things to say, which songwriting is also a bit it's very personal. So you're always, you know, you're you know, you're always growing as a person. So you have more to say and more to do, and more work to sort of unearth the heavy lifting and but I always also, you know, there's this, there's this writer named Anne Lamott, and she says the perfection is the is the is the voice of oppression. There's because there's no such thing as perfection. And I would say, if I have a superpower, it is knowing when something is ready, and and putting it out there, and letting go of it and and then celebrating the work. And so, in a way, all, all work is a bit unfinished, because we're humans, and you can't there's no, there's no such thing as a job perfectly done. It's a task perfectly, you know, as a yard perfectly maintained, or a round perfectly played, or a song perfectly written, and chasing perfection, I think, is, is it's just a fool's errand and but it sure is. It sure is enticing. You know,

David Novak 1:04:56 

all right, last question, what's one piece of advice? You'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader, learn to listen.

Drew Holcomb 1:05:04 

I think that if I could go back and look at any of my major crisis moments, or moments where I made made major mistakes, there was probably someone speaking up that I wasn't listening to, you know, or person I wasn't seeing because I was too busy, you know, sort of in my in my hard charge spirit, so but I also think that relates to listening to yourself and sort of knowing your own conviction. And then I'll tell this one story about a musician. It's a quick story. I have coffee a lot with young artists, and I wish that he had, he had sort of taken his shot. And that's what I mean by that, is he said, I want to get coffee to talk about music. I said, Okay, great. I got one hour meet me at three o'clock at this coffee shop down the street, and we sit down, we talk. We're just small talking, and we're small talking. And I had made a decision. I was not gonna I was not gonna start the conversation. This is him. He asked me for coffee. So with four minutes left in the hour, I said, I can't remember his name. It's probably better that I don't remember his name. Let's say his name is John. John. You have wasted my time. More than that, you have wasted your own time. You had an hour with me to ask you anything you wanted about music, and you didn't shoot your shot. You just sat here waiting for me to lead the conversation. If you want to talk again, call me in one year from today and bring a list of things to talk about, but until then, don't reach out to me and ask me any for any advice, because you wasted my time and he didn't shoot a shot. You know, that's

David Novak 1:06:43 

a song for you. Drew, shoot your shot.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:48 

That's a good one.

David Novak 1:06:51 

You know. Drew, you know, I love your music and and really feel blessed I've gotten to know you. And you know, one of my favorite songs is fly and that you've written and sung, and the other one I love is gratitude, you know, which is a great, great, great song. And I bring those up because I think anybody that listens this podcast should listen to both those songs, for sure. But I also bring it up because I'm so grateful for you. You're an incredible person. My life has been enriched because I've gotten to know you. I love how you think. I love how you care about other people, and I love how you lead. So thank you very much for being on this show,

Drew Holcomb 1:07:30 

Dave, it's my honor. I feel very strongly in the same direction. Back at you. Thanks for being my friend and inviting me into this beautiful thing you're doing. You

David Novak 1:07:44 

drew. Make no mistake about it. Drew understands the power of super serving his core customers by giving them more of what they already love. He creates happy, lifelong fans who bring their friends along too. In every business, you've got to find your heavy user. Look, I know it's natural to go after your barely engaged users and get them to spend a little more. We all want to broaden our reach, but you can waste a lot of time and resources that way. Remember, sometimes it's better to invest more in the people who really value what you offer your heavy user, rather than trying to convince the people who don't okay at this point in this show, I usually give you some way you can apply the episode's big idea, and you should absolutely think about how you can super serve your core audience. That's the big idea in this episode. But since it's the beginning of the year, I want to do something a little different this week. Just spend five quiet minutes in your day and play drew Holcomb song gratitude. Focus on the lyrics, let them really sink in, savor them. Really feel what's in that music and the intent behind it, because when you have that attitude of gratitude as a leader, I'm telling you, almost everything else gets easier. When you get that state of gratitude, you go to work. You go with great anticipation. You go with your mind open to learn. You go with your mind open to hear from other people, and when you get in that state of gratitude, you make your very best decisions, because, believe me, you are moving up that mood elevator to the very top. And when your moods where it should be, you're the best place that you can be. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders, super serve their core audience, their heavy user. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Pat Kelsey, Head Coach of the University of Louisville. And this guy, I can tell you, is a guy who knows how to begin a turnaround, and I predict big things for the University of Louisville. Basketball team going forward,

Pat Kelsey 1:10:01 

when you're having a lot of success, sometimes you kind of take your eye off the ball a little bit, and you start looking around about like, Man is is this next opportunity going to come? And sometimes when you do that, you're less effective in the position that you're in.

David Novak 1:10:16 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. 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 in each and every episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader that you can be. And one more thing. Everybody happy new year. Let's make 2025 the year of leadership, the year we all get better and better at what we do. You.