IAM1218 – Founder Helps His Clients Find Gig Bands through His easy to use Website

Sam created Findaband, a live band booking agency, in Auckland, New Zealand back in 2008.

At the time, he was a musician who was seeking a way to pay the bills and free up his time to work on songs.

The site started out very small, just booking a handful of bands for local bar gigs, but it grew steadily, eventually becoming a 7 figure business.

Today, Sam is working on expanding the business into Australia and the US, with offices in Melbourne and Nashville.

He also operates a boutique SEO agency called HARO SEO, which is a link-building agency specializing in HARO.

• CEO Story: Finding a way to end his corporate job, driven by his friend (whom he taught how to play the guitar) who was actually making an album. So in 2008, he finally started findaband.com, clueless at first, but it did the job, he got bookings and it has grown since then.
• Business Service: It’s like an Airbnb for gig bands. Clients visit their site, sort, and filter based on their preferences.
• Secret Sauce: Attention to detail design, copywriting, and SEO for his website.
• CEO Hack: Get that grounding on SEO 101. Understand backlinks, content readable and optimized for Google. He recommended Bryan Dean and backlinko.com
• CEO Nugget: Constantly re-evaluate if the thing you are working on is where you should have 100% of your focus.
• CEO Defined: A person who coordinates motivates and inspires a group of people with the ability to set the standard and stay focused on the mission.

Website:

www.findaband.co.nz

www.findaband.com

www.findaband.co

www.aucklandweddings.co.nz

www.nzvenues.co.nz

www.findadj.co.nz

www.haroseo.co

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Transcription

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00:17 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:44 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Sam Brown of Find a Band. Sam, it's great to have you on the show.

00:53- Sam Browne

Thanks for having me.

00:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Sam so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Sam created Find a Band, a live band booking agency in Auckland, New Zealand back in 2008. At that time, he was a musician who was, who was seeking a way to pay the bills and free up his time to work on songs. The site started out very small, just booking a handful of bands for local bar gigs, but it grew steadily, eventually becoming a seven-figure business.

Today, Sam is working on expanding the business into Australia and the United States with offices in Melbourne and Nashville. He also operates a boutique SEO agency called Harrow SEO, which is a link-building agency specializing in SEO. And we just had the opportunity to kind of connect a little bit and talk about all the awesome ventures that he's working on. And as a fellow, I guess we could call ourselves serial entrepreneurs. Looking forward to the next time we get to talk again. And the time after that and the time after that. But for now, Sam, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:50 – Sam Browne

I think I am, yeah. Let's do it.

01:52 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen then. So they kind of kick everything off. I know I touched it it a little bit, but I wanted to hear a little bit more on how you got started with finding a band, and what I like to call your CEO story.

02:02 – Sam Browne

Sure. Yeah. So I really got into business in the very first instance, really as a means to an end. So I was really just looking for a way to get myself out of my corporate job. I was working in digital ad sales for Yahoo in New Zealand. It was not something we were passionate about it, was just paying the bills. And a friend of mine who I actually had taught guitar, I was communicating with him regularly and he was making an album. And I was thinking, this guy that I taught guitars, making an album, and I'm sitting in this cubicle, what am I doing?

So that was, that was the catalyst that, that he inspired me to take action. And I saved up a bunch of money by buying and selling guitars on New Zealand's version of eBay. And I actually went on a game show. Funnily enough, I was on the show that in America is called a smarter than a fifth grader. And the dollars are much smaller because there are only 5 million people in New Zealand. But I came away with a little extra cash from that and basically quit my job shortly after having saved for six months and the game shows money.

And so when I started the very first version of Find a Band in 2008, it's fair to say I had no clue what I was doing. I'd never heard of WordPress. I'd never heard of SEO. I didn't know what copywriting was. I didn't know anything about design. You know, I really had no idea.

03:24- Gresham Harkless

What I was doing.

03:25 – Sam Browne

And I spent more than I needed to spend in hindsight, you know, probably by a factor of five. But anyway, I took it live and even though it was very far from perfect, it did the job. And I found that within a fairly short space of time, I was actually booking live bands initially, just my own band and a very small handful of friends' bands. And then, you know, I would talk to friends of friends and they would sign up. And over a long period of time, we got to. We actually, eventually had a couple of hundred bands throughout New Zealand that I was booking. And so, yeah, that's. That's kind of how things got started.

04:02- Gresham Harkless

Nice. No, I appreciate you sharing that and especially hearing the progression of everything you've been able to build. And of course, hearing that, you definitely crushed. It sounds like you're smart, being smarter than the fifth grader and that kind of planted those seeds for you. I wanted to drill down a little bit more. Could you take us through, like, how Fonda band works and, and how you're serving the clients that you work with?

 04:22  – Sam Browne

Yeah, sure. So find a band. I guess if you had to sum it up, in a sentence, what I'm shooting for, at least, is like the Airbnb of live bands. So you go on there and you say, we're having a. We're having a wedding, say, that's a that's a that's about half of our clientele are wedding clients. And we're looking for a band with like four, four band members. And we want them to play soul and funk and we like these artists and we'd like a female vocalist. So, you know, you can basically drill down with those sorts of filters. And then once you, once you see the, the bands that might suit you. The key is that you go into their profiles and there are videos and I guess we'll talk about that more on the call.

But then, we basically make music videos with the artists that allow the client to really see what they're going to get. So we'll make the kind of like a highlight reel, almost of six to ten songs that clearly demonstrate what the band does, how they sound, how good they are, and, yeah, basically the client then requests a quote for the artist. We give them an idea of the price, but we don't get down to exact dollars because it's different every time. Different dates, different locations, different requirements, and then, and then the sale kind of happens over the phone and over email from there.

05:51  – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but reading your bio, that kind of seemed along the lines where musicians are always kind of probably looking for those opportunities to make sure that they have gigs in order to pay the bills. And it sounds like, of course, the people are looking for the musicians and knowing, like, who they'll get and who they get to work with. So it sounds like a win-win-win-win for lack of a better term or a better phrase so that people ultimately get what they need.

 06:18  – Sam Browne

Yeah, you're exactly right. It's a great business to be a part of. With that in mind, I liken it to where I compare it to something like, say, insurance, where it's not much fun to pay for insurance. You kind of resent that you're paying all this money for something that you might not need and it's kind of negative in that regard. Whereas with find a band, as you say, everybody wins. The musicians are very happy with these great gigs that we're getting them, that really, we get far more gigs for them than they would ever get for themselves if they were just out waiting for clients to come to them.

The client comes into the process hoping for an amazing night of music, and that's exactly what they get. We frequently, I mean, on a weekly basis, we have people emailing saying, hey, you know, people are still talking about my wedding six months later and telling me the band is the best, best band I've ever seen. It was the best wedding they ever went to. Thank you so much. And then, of course, you know, there's myself and, my team making a living. So, yeah, it's, I think that's a big part of what has sustained me running the business all these years is there's just a lot of good feeling that comes out of it on a very regular basis.

07:28 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And when you, like you said, when you're talking about, you know, a wedding or one of those events that, you know, is a special event, you have those memories of all those different, you know, parts of it and music and how that bandaid is such a huge part of that. So I absolutely love that you've been able to kind of bring each of those people together to make that happen. So what would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and make sure you need?

07:58- Sam Browne

Finding a band is very much my main project, but with all of my projects, I think it comes down to striving to create the best product I possibly can, even knowing that I'm going to do an even better job in the future. So not, in other words, not holding myself up to the standard of fiction, but doing my very best. So that would be using the best designers, the best developers, and really high attention to detail. What does, what does the button look like? What is the text on the button? So this is like user experience stuff on the website specifically, because the website really kind of is the, is the business in terms of the client experience.

So I put a ton of energy into that, being as good as I could possibly make it. Copywriting is a huge thing. That's in terms of things like, certainly the sales copy of actually getting somebody click, you know, click through to the site and then click contact us or whatever the case may be, get a quote. And then the third and very, very vital part of it is SEO. I was lucky enough to learn from a friend of mine who kind of just stumbled into SEO in about 2009 or 10, and he really just taught me what, in fact, are the basic basics of SEO. So things like, you know, what are backlinks? How do you get them?

How do you set up the text on your homepage to rank for your, you know, your homepage keyword, for example? I've since learned a lot more since, you know, and it's changed a ton. It's, you know, eleven years on, it was very. It was almost kind of like caveman stuff compared to what we do now in SEO. But that's it. A lot of the fundamentals haven't changed. Backlinks are still backlinks. Great content still ranks. You know, we used to do a lot more spammy stuff with keywords than we do now, but that has definitely been a really, really big part of it. You know, it's like this.

If you have the best-looking website with the best copy, and in our case, the best videos, et cetera, but you're on page three of Google, it was all for nothing. You know, you have to be ranking. That's the first thing, really. And then you get the other stuff. Right. So, yeah, I would say design, copywriting, and SEO have been my absolute key things to focus on. When you create any aspect of a website, you want your user to just get it straight away, you know, along with making things look great, I also try and make them really easy. I want people to instantly understand whatever it is I'm putting in front of them with no questions required, no thinking on their part. So it's a smooth journey from A to Z.

10:28 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. And I think what, and you kind of alluded to this, that a lot of times we forget, is that to get to. To a place where you're not making people think, there's a lot of work in between that makes that happen and the excellence that it takes to get to simplicity. I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call CEO hacking. You might have already mentioned this. This could be just like the book you mentioned, but it could be a book, it could be an app, it could be a habit that you have, but what's something that you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

10:58- Sam Browne

Hmm. Okay. I guess the thing that springs to mind in terms of if I was sharing with an up-and-coming entrepreneur who is trying to understand what to focus on and what not to focus on because there is a lot of content out there, I would say that the thing that springs to my mind is Brian Dean and backlinko.com. and the reason I bring him up is he does such an amazing job of distilling SEO for a beginner, but also for an intermediate and even some advanced techniques. He definitely is focused on helping people who know, who are basically business owners, who need to know the basics of SEO.

That's his focus, I would say. So I guess the top of my list for an up-and-coming entrepreneur, especially, obviously, a digital entrepreneur, somebody who is web-based in one way or another, would be to get that grounding in SEO 101, understand backlinks, understand on-page SEO, which is your content being readable by Google and being somewhat optimized for Google, where your headings are, spelling out what the post is about. And, yeah, so that would be my single top recommendation, backlinko.com dot.

12:13 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I appreciate you kind of touching on some of that, of course, given that hack, but also the essence of SEO, because I think so many times people don't realize how much it includes within, quote-unquote, digital marketing, the copywriting, the backlinks, just all of those things, how it makes up what ends up returning a result of people don't realize all of that.

So I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you touched on. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

12:48- Sam Browne

Oh, wow. Okay. Okay, here's a good one. And this is, this is from somebody who didn't do this. I would say the key, really, is to constantly reevaluate if the thing you're working on is where you should have 100% of your focus. And if it isn't, get out of that thing and get into something new. And I guess, honestly, it's a little bit of a paradox and that you have to kind of try stuff in order to see what works. But, you know, so you do split your focus. But if you do that and you find one thing is massively outperforming the other things, drop the other things and just go all in on that winner.

13:26- Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. I think that's something that you could tell my younger business self as well, because I think, you know, sometimes, and I think, and just speaking for me personally, like you, I didn't have as much of a, I don't want to say a value of time, but I thought time was definitely infinite and thought the energy was infinite as well, too. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEO's on the show. So, Sam, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:56- Sam Browne

A CEO is. Is not a. Is not a person with a deep, singular skill set. It's a person who leads, coordinates, inspires, and motivates a group of people, however large or small, whether it's five people or 5000 people, that you have a little understanding of what each one does, respect for what they do, and the ability to continually set the standard, reiterate the mission, stay focused on what the mission is. You know, you're giving however many people a reason to commit their one precious life to the mission that is your business.

14:43 – Gresham Harkless

I appreciate that. Yeah, I love that definition. And like, the beauty of this, the beauty, the gift, and the curse, I should say, of this question is, you know, there's so many different kinds of perspectives and ways that you can look at it. So what I wanted to do is just pass you the bike, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you want to let our readers and listeners know in of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find about all the awesome things you and team are working on.

15:04- Sam Browne

If you're a young person who's either just started a business or you're thinking about starting one, those first few years are really hard. There's a lot of figuring out to do, especially if you're in year two, or three and it feels really difficult. That's normal. It's okay. And it's worth sticking at it. You will come out the other side. It's especially tough right now with COVID but there are always challenges too. I started in the GFC, the global financial crisis, and look, it'll make you a better business person in the long term to get through these hard times.

In terms of if you want to check out the Findaband sites, the websites are Findaband Co NZ or NZ is the New Zealand site. We have found a DJ dot co dot NZ as well. We have. The site in Australia is Findaband co and in the US, findaband.com dot.

15:58- Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Sam. We will definitely have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. And I appreciate you so much and, you know, sharing all your knowledge and your time today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:10- Sam Browne

Yeah, you're welcome, man. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

16:14 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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