episode 202 – how a bad band with a great brand secured a $3.6m record deal

Doug Houser: From Rea & Associates studio, this is unsuitable. A management and financial services podcast for entrepreneurs, tenured business leaders and others who are ready to look beyond the suit and tie culture for meaningful, measurable results. I’m Doug Houser.

Just because you produce superior products and consistently flawless in your execution or have the best and brightest employees on your team’s roster doesn’t mean you’ll outshine the competition.

For example, Columbus rock and roll band The Toll may not have been technically superior to their competition in the late 80s and early 90s, but their brand was unique, daring and dangerous, which ultimately attracted the attention of Geffen Records and resulted in a $3.6 million record deal.

Today, Brad Circone, former front man of The Toll is here to explain the sorcery that is brand differentiation and what businesses can do to set themselves apart in an overly saturated marketplace. Welcome, Brad.

Brad Circone: Welcome is right. It’s sorcery. That’s beautiful.

Doug: Love that.

Brad: And I do like that. Good writer over here on this team.

Doug: Sounds like maybe a new song. You can write.

Brad: No, it sounds like Stevie Nicks. Stevie Nicks kind of song. Sorcery.

Doug: Oh, Sorcery.

Brad: Sorcery.

Doug: Yes.

Brad: But I like it.

Doug: So, it’s good to have you on this side of the microphone. You are. For those that don’t know our engineer and producer and professional extraordinaire. Without you, this podcast could not happen. So, thank you for that.

Brad: Thanks for having me on.

Doug: Absolutely.

Brad: And with you being a music buff, this is good for both of us.

Doug: Absolutely. So you met my musical idol, which is Joe Strummer from The Clash years and years ago. Passed away tragically, I think 17 years ago.

Brad: Jesus.

Doug: I know. Time flies, so tell me what that was like, a little bit.

Brad: It was great. And it was at Veteran’s Memorial.

Doug: Yes. Old Vets.

Brad: Yeah, and we were, I got backstage somehow, I think a lady friend of mine gave me a backstage pass. So I went back there and would just hang out on a card table. And he came and sat next to me and said-

Doug: Is this post set or pre-set?

Brad: No, their gig was over and we had maybe started the band, but it wasn’t called The Toll. I think at the time it was called nothing yet.

So I was sitting, I know, inventive name. Don’t say it, Abby. Everything’s fine. And I was sitting on the table and all of a sudden I see this boot swinging with my boot. And I thought, oh, those boots are cooler than my little American boots. And it was Strummer.

Doug: Wow.

Brad: Sat right next to me, drinking coffee and Guinness.

Doug: Nice.

Brad: Hot coffee with Guinness in it. And I could smell it. And I had never had it.

This is, again, long time ago. And I said, “What’s that?” And he said, “It’s mostly coffee.” I said, all right. But he just sat there and signed people’s shirts and autographs.

Doug: Wow.

Brad: Just hung out with people. Didn’t act like a rock star. It was unbelievable. Very humble. And he got done and it was just me and him and a couple of the road crew and he said, “Do you want an autograph?” I said, “No, I need advice.” And he said, “That’s a good answer.”

Doug: Wow.

Brad: He said, “What’s the advice?” I said, “How do I get a band signed?” Yeah. And he said, and he stood up and he got ready to leave the room. He turns around like an old Colombo move and says, “You need to go to the biggest, most bad-ass city in the world and make sure you have something to say and say it.”

And I said, “What do you mean?” He goes, Get a gig at CBGB’s. You’ll know in an hour whether you have talent or not.”

Doug: No kidding.

Brad: So that’s what we did.

Doug: So, go to New York-

Brad: Well, we got a gig at CBGB’s. Took me a year and a half later, but yeah, but.

Doug: But you did it.

Brad: Yup.

Doug: Wow, that’s fantastic.

Brad: I didn’t want the autograph is … I wanted to hear something from his brain that I could utilize to help us get on our road.

Doug: Yeah. And that, that leads me to our topic or one of the topics today, differentiating your brand. So he really kind of drove that home as it were, so you could go in and show how you can differentiate. Right?

Brad: Yeah. And I think he wanted me to also expose our lack of differentiation because when we first played that night, we weren’t different. We were just … none of us can read music, so therefore we couldn’t play cover songs. So we used to get local gigs around Columbus by calling ourselves a cover band. But we only did cover songs that were unreleased.

So, they were our tunes. That’s the only way we could get in to get any door money.

Doug: Nice.

Brad: But when we went to New York the first couple times we, you know, we failed because we weren’t differentiated. We weren’t mature. We didn’t have an idea of unique selling proposition. We didn’t do any market research. That’s when I realized that, wait a minute, what Joe’s saying is we’re not ready for New York. The fastest way to know that is to go do it. Fail forward.

Doug: You say, Oh God, this is, I’m out of my element or whatever.

Brad: Yeah, totally. Well, I was drowning. Yeah. So we came back and rebooted and that’s when we got very intense and took a much more brand marketing approach to rock and roll.

Doug: Okay. So, how did that work? What was that thought process like?

Brad: We all were going to OSU at the time. My cousin, who’s now an attorney downtown, our bass player and our drummer we were all living in a place together on campus. And I bought a giant chalkboard. Yes, this is pre large computers. And on the chalkboard we nailed every band in the late 70s, early 80s that we loved. And we assigned their A&R guy and we looked at why they were signed. We did competitive market research on every band and predicted which A&E guy might sign us because we didn’t have the bandwidth to go after every A&R guy. A&R stands for artists and repertoire in the music business.

So we narrowed it down to a few. And one was a guy from Chrysalis, Bruce Dickinson, who signed this band that we loved at the time called The Psychedelic Furs, 10 album deal, CBS records, who later produced our demo tape.

Doug: No kidding.

Brad: I met Tim in New York through his lovely wife and we were having a breakfast brunch drinkathon.

Doug: Guinness and coffee?

Brad: Yeah, no, it was stronger than that with the Furs, but we actually did research on all the A&R guys.

And another guy that we did research on was a guy by the name of Michael Rosenblatt, who ultimately ended up signing us. I still have the … my handwriting of who he had signed, you know, Madonna, Depeche Mode. We weren’t into Madonna, that wasn’t our kind of music, but we were into Madonna’s uniqueness and greatness as an artist and a brand.

Doug: She differentiated, right?

Brad: And Rosenblatt saw that before anybody else in the market. And you know, that’s the thing about Michael Rosenblatt. He’s signed so many unbelievable bands that were from many, many different genres. So, I trusted that. So, that’s the first thing we did. We knew we couldn’t play well. We couldn’t read music. But we also knew because we had these limits that perhaps we could stumble onto something beautiful because we were limited.

Doug: Yeah. Be great at something.

Brad: At something. And I know a little bit about our art enough to know that sometimes the things that limit you catalyze you, right? Like Keith Richards, you know, he has five guitar strings, doesn’t have six, he doesn’t need six. And so there, there’s a lot of things like the Ramones. Johnny Ramone, they’ve all since passed, the original Ramones. But Johnny Ramone, when we were playing with him, he has a famous quote that he’s the only guitar player ever in the history that all strokes on the guitar down strokes. Why would I stroke up? You only need to stroke down.

Doug: I’m leaving that one alone.

Brad: Yeah. So we figured, let’s take these inconsistencies that we had and put them together. So one day in practice, we’re just screwing around. And again, none of us can read music, but we loved making music together and we knew that we had that, right? Yeah. And my cousin turned to me and said, “You didn’t write any of those lyrics, did you?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Well, it just feels more real when you’re doing that.” I said, “Doing what? I’m just ad-libbing.”

He goes, “Yeah, I know.” He goes, “Well, next time you write a song, let’s take away your pen and paper and you just get up here.” Every day, we practiced in Grandview in my parents’ pinball warehouse. I was next to, you know, KISS pinball machines.

Doug: I love it. Pinball wizard.

Brad: And we duct taped a jukebox speakers together. Those were our amps. They were old jukebox speakers and we had them all duct taped together, which was very intimidating when we came into a bar, people were like, where’s your amps? “They’re over there.”

Doug: Right there.

Brad: “You mean the ones with the duct tape?” “Yeah, those are ours.”

Doug: Very cool.

Brad: Anyway, I started ad-libbing lyrics and that kind of cemented the mission of the band.

Doug: Interesting.

Brad: And then my cousin Rick and I said from now on, if we have a gig, we went through 12 drummers doing all this and numerous bass players, if anybody quits on us or doesn’t show up or is five minutes late for practice, they’re out.

Doug: Wow.

Brad: If they don’t show up, we’re still gigging.

Doug: Yeah.

Brad: We’re still playing and we’d played some horrible shows just my cousin and I.

Doug: Just two of you.

Brad: Don’t read music and thank God he was good looking. We still had a couple of people who would stand around just to look at him.

Doug: Just to watch him.

Brad: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think I fell in that group later. I was so bored with myself. But the point of the matter is we understood we had a differentiating attribute and that was our ability to improvise and never write down a single lyric. So, we didn’t.

Doug: Wow.

Brad: And we started writing different kinds of music. And the only lyric I would sing that I was singing every night was the choruses. So this caught on in East Lansing, Michigan and Pittsburgh, college campuses. A lot of English majors and journalism majors would write about us.

Doug: Okay.

Brad: In their local rags back then. And so we were on 97.1, which is the number one underground radio station in Southern Ohio. And we were posting, we were actually ranking songs then.

Doug: Wow.

Brad: Now again, I would keep the choruses the same. But what would happen is everybody would come to the show to see would the song be three minutes? Would it be 30 minutes? Sometimes, we would do one song for 30 minutes, just to see if we could get everyone to leave. I’m serious.

Doug: Make a big game out of it, basically.

Brad: Yeah. But we knew we had a difference. And so that’s when we started to do is differentiation. And eventually, that led to more and more shows, shows that were packed before we got there, which we weren’t used to. And tons of books we used to get. They would throw books at the stage because a lot of the songs were inspired by novelists, from Fitzgerald to Doris Lessing and I would go on these long diatribes, whatever mood I was in, and the band improvised, because all we had was one another. Couldn’t read music.

And so we would have stacks of books.

Doug: Very cool.

Brad: The road manager and roadies go, “Well, the books weigh more than the equipment now.” What are we gonna do with all these books? I said, I don’t know, we’ll sign them and send them back.

Doug: There you go. Send them back to the fans. Right?

Brad: So that’s how we got started and Michael Rosenblatt finally heard of us, flew to East Lansing, Michigan, in an outdoor concert. Saw us, where we played one song for 22 minutes and he came up to the front of the stage and said, “That’s unbelievable. If I gave you a lot of money, could you do that every night? No matter how big the crowd gets?” And I said, “Probably.”

Doug: Sure. Give it a try.

Brad: We’ve never played them more than 2,000 people. Probably. So that was it.

Doug: That’s awesome.

Brad: And the Furs helped us, we did a demo tape here in town at Music Hall in Oakland park and the Psychedelic Furs’ bass player, Tim Butler flew in and I had a $2,000 check from Chrysalis Records, because they were interested.

So we had a little bidding war between Chrysalis, MCA and Geffen, and I took a photocopy. We were broke. I mean we were broke. We were below ramen noodles and I took the $2,000 check from Chrysalis and made like 20 Christmas ornaments out of it and got an old tree and put it up for the band. That was our Christmas and the day after Christmas, we get a knock on our door. I think it’s on Summit Avenue where we were living at the time. Get a knock on the door and it’s Tim Butler from the Psychedelic Furs.

Doug: Wow. Just showed up?

Brad: Showed up to record the song we did that’s on the first record called Smoking Up the Cigarette.

Doug: Wow. That’s awesome.

Brad Circone: And then that got us to, eventually back to Rosenblatt through the Furs.

Doug: Okay. And then, Geffen.

Brad: And Michael worked for Geffen at the time, and Michael’s father is Eddie Rosenblatt and he was the president of Geffen. So we were in the family and that’s how I had tacos with Hall & Oates one night. But that’s another story.

Doug: That’s a whole separate podcast.

Brad: It is.

Doug: Taco Tuesday.

Brad: It is. I don’t know if it was a Tuesday. It was LA taco style, so it was probably organic before we knew the word.

Doug: There you go.

Brad: But it was differentiation is my point.

Doug: Yeah, the brand … you had created a brand for yourselves. It was different. And so if I think about that from a business owner’s perspective, is that what I should focus on?

Brad: Exactly. Is that excellence … You know, there are the cliches, like, you know, be the best at what you be, and excellence, and all those kinds of things.

We already knew that we couldn’t beat, we couldn’t fight, we couldn’t win the battle on excellence. Right. So win it in a different way, and for us it was originality, on how we told our stories through music.

Doug: Yeah.

Brad: And sell that.

Doug: Sure.

Brad: So I always said that we were a hell of a lot better brand than we were a band. The band grew into the aspirational brand.

Doug: Interesting.

Brad: And that’s why I sometimes see clients holding back. I see beauty in their business. They see problems in it. I can only see businesses aspirationally.

That’s why as soon as my rock and roll days are over, it was easy for me to get into branding. I just added an R to banding, and I was done.

Doug: There you go.

Brad: But it’s about thinking aspirationally about your business and to be fearless, but you have to be confident and get out of the way of the everyday problems.

Doug: Right.

Brad: I mean, I could have kept focusing on, we don’t know how to play. I can’t sing well, I could have focused on all the negatives.

Doug: I can’t read music.

Brad: Or I could say that I want this dream so much, I got to find a different route to get there.

Doug: Okay.

Brad: And that’s differentiation. So, I don’t want companies to be great. I want them to be really good at one thing and do that thing forever.

Doug: Over and over and over.

Brad: Over and over and over. And many times it’s about not being patient enough as a business owner to find the position.

You’ve got to find the position. So oftentimes they can’t be objective enough as a business owner to find that position. Or daring enough, because they’re running it. But if your dream is big enough, you can aspire a brand that will motivate the business.

Doug: Right. Absolutely.

Brad: I mean, that’s Apple.

Doug: Because people get behind it and the brand is the culture.

Brad: That’s it.

Doug: It’s one and the same.

Brad: That’s exactly right. But that is a whole other belief system. So that’s why I say the idea of strategy, always over tactics. Being disciplined and finding a position of over excellence and collaboration is always better than ego.

Doug: So that teamwork within the company, rather than having a quote-unquote “cowboy” team or person over here that feels like they’re different or better than the rest of the business.

Brad: That’s right. I mean, the humility, if you look back in great rock and roll bands, it’s when they’re together that they’re the best.

Doug: Yeah.

Brad: And there’s a reason for that. It’s because of respect and humility and those are the same factors that motivate great brands, whether it’s in an entertainment business or in accounting business.

Doug: Sure.

Brad: And you know, the Rea way is a major emotional part of the core value system and brand of Rea.

Doug: Right.

Brad: And that’s the same thing we did as young punks going to school, you know, hanging out at Crazy Mama’s and going to school at Ohio State.

Doug: Whether it was knowingly or unknowingly, it’s what you enjoyed. Right?

Brad: That’s right; I didn’t overthink it. Exactly.

Doug: And that’s the part, you know, I think about our daily lives at our firm here. And even my best clients, you can tell they’re enjoying themselves and they collaborate and they want to be together, they want to talk, they want interact, and that’s when it’s most enjoyable. And I think a lot of times you see companies get away from that. You know, they get so focused on the task, they lay lose sight of what they’re really doing, in terms of why are we here.

Brad: Yeah, and I think they block themselves from influential innovation. I mean, the greatest thing is to be humbled by somebody who knows a hell of a lot more than you do. Sorry for cussing. Knows a lot more than you do and sharing in the joy that you can learn from them.

And again, whether it’s a business or from entertainment to law firms, you’ve got to find that brand, find that position, exploit those differences and stay on brand.

Doug: Yeah.

Brad: Always.

Doug: Keep that focus. It’s just interesting you say that because I see competing firms or clients of ours that they try to be so good at so many different things that they’re quote-unquote “the master of none.” You know? And as you said, I think that’s a great point. Try to be very good at just one thing and exploit that.

Brad: Yeah. It’s like, I like art of all kinds. And you look back at Matisse and Picasso and all the impressionistic movement and Matisse what led an art momentum called Fauvism.

Doug: Okay.

Brad: And he’s interesting when you read his quotes about art, his quotes about art are as interesting as the colors that he chooses.

Doug: Really?

Brad: Read them. Because he’s a brand. He was a brand. Someone had took impressionism. He can’t say, “I do that.”

Doug: Right.

Brad: So he creates Fauvism.

Doug: Interesting.

Brad: You never angle to pick up more that you know. That’s called greed. It’s always better to angle to what interests you and what can differentiate you so you can give it away.

Doug: Right.

Brad: And that germination creates businesses on businesses on businesses. That’s why great businesses that want to have a line extension or move into other products can do so easily, and people wonder how are they owning that entire ecosystem that quickly? It’s because they’re using the same core.

Not just operationally and technically. I mean culturally and branding. It’s the same core.

Doug: And that’s how they grow.

Brad: That’s how they grow. And so you can call it organic, right? Yes, it wasn’t M&A, we get it. But it’s also because your culture is well aligned and your people all want you to go there. It’s probably not the CEO’s idea. It’s that his culture is so good that it’s people bringing him the ideas. Or her the ideas.

Doug: And as you said, they want to go there and if you’re not, then you’re stagnant and they’re not excited.

Brad: They’re out of the band.

Doug: They’re gone. Right? There you go.

Brad: They’re out of the band. The band splits up.

Doug: You’ve got Noel and Liam Gallagher and they can’t stand each other.

Brad: Right. That’s a shame.

Doug: That happens. But it’s interesting. So what do you see in today’s world where we’ve got, you know, technology advancing and changing jobs, you know, how do you continue to have that sort of singular focus or one thing that you do so, so well and continue to try to move that forward?

Brad: That’s a great question. It’s harder and harder. As technology grows and advances all the way from, you know, robotics to algorithms, those kinds of things, we get farther away sometimes between about human connection and the emotional side of business building is branding. So, that is a challenge.

But I would say there’s two cornerstones. One is have a philosophy, you know, philosophy’s a … This sounds like an older nomenclature. But having a philosophy, a belief system in something, I mean, deeper and higher up than the business. A true philosophy will keep you grounded enough that no matter what technologies are layered on that it should still grow. The roots of the business are philosophy.

So when we begin a brand, we begin with a philosophical paragraph of the brand that is aspirational. And the other thing I would say is nowadays it’s important to productize even things that are not tangible.

Doug: Interesting. So, what do you mean by that?

Brad: Professional services.

Doug: Okay.

Brad: So just because when you open that Apple box and you see your beautiful new, you know, iPhone or product, you get this feeling. Well, professional services can be unboxed just as eloquently.

And it’s in the nomenclature we use, it’s the touch points we use pre and post meeting. It’s in the platforms that we build. Build a platform today. It’s not hard. Build an application that pursues needs that are not yet requested by your customer and give it away to them.

And tell me you won’t get longevity in business relationships and brand loyalty because you will. But again you see you have to have that philosophy to believe in the platform. And that philosophy is also born from the idea that you want to be collaborative, you want to remain humble. Right?

And you want to do the same thing you would do as an artist writing a song or building a company. It’s one layer at a time.

So I think on both sides, just because professional service firms don’t have products doesn’t mean they can’t productize.

Doug: Sure.

Brad: And productization, I think with all we do, especially with Slack and things in the cloud and all the things that create efficiencies, well, if they’re creating such wonderful efficiencies, which I say they do, then let’s use some of that efficient time to build something greater again, for those we serve and give it to them.

Doug: Yeah. Let’s share that and find a way … then they’ll be tied to you and dedicated to you forever, right?

Brad: Right. Because it’s not how much, you know, it’s always how much you care. And that’s the emotional side of branding business needs not to forget.

Doug: Yeah, that emotional connection and that relationship.

Brad Circone: Yeah. We call it reconnecting the human spirit.

Doug: Yeah. That’s so vitally important. That’s a great message for today.

Brad: Agreed.

Doug: Yep. Well Brad, I really appreciate it. This has been awesome. I could go on forever talking about this topic.

Brad: Off mic, we will continue to talk about music.

Doug: Yes. And some music history as well. By the way, what’s your favorite soundtrack of all time? Do you have one?

Brad: Oh my God, of course.

Doug: What is it?

Brad: Godfather.

Doug: Godfather. Okay.

Brad: Easily. And matter of fact, that’s what we would play before we went on stage many a time. Just that. Take the stage in dark to the Godfather. It’s beautiful.

Doug: That’s awesome. Well, I have two I’ll share. One is The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Brad: Oh my gosh, that might be better than the Godfather.

Doug: Which is great.

Brad: That is great.

Doug: Yes.

Brad: That’s almost scary though, as a soundtrack.

Doug: It is.

Brad: It’s scary.

Doug: Yes. And also Grosse Point Blank, just because it was put together by the late Joe Strummer.

Brad: Yeah.

Doug: So those are a couple of my favorites.

Brad: Yeah.

Doug: Great stuff. We could go on forever. Well, thanks again Brad.

Brad: Thank you for having me.

Doug: Great to have you. And I’m sure we will have you back again soon.

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