Episode 3: Wes Pendleton

Soul Surplus and Lifelong Learning with Wes Pendleton 

When music producer and entrepreneur Wes Pendleton lost a sixty-thousand dollar deal over a licensing dispute that should have been easy to solve, he asked himself whether anyone else had experienced this infuriating problem. Fast forward to the founding of Soul Surplus, a full-service production company that creates original music compositions and digital media for music producers, filmmakers, content creators, and brands. Having built his personal music library for over a decade, Wes co-founded Soul Surplus in 2016 as a response to the recurring issue he was experiencing in the music industry as a producer and entrepreneur. We talk with Wes about the founding of Soul Surplus and how his observations about the marketplace helped him realize that he couldn’t do it alone. Wes shares how he and his team got together, what they each brought to the table and why he’s so grateful that none of them have a big ego. He describes the circumstances where they nearly lost everything in 2019, and how, despite major setbacks, they were still able to reach their goal and be successfully acquired by another company. Wes also explains how being a lifelong learner has shaped his life and why he dedicates three hours every day to learning. It was an honor having Wes on the show, he has a wealth of knowledge and we can’t wait to have him back on for part two!

Season 2 Episode 03: Show Notes

Key Points From This Episode:

●      Introducing today's guest Wes Pendleton a music producer, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Soul Surplus.

●      The difficulties that Soul Surplus faced during the summer of 2019 and how they almost lost it all.

●      The advice Wes would give to his younger self in 2018: take your time.

●      How Soul Surplus was still able to achieve its goals and be acquired despite major setbacks.

●      What Wes considers to be one of his greatest creative achievements.

●      Wes shares his approach to assessing talent and empowering people to do their best.

●      What Wes observed about the marketplace that helped Soul Surplus stand out as a company: you can get more done with a team than with one person.

●      The concept of the three-headed monster and how it informed the structure of Soul Surplus.

●      How Wes’s experiences as a black man informed their exit strategy.

●      Why it was important for Wes to separate his love of music from his business decisions.

●      How Wes recognized a problem that needed to be solved and built his company around that.

●      The posturing that Wes has observed in the music industry and why he chooses not to operate like that.

●      How Wes schedules his day to include several hours of learning.

●      A breakdown of what Wes includes in his learning hours, and what he included on the day of recording.

●      Two moments in Wes’s life where he decided to take a low-pressure job to allow his mind the freedom to step back.

Tweetables:

“I'm the most proud of being able to assess talent from way outside and understand who's the best person for a very specific job. Then being able to enable that person to succeed in whatever project that they decide to work on.” — Wes Pendleton [0:12:13]

“Our goal was to have an exit so that we can be acquired, and then we can get equity in whatever company that acquires us. That was the main goal.” — Wes Pendleton [0:16:03]

“I read a ton, I listened to a lot of podcasts. My days are very structured, to lean towards learning. I spend at least three and a half to four hours a day learning. I probably should give one of those hours to the gym.” — Wes Pendleton [0:21:19]

“As black men, one of the things that we tend to see in our community is, we see our folks build businesses, but they don't consider the fact that the business could end one day.” — Wes Pendleton [0:21:43]

“If you go back, and you look through any of our social posts, also on from Soul Surplus, I am not present in any of them. I might be present in maybe two or three pictures. That was very on purpose because this is not about me, this is about the brand.” — Wes Pendleton [0:33:48]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Wes Pendleton

Wes Pendleton on LinkedIn

Wes Pendleton on Instagram

Soul Surplus

 SEASON 02 EPISODE 03 [TRANSCRIPT]

“WP: I read a lot, I read a ton. I listened to a lot of podcasts. My days are very structured to lean towards learning. I spend at least three and a half to four hours a day learning. I probably should give one of those hours to the gym, you know what I'm saying, which is something I'm working on now. But I spent a lot of time learning. Marcus and I can speak as Black men. One of the things that we tend to see in our community is we see our folks build businesses, but they don't consider the fact that the business could end one day.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:39] JU: Welcome to The Paint & Pipette Podcast. My name is Jeremy Utley. It's my job to illuminate the tactics of world class performers across domains. As a day job, I teach at the Stanford d.school, helping students learn what it takes to come up with ideas. I've realized I need to stay in the classroom learning myself, and this podcast is my classroom.

[00:01:27] MH: Hey, I'm Marcus Hollinger. I lead Marketing and Creative at Reach Records in Atlanta-based Independent Record Label. I'm also co-founder for Portrait Coffee, where we are seeking to reimagine the picture that comes to mind for folks in specialty coffee. I'm so excited to pull up my desk alongside my good friend and fellow learner, Jeremy. I think you all are going to love what we have for you this season.

[00:01:58] JU: We've got some amazing stories on deck and we can't wait to dive in and learn alongside you.

 [00:02:03] MH: So grab your pipette and your paint brush, and let's make something beautiful together.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:11] MH: Today, we had the pleasure of speaking with Wes Pendleton, music producing turned co-founder of Soul Surplus. You guys are going to love this one.

[00:02:21] JU: Marcus and I tried to figure out what points we wanted to highlight at the top of the episode just to tease you a little bit, but folks, we got to say, Wes is the real deal. There are so many incredible insights he shares with us. It's worth just sitting down, grabbing a pen and taking notes and sitting in school with Wes Pendleton. We're not going to give any teasers, because we want you to be as surprised and delighted as we were in this conversation. Enjoy.

We need you to say join us for every conversation just to help us keep it clean. Keep it real.

[00:02:55] WP: For sure. Yeah, I say seriously, guys. I appreciate you having me on. I've been looking forward to having more opportunities like this. Marcus and I talked about this a little while ago, just being able to share the story, because I haven't been super loud about it on social or anything like that. It's a big deal, man. You know what I mean? Yeah. Just grateful to have opportunities like this. Thanks for having me on guys.

[00:03:16] JU: It's humbling. It's a privilege to get to know you better and to hear your story. I mean, let's just dive right in. You say you want to share the story. What's the story you want to share?

[00:03:26] WP: Well, I assumed that I was going to be on the talk about Soul Surplus and all the good that came out of that. Yeah, so I'm going to go by whatever you guys want to start off with or whatever you want to ask them. I’m good…

[00:03:38] MH: I got you. I got you. Let's start right here. I'm going to read this sentence. You finish the story from here.

[00:03:46] WP: Okay.

[00:03:46] MH: This is from you on Instagram two days ago. You said, “We almost lost it all, the summer of 2019.” What Happen?

[00:03:57] WP: I mean, that's a great cliffhanger right there, by the way, just you know. That was the end of the episode, I feel like, I got to get on the next one, right? That’s good…

[00:04:05] JU: We almost lost it all.

[00:04:09] WP: Yeah. The summer of 2019 was rough. Probably was the hardest time period of my adult life for sure. Basically the company had been growing by leaps and bounds, super grateful for the fact that we were able to grow so fast and revenues are growing. I understood to continue to grow that we needed to raise some capital. I went through the traditional ways we're trying to raise capital. I went to talk to people, went to went to the banks, and we were denied along the way, because we were basically too new. We didn't have enough credit history to be able to raise the type of money that we needed.

At the same time because we use PayPal. PayPal was smart enough and forward thinking enough to see hey, these guys are actually doing a considerable amount of revenue so they have this working capital program where basically they give you a lump sum of money and instead of you repaying back in a traditional way, you just repay on every sale that you get. If it's 10, or 20, 10, 20, 30% that's how we started raising capital and building the company.

So we finally got to a place where, I think the last the time that we borrowed money from them, it was 100 grand or something like that, but what I did wrong was I also took out a regular loan, which then banged us, all at the same time. I still remember, this was May 5th, 2019. We had payroll, debt payments, some other things all happen on the same day and around 37 to $40,000 walked out the door on a Friday. We were not that –

[00:05:51] JU: It’s a hard Friday. That's a hard Friday.

[00:05:53] WP: Yeah. We were not that liquid. So basically, for the rest of the summer, and a couple of months into the fall, we basically, I had to let go of two of my buddies that worked for us. We had two other guys that we had to reduce back down to part time. One guy literally almost quit, right as we got to the place where we turned it back around. Myself and my partners, we were literally working 75 hour weeks, it was ridiculous. All the while, I'm maxing my credit cards out. I must have came out of my pocket like 60 grand that summer, just to keep us afloat. It was bad.

[00:06:32] JU: If you could go back in time, Wes, and give 2018, early 2019, Wes Pendleton advice, what would you tell him?

[00:06:40] WP: Take my time.

[00:06:43] JU: In terms of growing or what do you say more about that?

[00:06:46] WP: Yeah. Definitely was in terms of growing. The problem was is, I understand, tech culture and VC culture. So what I was trying to do was mimic the way that VCs raise money, and they just blow through cash every 18 months, because they're just growing exponentially. So that actually worked for us, because we grew at a rate that most companies that I've encountered, don't have the possibility of doing, especially the type of business that we have. I also overspent specifically and giving people raises and also basically just paying them too much money.

I really wanted my team to be taken care of, and I wanted them to be paid the amount of money that I felt they deserved. But in hindsight, what I probably should have done is hired one person, and probably should have kept them on part time, and then we would have been good. Instead I hired four people. Yeah, it was rough. It was rough.

[00:07:42] JU: I'm wondering, you said you tell yourself to take your time. How do you think about taking your time when it comes to growing the business? I mean, as far as I understand it, you had your growing business, you need people and you want to reward your people. What does it look to take your time, while attending to the present needs of the business?

[00:08:02] WP: Yeah. So some of it was, we were trying to offset a lot of the heavy lifting from the partner group, because we were doing a lot of heavy lifting as the manager or I'm the managing partner out of my three partners, right. Basically, what I was doing was a lot of branding, marketing, graphic design, and things like that, and that was taking away from me being able to take meetings, to raise money and stuff like that. So I wanted to hire people to replace me in my jobs, when really what I should have done was just, I should have kept that work for myself, probably for two years.

Then also we very much and I explained this to Marcus, another thing – the funny thing about this whole story is we actually did the right thing. This actually worked out exactly the way we wanted it. The problem is, is that we didn't foresee this problem happening. Basically, I had an exit in mind, my partners and I, we had an exit in mind. We knew who we wanted to align with. We knew who we wanted to buy us at the end of this race. But it was just, there was definitely a few mistakes of me just – I think I borrowed way too much money unnecessarily and then spent a bit too much money unnecessarily as well.

[00:09:15] JU: Have you since been acquired? Am I deducing that correctly from the conversation?

[00:09:20] WP: Yeah. We got acquired in March 2020. Yep.

[00:09:24] JU: In a sense, it's a happy story. It's interesting, right? Because it seems you made decisions in order to achieve a goal. Things went sideways and then you actually achieve the goal. Does having been acquired, which is a tremendous accomplishment, congratulations. As it made you think differently about what felt mistakes, or would you rather say be acquired in two years from now and not have to have made those mistakes? Because you got the goal, so talking about how – because I think in the beginning, I actually didn't know that you'd been acquired. Where my mind went is, this didn't end up where you guys wanted it to go. So it was a little bit of – when you say, we got acquired. I'm like, “Wait, hang on a second.” Walk me through that.

[00:10:07] WP: Yes. Basically, everything actually worked out the way that we thought it was going to work out, but it actually ended up happening a lot faster. We thought we were going to get to the end, this year 2021. We thought 2021 is five years, and we're going to search for an exit and that would be perfect. We actually did this in the third, like three and a half years in, which is still to this day, I can't believe that we did that.

One of the reasons why raised so much, was the goal was to build enough IP to attract a right suitor. So it did work out in the end. I actually, basically did make the right decisions as far as what the end goal was going to be and how we ended out at the end on top, but at the same time, those six months they probably took away a year or two off of my life at the end of the day. So yeah, it was rough.

[00:11:02] JU: For folks who aren't familiar, tell us what would you say is your great, you just call the last three and a half years, why did you get acquired? I mean, what's the creative value you put in the world and maybe to be very specific, what would you consider to be as an entrepreneur, as an individual contributor, as a leader, what would you consider to be one of your greatest creative achievements, just so we can get inside of the head of a champion, so to speak?

[00:11:32] WP: Sure. One of the things that I feel I did well was I was able to assess the general marketplace, and to assess how companies and competitors did their business. My main goal was to say, I know that we can create the same types of products, but I want to attack it from a completely different angle, which is to build an actual better team than everybody else's team. That's what I did. I went and I got the best of the best, to create these products, which is not what everybody else does.

What everybody else does is they go and they just try to find anybody and they tried to nickel and dime those people to create products for them. Then they put a nice bow on it, and they market it up, and make it look like more than what it really is. But what we were really doing is every product that release, we were hitting people in the mouth, and it gotten a lot of attention across the board. So what ended up happening was we, in a roundabout way, we started making some slight enemies, because a lot of folks were chattering about the fact that they felt it was unfair, that we had this competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Not only that we’re really good, but then I also streamlined the process through project management and then we started hitting people with products every week. Then that summer, when we were doing really, really bad, we actually started hitting people multiple times a week, because we were, we had to dig out that much. I would say, if I had anything that I'm the most proud of, it’s being able to assess talent from way outside and understand who's the best person for a very specific job. Then being able to enable that person to succeed in whatever project that they decide to work on.

[00:13:11] MH: How do you say you think about assessing talent? What's the recruitment chart look like?

[00:13:18] WP: Maybe use a specific example. You don't have to use their name if you don't want to. But get down to the, because generalizations, I find people gloss over important details are actually critical.

[00:13:30] JU: Yeah. Sure. Probably the most important aspect of myself and my other two partners, because I could talk about them, they won't mind, is the fact that none of us have egos. Now we all have ego, don't get me wrong. We have to have a little bit of ego, but it's not ego in the sense that it gets in the way of for progress. The three of us understood that we all had very specific specialties that we were really good at. I was really good at marketing, building brands, being able to speak to corporate partners and things like that. My other partner John was really good at project management. Then Joel really basically handles the majority of the music aspect and being able to guide talent to finish out products the way that we envision from the beginning.

[00:14:17] JU: Is that the, when you say assemble the team, are you referring specifically to the three of you? When you think about your vision being seeing what people are doing in the market and saying I'm going to do something different. Was that the big thing you said, “We need marketing, we need project management and we need the music and the three of us.” Is that the big idea so to speak, for lack of a better word? If so, what I'm curious about is, walk us through how you arrived at that big idea. You talked about assessing the marketplace. To me that actually precedes the formation of the team. The assessment is what led you to the idea what matters is, I need the big three. I need the dream team, right. I'd love to hear how you, if that's true. I'm just reading back what I'm hearing, how you arrived at that insight?

[00:15:03] WP: Yeah. Sure. If you look at the marketplace, the majority of these companies were led by one person. So that was the main reason why guys weren't able to output at the rate that we were. They weren't able to gather the right amount of talent that we were able to do. So basically, what I said was, because we're going to be a three headed monster that gives us an advantage for every other company. Then so not only that, we have a really good partnership up top, but then also the talent that we hired underneath us, were guys that were really the best of the best at what they do.

Then when you’re starting to get to that space, then it's more about managing people's expectations and their behaviors and who they are as people and how they perceive themselves within the company, so that's where I came in and that was the one thing I was able to do as well. So basically help people to see the goal and then I also very much was honest with guys. I was like this is our goal, our goal was to have an exit, so that we can be acquired, and then we can get equity in whatever company that acquires us. That was the main goal. That was passed down from top to bottom. Even through the acquisition, we fought for that, to make sure that those guys would be taken care of.

[00:16:18] JU: I got two things I'm dying to know about. I know Marcus does, too. I feel Marcus had the chance to talk to you a lot. I'm just being selfish.

[00:16:26] MH: Go for it. I'm just soaking it in.

[00:16:31] JU: You just put your hand up, Marcus, if you're like, dude, come on, let me get – But two things came to my mind was, one is, I'd love to know, you mentioned that word, three-headed monster, which I love. We're going to be a three headed-monster. There's this expression in research, a slow hunch, meaning that idea can developed over time. Where did the three-headed monster idea actually come from? When did you realize, you know what's needed? When did you see, everybody's doing this by themselves. I’d love to know more about that epiphany moment or how that insight was developed? Then the second thing, and I don't know if it's related or not, but I'll just say it is, you talked about being honest about the goal. We want to get an exit. Why was that your goal? Before you can be honest about it, you got to know that your goal, I'd love to hear why you decided that was the goal?

[00:17:19] WP: Yeah. Sure. First and foremost, going back to the three-headed monster thing, basically, looking at the marketplace, companies were either on one side of the spectrum or the other. Either was one person running a company by themselves, or it was basically just a regular corporation, where there's a hundred employees. So I said, I really don't want to be the one person employee. I would like to be something that's a bit more, but I want to be able to hire the right type of guys to make it look like, because of how much product that we put out that maybe we might have 25 employees, that was the goal.

So that's why we went ahead. That's why I felt it was important for me not to just be in this by myself, because there would be no way that I'd be able to project manage that many products as a single person. As far as the exit, I'm just thinking about making sure that my family's taken care of long term. I understand the way that the economy works right now. I wanted to get to the bag in the most efficient way possible. I wanted to be able to get a return on my investment that basically set me up for the rest of my life. That's why we wanted to go at it with an exit.

I did the whole going and looking through, what's that Crunchbase to see where the company stood. They were on their series B and I was just like, these guys are going to go towards an IPO one day, so this is the company that we need to lock up with. We need to be hand-in-hand with. I still to this day, I don't know how I managed to pull it off, but it was all natural. I didn't force it. It was, they came to us first without me reaching out to them. We develop relationships. A lot of those guys are really good guys and gals.

Then once we got out of the fog, and after the summer 2019 I said, “Hey, man, listen I know we talked about possibly partnering and talking about maybe a possible acquisition. Do you think that's something that we can maybe talk about now?” He's like, “Funny, you should say that, because that's what we've been talking about internally for the last three or four months.” So it was, they told me it was the fastest acquisition that they've ever had. It took us four months to get done. The rest of the acquisitions that they had before that, most of them took anywhere from nine months to a year.

[00:19:40] JU: Okay, so this is incredible and fascinating and again, congrats, because you're crushing it. How did you even think about exit? I mean, I grew up on in Oklahoma, no tech, so maybe that's a handicap. I remember when I came to business school at Stanford, what is it? 14 years ago now. One of the things that blew my mind is like, I thought there were five jobs that could be done in the world. It's like, I had worked at Chick-fil-A, that was one. My dad was a lawyer that was two. My mom went to the mall that was three. There were just so few options that I remember. One of the things that blew my mind when I came here was, there's an infinite number of jobs in the world you can do, but I had no idea.

My question for you is, to me when I asked, why was exit the goal? You really quickly got to, well, that's how I knew I can provide for my family and things like that and maybe it's a stupid question to like, how did you even know that? How did you come to the point that you look around you go the way that I can get the, as you say, get the bag as quickly as possible? I need an acquisition. Because to me, that's actually, I think for a lot of people it's like, what are you talking about? I got a job. It's like I'm making my hourly rate, but thinking in terms of building something in order to be acquired, looking at Crunchbase, understanding where folks are in their fundraising areas, that's a very sophisticated thought process. I wonder what had happened in your life that led you to even see that as a possibility?

[00:21:15] WP: Sure, well. I mean, I'm just an avid reader. I read a lot, I read a lot, I read a ton, I listened to a lot of podcasts. My days are very structured, to lean towards learning. I spend at least three and a half to four hours a day learning. I probably should give one of those hours to the gym. Which is something I'm working on now, but I spent a lot of time learning. Marcus and I can speak as Black men. One of the things that we tend to see in our community is, we see our folks build businesses, but they don't consider the fact that the business could end one day. They don't consider the fact that, that business could end in a way that they are not prepared for or a way that they ever saw coming.

So for us, it was like, if we start this company, we need to make sure that we have an end goal in mind. In case things start to go south, we can get out of here very, very fast. We can get out here very cleanly, without having to deal with a lot of money issues, with lawyers and stuff like that. So that was the main reason why we went at it that way. Then, one of the things that we did when we first started the relationship with the company that acquired us, was we assimilated our product to match their product in a way that they did, the way that they exported their product.

So we completely revamped our product, we basically made a carbon copy of the way that this company distributes their product. When we got acquired, it was literally seamless. We didn't change anything. As a matter of fact, when we got acquired, we actually taught them some of our project management and it changed internally at this cost. Yeah. It was really great, man.

[00:22:56] MH: Yeah. I want to I want to touch on something real quick, with the question, Wes, because you talk about, and you're right, in our communities it's one thing to move from the mindset of I got a good job, into going into the mindset, I can start a business, but that's a leap, right? Then there's this whole other leap that you're talking about of, “Yo, it's not enough to build a business, I need to understand that this business. I could find myself on the wrong end of a downward cycle of this business.” One question I wanted to ask you, because that goes a little bit further when you start talking about music. Music is probably arguably one of the Black community and even America's most cherished exports. How do you have that mindset about such a cherished export like music?

[00:23:48] WP: Yeah. I mean, I think that's low key, one of my superpowers has been able to separate my love and affinity for music. I had to be very Black and white. I had to be much a captain of capitalism, as my friends call me. I had to just keep it real. It's business. The world is looking for specific products. The world is looking for us to help solve problems. I created this company, literally because I had to solve a problem for myself. I was like I can't be the only person that's having the same exact problem. So lo and behold, I started doing some digging, and I find out that there's this whole industry that I had no idea existed, and it's like a multi-million dollar industry going towards a billion dollar…

[00:24:32] JU: What is the problem? I got to know. What is, because I hear that all the time. I mean, even Jeff Bezos said that about AWS. When they were starting it, which by the way, is 90% of their market cap. When they were starting to build it, one of their investors very famous guy, John Doerr said, “Why should we build this business?” You know what Bezos said? Because we need it.

[00:24:53] WP: Yep.

[00:24:54] JU: To me, there's something really profound about being your first customer. I'm actually working on a blog post right now, called Be Your First Customer. But I'd love to hear, what was the problem that you were trying to solve? I love what you said, “I can't be the only person experiencing this.” Just walk us through that problem realization moment.

[00:25:13] WP: Yeah. Sure. Basically, I'm a producer by trade, that's at the baseline, that's what I do. I don't do it as much anymore, because I don't have to. But basically, I'm not just a producer, but a sample based producer. I use original music that was created by somebody else. I reformat it make it into my own thing. The problem is, is when you make music that way, you have to ask permission. Then you have to get clearances and licenses and stuff like that –

[00:25:39] MH: And pay a lot of money.

[00:25:40] WP: And pay a lot of money. As a matter of fact, Marcus is literally just went through this, with one of the artists that he has with his roster, which is really funny.

[00:25:47] MH: Yes.

[00:25:50] WP: Yeah. Basically, I had an opportunity to land a pretty substantial licensing job. It was for 60 grand, I think it was, and we could not get it accomplished, because we could not clear the sample. So I lost out on all of that money. I was like, “Really?” So I say, “What can I replay it?” They said, “No, you can't replay it, because we hear it and we know that you replayed it, then we're going to bang you for more.” I was like, there's got to be a way for people like me, to be able to use sounds that sounds exactly like what I hear on Oh 45 and to be able to create it and not have to worry about getting a clearance. That's how the company was created.

It was my guys, we're going to sit down and we're going to create this stuff that sounds exactly like what I would hear coming off of a record. Then we're going to give it to the public. Let them not have to worry about any sample clearances or issues of that sort. We're just going to create this one time. If you want to use it, you're good to go. Don't hit us back for anything, you're fine. That's how the company was created.

[00:26:58] JU: One of the things that's interesting, you hear, I hear this a. People can say, well, that's our competitive advantage. We can't give it away, right? Take a, you got a pizza joint, they know how to make the crust perfect, right? Well, one way to think about it is, wow, don't tell anybody, because that's what makes people like your pizza. Another way to think about is, if we could sell the ability to make perfect pizza, to everybody who makes pizza, that's actually a way bigger business than selling our pizza, right? But I feel a lot of organizations have this tension of well, we can't give away our secret sauce, or it's not giving away, but if we sell that, then what makes us special will be gone. Did you wrestle with any of that tension or how did you deal with that question?

[00:27:43] WP: Not really, because again, we're in the new generation of music making. Then these new kids care about who sample what or anything like that. They don't care where anything came from, they just want to know, does it sound good. That's all they care about. It's weird that I was able to get there, because I tend to be a purist at heart when it comes to, when I create music. But as far as what somebody else wants to do, I'm not particularly a purist about that at all, I really don't care.

[00:28:11] MH: Well, and I think this taps back Wes, to and I think a lot of folks who would listen to this who find themselves on the creative spectrum. I think, this is what you're talking about is very helpful. Not only were you able to disassociate from the business, but it sounds like you were able to disassociate from your craft and a sense of, “Yo, I'm a purist.” But instead of bunkering down on that and becoming irrelevant, like New York hip hop. I'm going to open the market, that was debt. That was a debt.

[00:28:48] JU: I heard that. I heard that.

[00:28:51] MH: I'm going to open up the market. Instead of selling the pizza, I'm going to sell this off. I want to ask you the same question that I asked [inaudible 00:28:58]. I'm going to ask it a different way. How do you get to the point where you can become that objective, even about yourself to say, I'm not going to project what I am on the rest of the market. I'm going to see an opportunity for myself within the market. How do you, how does one get there?

[00:29:18] WP: Yeah. Sure. Well, I mean, I think in a way, it's a bit closed minded. I've seen too many speaking of New York hip hop. I've seen too many guys from that era. Completely walk away from life-changing money, specifically because they hold this moral position. That's not really moral or immoral, it's a personal stance. Then you fast forward to later and then they're complaining about the music industry, and this, just like my man. If you maybe would have just played the game for 10 minutes, 10 years ago, you probably would be in such a different space. You probably wouldn't have these gripes in this bitterness that you have. Life is so long. It's not just about what's happening in this moment right now. You can't be that precious over something that the world doesn't necessarily consider as precious. It doesn't make any sense in the long run.

[00:30:19] MH: It's funny that you said that life is long, because the word I was thinking, as you were talking was longevity. I want to place a marker in the ground. Say, as a friend, this is something that I identified about you very early on. I think what we're having a conversation about so far is achieving longevity, right? So far, you've been able to there's this pattern of moving thought processes out of the way, that become a hindrance to longevity. I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to tease up a story going further into the music side of things. You told me one time that you were in a studio with a bunch of guys. For those of who don't know music, a lot of times the artist, the artist is the front facing person. Folks attach a lot of meaning and attach a lot of ability to an artist.

You mentioned to me one time, you say, “You know what, man. I got tired of being in the studio with artists who were making these outlandish demands and thinking that they had the right to do that. I'm like, yo, I have access to more than you.” You decided to no longer exist in that space. What were you thinking in that moment? What can you open attention and how that might have even been a precursor to the business, if it was?

[00:31:39] WP: Sure. One of my biggest pet peeves is wasting my time. I cannot stand it. It's one of the things that drives me saying the most you can ask my wife, people who waste my time, it's probably just one of the things that I just can't stand and I don't really bang with. So the issue that I have is that, Marcus, you understand this as well is, in music there's a lot of posturing, there's a lot of people who will go out of their way to say that they are this and that, or to present themselves as one thing or another, but they're not really doing anything.

So one of the things that I noticed over time was, I would be in studios with these guys and these are guys who are on socials, and they're saying they got this and they got that. This dude just asked me for lunch, “Yo, can you spot me for lunch? Because I don't have any money.” I'm like, what are we really doing here? I've never been a person to lie about who I am or where I am in my life or my position and things. The thing that just bothered me the most is, I felt I was in this cycle of people lying about who they were in their position in this industry. I just didn't want anything to do with it anymore. That was really the precursor. Yes, sir.

[00:33:04] MH: I think, there's this, you have this talent that I want to put out this. You can almost see around the corner a bit. Then that there was a, yo, I see around the corner. I'm reading this room for what it is. It's time for me to move on. Do you see that same thing as a founder or maybe there's temptation, as a founder whether in fundraising, or interacting with competition, where it can be tempting to become more about posturing then positioning? If so, man, I'd love to hear if that's something that you see.

[00:33:42] WP: Yeah. I mean, the good thing is I've thankfully been able to stay away from posturing. If you go back, and you look through any of our social posts, also on from Soul Surplus, I am not present in any of them. I might be present in maybe two or three pictures. That was very on purpose, because this is not about me, this is about the brand. You know what I mean? So what I did was I specifically put the guys who were the ones that were making the sauce as the ones that will be at the forefront of why this works. That was very on purpose.

[00:34:17] MH:  The eyes that affected the bottom line.

[00:34:19] WP: It actually worked really, really well. One thing that was really interesting was from a competitive standpoint, it rubbed my competition the wrong way, because they felt what I was doing was showcasing the fact that my guys are better than your guys. I really don't care if you're insecure. I mean, yeah. At the end of the day, my guys are better than your guys. That was also on purpose, but that has nothing to do with me. That has to do with the fact that these guys are just really, really great. I wanted to make sure that that was presented at the forefront of what this brand stands for.

[00:34:54] JU: One thing that I'd love to circle back to in the last couple of minutes here. Marcus mentioned, you can see around corners, read the room. I can't help but wonder whether that has something to do with reading. As you said earlier, I spent three or four hours a day learning. Seeing around corners, I think there's this quote, I love. I don’t know if you all have heard it. The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed. I love that. I think that learners can see the uneven distribution of the future. I would love to know, how do you carve out time to learn? What does learning look like to you? What does it look like practically? Because I think there's a lot of fellows potential founders out there guys and girls, Black and any other race, background, etc. How do they dedicate themselves to learning? What does it look practically for you?

[00:35:47] WP: Yeah. Sure. I literally have block scheduling for myself throughout the day. The first thing that I do when I first wake up, is I dedicate three hours to just learning, there’s no emails, there's no scrolling on social media. It is just to learn. That's it.

[00:36:05] JU: What do you do in that time? In those three hours what do you do?

[00:36:08] WP: Yeah. The first two hours is usually just reading, just catching up on things that are happening around the world in very specific corners of the earth. Then I usually dedicate at least about half hour to 45 minutes to listening to a specific podcast. That usually changes up whatever day of the week that that we're in?

[00:36:28] JU: Walk us through today, Friday.

[00:36:31] WP: Yep.

[00:36:31] JU: What did you read? What do you listen to?

[00:36:34] WP: Okay, so this morning. I read a horrible story, as a matter of fact, and I even recorded a podcast from my own Patreon about this, because I was so irritated. The fact that the DSPs are now wanting to ask for more money and more percentages from creators. It's literally, basically that creators going to be at the lowest rate ever in history, when it comes to how much they're going to get from DSPs. I spent pretty much the first three hours of the morning, going back and digging through some old articles that I had written, where actually the publishers had won an injunction earlier this year. They were awarded, I think, almost $450 million for all mechanical royalties that people just had not collected on for years.

This story right now is we're finding out that the industry is basically fighting back. The DSPs are fighting back. Now they're basically going to say, not only do we want to get more from you, but we're going to go back 15 years, and we're going to eradicate anything that's happened in 15 years ago, and this is like, really? This is like really.

[00:37:43] JU: What tripped you down that track? I mean, I say what you read this morning, and you go straight into DSPs. What are the feeds, how do you determine or do you have a plan for Monday? Let’s ask a different question. Do you already know what you're going to be studying or reading? How do you even make that decision?

[00:38:01] WP: Yeah. Usually music news tends to be a bit more heavy towards the end of the week, so I tend to read a lot more music news towards the end of the week. The top of the week is more mindful stuff. So understanding things about how my mind operates, trying to be more productive. Those are the avenues that tend to go in the top of the week. It's more about being prepared and ready for how my week is going to go. I tend to lean more into that side of things at top of the week. Today, it was reading an article last night before I went to bed. I also tend to read a lot at night too.

So reading article at night, and then waking up the next morning and finding another article that was a companion to this article about the DSPs. So, but that's pretty much how my day goes. I tend not to be as focused with the podcast every now and again. I might need something a little bit more lighthearted, depending on how I'm feeling that morning. But if I'm pretty determined about learning something very specific, sometimes I'll take 10 minutes to try to find a very specific podcast that deals with something specific that I want to think about throughout that day.

[00:39:07] JU: I got to ask a question that I know if anybody ever, if this ever sees the light of day and anybody listens to it. Here's my obvious what seems a very obvious question. How in the world do you have time to dedicate three hours every morning? How do your employees deal with that? How do your co-founders deal with that? Now that you're acquired, how did your bosses deal with that? I think most people go, “Well, we have our team meeting, and I've got my one-on-one. How does it practically work say, actually, until lunchtime, I'm just learning. How does that work?

[00:39:41] WP: Yeah. Well actually starts way before that. So usually, my three hours are usually done by around 10:30, 11:00. But the good thing about the acquisition is that my job is very autonomous. The thing I love about the company that acquired us, they're more on the tip of, we don't care how long it takes you or how little it takes you to get done, what you're getting done, we just wanted to get done. I'm blessed in that way that I don't have to clock in at work. Because of the acquisition I don't have any more employees. They all work for the parent company now. I'm not doing a lot of project management for Soul Surplus…

[00:40:30] JU: Nice. Is learning a new priority and habit or were you, did you have the same three hours blocked when you had employees? What point in your life did the three hour block become a cornerstone of your calendar?

[00:40:44] WP: Yes. That started back in around 2016, is when I really started to block that time out. It was because I had, I think I told Marcus about this, I walked away from everything. I was just like, I can't do this anymore. I went and got a regular job. I was working at Best Buy for six months or something like that. It was the best thing ever. I wasn't making any money, but to be able to go to work and not have to think about what I'm going to do when I go to work. I just showed up, but it was the best thing for me, because I worked in the home theater department and ended up working in Magnolia, which is sectioned off in the side. Not too many people come into that part of the store, because you have to have a specific amount of money to be able to shop there. –

[00:41:30] JU: Right, exactly.

[00:41:31] MH: Yeah, yeah.

[00:41:32] JU: So you take naps or what would you do?

[00:41:34] WP: No, I literally would have air pods in and I would literally just stand in the middle of the floor and listen to podcasts for hours and I mean I'm just listening and listening and listening. I would listen to audiobooks. It was the best thing that happened to me, because one thing I did learn about myself through that is, where I get the most clarity is when I actually take a break and take a step back. Marcus actually knows this too, this summer I did the same thing. I took a break for five months and went and cut grass. I went and bought a zero-turn mower. I went and bought a trailer. I bought a brand new truck. I went out and cut lawns the whole entire summer.

[00:42:12] JU: Wait, like as a business, you just mow people's lawns?

[00:42:15] WP: Yep. I had to get away. So I'm in the field. I got the shell, headphones on. No music, just to protect my ears. The funniest thing happened is as, I got close to the end. I knew exactly what I was going to do coming out of the summer. It was so clear. It was the same way with Soul Surplus. The same thing happened when I worked at Best Buy, my mind was free. I didn't have to worry about anything.

[00:42:42] MH: Wow.

[00:42:43] JU: I'm blown away, just for the record.

[00:42:46] MH: Jeremy’s on a wire cutter looking for the best lawn mowers.

[00:42:50] JU: Dude, I'm telling you what, Wes just blew my mind. There are pieces of my head on that glass back there, so good. I feel like that's, it's a perfect place to end because there's so much more you want to know. My last question is, can we please have a Wes Pendleton part two at some point in the next few months?

[00:43:12] WP: Absolutely.

[00:43:13] JU: There's so much richness here. I feel like, we've hardly, we've just scraped a little just enough ice off the iceberg to cool off my water. That's it. I know there's so much more and let alone what's beneath the surface. I got to tell you, it's such a treat and pleasure and honor to meet you, hear your story. I hope we can do you justice and hopefully share with folks. Our goal is to impact people's lives in a in a profound way. I know hearing your story will do just that. Thank you for your time. We're delighted to have a chance to get to know you.

[00:43:44] WP: Thanks so much, guys. Really appreciate it.

[00:43:46] JU: Yeah.

[00:43:46] MH: Absolutely. Thank you, Wes.

[END]