Join Leela for a conversation with Holly Hagerman, founder at AmptUp.com, an online marketplace to connect venues and musicians through a lens of equity, fair pay and contract usage. Holly shares stories about the founding of the company and talks about AmptUp's mission-based objectives of making it easier for music and venues to make a living; increasing equity, both in pay and representation, for people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ commuities; and making any city a Music City. All while using booking fees to create a steady stream of grants.

Links!

AmtUp website: https://www.amptup.com/

Find AmptUp on Instagram and Facebook.

Find NIVA (the National Independent Venue Association): https://www.nivassoc.org/

and information about the Save Our Stages Act: https://www.saveourstages.com/

Hi everyone and welcome to Power Pivot, where we

talk about power, community, leadership, and ethics. I'm your

host, Leela Sinha. Today I am so pleased to have Holly Hagerman

here with me. She is the founder of AmptUp.com, an online

marketplace that connects musicians and venues in ways

that cut booking time in half, and is dedicated to

transparency, equity and fair pay. So you can see why I was

interested in having her on. She is a Texas native and a two-time

founder. Her first company was an award-winning B Corp

certified boutique marketing agency serving socially

conscious and environmentally friendly businesses. So she's

been at this ethics thing a while. At AmptUp, together with

her co-founder, Frederic Rouault, a musician and venue

production professional, she brings digital marketing

know-how ,insider industry knowledge, and, most

importantly, passion to her work. Her goal is not just to

reopen live music, but to reconstruct and democratize it.

Welcome, Holly, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really

delighted.

I am so excited for our conversation, I was telling

my assistant earlier that you've got this incredible business

plan that you're just you're, you're fixing such an important

problem. And I'm I'm just I'm delighted to begin to dig into

it with you. So. So let's start with your own description of

what your business does, because I want people to have context

for when we start talking about why you're doing it.

than we understand theoretical explanations: I'm a musician and

I want to use your service, how does it work?

create your profile, and then, well, on a lot of musician

websites, and there are plenty of them out there, you then just

sit and wait, you build a profile and you sit and wait

until you're found. On AmptUp, you don't have to do that. This

is actually a tool that allows you to streamline your booking

from the musician's side, allowing them to build their

career. So you can create that profile. And then you can

immediately jump into our venue search and tour routing tool to

either do a local search of venues or to do searches for

venues in other locations that you want to tour to. So you can

put points on a map, and you can receive 1000s of contacts for

venues in those locations. Right now, we're in Texas, Louisiana,

Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oregon and Washington. And so we have a

contact database that's free, it's public, our goal is to have

the world's largest free public database of contact information

so that musicians can more easily route their tours. So

they put points on a map, they get all of that contact

information back based on the filters they put in for the

venues they want to play in that will fit their audience, and

they start pitching. And even if the venues are not on our

platform, because we're just starting out. So just in the

last couple of weeks have we started even communicating with

the venues and trying to get them to join our platform. But

we've designed this so that musicians don't have to wait. We

have an enormous database, the most robust for our areas so

far, so that they can start pitching exactly as they

normally would via email via phone. Because they're going to

get all of that contact information and can broker those

deals directly themselves. And if they would like they can then

send them their booking link and say booked me on AmptUp. They'll

get fast digital payments immediately after the show, and

they'll get a contract every time. They'll get all of the

details. The advanced details of the show, the backline of the

venue, all in their contract for easy viewing.

Okay, so, in short, if I'm a musician, I can go into

AmptUp.com, I can put in where I am or where I'm expecting to be.

And I will get contact information for venues in those

places. And then I can do my regular routine, just pitch them

directly. And then if they say, Yes, I have the option, I don't

have to, but I have the option of using your service to get the

contract, to get the payment, to do the booking. And then you

streamline that process for me.

You got it. You nailed it.

Awesome. Awesome. I am not a performing musician,

myself. But you know that that old adage, don't date the

drummer, I didn't get the drummer, but I did date the

singer-songwriter for a while, so I have some sense of what

that might be like. And from a venue's perspective, like, Okay,

I'm a venue owner, and I have some empty spots. What can I do?

So similar to the musicians, there's really

two sides to this platform for both sides. One is the

discovery. So they can actually go on there and find musicians,

right on our homepage, I can do that. And we have some really

unique filters that don't exist anywhere else in the world. For

example, because the musician has just gone in and put the

points on the map of where they wanted to go. And then receive

those venue contacts back, the venue can actually then search

that through the back end, and find all the musicians that are

going to be touring in their area. So they can search local,

they can search touring nearby, they can also search in a way

that they can infuse a little bit more diversity. If the

musician self-identifies by certain historically

marginalized communities, they can also search by independent

or agent-represented for the representation. So they can do

all of these different searches, find the musicians listen to

their music, and see all of the information, who's in their

band, watch videos on how they perform live, and make a

decision. So that's the discovery element. But like the

musicians, there's this whole streamlining side of things

where there's a contract, every time, the payments are handled

digitally, the W-9s are handled by our system, you don't ever

have to look at them again. And so it's very organized and easy.

So if they choose to not discover musicians on our

platform, they can allow musicians to pitch them by

putting their profile link on their website and say, pitch us

through AmptUp. And they can organize all of their pitches

through there as well.

Wow. I don't know about owning a venue. But I know

that if I were, if such a tool existed for hiring contractors

for my business, I'd be all over it. So this is a really kind of

innovative approach, isn't it? Do you have a lot of

competition? So Holly Hargerman: So it's a

response to that, in one sense, you could say yes, there's tons

of competition. I mean, you know, you just can't walk five

steps without tripping over another musician-oriented

website. The problem is, or maybe the benefit is, that none

of them do even half of the things that we do. I actually

created just for my team in the last month, I can't believe it

took me so long, but I created one of those competitor charts.

And I marked down all of the things that we do, and then all

the things that competitors do and in a chart, and it's just

this sea of red x's, there's only like, in fact, our greatest

competitors is Google, Gmail, and G calendar, those are our

greatest competitors. Because they do those two things very

well. And that's really one of the biggest jobs of booking. But

it's very hard to find any other website that will allow you to

actually broker a deal online that allow you to actually get

paid online, they really mimic the old standards of you know,

the the grind and showing up and get getting paid in cash and

waiting until 2am and talking to the bar manager after

everybody's left to get your money or, you know, coming back

driving across town to get your check. So I would say that it is

very difficult for us to find a direct competitor. But there are

a few. Gig Salad, for example, does help you find musicians,

but they don't allow professionals, industry

professionals, to really broker a deal. So for example, you

can't be paid based on ticket sales. And I'm not sure that you

can even be paid online all of the time. It's not a requirement

there, you can get paid in cash. And they don't have any of the

streamlining tools. So it's not really our market. But most

importantly, there're really hefty subscription fees. So

that's something, you know, we've just done a lot of deep

listening, hundreds of hours of deep listening, and while I

don't think anything we're doing is a surprise. I think it's kind

of like putting wheels on luggage. All you had to do is

listen to the audience and and they would have told you exactly

how to build what we've built. It's not a secret. Its actually

it exists in all of the minds of all the venues and musicians

that we talk to. We just put it all together.

You know, sometimes I think that that is the genius

of a software company is to put it all together. Because so

often somebody is sitting at their computer and going, why

doesn't this program that everybody use, do this thing

that everybody needs?

Exactly.

Like, the number of times I've gone into a Google

tool, it's not like Google is underfunded, the number of times

I've gone into a Google tool and been like, I need to do X, it

must be able to do X, and searched their help forums. And

it's been 10 years of people asking for them to please make

it do X. And they just haven't chosen to make it a priority.

Yes, yeah. Leela Sinha: And that's the only

it's not like they can't afford the programmers. Right? We're

not talking about a little mom and pop shop we're not talking

about, although I will say that I've just discovered getdex.com

and I am enthralled with Dex, because it's a Rolodex,

what's it called?

it's called getdex.com. The name of the tool

is Dex, but their URL is getdex, and I have just discovered them

through a friend, she knew the founder. And so she was like,

you know, this is a new company, but they're doing something

that's very basic, and that nobody else is doing. You know,

it's one thing if you need a CRM, where you need this giant,

you know, pipeline sales tracking system. But what I

needed was a Rolodex that had space for notes and updates, and

would connect with my calendar, because my entire business is

based on relationships. And so out of nowhere comes this

company that's making an online Rolodex.

Perfect. Well, you know, it's funny, like you

said, a lot of this is just organizing, and I've always told

my mom and my friends that, but you know, when I grew up and

retire, I want to be a professional organizer. Like, I

just want to go into people's houses and organize their

closets. And my parents are always like groaning when I come

home, because I'm like, you know what this country needs, it

needs a complete reorganization. And then they can't find

anything, and they're grumbling about how they, they can't find

that 30 year old aspirin bottle. And so, you know, I realized

that what I'm doing now is actually the dream, like, I'm

just organizing information and systems and processes. So it's

really a happy skill fit for me,

you know, I am an unrepentant at this point,

disorganized person, like, I know where the stuff is that is

important, but everything else, it's gonna take me a minute. If

it's got a place, if everything had a place, that'd be great.

But I'm always acquiring more stuff until I haven't got enough

space for it. I just have too many balls in the air. So I'm

really grateful for people who are doing what you're doing.

Because if I were in the music performance business, I would be

so relieved. I would be so relieved. To have, you know, a

single tool. Every time somebody comes up with a business tool

that's like, okay, we're putting everything in one place, I have

to go research it and I have to take a look and see if it makes

sense for me. Because the amount-- you know, a lot of

people talk about it as the neurodiversity tax. Like, if

you're, if you've got ADHD, or if you're autistic, there's

certain things that are harder to do. And so you just don't do

them. And then you end up paying late fees, you end up you know,

getting fined, you end up getting a ticket on your car,

because you didn't renew your registration. Why? Eh? It fell

off the edge of your plate. And so having anything, especially

when you're dealing with contracts, and making sure

people get paid-- like I when I'm working with small

businesses, especially, I mean, anybody but especially small

businesses, I want to make sure that they get paid, I want to

make sure they get paid on time. And I want to make sure I'm

working with businesses that are going to make the world a better

place in some way. And your business model is so interesting

to me. Go ahead.

Thank you. Well, you know, you keep talking

about businesses and business tools. And, and I think what's

really interesting is, as I started talking to more and more

musicians, I realized that they are not necessarily using those

words, but that's exactly what they want to be and what they

want to do is they want to advance their career. And as I

started using those words, like we, you know, we want to help

grow your career, we want to help you, you know, take it to

another professional level. We, you know, we believe that you

can't grow as a business person, unless you have this, like a

contract, and you understand the terms of the deal before you

drive 30 minutes and set up your gear. And people started

thanking me and being appreciative of just sort of the

recognition that they are businesses. and that they

deserve proper business tools, not just a gimmicky, flashy,

brightly colored sight. You know, it's funny, because most

of the time is as I start searching for investors, and

we're doing a funding round. So many of them asked me if I

consider myself to be b2b or b2c. And I feel like, what kind

of question is that? Of course, it's b2b. You know, we're not

only connecting two different business parties, and we're a

business and there a business, there's no doubt in my mind,

it's a b2b model. And they're like, Oh, well just kind of

seems like it's b2c. And I heard that so many times from

investors and other people, because the entertainment world

feels, you know, everybody can instantly connect to

entertainment in their life. Whereas like health care it, you

know, that's just, it's very clearly going to be b2b. It's

dry, maybe it doesn't-- maybe you had some negative

experiences with it. But with music, everybody can connect on

a very human consumer level. But the people that we're serving,

they want, they want to grow, and they want to kind of tap

into that business side and make things easier, and they want the

business tools, just like we want business tools in any other

industry.

Yes, and I think that that's an interesting place

to start digging into the kind of ethical side of what you're

doing. Because what's happening as I'm hearing you describe it.

And I think that that's reflected in my own experience,

is that the musicians, the performers, are themselves often

struggling to see themselves not as hobbyists but as businesses,

at least at the beginning. And so that's a piece of it, but the

bigger piece of it is that they are trying to be seen by the

venues as businesses rather than as, as hobbyists, and to get the

respect that a business should get.

You know, I actually don't think it's... I

don't think it starts with the venues. I think it starts with

society at large, and how we treat people with a musical

passion and the possibility that it can be a viable career, and a

viable livelihood. And it is in many other parts of the world,

where you have more of a kind of a middle class of professional

musician, whereas in America, it's really like feast or

famine, like you're the Beyonce's of the world, and

you've hit it big, or, you know, you're your weekend warrior, and

you've got your day job. And, and I think that other cultures

around the world, just appreciate the place that music

has, and those people's place as artists and the value that that

brings to our society. And so, you know, if they go to school

to a conservatory, or for music in some way, there's, there's

absolutely no concern or stigma around that. And so, you know,

I, I see that the venues do treat the musicians, as

professionals, however, we have not equipped musicians with the

professional training, to understand that they have the

right to understand the terms of the deal beforehand, that they

have the right to negotiate, that they have the right to ask

for payment in certain ways, you know, like, by Pay Pal, or by

credit card, not by check, not at two in the morning, upfront,

give me a deposit, these are all things that they can do, but we

don't have the proper infrastructure and, and

understanding to funnel musicians into that business

training. And I think it's evidenced by all the technology

as well is that, you know, there's just a bunch of consumer

facing sites, they are not SAAS tools, business tools. And you

know, when I do see the one or two that do provide serious data

or analytics for musicians to grow their career and see how

they're performing on social media and all these other things

and, and kind of aggregate the data, they're always talking

about, you know, how they need to make it fun and, and bright

and beautiful and creative because they're working with

creatives, they need to make it easier. And I think that that's

wonderful, you know, because you do have the left and right brain

merging there. But it's just to say that there aren't a lot of

tools that focus on the business need and serve the musician and

treat them as a business professional. Even though

they're showing up that way and most of them that I am talking

with are treating their career as you would any, you know, any

sales job or any job that that you need to go out there you

need to hustle you need to be organized. You have to have your

spreadsheets you need to make maintain relationships, you need

to do your networking, you need to have your business cards, you

need to have your, your release, you need to do your social media

and your press relations. They're doing all of these

things across a really large span of skills. And they're all

self learning it for the most part.

Yeah, I remember the first time-- I've been, I

started out in the coaching world. And now I do, of course,

more consulting and coaching kind of a mix. But when I

started out in 2009, there were no business tools for coaches.

None. And I remember the first time somebody said, "Hey, yeah,

I'm creating a tool that's going to pull together like the

booking and the contract and the calendar". And I was like, "Tell

me more."

Right?

Because before that, it was. It was me on my

phone was Google Calendar. That was the only way you could book

me because that was the only tool available. And of course,

that's not the case anymore. So what you're doing is, I think,

really important. And I think your point about the the art, I

would say I would even say it's the arts in general, is well

taken, that we in this country, in the United States especially,

don't respect the decision to make the arts a career because

we don't respect the arts the way we need to.

Yeah, and that's a really kind of big and

multi pronged conversation. And I think part of it, you know, we

as consumers must examine our consumption habits. So for

example, if you pay $10 a month, for all-you-can-eat music,

essentially, you have to then wonder how are you compensating

the people who are feeding you this constant creativity. And

they're, they're probably not getting compensated

appropriately based on the consumption that we're doing.

And so that feeds into as well, that difficulty of elevating the

musician, and the venue as well, to these, these professionals,

that professional level. And, you know, the third part of our

mission is to make any city a Music City. And within that, if

we can percolate music into every corner of America, which

it is already there, I mean, I used to live on an Indian

reservation. And, you know, they might not have had lawyers or

accountants, or even a decent grocery store within 30 minutes.

But they did have really great live music, they had several

stages nearby. They also had a really great medical facility,

fortunately. So you know, I think that we underestimate

where music is, and how it fits into our lives. And now we just

need to add a little bit more structure to, sort of rising

tide floats all boats, spread that music inventory out and

make sure that musicians have access to it, that they can,

they can get into venues wherever they need to go on the

way on the route to wherever they're headed next.

So let's talk more about the ethics. Why did you

decide that this was important? Like yes, there's a gap in the

market. And that's absolutely important. But why-- I know that

we talked a little bit when we we talked before the interview

about the the equity piece, the diversity piece, can you talk a

little bit about why that's so important to you?

Well, you know, it kind of goes back a few steps

and I'm sort of wondering where to start. So I started this with

my husband, we were originally planning to create a rehearsal

studio space with a cafe and a bar, like the one he had grown

up with in France. And we had been working on it for several

years, I was working on the business plan when the whole

world shut down for lockdown. And it was April 2, I remember

because it was my birthday and just turned over to midnight.

And I just kept thinking and thinking, it's not enough, it's

not enough, it just, it feels like it falls flat, it'll be

fine. But by the time we get this thing launched, it'll be

fine. People will be ready to go out again and all that but it

just doesn't seem like it's going to be helping enough

people. And so then I had this lightbulb moment where I

realized, you know, I have been in the position of a big talent

buyer for various events for my previous company, and always

really had to do a lot of legwork to find musicians. And

so the light bulb went off and I realized, hey, there's not

really a good place to find them. So that's kind of that the

founding story now how that relates to the diversity and

equity piece is that I didn't know a lot about the industry

because I'm not a musician, even though I'm married to a

musician. And when I told him that he said, Oh, this is so

needed, you know, musicians just really need help. And he started

telling me all about his friends and the issues that they were

having Whereas I would just came at it from solving, you know,

maybe my own problem of trying to find musicians. So I really

had to do lots of deep listening. And fortunately for

my previous business, that was something that I had trained in.

And so I sat and I listened. And I called one person who I knew

who had a lot of creative people in her life. And she connected

me to some musicians. And then those people, they talked to me

and I listened, and they connected me to other people.

And I, they talked, and I listened. And I just pummeled

them with questions. And one of the things that I kept hearing

over and over again, between April and June-ish was this,

sometimes overt, and sometimes subtle, racism and sexism that

seemed to be pervasive for any of the people I spoke to that

were not white males. And, and that really struck me, it made

me it made me really sad. Because I knew that they just

felt that they weren't really able to fully achieve their

dream through no fault of their own. And then, of course, at

that same time, there was the murder of George Floyd, which

touched me deeply, and changed my life and my understanding of

my place in it and, and how we all fit together. And at that

point, I decided that this had to be a core function, not just

a mission or a nice idea, it had to be embedded in the

functionality and the leadership of the team. And so first, I set

out to make sure that we were providing financial

opportunities to people of color, women, LGBTQ communities,

so that we could start there, because I think that that is one

of the best places,

opportunities within your company.

That's right, yeah, to make

this, but that the ideas inside those brains were, were bringing

more diverse perspectives. And so that, you know, others could

see these people in a leadership position and either, you know,

feel inspired by that, or start to create new normals. So that

was part one of it. But part two of it was to ensure that it was

embedded in the functionality. So in my previous studies, in

marketing, for my previous business, you know, I just

consumed social science, social psychology studies, I loved

that. And one of the studies that I read, it's pretty well

known, is that when people, you're trying to get people to

do behavior change for marketing, or anything, could be

for charity, they did three different steps. So first, they

gave out awareness, they went door to door, and they handed

out educational information. The second is that they, you know,

it was for an electrical company, for example, they would

show you your past usage, and give you all the educational

material. And then the third group, they would give them the

educational material, show them their past usage, and then show

their usage compared to their peers in the neighborhood, their

neighbors. And the third group was the one that had a

significantly greater behavior change. And so I took that, and

I said, I bet we could do the same thing with hiring

practices. Because why is nobody doing this now. And I looked at

the murder of George Floyd and I looked at, you know, the exact

same thing that had happened four years previously, you know,

in broad daylight on video camera, with a neck on a knee

from an officer. And I thought, why didn't that one make a huge

splash? There are certainly a lot of, you know,

socio-political things happening that are different now. But it

was almost exactly the same. And it occurred to me that awareness

is just not enough. And I didn't want us to get in the same old

trap of trying to raise awareness, and not change any

behavior. So I felt like, let's try to change technology. So

we're working on the designs, as we speak, I spoke to my designer

about it today, the designs have always been in my head and the

functionality has been in place since day one. And now we're

trying to kind of pull that back in together, which is it will

show venues, who they're hiring, and how much they're paying and

the frequency as well and then show it compared to their peers

based on those historically marginalized communities. So

they could see for example, okay, I'm paying men, about 20%

higher than I'm paying women so that they can have awareness

about their own behavior change. And then they can look at the

industry standard and say, oh, man, you know, the rest of the

industry is actually only like two percentage points difference

like, I'm pretty out of whack here. And then have an

opportunity to change their behavior. So that's sort of

where it came from and how it got implemented.

That's so interesting to me because,

because what it means is that-- I am a child of the 80s, I grew

up in, in really like my elementary, middle school years

were entirely in the 1980s. And so I was hammered with the, you

know, the DARE program, the, the "just say no to drugs program,"

right. And all of that is based on peer pressure. And what

you're talking about is really leveraging the subtle social

mechanisms behind peer pressure. Because typically, peer pressure

doesn't come, you know, with a giant hammer and a big sign and

neon. Peer pressure comes when we look around, and everyone

around us is doing something different from what we're doing.

And of course, that's a really interesting conversation right

now with masking. But-- because, you know, in some places like I

live in the Bay Area, masking is still very normal. Most of the

time, if you go out, you'll see people without masks, you'll see

people with masks, you'll see people, if you're walking

outside, you'll see people with masks hanging off their wrists.

And if they go inside a crowded space, or if they even if they

enter a crowded space outdoors, often they'll just pop that mask

on their face, nobody makes a big deal out of it. It's just

normal. I have friends who live in Idaho, let me tell you, that

is not the story. in Idaho. And, and so this is this is a really

interesting place for ethics, because, because on the one

hand, if they can see that they are dramatically out of line in

a direction that they kind of know is ethically untenable,

then it will encourage them to do better. Do you have any

concerns that if they can see that everybody else is being

terrible that they will feel like, oh, I don't have to worry

about doing the right thing?

Oh, that is a really good question. I think

that's something that we'll have to give some thought to. I think

that there might be some room for us to impact that, to create

notifications, and to maybe add some alerts in. We do have on

the front side, a little bit of a poll for them. So their

information will be totally private, and it won't be shared

with anybody publicly, we will of course be able to aggregate

that data on the back end. And I think that data is extremely

powerful, because you can't manage it if you can't measure

it. And currently, there is almost no data anywhere about

diversity on the stage. And so we'll at least take that first

step to understand what it looks like. And then we can put it out

in front of people and say, women are getting paid 30% less

or 40% less on the stage, this is unacceptable. And we can

start to create awareness campaigns around that, while

combining that with the data right in front of their eyes

about what their usage is and what others usage is. And then

highlighting the changes. So maybe it's really terrible in

one location. And but we can highlight the pay equity has,

has come $5 closer to equal in the last month. And so we can

highlight that and start to cheerlead people and encourage

them, gamify in a little bit of a way in a sense to, to maybe

add a sense of belonging or competition to it. So for

example, if you reach certain standards, you will receive a

badge on your profile. And so that's kind of the pull of this

as well, is that they'll get that badge on their public

profile so that musicians can see that they are

female-friendly, or LGBTQ-friendly, so that they

know that they're welcome and that they're going to be

comfortable there. And so if that's important to that venue,

then then that might be something that would draw them

in as well.

So they can see that they're friendly, and also

maybe like a pay equity badge. Is that what you're what you're

envisioning?

Exactly.

this, this organization consistently, pays

equitably, and presumably, hopefully people won't try and

end run around that by you know, paying through your system and

then a little extra on the side for the people that they want to

incentivize.

I don't think they would go through that much

trouble. But, so, we're focusing on two elements. One is the pay

equity and the second is the hiring frequency. So making sure

that they're being brought onto the stage as often as others and

being paid equitably as well.

Right? Because if you're not on the stage, you

certainly aren't getting paid.

Right? Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're getting

paid the same if you only get on there three times for every

seven times that someone else does.

Do you envision yourself facilitating

relationship building on either side of this or across even

across that, that fairly sizable gap between venue owners and,

and performers?

Yes. And here's the reason why. Because as I

said, everything that we have built is simply a reflection of

the listening that I did. And that's what people told us is

that the relationship was the most important thing, it is the

sole reason that they were in the business that they wanted to

help musicians grow. And musicians know that being in

good relationship with the venue, makes their job happy and

enjoyable. So the relationship has to sit at the center. And

the way I've looked at it from the beginning, is that what is

causing poor relationships?And what is causing negative power

dynamics? And those are, those are two different things,

really, the first is for the poor relationships, these are

miscommunications, these are bookings that get double booked,

they're, you know, information that gets lost; someone that

gets dropped off an email thread, or they text them and

then they actually started in an email chain somewhere else, that

information gets lost. Our system prevents that from

happening, or at least reduces the likelihood significantly. So

for example, one of our, one of my favorite musicians on the

site, who's been with us since the very beginning. And he's a

really dear person, and a very good, hot, up-and-coming

musician, really believes in what we're doing. He was telling

me a story about how he was in a hot music town. And he had

played in his hometown a few hours away a few weeks prior,

had a great show, sold it out, and then went back to where he

was living in this hot music town and continued to play gigs,

and got a call one night where the venue said, "Where are you?

we have a line out the door, and you're supposed to go on in 30

minutes." And he said, "I don't know what you're talking about,

I don't have anything on my schedule. I don't have any

recollection of us talking about this. And I'm playing another

show in half an hour." And that relationship was ruined. And it

was a really great venue in his hometown. And he also then let

down fans as well. So that was a real catastrophe. And it was a

simple scheduling error. And that relationship was ruined. So

we have the opportunity to build relationships by reducing those

nagging details and the details that get missed that can that

can kill a relationship. Now on the other side, you've got the

power dynamics. Now the interesting thing about the

power dynamics is that musicians and venues have come together

like never before, throughout the pandemic in order to survive

and seek out funding. So you know, you have the Save Our

Stages Act, you've got NIVA, was formed. And a lot of other

musician aid organizations throughout the pandemic. And so

they've really come together, and they've gone through an

extremely humbling couple of years together. So I think that

that's a really great basis to reconstruct and democratize live

music. And so with that, the best way to equalize those power

dynamics is through transparency, and simplicity.

And so just simply opening up calendars. So both sides can

see, hey, I've got this available, I've got this

available, and then being willing to maybe have that hard

conversation or message, say, hey, you know, yeah, we do have

that date available. But it's not really a great fit for your

band sound right now, or it's not, your band isn't at the

level that we need it to be, or you don't have the draw that we

need. And so to be able to have those conversations, but it

really starts with the transparency first. Also pay

transparency, what am I going to get paid? I'm going to drive out

here with five other people and set up all of this gear, and

we're going to spend three to five hours of our time and

probably get paid less than we want to get paid. But what is it

that we're going to get paid? If they get to the end of the

night, and it's significantly less than what they thought they

were going to get paid, then you have damaged relationships

again, and you have power dynamics at play, because the

venue has total control over that. And the musician, the only

power they really have is to walk away and not come back

again. So those are some of the things we're trying to equalize.

the ways--I'm going back to this this peer pressure thing-- and

the ways in which venues.... having relationships with other

venues that aren't purely competitive, or musicians having

relationships with other musicians that aren't purely

competitive, but instead are collaborative. So that you know,

a musician-- and I know this happens in a lot of industries--

musicians will tell other musicians, "hey, I had a

terrible experience at that venue, I wouldn't work there if

I were you." or or a venue sitting down with another venue

and saying "okay, so we aren't even getting the opportunity to

book Black musicians because they're not coming to this town.

What are we going to do about that? You know, how are we going

to make this a place where we can book, this great act that we

want to book, but the nearest they ever come on their tours is

300 miles.

Yeah, the, and that was, I didn't mention this.

But in my interviews, venues repeatedly told me that

diversity was something they would like to improve on their

stage. And they didn't know how. So the search function where you

can actually prioritize, or sort for that. It's not going to

eliminate other options. But it will allow you to infuse that

into your search results a little bit more, was a direct

response to venue saying that that was important to them, but

they didn't know how to do it, and they didn't have a function

to make it happen.

It'll be interesting to see how that

works. And I'm thinking about the parallels between that and

the startup world where people are forever claiming that the

problem is a pipeline problem. We can't, we can't hire more

diversely, because there's just nobody qualified. And everybody

is looking at them, like, are you kidding me?

Yeah, you know, it is, it is interesting. So for

example, I went through great lengths to try to find people

that were, you know, not just like me, I put on every single

job posting women, people of color, LGBTQ communities.

Applications welcome. And put in our mission, I posted it to

Women Who Code and, and also looking at the results of all of

the qualified applicants. 80% of them were still white males.

So-- or from India--, that there is also a lot of that in the

coding world, but but the majority of them were white

males. So it is an interesting issue. And one we have to

some friends that graduated college with me, who went

directly into tech and have stayed in tech. And they've

actually said that in the last 10 to 15 years representation of

women, specifically in tech, has gone down. That they have fewer

female colleagues than they did when we graduated, which is

fascinating. My college graduation, my 25th reunion just

happened. So that's-- I'm old. But but it is interesting to me

that the amount of trouble getting into and staying in the

industry, it seems to have actually increased since then.

So what I'm curious about is what, what's your favorite thing

about this project? You know, you we've been talking for a

while now. And, and you, you have all this very carefully

thought out stuff, but I'm an intensive. And so I want to hear

what really brings you joy about this.

Oh, boy. There is just so much.

And I know you're in the middle of a lot in your

life right now. So I get it. But also like, I know that there's a

lot about this that lights you up, and it just gets you

excited.

Well, my initial response would be the

diversity piece, because I think it's truly unique. And I've

never seen any other place doing something like it. And it seems

like an obvious answer to a very critical problem of the pay gap

in in our nation for for these historically marginalized

communities.

Do you think could become a model for other

industries?

Oh, absolutely.

Like, do you think the tech industry can borrow

your technology or your model or your view or something and

improve their record?

Yes, absolutely. So in fact, we have

nine different features on our site that are patent-pending

right now. And that's one thing that I will never put guardrails

around. Because as soon as I had the idea, I thought "this needs

to be shared." So I'd like to share it with as many people as

possible even if that means, you know, creating a widget or

actually letting people copy the code. I think that it is

something that is really vital for the fabric of our society to

change, is to have a little bit of that structural help. And

again, that data because once we have the data, we can start to

respond to it a lot more. So I think that the diversity piece

is, is one of the most exciting pieces of this for me, in terms

of the potential it could have to go into other industries and

make change. And it will be so quantifiable and trackable that

we'll really be able to see the impact that it's having. I think

that the second piece would be the tour routing tool. It is

the-- it's like an entire site on its own. And there's nothing

like it that currently exists. So I think that that would be

the the second most exciting piece on this site.

If you imagine yourself, you know, this

business, five years, 10 years out, and like Oprah-level, like,

"you get a car and you get a car" kind of impact on not just

the music industry but more more broadly than that, what's the

biggest level of impact you can dream of for this business right

now?

I think the biggest level of impact, in my

mind that this business could have, is that like Airbnb, or

Uber, that it would completely change how we think about

accessing a certain element in our life. And one that is, in

particular, extremely important to our well being. Which is

music and arts. Getting a taxi, it definitely does improve your

life, if you're trying to get from point A to point B, and,

you know, it's raining out. But music has a way to transform

communities and cultures and, and an experience and a memory.

And so I would love if, if this tool allowed people to say,

"live music is completely accessible to me, I can just go

on the site and find the live music. That's the right fit for

my venue, my event, my corporate event, my wedding, my birthday

party, my kids' party." And so that we now create, and again,

this goes back to the third part of our mission, which is to make

any city a Music City, do we start to percolate music through

our life in a way that it was originally intended to be. I

mean, when when you go to other cultures, live music is a part

of people's everyday life, or at least their weekly life, it's

not necessarily an expensive thing that you have to be, you

know, kind of like a foodie type person for food or like a, I

don't know what the equivalent would be for music, a music-y

kind of person to go out and have those connections. The

original mission statement was to ensure that the soul-fueling,

people-connecting power of live sound can thrive, not just

survive, post-pandemic. And those words, to me, really speak

to what live music is. Because I never considered myself, you

know, like a live music junkie, I don't know the names of all of

the greatest bands, or the indie bands, or the niche bands. And

I've never been one of those people that's like, "Oh, I knew

that band back before they sold out or before they got everybody

loved them." I just love music. And I always felt a little

self-conscious about that, like, I wasn't really cool enough,

because I didn't know the names of bands, I didn't spend my last

dollar going out to live music on the weekends. But when you

interact in other cultures, whether it's a tribe in Africa,

and they're, they're singing in the complete pitch black with

their kids at night under the stars, or they-- or, you're at a

dinner party with four people around a French dinner table,

and somebody breaks out a guitar and they just start playing and

and then everybody's singing and dancing by the end of a four

person dinner. Those things don't happen as often in

America, and I think that they can and I would like that to be

the impact of this, that live music is really accessible. And,

embedded in our culture in a different way. In a way that is

more natural to human beings. You know, I am married to a

musician and we've been married for 10 years. And all of his

friends, he even has a lot of French musician friends where we

live in America. And and we still don't have the same level

of break out your guitar, break out your music, start singing

and dancing, like we do when we are in France and we are not

around professional musicians. And I think that that's a really

interesting dichotomy that I'd like to get to the bottom of. So

that's the impact I would be honored to say came from this

business.

I love that vision. I'm reminded of being in India

with my father's family, and we were all sitting around it was

my father's mother's hundred and... I think it was her

hundred and first birthday, right around then... and the

whole family was gathered. And it just sort of turned into a

talent show? Like everybody had a thing that they did, they got

up and danced for a half a song or they danced and someone else

played the drums and somebody else sang. And like, that kind

of thing is a thing that I don't experience here. Well, I want to

say I did when I was embedded in folk music culture,

specifically, but not otherwise.

Well, you know, this story that really drove me

at the beginning of this was sort of a connection between a

story from a venue that I was speaking with, who had traveled

internationally, toured in Europe, and I told him that, you

kow, I had gotten stuck in France, and I was married to a

French musician, and all of that throughout the pandemic, and,

and the story that really drove me was I was in Ireland with my

mother, and we were out in Dublin at a pub. And there was a

group of men of all different ages, just a lot more

intergenerational, a guy, must have been 80 years old, and he

just stands up, and he puts his arm in the air, and he starts

singing this Irish ballad. And then all of the young men they

join in. I mean, it was just so chilling, to see the way they

connected young and old, and who knows what the occasion was. But

it was so powerful. And they were not shy or timid about

sharing that with the rest of the bar. And I thought, that is

what I would love for my community. I'd love to be able

to go out my door, and go down to the local bar, and have

people break into song. And I mentioned that to the venue,

that I was speaking with, and he had toured through Europe

extensively. And he said, the culture is completely different

around music there, it is much more like a family, even when

you're professional music going and playing at a professional

venue. He said, they welcome you in, they offer you a sandwich as

soon as you walk in the door. And it's really just intertwined

and interconnected. And I think that we have a lot of space that

we could fill with something like that.

It really is all about the relationship.

on time, and I want to bring us to a close. But thank you,

again, for taking the time, for spending the time to tell us

about about who you are and what you're doing and why you're

doing it and how you're doing it. Because my hope is that with

the interview episodes of this podcast, that we're really able

to talk about who has the power, and how to shift the power, so

that, so that more people, more people can get their needs met,

more people can get what they want, more people can get what

they need, and there's more joy and pleasure in the world.

That's, that's the bottom line goal of this whole entire

enterprise. So if people want to want to find you, want to engage

with your work in some way, where can they find you?

So first, I would go to AmptUp.com. And

that's a-m-p-t-u-p dot com. And fill out a profile. Right now

we're focused in the Austin and the three city area around that,

and then Portland and Seattle, but you can join and you can

book a tour into those areas. And then when we come to your

area, then we'll be able to connect with you. And you can be

our VIP launch group for that area. And then second would be

on Instagram, at AmptUp Music on Instagram or Facebook, you can

join the conversation there.

Excellent. Do you know where your next couple of

launch cities are so people can start to get excited?

Austin. And then we're going to be moving out to Dallas,

Houston, San Antonio, and then over towards New Orleans. And

we're going to head up towards Nashville and up that Eastern

Seaboard. And then on the West Coast side from Portland and

Seattle, will start heading kind of down and up, we might touch

up to Vancouver BC. We already have a musician there who is

actually from Austin. So we might take that opportunity to

connect with that really cool town, and then travel all the

way down the west coast as well.

Okay. All right, I guess the Upper Midwest, will

just have to wait a little bit longer. But I'm sure you'll get

there.

Well, I will say that that we will go where

the people want us to go. So if there is a large group of people

already in one area, then we'll prioritize that area because,

like you said, it's all about relationships. And our community

is the most important thing to us. So if we have people that

are there, ready to champion this and make it a reality, then

we'll go there.

So it sounds like if people are excited about you

and what you're doing and your project and they are either a

musician or a venue, they should go to your website and sign up

already so that you can start to see those data points pop up.

You bet and reach out to me as well. Just

let me know. And I'll keep an eye out for it.

really a joy to talk with you. You always have such stimulating

conversation. So I really enjoy where you take the conversation.

Thank you so much. Bye.