# Eric Sheinkop on Dyslexia, Authentic Marketing, and Being Acquired by Coca-Cola

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Soundstripe
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm3tzLEqCxc
- **Дата:** 15.04.2026
- **Длительность:** 1:11:31
- **Просмотры:** 49
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/46354

## Описание

Eric Sheinkop founded Music Dealers at 16 and scaled it into a licensing platform that placed independent artists inside campaigns for Coca-Cola, the FIFA World Cup, and the Olympics. Jeff and Eric talk through what dyslexia taught him about spotting patterns in broken industries, the PE deal that eventually cost him the company, and what he's building now at The Desire Company, connecting brands with verified subject matter experts.


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## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Hey, I'm Jeff Perkins. These are the Soundstripe Sessions. This is a podcast about the space between inspiration and execution. That's where the real story lives. We sit down with worldclass creators and storytellers to unpack the craft, the creative decisions, the roadblocks, and the breakthroughs that shaped their best work. For anyone who makes things and wants to make them better, Today's guest is Eric Shinop. Eric started his first record label at the age of 16. He went on to found Music Dealers, a global music licensing company that put independent artists inside Coca-Cola's biggest campaigns, including the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup. Along the way, he picked up a Billboard 30 under 30 award, a Cane Lion, a Cleo, and an Emmy. Now he runs the Desire Company where he connects brands with verified subject matter experts to create content that moves people from browsing to buying. He's also a published author. His book is Hit Brands: How Music Builds Value for the World's Smartest Brands. I have a copyright here. Uh he's a TED X speaker and he's a Soundstripe customer. So we love that. So Eric, welcome to Soundstripe Sessions. Great to have you here. — Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure. big fan of the platform and of yours obviously. So, — well, we appreciate that and appreciate you taking the time. So, I like to start these interviews going back to your origin story and uh like I just said in the intro, you got an early start in your career. So, talk a little bit about your upbringing, where you came from, and then how you at a very young age got into the music business. Yeah. So, since I was little, music was really the only thing I cared about in life. Like, besides family, that was it. Like, that was all I wanted to do. That's what my world was dedicated to. Um, so I studied it. I studied, you know, a ton of instruments. Uh, I was in bands since third grade. Uh, everything from orchestra to jazz bands to rock bands to sca bands. Um, and then in high school, early high school, uh, overnight I went from a small private high school in downtown Chicago to literally the next day an inner city Chicago public high school. It at the time it was one of the most violent in the city. Uh, metal detectors when you walk in. So, it was a completely uh, different world. And the one thing that I got so excited about and that stuck out to me was the artists and the music was what dominated the hallways. It's what dominated the classrooms. Like all of a sudden, um, at my other school, there was a handful of kids who were into music. And at this new school, it felt like there was just music flowing everywhere. Um, everybody was artistic. Everybody could rap. Everybody could sing. Everybody could make beats. Um, but what I noticed is none of them took it seriously because there was no outlet for it. There was nothing that anybody could do with it. And that's when I decided I was like, "Oh, well, I could just create a record label and a platform and I could record this and produce this and put this out. " And so that's what we did. So I would, you know, skip a bunch of class and kids would come back to my place, which was a couple of blocks away, and we would record and uh, you know, by the end of the week, I'd have it pressed up on a CD and we'd be selling it and it was awesome. It was a great experience. But that was the that was the initiation of actually entering the business of music. And then I carried that uh company throughout college. and then it turned into my next bigger company and all of that. So, it was cool. — So, what drove you from the private school to the public school? — Oh, not being easy to process. — They uh um I actually just gave a TED talk where I talked about this. I was just not easy uh for them. I did I had, you know, pretty severe dyslexia, which wasn't commonly understood at the time. and uh they just didn't like things that were done outside of the box and I was quite outside the box in a lot in a lot of different ways. Uh so got the boot and um the next day as you know what was initially meant as punishment, my dad the next day put me in this new high school. Um and it was quite an experience, but it was cool. But sounds like it was like almost the

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

best thing that ever happened to you. You probably wouldn't be — where you were today without that. Uh, talk about some of your early musical influences. What did you know because you started so young getting into music, but what were you listening to at that point? — I mean, Jimmy Jimmyi Hendris was my all-time favorite. Like um that that's what I really listen to. But at the same time like I was obsessed with entrepreneurs in the music industry more than the musicians necessarily. Like I connected with their experiences, their stories more than the music a lot of times. Like everybody from Leor Conn and Russell Simmons and like watching people create, you know, Seymour Stein and these are all people who became mentors of mine eventually which was really cool. But growing up in Chicago, we didn't have a music industry. So, it was a lot of just reading and um getting that information and living their lives through the stories that I could come across rather than seeing it. It's not like New York or what Atlanta is now or LA like we didn't have a real infrastructure for music. So, um I was always obsessed but at uh arms distance and that was all I wanted to do was get in the door. I did get a early internship about 13 years old at R. Kelly studio uh working for R. Kelly and then uh worked for him in his home studio for a bit which was a whole other podcast story. Um but uh but yeah, Chicago was a very interesting place cuz we were we were uh starved I would say and we wanted that life. We wanted it but it wasn't at our fingertips. So we had to create it. — What did your parents do? Were they into music or were they entrepreneurs? — My father was a orthopedic surgeon. So he was in medicine. Um, and my mom was a teacher and jewelry designer. Actually, she makes all my jewelry. So, — Oh, nice. — Uh, she is an artist. Um, so I got a lot of the art from her and then uh no, my dad was never like he was supportive of me learning music and studying music, but he never thought it would be a real industry. Even like I one of my favorite stories is uh my company we started making like $10 million a year and he was like you know it's probably time you think and I was young and he was like it's probably time you think about getting a real job sometimes like okay so I can make 1% of that working for somebody cuz that's the way that you know it's supposed to be done. So yeah it was different. — Yeah that's amazing. Now you ended up in a McDonald's commercial wrapping. — Yeah. — When you were like 16. Tell us about that story. — Yeah. So that I was probably about 20 at that time. Um but so I launched, you know, this record label and I went to college and then my freshman year of college when I was running it, I had a show on the radio uh in Madison, Wisconsin and Napster launched. So Napster killed record labels as we knew it at the time. Um, absolutely destroyed it overnight. Like we went from going to the record stores and buying CDs to music was just free at our fingertips. So, I was looking for different ways to make money with music. And I was throwing shows primarily, like I was throwing a lot of concerts. And at one of the concerts that I threw, a producer came up to me and he said, "Hey, I'm working on a Kellogg's commercial. " Uh, one of the songs that you that your band played, I want to use it. And I was like, "Well, what does that mean? " And he's like, "Well, every time you watch a commercial, it has music in the background. It's a very important part of advertising. " um I'd like to use that song. And I was like, "Well, do you pay for that? " And he was like, "Yeah, of course we pay for that. " And I was like, "Absolutely. " Like, so that's what I started focusing on. Not entirely, like I was still throwing a lot of parties, throwing a lot of shows. And then started learning very slowly what licensing was. And then and I wasn't seeing a lot of money from it. It was like, you know, a little bit I was taking a manager's fee off of the bands that I would manage. And then I was in uh Leo Bernett and I had provided background music for a McDonald's commercial and there was a famous rapper that was supposed to rap on it and he didn't show up. And so McDonald's was freaking out. The clients at McDonald's were freaking out. Leo Bernett was freaking out. Um and I was like, "Well, you don't need a famous rapper to rap on it. Nobody's going to know who it is anyway. Like anybody could rap on it. "

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

And somebody said, "Well, if anybody could rap on it, why don't you rap on it? " I was like, "I will happily rap on it. " So, literally went into the booth. I hit record, walked into the booth myself, wrapped on the McDonald's commercial, it went to air, and it was like the greatest thing that ever happened to me. And that's when I actually learned about licensing because these royalty checks started coming in, and I thought it was a mistake. I didn't know what they were. They kept on paying like every quarter. I just kept on getting these checks and I was cashing them as fast as I could, like thinking they were going to realize they made a mistake. Um, and my brother, he's 13 years older than me, he's a financial adviser, and he was like, "Where where are you getting this money from? Where is it coming from? " And I was like, "I think they keep on accidentally paying me the same for the same commercial. " Um, and he was like, "But why are they different amounts? " And I was like, "I have no idea. " So he looked into it and he's like, "These are called royalties. This is a real business. See if you could do it again. " And I did it again. And then he was like, "Do it again. " I did it again. And he was like, "All right, stop everything else you're doing. Just focus on this. This is a business. This is called licensing. Get your music into commercials. " I was like, "Okay, that's what I did. " — Yeah. It's very similar to other uh people I talked to. I was talking to this uh filmmaker and he was doing um concert films. So he's going to all kinds of concerts and with a big setup and he's filming the concerts and he was making like no money because you know when you're in you're trying to make more art it's just hard to make money and then one time he got a corporate gig and they wanted him to film like a company meeting or something and cut it into different clips and they paid him a ton of money. — Yeah. — And he was like this is where I'm going to spend my time. I'm gonna — Exactly. — These corporate guys have deeper pockets than uh the musicians out on tour. So that's a — Yeah. Well, that's I mean all of a sudden I realized like you know who is not going to steal music? McDonald's. McDonald's music. Like kids in their dorm room, yes, they're going to steal music all day. You can't get that genie back in the bottle. Like they're never going to pay for music again. But brands have to pay for music. Uh and that was like the biggest light bulb moment of my life. That was awesome. — Yeah. And even at Soundstripe, it's still amazing because we have so much music out there and so many different ads. it becomes a significant revenue channel that is, you know, essentially very high margin for us because you it's all based on things we produced in the past. — Well, that's the thing. That's why I love Soundstripe, too, because you guys have the best model because you actually own the music, right? — You produced it for this purpose. Uh, with my uh licensing company, I was making deals with artists saying, "I will license your music. " And then we were splitting some of the royalties and it became very hard to track and I missed out on million literally millions and millions of dollars that we didn't get credit for because there were so many different writers and everything was confused and mine was non-exclusive. So the way that you guys are doing it is just the cleanest and most profitable way to go about it. — Yeah, it's I've learned a ton about the music industry in the last two years. Um, but man, it is so complicated. You know, music licensing is one of the more complicated things I've really ever learned about just because you have an asset which is the song, but then that asset has two components. It's the publishing and then the recording. So, and then you have different owners of the different components. So, then if you want to use that song in a television commercial, you have to get approval from everybody. — Yeah. and you have to negotiate with everybody and not everyone's going to want the song used in certain places. And so it's um and then there are experts who that's all they do is figure out how to navigate that. But it's not it's no joke. — It is no joke. And I would say that when it comes to like the royalty collection side of things, it's it stays intentionally confusing, intentionally muddy. like ASCAP, BMI, CESAC, like they are so antiquated with how they track. That's not by accident. That's because they get to keep the money that they don't know how to pay out properly. Uh so it is a very tough industry to not only to learn but then to really properly navigate for all the parties, for the artists, for the you know and like you said like one person, one bass player on a track from 15 years ago could kill a major commercial if they're like, "No, I don't like Advil. I'm not going to put my music in an Advil spot. " Like whatever it might be. — Yeah. It's super complicated that you know so some labels they do have what they call the holy

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

holies right they own everything but that those cataloges are not big — it's they're really small — um so it's that's why you know that's why we have a great enterprise business because people are just like — one-stop shop no licensing headaches — I told I' I've told our company I mean at first we were using you guys and others and then when we just saw how effective and efficient and like I saw there was no real room for mistakes. Whereas others like with music dealers 15 years ago, every once in a while CBS will still hit me up and like, "Hey, this artist is claiming that their manager uploaded the music without their permission and it was placed in 90210 remake. " And I was like, you know, that you just got to avoid that at all costs. It's complicated. — I know. So let's talk about the growth of music dealers. Would you say music dealers is kind of like the offshoot of the business you started very young? Is it did that kind of transition into music dealers? — It did. Yeah. I had a management company and then — um well record label that I turned into a management company that when I found licensing I went from managing four artists to 40 to 400 to 4,000. Um, and that's what became Music Dealers. — Okay. So, talk about the growth of that business cuz I know you were on the uh the fast company, fastest growing companies list. Uh, you had a deal with Coke. You eventually got acquired by Coke. Talk about uh take us inside that journey. Yeah, I mean what really happened was um I used to operate somewhat I didn't know what the word was but I was a music supervisor to an extent. So um commercials would go into production and I would go into the studio and I would sit there and I would watch the commercial and you know without music or with a demo track and then I would pull up from my library um which was not sophisticated. It was basically an Excel sheet. I would pull up music that I thought might work. And that's how I was placing these commercial these songs in these commercials. And then one day somebody said, "Hey, can I get access to your uh Excel sheet with all the music? " And I was like, "Why? " And they said, "Well, because if I have that, I don't need you to be sitting here. " And I was like, "Oh, well that would mean that I could do music for you and another agency at the exact same time. " And so I said that, you know, that was that's when I saw that scale could take place. It went from me being the guy providing the music to giving access to all of the music. And that's when I hired a programmer to build like a more interactive Excel spreadsheet. Started getting more musicians. It was originally was all Chicago musicians and then I started needing classical music and for Lexus commercials and I started needing all types of different music. So, uh we expanded that way. Then when it came to the you know the growth was definitely modest but then I officially started the company in 2008 and that was at the recession during the recession. And what happened during the recession is the ad budgets all got cut. So when an ad budget gets cut, what's the first thing that they cut in the ad is the music budget. So they went from wanting these massive songs to not having a budget for it. But what I had was independent artists whose music sounded as good as major label songs, as famous songs, but they were really affordable in comparison. So that's what kind of blew up. Then I took a bunch of investment money and VCs and private capital and all of that. And then uh that's a whole different story. And then you know it's interesting cuz you think you're growing so quickly. On the outside it feels like that but on the inside you're always behind on your numbers. Like you always projected that you were going to do more. So you never get to enjoy that growth. It never feels like you're really truly growing um as much as you are because you projected, you know, 10x and you did 6x, which is great, but nobody's happy because you projected 10x, — especially when you have investors. — Yeah. Exactly. So, you don't get to enjoy it and even really uh celebrate it or notice it as much um uh until you kind of step back or step away or you get those type of recognitions where it's like, oh, you're one of the fastest growing private companies in America. It's like, oh, okay, cool, great. We got to keep on we're not there. We're not nobody's happy with that growth. We got to keep on going. So, um, yeah, and then we became the largest provider to

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00) [20:00]

Disney, McDonald's, CBS, HBO, Coca-Cola, Viacom, um, grew internationally, and then ended up selling to Coca-Cola. — So, those are some pretty big brands that you were working with. How'd you get those deals? How I mean, that working through a big enterprise, that's not easy to land HBO and Lexus. It was uh ignorance was working in our favor. We had no experienced people. Um we had nobody to tell us that it's impossible or whatever. We would get ourselves in the room. Uh which was, you know, very hard, but um we were a cool company and people wanted to at least they were at least intrigued and wanted to find out what we were up to because nobody had done what we were doing at the time. And we also like I got a partnership with Live Nation. So, we would throw these monthly concerts at the House of Blues Foundation Room and I would invite all these clients out and we would do that in New York, LA, Chicago. Um, and we would just have these really cool parties. So, people would come and then they would be like, "All right, yeah, I'll set up a meeting. " And we would go in and they would say, "Well, do you have the ENO insurance and this and that? " We'd be like, "Yep. " And then I'd walk out and be like, "We need What does this mean? We need to get this now. " Um, but no, it was a lot of just not knowing what we were up against that allowed us to kind of uh slide in and it all like nothing started with a big deal. Everything was a was like we'll just test it out like let's just we'll run it once and see how it goes. And that's the thing with Coca-Cola. I met uh one of the guys at a party that I threw in New York and he was like so is all you do live shows? I was like, "No, no, no. We license music. Like, this is just to showcase our artists. " Um, he's like, "Oh, well, I'm actually working on a campaign right now we're really struggling with. I I'll send you the brief. " And it ended up being for uh FIFA World Cup. And in 5 days, we had I turned around like 15 demos and they were blown away. Um, and they said they had been working on it 6 months and getting nowhere with the majors. So, we landed that and um and then it was like the next thing, the next thing and then all of a sudden they came to us and said, you know, we're interested in investing in your company. And then and we were totally caught off guard by that. That was uh it was great. Wasn't planned. So you went to Wisconsin for college — and when did you ever work a traditional job or you just came out and started with music dealers and then just it went from there? — I had uh one month I was a host at a restaurant. That's the only traditional job I've ever had. — Was that a side hustle type job or was that you that was you were trying to do something different? — No, that was my summer job and then I was like no this is not for me. But no, I had uh I threw um I DJed three nights a week at Madison and that's you know that's how I made my money. Um and then I had my show on the radio which I did not get paid for but um and then I would record artists. A lot of the football team, they all thought they could rap, so they would pay for uh studio time in my dorm room um to come in and have me record them and produce them. Um but no, that was it. And then after college, I got uh a job at it was back through R. Kelly um and a studio called Slang Music Group in Chicago. They were doing all they have all the platinum remixes for like the early Beyonce stuff and um TLC and like all like Vince Lawrence who that was his studio. He's credited as founding house music, one of the founders of house music. And I'm not a house I don't really like house music, but um I was the hip-hop guy at the house studio. — So that's how I and I had the night shift. Um but that was my job and then I quit to do the licensing full-time. — Okay. Yeah. Your story is very similar to the Soundstripe founders in that when I had them on the podcast, one of the lines they said there, they said because they came out of they were touring musicians. They were on the road with bands. Um then they became the bus drivers for the bands because they realized the bus drivers made more than the musicians. So then they started driving the bus and at some point uh they started this business and you know similar to you no classical business experience. They didn't come out of a label or music licensing. They just um stumbled into it. And they made this point to me that uh they said if I actually knew how hard this was, I would have never gotten started. — But because I didn't know any better, I

### Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00) [25:00]

was never in business. I had never tried to do this. It was just a little bit of like, all right, well, I think I could do this. This seems like a good idea. my favorite salesperson. She just had no idea who she was calling on and like had she known, she would have been so intimidated, but she didn't care. Uh so she got these unbelievable deals because she was never scared. She was never intimidated. She was just, you know, ignorant in the best way. Um, and I still work with her to this day because she's just she's a she it's amazing. She doesn't know what she's up against and that's what works. — Now, how did you learn some of the things around, you know, raising money, operations? I mean, how did you get into that? Cuz you're here producing music. That seems to be your sweet spot. You're entrepreneurial, but how did you how do you pick up some of the skill set around actually operating a business and raising money and, you know, getting acquired? So, a lot of that was my brother. My brother had a financial advising company. Um, he set me up in his office when I started licensing and he was always very intrigued. 13 years older than me. He always had like a we shared a room growing up. So, we were like best friends, but he was also like a father figure to an extent, but also like an older brother. It was just it was an interesting relationship. Um, and then he was like, you know, the I've got some uh clients who might be interested in investing in what you're doing. And I was like, well, why would I do that? And he was like, well, because then you could get your own office, and then you could do this, that, and you could hire people. And I was like, okay. and he set up a meeting and I told them what they do what I did and we just came up like they were like well I mean I'll tell you exactly transparently they were like all right well if I were to invest uh $500,000 what would the valuation of the company be I was like 14 million like no idea why I said that didn't make any sense uh and they were like we'll value it at nine and I was like okay and That was the start. Uh there was zero reasoning behind anything at that time. Um and then he saw like oh okay this could be real and he eventually he ended up leave he ended up selling his practice to partner with me. So then he helped um you know he always said that I was like the he would set up the meetings and then I would be like the sizzle to come in and just talk about the art and then they'd be like yeah okay if the deal makes sense and it was great you know we ended up raising a lot of money. Um, and the royalties is really what makes it uh such an attractive deal for investors because it's just it just keeps on giving. Like — we have commercials and movies and TV shows we did 15 plus years ago that are still generating income. It's crazy. — Yeah. — And they love those type of things. — So you built the company up and then you got acquired by Coca-Cola. — Yeah. — How did that happen? I mean that's a huge deal to get acquired by massive global Fortune 100 brand. — Yeah. No, it was amazing. Um so I was living in London. I had an office in Chicago and LA and New York and um we were doing a lot of work with Coca-Cola and um started doing more for their live activations. You know, they're the largest sponsor of the Olympics of the World Cup. So at the Olympics, it's really interesting like they have a big presence in the athlete uh village. So all these athletes, they're like 18 years old and they come from all over the world and they have to be sequestered for 3 weeks and then some of them compete for like 30 seconds and that's it. Um so they need things to do in the athletes village. So Ko decided like, hey, we should build out like a recording studio and let them just have fun and whatever. So like I did that for them and we just kept on doing more and then what really happened again was like Koar realizing the value of owning the music not with the major labels involved the royalties that come from that and then if you think about the efficiencies um globally for a brand like Coca-Cola they have 3200 products 207 countries they're operating in they have uh just in Latin America three People touch their products three times a day. Every individual in Latin America touched their products three times a day. Water, milk, coffee, Coca-Cola, whatever it might be. I would go to Japan and I would work on uh milk sonic

### Segment 7 (30:00 - 35:00) [30:00]

identity for Coke. I would go, you know, to Malaysia and work on coffee identity for Coke. And then something we did was inside of our search platform, I started creating buttons for Fanta and for Sprite and for Diet Coke and it was the music that was pre-approved um on brand for all these brands and then they gave it to other agencies and all of a sudden and the efficiencies that it created, the cost that it saved, it was cheaper to buy us. So, at a certain point, it just became a math uh problem for them where they were like, "You know what? We can make money off of this. We could save money. The efficiencies are huge. There's no legal issues. It's not a headache. This small company is is, you know, we took over a lot of global work. Uh, which pissed off a lot of agencies, but it made their lives a lot better. So, it just kind of naturally happened. We didn't pitch them on it. We didn't even think about it. Um, but they set us up in their office in London, in Mexico City, in Atlanta, and it just worked very, it was just super smooth. — So, when they acquired you, you had other clients. — Yeah. — Beyond Coke. Sounds like KO was probably one of became one of your biggest clients, but you had other clients. Did you keep doing work for those clients or did you become kind of KO's music licensing platform internally at that point? — So both anything that was potentially a conflict we couldn't do obviously. Um but they said look if you need to be working with anything that could potentially be a conflict then we're not being we're not um the right partner. like we have so much music needs like so much needs to be done that you shouldn't have time but they didn't demand that we didn't they were very respectful of um you know truthfully they it was a great time at Coke they were investing in startups they invested in Spotify was the first one we were the second one they invested in a company called uh Misfit which sold to Fossil for uh $400 million and actually That founder is now one of our investors at the desire company. Like they put us in rooms together. We helped launch Spotify in the United States. Like they would put us in rooms to solve problems together. And they were so it was so interesting that the way I mean Emanuel Suge was the one who was running the um VC arm and the world and entrepreneurship and investment at Coca-Cola and he was such a forward thinker in this. But then they had a new CEO come in and all of that got cut. Like so they were, you know, that's how it is. Like every eight years these huge companies turn over and every initiative that they had going on, they stop and they start brand new ones that they're going to have their legacy and their name on. So it was a great time though. Um but no, they were really respectful. They never forced us uh just to work for them. Although we you know we had to make decisions that we had to put our we had to allocate our resources really primarily for Coca-Cola at some point. — So were you operating as a still as a standalone company just Coke was your owner? Is that how the structure worked? — Yeah, for the most part. Yeah. Like we were inside of KO's headquarters here in Atlanta in London, Mexico. But um they treated us as a it was it it's it was like the best blend of both worlds. like we were CO employees, but we weren't. And they, you know, Emmanuel, he set that up intentionally. He said, because if you're a Coke, if you're a proper Coke employee, you have to jump through every hoop imaginable to get everything, anything done. And people said, you know, I'm it's been long enough that you my people aren't there anymore. I could say like people would say, you got to be careful because Coke is where dreams go to die. Like, and they don't just mean like Coke. They mean these big corporations. They take on these small companies that are full of life and bringing with creativity and legal just continues to crush it and crush it and crush it. And so they didn't want that to happen and they warned us about it. Um and they said you don't want to be a full Coke employee. You want to be able to operate as though you're an outside so you get a slap on the wrist if anything goes wrong and that's it. Um so it was they set us up really well. — That's great. Yeah, I had a similar experience when I was at Park Mobile and we got acquired by BMW and we were super concerned because we're like this is a big German global OEM. — You know, we're a fastmoving, you know

### Segment 8 (35:00 - 40:00) [35:00]

entrepreneurial tech company, you know, what's going to happen? But it sounds like it was similar where they actually left us alone — and kind of let us operate and let us grow the business. And so it's nice when that happens. It does not always happen though, it sounds like. Then later on it kind of went the other way for you. — Yeah. And it was only because they gave us so much rope that um eventually I did make a horrible deal. And had they had full control and taken over everything, uh they never would have let it happen. But um yeah, it was exactly that. Like I think it was very rare. It would be very hard to replicate something like that. It is a dream scenario compared to a lot of deals that I've seen with acquisitions from bigger companies. But yeah, then I got myself into some trouble with a deal structure. — So then new CEO comes in, things shift a bit. Is that when you exited? — Yeah. So um well before that I had cuz I still maintained control uh majority control of the company and then I sold that to a private equity company and that wasn't like so that I could take all this money off the table. It was because I wanted to continue to grow the business and I wanted to do like you mentioned earlier like there are companies that just help navigate the major labels and get all the rights like I wanted to launch new divisions of our company. um which I there was no reason for me to do. I should have just stayed in my licensing lane and some custom music. But um I did and then that company came in and part of the big reason why they wanted in and they were willing to pay the price was because they wanted a seat at the table with Coca-Cola because they owned other companies that they thought they would be able to get into Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola did not appreciate that. It it it definitely hurt our relationship. Um and they saw that like we were kind of being bullied by this PE company. And then uh they were like, "Okay, uh we're going to start charging our artists. " And I was like, "What? No, we're not. Like we're built to support artists. We're built to pay out artists. " At this time, we had already paid independent artists $15 million. Like I was super proud of that. M. — And then they were like, "Well, we're going to start charging them $20 a month to be on the platform. " And, you know, in all honesty, that was definitely like the that was a good move. Um, you know, 20,000 artists, $20 a month, that's good money. And I refused. And I was very, you know, bullheaded. And uh, they were like, "Well, if you don't like it, there's the door. " And I was like, "No, what are you talking about? " I was like, "This is my company. " And the guy cut me off. He's like, "This is no longer your company. " — I was like, "Oh, no. You're right. " And uh and I got fired. — Oh, man. — That was uh But, you know, it it's good. Otherwise, I'd still be doing the exact same job working for this PE company. So, it's okay. — Yeah. It's probably it's a good lesson for you, too. It must have been super hard, though, given that you built that thing. I mean, that's your baby from elementary school to, — you know, your to your basically your first job and the thing you probably love more than anything in life beyond your family, right? — 100%. And I didn't even have much, you know, like outside of that. Like, yes, I had my parents, my brother, and my sister. That was it. Like, that was my life. Um, there was nothing else besides that company and it was my entire identity, my entire ego. I never had a a different email address than my company email address. I had no personal email. It just was my life. It's who I was. Um, so and like talk about it being your baby. Like what I used to say it was like watching somebody take your baby and then me be like, "Oh, no, no. You're holding it wrong and you're going to hurt it. " and them being like, "We know how to hold a baby. Don't worry about it. " Like, I've held tons of babies. I'm like, "Yeah, but this is a human life baby. Like, you're not holding it right. " And then all of a sudden, they suffocate the baby. And I'm like, I You can't do anything. It's it was rough. I was super depressed for like six months. Like, I was like, I couldn't even get my head around what happened. It was so unexpected of anything that would like I couldn't believe it played out like that. It was like you can did not see it coming. — Yeah. I always tell entrepreneurs, founders that, you know, at some point there's going to be an event. Hopefully, it's great for you, but

### Segment 9 (40:00 - 45:00) [40:00]

it's never the same after it happens. And the one thing you have to go into it just eyes wide open, there's going to be a lot of change here. And knowing that you're part of that potential change, like you may not be a good fit for the company going forward. — Yeah. Um, and just having to kind of accept that as part of the deal. And um, I I wish um, I had known that because I had a I had a very similar connection to what Park Mobile — and same thing. I was gutted when I got kind of pushed out of there. I just gutted like you — you months for me to try kind of get back get my head right. Uh, because it was I didn't run that business as long as you ran yours, but it was still like five years there. That was my baby. Like it was just like, — you know, we grew that thing. We won a ton of awards. We sold the business twice. It was like that was — like I — I thought I was going to stay there the rest of my career. — Yeah. — And then, you know, you sell the business and things go not the way you planned. So you I just it's always important as an entrepreneur like as you build your business to an acquisition or some big you know event after that happens just be ready manage your expectations. — Nobody ever told me that. — Yeah. — Nobody there was and like in Chicago you know not only did we not have a music infrastructure uh we didn't have a startup infrastructure at the time. So there was nobody who was advising me on that or telling me on that. So it really caught me off guard and and I didn't realize how normal that is, you know, that it actually happens. And that's like to your point, you tell everybody at some point there's going to be an event. Um I remember when an investor was like, "Well, when are you going to sell the company? " I was like, "What? Why would I sell this company? " — Sell the company? Who does that? — Yeah, this is the greatest job ever. Uh, so yeah, it was just I wish I had a little bit more understanding of it, but then you know, who knows? So, — yeah. Well, everything happens for a reason. And now you uh you have a new company — that's doing great. So, let's talk about that. So, you started the desire company. — Yeah. uh talk a little bit about the idea behind the desire company because what what's cool is you took um what are what was a real pain point for you in your life and you said I think I could build a business around that. So talk about where the idea came from. — Yeah, I mean there's a lot of similarities between the desire company and music dealers in terms of creating a platform to give opportunity to you know underrepresented artists or experts or you know whatever it is. So, um, there were two things that happened for me. Number one, I was watching the rise of influencer marketing, and I hated it. Like, I hated it. Um, and Judith, my wife, she wasn't my wife at the time, she was the global director of brand PR, communications at Coca-Cola. um and had I met her cuz she media trained me when we did the deal with Coca-Cola, but she was in charge of doing the first influencer program at Coke and she did the most unexpected thing where she hated it. Also, she wanted nothing to do with like the traditional influencer stuff. And she the first person that she signed was Britney Spears, but Britney Spears had just come off of a multi-year contract with Pepsi. And so, everybody was like, why on earth would you go to Britney Spears? She's just been on all these Pepsi ads. And but what was always in the paparazzi and TMZ was Britney Spears would get in trouble because she would be photographed backstage drinking Diet Coke. So, yes, she was being paid by Pepsi, but she actually loved Diet Coke. Um, so Judith said, you know, that's what I want, authenticity. Like, I want the people who actually enjoy our product, love our product, um, not because we're paying them. So, she did something amazing. She didn't pay any of these people. She got Taylor Swift. she got I mean just amazing names um for free because she gave them a product that they already embraced and loved and um so I saw that happening and at the same time I actually I broke my neck and I was I didn't want to take the pain medication so I was looking for topical or whatever homeopathic um anything I could do to help with the swelling and some of pain. So, I called a professional rugby player that I knew and I said, "You know, when you jam your neck," because he would he's told me before like they're like fracturing uh vertebrae all the time. Uh and I was like, "When that happens, what do you use? " And he was like, "Oh, Boofreeze. " Like, BoFreeze is like the

### Segment 10 (45:00 - 50:00) [45:00]

best thing. It will numb it immediately, you know, doesn't no negative side effects or anything of that nature. And meanwhile, looking online, like there's endless amounts of reviews, products, there's endless amounts of influencers telling you should do this or this or this. But I was able to pick up the phone, call an expert, and get the exact product to help me. And so it was those two things that we blended together to create the desire company was just working with true experts who could recommend authentic products that they actually use why they like them how to use it and who it's recommended for. And uh that's what we've turned into the desire company. So now we have the largest community in the world of cross-disciplinary experts. So, we have veterinarians, we have uh race car drivers, NASCAR F1 drivers, we have um NASA astronauts, we have NFL players, but besides like the NFL players, it's they're trainers, they're nutritionists, they're dieticians. Um you know, I started with uh just calling on my music contests. Um Beyonce's team, Rihanna's team, Fel's team, Pink's team. So, we got their choreographers and their makeup artists and their hair stylists and their directors and photographers. Um, so now we, you know, we power the world's largest retailers and we create all of the content uh for commerce that lives on their site, CTV, social, um, but not influencer stuff. It's a very different. — So, how does it work? So, the brands or the products or the retailer comes to you and said, "Hey, here's a product I have, it's uh it's a high-end mattress, you know, find someone to actually — find someone to give me a good review. Is that how it works? " — To an extent, yeah. Um, so we sign with Walmart and Sam's Club and Best Buy and Tractor Supply and um, what they do is they have something called a retail media network and it's where the majority of retailers actually make their money. They don't make very much money from selling products on their store. They make money from advertising. Um, so Walmart makes $4 billion a year off of selling advertising services to the brands that they carry in their stores. Um, so they have to give them a menu and saying like, "Okay, well, you have to spend $1 to$10 million a year with me. How do you want to spend that money? it on a television commercial, a buy one get one free in store, a cardboard cutout in the store, uh, um, a receipt on the back of a uh, I mean a coupon receipt, and now they're saying um, you should buy Desire Company video. It's an expert product review. how to um so we wake up and you know this week and today we got a new mattress but we do a lot of mattresses but we got uh you know this week it's been Ziplock M& M's Advil um uh bows um there's uh whirlpool we do flooring we do lights so we'll find carpenters or we'll find interior decorators or designers um so whoever is the right expert. We don't just have them talk about it. We have them use the product and use it for several weeks uh before they'll do the review and then we film a television broadcast quality review or how to like how to install it. Uh so it's used it for post-purchase as well. But it's really cool. It's all about brand partnerships with experts. — So you're actually uh really leaning in on authentic reviews by experts. So you're it's not just a paid talking head, right? It's someone you give them the product to use for a period of time and then you do the production, right? You're producing higherend videos of this expert who has experience with the product, which — feels like a much more compelling way to tell the story of the product than a generic television ad or um or something where it's a kind of a paid placement. I is that the idea that you're kind of really leaning in on authentic storytelling from like real people? — That's 100% what it is. It's an you know, it's a real person but who has elevated to the top of their career. So whether that is a doctor or um a carpenter, they are that's all they dedicate their life to for the most part. So when they talk about a product, it's so authentic the way they talk about it. We also have people who say, "Hey, I used it for a couple weeks. I don't want to uh stand behind this product. " And that's fine. Like that's part of our process, too.

### Segment 11 (50:00 - 55:00) [50:00]

So, we don't do every single product uh that gets sent our way. Although, we are typically able to find the right use case cuz we found like for instance, Sun-In is a um hair lightener from the ' 70s. Uh we gave it to a bunch of salon owners for a review and they were like I'm not going to stand behind this. It has a bad rep online. Like this that the other like I just don't think it's right for my audience. Not that they have to post it on their social or anything of that nature. But then I was talking to a hair stylist. He was like I love Sunonnet. He's like you just have to know when to use it and who should use it. It's not for everybody. So I was like that's perfect. That's what we want to hear. So he starts out saying look sunun is not for everybody but if these are the results that you want and this is the hair that you have then it's perfect. Um so it is uh very authentic which is even you know more important now in a aentic shopping and uh AI you know cutting through all of the reviews that are out there and finding you know real use cases that are supposed to be useful for people. But but the storytelling is the most important thing. And what makes storytelling great? Music, which is why we love Soundstripe. — Uh yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. You know, you are probably one of the most experienced people when it comes to picking songs for brands, right? I mean, you've done that your entire career. Um, one thing we hear from a lot of our customers is that that's the biggest pain point in the process is like, how do I find the right song? And, you know, our catalog, we've got 12,000 songs. You know, that's a pretty good amount. You should be able to find what you need in there, but then it's like the how. What are your tips? Like, how do you find the right song? Or, you know, it sounds like you're really good at just identifying it. Is it gut? Is it something else? Uh, talk a little bit about that process. Yeah. I mean, so first of all, I don't uh I'm not involved in the production process as much anymore. Our we have a pretty our biggest team is our production team. Um especially post-prouction. So they're the ones picking all the songs. But yeah, it's definitely an art um and science. I mean, the reason why music is so important in storytelling is it's the emotion that's supposed to pull the viewer into the screen, right? Like you know when the killer is hiding in the closet, you know when a couple's going to kiss for the first time, you know when it's about to rain, like before the thunder because the music um is what is the emotional pull for the viewer and it's also you know what I think that music has two roles, two primary roles. One is to emotionally connect. Um, and that's really sciencebacked, too. Like, if you get into it and you could make uh the viewer's heart lock on, I forgot what it's called. It's not entrapment, but it's something like that. But there's a scientific um thing that happens that you could actually make the viewer nod their head with the right song and the commercial and the right pace because your heart will lock onto the beat and then all of a sudden you're nodding to the commercial. What could be better for a marketer than that? The second piece is in today's, you know, fragmented attention spans and, you know, people not only have their phones out when they're watching TV, they have their computers, they have something going on in the background, they have this. No one's watching commercials anymore. So, if you have a song that could hit and pull somebody's attention back to the television, like again, that's a huge win for a marketer because they spend millions and millions on these television commercials, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions on the media buys to make people make sure people see them and nobody sees them. So, if music could do the job of getting people to actually look at the screen, that's a big win and I think that's a huge purpose. The second is bringing them into it to connect with what's happening on the screen. The way to go about it. I mean, there's like the obvious and then there's the really unexpected. And I think they both work really well. So, for instance, like in a battle fight in a slow motion battle, all of a sudden, if it's classical music, you wouldn't expect that, but it works really well to pull you in. It creates these other points for your brain. Like, every sec 7 seconds, your brain needs an audio something to pull you back. Um, so there's I mean, there's tons of tricks. I've written I wrote another book about it called Return of the Hustle: The Art of Marketing with Music. Uh but

### Segment 12 (55:00 - 60:00) [55:00]

we go into the science about it, but um and then also with the Desire Company, like we made everything sciencebacked from the beginning because of what I learned in music. Like when I started really learning about the science, uh that's when everything changed and that's when marketers actually start paying attention. — Yeah. Give it give an example of that. What are you doing that's science-based in at Desire Company? — So, we have uh one of our VCs, they owned a neuroscience lab and it's everything that we've ever done, we've put through this neuroscience um testing and you could get it's great cuz you don't need like a focus group of a thousand people or even 100 people. You need 10 people and they hook up these you could see the pupils change. You could see when people get upset, they when they're happy, when they're confused, um, without them saying it. And then what's really funny is if you ask them to recall or whatever and they write down, they will they will not tell you what they were actually feeling because they didn't recognize that they were feeling it until you say like, "Well, your chart says that you were confused at this point in the video. " And they're like, "Oh, yeah. I was kind of confused by that. " Um, so everything down to like when the product should be shown, when the face or the eyes of the expert should be shown, when the name and title of the expert, uh, what should be in the background, like all of that has been built on science. And again, just because of how effective we saw it with music and music placement. — So every video you're doing, you do you put it through that scientific testing? Through neuroscience, we developed a proprietary production process. So now we know for food uh what the right type of template for editing is for um electronics. What the right type of editing is for um anything uh working out or sports related like when to show the person, when to show their eyes, name, uh when to show the product, when to show the products. Uh finished uh results. All of that is completely sciencebacked. — And then the music choice. Do you say for food you want this kind of music? For fitness music. — Yeah, absolutely. It uh I mean and and you know too like music will change the way food tastes, — right? Like I don't know if you've ever done one of these things, but like um you could do wine tasting with music and it will change the flavor of the wine if you're listening to heavy metal or you're listening to blues. Um it really does. It's unbelievable how our how we're tuned into something that we're not recognizing. And the same thing goes with when you're watching something. You could be very turned off by a piece of food on camera if it's the wrong music or you could get hungry. — Yeah, that's amazing. I want to go back to something you said at the beginning of the conversation. Um, you were at a private school. You were you were dyslexic. — Yeah. — Or you are dyslexic and that, you know, led you kind of out of that school to a different school. um you know talk about the dyslexia a bit because I know you've talked about this in um in other podcasts and interviews um and give me a sense of you know because it seems like that dyslexia actually you know while it may have seemed like a disadvantage at one point it actually became an advantage for you in your career. Uh talk about that a bit. Yeah, I think as a kid and not really knowing what it was, it was horrible because you just know that there's something different and I would constantly get in trouble. Like even for turning the book upside down and reading upside down, which was how I had to process, I would get in trouble. So like that was horrible. And I would get like pulled out of reading class cuz I was like grades behind where I should have been and spelling I still can't spell. But um what it did and does for me is I'm able to recognize patterns that other people don't really see and I and like small as like a pattern in the whatever but or macro like patterns in industries and so that's what um I have been very good at in my career is identifying find like, okay, I see something that's happening here. It's been happening for a while. It's going to keep happening and it's only going to get worse because of X, Y, or Z. This is where we need to fill a gap. So, you know, the downside of doing that is you have no blueprint and you're not it's not like Lyft uh you know, launching after Uber where you have it all mapped out for you. uh you're the doing something that's never been done before is

### Segment 13 (60:00 - 65:00) [1:00:00]

challenging and if you're too early in the market, you might as well be too late. Like, you know, that's one of the things I've always struggled with too is like thinking trends were going to happen before they actually did. And like we were there with Desire Company where authenticity was not nobody cared about it for our first couple years. And that's what we were just beating our chest saying like but it has to be authentic reviews. Brands didn't care. Um it finally caught up and luckily we were able to stay in business long enough for it to catch up. But yeah, I think that all of these things and if you look at and I didn't know this at the time because again like I didn't know I was dyslexic until later in high school when they finally started putting it, you know, figuring it out what it what that really meant. But a lot of entrepreneurs actually are dyslexic. Um, and I think it is because you see things that other people don't see. The problem and Judith, you know, my wife has done a great job who's also my business partner. She quit Coca-Cola to to, you know, start the desire company with me. But, um, she reminds me like you can't get frustrated cuz other people don't see it. like you're going to have to take more time to explain it. And like that would be that was a huge problem especially when I was younger. I would get so frustrated. I'd be like, "How do you not see this? It's right here in front of us. " And they'd be like, "I'm I don't get what you're saying. " So that I don't know. But it's I mean, I'm glad I wouldn't I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't want my kids to have it necessarily, but I'm but it's but it worked for me. It's just really an inspiring story to hear uh that you know you had this cha what was perceived as a challenge but actually — it becomes really the catalyst for your career and your success. Um and you probably had you not had it you probably might be in a different you might be a surgeon like your dad right — I might be a hostess still. Um, another thing you just said that I think is interesting is it it's taken brands a while to catch on to authenticity. And I hear this a lot in my uh client conversations is one of the reasons people really like Soundstripe and are leaning to Soundstripe now is that we actually our music's all humanmade. And in a world where there's just there's infinite music out there to get now, but there's so much AI music and they hate that because they're like, I just want something authentic uh in my commercial or my video. And it sounds like you're on that same trend where that, you know, there's so many they're AI influencers now. Like these aren't not real people. So brands that are sort of going in the opposite direction towards more authenticity seem to be resonating even more with uh consumers. — 100%. I mean I used to really envy um the influencer companies because everybody was flocking to them and I was taking a hard stance against them saying like that's not going to do it for your brand. But it did. It got them spikes in sales so the brands didn't really care. Now, um it's a different story. It's been so saturated and with AI and nobody could tell like really like and that's just been in the past couple of months. Uh nobody could tell if it's a real influencer or whatever. They need the authenticity. It's not a it's not like well which do I like better? They need it. Um because just like every you know now when somebody realizes what a billboard is that it's an ad they don't pay attention to billboards anymore. So now when you've realized what influencers are and influencer marketing is they have a lot less credibility with the consumer. They you might still discover an interesting product from them. Um they still have a role but it's diminished for sure. And I think the same thing when it comes to music. Like a lot of people, they're like, "I don't care. I just need something and I need it fast. " Uh, but number one, there's a lot of backlash. Like if you saw what Coca-Cola did and, you know, always the real thing, but they did a completely AI commercial, like not a good look. — Um, and a lot I mean, a lot of these brands have messed up really out the gate with AI. So, I think it's it turned them off quite a bit. Um, especially with music. It's a sad thing. I It really is a sad thing. Like, I think about it all the time that this is, you know, we wanted AI to do our dishes and and wash our floors so that we can make art, not have AI and the first thing it tackles is art so that what? So, we have more time to wash our floors and do dishes.

### Segment 14 (65:00 - 70:00) [1:05:00]

like it it to me it's like horrible that that's what uh AI went after first was the art. Um but everybody I mean I guess that's why iPhones and everything are so successful because everybody thinks they're a photographer now because they could take a high quality picture and all of that. Everybody wants to be an artist. But um no, the authenticity of a real song will always uh pull more attention and especially if there's a real artist behind it and you could learn a little bit more about their story if you're that inclined like yeah I think you guys are in a good situation. A lot of licensing companies though I do not think are in the same situation. Well, it's interesting because I mean music essentially is data. AI is built on training on data, right? And so it kind of makes sense that you train on the millions and millions of songs that have been created and you could have an AI tool that generates music. Uh yeah, — I think where — what's interesting to me is that it if you're doing a project and you have the choice between uh oh, I could prompt to create a song or I can go to millions of songs created by real artists. — Yeah. — That are out there and available and usually are not very expensive to license for my project. Why would you sit there and prompt to create a song? Just like you're a video editor. All right, I'm doing a video about the beach. Or you just kind of pull up great humanmade music that's all out there that you can license easily simply. Um, it just it like in some ways I think the AI and music tools are fun because I could write a song about — Yeah. — You know, for my wife's birthday or my kids and that's super fun. — Um, — but when it comes to commercial projects, you're going to you're not going to prompt to create a song for your Super Bowl ad. And I think it's too scary now for brands because they don't know where that music came from. There's been so many the lawsuits because where do you think that the these uh um engines got trained? They got trained on all the major label music. So of course the major labels are going to sue. — Um but no, to your point, like my favorite example is my four-year-old Styles. He his favorite song is from um Despicable Me uh the you know Minions and it was uh Farel's song. It was like I'm having a bad day. So he was walking around singing I'm having a bad day and I was like that's horrible. Don't sing that. So I changed the song in AI to I'm having a really great day. No, Styles is So now he walks around singing Styles is having a really great day. Like that's a fun use of AI. Uh, but to use it for a project, I do not think you'd be I don't see it happening um much more anytime soon. I think the first players went out, they tried it. They're always, you know, they tried to be ahead and get attention for being the first to do it. They got in trouble. Um, and I think rightfully so. And, uh, now I think they're going to back off a little bit. They have to. — Yeah. And listen, I we use AI a ton within our product. um within our company, we use it to be more efficient, but when it comes to the music creation, we're pretty precious about that. Like human artists making real songs um that are just, you know, really high quality. All right, last question for you, Eric. Um if you could give 18-year-old Eric Shine Cop uh a piece of advice or nugget of wisdom, what would that be? Yeah, I think I'm still trying to to learn this one, but uh to not take everything so personally. It's not personal. Uh I was not good at taking feedback for a long time with my previous company because I always felt it was like an attack on me. And I think a lot of that does come with my uh dyslexia and how I was treated when I was younger that it was like wrong or stupid or like I was removed from class to go to like a lower reading level or like things like that. So I had a really hard time with uh things that didn't need to be confrontational. Like they weren't meant to be confrontational. They were meant to make the product better, the project better, um the vision more, you know, uh a better chance of success. And I would always take it as like it was a personal slander, a personal attack. Um so I think that lesson is one that I'm getting better at, but still, you know, still learning. I think that and then also what we talked about earlier that um there I guess it you know it's the fact that like I did not have a separation between

### Segment 15 (70:00 - 71:00) [1:10:00]

myself and my company and not that I'm talking about work life balance or anything like that. I'm just saying like you're going to sell or you're going to go out of business get fired or you're gonna, you know, whatever at some point and you should be aware of that so that you're you could absorb it a little better when it happens. — That's great, great advice, Eric. If people want to connect with you or learn more about Desire Company, where should they go? Uh yeah, the desire company. com or LinkedIn ericshup sin n ko p. Amazing. Well, Eric, this is a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for being vulnerable. Uh if you like this podcast, make sure to subscribe on YouTube or follow us on your favorite podcast platform. But thanks again, Eric, and we will see you next time. — Thanks so much. It was a pleasure. Soundstripe is a leading music licensing platform offering the highest quality music produced by award-winning artists and innovative tools to find the perfect song for your project. Soundstripe has over 100,000 audio tracks along with sound effects and video assets. We provide comprehensive licensing coverage. Whether it's a broadcast TV spot, social media video, or podcast, Soundstripe helps turn an average video into an unforgettable story. Learn more and sign up for a free account at soundstripe. com.