Over my summer break I was in Music City, Vegas, NYC, Europe and Montreal. It was a productive and diverse four months – I had time to invest in some personal career development by attending conferences and seminars in the weeks before and after my full-time nine-week summer internship with Round Hill Music. As well, I was able to continue to advance my collegiate marketing initiative with Stem, balancing it all with some amazing summer travel with friends and family. It was such a memorable summer and I’m happy to finally be able to post this recap now that I’m back on campus to complete my senior year.
Trojans Take Music City
After finishing up with exams in early May, I stuck around in LA to watch friends walk for graduation at SC. Then, I was off to Nashville to attend the annual Music Biz Conference for my second year. I was proud to represent USC at the conference as the school’s Student Ambassador.
It turned out to be a really awesome trip because my Dad happened to be in town to attend an annual meeting. We coordinated and met up for lunch at Smashville’s best rib joint! Later that night, after the conference had ended, we went out to see up-and-coming rock band Greta Van Fleet. We were joined by my classmate Kidder Erdman and Paul Young, the program coordinator of Music Industry at USC. Both Kidder and Paul were also attending the Music Biz conference, so together we had an opportunity to enjoy some great food, music, and the best that Broadway Avenue has to offer!
ABC… Always Be Closing!
I attended Dale Carnegie’s renowned three-day course in Relationship Selling with instructor Emil Everett. One of the cool aspects of a sales training program like Dale Carnegie’s is that every person is taking time out of their career to improve. Almost all of the attendees were enrolled by their employers, so being the “young guy” in the room I really appreciated the supportive atmosphere cultivated in our classroom — people were always gracious with their critical, but constructive feedback.
In the finals of the Sales Talk Competition, I lost to Jordan Decker, a PA guy who I bonded with despite the fact he’s a Flyers fan. As heartbreaking as the loss was, I made sure to take a picture for good humor with the championship plaque I didn’t win.
A highlight of the experience was hearing about the classic “Always Be Closing” sales motivation speech given by Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glenross.
An Intern’s Dream…
I completed a full-time, nine-week summer internship in NYC at Round Hill Music. Round Hill is unique in that it’s a leading independent music publishing company, while it is also a successful private equity firm with a focus on investing in diverse music catalogs.
Through the course of the internship, I had the chance to gain experience in several areas of the company. In the early weeks, I carried out a mandate tracking and administering royalties across several music catalogs recently acquired by Round Hill. Later on, I put my Excel skills to work doing classic financial modeling analysis for some music catalogs under due-diligence for potential acquisition. And, building upon my experience at Stem, I dug deeper into the best metadata practices.
Last summer I shared an “internship highlight” on this blog about the skills I gained at Stem as a dog-walker (Geronimo ❤, Velo ❤), so I thought it would be appropriate to continue the “highlight” tradition this year!
With only a few weeks remaining in my Round Hill internship, an intern’s dream came true. During week five, I was blessed with the arrival of a young new intern who I adopted as my own “direct report”. You can’t make this shit up… I was an intern with my very own intern!
A shout out of thanks to Josh Gruss, who gave me the opportunity to join Round Hill and Michael Lau, who mentored me from day one. Thanks, as well, to the entire Round Hill staff who were all so welcoming to me.
Vegas Triple Header
Throughout last spring, I spent a lot of time working with Sean Kennedy, Noah Arin, and Jack Koplin. They guys were getting ready to launch SOZ, a new artist duo featuring Sean and Noah.
Over the course of the summer, I made three separate trips to Vegas to launch SOZ. There’s a lot to share on this, so I’ve dedicated a separate post entitled, What Happens In Vegas Never Stays in Vegas.
Through the Binocs…
Yes, I’m adding my first-ever “Through the Binocs” section where I’m throwing in miscellaneous summer highlights and observations — a nod of respect to Big Doug (pictured next to me in the photo below) and his world-famous travel blog.
An event to remember– that epic sunny Saturday afternoon with family and Triple Crown winner… Justify!
An interesting anecdote… After the Belmont Stakes race, I found myself in a YouTube rabbit-hole watching highlights of past triple-crown winners, and then stumbled upon an article in the New York Times about a famous race caller, Dave Johnson. Back in the 70’s, Johnson’s hallmark line, “Aaaaand down the stretch they come,” became so famous that he trademarked it! Aside from the emotion he delivered every time he made the call, the idea that an audio clip can be trademarked has been the foundation of my studies in the Music Industry program at USC. The famous call seemed only so appropriate as the title for this blog post given that I’m heading into the home stretch during this, my senior year.
I thought it might be tough to top the excitement of starting the summer with a Triple Crown weekend, but as it turned out every weekend throughout the summer was special. It was a blast hosting old friends from Montreal, USC friends, and others out on Eastern Long Island…
And, of course, an unforgettable Europe trip with 20 friends from SC. We visited Cinque Terra, Portofino, St. Tropez, Monaco and Barcelona. I also included a pic of my spontaneous meet-up with Matt Steinberg and Eric Schwartz in Barca!
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Now I’m back to LA and looking forward to continuing my work representing Stem, while also starting my new project curating intimate concerts on behalf of Airbnb Experiences. Of course, I’m also finishing up my senior year at SC.