Music Mogul: L.A. Reid

L. A. Reid began his music career as a drummer. Then he co-founded LaFace Records, discovering dozens of future pop superstars. Reid is now one of the most influential executives in the music industry. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  It probably would have been better if I'd just kept my own company and not gone to work for anyone, because all of a sudden, I had a lot of money and not a lot of friends. And I was immediately attacked by the media and the industry, and I felt the cold shoulders from everyone. And I said, oh, my God, I've made a massive mistake here.

• 0:30Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 0:42Guy Raz?

  On today's show, how L.A. Reid followed his instinct for spotting talent and went on to create some of the biggest hitmakers in pop music.

• 1:02Guy Raz?

  So you know the song, right?

• 1:14Guy Raz?

  So this is, of course, Pink. And the guy she's singing about, when she says, "L.A. told me you'll be a pop star," she's not singing about Los Angeles. She's actually singing about a guy named L.A. Reid, who's one of the most powerful executives in music. He built his own record label, and then he went on to manage several others. But what he's really known for is finding amazing talent. He discovered Pink, in fact, and Toni Braxton, and Rihanna, and Justin Bieber, TLC, Usher, OutKast, and many others. And the thing about him is, he just seems to have this sense of what pop music fans want to hear. In that sense, it really began when L.A. was just a kid, growing up in Cincinnati

• 1:57Guy Raz?

  in the 1960s, and listening to a lot of music.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  Just hearing music on the radio, buying 45s, buying James Brown's records, old Motown records, or buying old soul records and bringing them home and just drumming on the table along with the songs. By the way, I thought I was gonna be the next James Brown. Didn't work out. So the truth is that I failed miserably.

• 2:22Guy Raz?

  Did you used to like perform in front of the mirror with like a, like a, you know, fake mic?

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, all the time. Yes. Fake mic, the broom, you know, the mirrors, you know, we did everything, you know, we had a great time growing up. And music was everywhere.

• 2:42Guy Raz?

  So how did you get into, into playing in bands? How did that happen?

• 2:45Speaker 00

  It's a really funny story. I played at home by myself forever and never played with a band. And then one day, I'm in my basement and I look out the window while I'm in the basement playing by myself, and there's a guy staring at me. And it startled me. So I stopped and I went outside and I said, hi. And he had friendly eyes. So, you know, the fear kind of went away. And he said, you play pretty good. There's a band around the corner that needs a drummer. You know, his name was Vince. And Vince took me around the corner to meet a couple of other musicians, a bass player and a guitar player. And, you know, I joined their band. It was really that simple. And one band led

• 3:27Speaker 00

  to another. And I think things started to get pretty serious by the time I was in high school.

• 3:33Guy Raz?

  So I read that this is around the time where, where you met somebody who would become this sort of transformational figure in your life. His name was Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds. How did you, how'd you guys meet?

• 3:44Speaker 00

  One night Kenny came to watch my band play. And about six months later, I got a call from him asking me, could he join my band?

• 3:52Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  And I said, nah. Nah, I don't think you fit.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  And then I met him a little while later in the studio. And in the session, Kenny Edmonds was writing a song and performing it. And I walked in while he was recording. And when he came out of the booth, I was like, oh, my God, that's Kenny Edmonds, the guy that called me and said he wanted to join my band. And I said, no. How stupid am I?

• 4:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Because he's pretty incredible.

• 4:20Guy Raz?

  So what'd you do?

• 4:21Speaker 00

  I instantly befriended him. He did join our band. We started to write songs together and made our demos that eventually got us a recording contract.

• 4:30Guy Raz?

  And the name of the band was?

• 4:32Speaker 00

  The Deal, D-E-E-L-E.

• 4:34Guy Raz?

  And you guys like started to get attention.

• 4:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, we had some notoriety for sure. Our first record was a song that I co-wrote called Body Talk. And it became a top five song on R&B radio. That was good enough to get us on tour with the great Luther Vandross, who allowed us to open for him.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  So pretty much overnight, life changed. And all of a sudden, we are on a massive stage in an arena with 15, 20,000 people per night.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  But the most fascinating thing was the talent that was around. Watching Luther Vandross every night and watching the musicians and the background singers and the entire productions that went into the shows. And I think I became more fascinated by the talent that we were around than I was about actually being a performer on stage. And I think that was probably the beginning of me sort of drifting into a talent finder and a talent nurturer, more so than a performer.

• 5:54Guy Raz?

  So how did you and Babyface go from being a band to saying, hey, you know what? Let's actually get out of this side of the business and go to the other side?

• 6:04Speaker 00

  We were signed to a label in Los Angeles called Solar Records. And the label was like Junior Motown. The head of the company, Dick Griffey, called after hearing some demos that Kenny and I did and asked us to come out and produce other artists on the label.

• 6:22Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  Before long, we started getting calls from all the record labels in town. And back then, you had to write the song and produce it. So we did it all.

• 6:31Guy Raz?

  How many, how many number one hits did you guys write?

• 6:33Speaker 00

  We had probably 35.

• 6:35Guy Raz?

  What?

• 6:55Guy Raz?

  How did you guys know what, what a hit was?

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Well, A, it just takes great talent. And Kenny Edmonds, my partner, is one of the most prolific songwriters ever. But he had this great talent and I had the greatest job in the world. I would hear the songs first and decide which ones were the good ones.

• 7:13Guy Raz?

  So you would, you would, you would say, oh, that's going to be perfect for Whitney Houston.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Exactly. Or this song is great, but the bridge, not quite sure. Or that lyric, I'm not sure if that lyric is it. Or it sounds great as a, as a slow song. Let's make it faster and see how it sounds. Or maybe we should take it from that artist and give it to another artist. So that was my thing was just to try to find the, the absolute perfect pairing for the material.

• 7:38Guy Raz?

  So you, so you and Babyface are, are like churning out these hits and, and at some point, what happens? Like, does he say to you or do you say to him, hey, you know, we should like, we should stop working for other people. We should like build our own thing.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  Why, why are we allowing our music to be picked over? Or people to make decisions about which songs will be singles? You know, we actually know, we're very close to it. We should do it ourselves. We lived in Los Angeles by then and we loaded up our trucks and we moved to Atlanta, Georgia.

• 8:07Guy Raz?

  Why? Why Atlanta?

• 8:09Speaker 00

  We, you, we didn't have a reason. We really didn't. We decided Atlanta by looking at a map and saying, how about Atlanta?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  And we did it. We moved to Atlanta. We put our flag in the ground. We opened up a little office and called it La Face Records. And we held auditions. We would go on the radio and say, OK, auditions are being held at the Club Roxy, or the Atlanta Knights, or any of the nightclubs. And we would just hold auditions, looking for talent. And before long, the talent just came running, because we were the only shop in town.

• 8:44Guy Raz?

  Because nobody thought of Atlanta as a place to go to.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you wonder why people think of things like that. And I did it. And I did it wildly successfully. And I still don't know why we did it.

• 9:00Guy Raz?

  How are you funding the business?

• 9:02Speaker 00

  We fund, as a producer, you know, we would work for hire. So we would get paid.

• 9:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  And we used that money to build a recording studio in Atlanta. As a record label, we were funded by Arista Records, which was the great Clive Davis.

• 9:17Guy Raz?

  So they had like a joint ownership in the company?

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Yes. We had a joint venture. We brought the talent. They brought the money. And we made the creative decisions. And we would bring it to them for marketing and promotion.

• 9:30Guy Raz?

  So how did you learn how to run a company? Because up until that point, you were, I mean, it was the two of you. And you were, you'd been a musician, you were a writer. But like, at this point, you are, you're CEO.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. It is, I didn't know how to run a company. But what I did know was how to manage people.

• 9:47Guy Raz?

  Hmm. How did you know that?

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Because I was a bandleader for so many years. And you know, there's not very much difference between being a bandleader and being a CEO of a music company, because it's managing talent. And I won't say that I mastered it, but I certainly knew something about it when I started the company. And I figured the rest out.

• 10:08Guy Raz?

  But I mean, you're talking about managing people who are some of the biggest pains in the ass in the world.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:13Guy Raz?

  Like giant egos.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  They weren't bigger pains in the ass than the kids I went to high school with.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  You know, I mean, imagine this. I was at a very young age, trying to manage people that were drug addicts, or people who weren't particularly motivated, but maybe they had great talent, or people who were just difficult for the sake of difficult. And I had to manage to get these people out of their houses and onto a stage. So for me, it was always people management. It was never completely company management to me. It was always people management. And I take it one meeting at a time and one person at a time.

• 10:51Guy Raz?

  So how did La Face do in the first, like, at the beginning?

• 10:55Speaker 00

  The first two years that we had the label, sharp learning curve.

• 11:00Guy Raz?

  And this is all in the 90s, right?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, we started the label in 1989. Our first signing was a band called Damien Dame, and we gave them our best material, and it didn't work.

• 11:13Guy Raz?

  Like, it just, nobody was, it just fell flat? Like, people weren't buying the records?

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, we just thought, you know, we thought Arista Records had failed us because we, we thought we were perfect. Like, you know, well, look at all these hits we have. So it can't be the music, it must be the production or the promotion, I'm sorry. And Clive Davis said to me, well, maybe it's the talent.

• 11:33Guy Raz?

  Was he, was he right?

• 11:35Speaker 00

  Yes, they were very talented people, but they were not world-class superstar-level talent. They weren't like Whitney Houston. So we learned pretty quickly that we needed to sign better talent.

• 11:49Guy Raz?

  Did you feel like a failure after, I mean, because you, you put all of your effort into this, this is your first big test?

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:56Guy Raz?

  And you guys are sort of this, you know, this successful duo, and then this thing just, like, falls apart pretty quickly after you sign them. Were you feeling like, maybe this is not going to work? Like, maybe we're going to go?

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I never had doubts. I never had doubts that it would work, but I did have to think about a different strategy. So my strategy was, wait a minute, this isn't working. Let me think, what are we doing wrong? I said, I know what we should do. We should get a soundtrack to a big movie, and we should put all of our artists on it, and we should put all of the talent that we have relationships with in the industry, we should ask them to be a part of it, and we'll use this as a launching path for our label and our new artist. So I dreamed up this idea, then I said, no, now, how do I pull this off?

• 12:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, you, you need a movie.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Need a movie.

• 12:48Guy Raz?

  In a minute, we're going to find out how LA found that movie. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Stay with us.

• 13:11Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1991, and La Face Records has just had a major failure with one of its first bands. But LRB thinks they can recover, they can pull out of this if they do this one thing, if they produce a soundtrack for a major Hollywood film. But of course, he needs to find that film. So he picks up the phone.

• 13:34Speaker 00

  So I called a friend of mine. Her name is Cassandra Mills. She had recently had a soundtrack for a movie called New Jack City. I said, Cassandra, how'd you find that movie? How'd you find the soundtrack? Tell me, walk me through it. How's that work? And she told me, she said, OK, you have to go to the movie producers, and you have to go to the studios and just see what their slate of releases looks like, and try to attach yourself to one. I said, OK, that sounds like a lot of work, and I know no one, so this is not going to go well.

• 14:02Guy Raz?

  Presumably, you didn't have those relationships, right?

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Living in Atlanta, and living in LA, working in recording studios, I didn't know a soul.

• 14:09Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  So Cassandra called back, and she says, Eddie Murphy has a movie called Boomerang that's in production. It's perfect for your label. You should go and meet Eddie, and you should meet the producers and the director, Reginald Hudlin and Warrenton Hudlin, and convince them. And I said, you know, perfect.

• 14:29Guy Raz?

  How did you get a meeting with him?

• 14:31Speaker 00

  I just called. I found their numbers. I called their office, and I said, hi, this is LA, from LA and Babyface, and we have a new record label called La Face Records, and I'm sure you know us. We produced Don't Be Cruel for Bobby Brown, and we produced this and that. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can meet. They weren't particularly excited, and I thought, wow, you should be so happy I'm calling you. That was my...

• 14:56Speaker 00

  That's, and I also learned that that didn't work.

• 14:59Guy Raz?

  So they gave you a meeting and you flew up to New York to go see them?

• 15:02Speaker 00

  I flew up to New York and I met them.

• 15:04Guy Raz?

  Were you nervous?

• 15:05Speaker 00

  No, I wasn't nervous at all. No, I'm so goal oriented. I was like, I'm gonna get this. I have to get it.

• 15:10Guy Raz?

  What was your pitch? Yeah, what was your pitch to them?

• 15:12Speaker 00

  My pitch was basically that your movie is a reflection of who we are as music people. We're all cut from the same cloth. We write the songs that your audience wants to hear, you know? I don't remember exactly what I said, but boy, I must have been good that day. Anyway, so they said, okay, great. Now, who's distributing your label? And I said Clive Davis from Arista Records. They said, okay, well, if you can get Clive to come in, we'll do it. So I called Clive and I asked him, would you come to a meeting with the Hutlands? And Clive agreed to do it. He came into a meeting with us. Clive used his magic charm and we had a deal. And that was it.

• 15:52Guy Raz?

  And how many artists at that point had you signed under La Face?

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Not many. We probably had, we'd just signed Toni Braxton. We'd just signed TLC. And that was it.

• 16:02Guy Raz?

  And so you needed to have enough artists to sing those songs?

• 16:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, but we had great relationships with talent. And we went to Boyz II Men and we asked Boyz II Men to be involved and we asked Johnny Gill to be involved. We asked-

• 16:15Guy Raz?

  Because you'd been writing songs for these guys already.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Yes. And we put it all together. It became Boomerang. We sold 3 million copies of the album. And we launched Toni Braxton. We launched TLC off that album. And we won Grammys with Boyz II Men for End of the Road. So that album was the launch path for our label, La Face Records.

• 16:49Guy Raz?

  Wow, so you guys, you must have been really busy at this point.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, now I'm managing Kenny and I'm managing the artist on the label and the songwriters and the rappers and I'm managing the relationship with Arista. And I'm also putting together a little staff and figuring that out and figuring out how to keep those doors open and keep the bills paid. And I learned.

• 17:11Guy Raz?

  So what were some of the mistakes that you made while you were running La Face? Was there anything that you did that you look back on, you think, that was just, I was really dumb or something I learned from that I'm glad it happened because I learned from it?

• 17:23Speaker 00

  I think I really ran into my difficulties when Kenny and I decided to sell our company to Arista Records.

• 17:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Why did you decide to do that?

• 17:34Speaker 00

  I'd watched Berry Gordy build Motown Records.

• 17:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  And sell it. I'd watched this as a business practice. I watched David Geffen build record companies and sell them. So a part of my goal from the very beginning was to build an asset that we could sell. The idea was that we could make a lot of money by selling this company. So we got Arista to agree to buy the company from us. And there was one stipulation. This was like the most difficult thing in my, probably in my entire career. The owners of Arista, they said, we'll buy your label, but you'll have to agree to A, move to New York, B, you'll have to replace Clive Davis and take over Arista Records as its president.

• 18:21Guy Raz?

  Wow. I mean, this guy was your mentor.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  And also arguably the most famous

• 18:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Record executive in the world.

• 18:31Guy Raz?

  In the world.

• 18:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:31Guy Raz?

  So was that tense between you and him at all?

• 18:35Speaker 00

  We went through a very tough period. We went through a very, very tough period. And Clive felt I betrayed him and I felt he'd ignored me and ignored my opportunity to cash in on the work that we had done. So we both had issues with each other.

• 18:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but before that happened, I mean, weren't you able to just say, no, listen, I just want to cash out and move on?

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that really wasn't. How it worked because-

• 19:02Guy Raz?

  It wasn't an option for you?

• 19:03Speaker 00

  It wa- I, I didn't want to move. I mean, I wanted to work.

• 19:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah, but I mean, you could have cashed out and then gone and started your own thing again, a new thing.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, sort of, but the way it really works is I'm the manager of the talent and what you're buying is really me.

• 19:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  You're not just buying those records that have already been massively successful. You're buying what you hope the future will be.

• 19:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  So that's kind of how it works.

• 19:31Guy Raz?

  How, how did the people at Arista react when you became the CEO?

• 19:34Speaker 00

  The people at Arista who were Clive loyalists didn't react favorably. Neither did any of the other record executives at the other labels or the media or the artist community. No one acted favorably and so I was immediately attacked by the media and the industry. And I felt the cold shoulder from everyone and I said, oh my God, I've made a massive mistake here.

• 20:04Guy Raz?

  Was that a tough time in your life?

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Bittersweet.

• 20:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  It was bittersweet because leaving Atlanta, moving to the big city. People in Atlanta kind of thought I turned my back on them, so that wasn't beautiful either. I loved the idea of taking over this major label and being, all of a sudden being in charge of Carlos Santana and Whitney Houston's career, along with all of my LaFace artists. So it was, it was bittersweet because three years after I took over Arista Records, we were wildly successful, more so than we were at LaFace.

• 20:39Guy Raz?

  What was that, where did that success come from? Well, like from which artists?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  An example was we had Pink, who sold 10 million albums.

• 20:47Guy Raz?

  How did you discover?

• 20:48Speaker 00

  Oh, Pink was a great one. Sharon Daly was an assistant at our office. I walked past her office. She was listening to a demo and I said, hey, what's that you're playing? She said, oh, it's these girls from Philadelphia. I said, turn it up. It sounds kind of good. Turn it up. She turned it up.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  I said, what did it look like? She pulled out a picture and it was these three white girls and I thought they were black. I was like, oh my God, this is really magic.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  One of them, Alicia Moore, was the outspoken lead singer, who was about 16 or maybe 17 years old. And we signed the group based on hearing that demo, walking down the hall.

• 21:30Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  And then, once we signed them, I encouraged her to leave the group and become a solo performer. And she left the group and she changed her name to Pink and she became a world-class star.

• 21:45Guy Raz?

  How did you, like, how did you identify her as the one in the band that was gonna be the star?

• 21:51Speaker 00

  It's just one of those things, you know? If I have a gift, that is my gift. I love talent. By the way, I'm not any different than the public. The public knows also, man. If a great artist comes on television or on the radio, the public always knows, like, wow, look at that, that's Lady Gaga, that's great, right? So I think of myself as a super consumer. I don't think of myself as a professional. I think of myself as a fan. And anyway, so Pink became a big success and we had Usher, who had a big success, and OutKast had the monumental success. They won Album of the Year. They sold over 12 million copies of their album.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  But at the height of it all, I got fired.

• 22:35Guy Raz?

  Wait, what, why?

• 22:37Speaker 00

  I think there were many things. We were, we were really successful, so it wasn't talent.

• 22:43Guy Raz?

  Are you hard, do you think you're hard to work with?

• 22:46Speaker 00

  I don't know that I'm particularly difficult to work with. I do believe that I'm very different than other people who have my job, or jobs similar to mine.

• 22:55Guy Raz?

  Like, how so?

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Look, if I'm in the room with the other record executives, it's pretty difficult to not notice me.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  For 20 years, I've been the only black guy.

• 23:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah, everybody's white. They're all white guys.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Everybody's white except me, you know. So I definitely stand out in that respect, you know. And that could be good and bad, you know. That's the reality of the world, you know. And I am not playing any kind of a race card or complaining at all because I have a wonderful career and I've been supported both by executives and by the talent. So I don't say that as an excuse for getting fired. Maybe I just pissed somebody off. And the takeaway was if I not sold my company, then I wouldn't have gotten fired three years later because I was the owner, you know.

• 23:49Guy Raz?

  How'd you feel when you lost the job? Like, were you upset by it? I mean, did it?

• 23:54Speaker 00

  I didn't get a chance to get upset. It was the weirdest thing. I think in that moment that I got fired, I felt like someone had punched me in the ear.

• 24:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  And I saw stars for a second. And as I'm riding down the elevator, you know, from this skyscraper in New York City and thinking about what just took place, I get in my car, I call my lawyer. And I said, you know, I just got let go. He says, yeah, I know. Call you right back, right?

• 24:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  He literally calls me right back within like a minute or two. He says, OK, Doug Morris wants to see you. He's the head of Universal Music. He wants you to come to his office right now. So I drove directly to Doug's office.

• 24:41Guy Raz?

  That day you were fired?

• 24:43Speaker 00

  Oh, that hour.

• 24:44Guy Raz?

  That hour you were fired, OK.

• 24:46Speaker 00

  And 40 minutes later, I was shaking hands with Doug Morris and I'd become the vice chairman of Universal Music Group within minutes.

• 24:55Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  And Doug says, you know, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. They just let go of a great talent and I'm so happy to have you. And Doug and I are still together to this day.

• 25:05Guy Raz?

  So when you were fired from Arista, that was a period when you then went to Universal and Def Jam. Def Jam was where you sort of oversaw Def Jam.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, I oversaw Island Def Jam, yes.

• 25:16Guy Raz?

  Is that where you signed Rihanna?

• 25:18Speaker 00

  Yes. Rihanna came to my attention through her now manager, Jay Brown, who was an A&R guy at the label. He brought her demo to my office one night. I usually work really late at night, and he played me the demo. I said, "That sounds really good. Get her here." He brought her to New York. She auditioned for me and for Jay-Z. Jay-Z I'd hired as the president of Def Jam.

• 25:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  We signed her.

• 25:41Guy Raz?

  On the spot?

• 25:42Speaker 00

  On the spot, yeah. It's always on the spot.

• 25:44Guy Raz?

  You knew she was going to be huge.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't let people leave. If I think you're going to be a big star, I don't let you leave, you know. Sometimes people insist, "Hey, can I think about this?"

• 25:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  You know, and then the answer is usually, "No, you can't. You need to do it right now." Because the minute you walk out my door, and other record executives know that you're talking to me and I'm going to sign you, you will have 10 offers at your door the next day. So I can't risk that.

• 26:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Do you see, like, you have, for most of your career, you've worked with other bigger companies or for bigger companies. You still work for a bigger sort of parent company now.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 26:20Guy Raz?

  But do you still see yourself as an entrepreneur?

• 26:23Speaker 00

  Oh, I think so.

• 26:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I still do music publishing, you know, as an entrepreneur, for example. But I'm also an entrepreneur for the major corporation. So, you know, the truth is, maybe it was a little bit of my calling to be a little bit of both. Because, you know, I jumped at the opportunity, right or wrong, you know, or whether I handled it well or not, or whether it was difficult or not, I jumped at the opportunity to come to work at Arista Records. So I think there was something I liked about the major corporation. There's something that they like about me being an entrepreneur.

• 26:58Guy Raz?

  Do you ever miss, like, sitting in a room and writing songs for other artists? Or do you, or do you, like, now just love the deal making and the, you know, and the signing and the creating the artists and all that stuff?

• 27:11Speaker 00

  I love it all. I love the theater of action.

• 27:15Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  I love a thousand moving parts and keeping all the balls in the air. That's what I love. I mean, I love music first, of course, but I think I get great satisfaction from juggling, like, many, many things, and making sure that they all land properly. You know, that's what I like doing. Air traffic control. Yeah.

• 27:36Guy Raz?

  How, how much of your success and your journey from, like, Cincinnati and, like, drumming drumsticks on the floor to going to Indianapolis and just hustling and, and working for, like, you know, whatever money you can make to the success you've achieved? Like, how much of that is because of your skill and your intelligence and how much of it is because of luck?

• 27:58Speaker 00

  They say it's better to be lucky than to be talented.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  You know, I would have to say that there were times that I was really lucky and there were times that I had to be talented. Right? So I'm gonna say 50/50.

• 28:20Guy Raz?

  L.A. Reid, he's now the CEO of Epic Records. And even after 30 years in the industry, he's still discovering new talent. In fact, in 2014, against the instincts of most other record executives, L.A. signed Meghan Trainor.

• 28:40Guy Raz?

  And within a year, she brought Epic Records three top 10 singles.

• 28:51Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for listening to the show this week. If you want to find out more or listen to previous episodes, you can go to howibuiltthis.npr.org. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes. And please do us a favor and write a review. Let us know what you think. You can also write us directly at [email protected] or tweet us. That's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Ramtin Arablouei, who also composed the music. Thanks also to Neva Grant, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 29:34Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks for staying with us. Here's the part of the show where we share your stories about the things that you are building. And this week, we heard from a listener in Bend, Oregon.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  I'm Kent Sheridan, the owner of Voila.

• 29:47Guy Raz?

  Voila, it's a company that makes very delicious coffee, Kent says, even though that coffee is instant and it comes in a little packet.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  You don't always have the time to grind your own coffee. Being able to just add water wherever you are is pretty special, in my opinion, without compromising the quality for even the highest coffee snob.

• 30:10Guy Raz?

  Kent says that he's actually going for a flavor that tastes as good as a $4 Puörer.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Coffees that have a caramel sweetness, nutty, like hazelnut.

• 30:20Guy Raz?

  Leather, wet wool, hyacinth, pine needles.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Very mango, tropical fruit notes.

• 30:27Guy Raz?

  Kent is getting these coffee beans from specialty roasters all across the US, and he wants to sell his coffee online. But he's obviously not the first person to try and make a really good, high-end, instant coffee, right? Like Starbucks has done this. So there is competition out there. Oh, and one other problem? Now that he's trying to scale up, he still has to work out his freeze drying technique.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  When you bump it up in size and you have all of these variables with temperature and pressure, and when everything's in a vacuum, it's not so clear cut.

• 31:00Guy Raz?

  Kent Sheridan hopes to have Voila coffee ready to go by December. He already owes his Kickstarter backers 1,339 cups of coffee. Good luck to you, Kent. And if you want to tell us about the company or idea that you're building, go to build.npr.org. That's build with a D dot npr dot org. And thanks.

• 31:28Guy Raz?

  Here's another NPR podcast you will definitely enjoy. It's called All Songs Considered. It's NPR's music discussion and discovery podcast. Each week, Bob Boilen and Robin Hilton share the best of the best new and upcoming music. You can download artist interviews, live concerts, and lots and lots of songs you'll fall in love with. Find new All Songs episodes every Tuesday at npr.org/podcasts and on the NPR One app.