Hello, this is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. And folks, I know I’m always excited about my guests, but this is a really unique treat for us today. I have with me today Louie La Vella. I want to say before I let him come on and talk, I like to brag about our guest. He is fascinating for so many different reasons. The absolute embodiment of that entrepreneurial spirit, for sure. But he operates in around that you would not expect to find like that humanitarianism deep inside of him in that heart and everything and you’re going to feel it as soon as we get to dialoging. Who you’re going to feel is energy in you’re going to know what he’s about. But you wouldn’t see it on the surface. And that’s the beauty of him. He’s got a depth to him that probably surprises a lot of people.
And so, with that, I’m not even going to tell you all of the stuff is that he’s got here today. That’s for sure. Going to come out. But this guy is a pretty high-profile cat and it’s exciting to have him engaged in a Super Power conversation with. So, Louie thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much and thank you for the kind words. I appreciate that.
Absolutely. So, of course we’re going to throw you in there and ask, what are your Super Powers?
My Super Powers. I’m in the entertainment industry if anybody hasn’t caught wind. So I work in, as I call it, the shark-infested-waters-of-the-entertainment industry. And my Super Power really has been, if I could pinpoint one really good and strong one that has caused me to navigate those waters and succeed, it really is identifying where I can build my own door and break that open. So, there’s a lot of closed doors everywhere, not just in my industry and businesses, but there’s if you have an entrepreneurial mindset and this Super Power you can see closed doors but know that you can build a door on the side and break that open instead. And I think that has really caused me to succeed. But also, allow me to help others, whether that’s other businesses in my industry musicians that are up-and-coming and need a lot of help exposing their music and whatnot, and just using that kind heart to. That’s my life, to help so many different individuals and companies navigate these waters, but teach them how to do that or show them the doors that they should be opening because so many times business is hard not just in my industry. And you can give up very quickly or lose consistently. But if you can figure out how you can get excited about, well I could just build my own door and break through that instead, it allows you to try for it all the time.
I love that you said, “Build Your Own Door.” I think that’s a book title for you. That’s such a great illustration of, like you said, the entrepreneurial spirit of the business world. All of it is like, you can’t so what! So, that person’s door is closed. So, what! There’s many other doors. I just had this vision of Monsters Inc., with all the doors that go in different kinds and stuff. The fact is that a different door drops in. And I think that’s a great way to explain it.
I guarantee you, I’m going to totally deviate from any sort of format. I don’t even know that I follow a format for these interviews because I have so many questions around how do you maintain yourself in the midst of that? So for sure you’re driven and you’ve got your focus on how to be successful. How do you maintain your heart, your own Spirit, and everything, especially in this industry?
We’ve all seen the crazy things that go on when you’re watching TMZ, or when we were younger, in the bars and the band would, they might get drunk, and the sex drugs and rock and roll just ruins them, and they’re not even famous yet. Yes, so, this industry can eat up a lot of people.
I think for me even at a young age, I love the entertainment industry because it’s fascinating. It has a little bit of fame and celebrity too, which everybody wants to be in. And I’m good at the marketing and I’m good at the exposure and branding in this industry. But even at a young age I think having a goal, a life plan goal, is what keeps me grounded. And not really caring or going to that sex, drugs, and rock n roll thing. For me, it was my life plan. I could work at home, make my own hours. I can work with some high-profile people. I can have fun at festivals. And it’s just a great job. And it’s a fun job. And it is a business. A lot of people take it as it’s really fun, and they’ve ruined their career because to me, like I mentioned earlier, they’re drinking their way out of being successful. But to me, it was always a business. I’d have people come up to me when I did the nightclub level. Now at festivals and musicians and even at that level, Lou we have the greatest job in the world, and I’m thinking yeah, this is pretty fun. I do enjoy it, but it is a business, and you have to think about it that way.
But being grounded and having that one goal. And for me, it was obviously with the wife and kids, working from home, playing with them, enjoying traveling and things like that. This allowed my life design. It’s great for any entrepreneur to just have. You have a goal that you want this job, or entrepreneur, or business to be situated around, otherwise you’re creating, Like I mentioned, just a job. Then, even if you’re an entrepreneur or a business owner, but you’re stuck to it, you don’t really like it still. You may not work for somebody else, but you’re working for you and it might still suck. So, you have to make sure you have that goal in mind to keep yourself grounded and grow, especially in the entertainment industry. For me, that’s what kept me grounded, and think about it is a business, and also a great tool, a fun tool to have my life design.
I love that. I love that you talk about life design. I think it’s so crucial because that is really the anchor that calls you back and, even more importantly, not just keeps you grounded, but also allows you to fly because you’ve got that navigational tool to come back to. I would imagine, it gives you the freedom to explore and choose to move around and all that stuff. I often say, my marriage with my husband and our daughter in the triumvirate that we’ve created is the very platform that gives me the courage, and gives me the support I need to expand in many ways that I don’t know that I would have done otherwise.
And a lot of people say in business you have to build a team around you. And I think for you and obviously for me and maybe a lot of other listeners out there, it’s the family. That’s the support group. And yet, it’s a starter platform that you grow out of from there and can design things around, that where you make decisions around what’s what your life design wants to be.
And that’s exciting too because then I can make decisions on why I want to take the speaking gig. “Hey, what’s going on next week? I might be speaking in Chicago. Let’s all go on a trip,” that idea. That’s why I want to have. And so, this has allowed me to do that. And it’s the entertainment industry is just what I’m doing. That’s the fun in the business I’m in, which I love and it’s great. It’s fascinating. But I think when we were talking a little bit earlier on how to stay grounded and what to do to be successful, I think that that main goal is what does it for me.
Well as is knowing that that’s not who you are. I like that you said that’s what you’re doing. And what I found was by persevering through creating that real, holistic lifestyle with my husband and daughter and everything else that’s what gave me the tools and the skill sets to then build with Super Power Experts a totally collaborative model and work with other people and encourage others to work together. And all the lessons learned that you can then apply outside of that.
And in your industry, I’m just really in awe. It’s not like I didn’t think people like you existed, but it’s not what we see. There’s a bit of a corn status there, I’m not going to lie. I’ll tell you, this guy’s been around people like Lady Gaga and Richard Branson and the Backstreet Boys. We can go through a little list the names and high profile people, and we all know the horror stories from that industry.
But as I’ve shared with you earlier, I really see how you light up things from within. And I’ve always had a special place in my heart for people who can do that because I could not. I had to leave the spy industry. I chose not to stay and traverse those waters. I chose out of them, and then grow from outside of that. And I really do have a lot of respect for people who can operate within certain systems and structures, and maintain their own frequencies and vibrations in, our speak. And I say that with the utmost sincerity. I think it’s amazing what you’re doing.
And thank you for that. I love the underdog, and I think that’s what drives me as well in this industry. I know you see people like Bieber, and I’m not involved with him personally, Justin Bieber, but the YouTube story. And he gets found on YouTube and becomes a megastar. Or Lady Gaga worked so hard, finally got to Interscope and is a megastar. And that’s the highest levels of celebrity. But I love that underdog work where I can teach positions or go to festivals that’s not with the largest ticket group out there and say, “You guys, we can compete because I have these tools, or I know how we can connect with the consumer or the customer, give them an experience, and be one of them.
And same thing with fans, in any business, how do you connect with your customer and be one of them and really connect? Everybody says customer service trumps, and it’s true. You go to a restaurant, and there’s bad customer service. The food can be great and you start getting a bad flavor of what’s happening here. There’s so many different tools and ways to really connect. And the underdog, especially nowadays with the obviously, the Internet and social media, can really do some damage to the big boys or just on their own actually become one of the big boys, independently. And I find that fascinating. I love working with the underdog and I love seeing the stories of them growing. And if I’m a part of it that’s even better. And even if they don’t make it to Super Stardom, but they make six figures a year being a musician and they’re like, “Wow, I don’t have to work in another job, I don’t have to work part time in anything. I actually love what I do, and I make $100,000. And that is awesome. And I don’t have all the stresses of a record label, or major touring, and all of this craziness. That’s still an amazing thing to accomplish.
Oh absolutely. It’s freedom. And I feel like that’s absolutely what you’re modeling for people, is that fearlessness and that freedom because ultimately my bias is, that’s what we’re all hungry for. We want to feel free, we want our own autonomy, we want to make choices, we want to be able to live our lives unencumbered, and however that looks for each individual. And it is different for everybody. Everybody wants something different, and you model that for people. Do you find yourself working here when you’re working with your clients and stuff? Do you feel like or would you even categorize yourself as doing a lot of personal development Personal Power work?
If it’s the musicians. Yes, because a lot of them just concentrate on the music as an artist, and they really want a record label deal because they don’t want to do the bookings, they don’t want to do the management, they don’t know the business, they don’t know what to do. They have a song and they put it on Facebook or YouTube, and then it doesn’t do anything, and they wonder what’s going on. So they beg for a record label to just take it from them. Unfortunately, unless you’re with a pretty decent sized label or one of the majors, even the smaller-medium sized labels will sign a track and they’ll do the same thing. They’ll just put it on Facebook and maybe they’ll have a bigger e-mail list than you, but it still fizzles.
So, I do a lot of personal development with these guys to really show guys like, you can do this. You need to learn the business, invest in yourself. You have to have the mindset to succeed. You’re great as an artist. The music’s good, that step’s done. But keep creating. But, let’s go on this side now and really get them excited to succeed on their own as a personal brand and as an entrepreneur. So, it’s fun to go through these stages with them and have them grow and figure things out and get excited about it.
I wonder, too, even with the festivals and stuff. The worlds that we all play in with the energies and frequencies and vibrations and stuff. And there is a certain frequency of success. There’s a certain vibration level that has to come, this synergy that has to happen for things to be successful. And it’s easy for a single person, if they have enough clout or a group of people, to really derail any project if they go into fear or self-sabotage or any of this other stuff. Have you encountered anything like that?
There’s always haters out there obviously in every business, especially this one here. I think if you build a personal brand, or a business brand. So, if you talk about a small one of my festivals as 25,000 people show up every day. So, it’s a fairly decent sized festival a pretty large. And when you build, a good fan base, like I mentioned earlier, you’re one of them, they’re one of you, you’re almost like family. And if you can build that, and I rely heavily on social media. We do have some traditional media running like some radio in some print, but really, it’s all social media, especially that demographic.
But there’s a heavy interaction. I understand them as people, and then they understand us as a brand. We’re not cold and corporate. So, when you get the haters that come out or something happens in the festival that’s not nice or who knows what happened, they didn’t get in because they were too drunk or the credit card system goes down for an hour. These are mini disasters on their own level, or on a large level. If you’ve built the right community, most of them have your back. And when you have the people talking on social media about this sucks or this is not right or they didn’t let me in on these guys and that guys you’re going to have people get your back as if they’re your friends. And if you can build that community properly, then this is in any business, you have some pretty good Brand Power there. And that’s really important. It’s really important to protect your brand in that respect. And if something happens that is your fault. You own it, you fix it, you apologize, and move on.
You have the community give you ideas or help. Like, you don’t just hide and run and point fingers and blame everything that tarnish your brand. When the brand is tarnished, it’s very difficult to fix. It’s not as easy as, Hey, we’ll put out a new song that’ll fix it, or hey we’ll just rename the bar and that’ll fix it, or whatever the business is going to try and do. New logo is coming out. That’s not going to fix your brand right. So, you have to be very careful and guarded of your brand. But that’s a very powerful tool.
Well and I love that you’re talking about transparency that’s a really neat buzz word anymore. And in so many different arenas. One of our businesses does the due diligence stuff. And that’s that model that really trains businesses to be transparent about everything.
And like you say Own up to it. When you’re willing to step into that space and be confident in who you are and approach those “mistakes” with decorum and professionalism. Say, Wow, I apologize for that, let me see how I can fix that, as opposed to hiding from, like you said. Or bloviating, or puffing up, or whatever ego process you want to use. It goes a long way. I think that there’s a big trust factor anymore. That’s really coming to the surface because in social media because of the advent of the Internet, it’s difficult to hide anymore. And if you screw up big enough, people are going to know about it. And so, that’s such a powerful way to navigate that industry.
Now I was just going to say that, especially in social media, you really cannot hide from anything. And I have had people say in meetings, “Well if they’re going to bad mouth us, let’s just delete them and ban them from our page.” Well, don’t you think they have their own following still? You can’t erase them from Facebook. What are you going to do? You are going to make them even more mad. Yes, if there’s hateful comments, like hateful racist things like that you, want it cleaned up of course. But if they’re talking about your branding something, even if it wasn’t our fault, it actually wasn’t their fault, you still have to head it on. You have to do it right on top of it. Try to. You can take them off, I say off line, but really into messaging and show everybody and show the world that you are discussing it openly. And you want me to take it to private so that you can discuss further and that’s fine too. But just deleting and just going with going to ban them and delete them, they’re going to go off. They probably already have on their own Twitter in their own Instagram from Facebook and Snapchat and bad mouth and talk about your brand. And if people come to your own pages and see nothing’s trying to be cleaned up, then they are going to run with it. And if there is enough for them, they have control.
We see this everywhere now. Even in politics. It looks like traditional media’s lost control. It’s just the way. It’s the consumer behavior. And I study consumer behaviors a lot. And I think that may be a reason why I’ve been successful in this industry where you can predict or see it in real time what their behaviors are. I was taught people ask me, Hey, Louie, teach me Facebook ads. And I’m like, that’s no problem, but you can get them off YouTube or go to Facebook business pages. They have videos and they’ll teach you everything you need to know. And I can teach you too. But that’s just tactics. Now what about the strategies. What about the user behaviors? Like I can get a picture of my grass and advertise like crazy. But what is the strategy behind that? It’s like, clubs used to get a flier that you put on a car and they still take it same flyer digital image and boost that on Facebook, and I’m thinking who wants to see the flyer? I don’t care if you’ve targeted the right 19-year-old, 21-year-old female that likes Patron tequila or whatever the deal is. Or hip hop fan. But you’re not giving them the right creative and strategy. And that’s a user behavior thing and it’s an art.
But I think you’re being extremely humble because strategies grade tactics are gray at the end of it all. All I’m hearing in you is not all but at the core of what I’m hearing in you is, you have to have the confidence to show up in a specific way because you didn’t get to those strategies without some trial and error. So, I really, I’ll go ahead and brag about you for you because it’s refreshing to hear. You have to have some internal fortitude to be able to say. And the irony is this is that is that if you don’t show up fully and in transparency and open to seeing all those great bad buzzwords, then we think that we’re somehow protecting ourselves, that we shy away from what we perceived to be vulnerability. But the secret is that most people don’t realize. On the other side of that when you show up in that whole mess, with your heart on your sleeve and transparency and being like, hey this is cool, sure I screwed up. Great. I’ll take care of that, or whatever the case may be. That is your most powerful place of playing, and it’s only in that place that you can then create and implement strategies and techniques and all these other things, and really have some degree of success. Because if you’re having to spend all of your mental, emotional, physical energy on wondering when the next shoe is going to fall or when the next person’s going to complain, or any of these other things, it’s exhausting and it.
And if you make those emotional connections somehow, whether you’re doing something right, when you’re connecting with them, whether you’re fixing something that went wrong, every emotional connection, you’re building one raving fan at a time, not just a regular phantom follower. And a raving fan, like I mentioned earlier, is a community that has your back, that will buy anything that you put out there. Those are the people, if I’m talking ticket sales, they’re the first ones that I’ll buy the presales because they’re cheapest, and they trust they’re going to put on a great show. But they’re also the same people that would buy the most expensive ticket because they want to support it right. We’ll rebuild that one fan at a time. And even myself as a Personal Brand, speaking and books and stuff like that, I’m transparent. I have to put out content that shares with others and teaches others, but also me. If you bumped into me on a street or re-emitted at a networking conference, I’m still going to act the same way and talk the same way as I’m talking to you right here. There’s no pretender, fake of it all and you just have to be real and put yourself out there. And that builds, like I mentioned earlier, that strong Brand. And that’s extremely important thing.
Absolutely. And folks, if you’re sitting here listening to this and you’re not an entrepreneur or maybe love your job and you’re cool being employee or you don’t work. Whatever the case may be, this is true in life, this is true in relationships. Early on, and I don’t know why, I don’t know what delineates who gets what message and who really perceives in the world in a particular way. But early on, even in my marriage with my husband and how we parent our child and stuff like that, it was always from that place of I just want to be. I call it the holistic lifestyle, your life is your work, your work is your life. There’s no more going to work with this mask on, and then coming home and putting on this mask, and then you do the nicey, nice phone calls with your friends is superficial. It’s exhausting.
For me, I just opted out of the entire game. And what I found on the other side of it, even personally. So all that information we’re sharing about brands and businesses and success, is extremely pertinent, even in that personal empowerment journey, no matter what you’re doing here in the world. Who are you being in the world? And then what you do is just a side note.
Absolutely. And then that’s with people who change jobs 17 times and that’s great too. Sometimes careers are no longer last. And like you mentioned you may not be an entrepreneur a business person you are just someone who loves your job or maybe you don’t want your job. But if you can find out your personal why, maybe you can figure out why you might like this job, or why you got in it to begin with. And maybe you start to find new love for that job, or maybe decide what I’m going to do something on the side and then replace the job or whatever. But again, all of that stuff, what’s your actual real goal in the end? And then every decision you make has to go around that goal. And I know a lot of people say, “Yeah, well, I can’t just quit my job, I have bills to pay.” Well, as an entrepreneur there’s a ton of downtimes to look at time. We just get in a mindset of, it is downtime, but that’s ok, I can make money out of thin air, apparently. So, let’s figure this out.
It’s a little bit of magic.
It is. And then you find your audience, you make sure you’re engaging in that audience. I always like to say make sure I’m playing in the sandbox they’re playing in. So don’t do the newspaper or radio, if your demographic is all on SnapChat. That idea, you need to know where things are happening and then you can become successful.
We just got back from the conference and people ask, “How did you do it? How did you get that level of success?” And I was like, I guess we wanted to eat, I don’t know.
It just happened, it just magically happened.
Yeah, and you reach this point of no return where you’re like, I’m not going back. I’m not going to go get a job to do whatever. I left government twice. The first time I said I wasn’t going back. And then the second time, I really wasn’t going back. So, I had to do a couple trial runs there. But after that you’re like, no I’m good, we’ll figure this out.
And there is something to be said for burning all the ships, just going all in. And when you get into that space, it’s not quite as scary as we’d like to make it out to be. And again, this is not just an entrepreneur’s journey. I see it all the time in the consciousness journey for people. There are points that we face, are we really going to drop that baggage, or let go of that story or that victimization, or whatever it might be because make no mistake about it, even the painful and unpleasant stories that we have about ourselves connect us to someone somewhere. And a lot of times we’re hesitant to let those go because we don’t know what it looks like on the other side.
That’s true, like I said, it doesn’t matter if it’s entrepreneurship, business, or whatever, it happens. And so, when you’re facing those moments of, I can choose to move ahead. But what does that mean? What does that look like when it’s big scariness? Because you don’t know. You haven’t been there yet. Know who your allies are. That’s one thing, I see clearly Louie that you do in that industry, is the idea of some people do need their hands held. And that’s ok. And hold someone’s hand, and find someone that you trust to do that with you and cross that threshold or build that door and bust through it and then keep going. And know that you’re not always going to need to have your hand held. And it’s it may not be as scary as you think it is.
Yeah, and hand-holding can be in so many different levels. At the beginning, it could just be reading that book that just teaches you a little bit. And then it moves up to another scenario where you’re discussing it on a Facebook group to learn about something. And then maybe it’s a coaching thing, and then it moves up from there. There’s so many different levels of getting mentorship. It doesn’t have to be a direct mentorship all the time. You’ll get to that spot. And yes, you should take advantage of it. But sometimes, just starting by reading a couple of those articles that interest you or that book or that two books that that gets you going and gets you excited, and then you just keep moving and growing as a person.
I love that. Well I would be content sitting here chatting with you all day. I want to be sensitive and honor our time. And there’s a specific question I want to make sure that I ask, and it’s around that idea of living in your Power. Do you have a story about a time when you got an intuitive hit and you took action? And then what transpired because of it?
I probably have a ton. Great. That was a really good one. Well you mentioned Lady Gaga earlier on. And so, I’ll tell that story.
So, this was her first television interview as Lady Gaga. This is her first ever TV interview. So, I was in Miami with my production crew this is when I was doing television in the music industry. So, it was like an MTV style channel. We were interviewing big DJs and bands and whatnot. And there was a private event we were at just filled with interviews, we’re the only TV crew there. So, getting bombarded with interview after interview after interview which is great and lots of fun. And then we had this manager and PR rep come to us in this two-minute break and say, “We have this girl. She just signed to Interscope. She’s got great music, she’s about to explode and the label is ready to push her like crazy. And she’d love to get an interview, whatever exposure she’s going to get, she would love to put her everywhere.” Obviously. I think, man we got all these other interviews lined up, like we don’t have time to interview this girl. But yes, this is where you like you never know. Hold on, let’s not turn people down. Again, you want to take that heart and let’s help the little guy, which is not the little guy, but at the time nobody really knew who she was. But let’s see, maybe we’ll give her some exposure. We’re not the biggest channel in the world, but let’s help where we can.
And so, we listen to the track, it was “Just Dance” and she was doing a performance there at this private event. So we thought, let’s cancel some of our other interviews that were bigger names, but we already have those interviews from months ago, let’s cancel them and let’s give her an interview too because let’s just do it. So we did. Great girl. Of course, it’s Lady Gaga I’m talking about an really nice person. She performed “Just Dance” and I believe two other songs. We recorded it and she exploded.
Now this was March I believe 2008 or seven. So, the funny thing is this was being shot in March, where this whole series of shows in Miami and we were going to edit them all, and then release them in September for our new season. So, when the new season came out though, there was no Lady Gaga, and we called in back to our editors and said, “Where is Lady Gaga?” Because over the summer she was just a superstar at this point.
And they’re like, “We noticed that this episode came out because it was edited back in March and nobody knew who she was.” So, they didn’t put her in the show. But, it had a whole other show, obviously, with that footage that they did edit over the summer because they obviously knew which was coming up the week later. But it was funny that that initial show was already done. And she grew so fast.
She didn’t make the cut.
She didn’t make the cut. Can you imagine? But of course, we had lots of footage of her the big long interview and performances. And they had footage and created a special episode on because we had the superstar now, which is great. But having the intuition on, hey let’s help somebody, again the little guy, which obviously wasn’t the little guy, she was with a major label. But at the time nobody knew who she was. Also, that second, this might be something we want to jump on just because I am intuition of something here, when you just got that feeling. Let’s build this extra door on the side here and bust this open because it could be something. And hey if I said no and was short-sighted look we have interviews to do with big people so forget you. I would have been telling a different story right now, on the time I could have interviewed Lady Gaga this week.
I really credit you with that whole leading with your heart thing, and maybe you didn’t always and maybe this is just where you settle into now and I get to meet you in this space. But it’s there is something to be said for that in a way would be very easy for me to come off trajectory. You feel pretty solid in it now. So I give you kudos. And really honor the fact that you are traversing that world and lighting things up where you can and doing your part. That’s a big deal.
Thank you.
So, I know people want to want to know more about you, where can we send them.?
Absolutely. Well I’m obviously all over social media. That’s what my entire world now at my website of course, and all of that is my first and last name. So it’s spelled L O U I E L A V E L L A. LouieLaVella.com or at Louie La Vella on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. Anybody can reach out and just find some interesting stories that I have out. I love to throw some of my two cents out there and talk about different business things in the entertainment industry. And I have so many different business industries meeting and contacting me. And like your audience, you’re just trying to get a couple of little golden nuggets or just some inspiration and some fun stories. And definitely, anybody out there wants to reach out and ask anything or something, even to their own personal situation, I’m more than happy to interact.
Perfect. Well, you’re awesome and I really do appreciate you.
Well I am going to leave that that I really appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely! And everyone out there, of course, as always, we appreciate your loyalty. And until next time, go out and uncover your Super Powers and change the world. Take care everyone.
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