We caught up with the brilliant and insightful DeAnna Roman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
DeAnna, appreciate you joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
Octavia Entertainment grew from a seed that was planted decades ago…Three decades ago to be exact.
I started performing with karaoke tracks in people’s living rooms when I was 9 years old and today I own an entertainment company and booking agency in one of the most difficult cities to break into, Nashville, TN. That break certainly didn’t happen overnight, (I’m about to turn 40,) and we had to pivot a few times to get here, but we are here!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hello, my name is DeAnna Roman and I am a workaholic.
I have been performing all of my life, touring both regionally and internationally…mostly as a lead vocalist, but sometimes as either the vocal director or a background singer for another artist. I have been creating bands and booking events since I was 14, which was also the year my career in Nashville began on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.
There has never been a shred of expectation nor stability to what I do. The whole basis of things as simple as booking events or as complex as trying to get signed by a major label is submitting your material and waiting hoping that someone calls. That’s terrifying to most people, and frankly, now that I am nearing what was once explained to me as being the edge of the end for entertainers, it can be little scary for me, too.
In my 20’s, I was cautioned by some older performers that if I didn’t stay fit, stay relevant and keep the machine constantly moving, that I would age out and my career would be over. I have never subscribed to the idea that there is an inevitable moment of failure because you’ve reached a certain age, but I do realize that at some point, it would be prudent for me to “pass the mic,” if you will.
Instead of considering my decades of hard-earned accolades for naught, I reframed the situation and came up with a backup plan. After 2020, I developed a backup plan for my backup plan because having my entire industry shut down for a year wasn’t part of the original schematic. I’m not going to get into it. We were all there… It was not ideal…I digress.
After doing the artist thing for 14 years and checking off some career “bucket list items,” I had to get real, respectfully. Nashville is expensive. When I made my permanent move here in 2007, my rent was $650.00 per month. To rent that same apartment today, it’s $1,600.00 per month! Something had to change, so I went to a few auditions, subbed in as the “singer du jour” for a few party bands and landed in a pocket that I had never even considered fitting into. Over the years, I had performed for every kind of event you could imagine, but when it came to my attention that owning an event band was an option… and it was lucrative???
PIVOT!
After a few years of performing with high-end wedding bands and traveling with them long enough to make some connections of my own, I made a bandleader looking to expand an offer to use my sound system and contacts to run a franchise of their group; giving him a percentage for letting us use their brand and reputation. We had auditions for musicians, filmed a promotional video and boom; I was paying my rent, still $650 at the time, in one day vs spending a month teaching voice and promoting my “artist thing” to make ends meet.
I had been self employed my entire life. Although I appreciated the jump-start and loved having a year of bookings laid out in front of me that I didn’t have to find, I didn’t feel that their business model moving forward was the best fit for me. I honored my commitments for the remainder of that season and then split to re-group and start over as my own brand. I had no idea what that looked like, but I knew how I wanted to run things.
While on what was to be one of our last road trips as “the other band,” we were in the van blasting an 80’s playlist and “Jenny 867-5309” came on. Everyone was shouting over the music and carrying on their own conversations until the bridge of the song, when every single one of us collectively took a deep breath and shouted, “For a Good Time, Call…”
It was the perfect moment that solidified our brand. It’s tongue-in-cheek, slightly risqué for the South, nostalgic to the age group I envisioned as my target clientele and iconic because 14 people just stopped in their tracks to shout it at the top of their lungs. In that moment, 4AGTC was born.
We were contacted by a “new to us” advertising platform called The Knot who offered us a spot on their website. I knew nothing about advertising, but knew we had to start somewhere, so I signed a year contract, made a Google ad for fifty bucks a month and rolled the dice. That was almost 10 years ago. With little advertising, the support of the agency that booked us before we re-branded and lots of word of mouth, we had a full calendar and saw significant organic growth every single year, (except that ONE year nobody saw anything but their sofa…)
We have built an incredible team over the years. Musicians come and go in Nashville every day, but we still have friends from the original iteration of 4AGTC that will go on tour and then come back to perform with us when they’re off the road. Those friends told their other friends and before we knew it, we had a huge staff of incredible singers and musicians who liked how we ran our business and wanted to be a part of what we were doing long-term.
PIVOT!
My husband is a full-time audio engineer, videographer and photographer with his own production company, Roman A/V. We are also key holders at an historic theater where Tanner (my husband) is the tech director. I started to do the math…Free videographer + great deal on a venue + willing participants = opportunity to expand. We are going to need promo. We filmed for two days straight and got reels for each of the female leads including myself. Like magic, we now had 4 bands to book. With multiple groups, I could keep my company moving forward, take a break from performing anytime I needed to, and my team could make steady money without sacrificing their other ambitions to be here. No brainer. PLAN B was officially in full effect.
While in the midst of hammering out the details of PLAN B, I was asked to have a meeting with one of our girls, Kylie to discuss “other business.” We met for coffee and she opened with, “A year ago, I started my own all-female party band. We are ready to film, and we want your help, but we are still missing one integral part; Will you be our agent?”
PIVOT!
I have four bands, work with my husband’s company when I can and I am now somebody’s agent. How is this going to work? Do other people need help? I have all of this experience and so few opportunities to share what I know. Should I start another business? Do I dare try and open an entertainment company and booking agency in NASHVILLE? What if I fail? What if nobody else wants my help? What if I CAN’T help? What if MY agents now see me as competition? I had all of the thoughts, all of the fear and ALL of the feelings, but I didn’t have time to process. People were counting on me and I had to figure out how to make this work, fast.
That night, same as any other, my husband and I put on a nerdy documentary before heading to bed. He got to scrolling on his phone and I sat there restless trying to figure out how I was going to pull this off. I picked up my laptop and started searching for catchy names with “Roman” in it. I figured if it worked for my husband, it could work for me. I searched for hours and everything hip was taken. I gave up and shut my laptop. Before I even had a chance to set it down, a documentary about the Roman Empire and Octavia the Younger came on TV. “Okay, that’s weird,” I said. I sat there and was absolutely fascinated by her story. It just clicked. I googled Octavia Entertainment and found one other company using the name. They weren’t based in the US and weren’t music related, so I immediately purchased the URL, filed the LLC and Octavia Entertainment Nashville was born.
My PLAN B for my PLAN B officially launched October 8th, 2022. Octavia is an agency-friendly full-service entertainment resource which currently houses thirteen wedding and corporate event bands, three touring artists and a growing list of preferred vendors that we are proud to regularly do business with. An a la carte list of professional services aimed at helping emerging talent develop their brand and break into the Nashville live music scene will be added to our offerings in the fall of 2024. Both 4AGTC and OEN are a testament to the old saying, “If you build it, they will come.”
I was just a kid from rural PA. I am not sure why life brought me the opportunities that it did. It’s been a weird, wild and ridiculously fun 30 years. I have learned so much from my experiences navigating the mystical music business. My only goal was to live each day to the fullest and someday be able to make it all count for something. I am glad I didn’t let people convince me that someday it would all come to an end. Because of the faithful friends I have made since moving here all those years ago, I have not only “scaled up,” I have a business that will continue to grow as I support and train others. I believe OEN will be here long after it’s no longer appropriate for me to be in a cocktail dress singing Ke$ha. And for that, as I am sure others will be as well, I am eternally grateful.
Any advice for managing a team?
We are a “people first” organization. I always do my research before hiring new team members. Talent aside, I am most interested in who they are, what their ambitions are outside of my company and more than anything, how I can support them. We truly are like a family. It’s a cliche that doesn’t work for everyone, but it has a high success rate for us. I have never heard of anyone moving to Nashville to be in a wedding band. Everyone has their own reason for being here and their own passions. I know that I wouldn’t want to work with anyone who didn’t support my ambitions and made me feel like I was simply there to make them money. We are all trying to make money, but our goal is to make sure everyone feels supported both on and off the stage, personally and professionally. Events come and go, but people always remember the way you made them feel. If our team feels anything less than welcome and appreciated on every single gig, we aren’t in alignment with why we decided to do this in the first place.
I recommend getting familiar with personality tests like the enneagram, understanding the 5 love languages, zodiac signs. I know that sounds “woo woo,” but understanding personalities and how to pair your team members to create a peaceful and productive environment is paramount to any company’s success. In my case, our musicians are with each other several days per week, sometimes traveling long distances and working events that are between 8-12 hours long with a lot of downtime between performances. Putting folks with mismatched personalities in close proximity for that long can really hurt morale and derail productivity. When your name is “For a Good Time, Call…” and people aren’t having a good time, that’s a problem!
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
We are pleasant, faithful, professional and live up to our name!
We have a handful of agents and event specialists who we owe a lot of our success to. We show our appreciation for them recommending us by setting the tone with a smile, going with the flow and doing our jobs. Events with as many details as weddings and corporate events are prone to twists and turns, but at the end of the day, we play music for a living. It really isn’t that difficult to check your ego at the door and show people a good time for a while.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.octaviaentertainment.com
- Instagram: @4AGTC
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OctaviaEntertainmentLLC/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@OEN615
- Other: www.4AGTC.com www.deannaroman.com www.romanav.com