We were lucky to catch up with Ethan Langston recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ethan, appreciate you joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

This is actually a pretty incredible story. Groundwork was born from an idea that my now-business-partner Michael and I came up with: to try and scout raw pop talent very early-on and endeavor to build a brand from the ground up with that artist. We were looking for the block of clay so to speak.

We had considered a number of young, talented individuals but had yet to find the perfect fit, when Michael’s dad’s best friend gave him an unexpected phone call. All artist managers are all too familiar with the “I’ve got an artist for you” call or text from a friend or family member, but this was quite the stretch. This was the family friend’s granddaughter’s best friend…from summer camp. She’d never written a song, much less released one. But the 16 year old did have a beautiful cover on YouTube of an Adele song, which was more than enough to have Michael and me floored.

She just so happened to live in Michael’s hometown, so he sat down with her and her family in the coming days and found out that she had all the pieces to the puzzle but had yet to start putting them together, which is where we came in. The rest is history! We spent two years working solely with her before nailing down our workflow, hiring a strong team, and building out our roster from there.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Groundwork Music is a full service artist management and development company with offices in New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. We have a number of artists based primarily in the US, but a couple abroad as well. As I mentioned, our goal from the very beginning has been to find talent early on, and work with each artist to identify and hone their brand both from a visual and sonic perspective. As we’ve grown and several of our artists have become more established, we parsed out the company into two divisions: Groundwork Management and Groundwork Development. We wanted to stay true to our roots in scouting the best talent from square one while also continuing to build our established artists on the full service management side.

I would say that the #1 thing that sets us apart is our strong focus on branding and marketing. We are a lean team, and about half of our staff is dedicated to branding and marketing. In my opinion, it’s impossible to build a successful artist without an identifiable and marketable brand, both of which all of our artists have, or are on their way to having, regardless of genre.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My business partner and I met when I was working at my first management job out of college (Blind Ambition Management) because he and my company partnered to manage the Grammy award-winning artist Marc Cohn. You might know him from his early 2000s hit Walking in Memphis. We found ourselves working directly on a variety of projects relating to Marc, and eventually found out that we had similar dreams and passions when it came to artist development.

Plus, when we first had an opportunity to hang out in person (as he is NY based and I’m Atlanta based) and grab some food together, we found out that we had something else in common: we’re the problem children at restaurants. He’s picky and I have a bunch of food allergies. It’s actually quite problematic when we travel together now, as there is little to no crossover between what we eat haha, but we make it work.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I had a bit of an unusual situation where I was given a rather lengthy down ramp from my full time job (due to my boss’s impending retirement) of over a year, which gave me plenty of time to start making plans with Michael regarding the future of Groundwork. The first milestone was that initial client signing that I mentioned, when we were given an opportunity to start to bring some of our ideas and methodology to life. And signing additional clients was a second milestone. Beyond that, it started to turn into individual artist milestones that we got (and still get) to celebrate with them. Whether that’s a song hitting a certain stream threshold, a first sold out show, a first brand deal, a first record deal… there are so many opportunities to celebrate wins, which can make it a very rewarding job. It’s a lot of work, but celebrating wins with the artists is one of the best parts!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.groundworkmgmt.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/groundworkmgmt

Image Credits

Cole Weber, Zach Foty, Michael Arteaga