We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Guy Balbaert a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Guy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

I was working for Bose globally when a US colleague came up with a product idea that would allow bands to rehearse silently using headphones with full control of all sources. It was a game changer idea that needed to be built from the ground up. We (Steve Skillings and I) then both left our well payed jobs and launched JamHub about a year later after having sourced investments from multiple partners. It was a massive undertaking for a very small team, but we had a working product and through our joint networks, drive and market knowledge we had a full global distribution network up and running only one year later. The challenge from then became constant growth, new product creation and keeping investment money (read cashflow) in check. It was a hell of a rollercoaster ride to run this company to the level we envisioned, until we found an investor in Singapore that bought the company and the additional software platform ‘Bandlab’ – online collaboration tool for musicians – that we had conceived and is now a creative tool for millions of musicians globally.

Guy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I was the guy who was always hanging around the mixing desk on stage and in a recording studio. Even as a creative artist and songwriter the production tools were always of interest to me. After graduating I almost immediately found a job with a friend of mine setting up a distribution company dealing with key industry pro-audio brands like Martin Audio, Midas, BSS, AKG,…
The connections and knowledge acquired during the initial years set up the rest of my path. At the same time I was songwriting for other artists and working on my own songs. That resulted in an artist contract with EMI and the release of my solo album with READ produced by Kevin Armstrong (David Bowie/Keziah Jones/Morrissey/…) This was all happening at pretty much the same time. I believe that the mix between a marketing degree, my language skills, a love for the creative and the tools needed to record and perform that creativity gave me a holistic view on what is required to get songs/products to market.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The moment I understood that video content was going to be the strongest voice in the communication mix of any brand. I really felt the impact of video marketing through my work with Ernie Ball some years ago. After that assignment I could see that this was going to be a strong element for my future consulting work. I get really involved with that strategic and creative video content creation process nowadays and it leads to much stronger brand positioning as a result for every company involved.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

At JamHub that was almost a constant. We were an ambitious outfit with big ideas and not enough investment money to do what we wanted to do at the pace that we wanted to do it. The core team went for months on end without pay to keep going. No fun, but it does give you a resilience that you never lose again in life.
I’m really understanding now every time I meet bootstrapping entrepreneurs. It’s not for the faint hearted, but you feel very much alive doing it.

Contact Info:

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-balbaert888/
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/guybalbaert

Image Credits

Image 1 – Guy Balbaert
Image 2 – Setting up a video podcast for Boveda in Korea
Image 3 – Bandlab logo
Image 4 – JamHub product
Image 5 – Visiting partners (Bourgeois Guitars/Taylor Guitars/Ohana Ukelele’s)