Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lee Andes. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Lee, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think you need a dream so vivid and clear that the facts don’t matter. It needs to be so internal and essential that by consequence of curiosity and obsession, the facts don’t matter. It is not that you tell yourself the facts don’t matter; it’s more akin to looking up and realizing you haven’t paused to consider the facts. It’s very similar to falling in love. On the front end you may and should count the cost to the best of your ability. Then if curiosity and obsession give birth to hope then be consumed by the process of cultivating what you hope for.

When I started my business, my first “why” was to fund my hip hop dreams of touring and releasing albums and signing a record deal. I was obsessed with disproving my own doubts and simultaneously wanting to disprove those who had no confidence in me to accomplish them. Many of those people had the best intentions, but nonetheless caution sounded like a lack of confidence to my ears. It ended up being one of the best things for me.

For me it was a marriage of running toward a dream, AND running from a nightmare. I knew I didn’t want the life that I saw around me. I knew that hip hop was a haven of escape for me, and I felt that I could leverage it to become a vehicle to deliver me to my dreams.

So of course it must start with WHY and then WHAT and then HOW & WHO.

Lee, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

So I have a really unique and serendipitous story in terms of how I got started in my business. While in high school one of my best friends discovered a passion for hip hop and rapping. We did everything together and so naturally we did this together too. Growing up in a small rural town in Virginia, hip hop was way out of the ordinary and this was well before Spotify or even SoundCloud. For years we wrote songs and recorded ourselves and just focused on getting better.

After we graduated from high school I chose to opt out of the college route because I felt confident I would be an entrepreneur in some capacity. One of my first jobs was grand opening our local Best Buy. I remember during one of the first team building ice breakers the question was the typical, what’s your name and one fun fact about you. Feeling a particular boldness in my passion for rapping I decided today was the day that I was declaring that I may work for Best Buy but I’m going to be a professional rapper! So I said my names Lee and I like to rap. Everyone sort of glances around and snickered and chuckled etc.. not super fun in the moment and I’m sure over the next few months there were some comments and jokes that I didn’t particularly enjoy. Nonetheless, about 6 months later a customer came in to buy a washer and dryer. As they were finishing up the sale, the customer asked the sales associate, ‘do you know anyone around here that raps?’

That sales associate remembered what I had said in the icebreaker 6 months prior and pointed them in my direction since I happened to be working that day.

The customer and I instantly had a great rapport. He invited me to his studio to record a demo and see if we had chemistry working together. Everything went great and so he offered to pay me what Best But was paying me in exchange to essentially be his apprentice.

He had had a hand in producing the competition music for the movie Bring It On, and had done countless custom mixes for the world’s best All Star Cheer routines. All Star Cheer is sort of like AAU basketball. It’s a private sector of the sport that is more competitive.

After working with my mentor for about a year, we decided to go our separate ways. After that I moved to Columbia SC where I started CrimsonMuzik Vocalz with the gear he had given me. So I started my vocal business by recording in a closet using coats and jackets as my acoustic treatment.

I did well enough that I decided to bet on me and quit working for Best Buy. The obsession I had cultivated for this craft had outgrown the doubts, worries, and fears. I knew that I had a hold of something that I was able to wield well enough to make it pay me.

From there we expanded our roster to include many more vocalists. We began to make a name for ourselves in the industry simply by being obsessed with developing strong relationships with our clients and a freakish commitment to being reliable and communicating with our clients. We were able to create a system that allowed anyone to work with us remotely, and an environment or culture that made them want to stay.

So the brass tacks of what we do is very simple:

Cheerleading teams need music to compete to. That music needs to be composed with the team’s choreography in mind, so the team hires a “CMM” (Cheer Music Mixer) or the producer. That CMM will create the music sort of like a mash up mix. To add customization to the mix to make it more specifically custom to their clients identity, the CMM will hire vocalists like mine to record vocals that include team identity aspects. It could be as simply as colors, mascots, team names, etc… but we also try to dress it up with lyrics capturing their ‘mission’ or theme. Some teams are going for back to back titles, some just missed it last year and want redemption. The possibilities are as individual as the teams themselves. Whatever the case may be, we try to capture that teams identity in our lyrics so that we in effect become their voice during the performance.

Since we started in 2012 we’ve had so many exciting opportunities like being featured in countless World Champion mixes. Our vocals have been featured in performances on Good Morning America, Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and more.

No matter the accolades or whatever we’ve accomplished, the mission for us is to simply provide vocals that will help draw the best out of the athletes over the course of their season and to do so with lyrics that can last a lifetime. We recognize that our vocals contribute to what becomes their seasons’ soundtrack. With no exaggeration they will listen to this piece of music no less than 6 hours a week. What we say in the vocals has big implications! We believe that what we take in contributes to what we give out, so we want to be sure that we’re sowing a positive and empowering message to these athletes that not only gets them over the finish line in terms of the performance and season, but we want to contribute to how they think in life after cheer as well!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

We like to think of our industry as fairly recession proof because in all actuality the All Star Cheer industry covers all ranges of income in terms of who participates, but it can be an expensive sport. This has provided a great deal of stability for those who can simply stay consistent and reliable.

When the pandemic occurred it looked like we’d remain in tact especially at first because All Star GYMS were seen as fitness spaces and were largely allowed to stay open. That gave us some confidence but quickly we realized that live competitions didn’t have the same liberty.

It looked like at least for the foreseeable future our industry was dead in the water. Our accountant helped us structure our expenses and our budget in a way that allowed us to ‘float’ as he called it. We began creating custom songs for teams and companies outside of cheer to try and supplement the revenue as well as receiving PPE for payroll a couple times.

Our revenue was essentially cut in half for 2020 & 2021.

Thanks to the cheer industry at large innovating and creating the opportunity to compete virtually by filming your routine in the gym and submitting it online to be judged we were able to make it.

As the country began ‘opening up’ again things bounced back within a year or so.

During that time it was so important to have faith and confidence that even in such dire times all I can control are the things I can control. The energy you spend worrying is just that, spent. As difficult as it was I would force myself to tell myself that I would wake up the next day and get after it again. I would force myself to believe that even if we went broke we would rebuild it. The battle became very mental because there was not a lot to do.

Over time the facts gave way to the vision and the consistency we held. It was in that season that I learned what it means to have livelihoods that depend on what you’ve built. Being in business for yourself is an exciting experience, but when you realize you’re in business for those you serve and provide for it becomes a high calling.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I mentioned this a bit in an earlier question, but I’ll expand on it more here.

What has made all the difference in our business is the way we relate to our clients. In our space it was common for everyone to have ‘their guy’ when it came to custom vocals. So for us to be successful we needed to become ‘their guy’ to a lot of people.

For us this meant that our ‘secret recipe’ couldn’t be ‘OUR secret recipe’ it had to be developing rapport and chemistry with the client personally. In music (especially cheer music) everyone does the same thing a little bit differently. It sounds to simple but that is a pretty good general description.

So we had to find what made each of our clients distinct and individual and then factor that in to what we gave them specifically.

In addition to that we male sure that we over communicate. We get clarity on things that we already knew how to move forward on. We touch base at every point in the process that deviates from the typical expectation. We send gifts to our clients for holidays and connect with them at events.

To sum it all up, when we enter into business with a new client, it becomes a bit of a mission to become friends with them. We want to know what makes them tick, so that we can scratch where they itch. Whether that be in life or in business. We’ve had the privilege of being a listening ear to clients going through unbelievable circumstances. We’ve had the privilege of ‘saving the day’ by turning around vocals way ahead of typical turnaround times because of some unforeseen issue.

We learned to become authentically others-centric and we did so because we believe that you get to live how you want to live once you’ve helped enough people live how they want to live.

Contact Info:

• Website: Crimsonmuzikvocalz.com