We recently connected with Sam Parvin and have shared our conversation below.

Sam, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Parvin Music’s Mission: We help consumer brands make a positive difference through the music they use in their communications, while doing away with the “starving artist”.

Here’s why this is important to me.

There are few things that have impacted my life as much as music. And I’m surely not the only one.

When thinking of songwriters and musicians (“artists”) – Being fully yourself and putting it out there for all the world to see/hear is the bravest thing you can do, in my opinion. We “muggles” derive great value from their vulnerability! These people should be awarded handsomely, not just in money but in having their messages heard and acknowledged.

I’m passionate about this because my own personal purpose in life is get to live as my most authentic, fully-expressed self, and to support others in doing the same. Self-expression has been a theme of my life. Maybe it comes from moments throughout my life where I felt like I needed to twist and turn to mold myself to be what others wanted me to be instead of fully putting myself out there. Maybe it comes from before this lifetime. Maybe both. But the need to acknowledge and support those who have the courage to express their authentic selves is rooted in me.

On the other side, brands are like people; they express their hopes and desires and how they see the world, like we do. The messages brands put out there SHAPE OUR WORLD. And they have the power to change our world. So we better be intentional about the messages we put out there.

If my team and I can make a contribution to both brands and bands getting to express themselves in a positive way, be compensated for their courage, and inspire others to show who they are, we’re accomplishing Parvin Music’s mission.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

About You & Your Business

I’ve known I wanted to work in music from a fairly young age. Music has been a part of my life forever, it was handed down to me from my parents and sister, and I’m a natural entrepreneur so I was curious as a teenager about exactly how the “rich and famous” artists I loved got rich and famous.

I specialize in advising brands on how to use music to improve their businesses and relationships to their consumers. We focus on licensing and composing music for advertising. What we do differently than most businesses you can source music from is that we’re really here to “solve the music problem”… We get involved with projects early, act as an extended advisory member of the team, and make sure music is being used as an asset to get closer to the brand and business goals.

In my first “real” job out of college, I worked at a well-known recording studio. I went there to work on music, and what I found was also an entire world of audio for advertising, film, and television that I was also passionate about (it turns out!).

I remember standing in the lobby of the studio and thinking, “What IF! I could bring together the worlds of music and advertising, to help get artists paid and heard while also helping brands really say something powerful through music?!” At that time, it was much more seen as a sell-out for a band to license their music for a big consumer brand. Over the years, bands have gone from selling out to cashing in. ;)

Later my dream of doing this would fall in my lap.

After a year at a major sales and marketing organization (we sold software, I worked in a cubicle and wore heels to work. It felt like dress-up everyday, not something authentic to who I am.), I got an email via Linkedin. It was the week between Christmas and New Years, I was sitting in a cafe about to make the five-hour drive from Atlanta to Charleston, SC, and I randomly checked my email. I don’t remember the entire email from this person via Linkedin, but the last sentence said “…if you don’t currently have your dream job, maybe we should have a conversation.”

They had a nice looking website (back in 2011), and so I figured I’d take the call. Haha.

I had my first interview with Music Dealers, the first music synch licensing agency representing “real” unsigned artists, on a Sunday, got an offer on January 1, and moved to Atlanta to work inside The Coca-Cola Company headquarters just two weeks later. I was a contractor with an office in-house, managing all music assets under my Coke email address. By the way, I’m from Atlanta and Coke has been a part of my heritage and the identity of my city since its inception in 1886.

At The Coca-Cola Company, I got a master class on music licensing for the most recognized brand in the world. I built their entire ecosystem of music (with my small and mighty team of scrappy music experts). I saw so many opportunities to use music as a more powerful tool and to make the partnerships between artists and brands richer. Less transactional, more valuable in not just “money exchange for music”.

It was also clear that corporate life was not for me. While I absolutely adored the work I got to do, I worked with the best marketers in the world, and I got exposed to people and cultures from the Philippines to South Africa, Mexico to Pakistan… I spent a lot of time feeling like I didn’t belong or that I had to do things a certain way for the work to see the light of day. I realized how important it was for me to have freedom of time and creativity and that there are a lot of different forms of valuable energy besides money and prestige. I’m so very thankful to have learned that for myself by the age of 30.

The stars were on my side, because I probably would have never left that job. But with some re-organizing and the close of Music Dealers, I was ushered into starting my own music licensing agency with four brilliant music professionals. I created the possibility of my living in Mexico and building the business in LATAM, and my partners were on board. Within six months of leaving Coke, I had my own business and lived in a foreign country.

Probably about two years into entrepreneurship, I realized that that was always the vision I saw as “success” for myself. Starting my own company, making it happen in a foreign country, and learning to speak Spanish are collectively the accomplishments that I’m most proud of in my life.

After a year, my business partners and I parted ways, as it was clear to us all that we wanted to build two different businesses. The next day, I was awarded my first big project in Mexico, ha. I guess I was starting my own gig!

When I started Parvin Music seven years ago, I vowed to work with a small roster of clients, more closely and from earlier in the process, to really understand their businesses and consumer needs and desires. When we are INTENTIONAL, get a HOLISTIC view, and get in COMMUNICATION with each other around what we really want to move in the world, magic can happen. Not only that, but we save a lot of money, increase marketing effectiveness, shape culture, build more long-term brands, take the music procurement process off the hands of clients, and more.

In the last seven years, I’ve had the pleasure to support some of the biggest brands in the world, like Maker’s Mark bourbon; GMC; Corona, Pacifico, Victoria, Dos Equis, Sol and other beers; Procter & Gamble brands, and more.

My business continues to evolve as I do.

I have created the freedom of time and creativity in my life that’s been the biggest gift.

Intention has become an important part of my life and thus my work. We are crafting the world we live in in every moment, so I want to take care of what I put out.

I’m now seeing myself as an artist more than ever in my life, and it’s the coolest thing. I am forging new collaborations and working on projects just for the hell of it, and I think that is feeding the output of brand projects as well.

I’m open to working with consumer brands who want to and/or already do use music as an asset in their advertising. The last couple years have been a lot of internal work and business projects for me. This year is a lot more about artistic collaboration, both in brand projects and in producing musical talent, and in any other project that helps me and/or my collaborators express themselves.

You can see some select projects on our website.

I also write articles about music for brands and release them on our blog and on Linkedin.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The world we live in is no longer linear. In order to make more money or have “more”, that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to put in more, work harder or more hours.

To grow my own business has taken work. And I’ve gone through periods where I would glue myself to the computer and “work hard and long hours” to produce the output that I thought I should be producing. I was really focusing on the “doing”, and my “being” inspired, motivated and confident was not there. So of course the results compared to the amount of time and energy I was spending were just not coming.

I continue to work on “being” in an open, healthy, inspired and confident space and have seen that having conversations and creating from there is what makes a massive difference in my business (and life). It’s exciting to see that, because of all the technology and modes of communication we’ve developed as humans, that we can live abundant lives, not only in money, but also in time, health, relationships, and more.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

I subscribe to the way of work of Blair Enns and his The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. Among other things, it speaks to building our businesses through conversations and value-for-value, long-term collaborative partnerships with clients, not by responding to RFPs or making one-way presentations.

There are many aspects of his teachings that have been fruitful for me. One overarching message I’ve gotten is this – If someone hires me (or you), it’s because they need what I can provide. Money is not the only form of energy being exchanged, and by having high-level conversations and putting myself on the same level as my clients, I acknowledge the expertise that I provide for them, and them to me. It becomes a strategic relationship versus tactical. It’s been helpful for this small niche expertise of a business I run.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://parvin-music.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samparvin/

Image Credits
Jess Parvin, Juan Mejía, Erika Stauffer, staff of Advertising Week LATAM, staff of Advertising Week New York