We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Todd Hackett a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Todd, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
For my company, Hastati Music Network, the idea sort of just evolved over time. I started in the music industry as a promoter selling tickets and recruiting people into this MLM that I was a part of. I was consistently on the leaderboards for top sales and was promoted to higher positions. Eventually, I left that company and formed my own, Diamond’s Edge Productions, which gave me a lot of insight into hosting shows, talent buying, etc. That company failed due to some poor decisions I made in choosing working partners but it still served the purpose of giving me lots of connections and knowledge about how live music events work. I would leverage the connections I had to connect people to various resources and professionals that I had networked with and became sort of a ‘telephone operator’ for producers and promoters. I started being approached by people I had never met and people overseas looking for my help so I founded Hastati to divert attention away from my personal contacts over to an entity. From there, Hastati continued to evolve, being leveraged by record labels, promoters, clubs and venues, artists, and all kinds of people in the industry. We’re now a formal artist management company building out two new services for artists and the industry. One being an EDM-focused digital marketing agency and the other is developing a SaaS to automate, escrow, and protect the entire talent buying process for each end user.
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?
I got into the EDM realm when I was going through a pretty rough time. My mom was involved in a serious accident that left her paralyzed and in the mind of an 8 year old, my family kinda fell apart during this time so I had to grow up really fast to help fill in some of the gaps my mother left behind. My business that I had formed to pay my way through college was going under, and I was getting over being dumped by my ex fiance. I was also going through a complete identity crisis as I had left the religion I was raised in and was trying to figure out who I was and how I wanted to see the world. It didn’t help that nearly everyone I knew in that religion completely abandoned me due to my leaving the church, so apart from a few select friends, I had lost my entire support system as well. My roommate and good friend Austin, introduced me to Skrillex back in 2012 and I instantly fell in love with the music. It was the perfect blend of aggressive and energetic that was a complete embodiment of all the struggles I was going through and it helped me vent those emotions in a healthy way. I Googled ‘Dubstep Concert’ one day (not knowing what a rave was) and found tickets to a show in my hometown and decided to go by myself. I went through a total culture shock as the world I had come from was very socially conservative and I entered this world of neon colors, lasers, loud bass, kandi jewelry, and a freedom of expression that I would have formerly thought to be a total abomination. The people there were so kind and open and they welcomed me and loved me and became my entire support group as I was navigating life’s challenges. I made a promise to myself that I would give back to this scene as it had given to me and have dedicated my entire life and focus to doing what I can do to enrich the culture, help artists, and push the EDM scene to higher heights. Since then, I’ve worked in as many positions as possible from light and sound production, to tour manager, to promoter and event host, to talent agent and manager, to even studying entertainment law so I could understand every moving part of the industry and find ways to improve how things operate.
Some of my top achievements in the scene would be when I first founded Diamond’s Edge. It started out as a troupe of Go-Go dancers. I really wanted to focus on making a squad that was super diverse as a nod to how diversity and inclusivity were paramount values in the EDM scene. So I gathered people of various ethnicities, body types, sexualities and genders and I trained them in physical fitness and endurance and lined up dance instructors to help them improve their dance moves. Within my first year of operation I had contracts with the White Horse Inn – the oldest and longest running gay bar in the nation, Beaux SF – a very high end gay club in the gay district of San Francisco, and my dancers were hosted at SF and Oakland Pride the same year that gay marriage was legalized at a federal level in 2015. We eventually blossomed into an event production company and so I needed to find promoters. The general practice among promoters was to offer their street team free access to their shows as compensation for helping with the marketing effort. I decided to take a different approach and I paid my street team based on the ticket sales they generated and paid them per hour spent handing out flyers and posting on socials. As a result, the members of other promoter’s street teams started coming over to work for us, and our competitors were forced to increase the level of compensation they offered to their team. I’m proud to be the one to help change how street team’s are treated here now as a result of my efforts. Our competitors though, well, they weren’t too thrilled about the changes I brought about haha.
Another achievement I’m really proud of was when I worked for ESM – an event production company based out of San Francisco. I was focused on spreading the company as far as I could and started connecting with people out in Salt Lake City. From my own bedroom I hosted meetings where I trained people to help me recruit and build the promoter base so that we could host the very first out of state takeover for the company. I eventually moved to Utah to manage the team I had built and we accumulated enough promoters to finally host our first show. Sadly, the show never launched due to upper management wanting to focus on other things, but the fact that I was able to build up a branch all by myself made me receive many awards in the company and I was given new roles and responsibilities which helped me develop my professional skills while also working in an industry I loved.
On a more current level, I linked up with the owner of Riddim Network – the world’s largest Riddim record label – and started pushing for him to leverage his platform for live shows. He like the idea, but wasn’t sure how to go about it, so I just started sending out cold calls to various promoters to see what kind of interest there would be in something like this. There was a huge amount of support for this idea, and since then we have hosted several Riddim Network takeovers all across the country, each becoming bigger and bigger as the momentum grows. This effort has helped promoters across the country host some of the biggest shows they’ve ever had to date, including one promoter who reported their very first ‘Sold Out’ event with us.
It’s nearly impossible to break down everything Hastati does for the industry because, frankly, we do it all to varying degrees. From marketing and branding consultations for artists, to helping build business and sales strategies for promoters, to providing DJ mentorship and music production lessons, even offering legal resources and coaching on negotiation strategies, to graphic design, video editing, and 3D visuals, if you are in the industry and you need guidance or resources, we probably have the solution for you.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
I have worked at executive level marketing positions in the past, so I could see a lot of the inner machinations of startups and how these companies were beholden to their investors. I didn’t like how they were stressed about meeting certain metrics and hyper focused on meeting quarterly expectations. I felt it took a lot of energy away from the core vision that their CEO’s had and as a result I feel like the business suffered in terms of how it could innovate and experiment as they relied mostly on best practices and safe bets.
When I started Hastati, I have self-funded the entire thing since 2018. Although I have been approached by investors, I have consistently denied them so as to maintain total control of how things operate within my company. It’s made money tight plenty of times, but the freedom to be able to pivot and experiment with different ideas and strategies has been more valuable to me than the potential money I could have earned by going down the ‘best practice’ route. I’ve been free to make mistakes and learn the hard way, which are lessons so valuable to me because they give me a depth of understanding of WHY we do or don’t do certain things, rather than ‘well I was advised not to do this.’
There will come a time with the development of our talent buying software that I will need investors to get behind the project to scale, but for now, I’ve built an entire team around that effort solely based on the fact that they believe so feverishly in the vision I have created that they are willing to sacrifice their time and energy for equity shares alone.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
I think what helped me the most is that I’m always willing to lend a hand with projects that need a little bit of nurture. I have given hundreds of free consultations, built business plans for dozens of promoters and a few festivals, and guided many artists through proven systems of growth. I usually do this on the condition that they provide me with the data of what the execution of my strategy looks like, which I’ll then share to my audience so they can see what I can do for their brand / company / artistry / etc.
Additionally, I’m completely honest with every client I work with. Sometimes my critiques can hurt your feelings if you’re not prepared to be told that what you’re doing sucks, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters for your business is results. The fact that I’ll be brutally honest with you is a trait that many value in this industry as putting up a false positive front is such a common practice that when you get in front of someone like me, I’m almost like a breath of fresh air to people. Being aggressively authentic has served me very well in my dealings with people.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hastatimusicnetwork.com
- Instagram: hastatimusicnetwork
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-hackett/
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/hastatimusicnetwork
- Other: Consultancy link – zcal.co/toddhackett
