We were lucky to catch up with Tom Ciurczak recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tom, appreciate you joining us today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

The most important lesson I learned in my prior job is to always surround yourself with people more talented than yourself. I’ve built 3 highly successful, multi-million dollar companies. It’s not easy to do this without surrounding yourself with the best people you can find. Many business people are reluctant to hire people smarter and more talented than they are. But I learned early on that was one of the important keys to success. I applied the same strategy to my career in music that I have in business. I recruited the very best and just like in business, when you do this the end results are exceptional and often times spectacular.

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.

I come from a musical family where my father was the principal trombonist for the US Military Academy Band at West Point NY. So, you can say music is in my blood. But unlike my father instead of the horn, I picked up the guitar and became quite proficient at it from an early age, to where I was playing in many rock bands in the Mid-Hudson Valley area of New York during my high school days. During this time, I fell in love with the art of song writing.  It was the art form that consumed me, and I constantly worked on honing my skill in songwriting. This is something that I have kept up with my entire life. However, when I graduated High School, my father sat me down and gave me the speech about “starving artists” especially musicians. He said most musicians, regardless of how good you are, can’t make enough to be a full-time musician. Only the lucky few can, and many times the key is not talent but rather luck. So, that sent me on the path to college and a business degree rather than concentrating solely on music. I graduated college and took a job with a lighting company in Upstate NY that soon was bought up by Osram GmbH, one of the world’s largest lighting companies. That sent me down the path of 40years in the International Lighting Industry. But all the while I kept up with my song writing and guitar playing. I moved from NY to California in the 1980’s, traded the German Lighting Company for their Japanese mirror image competitor in Southern California called Ushio, which I built into a $100million company before leaving in early 2000 to start my own import lighting company, BLC International. BLC International, like both Osram and Ushio, focused mainly on specialty lighting used in Semiconductor, Medical, and Entertainment applications. Most people would call it niche marketing, but it is quite lucrative and is something I knew quite a bit about from my years with Osram and Ushio. However, as fate would have it, I attended a “Songwriting Master Class” held by Steve Earle in 2014 and that put me on the path to take my songs to the next level. I was able to put together an extremely talented team and in 2020 I released my first album “Call Me Ishmael”. But as I said luck is always an important element to success, and we released at the same time the planet shut down for COVID, so it never got the exposure it could have. I guess it was good that I had that day job, that my father told me to get. I did, however, get played on over 250 radio stations and received many positive critical reviews. So, I decided that the COVID shutdown wasn’t going to deter me. I mean what were the chances it could happen again? So, I put together my original production team and brought in even better session players to record “I Ain’t Ever Growing Up Volume I” (it’s called Volume I because we recorded enough for a Volume I & II. The Volume II I’m holding onto and will release it next spring) I do think there is a lot of Art in Business and a lot of Business in Art. I believe my combined success and knowledge in both is what sets me apart, and its also what I’ve been most proud of.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

While at BLC, my partner left with our largest account. We were still in our early days and the loss of our largest customer would have crippled us. I needed to replace with an equally large $1million customer and I needed to do it quickly. Out of the blue an opportunity occurred where a large medical company needed a very special lamp made for them. They invited 3 vendors to make presentations and I was one of them. But there was a blizzard the day before the meeting and all flights were stranded. I took a cab from Long Beach, CA to LAX and caught a red eye into JFK. I rented a car and made it in time to make my schedule presentation. But, due the blizzard my competitors all cancelled. The end result was I won the contract and new account, because I was willing to travel through a blizzard, while my competition wasn’t. the lesson I guess is, if you want something bad enough you’ll go through a blizzard to get it. Also, after I recorded my first album “Call Me Ishmael” the planet shut down completely due to COVID. I needed to shift my plans to promote it, or it was never going to get heard. But a blizzard didn’t stop me so I figured COVID wouldn’t either. It took a tremendous marketing effort, but I was able to get it played on over 250 radio stations, this in turn spurred numerous positive critical reviews. Both are examples of another thing my father told me when I was young. He said never give up on your dreams and I never have.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I never really pursued my songwriting skills while I was young. I instead concentrated on building successful businesses and raising a family. But songwriting is more than a hobby to me. It is a passion. And I think passion is often what drives people above and beyond. I’ve always succeeded in whatever I tried to do, so I have a lot of confidence in my abilities .Right now I have very simple goals. Music may be the most difficult challenge to succeed at as it is so very subjective to listeners. Creating and playing music is quite a catharsis and a tremendous amount of fun. Just getting my original songs recorded and heard is a reward in its own right.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tomciurczak.com
• Instagram: @tokyotommy58
• Facebook: Facebook.com/TomCiurczakMusic
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-ciurczak-8725518/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/tokyotommy58
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmcRImn3fuX0pxlV5sYHvlw
• Other: Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/4kSCXkEUWwUq5ykqyEf1Dn

Image Credits
Bobby Wakamatsu