“What would you say is your biggest accomplishment?” Asked the stern-faced hiring manager as he reclined slightly in his chair. He wore an untucked polo shirt that made me feel uncomfortably overdressed in my suit and tie. But, I knew I had the perfect answer to his question.

Awhile back, I sang in a band called King Niko. We recorded a song that was getting regular rotation on a number of radio stations in Salt Lake, LA, and Chicago. Within weeks of its release, we’d received a ton of great press and landed some big shows.

At one of those shows, I got to fill in for the lead singer of Panic! At The Disco, who’d been unexpectedly hospitalized the day before. Their bassist approached me strictly because he’d heard, and liked, our new song. In terms of big accomplishments, I knew that this one song was a better example of my capabilities than anything at my “day job”.

So, I told Stern-Faced Hiring Manager about all the work that went into that process — from writing and recording to publishing and publicity— laying out why it was my biggest accomplishment. He paused, as though waiting for the point of my response.

“Oh, I meant something from work,” he finally said, with a nervous chuckle. And, it hurt. All of the skills and behaviors this company said they were looking for were demonstrated in my story — creative problem solving, project management, improvisation, communication skills, attention to detail — but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. I don’t think he was trying to be dismissive or patronizing, he was simply unable to contextualize my response. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get the job.

These days I’m a Customer Success Manager for Teem, a Workplace Experience company, and I’m thriving. I knew from the first time I sat down with Zach Barney, who would go on to hire me, that Teem was different. Zach wanted to know more about how I wrote, how I rehearsed, how I planned and managed concerts. I would interview with a half dozen Teem employees before joining the company, and each time I felt like their goal was to get the full measure of the person — not to check off a list.

And it’s not just Teem, “transferable skills and behaviors” has been a buzz phrase in HR and PeopleOps for decades. So, what skills and behaviors can musicians offer your business?

When I think about it, many of my most successful and accomplished friends honed their skills not in a boardroom or a classroom, but in dive bars and recording studios. While I know a lucky few musicians who have been able to make a career from music, I wanted to take a closer look at the ones who’ve found success in tech, finance, and business.

What did Miki, our HR Manager at Teem, recognize in my skillset that Stern-Faced Hiring Manager from my story didn’t? What kind of advantage does that give musicians? Here’s why you should think like Miki, like Zach, and like Teem: hire a musician.

They Work Like Rockstars

Party like a rockstar? Maybe. Work like a rockstar? Absolutely.

Music is a hustle, it’s a grind. It’s a crowded space with a very high noise-to-signal ratio and you have to put in enormous amounts of work to differentiate yourself.

I asked my good friend and bandmate Ben Moffatt, CEO of Gantry Creative, what he learned from his decades in music. “Mostly, the ability to hustle,” he said. “I don’t expect anything to just come to me in a flash of brilliance.” Ben’s story is a familiar one to me, a rebellious youth for whom music is the one great constant that teaches the value of persistence. “I was a late bloomer, both professionally and academically. I graduated college at 32 and landed my first ‘real job’ at 33,” Ben recalls. “I’ve cleaned hotel rooms, waited tables, sold furniture, and loaded semi trucks. All of those jobs helped shape me into the man I am today.”

“I don’t expect anything to just come to me in a flash of brilliance.”

— Ben Moffat, CEO of Gantry Creative (Rocker)

Chris Jex, Senior Merchandising Manager for eBay’s Latin American operations, echoed Ben’s thoughts on hustle. “While playing and touring in the band incamera I was completing degrees in Economics and Political science at the University of Utah, and working a full time job in online marketing,” he told me. “Balancing way too many projects and responsibilities seems to be a common trait of a lot musicians I know and refutes the stereotype of the lazy, single-minded musician.”

Single-minded focus when needed, plus the ability to multitask and prioritize? Check.

They’re Entrepreneurs and Self-Starters

These days, a working musician has to wear every hat. They’re the creative team, sure, but they’re also marketing, sales, PR, accounting, etc. If a musician can’t figure out how to run their own business, then they’re pushed out of the market by someone who can — it’s as simple as that.

As a result, the successful musicians I know are also accomplished and well-rounded business managers and owners. Katia Racine, of Pixie and The Partygrass Boys, is also Program Manager at Sustainable Startups. Ben Moffat branched off from his job at Salt Lake Media company Verite to start Gantry Creative.

My BassMint Pros bandmate Maclain Lindquist runs daily operations for northern Utah’s largest funeral and cemetery company. “My first DJ gig was playing rap songs on two Fisher Price boomboxes for my fourth grade graduation party,” Maclaine told me. “I began a lucrative DJ career from 1998 to 2001 and I’ve been recording people of all types of music in my basement since 1997.” For Maclaine, music not only helped develop and hone business skills, but keeps him centered and on task at work. “Without music, I wouldn’t have the peace that I need to do my job to it’s fullest. I must be centered to best serve the families going through grief from the inevitable stages of mourning.”

“Without music, I wouldn’t have the peace that I need to do my job to it’s fullest. I must be centered to best serve the families going through grief from the inevitable stages of mourning.”

— Maclain Lindquist, Operations Manager.

In his best-seller “Love Is The Killer App,” author and former Yahoo CSO Tim Sanders described how his passion for engaging an audience compelled him to turn down a law school degree in favor of touring America in a van playing reggae music. The focus changed, but the passion, drive, and entrepreneurial spirit remained. That’s what makes him Tim Sanders: king of the love cats, tech industry giant, and New York Times best-seller. Could you spot a Tim Sanders if you saw their resume?

Adaptability, passion, and ownership? Check.

They Think Outside The Box? Heck, They Live Outside The Box

Randy Favero is the CEO of Satellite Broadband Holdings in Park City, Utah. He’s also an incredible singer. As VP of Worldwide Professional Services at Netscape from 1997 to 2001, Randy hired over 500 employees — mathematicians, engineers… and musicians.

“There’s a huge correlation between math and music,” Randy told me, “and often it was easier to take math majors and music majors with a creative mind, mold and shape them, versus using computer science guys who thought in a very structured way.”

Skyler Arbon is probably the best guitarist I know, and he’s also an R&D Research Associate at BioFire Diagnostics. “I’m constantly designing and executing experiments around our products for diagnosing infectious diseases,” Skyler explained. “There’s not a lot of room to be lazy in any sort of business field, and artists in general can be pigeon-holed into being portrayed that way, when really we have a lot of creative muscle we built through our artistic endeavors that we can exercise to excel in our fields.”

Musicians have a way of communicating complex ideas in a relatable way. During his 20 years at IBM, Randy saw musicians play a big role in helping the company “shift its focus from selling devices to a solutions-based environment.” Randy goes on to say that at Netscape, musicians helped develop modern web browsing as we know it.

Creative problem-solving? Check.

Artists Make Great Employees

The next time you’re screening candidates or putting together a job listing, think about your best employees. What do they have in common? They’re probably driven, enthusiastic, optimistic, have excellent attention to detail, are action-oriented and accountable. As it turns out, that description also perfectly applies to all of the best musicians I know.

And what about painters? Poets? Stand-up comedians? I guess the main point I want to make is to see beyond job history, education, degrees, and all of the standard checkboxes to which we’ve grown accustomed, and consider the hard work of creatives. You should absolutely hire poets and authors — and why not mimes and jugglers, too?

Anyone who can excel in a creative endeavor through practice, grit, and determination is worth interviewing and taking as seriously as the traditional candidate with the traditional resume. But, you know, mostly musicians.

Ransom Wydner is a Customer Success Manager at Teem, which provides client companies of all sizes with actionable workspace data and a suite of dynamic employee tools and solutions to optimize Workplace Experience. He’ll sing you pretty much any song you’d like to hear if you call him at work, preferably Disney themes. 415–951–3755.

Check out our Workplace Weekly Playlist on Spotify featuring two songs from Ransom Wydner and King Niko!

Why You Should Hire A Musician was originally published in WX Weekly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Pioneer Day 2015, H&M fitting room at City Creek mall in Salt Lake City — that’s when and where I decided I needed to get in shape. I’d always said “eventually I’m going to get fit” and now here I was, looking in the mirror at the most out of shape version of Ransom Wydner that I’d seen.

Pioneer Day is a Utah holiday observed on July 24th, traditionally celebrated in the water — or at least that’s how my friends always celebrated. As such, I was shopping for some swimming shorts, but nothing fit like it should. I wasn’t horribly out of shape, but at 175 I was the heaviest I’d been since college (when I discovered beer and its abundance of empty calories). The month before, I’d turned 30 and I had back pain every morning. After x-rays and exams, my doctor wrote a prescription that said “get in shape.” So my doctor, myself, and these incredibly unflattering shorts were all telling me the same thing and it was time to listen.

I tried a lot of things. I tried a strict diet, I tried joining a gym — several gyms, actually. I walked and biked everywhere, but I just couldn’t shake these extra pounds. I’d been 150 through most of highschool and figured that was about the weight that my height and frame best supported, so that was my goal — 25 pounds, 11kg, no small feat.

Some people can make it to the gym regularly, I’m not one of them. I like to stay incredibly busy and even though I recognized the need to prioritize my health, I just couldn’t fit the gym into my life on a regular basis. Any busy knowledge worker knows what I mean.

Some people can stick to a strict diet, I’m not one of them either. I need my morning coffee and sugar, I travel frequently and as a part-time musician my weekend meals are often dictated by the venue’s menu. There’s a snack closet at Teem, anyone else know the challenges of the work snack closet? Business lunches? Happy Hour with prospective clients?

These aren’t new or unique excuses, they’re probably the most common reasons why our new years resolutions fail year after year. I could beat myself up for making excuses, or I could figure out a solution. For me the key to getting fit was to make it fit. That is, I had to find ways to make fitness work with my life and schedule. I had to make new habits that could become part of my day-to-day instead of trying to re-shape my day-to-day around the habits.

First, food. I used a calorie-counting app called “Lose It” to track my calorie intake and make sure I was burning more than I was taking in. Things started popping out at me — a beer is practically a sandwich, calories-wise, so I cut back a little. I found foods that I loved and became more conscious of portions, and I chewed and chewed and chewed my food (“it should be like a paste,” is what my mom always said). I grew up incredibly poor, so I have an deep-rooted aversion to wasting food. This expresses itself in a “clean your plate” habit of mine that I had to break, and sometimes that meant telling a server at a restaurant that I didn’t need a doggy bag and yes, I was done. That was hard, but it helped.

So portion control and small tweaks (less meat, fewer carbs, tons and tons of water) helped get my diet in check, but what about exercise? I’ve seen the future of fitness, friends, and it’s jumping jacks. 500 jumping jacks can burn up to 1000 calories. 1000 jumping jacks, in groups of 250, can burn off an entire day’s food calories (based on a 2000 calorie diet). I do my jumping jacks while I watch the evening news, which is something I do to unwind every night anyway. 250 jumping jacks, at a good speed and intensity, can be fit into a 15 minute break easily.

The ab wheel is great. I can watch TV and get a fantastic core workout. I got some 5 pound weights that I only use for pushups. The weights are hexagon in shape so they don’t roll around and offer relief for my wrists, compared with traditional pushups (any other wrist-injuries, fellow keyboard warriors?).

1000 jumping jacks, 100 pushups, 100 ab wheel…rolls? I split these up throughout the day and make them fit into other things I’m doing. This is a commitment I can stick to, and I have (mostly). Even when I changed jobs last year, from working at home to a fast-paced and challenging Sales Development job at Teem, I’ve still been able to stick to this regimen and I’ve been at my goal weight for 6 months now.

I’m not going to be modeling underwear any time soon, but my back pain is all but gone and I have loads of energy. 25 pounds changed my life without having to change my life. I love pizza, I love beer, I love sugar and I still get all three, just a little less frequently. I am without a doubt in the best shape of my life and all it took was finding ways to make fitness fit.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on March 24, 2017.

I was devastated when my bands broke up. I’d just turned 30 and had dedicated my 20s — my youth — to music and performing. I had some accomplishments to show for it and in my mind I was this close to finally “making it.” I had a record contract and an album produced by a Grammy nominee and now all of the sudden both of my most prominent acts had disbanded? What do I do now?

Like many creatives, I was convinced that only art would do. Only a full time professional performing career could make me happy — it was rock star or bust and now it seemed certain that I’d never get there. I was despondent, shattered, completely lost. Then I saw Mike Rowe’s PragerU commencement speech, “ Don’t Follow Your Passion.”

When I thought about it, I realized that music isn’t my passion, performing is my passion, and performing has always been there for me when I needed it most. I grew up very poor — third world, eating grass, living in shacks poor. I was homeschooled and moved around 50 times. When I finally started school in the 6th grade, I was about as weird as you’d imagine a child raised by wolves. I was bullied, I was ostracized, I was pantsed on the playground. When the star of the 6th grade Shakespeare play had to drop out at the last minute for a soccer tournament, my music teacher Mrs. Davis asked if I could learn all my lines in 2 weeks. I did, the show was great, now I had friends.

This pattern repeated itself: in high school I started doing comedy and suddenly I was Mr Popularity. When I had to drop out of college for things I couldn’t control, joining a band made me feel like the master of my own destiny. I felt like I was in control and if I put in enough effort, I could put on a heck of a show. I won awards and accolades and it seemed like I was right. Surely if I just kept putting in effort I could make a career out of this, right?

Back to Mike Rowe. He put it very well when he said “dream jobs are often just that — dreams. But their imaginary existence just might keep you from a career that offers a legitimate chance to perform meaningful work.” He’s also quick to add that passions are important, we just shouldn’t rely on them to pay the bills.

Back to me in the more recent past. I had put a lot of pressure on myself to be a successful musician. I found myself compromising on quality in order to make something more “commercially viable.” At one point I was playing in three very active bands at the same time while doing session vocal work on the side. I rehearsed every night of the week and performed almost every weekend. I started to resent it. I didn’t enjoy recording in Hollywood — a dream I’d had for years. I didn’t enjoy going on tour. I hated rehearsal and counted the minutes until it was over. Instead of hanging out and socializing after a gig, I would drive right home.

I told myself that it was my day job that was the problem. I was only resenting my beloved passion of music because I wasted so much time working. I committed to work even harder on music and to put even more pressure on it to make a living for me. I did well at my job because it wasn’t a challenge. I didn’t seek out challenging jobs because for me a job was just “a way to pay the bills until I make it as a musician.”

My crisis of collapsed bands, seen in this context, was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. Music is a great way for me to make friends and express myself. It’s not, as it turns out, a great way for me to make a living. It can be done, sure, I’m not saying that it can’t. I know plenty of successful professional musicians who’ve found their own ways of making their dreams work for them but those are other stories for another time.

In this story, we’re at the part where I shifted focus. I looked for challenging and rewarding career opportunities. I looked for ways to make money from music as well as from the other skills and behaviors I’d honed as a musician — public speaking, communication, engaging an audience, organization, event planning, marketing, sales, improvisation, memorization, creative problem-solving, and so on. I found a company, in Teem, that valued my “transferrable skills and behaviors” (to borrow a line from David Brooks’s The Talent Edge) and leveraged them into value for both them and for myself.

Because I dedicated myself to finding a career that represented more than just a paycheck to keep me alive until I inevitably became a rockstar, now I work for a company that affords me the time and peace of mind to keep my passions and my dreams with me instead of in front of me to be chased. I still rehearse every week, I still record several times a month and in May I’ll go out for a short tour, but it’s different now — the pressure’s off. I can run, I can read, I can write a LinkedIn article instead of beating myself up over a verse that just has to be done by such and such day.

I’ve pared down my projects and they all fulfill a different passion for me. My rock band is introspective and those bandmates are my best friends. My hip hop group is raucous and goes on tour. My cover band is impeccably professional with enormous crowds and pays well (not enough to live on, but it doesn’t have to). I have recording projects that make me money and recording projects that are just ridiculous and fun.

I wouldn’t presume to give advice or to play the role of a disappointed television father, chiding whomever will listen that it’s time for them to give up on their silly dreams and get a real job. All I can do is speak for myself and right now I’m the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been, and you know what else? I’m probably a better musician, too.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on March 18, 2017.

Hip Hop has come a long way from underground parties in the South Bronx to a dominant force in global pop culture. In just about 3 decades, it’s permeated every facet of American culture and has a bit of a Midas touch. Given such meteoric rise, it’s worth asking ourselves what can we in the tech world, or any startup, learn from Hip Hop?

Finish Your Breakfast

The late John “Franchise” Strickland is credited with this phrase. It’s a reference to a no-look pass to teammate W.H. “Smush” Parker who then failed to convert — missing an easy dunk. Strick’s reaction, “Dude, you gotta finish your breakfast,” stuck with Jay Z, who managed the street ball team on which the two played.

To Jay Z, it meant “you need to finish your job up strong.” In the startup world, it means you can’t just finish a project — you need an exclamation point at the end. Too often, we’ll front-load a new initiative with enthusiasm and energy only to get distracted, run out of steam, or focus on what’s next. While foresight is valuable, we’ll do well to remember that before we can start planning lunch we’ve got to finish our breakfast.

You Need All The Elements

While KRS One Identified 9 “Elements Of Hip Hop,” most put the number at 4: MC, DJ, Graffiti, and Break Dancing. Rappers (the best ones, anyway) make up the MC element, but just as you can’t have hip hop culture with only rappers, you can’t generate growth at your startup by increasing head count in Sales or expect a top-notch dev team if you’re only looking at experience. A growing company needs all the elements in order to thrive.

Talk Big and Back It Up

Few themes are as closely associated with hip hop music as bragging. Talking big might as well be the 5th element of hip hop. What’s unforgivable, though, is to talk a big game and embarrass yourself by not bringing it when it counts. This is a hallmark of battle rapping as well as good advice when you’re forecasting next quarter’s numbers for the board. When our eyes are bigger than our stomachs we leave a lot on the table. Talk big, think big, and always have a plan to walk the walk.

Keep It Real

Authenticity is everything in hip hop and it turns out it’s good business too. Aaron Ross (a legend to Sales Development Reps like me) highlighted the advantages of authenticity in Predictable Revenue and contrasts it with the thoroughly inauthentic “Always Be Closing” of yesteryear. Keep it real in sales, support, marketing and all aspects of your business and you’ll have a stronger and more resilient company to show for it.

Stay Hungry

Ok, HOV didn’t say “hardest one here” but this is LinkedIn and we need to keep it PG. Staying hungry isn’t just about ambition, it’s about agility and subversiveness. Staying hungry is about acting like a scrapper even once your startup’s a bonafide success. It’s A Tribe Called Quest putting out a political album in an election year or Apple ditching the ports on all their new devices.

Steve Jobs went so far as to say “stay hungry, stay foolish,” in his admonitions to take risks. We need to stay proactive even after that move into a bigger building or an IPO. This is the age of acceleration, to quote Thomas Friedman, and it won’t slow down just because you’ve found your groove.

Stay hungry, stay scrappy and let’s ring in 2017 with all the swagger of a DMX record.

Ransom’s knowledge of hip hop comes primarily from his BassMint Pros bandmates who have been making “old school” hip hop in Ogden, Utah, since 1997. By day, Ransom is the Northwest Mid-Market Sales Development Rep for Teem. Ask him how Teem can supercharge your workplace the way that Dr Dre supercharges a track by calling 415–951–3755 or emailing ransom.wydner@teem.com.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on December 31, 2016.

1. CNN aired 30 minutes of X-Rated content in place of Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown.”

When it comes to 2016’s news stories, a lot happened. Scientific breakthroughs happened. A hotly contested Presidential election happened. Collective mourning over the deaths of several beloved icons happened. All of these events contributed to this year’s blockbuster headlines, but 2016 is also a story of what didn’t happen and the enormous impact of “fake news.” Here are some of the biggest stories from this year that never happened.

2. Pope Francis Endorsed Donald Trump

Based solely on a tweet by user @solikearose, it’s easy to see why this story took off. A major news outlet accidentally broadcasting a half hour of adult video instead of a show called “Parts Unknown,” practically writes itself. In this case, it did write itself because it’s not true. Nobody else in the Boston area, where the purported snafu allegedly took place, nor indeed any of CNN’s millions of viewers, reported anything similar to @solikearose’s account.

3. Donald Trump insulted Republican voters in a 1998 People Magazine interview. 4. An FBI Agent investigating Hillary Clinton was found dead in his apartment.

In July, the now defunct and completely made up “ WTOE 5 News” posted the headline “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President, Releases Statement.” Such an endorsement would have indeed shocked the world, as the leader of the Catholic church has never endorsed any US Presidential candidate in history — not even the famous first Catholic President, JFK.

While not a brand new meme, this oft-shared image has seen a resurgence in social media since Mr. Trump clinched the GOP nomination in July. While Donald Trump’s political leanings have been difficult to pin down, and he’s stated in the past that his stances on healthcare, abortion and “ social issues” are fairly liberal, he’s referred to himself as a Republican since 1987 and first hinted at a Republican Presidential run in 1999.

Posted by clickbait fake news site The Denver Guardian, this article stated that 45-year-old FBI agent Michael Brown shot and killed his 33-year-old wife, Susan Brown, before shooting himself and then burning the couple’s home to the ground. No such agent, no such wife, no such home, no such thing happened.

5. Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education only got the job because she donated $9.5 million to Trump’s campaign.

While Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos has been a high-profile donor to the Republican party for decades, she has never donated such a large sum to any candidate — including President-elect Trump.

It’s notable that so many of these fake stories were political in nature, and worth mentioning that 17 of the top 20 most viral fake news stories had a pro-Trump bias, but most of these stories were not written by or for politicos — they were made up by clever tricksters looking to make the most of partisan rancor, publishing stories for the ad revenue only.

Misinformation is nothing new, of course. In 1710 Jonathan Swift observed that “falsehood flies and truth comes limping after it;” a sentiment later honed by Mark Twain as “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” Still, the scale of fake news seen in 2016 and its overall influence has certainly inspired my 2017 New Years resolution: to always fact check.

Want to fact check your workplace’s productivity? Ransom is a Customer Success Manager for Teem, a meetings management and workplace analytics platform that can help you separate fact from fiction when it comes to your office. Request a free trial by calling Ransom at 415–951–3755.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on December 5, 2016.