I Made an Album About This Business
I am not a musician by training. I am a guy in San Antonio who helps sellers by taking over their house payments, and this fall I started turning the work into songs. This week the album went out to the stores. It is called From the Woods to the Deeds.
Here is why I made it. This business gets heavy. Deals die at the table. Sellers are hurting and trying not to show it. Buyers get scared at the last minute. A few weeks ago I lost my dog Hefner, who had been with me through some of the hardest years of my life, and there is a song on this album with his name on it because I did not know where else to put that.
Music turned out to be a way to carry all of it. It is also a way to teach. People forget a lecture by Friday. A hook stays in their head. Most of what I know about creative finance I learned by listening to people who were ahead of me, so putting the lessons into songs felt like giving some of that back.
The honest part is how it was made. I wrote the words from real moments, closing tables, long drives, and years I do not talk about much. Then I built the songs with modern tools, the same way a lot of music gets made now, and my team and I picked the takes, threw away more than we kept, and had the keepers mastered at 432 Hz because someone close to me asked for that tuning. She says it feels calmer. She is right.
The cover is a picture of an open Bible at 2 Chronicles, where Solomon asks God for wisdom instead of riches. That is pretty much my whole business plan. Ask for wisdom, then go do the work, then ask again tomorrow.
The songs are the road. The Forest is about where I was living years ago. Two Houses Deep and Wrap It Up are the deal years. Money Trees is about wanting more for your family than what you started with. Still Us is a love song, because a life is not only work. Dirt Don't Lie is the reminder I give myself when I want to cut a corner.
If you take anything from this, take this: whatever you are building, find a way to remember why you started while you are still in the middle of it. Document the road while you walk it. You will need the reminder on the hard weeks, and somebody coming up behind you will need it too.
I am still a student at all of this, the deals and the music both. What do you do to stay human in this business? I would like to hear it.
Chris
P.S. The music is under the name Lil Coupon (I go by Lil C). The album is on its way to Spotify now, and the songs and videos are up on YouTube.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2JyqWL0SrzEWI3KXbckzU8
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