In this week's episode of Hello Chaos, we had the pleasure of speaking with Robert White from Dolphin Entertainment. Robert shared his unique entrepreneurial journey, which began in his teenage years in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was immersed in the music industry. His early experiences at a local café, where he learned guitar from seasoned artists, laid the foundation for his future endeavors. Robert's path took him back to New York, where he initially pursued a career as a singer-songwriter. However, as he started a family, he transitioned into DJing under the moniker DJ Dolphin, a nod to his love for the Miami Dolphins. This eventually led to the founding of Dolphin Entertainment Company in 2013. Despite starting with a focus on talent management in the music industry, Robert's company pivoted to the publication industry, launching Splash Magazine to feature models and talent from his agency. This strategic move allowed him to create a platform for promoting and booking talent. The publication evolved into a more high-end men's lifestyle magazine called Savoir Faire, which continues to thrive in the digital space today. Throughout the episode, Robert candidly discussed the realities of entrepreneurship, including the need to pivot, the myth of overnight success, and the importance of perseverance. He shared his personal experiences of having to take on part-time jobs to support his entrepreneurial dreams and emphasized the significance of trying new ventures to learn and grow. Robert's driving force is to leave a legacy and change the direction of his family tree, being the first entrepreneur in his lineage. He hopes to provide a platform for his six children to launch from, potentially passing on the company as generational wealth or selling it for their benefit. Listeners can connect with Robert and learn more about his work at dolphinentertainmentcompany.com. As always, Hello Chaos is here to share the real, raw, and unbiased stories of founders and entrepreneurs, where "aha meets oh shit." Join us every Sunday for new episodes and insights into the chaotic world of entrepreneurship.
Jennifer Sutton: Welcome, welcome to Hello Chaos, our weekly podcast exploring the messy and chaotic lives and minds of founders, entrepreneurs and innovators. Every week, we talk to entrepreneurs from different industries at different company stages of all shapes and sizes. We like to hear the real, the raw, and the unbiased founder stories. Talk about the good, the great, the ugly, all parts of being a founder. And it's why our mantra is where aha meets oh shit. We drop new episodes every Sundays so founders can listen to us on a Sunday afternoon as they prep for the week or maybe their drive-in on Monday. to the office. HelloCast is one of the many resources brought to you by OrangeWIP. That is OrangeWIP, W-I-P, for work in progress. OrangeWIP is a multimedia company dedicated to serving founders and entrepreneurs in affiliate cities through hyper-local media platforms that have been designed to inform, inspire, and create connections. in the local market to help founders succeed. Orange Web is an all-in-one content hub with fresh and engaging stories, curated calendars, and local dynamic roadmaps to help the founder navigate their local entrepreneurial ecosystem with ease. We've really done all the hard work for founders, so they only need to go to one trusted source to find all the local information they might need. My name is Jennifer Sutton. My friends and family call me JJ. I'm the founder of OrangeWIP and will be your host today. And I'm excited to have Robert White with Dolphin Entertainment coming to us out of, where are you, out of New York, Robert?
Robert White: I'm based out of New York, yeah. I was going to say, it's a nice rainy day.
Jennifer Sutton: Rainy day. Yeah. We've actually got finally sunshine here in South Carolina, but thanks for joining us. Welcome to Hello Chaos.
Robert White: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jennifer Sutton: Well, why don't you just start us out and just tell us about your entrepreneurial journey. How did you get started in this?
Robert White: How did I get started? Okay. So my journey kind of goes back to a little bit of childhood stuff. When I was a teenager, I moved from New York to Nashville, Tennessee. My mom and her husband at the time took a job at a very kind of cool cafe. It was like a writer's night cafe. They had songwriters perform there. Some of the major artists that were in town would come there and perform their new songs so people could hear them and they can get an audience, you know, recommendation about them. So they started working there. So as a high school student, I was going to school during the day and then I would spend time with them at night at this cafe. And really kind of got bit by like the music industry and learning a lot about it. I started performing there. I was a songwriter and learned how to play guitar. And it was kind of a unique concept because I was playing I was hanging out in the back room where they call it the tuning room, and all these artists come there to tune their guitars. I would sit back there and practice in the evenings, and these guys would come through and teach me chords. I was learning how to play guitar from these great guitar players and even some celebrities. It was a very unique experience to grow up in.
Jennifer Sutton: Amazing.
Robert White: Yeah, so I did that for a while and then got a little bit older and decided I was going to come back to New York. And when I came back to New York to be around family, I then had songwriting under my belt. I was playing guitar. So I started playing out in local places around town and people started coming to the shows and recognized me as like a singer songwriter in New York. And then from from that, I kind of switched gears, I started building family, and I met somebody and had kids. And so I still wanted to have music as part of my world. But I just couldn't do the performing aspect of it like that anymore. It was tough to kind of find time to, you know, write when you got new kids in the house now. And so They converted. Yeah, it converted from songwriting to disc jockeying. So I actually became a DJ. And so I started, I started doing a lot of that stuff. And so then it wasn't like, oh, you could use your name, Robert White as your DJ name, you needed to have something cool that people would remember. So I called myself DJ Dolphin because I was a Miami Dolphin fan.
Jennifer Sutton: I was wondering where the dolphin came into
Robert White: This is exactly where it comes into play. Yeah. So when I started my company in 2013, this is right near the end of my DJ career. I wanted people to know who I was still. That's why it was called Dolphin Entertainment Company so that people knew in my local area that Dolphin was running this or that they knew me as DJ Dolphin. So that's kind of where the start of the name came from. But the start of the company really came from being in Nashville and having a lot of interesting contacts. A lot of people that were starving artists when I was in Nashville, we all grew up and I started my own company, entertainment company, but they all started like becoming the presidents of ASCAP and becoming writers and becoming these incredible people in the music industry. And that that network allowed me to really kind of launch careers and do stuff for people that were smaller. And that was kind of the whole gasp of the company and why I started it was I was going to be, you know, the next big talent manager for music. Yeah, because I had great connections that were lifelong friends. So.
Jennifer Sutton: Well, has, has your dream been realized?
Robert White: Or are you still working towards it? I'm still working towards it. The thing is, and I think what most people don't understand about entrepreneurship and, and kind of starting your own business is obviously there's a lot of struggle in the beginning. But the audience that you cater to sometimes directs you in different places. And they tell you what they really want from you, and you don't get to tell them what you want, right? So like, you may create, you may create a really great product. And everyone's like, Oh, we're not using this, maybe you should try something else. And that's kind of what I did, I was doing a very specific service and offering some stuff, and nothing was clicking. But people were saying, Hey, maybe if we had this, maybe if we were doing this, this would make more sense. And so my company actually transitioned in like, I'd say 2016 ish.
Jennifer Sutton: So about three years after you started it, you were like, I got a pivot.
Robert White: I did. Yeah, it was a huge pivot. And we actually jumped into the publication industry. And I became still I got to tap back into my writing. But now I own publications and still still working with some talent, but a different direction. I wasn't even working with musical talent. I was working with models and working in the modeling industry in the very beginning.
Jennifer Sutton: Oh, my goodness. So that did take a big pivot.
Robert White: Yeah, it did. It was interesting. It changed because of a friend. I have a friend that lives in Toronto, who is working for a very large modeling agency at the time. And we were having a conversation and I said, Hey, the way that we book talent, musical acts and stuff, right. It's exactly the same way you book models. And she's like, no, actually it's not the same concepts. That's a little bit different. And I'm like, no, I think I could do it. And so it was a, a friendly bet where I was like, I'm going to find any random girl that I think could be a model. And I'm going to go book her the same way I book a musical talent and see if she gets anything going. And that's exactly what I did. And it did, it worked. So it turned into one after the other after the other. And at one point, we had a talent agency of about 300 women at one point, they're all female models. So
Jennifer Sutton: Wow. And so you said that you did some publications and all that. Was that just to like more education to the models or the musicians of like how things work or?
Robert White: So we had a lot of models that weren't well known. No one knew who they were. They were not good names. And Well, I kind of sat down with a bunch of them in a meeting room one time and I was like, okay, what's, what's the aha thing? What do you need to happen so that you know, you made it in this career. I need a goal. I need to know how to make you excited. And a lot of the answers were, I want to be published in a major publication. You know, everybody wants to be published. That makes a lot of sense. And so I was like, well, let's see what we have. And so I started hustling. My sales guy came out and I was like, okay, we're going to call cosmopolitan. We're going to call Vogue. We're going to call all these companies and see if we can get. girls that were the girls next door that nobody knew published in these publications. And, and they were just no, no, no, no, no after a while. And I was like, you know what, we need a yes. And if I can't get a yes, I'll build a yes. And so I built publications and that kind of like launched it and we use the original publication that I launched as a calling card, basically, and we only publish the girls that I worked with. And we put it out to a lot of different places. So people could see the entertainment that we had, or people that we're working with. And that's how we use it as a booking guide, we would mail it to people, and then they would be able to look through and read articles about the talent, and then book them through the magazine. That's how it started.
Jennifer Sutton: Oh, my gosh. Do you still do that today or has it evolved?
Robert White: We do. It's all evolved now. Yeah, so it started as a magazine called Splash Magazine. We needed something that was affiliated with Dolphin Entertainment Company. And people started seeing it on social media and reaching out to me saying, hey, I want to get published in this publication. How do I do it? I'm like, well, our rule is that we don't publish anyone outside of our agency. So if you work with our agency, then we, you know, brag, it's like a recruitment.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, exactly.
Robert White: So yeah, I was like, well, if people really want to get published, and maybe we should just do a full on publication, we'll keep the name, and we'll just start bringing other people in. And so that's what we did. And kind of had a bunch of talent from outside that started getting published more high high-end people so we had very Kind of I say ABC list celebrities that were getting published in splash But those people were the ones that were our influencers and promoted the younger people there for the newer people coming in That were in the publication for us. So yeah, it was a different strategy, but it worked for the marketing aspect and And then as it grew, I also grew, got a little bit more mature as a man. And I was like, you know what, Splash was really kind of focused on glamor and swimwear and things like that, those kinds of models. And I wanted to go a different direction. And so we launched a new brand called Savoir Faire in 2018. And that was a men's lifestyle publication. It was more classy, it was high fashion models, more entertainment based. And that's what we still have today is Savoir Faire.
Jennifer Sutton: Very good. And, and, and that's still going strong. And that's, do you guys actually print print that it's like, or is it all digital?
Robert White: Yeah, it's a hundred percent digital at this point, but we do have an option for people to purchase a print copy, but our print copies are not traditional magazines. They're like, um, Coffee books. So coffee stand looks so they're very thick and and a little bit more pricey than most and we kind of set it up that way so that We could stir people away from the print option and just do digital 100% So it's kind of set up that way, but if people are like, hey, I'm in the publication.
Jennifer Sutton: I want to buy it Well, then this is the price point and this is the product and we'll and we'll give it to you So you talked about kind of like you're you know the the struggle of of kind of your aha of pivoting and that was kind of your that that most entrepreneurs don't realize that you're going to have to do something like that. Is there another like we call it the myths of of or misperceptions or misconceptions of being an entrepreneur? Is there another story or anything else that you would go no there's a bigger myth out there and how would you debunk it?
Robert White: Uh, the biggest myth. Um, I, I think that a lot of people look for the home run when they start a business, they think that I have this great idea and I'm going to start a business and day one, everyone's going to love it. They're all going to buy it and I'm going to be rich. And that is the biggest myth in entrepreneurship. Like, The way that I talk to people in general about starting a business when I communicate with people is if you're working a full-time job, you stay at that full-time job and you keep hustling and nights and weekends, you're doing your entrepreneur job. And when the entrepreneur job money equals your daytime job, then you switch. Then you can quit that job and you can be full-time entrepreneur, but not until that money is equal to what you're currently making. It doesn't make any sense to go the rough route. I had a different way to enter into entrepreneurship. I actually lost a job. I was working for a newspaper and I got let go from the job. I was able to collect unemployment like most people do. And at the same time that I was doing that in the state of New York, a program came out from the state that said, we'll let you collect unemployment and start a business if you go through these 10 steps. And so I signed up for this program. I went through a 10 step program and I was able to continue to be on unemployment and make revenue with my business as long as I was meeting with like a business coach on a monthly basis or something like that. It was a kind of a cool program that they created in New York state at the time.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, that's fantastic. That's really kind of nurturing that the entrepreneur spirit, but but not, but not trying to punish them. Right?
Robert White: I mean, it's Yeah, yeah, actually. Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, and the myth aspect, most people don't get that benefit. Maybe you don't live in New York. So the true story is, I'm sure you have a great idea. And I'm sure people will love it. But it's going to take time to educate them about what you created and why yours is so unique. why your service is so unique and you just have to go out there and kind of keep your day job and Hustle and like if you want to be an entrepreneur, you're going to be working a hundred hours a week not forty
Jennifer Sutton: Right, right. I've joked about it with other founders of that four-day workweek is not for us. No, it's not. Absolutely not. That book was not written for us people. So it's been 10 years or a little over 10 years since you've done your journey.
Robert White: Yeah, we're pushing 11 years in September.
Jennifer Sutton: So that's fantastic. Congratulations. You know, that's that's a big deal. So out of that, you know, your last 10 years, what's been your biggest kind of aha moment? Was it the pivoting, like I have to go now I have to pivot or was there anything else that you were like?
Robert White: No, my my my moment comes down to this, I think my aha moment is this. And it's more advice for any entrepreneur that's listening. There is this tough part that I just mentioned, obviously, of having to do a lot of hard work, it's not going to take off. Right. But there's also this other part of it, where if you don't try, you will never find out if it's going to work or not. And so my aha moment in business in general is yes, I have a magazine publication, I actually have two now. Um, we have a marketing company, we have a PR agency. We launched all these things because I've learned all these skills over the last 11 years. And then most recently we lost the, we launched the clothing brand and it was like, I'm going to do this because I want to, because I've learned enough about this industry that I can just go out and do it. And the aha moment for me was like, just go try. If it fails, it fails. It's okay. We can move on to the next project. But I think when you, when you really just go for it, you also learn a lot about yourself personally.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, so that's kind of my aha moment. Yeah, that's a good point. That's been my journey of When you hit the when you hit the excitement if I have the idea you learn a lot and then when you hit the wall I caught the ocean. Yes, you also learn a lot Absolutely. Well, what has been your biggest like oh shit the biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
Robert White: Oh, man, or maybe you're still in it.
Jennifer Sutton: I
Robert White: I may be still in it. There's been a lot of them. I'll try to pinpoint one that kind of narrows it down a little bit. I think my my oh shit moment really is that you're going to struggle financially. Like Entrepreneurship. I mean, 11 years. Great. I'm glad I've been in this for a decade. But the idea of it is that I have had to put my company on hold and work for somebody else. I've had to do things to make sure there was food on the table. It wasn't a smooth ride to get to where I am at this point where I can just decide how my schedule is going to be and I can have a little freedom when I want it. Like it took some time to get there. And you have to kind of realize that falling back or having that Oh, crap moment. How am I going to feed myself? You know, you have to realize you're going to have to fall back and get a job. I can tell you from experience, though, when you put that you own a company and you've been doing it for six years and you're looking for a part time job, they all say yes, because the experience there of like your work ethic and things that you actually do, people love that. So, I mean, I've done security jobs. I've done some customer service jobs, some things that I'm like, really good ads, but they weren't full-time commitments. They were just enough to get me through this step until my company brought revenue back.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah. That's it. Right. You know, and Robert, that's a, um, that's really a testament to your, um, personality of, you know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs that would never do that because of ego or pride. Right. Um, so the fact that you did that to be person, you know, to have that perseverance speaks volumes about you. So kudos. kudos that's a lesson learned to a lot of founders out there that you might have to set some ego and some pride aside and go either go work even if it's part-time but I also know people who needed to put their their company on hold to go work for somebody else and they were like I can't do it that's a failure and I'm like But you got to eat.
Robert White: For me, yes, absolutely. You got to eat. That's the answer. You got to eat. You got to pay the bills. You got to pay rent, whatever you're doing. The biggest thing for me when I took other jobs in my process was it killed me as a person. I felt like a failure because here I am this business owner and everybody knows you as that, but yet they see you working at this customer service job and they're like, what's going on here? This doesn't add up correctly. Right. what what I've done is just make sure that when I do work outside of my company and do jobs like that, that that footprint that I make in the community that regards is kind of smaller, because I don't want a bunch of people to see me that in that regard, like, oh, that guy owns a company. Yeah, he's in here serving us food. Like, I don't understand what's going on there. So It's still a pride game for sure. But you just have to do what you have to do to keep moving forward. I mean, it's there's an end game mission eventually with my company to either sell it to a larger company, pass it on as generational wealth potentially, to my children or something. So to keep that going, I'll do anything to make that work.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. And to eventually get, you have more freedom. That's what I was like, somebody asked me the other day, like, what is your end game? And I was like, freedom, like, yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a big one for me. So if you had to change two things about your company today, what two things would you change about it?
Robert White: What would I change? Um, yeah, I was I was listening to actually some other entrepreneurs speak on your podcast, by the way, so we should go listen to some other people. And I agreed with a podcast guest that you had who said that the biggest thing right now is adding other people to the fold and bringing other people in that can bring their expertise into the fold. I've been an entrepreneur for a lot of years. And I've worked with a lot of independent contractors. Basically, I've been the only employee for my company. And I'm okay with that. But there still is kind of a an aspect of I need more people so that this can grow. And I don't think it will ever grow unless you add more people to the fold. And get more information from another knowledge from other people and have them bring their ideas to the table. I think that's the unique way. So people is a big one. And I wish like the common one is probably like I need more capital, but I don't need more capital. I just need really strong people that believe in what I'm doing to really kind of bring their energy and their ideas and, and give them something. If one hand washes, the other situation happens quite often, then those people are going to be okay with bringing their time, energy, effort, even their money into a company to help it grow. And you look, yeah, and you're looking through those people for networking and stuff or to be investors or something. You're not, they don't need to be, um, I need money to pay employees. Just go out and find good people that will help you grow your company. And they want to help you grow your company because on the back end, they feel that pride and that sense of I did something and help somebody.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. That's right. Um, so, okay. So what, what gets you out of bed in the morning? Like what is, you know, what makes, what drives you?
Robert White: Yeah, it's this business for sure. I wake up every day at 738 o'clock in the morning I go to bed around 1231 o'clock at night. I sleep six and a half hours every day no matter what religiously because I know that I want to be up and I've got things to do. My schedule is never the same thing. I mean, people work in, you know, factories and other businesses all their lives. And it's the same thing every day. Mine's not. I have a phone call with someone I'm interviewing for a magazine. And the next moment, I'll be working on a marketing campaign. And the next work minute, I'll be talking to a model about how to get successful in this industry or industry. Like, my day is different every day, all day. That's right. And so it's just exciting. And it's something that I fell in love with. And so there's nothing, there's nothing that doesn't stop me from getting out of bed. When I think about the things that I get to do in a day.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. You love the chaos. It's like, I love the chaos. Absolutely. That's what it's like. We, we welcome chaos. I was like, I try to, I try to structure and organize it, but I still love it. Like I've been, yeah. Absolutely. So, Robert, what would people be surprised to learn about you that's not on LinkedIn or not on a resume? I mean, you've got an interesting journey, but is there anything that you'd be like, nobody knows this about me, but it's pretty cool?
Robert White: You know, the biggest thing about me is I'm a parent. How many kids?
Jennifer Sutton: I have six. Well, What are the ages?
Robert White: Three boys, three boys and three girls. Uh, the oldest is 24 and the youngest is 14. Um, two, two in college, one living on her own. I have grandchildren. I have two grandsons that are little now. Um, yeah. And then I have a full. Go into college soon.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah. So yeah, you got to keep, you got to keep working and burning the, that midnight oil. I was like, I have four kids and my oldest will be is 23. She'll be 24 in a couple of months. And my youngest just turned 13.
Robert White: So, um, yeah, I go off and, uh, I, yeah, completely. Thank you for that. Um, I go off into different categories sometimes and just think about stuff and something that caught my attention a few years ago was. Checking out the family. I wanted to know about my heritage and all that stuff I want to know what everyone else before me had ever done and All of my research from my dad's side of the family and my mother's side of the family There's not a single entrepreneur in the family tree at all everybody was a laborer. They all worked for somebody else. They all made their money some other way. There was no entrepreneur at all. And so when I learned that I was the first or when I learned that I was the one kind of shaping a different direction in the family tree, I knew that that was my motivation. And knowing that there's six branches underneath me, that makes a lot of sense for me to build a platform that they can launch from. So they're young adults right now, but we live for a long time. So my whole goal in the next five to 10 years is get this company where it needs to be before the younger three are in college and out of school, because then they may take it over. I may just give the company to all of them and say, here you go. If you need me, call me, I'll be in a beach somewhere. But that's very possible that you know,
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, I mean, I know several founders who are working towards, you know, they've got their family included. They have a path for their teenage and college kids to be a part of it. So and I also know other founders, you know, I come from the marketing side. I have a marketing agency as my as another business. And I worked in agencies, you know, 20, 30 years and the the person I learned from the most, he tried to give it to his guy laugh. I was like, he tried his hardest to give it to his kids. Yep, yep. And they worked for him. They both worked for him for about two years out of college. And they were like, Nope, hard. Nope, I don't. involved in those businesses at all. And I know my kid, I've tried to get my kids, I think I might have potential in my younger two. They might want to, but the older two were like, no, thank you. We do not like marketing.
Robert White: And I don't know if my children are gonna love all the things that I do but there's so many different things that I'm sure they're attached to something and That's kind of my goal Is that if I give them a lot of opportunity and a lot of options then I think that I'm kind of planting a seed That's gonna go on Um, but if they don't, if they don't want it that, and I give the company to them equally, and I'm talking about literally signing over shares to the company, my children, like making them the bosses. Uh, if they don't want to be a part of it, they can sell it and sell their share to the family and get the money and do what they want to do, which is okay.
Jennifer Sutton: That is, that is okay. Yeah. Um, so if you, so what do you do for your free time? Do you still play music? I mean, are you still writing?
Robert White: I have a guitar. I'll say that. Uh, it's got more, it's got more dust on it than my, my windows do. That's for sure. But like, it probably needs to be played a little bit more. I don't mind strumming it on occasion and kind of reliving some younger years. But I feel like that part of me is, I went from a songwriter to now an editor, and I write a lot of content about other people. And I'm really comfortable being like, behind the scenes in that regard. So yeah, I think music is a part of me on the weekends, I like to travel a little bit. I'm completely okay with kind of exploring more areas that I haven't gone to. I feel like at my age, I'm in the perspective of maybe midlife crisis, where I want to see a whole lot more of the world than I have in the last 40 years. So there's a good chance that there'll be more traveling in the future, but there's still a lot of things to line up to figure out how you manage that and still run a business. So.
Jennifer Sutton: Absolutely. That's what I said, freedom. It's freedom. Yeah, I want freedom.
Robert White: I'm getting greedy now.
Jennifer Sutton: So you've given a lot of good advice already, but what's the best piece of advice that you received from somebody else that really influenced how you make decisions or how you run your business?
Robert White: I think the stuff that I pay attention to and the things that I watch from other entrepreneurs to learn from is really just people that aren't even here anymore. One of my biggest quotes, which is cool, it's from Mark Twain. He basically said, there's two great days in a man's life. The one when he was born and the second one when he realizes why he was. And when I found out that my family tree was all nine to fivers and no entrepreneurial spirit in there, I was like, okay, that's why I was born. That's my, that's my aha moment. Yeah. And so that's one of the biggest things that inspires me is that quotes, you know, it's near and dear. It's in my wallet. I look at it on occasion. But I've definitely watched a bunch of other entrepreneurs that are in the space that I'm into. I mean, I, I'm in so many different categories that you have to look at different people, but their, their journey is what I pay attention to. I'm not a person that gets wrapped up in celebrity. I can meet a celebrity and I'll be like, Hey, you are a damn good actor. I really appreciate your work, but I don't, I don't get involved in the whole hype of that industry in that way.
Jennifer Sutton: And they probably appreciate that.
Robert White: Yeah, for sure. Hey, I'm the editor of a magazine. I'd love to put you on a cover so we could sell more magazines. How do we make that happen? I want the business perspective of it. I don't want the, oh my gosh, you're not going to believe who I just met. I'm not a fan person. But I do respect hard work and I do respect being successful in your craft. And so yeah, I just pay attention to what other people are doing in industries and try to mimic what they are doing. I don't think that I'm reinventing anything. I think I'm just watching what's working and trying to mimic that and then putting my own flair into that experience.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah. Is there anybody that you are very inspired by, like their journey?
Robert White: Yeah, there's a couple of people that I've been inspired by for sure. I listened a lot to Gary Vaynerchuk. recently, I love the I love the yeah, I love the Just the hardship of him like he's not he's very unfiltered and that's cool.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right and directness.
Robert White: I love it Yep, I would say Tommy Hilfiger in the fashion industry Not only as not only as a fashion designer and what they created with that brand But I would say like as a business person and the changes that he made the small part that people don't I'm from the same town Tommy is and And I'm not, I'm now getting into this fashion industry. So I'm watching and mirroring exactly what was happening with him in the 70s when he was launching that brand and what was happening and how it was developing. So, um, there's, there's people like that, that I pay attention to. It's like, yes, I want to be you, but I need to go back to where you began to figure out how you started so I can do the same path.
Jennifer Sutton: That's right. And then kind of watch how they've, they've evolved. I think I heard him speak. I mean, just he's, he is a very humble person that, that I think still holds on to like small town roots and
Robert White: Absolutely. Yeah, I've met him. I met him here in our hometown. He did a book signing for his book. And I went and we talked a little bit. Uniquely enough, I put his brother and some of his family on the cover of my magazines before. So I've met some of the brothers and sisters of the group. He's got a large family. There's not just him. There's like six or seven kids.
Jennifer Sutton: Oh, my goodness. And so I did not know.
Robert White: Yeah, it's been cool to intermix with them and learn a little bit stuff from them. There's some pretty cool pictures of Tommy's family and myself like, you know, connecting and talking and stuff. So it was cool to get his book. He autographed it for me. Yeah, we talked a little bit about business, but it's small talk. And so that was okay.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah. Sometimes it's at least he didn't disappoint you. That's always the worst when you're like, I'm going to meet. He says, this guy's my hero or this girl's my hero. And then they're, you know, total assholes. And you're like.
Robert White: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I like I like a little bit of that drama, actually. I like the idea of the like, oh, here's someone that you truly respect. And then you find out someone in the industry like, hey, don't you don't want to meet that?
Jennifer Sutton: You don't want to know them or when you meet them in person and you're like, oh, they are miserable. They are awful people.
Robert White: I had one of those experiences. I hate to brag.
Jennifer Sutton: Can you share? Can you share? Share it.
Robert White: Yeah, I'll drop the tea right now because it's worth talking about. All right. So we know about the song Walk It Out. It was a hip hop, big hit. Yeah. DJ DJ Unk, we'll say. My my 40th birthday was a few years ago, and I decided to splurge a little bit and I was going to hold a public concert in my small hometown and a nightclub. And so I and I booked DJ on to come and perform. And so we wanted to have you know, that was the music of the genre that I grew up with. And so I'm. I booked him to come and play. He showed up, we flew him in, gave him a room. And the concert was supposed to be about an hour and a half of a local disc jockey that was really well known. And then DJ Onk was going to perform and it was going to be about an hour, hour and a half show. He's got a lot more songs than Walk It Out and a couple others. So I was like, I just want you to do your whole album like an hour. Yeah, we'll pay you. And so he came in and around eight o'clock before the other DJ had even gone up. He said, I'm ready. Let's do this. And he got on stage and did a 15 minute set and never went back up. And, and pre-gaming, he was like literally the drunkest and highest person I've ever met in my life. It was, it was a bad, bad, bad experience. So like, Here I am like listening to this music and you can't get away from the song. It's in movies. It's on the radio still everywhere. Legendary guy for creating what he created. But in his adult life at this point, he's just the guy. He's a mess. Yeah, he's a mess. So I disappointing birthday present. Yeah, I mean, it was cool to have him there. There's some photos and things like that. Right. But like the idea is that I booked you to do a specific thing for me and he did not deliver. So that's right. I'm OK with kind of, you know, saying, hey, this this was this is not a guy you want to book. I don't care how affordable it is. You don't want the environment around you. So.
Jennifer Sutton: No, you know, I've got friends in the entertainment business and you know that their motto has always been doesn't matter how small your audience is or how big you play, whether and you play 100% your heart out, whether you've got two people in the audience or 80,000, you know, you, you, you work it, um, cause it's your reputation, your brand. So, um, and yeah, that's true. Consistent.
Robert White: And wear them out just that way. It doesn't matter if you're playing to a room of 100 people or you're playing to hundreds of thousands. The negative stories travel a lot faster than positive ones do. That's right. So you need to make sure you're constantly putting on the best opportunity you can.
Jennifer Sutton: Exactly. I think, you know, somebody was describing how that's how Taylor Swift kind of made it is that she worked it. She, you know, she, she wasn't the greatest guitar player, the greatest singer, but man, she knew how to network and just perform consistently and putting her heart into it. And it didn't matter if, you know, who was in the audience, but she, And so he was like, watch her at award ceremony. She's never in her chair. She's always up greeting other people, meeting other people, sending follow up gifts to people that have just, you know, her and Kelly Clarkson, you know, that relationship of, of the I'm sure you know, like Kelly said, Why are you just rerecording them? And so now every time Taylor gets like a Another hit or like another milestone. She sends Kelly Clarkson flowers to go Thank you for just making that like I think she tweeted it. It wasn't even like an interview It was you just need to do it. And so she was so that's kind of the the stories of you here of people that just have gumption and grit and
Robert White: You know, yeah, you know, you learn about when you're networking, people talk to you about networking and how you do all that stuff. And they say, you're only like three people away from the people you really want to meet, right? Yeah, that's a kind of concept that people talk about. So I'll give you I'll give you two quick stories on both sides of the story you just mentioned. So I was in New York City, and I was about to get on a bus because it's about four hours ride from me from where I live to go to New York City. And I never drive in the city. I just that's not my Oh, no. Take the bus and I was sitting in this bus stop and there was some some older women's I'd say like probably four or five of them right and they were Easily in their 70s and they're like talking about this party weekend they had and they were having such a good time and they're right They're separating to go home and I ended up on the same bus as one of these ladies so I was about one seat away from her and I was like, hey, I'm not to be nosy but like at your age, what does a party weekend consist of? What did you guys do?
Jennifer Sutton: That would be a good question.
Robert White: Yeah. She laughed a little bit and she was like, well, I'm going to read my book, but in a few minutes, why don't you come sit next to me and I'll tell you about my weekend. I was like, okay, that's interesting. She read a book an hour into our bus ride and eventually she turned around and said, Robert, come here. You can come sit with me and I'll talk to you about my weekend now. I was on her time, 100%. I'm talking to her and she was like, What do you do for a living? She told me about her party weekend. What do you do for a living? And I said, Oh, I work in the entertainment industry. And I do some other things. And she was like, Oh, my grandson works in the entertainment industry. And I was like, Oh, that's really cool. I'm like, what does your grandson do? And she said, he owns a record label. And I was like, very cool. Is it well known? Or she's like, Oh, yeah, it's pretty well known. She's like, let me show you a picture of him. She grabbed her phone and showed me a picture of her, Scooter Braun, and Bieber all together in a photo. I said, which one's your grandson? And she was like, that one in the middle. So Scooter Braun was her grandson. And I was like, now we've got this whole thing figured out, right? So now I'm talking to her about that. I'm very interested in like, give me your business card. She ran a radio show. I emailed her back then, I'd say years ago, she gave me an email, I sent an email, she forwarded it off for me. So that was kind of a cool thing to kind of connect with those, with that group completely random. And then the Taylor Swift side of it is this, Taylor Swift is from a small town in Pennsylvania, about a half an hour from where I live. So we kind of grew up in the same environment. Taylor Swift went to the same high school in Nashville that I did 10 years after I did.
Jennifer Sutton: Oh, wow.
Robert White: So we kind of were on the same page. Yeah, she's she's following me. So 10 years from now, she's gonna do something else that I've done. But yeah, so we had the Nashville vibe. We had the move there for music type of vibe. And we went to the same high school together. And that's not together. But you know, 10 years apart.
Jennifer Sutton: Right, right, right. We are three. We are like the was it I know can't make it like the six degrees of separation, but you're right networking. Maybe it's the three. Yeah, it's three steps. That's right.
Robert White: That's many person you want to meet. You just got to find the right people.
Jennifer Sutton: Just gotta find the right people. I love it. All right last question for you. Okay, what? If you had to sum up your entrepreneurial journey in just one word What would that word be and why?
Robert White: The word would be legacy. Oh Okay, and the reason why is because that's exactly what I want to leave behind I want to change my entire family tree. I want my children to hopefully live through some of the lessons that I've taught and things that I've done. You know, they're going to learn about what their dad did through podcasts, through other posts that are on social media, because that's where their attention is. And I just hope that like, that's the the legacy of me is that I changed the directory of the family tree.
Jennifer Sutton: I love it. I ask this question to everybody and I get a different answer every time. And I just, I think that's beautiful. All right, Robert, how can people connect with you and learn more about you? How do you want them to reach out to you?
Robert White: Yeah, the website's the best place to go to make first contact dolphinentertainmentcompany.com. Make sure it's dolphinentertainmentcompany.com and not Dolphin Entertainment because there is a Dolphin Entertainment based in Florida that's a lot bigger company than I am. And they get my phone calls and I get theirs. So make sure you go to dolphinentertainmentcompany.com. And then, yeah, anything from there, there should be options to contact or write or send a message or something.
Jennifer Sutton: Well, perfect. Well, thank you for having you on today and taking your time. I'm always amazed how fast these things go. But I really enjoyed the conversation and get to know you better, Robert. And I hope we can meet in real life somewhere.
Robert White: Yeah, I would love that. Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Jennifer Sutton: Yeah, thanks for hanging out. For everyone listening or watching, thank you for joining us. Again, this podcast episode will be published this coming Sunday and available on all podcast platforms. So subscribe to Hello Chaos, like, comment, and share this great content and help us grow and build a more connected entrepreneurial community. Hello Chaos is one of the many resources brought to you by OrangeWIP. That's WIP for Work in Progress. We are a multimedia company dedicated to serving founders and entrepreneurs in affiliate cities. We are 100% free and right now in three South Carolina cities. That is in the Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston areas. We are hoping to expand to other markets over the next few years. So every city needs an orange whip in order to have a more connected entrepreneurial community. Check out the latest edition, that's our April edition. We've got some great entrepreneur stories, great photography, the roadmap and curated calendars are there. So go ahead, subscribe, support us, we'd appreciate it. If you'd like to be a guest on our podcast, please send us an email to hello at orange whip calm y'all Thank you for tuning in to hello chaos. It's where aha meets. Oh shit. I'm your host Jennifer Sutton JJ and I'll see you again next week