Epiphone
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Daily Archives: January 19, 2012
KISS’ Gene Simmons offers life lessons to private equity crowd
Mark Calvey | SF Business Times
Gene Simmons, who has turned the 1970s band Kiss into a licensing powerhouse, offered plenty of advice on how to succeed in business and life in speaking this week to a private equity audience in San Francisco.
“Spreading the risk is not just good business advice, it’s an important life strategy,” Simmons told 500 people attending the Association of Corporate Growth’s 2012 West Coast Corporate Growth Conference in San Francisco Jan. 17.
Simmons shared some the history behind the creation of Kiss in 1973, while he was working as a New York public school teacher.
“You can’t just do the rock-band thing. You need something else to fall back on,” was his mother’s early career advice. (Asked later who is his most influential adviser, Simmons was quick to say, “My mother. She’s very pragmatic. She’s the smartest person I ever met.”)
“I played in a band because I noticed when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show, all the girls were going nuts,” Simmons said. “That looked like a pretty good job.”
And definitely a step up from his first job at the age of 12, scraping the fat off a butcher’s block and bringing up meat from downstairs.
Simmons was far ahead of today’s career advice to brand one’s self.
“The business model of Kiss was decidedly different than almost any other band that came before us — underlying rights, ancillaries, these are big words like gymnasium,” Simmons said. “I had to find out about trademarks and how to amortize our costs and maximize profits.”