From Wuhan's Frontlines to Music Innovation: The Unstoppable Journey with CR Holmes

From Wuhan's Frontlines to Music Innovation: The Unstoppable Journey with CR Holmes

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to Episode 216 of the Business Development Podcast. And today I sit down with CR Holmes, a visionary entrepreneur whose journey is nothing short of incredible. From pioneering the music industry with Your Beat, Inc., a platform built to empower artists and revolutionize music monetization, to living in China and finding himself on the phone.

Frontlines in Wuhan during the COVID 19 outbreak stick with us. You are not going to want to miss this episode.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more.

This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners. CEOs and business development reps, you'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 216 of the business development podcast. And today is my absolute pleasure to bring you CR Holmes. CR is a visionary leader and dynamic entrepreneur.

He stands at the forefront of the music and entertainment industries with his groundbreaking ventures, Your Beat Inc. And Shanghai Shadow InVision Models and Photography Co. As the CEO and founder of YourBeat, CR is revolutionizing the music landscape by creating a secure platform that empowers artists, connects fans, and ensures robust copyright protection.

His mission is clear, to build a thriving music community where creativity flourishes, personal data remains private, and artists receive the recognition they deserve. With a wealth of skills ranging from photography and live event production to business analysis and advertising, CR brings a multi faceted approach to his innovative enterprise.

In addition to his transformative work in the music industry, CR's leadership extends to the modeling and visual media sectors through Shanghai Shadow InVision, where he manages a diverse talent pool and collaborates with top tier movie producers, creating compelling brand promotions and market expansions.

His dedication to excellence is evident in his award winning documentary work and his ability to manage complex production sites efficiently. CR Holmes is not just a business leader. He's a catalyst for change, driving the music and entertainment industries forward with passion, creativity, and an unwavering commitment to making every deal mutually beneficial.

In the world of entertainment, CR holmes is a force to be reckoned with, pushing boundaries and setting new standards of success. CR, it's great to have you on the show.

CR Holmes: Oh, I really glad to be here. I really appreciate your podcast. And I think I think it's a good thing for a lot of businesses.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, thank you. I appreciate that immensely. And I know we've definitely had our struggles getting this particular show going, and I greatly appreciate your patience in the matter.

CR Holmes: Oh, it's all good. We're good to go. Imagine a world where artists can actually make enough money to pay all of their monthly bills while keeping all their rights and connecting with their fans on a deep and personal basis.

Regardless of what platform that pays artists, never get a fair share of the money that they earn, even after sometimes spending decades refining it. On top of that, as artists develop, there are no solid support networks for them to learn, progress, or positively network within. Our entire platform revolves around the artists and not their music.

We have built an entire community, a music city, with the artists as the focus. We're fully aware that artists need an entire village around them to reach their fullest potential. And we have created exactly that from connections with venues to deals with vendors, to ways to make your fans feel important and loved your beat is where the music works.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. And I can't wait to chat with you about that all, but CR, you have an absolutely next level story. You have an absolutely amazing, amazing journey, and I want to spend some time there today because there's so much great information in the journey. You had an incredible trip to China, and we're going to chat about that.

But, you know, take us back to the beginning. Who is CR Holmes? How did you end up on this path?

CR Holmes: Oh, there's so much to fit into that question. It is probably More than the book worth of answers. How do I set that down in a short period? I had a difficult childhood. I left home at 16 because it was a very abusive childhood.

I finished school on my own, paying my own bills. And then I went into the music industry. That was my first job outside of. School, when I finished school, I graduated, I went into the music industry, I did a tour with a company up and down the interior of BC. Really enjoyed it at a blast and I must've done something right.

Because I immediately got hired to go to another music company in Winnipeg, in Canada, and I worked with them to do the big valley jamboree, which is a large event and some people might know. And then we did the Calgary stampede, which a lot of people probably know. And we also did the Rolling Stones and Winnipeg Blue Bomber Stadium, which some people might know which was great.

I had I had a blast at everything. Like, I really enjoyed the industry. And I was having fun doing that. And at the end of that, I kind of got a. A call out to go to Toronto when I really wanted to go out there anyways, because my real dad was out there. So I went out there to to work with a company that was the largest outdoor stage in Canada.

It's called Moulson park and it's about an hour North of Toronto. And I worked there for three years. I really enjoyed that. Then I worked with Christy lights and precision sound. So I've, I've had a lot of experience. Here and there and everywhere in the music industry. And then I got into computers after that, because I wanted a little bit more stability.

And then after that, I got into the air force, Canadian air force. I was in the air force for 13 years. I'm an avionics systems technician. I fixed computers and electronics on aircraft, but I am not certified according to the Canadian government, though I fixed their, I fixed their planes for 13 years, but I'm not certified to do it.

So when I got out and wanted to join Air Canada or WestJet or, you know, a regular company, they all went, Oh, I love your, you know, 10 years of log books that you give us, but go get a certification at Nate. And talk to us later. And so I was like, well, after 10 years, I was going to have to take two years of school.

And I went and afterwards I would be hired as a journey as the basic apprentice. And making about 37, 000 a year. And that was coming from a military paycheck of about 72. So I was like, well, let's not do that. Let's go drive truck. So I drove truck, drove semi truck for about 120 grand a year. And that was all going fine until my real dad died.

And then. My my girlfriend of four years, I caught her cheating. And then I got into a truck accident and had my semi truck blow up all within about a year. So I was like, well, let's go do something I want to do for me because there's nothing else that matters. So I decided I would go to China to visit.

Yeah. I'll just spend three months in China looking around China. I've been playing a video game called romance with three kingdoms. Now if you're a very heavy strategy oriented kind of guy, you might know romance of three kingdoms or girl. You will find that it's a very deep strategy game. Takes about a month to play.

I really enjoyed it. Yeah. It's, it's a very, very heavy strategy game. Like I, I like to make my brain hurt and that's

Kelly Kennedy: I used to play civilization. So I feel you.

CR Holmes: Nice. It is a, it is kind of like civilization, but it's got a couple more graduations in it. But it's all about the turban war back in ancient China.

And I, you know, I'd fell in love with this game and I went and got the books translated in English. Like the two books are literally this thick. Wow. They're like three or four. Well, I don't know what you call it. Probably 10, 10 to 12 centimeters. Holy cow. Thick each, each. And there's two of them. It's very, very heavy book.

And it's one of the four most common books taught in China in, in their literary background, which I thought was really kind of cool. I found that out when I went there. And I didn't know anything about it when I went there. But I went there and I wanted to travel China. That's all I wanted to do was travel and learn.

And I did, I, I hit about 50 cities. In about three months, I had a blast. I had a great time. And and then I had someone say, well, actually I had probably a hundred people say, you should come in, you know, teach English here. And I'm like, okay, you're talking to someone who's a C in English. I am a A in math or science.

But don't talk to male C's in English, they, they, you know, I will pass, but I was, I was desired for my English because I'm a native speaker there. Sure. So I had a lot of fun there and I was like, well, I'm not really that interested. And then I put in an application because a friend of mine convinced me to.

And I ignored it for a week, didn't even think about it. Went and did some stuff with him and traveled and then had fun. And he says, Oh, by the way, did you check that site out? I'm like, no, I didn't even remember it. I didn't care. And then I checked it out. I had 40 applications and three signed contracts sitting in the email.

And these are not average contracts either. You know, when I get out of the military and I go looking for a job, it takes me six months. In China, I go looking for a job and a day after I look for a job, I get a job on, and I was making 5, 000 a month, getting my rent paid, getting my utilities paid and getting one month, one meal a day paid.

So it's almost all profit, like a hundred percent was profit. So what do you do when you make five grand a month and you have no expenses? Oh, yeah, build a great big pile of money. What do you do with this pile of money at the end of it? Well, I go and make a business and that's, that's kind of what I did.

And the first time I did it, I had someone else helping make this business because I was absolutely unaware of how to make a business in China.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure.

CR Holmes: And I spent probably a hundred thousand yuan, which is like 20 grand trying to make this business, bad idea. If you want to learn how to make a business in China, come talk to me.

You can do it for like 5, 000 yuan. It's very cheap to make a business in China. And a lot of businesses in China, a lot of provinces in China actually will pay for your office space and everything when you make your business. In their province because they want the income in their province. So that's something to think about when you go to make a business in China there's a whole lot more to business in China than you would expect.

But I had a, I had such a good time there too. But it was it was very learning. There was a lot of learning. That I did with regards to how to run your business in China and how to write a contract. I got very good at running contracts. Because you, you need to make sure that every T is crossed and every I is dotted in China.

They're great people, but if they can find a hole to not do something, they will find a hole to not do it. And that's, that's okay. That's just their, that's their culture. You know, their culture is to make sure they get the most out of it. And that's cool. But I think that I had a, when I first arrived in China, I was, as I said, I was, you know, everything had gone wrong in my life at all at once.

And I decided this was all for me. You know, I was like, I stepped off the plane and I went, you know what? Good or bad or ugly, this whole problem, this whole situation is me. You know, if I make it or I don't make it, it's all based on me and my decisions. So I can't, I can't blame anybody else. I only can take the responsibility of myself.

And I, I really came into China with a completely different mindset. And I pretty much had my entire life. And it was really good to have that. And I showed up in China and I have a really good story about when I first came into China with a family in China I don't know if anybody here knows what spring festival is in China.

But you can relate it very similarly to Christmas here in Canada. It's pretty much their Christmas and it lasts for almost a month in China. You will have pre spring cleanup, and then you have a big event, and then you have a week long time off of work, so everybody goes home and you all celebrate as a family.

So it's very, very, very family oriented. And I I love that about Chinese people. You're extremely family owned. So I had someone that I was talking to as a pen pal and they invited me to come to this little tiny town called  Kuzong. Now. I went looking for this town called Kuzong and on, on the map, I couldn't find it.

It took me a while to find it. And then I was told it's near Hanyang and then it's outside of Hanyang about an hour. So I went to this town, which is Changsha. I ended up opening my business in Changsha later. And then outside of Changsha, there's a smaller town called Hanyang, which is about an hour out of town.

And then when you get to Hanyang and you ask around for Kuzong, nobody knows it. And then there's this one guy goes, I know where you want to go. And I'm like, okay, I don't know if I should trust you, but okay, we'll try this. And he says, here, come with me and I'll give you a ride to the bus stop. A bus stop.

I said, you can't just drive me. He says, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to drive you all the way to Kuzon. I'm like, why not? He says, it would be too much money in the tax. The bus will only cost you 20 grand. But if I drive you in the taxi, it cost you like 200 grand. I'm like. Okay. Well, whatever. So he drives me over to this bus stop, drops me off at the bus stop and goes, here you go.

And I give him the money and I'm waiting at the bus stop. And then they're talking to me in Chinese and I can, at this time I know zero Chinese. I don't know. Ni hao. I don't know. Ni hao is hello. I don't know. Goodbye. I don't know. Thank you. I don't know anything. I just have money and a translator, Pleco and Google translator.

Anyway, so I'm sitting at this bus stop and these people are talking to me in Chinese and then translating with Google. And then we get to the point where. Yeah. Kuzong is this bus. I'm like, okay. And the bus comes and then I come up to the bus and I'm like Kuzong. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll go to Kuzong.

Okay. So I get on the bus. I pay them there. I think it was like 18 Yuan. It wasn't very much. And that's Yuan are like five to one, by the way, five Yuan equal 1. So 18 Yuan is like 4. It's, it's pretty small. So I go out to this little town called Kuzong and it's a great little town and it's. About a hundred thousand people.

Now for us, that's a reasonable size town, but in China, you can walk from one side of Kuzon to the other in about 45 minutes because they always build up, they don't usually build out. So a hundred thousand is a very small town, but then they, they call it a village actually. Wow. Yeah, they call it a village.

They don't see it as a town. It's, it's so small and I'm walking down this street of this town. Looking for this hotel, going down the street. And then I started hearing kind of mumblings and rumblings behind me. And I look over my shoulder and there's like a hundred people, like this group of a hundred people following me.

And I'm like, this, this is weird. And I keep walking and then look over me. There's still, they, they kind of like follow me and stop when I stop and look over, they stop. This is weird. It's very uncomfortable, right? You know, you're new in town and there's, there's a hundred people falling, it was really unusual.

So I keep walking and then like, there were like four or five people come up out of the group and like a group of teenagers. And they're coming up to me and I'm like, what's going on? And they come up and they're like, she speaks. This girl comes to me and she speaks in horribly broken English and says, what are you doing here?

I'm like, find a hotel. And she's like, no hotel. I'm like, what do you mean? No hotel. This is a town of a hundred thousand people. No hotel. She's like, no hotel. I'm like, there's gotta be a hotel. She's like, no, no, no, no, no hotel. How can there be no hotel? I don't get this. Like what's going on? And and we translate with Google for about 20 minutes and I find out that there is a One hotel in the town because people don't visit this little tiny town, right?

It's too small They don't nobody comes so in this one hotel their family went home for spring festival So it's closed. So there's No hotel. That's life. Oh, wonderful. Okay, what do I do now? I said, okay, what about the bus? Can I take the bus back? No bus. What do you mean no bus? I won't take the bus back, dude.

Because I ain't gonna sleep on the street. What's going on? He's like, no bus? And I talked to her for a bit, and she says, well, the last bus that you just caught was the last bus before Spring Festival. Now there's not going to be any buses until after spring festival, which is 10 days from now. Oh, so there's no way to leave and there's nowhere to stay.

And I'm in this town of Kuzong of a hundred thousand people with this crowd of a hundred people behind me. And I asked her, you know, in the midst of all this, what's up with these people? Why do I have a hundred and a hundred people follow me? And she says, nobody's ever seen a foreigner ever. What? They'd never seen a foreigner in their town in their life.

Wow. Like he says, you are the very first person that is outside of China that I've ever seen in my entire life. And she's 16 years old or 17 years old, something like that. And she says, all the people back there, they're older than me. And none of them have ever seen a foreigner in our time. Wow. So I'm like this, this celebrity because they've never seen a white guy.

Oh, this is really unusual. Like I'd never, I'd never had that feeling of people follow you around because they want to know you. That was just really very, very unnerving, right? And then she's like, she says, come with me. We're going to go to my place. I'm like, no, thanks. But no, I appreciate this. But no, she says, I want you to talk to my dad.

I'm like, oh, okay. Okay. We can talk to your dad. So she brings me over to her place and she walks in the door and her dad starts talking and she starts talking to her dad and they're talking in Chinese. So it's all Chinese to me, man. Yeah, it's all Chinese to me. I have no idea. But they're like, what? And I'm like, okay, and then she says, my dad wants you to stay.

I'm like, what? She says, come with me, follow my dad. I'm like, okay. And he goes downstairs and there's a spare room that's, you know, it's, it's the size of a hotel room. And he says, you can stay here until the end of spring festival, when the buses start, and I'm like, how much do you want? He says, Nope, no, no, no, no, I won't take any money.

Like I tried like three or four times to pay him money. I left money on the dresser. I left, like, he would not take this money. Didn't matter what I did. He says, no, no money. Just stay. And I'm like, he says, you're welcome in my house. And I'm like, Wow. That's can you think of that? Can you imagine that in Canada?

No. Let's, let's, let's turn this into a Canadian situation.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: Joe Blow, who's an Asian, who can't speak English, shows up into your, in your 10, 000, because this is what you think about it, you know, in, in Canada, like a 10, 000 or less town, and the motel is closed for those, for the Christmas holidays. Right, there's only one motel and he shows up with your daughter and her friends and, and she says, Hey, can he stay dad?

Can you imagine this in Canada? Like I could just, I'm thinking of this situation in Canada and going, I don't know how many dads would pull out their shotgun, but I'd say at least 50%. I can't even imagine that, you know. What are you doing in my house?

What are you doing in my daughter? Yeah, my God. How many would say, no, come on downstairs and stay for the Christmas holidays.

Yeah, yeah. Like 10 days of Christmas holidays. Like that was unreal. And when you talk to them, and the more I lived in China, the more I found this, you talk to them, that is common. They would expect that. If a foreigner needed somewhere to stay, Instantaneously eight out of 10 of them would say, yeah, that blew my mind.

I'm like, I thought Canadians were a welcoming country. Like I really did. I, I'm a very proud Canadian. I, I am willing to die for my flag and my country. You know, this is me as a military member. I really believe Canada is a great country and I feel like, Holy jump. And there's no way I would ever see that kind of compassion from Canadians.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: You know, once in a while, like there'll be the odd one, but I would say eight out of 10 Chinese. The average Chinese person in, in, in China, in regular China, they would all say the same thing. Yeah. Come stay, don't stay outside. Don't, don't have a problem. Don't, you know, try to find a bus home. Just come stay with us.

I was like, that was so foreign.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with you completely, right? Like, you know, I mean, I grew up in a small town just outside of Edmonton called Spruce Grove and yeah, probably like, I don't know when I grew up there, probably 10, 000 or 15, 000 people, like was not a gigantic town by any means.

It's a lot bigger now, but it wasn't then. And I remember, yeah, I remember going out at night and there being no cars, like you could go out for a walk and there'd just be you and that's it right. Different, different time, different world. But. Yeah, like when I think to like what you're saying with regards to just like somebody showing up at my doorstep or like I just especially somebody who's a foreigner doesn't speak English.

It would be very hard because there would be a lot of distrust. I think we live in a very distrusting society. We really do. Like we want to know people before we invite them into our lives, right? It's a completely different situation. You're right. I don't think I could see that happening. And especially not at Christmas, which seems kind of bad, but I think most Canadians wouldn't do it.

CR Holmes: Yeah. And that, that blew me away at the difference between. My opinion and what I was taught about the Chinese culture comparison to what I found when I went there.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: It was really a black and white difference. And that changed like my entire opinion of everything I've learned, you know, everything we're taught.

You know, it makes you think, okay, if that is so wrong, what else are we being taught that isn't so right?

And after talking for a while with the Chinese, I would, I would say that what we hear about is usually has to do with. Their wonderful governing body, just like here in Canada, we have a government body that everybody loves, right?

Everybody loves Trudeau, of course.

Kelly Kennedy: Especially in Western Canada. He's our favorite.

CR Holmes: So, you know the same situation goes for their government there. It's not a matter of And, and this is something you have to be really cautious with when you go out to China. You better not say that it was bad when you're in China because they are watching.

The difference is in China, tell ya, Hey buddy, we're watching you. In Canada, they go, we're watching you and we're not going to tell you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Like I remember when we, when we first met. One of the first questions I asked you was, dude, weren't you scared? Like, obviously in Canada, we're democratic, right? We like to think we're the, we're one of the freest countries on earth.

I'm not sure if that's always true, but we like to think so. And the idea is, is that communism is horrible. Communism is bad. Avoid communism like crazy. And so for me, the idea of like spending any time in a communist country would be terrifying. Let alone an extremely long time.

CR Holmes: Yeah. Let alone coming up to somebody's family and going, Hey, let's, let me stay in your house for like a week.

And I don't even know. Yeah. You know, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's a completely black and white difference from what we're taught. And that's straight up. That's about as. You know, point blank as I could say it, what we're taught about how bad everything is out there really isn't. Now, there are things that can be better.

I'm not going to lie. And there are things that make you go, Hmm. You know, when the doctor who discovers COVID leaves for work and work doesn't see him and he never comes home that day. Makes you go, Ooh, you know, things like that, like, you know, there are things. They also are very straightforward into the point.

You know, they say, if you talk about the government in a negative way, you will be reprimanded, you know, they're going to tell you straight out. You know, we, we love our country of China. And if you think that we're bad, we're going to kick you out. Okay. You know? So if you follow the rules that they lay out.

You don't usually get in trouble not that I've seen anyways, and.

Kelly Kennedy: I guess I just want to pause you there. What was it like learning these rules? Because these are not rules we have in Canada. You can speak however you feel. It's a freedom of speech. Not a freedom of speech in China, clearly. What was it like learning these rules as an outsider?

Like, you know, I mean, for them, they grew up in it. For you, it's like, holy crap. Like, I don't want to say something and get, you know, get reprimanded. Talk to me about that. Like, what was it like trying to learn all this stuff?

CR Holmes: It was as you say, I had the same. Uncomfortable and it was, I tell you, it was really uncomfortable when you look over your shoulder and there's a hundred people following you.

Okay. When you're not used to the environment or the culture, you're wondering, are they there for good, bad, ugly, what's going on? You know, am I, am I going to have to use my military experience? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not even kidding. You know, you're thinking, okay, how many people can I take out before I go down? A hundred's a lot.

I don't know if I can do that. I can't do that. I'm just going to keep walking. Like literally, that's what you, that's what's going to happen. Yeah. You got to remember that. This time I was less than a week in China, less than a week when this happened. I was like, brand new spanking off the plane, man. I, I had no idea what this, I'd never seen this before.

It was a way I remember.

Kelly Kennedy: You were like, this is how it happens. This is how I die.

CR Holmes: Yeah, well, you know, as a woman, where I was going, I wonder how fast I can run. And I run faster scared than they can angry. I don't know. Literally.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, man.

CR Holmes: But when you stop and they stop, it makes you go, what's going on? It's weird.

It's very unusual. Yeah. So, yeah. It was definitely, as you say, it's very, an unnerving process. Always watching what you say and when, and watching what you say, even online. It was made overly apparent that the number one thing that they used to chat is WeChat WeChat is like I am instant messenger here.

Yeah. You know, everybody uses instant messenger or, or WhatsApp here to chat with. Now, what if you were told by the Canadian government that everything you put through Instant Messenger will be looked at? Not some of it, absolutely everything you put through WeChat will be examined by the Canadian government.

Yeah, that's Now, how much do you want to talk about the Canadian government first? Sure, yeah. Like, really, how much do you want to talk about them? You're like And then number two, if you say anything bad about the Canadian government, you could go to jail in China. So you really go, that's something I don't want to do too much.

So you don't, right. And something like and they did this test more than once with Canadians, they would post the wonderful picture. Of Tiananmen square and immediately it would be taken down and immediately that account would be banned. And if that person was in China, they would find out where they were and six SWAT would come in, say hello to them.

Wow. And that's, that's a, for sure what will happen. And they will take you to the police department and you will have to write. An apology to get let out saying you don't support improper propaganda. So I read this all on WeChat and all on, on the internet. As I was there at the beginning, so I was like, wow, okay.

So they don't kind of check everything out. They check everything out. Yeah. So then when you see that and you know that you learned very, very quickly that. You got to be very careful what you put on their most common chat, but the only way to get to know anybody is WeChat. Like what a, what a hundred percent you don't with WeChat, you don't meet people in China without a WeChat.

It's back before internet here in North America. When you've met someone, you say, Hey man, you got your, can I grab your phone number so we could connect a hundred percent of the time. That's the only way to make sure you connect again. In China, you meet two people and it's like, Hey man, what's your WeChat?

Like it's guaranteed. If you don't have a WeChat, you know that they don't want to talk to you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Okay.

CR Holmes: It's, it's one of those. Oh, you don't want to give me your WeChat? It's not a matter of you don't have one. It's a matter of you don't want to give it to me. You don't like me.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, in all fairness, that could pretty much be the same in Canada.

Like if you don't want to give me your phone number, we know everyone's got a phone. So.

CR Holmes: Yeah, that's, that's, that's why we're lit adults too, right? Back in, you know, when you go with a phone, Hey man, what's your phone number? Actually, you know, I'm changing phone numbers or whatever, right? You know, some stupid excuse, right?

You know, it's not, okay. You don't have a phone, right? It's like. You know, I'm talking to me. Okay. No problem. I get it. Yeah. In the same thing, exactly the same thing with WeChat.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: If you go there and say, Hey man, can I have your WeChat? They go, actually, I don't have a WeChat. You go, okay, thanks.

Kelly Kennedy: See, I want to spend some time here though, because you didn't just go to China on a trip.

Like, you eventually stayed, you eventually stayed, you didn't just stay, you opened a business, like, you, you did it, like, you chose to be there, talk to me about that, even despite all of this, all these challenges communist system, you made a choice that, that that was where you wanted to lay down some roots, can we talk about that?

CR Holmes: Well, again, it was, you know, I got dragged into way too much money for way too little work. And movie star style life. And, and I'm really not even kidding. And you walk around and you go to these places and you have a hundred people follow you on, Hey, can reach? I can only reach out. It's literally, I feel like you're a movie star.

You're there. And I loved it. I had, you know, I never had a problem with getting out and having friends and going to an event. It was great. Just. Mind you, I didn't always take the time because business comes first. But for me, I did that and I started working in China and I had a lot of, I had a good time.

I made great connections. I had a lot of fun with it. I found it very easy work. Like, can you imagine doing 20 to 25 hours a week for 5, 000 a month? Yeah. That's crazy. Can you, can you imagine that? Like. What job do you have for that? Is there any job in Canada that you can do that? Let me know what it is and I'll see if I can go and apply for it.

Right. You know what I mean? It just doesn't happen here. So I was just living, living the life really. So I made good money and I was helping people. Teaching them English. And I helped all sorts of people from students to university kids to to adults. I even did, I even ended up doing a shoe sales company.

And went into the company and taught like 25 executives because they were starting to go overseas and they needed to speak English. To, to do emails and stuff like that and go overseas. So, you know, I, I never had a problem with teaching basic communication to me. That's communication. English is not the same as what you learn in school, which is all grammar and nobody loves.

Communication English is just getting, you know, hi, how you doing? What's your name? You know what do you need? Oh, I need five pairs of shoes. Okay. You know, these kinds of things are, are what we're looking at. You know, you're not looking at, you know, I before E except after C are a neighbor away. I don't care.

Hey, I probably even got that wrong. Oh, that sounded good to me. You know, that was my point, right? I'm talking about English, just talking English. Yeah. And that's, that's what I taught. I taught how to talk, speak English. And here's a, here's a very classic Chinese situation. And you can go to China today and have this happen.

You get off the plane and you say, how are you doing? And the first person that talks to you says, I'm fine. Thank you. And you, okay. That's a little bit formal, but all right. I'm fine. Thank you. And you, no problem. And then you go to the next person. Hey, how you doing? I'm fine. Thank you. And you, and then you go to like the taxi cab driver, you get in the taxi.

Hi, how you doing? I'm fine. Thank you.

Wait a second. What? And then you go to the hotel clerk. Hey, how you doing? I'm fine. Thank you. And you, and every person you talk to says, I'm fine. Thank you. And you.

Kelly Kennedy: You start to feel like you're in groundhog day.

CR Holmes: Everybody's a robot. It's really weird. So one of the very first things I teach. In university or I teach to any executive is do not say I'm fine.

Thank you. And you just not what you would say in English. I'm good. I'm great. I'm wonderful. I'm happy. I'm sad. I'm angry. Like, I don't care, but something real, you know, you don't say I'm finding you. I feel like a robot, like, gosh, man, it's so weird yet.

Kelly Kennedy: I'm sure it's the exact same. Like, I'm sure that for people learning Mandarin or any other country or any other language, I should say, you know what I mean?

There's always going to be those things that we're saying completely wrong because we don't understand the intricacy of the communication, right? It's like, it's. I feel like that happens probably everywhere.

CR Holmes: When I learned enough Chinese, I would say, this is what it sounds like in Chinese. And people go, you'd never say that in Chinese.

I said, no, you wouldn't say that in Chinese. But this is the same thing. It was what you're saying in English.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

CR Holmes: I mean, like, that's so weird. And I'm like, yeah, congratulations.

Kelly Kennedy: I want to take us into. Into Wuhan you have a very interesting perspective because you were actually there, dude. I haven't talked to anybody.

Obviously COVID was a massive impact around the world, Canada, United States, worldwide, but especially in China. And you were there at the time. Not only were you there, you were a crisis volunteer. Can we talk about your experience during the COVID crisis?

CR Holmes: Well, as I said, I made a lot of money and after two years of making a lot of money.

I went and opened a business. Why not? You know, if you've got a lot of money and you know how the business works, you can make even more money. If all the money comes to you and not to somebody else. I knew how much money I was making. And I also know that I was making less than half of what they were making.

I was like, dang, you know how much money I should be making? So I got into the business of tutoring. And then I went and made a good money, good chunk of money off of that. And in a year, I had enough money to put it into a second business, which was, a nightclub. I said, when I, when I thought about it, I went, okay.

Let's take everything to do with English tutoring. It's in, it's in the education business. It's to do with students. It's in a classroom. What is as far away from that as humanly possible, so that if something disrupts that, it won't disrupt my new business, because I don't like all my eggs in one basket.

You know, if one goes down, I can use the other. If the other one goes down, I can use, you know, and I kind of feed each other in times of trouble, that's how business runs. So I bought into a nightclub at a hundred grand Canadian. It's about 500, 000 . But anyways, so I had a nightclub and I had a English tutoring club or English tutoring school.

What could ever happen? They closed them both down at the same time. Nothing in the world could ever close both these business down at the same time. Nothing, nothing until

an inside of one week, I lost all my business, all at the same time. Wow. I'm like, that's really annoying because I have one business that is school kids getting together. Oh, we can't have school kids getting together in COVID. So closed all they were the first things to close down in all of China, every classroom, every school, every tutoring, because they actually really cared about their kids.

So everything got closed down. And then afterwards they went actual thinking about people that are getting together. We should probably close down all the bars and clubs. And about two days later, they all closed down.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: So I'm like, you know, life's anyways, both my business at the same time closed down and I'm like, okay, well, what am I going to do now?

You know, I can't get home because the tickets are 50, 000 each, not UN 50, 000 each to get home. And I wrote. You know, the country Canada, who was supposed to get me a ride home and that didn't work. And then I wrote to Canada saying, Hey, you know, you want to give me some funding so that I can get home? No, no, no.

That didn't work. So I was left in, in Changsha. Now Changsha is about two hours outside of Wuhan. So it was very close to the epicenter.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: So it closed down literally days after the news of Wuhan hit. So I'm sitting there, I no longer have a job. I have no income, I have nothing to do, and I have an expiring visa in China.

None of this is good. None of this is good. It's all bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, all the way along. And I'm like, this is a problem. So I go to the police because as long, that's one thing I've really found out. If you go to the police and tell them your problem, they will do everything they can to help you.

Everything. They will go upside down to help you. So I came to them and I said, my visa is going to expire soon and I can't get a flight home. What can I do about it? And they said, well, go to the visa place. And I went, okay. And then I come back about an hour later, visa place is closed and it will be closed until further notice.

Oh, sit down there. And then they went and did a whole bunch of research for me, like literally probably an hour and a half worth of phone calls and everything. And they came to me and said. Here take this piece of paper. It's a police stamp signed piece of paper. Don't worry about your visa It's good until the visa place is open.

Oh Okay, so there's my number one problem. I don't have a an issue with my visa now Where do I dig I have no income no way to do anything I have lots of money and you know a house, but I I am not one to sit around and do nothing I don't I go crazy so I went You know what? They are desperate for volunteers.

You see it every day on, on the thing, you know, the nurses falling asleep at their post. And it was horrible, right? They were working them 24 seven for like six days a week. It was crazy. So I went, well, they obviously need help and they're humans, right? We are all human when it comes down to it. You get past everything else, you know, you take, take off everything else.

We're the same biologically. Set of people, right? So I'm going to go to Wuhan and volunteer. And that's what I did. I went to Wuhan and I went to the city, the city council and the mayor. And I applied to be a volunteer and I was a volunteer right in Wuhan during the Wuhan crisis. And I got there about about the 4th of January 2020.

And I was there. And then January 21st, they locked down Wuhan to the point where I had a car. I could not find any road whatsoever. And I looked for about three days. I could not find any road out of Wuhan. Every road was either closed off by police, closed up by barriers, closed up by dump trucks, closed up by semi trucks, closed up by.

Anything that they could find to block off a road they used. Wow. You could not come in or out of Wuhan at all. If you walked out, you could, but Wuhan's a long ways from the next town. It's like three and a half hours from Changsha. You know, it's a long ways. So I was like, okay, well, I'm stuck here. I'm volunteering.

And I just kept volunteering and I met a guy who was a photographer, which is where this photography. Business came from, and we hung out together and we volunteered together and we had a great time and we helped a lot of people. I probably handed out about 2000 glasses and then I handed out mass and I handed out water and I would make deliveries of food and medicine to places.

And it was great. I really fit right in. And then as I was doing this. Someone who knew that I had left Changsha and went to Wuhan, he phoned me up. He says, Hey man, are you still in Wuhan? And I'm like, yeah, man. He's like, did you know, CTV is looking for somebody in Wuhan? Would you be up for that? I'm like, okay, I guess, whatever.

Like I hadn't thought about it. It wasn't on my list of what do I need when I go to Wuhan, you know, I'm going for CTV, you know. I'm like, sure, man, you can send me an email. Tell them to send me an email. Here's my email address. So they send me an email and say, Hey, this is what we're planning on doing.

Would you be interested? And I'm like, well, I did do photography for 9/11 and I got fourth place, like honorary mentioned. So, you know, in a national contest, I could do it. It's I've enjoyed photography is kind of like a, you know, a hobby pretty much all my life. Sure, you know, I could do this. What do you want me to do?

And they told me all about how to do the documentary. All about Wuhan. And that's what I did. I did an entire recording about what I was doing and what was happening in Wuhan from a firsthand point of view. And you can look it up today and look up Inside Wuhan W5 on YouTube or CTV news or violin run entertainment, which is one of the producers.

And it's my documentary and it aired in, in Canada. I don't know. Sometime in March or April, something like that. And the day it aired, it had 1. 2 million viewers. Wow. I was like.

Kelly Kennedy: That is unreal.

CR Holmes: Crazy. Like that blew my mind.

Kelly Kennedy: Was there, was there ever a moment where you were afraid? Cause I imagine that that might be something that the government might not want leaving the country.

CR Holmes: If you watch the video, you will see me walking up with my camera down here because you have to watch, right? There's ways to do things and ways not to do things. And I'm walking with my camera just here. It wasn't like, it wasn't in my hand and I wasn't taking pictures or it didn't look like I was taking pictures, but it was running.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: And I was walking up the ramp to the closed down Wuhan train station. When two police SWAT vans start driving towards me and you can hear me if you listen in the video go Right up,

that's I'm going oh, you know one of those Oh Moments. Oh, I was very very concerned at that point because if they didn't like it they they take your camera take your car take your You know, throw you in jail there. They have no limits. No limits.

Yeah. There are no limit in what they can do in China. Like it's, it's what it is.

It's it's that's their rules. Right. Yeah. And they drove past me. And you hear me,

and I was like, it's like when I felt really tense.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes, there's probably no other Canadians like, and that's like, we have a big country. There are probably no other Canadians with this experience. You are like, you are the only one like that is pretty bonkers. Do you ever like, do you ever like think about that?

CR Holmes: No, I don't. I don't usually see it in that method. I just see it as. It was an opportunity and opportunities don't knock twice. Opportunities knock once and you either make the decision to take it or you make the decision to walk away.

Kelly Kennedy: I love that.

CR Holmes: I'm, I'm always one of those. If an opportunity provides itself, really, you should take it.

Kelly Kennedy: I agree.

CR Holmes: And sometimes risk is, is rewarded. You know, I, I think actually more often than not risk is rewarded.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes.

CR Holmes: If you, if you put the effort in and the time in risk is often rewarded. So that was one of two times when I was very, very nervous. The second time I walked behind one of the hospitals and this never showed up on the video because I told them to take it out.

Because I was too nervous. I walk around the back of the hospital and there is a portable crematorium that they're just loading bodies in one after another. Oh my gosh. Right. One after another. And it goes to the crematorium and into the big dumpster in the back. And then, and it's not one or two bodies like that thing was rolling constantly.

And I saw it and I recorded it and then I left and I sent it to them. And CTV News went, Wow and I went, Don't put it on.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, I don't want to die.

CR Holmes: I'm going to feel like being one of those people. So, don't put it on. But I thought you might want to know.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, wow. Okay, okay, hold on. You were ground zero. There were a lot of people who, who said that the deaths were BS.

But what you're saying right now is absolutely not. There were a lot of people on the ground dying.

CR Holmes: They were a lot of people like the numbers that they gave you were BS. I agree, but not because they were too much. Probably because too little.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, wow, that is unreal.

CR Holmes: Being on Ground Zero and seeing that, it really, that was the other time that I went, Hmm, and then I thought about it and went, Hmm, no.

Kelly Kennedy: Seeing that, seeing the amount of people dying all around you, were you not afraid for yourself? Like, were you not incredibly afraid about catching COVID?

CR Holmes: Well, if you look into it, it is very similar to pneumonia. It is a a lower lung virus that, you know, builds up fluid in your lungs, just like pneumonia.

Now, when I was a kid, I was born a month early, so I had underdeveloped lungs. So I was very accessible to like, my body was very it had lots of ability to take on pneumonia. So five times when I was younger, I got pneumonia. By the time I was five years old. Wow. I had pneumonia five times and I lived through it.

So I went, well, after doing all the research on this and knowing that it's almost the same as pneumonia and knowing that I could live through pneumonia,

Kelly Kennedy: yeah, it was a risk you were willing to take,

CR Holmes: I was like, well, you know, it's pneumonia, it's pneumonia again. I know how horrible that is, but I have lived through pneumonia.

Okay. I can handle it. Yeah. And that's what that's. So I never really was scared of COVID. Like, you know, like the fear that seemed to spread through the whole world. And that was something else. So I said in the video, you know, greater than the COVID virus is the virus of fear. You know, it can do way more damage.

They were killing pets because they thought the pets could spread pneumonia or spread COVID. And it wasn't, wasn't the case, but you know, the, the. The virus of fear is way more dangerous than the virus of COVID ever was. And I think that's part of it too. So yeah, I think that you need to be educated. You need to learn what it does.

You'll need to learn how it's going to affect you. Now, if you have a bad immune system and you have problems with breathing. Then you better, better protect yourself in any way you can. But if you're a strong person and you don't have problems with breathing and you know, you can handle a horrible chest cold, then probably you could handle COVID.

It's not going to make you feel good. But you could probably handle COVID. So this over fear mongering, I think was half the problem. And no, there isn't something, you know, it's not something you should ignore and it's definitely something you should respect, but it also isn't something that is like the black plague and there is no, you know, it's going to wipe up, you know, half the world.

You know, the Black Plague literally killed one third of the world's population when it happened, you know, so, you know, there's, there's a limit, you know, yes, you have to respect it. No, you don't have to be deathly afraid of it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, the sickest I've ever been. I caught H1N1 when that was going around swine flu back in like 2008 2009 I want to say.

And yeah, I literally couldn't even get out of bed for two weeks. Like I was, we caught COVID and COVID was minor, minor compared to that. But, but, you know, I mean, in all fairness, it affects different people differently.

CR Holmes: That's right. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah.

CR Holmes: That's why I said, you got to respect it, right. You know, you got to make sure that you know what your limitations are and what your issues are.

Right. If you have problems with your chest, do you have problems with breathing? You have problems with your lungs or, or your heart. You know, really respect COVID stay out, you know, stay out of the way of people and, you know, wear a mask, that kind of thing, but, you know, I don't think everybody has that problem, so, you know, take it with a grain of salt.

So maybe a pound.

Kelly Kennedy: Maybe a pound, then you can salt your windows and doors while you're at it, dude. And then you came home, so you came home.

CR Holmes: Well, that was not by choice. Yeah, of course. China does have their limitations. I I lived through that. I was the very first and actually had the certificate, the very first foreign person to receive a certificate of clean health after COVID.

I have zero zero one on my clean health bill from China. Wow. It's very, very cool. Well, I feel very proud for that. It's really interesting, but After I did all the volunteering, you have to go through two weeks of decon, right? Because you want to make sure that you don't ever got, you don't ever get COVID and you don't spread it.

Kelly Kennedy: That's right.

CR Holmes: And that's logical because I'm, you know, you're working right next to people every single day. We get two tests every day to verify that you don't have it so that you could keep working. Right. So it's very, you know, they're very stringent on that, which is great. In the entire time to this moment, I still haven't got COVID.

Amazing. So I've never ever received COVID. I never ever got COVID. That's awesome. But I probably have about 500 tests of COVID. I've been tested like 500 times, more times than almost anybody else, I think, in North America. But I got a clean bill of health and I left. And then I went to Shanghai and with my friend from Wuhan, we opened a modeling and photography company, which is still valid today.

He manages out in China. So. And we open it with part of the money from CTV. Thank you very much.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.

CR Holmes: So anyways, I moved over to my company in Shanghai and I started living in Shanghai and running my company in Shanghai and then Omicron hit just when my visa was ready for renewal and the Chinese government went, well, you're a foreigner.

Omicron's hitting. We're closing down chunks of Shanghai. And your visa is up for renewal, go home and then come back in a couple of years. We're dealing with this, this Wuhan and this, this COVID problem. And we just don't want to deal with people. So goodbye. So they ended up sending me home. Now I had left everything in China because I still, to this day, think that I eventually will return.

But so I got, I got to Canada. Vancouver with a backpack and a duffel bag, literally. And I went, okay, what do I do now? Just start again. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Good. Start again. Had you did you have any savings left over from that time in China?

CR Holmes: No, because I spent a lot of it actually. Well, first of all, I, we had just put a lot of investment.

I put 500, 000 yen into, into the nightclub and literally we had opened a month, maybe two months beforehand, so we were still in the, in the red, like deep in the red. Yeah, because we're brand new, right? We put literally like three or 4 million into redoing and buying it and everything. And then we had to close

just nothing left after that. Yeah. And then I tried to spend a bunch of money to stay in China because I preferred to stay in China. That didn't work either. So I came back and I was pretty short on cash actually when I came back. So I'm like, well, you know what I can do? I can drive truck.

I can drive truck. I still got a class one license. I'll go drive truck and I'll make 120 grand a year. Which I did right off the bat, you know, what don't stop life life will never be fair You know, I think that's a big thing that I, I talked to a lot of people about is, you know, life, you know, people come to you and say, life isn't fair.

And I'm like, no, life is not fair. You're, congratulations. You have now learned.

Kelly Kennedy: You have learned the life lesson. My boys, they'll get on it. They'll be like, oh, that wasn't fair. They'll be fighting with each other. And you're not being fair. And I just look at them and I said, boys. Nothing in life is fair.

The longer you learn that, the better you are going to do.

CR Holmes: So you just pick up where you are. You get this hand in poker. You either play it or you fold it. That's it. That's it. That's all you do. You have two choices. Play it or fold it. So, I was there. That was my situation. I needed money. That's what I did.

Was it, was it my preferred? No, definitely not 100%. I had been in a major accident before I had lost a, a career with it before lost a lot of money with it before. So, you know, it wasn't what I wanted to do. And I really had no passion. You know, I'm the guy who will die for my country and my values.

I'm sorry. There's just no passion for me in driving truck. It's just my passion. Right. So I was driving a truck and my buddy, my friend says, you hate this job. And I'm like, well, it makes 120 grand a year. Yeah. Yeah. Right there. I need, I need the money right now. And he said, you should find your passion and make a job.

And that hit me because I'm like, okay, you go out into the world and there are jobs. And you try to fit into a job because that's the way the world is. I had never looked at it the opposite way where you can go make your own job. How do you make a job? So I thought on that for probably a good month and I came up with, well, the first thing let's, let's go with step by step, what are my passions?

Well, I love music. I can play music when I'm bad, mad, sad, happy, glad, whatever I always. I always love music whenever I'm working on a music stage or around music, I am probably one of the happiest people on the planet. You know, I love it. Okay. I have a passion for music computers. I have been playing with and fixing computers literally and since my grade four class when I fixed my classes computer, you know, I'm a Microsoft certified professional A Plus certified technic technician.

I am an avionics system technician. I've been working on computers on planes and trains, you name it, wherever. I've always worked on computers. I love computers. Okay. So that's my second passion computers. And this is very evident in the military. And I think this goes with a lot of military members. We all are out to support or protect the little guy.

That's what we're there for. Right. If someone goes to, you know, to attack someone that's smaller than them or less weaker than them, we are there to protect the country, our values, our beliefs. So, you know, supporting the little guy has always been one of my passions, you know, as much as everybody, you know, thinks that, you know, Edmonton Oilers should have won.

I'm sorry, I was cheering for the Underdogs. You know what I mean? It's, it's, you know, Vancouver Canucks were against Edmonton Oilers. Who was I cheering for? My team, Vancouver Canucks. Have they ever won a Stanley Cup? Never! But I'm still cheering for them. You know, they are the Underdogs. And they won, and that was great, but I'm always cheering for the underdogs.

Kelly Kennedy: You know, CR, you're in Calgary. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. Have you looked out the window?

CR Holmes: I'm a Canucks fan, and I will cheer for the underdogs because I always cheer for the underdogs. It's one of my passions, so those are my three passions. Helping small people. Music and computers. How can I combine those three into a single job? And that's where your, your beat comes from that from my passion for people.

My passion for music, my passion for computers, helping artists get out there and really make enough money to do simple things like pay their rents. What an idea. You know, Spotify goes out there and gets, you know, I saw an ad the other day, Amal, come, come with us and we will get you a Spotify. I said, did you know what a million streams does for you?

And I wrote a post on my Instagram about this ad. We will get you a million streams. Do you know how much Spotify pays for one stream? Does anybody, most people don't it's 0. 0032 cents. That means it's a third of a penny for one stream. Yeah. Okay. So if you get a million streams, that's a whole 3, 200. 3, 200 bucks.

Yeah. Oh, but it can't be that bad, right? A million streams can't be that bad. Well, let's let's look at it from a point of view of time So if you were to get a million streams an average song an average pop song not classical music not rock an average pop song, which are the most popular songs that's what they're called pop popular songs.

Anyways, they're two and a half minutes long So if I were to get a million streams, that's two and a half million minutes. Yeah listening And when you calculate that out, that's 4. 76 years of time that my fans had to spend to give me 3, 200. Is it worth it to be on Spotify? Wow. For us, we think that Spotify is a very niche product.

That is a marketing cost for someone who has over a hundred thousand viewers, over a hundred thousand fans and gets a hundred thousand streams every month. You use it to expand your reach. It is a advertising cost. It is not an income stream. Mm-hmm. I agree. See it as that for podcast, but it's perfect.

Yeah. Right. If it's, if you are in that niche, you are perfect for Spotify. If you have a thousand viewers you wanna try to get on Spotify, you are wasting your time. Really. You are wasting your time. You'll spend 85% of your time trying to get onto Spotify. Get 0 or maybe like 100 a month, but you will be spending 85 percent of your time.

Do not waste so much of your time. You know, there's that 80, 20 rule spend 80 percent of your time and 20 percent makes the most money. That's right. Oh, not 80 percent of the time on the stuff that makes 0 percent of your money. It's, it's really not Spotify. Our goal is to do the opposite. Now you can look this up.

There's a cool book called a thousand true fans, and it's not really book. It's like. A five page essay. It's called a thousand true fans. I love it. It's a really good idea Now a true fan according to this is a fan that will spend a hundred dollars a year on you And you think about that that's not really that much You calculate it out.

I think it's eight dollars and eighty four cents a month like two coffees a mcdonald's burger a month Now if you can get a thousand people to buy a mcdonald's burger a month for you You are looking at a hundred dollars a month from each one of them times a thousand people. You're making a hundred thousand dollars a year.

And you say that to artists and their eyes just kind of like go, I can make enough money to make a hundred thousand dollars a year on a thousand fans. I'm like, yeah, you don't need a hundred thousand people. You need a thousand people that really believe in you. And nowadays with a worldwide distribution network, which is available, you have What 8 million people are 8 billion people to get a thousand fans.

Do you see, you can't find a thousand people to like your music and 8 billion people. You don't need the top end people. You just need a thousand people to spend 8 and 84 cents. And our goal is with that, you make 100, 000 a month or 100, 000 a year. And for most people, 100, 000 a year pays your rent.

Kelly Kennedy: Especially artists.

CR Holmes: Yeah, pay for most of your bills, all of these things that you need, right? It may not give you like the glory lifestyle of, you know, the 4 million mansion, work on it, build on it. And maybe over time it will. But the fact that you can pay your rent might be a good thing. Totally. Especially if it's 100 percent off your music, that's our number one thing.

Kelly Kennedy: So how does it work? CR, how, how, how do we do this for them?

CR Holmes: Well, one of the things that we do mostly is we look at the numbers out in the world today. If you look at every major artist from, you know, a small artist, that's local to a large artist, that's actually making it 85 percent of your income comes from live venues, live events.

So what should you be spending 85 percent of your time doing?

Kelly Kennedy: Live venues!

CR Holmes: We almost all got that. Didn't we? So. What do we do? We build our first step, the very first thing that we're releasing is something called jam job. And jam jive is a way for venues to put up events and artists to put up their profile and they both can see each other's and say, Hey, I like that event.

I would like to apply for that event. And Hey, I like that artist. I would like that artist for this event.

Kelly Kennedy: It's a dating app. It's a dating app for artists.

CR Holmes: So yes, it's very similar to that for our artists. But it allows them. One of the things that we do with our artists is as they fill out their form, we ask them for things that a venue will need, but not every artist knows, especially newer artists.

Like, Hey, what's your one page or your EPK? What's that? That's a weird name for anything. Well, that's essentially your marketing sheet all about you. Like if you're a new artist, you don't know what that is. But if you don't have one of those, the venue will never look at you. Then what's, what about your stage plot?

Do you have your stage plot? It's that, I don't know what that is. If you don't have a stage plot, your venue won't look at you, right? These are things that you need to make that application. And we build that right into our initial form. When you sign up, Hey, here, sign up. It'll ask you for all these things.

It says, Hey, what's your demo reel? Oh, I don't have a demo reel. Well, you can't, you can't be on JamJive without it because we're going to send that demo reel to your venue because it is a requirement if you don't have a demo reel. Art again, the venue won't look at you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah.

CR Holmes: Venues do this every single day.

Any venue that's got any kind of salt in there, in their name, they've done this before a thousand times. The last thing they need is some scrub guy who comes in and doesn't know anything about the industry going, Hey man, I'm like the coolest rockstar on the planet, and you got to let me play. Okay. Do you have a one page?

Oh, what's the one page? What do you mean? All right, man. Thanks.

Kelly Kennedy: We'll talk to you tomorrow. So in a lot of ways, really what you're doing is you become the marketing team for these, for these artists, you really take that challenge off their plate.

CR Holmes: Yeah. Well, it's not just marketing. We do a whole lot of things but we help them do everything.

If you can think of a startup business accelerator, everything that a startup business accelerator does from. Mentorship, training, connections, funding, grants, sponsorship, all of that. Business management, post management, advertising, all of that. Like it's not one or two pieces. It's when the whole app is finished, we do the whole thing.

The jam jive is what we call a single feature MVP. It is our one feature of. A much broader platform that we want to get out so that a, we know that it makes 85 percent of the artist's income, so it's a good way to get artists making money. And B, it will be useful for artists, right? That's let's get something out there that's useful for artists.

So this is why we chose it as our first MVP or a single feature MVP. But we have a much, much bigger scope in regards to that. So just think of us as the startup accelerator for musical artists. That's it. That's what we are.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. CR, that takes us to the end of our show today. Dude, did I really appreciate this conversation.

Thank you for sharing your journey. What an exciting and wild journey. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your insights with the BDP. But you know, before we wrap it up, you're a serial entrepreneur. You're not only a serial entrepreneur, you're like literally a worldwide serial entrepreneur, which is really cool.

Do you have a piece of advice for some of these people who maybe you're on the fence? You know, they're a little afraid to go out and do their own thing. You've done it multiple times. You've reinvented yourself multiple times. What piece of advice might you give to people who are who are looking to make that jump to entrepreneurship?

CR Holmes: Keep going. The biggest thing you'll find when you get into entrepreneurship is. You'll start with a whole lot of energy, piles, piles of energy. There'll be days just like everything else where you have no energy. You just want to sleep. Keep going. Consistency is so key every day. Put your five, 10, whatever hours you want to put in, put time in every day towards your company.

Do it every day and you will see a difference. If you do a hundred hours of something, you're an okay person. If you do a thousand hours of something, you're pretty good. It's 10, 000 hours of anything. You are in the top 5 percent of people doing that in the world. Put the time in and do it consistently.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Put the time in. I love it. CR, before we close up today, I just wanted to point people your way. If we, if we have venue owners listening, if we have artists listening talk to me, who are your ideal clients?

CR Holmes: Our ideal clients when it comes to venue side, is someone who's actually been in the business before.

They know what it is. That they want and they know what it is they need from an artist because then we don't have to teach them. We will teach you if you need to, but we're here for artists, not for venues. But if you need artists on a regular basis and you want to, you know, change it up and get some, especially some local artists to you, we are number one.

That's our focus. Getting local artists out in front of fans. And, you know, if you want to throw 10 artists together for a night so that you can make sure that each artist that has a hundred can fill your venue, we can do that, right? Because that's one of the biggest problems for venues is making sure that, you know, they have an income for bringing in a brand new artist and one artist will have a hundred people and then maybe 10 people will show up.

So it doesn't really work well. So that's just why a lot of venues kind of steer away from newer artists. But if I pull 10 artists or 15 artists together. And we do a night of, you know, two or five minutes sets of each artist. Each artist brings 10, you have a hundred, you know, 15 people times 10. It's 150 people.

You got a reasonably good gig there. And then you have your regular other people as well. That'll show up, you know? So, you know, we can work things out. And even if you have venues that are not the average things that we're talking about, our old age homes. Or a restaurant or, you know, something like that, a coffee house.

And you want someone to come and play background music in your hotel lobby. You know, we can arrange that. That's for our venues for artists. You have problems with getting out there. You have problems with marketing. You have problems. You don't really know what to do with your social media. You don't know how to read your SEOs in your social media.

You don't know how to actually expand your brand. You don't know anything about, or don't want to know anything about business. You're here for music. This is who we want to deal with because we will come. And we will help you go through all those steps to get from step a to the spotlight. And that's what were here for.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing guys. This has been episode 216 of the business development podcast. We have been graced by CR homes, CEO, and founder of Your Beat. If you are an artist in Alberta looking for some support, they got your back. Until next time, this has been the business development podcast, and we will catch you. On the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020. His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development.

The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.