warning: This episode was made possible by generous funding from songa.vc. If this is your first episode of the songa.org story, please review the disclaimer at songa.org before continuing, or, grab a copy the Amazon limited edition ebook titled the songa.vc story: A Capitalistʼs Guide to a (novel) way of life—itʼs the insider story about how an experiential, multigenerational broadcast studio and artist-owned record label in Americaʼs Heartland awakened the hearts of America, and inspired a world suffering from wealth to invest less in companies and more in the company they keep.
By Wyoming
“I represent at an eclectic and extraordinary band of musicians, clinicians and movie magicians. There were screenwriters, songwriters, code writers, copywriters and, of course, underwriters. What do I write? Well, I write the checks,ˮ Forbes jokes on stage to big laughs from the private conference room of fifteen of the world’s leading capitalist power brokers, their families and their family offices.
All of whom had gathered at the Global Leadership Conference GLC in South Beach, Florida. All of whom Forbes had sequestered from the event’s main proceedings. All of whom Forbes was about to implore to join the Songa Revolution.
I watched from the corner of the conference room, observing my brother take center stage. Finally. It was his turn now.
We’d made it into the belly of the beast, just as Upton Sinclair had infiltrated the stockyards of had Chicago’s slaughterhouses to expose the horrors of America’s meat-processing industry. And now we had now done the same. The conditions of this South Beach convention center may have appeared more glamorous than a slaughterhouse, on its surface.
But the stakes were higher than Sinclair’s fight to change one industry. We were fighting to change industry itself. And every family along with it.
A livestream of The Band Called US feeds into the conference room TV from the studio of our St. Louis headquarters, playing on Forbes’ every word.
And I knew exactly the words Forbes was to say as he spoke them, because weʼd written them together. But he had to be the messenger, it was his time in the spotlight.
“We create immersive multimedia experiences that are a moving marriage of moving pictures, high-tech magic, and freestyle music designed to get families singing (both literally, and figuratively) our mission is to
make media more social. we make social moments, not media. the media we make together serve as momentos to transport you and yours back to the magical moments we shared. Electronic sharing of our art is strictly prohibited. our art is for your eyes, ears—and hearts—only.
free art, and the creators who make it. we show the way for artists, entrepreneurs, and families to free the art within themselves, and cocreate novel business models for an AI age that meet our universal needs for social, emotional, physical, and fiscal well-being.
inspire a values shift away from financial wealth toward social wealth. We pave paths for philanthropic families and social impact investors to build the social wealth of their communities by investing less in companies, and more in the company they keep—the social circle whose happiness most impacts theirs, and yours.
He stops pacing and looked directly into the heart of the crowd, “We all know that this is not the worldʼs largest gathering of capitalists, but it is one of them. And that's what I'm here to speak with you today, about the future. The future of your world, and ours.ˮ
I think back to when Forbes and I were kids, the boy I knew who I’d spend summers with on a ranch in the lowlands of Texas. And then I think back to Forbes the man, the one our family lost when he headed west to strike it rich.
He’d landed in the Golden State, where mountains used to be made of gold. Where miners had gone in search of fortune, they left their families as he had left ours. What little was remaining of it.
He’d gone to California in search of California the new gold: data. Silicon Valley was a boomtown in those days. Prospectors didn’t need a pickaxe anymore just a head for marketing and algorithms, a stomach for manipulation and division.