Business Profile: Interview with Rankin Whittington

Photo by Christine Greyson

For musicians who want to take their art further than a hobby and go pro, there needs to be an understanding behind how to build a musical empire. It’s a creative job, and creative jobs are known to have bendable boundaries. There is nothing set in stone. Your success depends on how resourceful and imaginative you are. 

I recently interviewed an old family friend, Rankin Whittington, who’s had a fascination with business management all his life and started his own company from the ground up; simply because he saw a need. His insights are valuable, and his experience with management and ownership can be beneficial for anyone in the music industry who wants to take their goals to a professional level. It’s so much more difficult to make money in a creative field if you don’t understand the logistics behind the way business management works. 

Furthermore, it’s imperative that anyone interested in monetary success surround themselves with resourceful, ambitious people. That includes those who don’t work in the music industry; don’t limit your connections to one category of society. The more connections you have in many industries, the faster you’ll get ahead. 

Rankin Whittington, a retired business owner, now wakes up comfortably every morning in a massive home on top of a cliffside that overlooks Grandfather mountain, North Carolina. It’s a dream home; spacious, quiet, and all inclusive. We sat down in the main living area in front of the picturesque windows overlooking the mountain. I had a thought; if I had this view every morning, you’d probably have to drag me by the arm away from it to get anything done. So I started by asking him… 

CG: What gets you going in the morning? Do you have a strict routine, or is there anything in particular that gets you energized about starting another day? 

Rankin: Oh, well.. It’s probably my airplanes. Ever since I was a little boy, I’ve had a hobby. I love airplanes. I spend my time reading aviation magazines, and of course, maintaining my two planes. I have that, and I have two houses to think of, two boats and five cars—I like maintaining these myself. I could hire somebody, but I enjoy it and I know better what I want done. I sold my business a while back, and I might be retired, but I’m working every day with the things I take pleasure from doing. 

CG: So, what was it initially that caused you to make the decision—to start your own business? 

Rankin: I saw the need. I was a school teacher. It was 1969, and I could see how poorly the school was administered and managed. It was the public sector. And later, I worked as a social worker. Again, I saw that public welfare was very poorly managed. I became fascinated with management as an art and a science.

So I decided to go to graduate school for management. Straight out of college, I became a county manager of social services. Public service as a manager does have more authority, but it was still very difficult because of the pressures of state and local government, and being part of a board. I wasn’t a sole decision maker. After 17 years of doing all that, I decided to go out on my own. Now I was the board. The sole decision maker. I could get done what I believed was best. When I started my LLC, I was a sole proprietor. I knew there were going to be a lot of decisions that had to be made quickly, and I didn’t want to consult or have to explain anything to anybody else. I was ready to move forward fast. 

So I took 14,000 dollars out of a deferred compensation account and started it. I had two children, a non-working wife, and a mortgage. I quit my job and got a home care license, I rented a 400 dollar per month office space, and I just… began working. 

CG: So you basically made a hard decision to take a chance, you stayed focused, and just did it. 

Rankin: Yes, that’s correct. 

CG: You had never done this before; were there any mistakes made or hard lessons learned that caused damage to your company? If so, how did you recover?

Rankin: Yes, there was. As far as on my end, I’d have to say any mistakes I made was not firing people who should have been fired. You need people who are engaged, productive—and aren’t a drain on the money. You can lose money by continuing to pay someone and keep them on without getting any returns. 

CG: You can’t always be too nice; keep people on out of pity. 

Rankin: Right. It’s a business. Also, outside of that, there was a situation that wasn’t my fault. Sometime around 2008, the state (of North Carolina) created a situation that hurt my company. An ex basketball coach from a University around the Raleigh area started a healthcare business, and took advantage of the way one of our state programs work. He made millions of dollars, did things incorrectly, and embarrassed authorities. Legislature finally did away with the program he was taking advantage of, which was where a lot of my business came from. It really took a hit. 

As far as recovering, it took seven years to get stable again. I had to lay off a couple of people in management. The volume of work we had plunged. The money we had to pay them with took a dive. I was thinking about selling the company, but knew it was not the right time; who would buy a company that was losing money? So I hung on. I went on hope. I fed it with my own money and waited for something to come along. I was burning through money. After seven years, it finally got back on its feet, was making money again, and that’s when I decided to sell. 

CG: So you basically had to just… have faith and hold out hope that you could survive. 

Rankin: Yes, that’s exactly what it was. And I didn’t want to pull the rug out from under the clients I was serving. Most of these people had developmental disabilities, and they didn’t deserve to lose their healthcare field workers. 

That’s the problem with the legislature. They tend not to fund the part of the job that requires policing the management of a company. People can get away with some terrible things before anybody finds out, then it’s too late. It would be more cost effective for the entire picture if the state would put in place ways of monitoring and supervising that would stop people from doing what this guy done.

CG: My last question for you—What qualities do you look for in people you want to network with? Collaborate with? The people you surround yourself with in your life?  

Rankin: People with strong ethics; you can’t work with somebody you don’t trust. I like to surround myself with people I can learn from.. and people with a good sense of humor. 

CG: Thank you, Rankin. This has been a very revealing conversation for me. 

Rankin: Well I’m glad, and thank you for doing it. 

Mr. Whittington grew up on a working farm 35 miles out of Richmond, Virginia. He began chores at age six, tending to chickens, and learning how to raise beef cattle and other animals and growing small grains. He cultivated a sense of responsibility at a very young age. Understanding how he managed and maintained his business is an important lesson in discerning some of the logistics of music management. From this conversation, it’s easy to see how holding on to non-productive, and sometimes downright greedy people could cost you money and damage your potential for success. It shows how failing to monitor and supervise the people who keep the tour running could hurt your reputation, your goals, and ultimately, your possibility for earning a living through music. It’s not the fun part of making music, but it’s a very important part of it.