by Mark E. Waterbury

John Awarski managed to work his way up to the position of marketing director at MCA's Cleveland office, but then the company went through a downsizing that included closing that branch. Once again using his connections, he found a job working for a one-stop distributor called Record Shack. "In the good old days in this industry, if you were part of the extended record industry family, they always took care of you," John muses. "It may not be the job that you wanted ideally, but at least it was a job and kept you working." The general manager at Record Shack was Bob Wilcox who continued to instill into John the credo of everyone working together from all levels of the company for the good of the product they were working with. Bob also led by example, not feeling it was beneath him at his position to help unload a truck or perform a similar task. John worked in sales at Record Shack, but unfortunately that company ended up closing due to corporate decisions. He briefly worked for another one-stop called Gemini, and then ended up at a label named Telarc International who was primarily doing classical music of extremely high musical quality at the time. This company also went through several changes, and as a result, they dismantled the sales department once again leaving John without a job. "They thought that they had such an exceptional product line that they didn't need a sales department. Sometimes you can read the writing on the wall, that you're really not welcome here anymore. So when it finally came, it was, "thanks, I'll just move on.""

John put his feelers out again, and among the contacts he talked with was Dennis Baker, who was a vice president at MCA during John's tenure there and was currently the owner of a distribution company called Action Music. When Dennis decided he wanted to enjoy a little more leisure time in his life, he brought John in as an operations person to work with shipping, receiving and other related tasks, while having a long time employee of Action take over most of the day-to-day running of the business. Just six months after John came on board, the day-to-day guy decided to accept a job offer with another company, so suddenly John found himself offered that position "I thought, "I need a job, why not?" It's a challenge, especially in this day and age. And I had to learn a lot about things I had never done before, but Dennis has always been available to help me. The good thing about the record business is that you can learn as you go along if someone is willing to have faith in you and if you in turn give them a good day's work, basically, and are enthusiastic about it." So John became the General Manager/Vice President of Action Music, the position he remains in to this day. He does acknowledge that there is a lot of hard work involved in the distribution side of the music industry, but he still enjoys what he does as he strives along with the other members of the Action team to create a sort of community that will help the independent artists it works with to get a solid foothold with their careers. "The part I enjoy is actually helping being a part of someone's success story. To know that I was a little bit of this cog that got a record sold, maybe not necessarily a million seller, but seeing success on the little levels. And talking to the artists can be great, too, because without them, none of us would be here."

Looking ahead, John could see possibly working in artist management at some point if the right circumstance came around. With Action, he keeps up the hard work to maintain a business base in the face of the tough times that the music industry has faced lately. Perhaps John's general philosophy about doing business is the greatest evidence that he learned well from those who taught him the variances of the music industry, as well as some of those interesting experiences he had previously. "You have to get to the certain level in your own mind of where you want your integrity to be and where your will draw the line. I can't see taking advantage of anybody. Some decisions that you have to make in this business are not going to be exactly popular, and sometimes you may have to do things for your company that you may not really believe in, but you just have to do, and I understand and accept that to a certain degree. But there's no reason to purposely go out and hurt someone, and people are hurting people constantly in this business. But I do believe this is an exciting time for this business, for those people who are willing to get off their butts and work and try things."

MONTHLY PROFESSIONAL ADVICE FOR MUSICIANS - from John Awarski: "The real advice is to believe in yourself. But you have to be careful that that confidence doesn't become arrogance, because arrogance can shut you down within the industry. People can look at it and go, "I'm not going to bother with this guy". You have to have that confidence in yourself, but watch out that you don't become overconfident. You also have to be realistic because you're not going to be a superstar tomorrow. Realizing that it is work, and you've gotta work at it every day. Not just working at being a better musician or songwriter, but also getting better at being a business person. You have to realize that there are certain compromises that you will need to make when you grow in the business, and when you make those compromises, you may be giving away some freedoms in return for something else. You have to decide what is more important."