Heroes in Business - Ross Honey, President CEO Touch Tunes, fmr Executive Xbox Microsoft

Episode Date: February 27, 2023

Music is an intrinsic part of life, even in the office. Ross Honey, President CEO Touch Tunes, fmr Executive Xbox Microsoft is interviewed by David Cogan Host of the Heroes Show and Founder of Eliances entrepreneur community. ,  

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. what a mind-blowing day it is with the amount of leaders that we have, those that are making an impact, changing the lives of others, creating, creating jobs, entertaining others, and so much more. Well, I'm excited about our next guest today. What does Xbox, former executive at Xbox at Microsoft, have to do with our interview today? Well, welcome to the show, Ross Honey. He is the president and CEO of TouchTunes, and you can reach him at TouchTunes.com. And by the way, too, thank you for the feedback we continue to have when I had Oculus co-founder on, who also you'll be able to meet him in September. September. So thank you again, Ross. Thank you for being here today. Well, let's jump right into it.

So first of all, talk to us about your experience having been at the executive at Xbox, executive Xbox at Microsoft. Absolutely. David, first, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. I'm excited to be here. Yes, I had the great fortune of working with the great team at Xbox on a product. I'm a gamer, so I was super passionate to be there. And what I got to work on with the team was to transform video game consoles into broader entertainment platforms that you could get any entertainment you wanted, not just games. So for example, Xbox was the first platform to offer HD on-demand movies and TV shows. We were the first platform of any scale to have the Netflix streaming app on it. And a funny little story, when we launched that, it was so popular with our users that it broke the system. We had so many people trying to sign up at any one time. It crashed our systems. And we saw, and Netflix saw it from day one, and this is quite

a while ago now, people were spending 20, 30 hours on Netflix streaming back in 2012, which really pointed the way for Netflix and for us on the amazing potential with streaming entertainment. pointed the way for Netflix and for us on the amazing potential with streaming entertainment. And what a fun job and position. I mean, everybody knew Xbox, right? It was just the thing. In fact, I remember even traveling at the airport and they had the Xbox set up in one of the major airports. Everybody was like crowded around it. Like, what is this amazing thing? And how did you end up getting that role though? Like what, you know, I mean, that's like the dream job at that time, right? Yeah. I how did I get that role?

I mean, it's it's one of those examples that your network is is super valuable. And I was thinking about my next my next where my next opportunity would be. I really wanted to be deeply involved in digital entertainment at a company that was really looking to make a difference. at a company that was really looking to make a difference. And one of my former colleagues knew a friend who had recently started at Microsoft, a gentleman by the name of Blair Westlake, a legendary executive in the entertainment industry. And I said, wow, that's interesting.

I'd love to talk to him. And so he connected me and I met with Blair and the team and they offered me a job. And then from there, it's one of those things where it's a mix of of good fortune, good, good timing and and working hard. And and I got to I found myself with this opportunity to have this amazing platform, passionate user base, amazing brand. amazing brand and with a world-class R&D team to help, through the power of software, change this product from a game machine to a broad entertainment platform. Yeah. And let's get into now with TouchTunes and stuff. I mean,

how did that all come to be? And that's got like, you've had how many downloads? I saw, I was reading some of the stats on it. It's off the hook. I saw I was reading some of the stats on it. It's off the hook. Yeah. So we're Touchstone's as a digital jukebox company. And we're in 60,000 locations nationally in the United States, which if you don't work in location based business, it's sort of OK. Is that a lot or little locations? And the way I explain that is to say, if you took all the Starbucks in the US, all the McDonald's, all the Subways and all the Walmarts, that's actually still fewer than 60,000 locations. So we are we are everywhere, predominantly in bars and restaurants. Although we've recently launched a new product called Touch Tunes Unlimited, which takes the power of the of the jukebox and its ability to connect people

through music and takes that into the workplace. And I joined seven years ago this week. And I was just really excited to about the product. It's an amazing product. Our customers love it. For those who track stats like NPS, Net Promoter Score, our users give us a 70 NPS, which is very high, and love the team. And also was really excited about the opportunity to go from what is a great but giant company in Microsoft and Xbox and work in a smaller company and really be one of the decision makers to help make it successful. Yeah, let's talk about the transition. How do you train? I mean, you went again from a global world, global universe to now, you know, what, seven years ago, working or now becoming the

president and CEO of TouchTunes. But how do you, how do, you know, how do executives make that kind of transition? I mean, I think, I think you, you first have to make that transition by just going in and being humble and recognizing that you have a lot to learn, both about a business, and that's any new business that you go into, but I think also in learning on how the company operates and how it's different, because it is radically different. But I think you also seek the opportunities that you have in a smaller company versus a larger company, which is a level of agility. The number of people I need to get together to make a decision on changing the is a level of agility. Like the number of people I need to get together to make a decision on changing the business

is fewer than 10. And in Microsoft, let me just say, it was a lot more than that. And that ability to be agile and be purely focused on the customer and develop new innovative solutions, like Touchstones Unlimited, is just really great and do it at a pace that, you know,

the bigger companies just are challenged with because they're just so big. Well, I got a little secret to share with you, and that is that I actually used to work for Microsoft in that. But I wasn't involved in the Xbox part, but you're watching and you're listening to me, David Kogangan host of the alliances hero show so make sure that you go to eliancer.com to check out past episodes and of course make sure that you go to alliances.com to see what our whole community is about also too is again ross honey is here he's the president and ceo of touchtoons former executive at xbox and you can reach him at touchtoons.com so what what is, you know, growing TouchTunes and

stuff? What are some of the secrets that you've, you know, now, because again, you went from the large to smaller company to be able to grow it? I mean, I think first, which again, I'd say is a universal in business, which is just being laser focused on the customer. How do you create new value for the customer? I think the second is that recognizing that bigger isn't always better. And actually the best solutions and the best thinking can come when you have constraints and when you don't have nearly unlimited budgets uh that at times it's we were fortunate enough to have at microsoft so to really uh embrace that the the scarcity and the constraints and challenge the whole team myself included to like develop uh great solutions even even in that that constraint and then i think lastly it's and again this is a universal, is empower the team. Be clear about where you want to go, what strategy you want to achieve, and then say,

OK, go make it happen and be there to help. And I think that's really helped us deliver outsized results here at TouchTools. So where do you want to eventually take you know, what's kind of where do you want to eventually take right the company? Like what what's kind of what's the next what's your crystal ball say next with TouchTune? Yes. So I think I think we we're very focused in in expanding the footprint of TouchTunes. We have great strength in in bars and restaurants, as I mentioned. But we we see the power of the jukebox and connecting people and there are many people places where people come together uh where music could play

a bigger role to connect them and the workplace is a perfect example of that yes music people can play music in their offices today whether that's putting on your earphones or you know just running background music but But there's some really key differences that just make all the difference and make this a better solution. First is, if I'm sitting at my desk and I have AirPods in, I can't hear everybody else. I can't connect with anybody else. No one knows what I'm listening to. So I'm listening to music, but it's isolating. Second, if you have background music playing, okay, someone picked that song. No one has influence on it. No one can pick it. With a jukebox, what you get is you get everybody coming

together to curate the music, what they want to hear. And then the act of that curation and the act of selecting that song drives conversation and connection. Hey, this song who chose this oh i did oh do we really need to hear another abba song like jeff like could we not like that kind of dialogue and conversation that we saw in our own offices because we have jukeboxes just to do our regular business we saw that that opportunity to take it to other workplaces and i'll tell you david it's just really been exciting to see how it's resonated. First of all, we are an incredible breadth of workplaces. We are in leading website technology companies.

We are in financial services companies. We're in distribution centers for major shipping companies. We're in food processing companies. And it really just speaks to how music is a universal connector, regardless of where you're working. And we've surveyed our users, and it's really interesting to see that they have found that, you know, almost 70% of our users, if TouchTunes is limited in the workplace, say it's made them excited to come to work and feel better since it's been installed. say it's made them excited to come to work and feel better since it's been installed and it's just it's really to see how how to see that impact um and we're very excited about the

potential because as you know there are millions and millions of workplaces and i'd love to have a jukebox in every single one awesome goal well ross also too is you know clearly again you've been very you've had an extremely successful career. And I know, as with many, you know, there's been bumps in the road. But what do you have to say is this to young adults who want to be able to, I mean, their dream is, right, either own their own company, become many, or become the CEO, become the manager, even in that case and stuff. You climb the corporate ladder, you climb the corporate ladder multiple times. and stuff. You climb the corporate ladder, you climb the corporate ladder multiple times, right? And again, even at TouchTunes, nothing was guaranteed. You had to prove yourself for seven years to get to where you are at that company. What are kind of some of those advice maybe you

share with young adults or where you learned it from or parents that are listening? Sure thing. So I think some of the things that I would impart to others is just to really internalize that feedback, any feedback, including feedback you don't like to hear or disagree with, is a gift. That this is someone giving you an opportunity to get better. And even if you didn't intend for something to be perceived a certain way. If that person has an impression, that in itself is something that you should be thoughtful about. And I think what has been super helpful for my progression of my career is showing that anytime you do something new, you're going to do stuff right and you're going to do stuff wrong. There's plenty of things I learned when I went to Xbox. There's plenty of things that I learned when I came here. I showed that when someone pointed out to me, hey, I thought

that could have gone better, or this is something you might want to think about, I took it seriously and I changed. So that's something I really, really encourage anyone early in their career to internalize. I think second is, you cannot overestimate the value of being a good communicator, both verbally and in written form, because you could be the smartest person in the world with the best ideas, but if you can't communicate them, it's obvious, but it's funny how people undervalue at the times. If you can't communicate it very effectively, then you're not going to get as much traction as the converse. And I would say people who are incredibly good communicators actually get far more credit and value attributed to them, even despite maybe their ideas not as strong as someone who's not as good. So that's another

thing. Communication, work on that, practice it, get training, do not underestimate it. And then lastly, we talk about working hard and working hard is is important. You've got to be ready to work hard. You've got to put in the time. But don't obsess on that, because at the end of the day, all that matters is the result and the outcome and the quality of it. And and at my board where I am right now, my board, my I bored tracking my hours, tracking my time, making sure that I'm working hard? No. All they care about is the result. Like, did we achieve our goals? Are we making the progress that we need to make? And if the answer is yes, then how and how I spend my time and how hard I'm working is kind of irrelevant. So I really want, yes, you got to

work hard, but no, that's not the focus. The focus is what you're getting out of it. Well, that's excellent. And again, you got it right here, right directly from Ross. It's about feedback, being open to it, being a good communicator, learning how to communicate more and results is the end result, right? It is the end result. No matter how much time it looks, the result is. Thank you again, Ross. You bring music to the workplace to keep teams focused and productive. That's it, you know. Ross Honey, President and CEO of TouchTunes. Make sure that you reach out to him by going to TouchTunes.com. This has been David Kofin with the Alliance's Hero Show.

Make sure you stand by because we've got the author of First Blood. That's right, the novel on which Rambo was made. Thanks, David. Absolutely. Go to ross.com.