Believe in Serendipity

Life and How to Live It with Dr. Rocco

From Ice Cream to Electric Lady

A conversation with John Storyk, legendary acoustic designer

I've been wanting to share this conversation for a long time. John Storyk is a Princeton-trained architect, a lifelong blues musician, and the man who — at just 22 years old — designed Electric Lady Studios for Jimi Hendrix. But more than any single achievement, what I find fascinating about John is the through-line of his entire life: serendipity, a tuned antenna, and the willingness to say yes before he knew how.

John grew up on Long Island, the son of an international commodities trader who believed deeply in world travel. A teenage summer in Mexico — walking into the Mayan ruins at Tulum, falling in love for the first time, discovering Greenwich Village through a girl whose father was a New York Times editor — set the whole thing in motion. By the time he graduated from Princeton in 1968, he was as serious about playing saxophone and blues piano as he was about architecture. He moved to Greenwich Village with his college sweetheart, played in a band, and assumed life would sort itself out.

Then came the ice cream shop. One hot August evening, he picked up a local paper while waiting in line and spotted an odd want ad: carpenters needed, no pay, experimental nightclub. A dime in a rotary phone later, he was redesigning the entire concept. That club — Cerebrum — landed on the cover of Life Magazine and ran for nine months before the mafia shut it down. But word had gotten around. Jimi Hendrix's manager tracked John down with a simple offer: come design a club for Jimi on 8th Street. Midway through, producer Eddie Kramer convinced everyone to build a recording studio instead. John had never been inside a studio in his life. So he created his own internship from scratch, doing all the drafting for a seasoned acoustician for free, in exchange for learning everything he could. A year and a half later, Electric Lady Studios opened. It is still there. Still booked solid. One of the finest rooms in the world.

We go deep into what followed: Stevie Wonder moving into Electric Lady almost the day after Jimi died, a lifelong friendship with Eddie Kramer, and a roster of commissions that reads like a who's who — Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, U2, J. Cole, and many more. We talk about the moment John heard Leon Russell playing Beethoven in his pajamas at 6am and quietly decided he would never be that good — and quit the band. We talk about meeting his wife Beth at a Thanksgiving party in Saugerties, and how she helped him turn a haphazard one-man operation into WSDG, now a 60-person global acoustic consulting firm with offices across four continents, built almost entirely through a student intern pipeline.

And we talk about where John is right now — navigating succession, stepping away from the CEO role, trusting the team he spent decades building, and the unexpected peace that's slowly come with letting go.

In this episode

• Growing up with a globalist father and a summer in Mexico that changed everything
• Cerebrum: the strangest nightclub in 1960s New York, and why the mafia closed it
• Designing Electric Lady Studios at 22, having never set foot in a recording studio
• Stevie Wonder, Leon Russell, Eddie Kramer, and a career's worth of stories
• Building WSDG into a global firm through an intern pipeline he never planned
• Succession, ego, and the slow art of letting go
  
  "The background noise of life is always there. There's always opportunities every single second. You need to keep your antenna up."
  — John Storyk
  
  John's billboard
  "Follow your dreams. Follow your heart. Believe in your intuition. And believe in serendipity."
  
  — John Storyk

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Life and how to live.

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Do you sometimes feel like life is passing you by? How would you like to get more out of life? We explore all things life on this podcast. Welcome to Life and How to Live It podcast with Dr. Rocco.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Life and How to Live.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the Life and How to Live It podcast with me, Dr. Rocco. I'm joined today by a very special guest, John Storick. John and I met a few years ago when I joined a board of directors in the Hudson Valley. John had been on that board for a while and in fact was a past chair of the board, very instrumental in the workings of the organization. As I got to know John, I found his story to be fascinating, and I think you will too. Normally, when I have a guest on the show, they're invited to talk about a specific topic. But every so often I'd like to have a guest just to talk about their life, the twists and turns, things that they have learned along their journey, and that we can learn about life and how to live it. So without further ado, John, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Thanks for inviting me, the traditional you thank me and I thank you. So we got that done.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

We got the thanks out of the way. So I would like, I just, John, I think your story's fascinating. And I hope that you would like to share it with the listeners today. Give give us kind of like how did it all start?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

I'm a third-generation Jewish immigrant. I mean, um somewhat typical story. Grandparents, actually, grandparents born here, but the great grandparents weren't, Eastern Europe. And um fast forward to the end of World War II, mom and dad, high school sweethearts, some other people, friends, they moved to Long Island, New York, pretty pretty typical, and uh to carve a better life. And I grew up in the suburbs of New York. Uh did well in school, not particularly athletic, um, but always loving sports, loving music. I grew up in a house with a lot of music. Um, learned piano, clarinet, got pretty good on both of those instruments. I fell in love with architecture at a very early age. I don't know why. I've been asked this question many times, but I know that even at the age of 12 or 13, I wanted to be an architect because I actually wrote a career paper on it, which I think I still have. Uh even in the summer, in high school I worked for an architect as a draftsman. Um and um the so I went to Princeton Universities in 1964. I graduated in 68 as an architect, but played in bands.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Um what instrument did you play in the bands? I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Well, I in my freshman year I I joined the marching band. I was a clarinet player, and for three years I was a clarinet player and went to 27 consecutive football games. But I also was in a rock band, no no money in clarinet playing in the Princeton Marching Band, which basically redefined the term marching, more like a running around band, more like a club. And um, I'm gonna go back to my junior high school year. My parents, my dad was a world was a was a uh a globalist before the term even existed. He was a com international commodities trader, very successful. So it was not uncommon to come down to breakfast and he's not there because he's in Belgium for four days or South Africa for a week, uh trading various commodities, and believed in world travel and believed that I should meet the world, and they managed to put me in an international study group in Mexico on the east coast of Mexico. Actually, it was in Veracruz, not the east coast, with some other students for a summer. And at the end of that summer, the eight students in that town living with families got to decide where they wanted to go. And I had known a little bit about the Mayan ruins, and so I convinced my group to go east in a third-class bus to what is now Cancun. There was no name Cancun, it was Juarez then, it still is Puerto Juarez. Take a boat to East Little Harris with no, where there were no cars and no buildings, just turtle farms and hammocks, and drive all the way down in a third-class bus to Toulum to walk into the ruins. As it turns out, I also fell in love that summer for the first time with, believe it or not, another American who lived only a few towns away from me, whose father was a New York Times editor, and in his younger years was a communist, actually, um, or a communist party sympathy sympathizer, and this person introduced me to Greenwich Village and a number of other things. So life changed for me in a in a in a whole bunch of ways. And that drifted over to my college life. And by the time I was a junior and senior in college, I was an architect and I was a blues musician. By then the clarinet shifted to saxophone, and my classical piano training shifted to basically blues piano playing. And I graduated, I strangely enough married my college sweetheart, which probably wasn't that smart, although to this day we're still friends, and moved to Greenwich Village for just to see what would happen. So what what year was that about, John? So this is 68, I'm 22, and imagine, try to imagine New York City in 1968 in Greenwich Village. And and I'm in a boot and a band. I actually thought I was gonna be a musician as a profession, even though I had a day job to sort of get a check. And my wife was a waitress, and and and we had the blast. We life life was was all before us, um, unlike the world that we're in now, which going on record as saying I don't want to talk about because it's not a good situation right now. Um and in case this gets archived, we're in March 2023, everybody. So 26. Um, 26, okay. See? That's how that's how much I want to forget about it. Um and then one of those strange moments in life, which will allow me to tee up my favorite word, which I'm gonna wake for a while. While one hot August evening while waiting for some ice cream at an ice cream store, now of course you'd fiddle around on your phone, which of course didn't exist in 1968, you'd you just pick up a local newspaper and read the want ads or read the posting. You you just read the paper while you were waiting. Maybe the East Village Other or whatever it was. And there was an ad that said, wanted carpenters to work for free on experimental nightclub. And I possibly I might have been uh intoxicated a little bit at the moment, and I said, Well, that sounds like fun. I always been pretty handy with with carpentry stuff. I had a wood shop growing up, and so a dime in a in a phone, rotary ring, and 30 minutes later on the upper west side, I meet these two absolutely crazy guys who have this idea for an experimental kind of club, like a sensorium that would take place in a loft in Soho. I didn't even know what Soho meant. The guy, one of them had gotten 10 grand on a trust fund, and the idea is people would walk in and change into these gowns, and for three hours they would participate in a kind of a happening and uh with changing lights and scenes and music. And they had a crude model in a shoebox that showed sort of these pods with smoke could come up through it. And and I looked at it, I said, you know, I'll I'll help you build this if you let me redesign it. Because I immediately saw things that just didn't make sense to me. And they said, Okay, if I redesign it, I helped build it along with a bunch of other carpenters in Soho. No permits, no nothing, no permissions. It opens in November, it's on the cover of Life magazine in February as a happening thing to do in New York. Everybody who passes through New York is gonna go there once. It's it it was sort of the talk of the town.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

What what was this place called, John?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

This the name of the club was Cerebrum. It lasts now we're into 19 winter of 69. It lasted nine months. To this day, I get at least one call a month from a student that's researching it or somebody wants to know something about it. It was in it's been pictures of it have been in museum exhibits as a changing force in the 60s.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Anyway, and of course, hold up for one second. I'm curious, like what really was happening in the cerebrum back back in those days? What why was it such a happening?

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Well, this was the moment of the living theater, Dionysus. Um, you know, the the world, the world was on fire in a good way, not like it is now. And artists were were exploring for the sake of exploring in the video realm, in the music realm. It was clearly there of amazing people made music because they just loved to make music, you know. The idea was that people would participate in a kind of a happening event. Um, and people would come in, put these gowns on, actually, they'd well they wouldn't really take off their clothes, they just put on white gowns, and then for three hours, guides would explore different environments. So one minute it looked like New England for 30 minutes, and all the slides, snow would fall, it wouldn't be real snow, it'd be artificial snow. From so was it theater, was it a club? And what happened was the basically the the gang, the mafia, they couldn't figure out how to make any money from us. We didn't sell cigarettes, nobody collected any money because you had to buy the ticket in advance, only held 64 people. Finally, they just threw a brick through the window and said you needed protection, and we closed it. The owner went to Woodstock in August of 69 and never came back. But during that winter, lots of people went there, and one night Jimi Hendrix went there. Now Jimi Hendrix is playing a lot at a club called The Generation, which is on 8th Street in the basement of a famous movie theater. Why? Because that was the blues club in New York. The same club that I used to go to two years ago and a year before that when I was in college, because if you wanted to see James Cotton or Buddy Guy in New York City, you would go to the Generation. That was the only place you could see them. Um and even one night, maybe a left-handed blues guitarist might jump on stage and jam with them, said said Hendricks. And so Jimmy decided to take over the lease of that club with his manager. And they did that. They took over the lease of the club. And his idea was the Cerebrum Club? No, no, no, no. The generation of clubs.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Oh, generations. Okay. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

And now comes that moment. He said, Find the guy that did this club downtown, and we're going to hire him to design my club. And I literally get a call from, well, not from Jimmy himself, from his manager. Do you want to do it, design a club for Jimi Hendrix? I'm 22 years old. I said, okay. And actually, how did you get my phone number? I never really found out how they got it. I literally can remember that call. And so I went up and I met Michael Jeffrey, his manager, and Jimmy and a few other hangar-oners, and I get hired for a few thousand dollars to design, redesign this club, which I did with a circular stage. It was down in the basement of the building below this movie theater. It gets the story continues to get stranger and stranger. I do the drawing, I do the design, I present it, and at the 11th hour, I can even remember getting that call. I get a call from the then potential club manager who they had hired, who was running another club uptown called The Scene, Jim Marin, calls and says, We're not going to do the club. It's now going to become a recording studio, because his producer and engineer, Eddie Kramer, has convinced him to not do a club, but to build a studio because Jimmy's running up huge recording bills. At the time, the music industry was shifting. And Jimmy was one of the first artists to basically take the advances and deliver an entire master on his schedule, okay? Very different than how recordings were done in the 40s and 50s, where artists just came in for a few hours, did the recording, and left. And so he was running up huge bills in uh in the few other studios in town. And I said, Guys, I've never been in a studio. They said, No problem, you can stay on and do a studio. And so life changed on a dime for me. I, of course, at first I wanted to strangle Eddie Kramer for scrapping my project, but then I embraced him. He's remained a lifetime friend. He's my he's the godfather of two of my kids. I talk to him every week. He's, you know, he went on to produce Zeppelin, Kiss, etc. Legendary uh engineer producer. And so I kind of took a month off, learned everything I could about studios. We hired another acoustician who had done radio stations. I actually offered, I quit my job as an architect. I'm still in a band, and I agreed to do all the drafting to this acoustical engineer for free if I could study the drawings and have him help me with the detailing. And he agreed. I created my own internship by myself and somehow fumbled through the design, and a year and a half later it opened. Of course, while it was being built, it was famous. Everybody knew that Jimmy was building a studio on 8th Street. There were no other studios downtown. And before the studio opened, I had three other studios to design. And so a career was launched almost overnight. It gets even crazier, Rocco.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Well, this is already pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Well, no, no, we're not we're not done yet.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

We're not even there yet. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Well, because it turns out, remember, that club that you and now studio, by the way, still there, 60 years later almost, still there. You go down the stairs, the main floor was a very well-known film movie theater. That movie theater and the building was designed by Frederick Keisler. Frederick Keisler is a kind of unknown Viennese architect who had come over in the 20s, who really only designed a handful of buildings, and I was a huge fan of his in architecture school. I knew all about this theater from pictures, but I didn't know where it was. And in fact, for months while I was designing this and in the building, I didn't know, I never went into the movie theater because I didn't have to. I had no idea that I'm working in the basement of a building that one of my true architectural idols had designed until we went to file the drawings at the building department and out came the original blueprints. By then they were using, they were using blueprints. Now, of course, everything digital. And I I I screamed when I saw his name on the drawings. I said, Oh my God, this is Frederick Kiesler's movie theater. This is pretty nuts.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

And then to get even Serendipity everywhere you turn, serendipity.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

You might have stole my word, but that's okay. I don't mind. I don't mind. You're allowed to. So um, and to make it even crazier, my wife, who you've met, Beth, who's about six or seven years younger than me, she's in high school at the time. And every day she would take a bus that dropped her off right in front of that site because she would take the A train up to music and arts. She was a she was an art major and had gotten into music and art at the Magden High School, and was walking by, everybody knew what was going on, and she was walking by the construction site because we had this kind of circular front that was being built on the front. And so we often joked that did we meet each other, and of course we didn't. It took 20 years before we met. So we we were close, but it took 20 years before we met.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

And so that's pretty amazing. That is pretty amazing, John.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

That was the start of what has essentially not stopped. Uh a few career speed bumps and and a few lives later. Um it but I basically have have been designing studios more or less continuously since since '68.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Now the studio you designed for Jimi Hendrix was called Is still is Electric Lady Studios.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

So Jimmy, Jimmy died way too soon. The the the studio basically got finished around May or June of 70. They had a big party in August, and he died in September. Of course, that was just tragic. His manager took over the studio, and he died only a few years later in a bizarre plane crash. And then it went through a number of owners, uh, some successful, more successful than others. And finally, about 15 years ago, it got transitioned to a really good ownership group with an amazing manager who had worked there as an intern who was a friend of mine, and actually I helped find that new ownership team. And um today there's really only of course the studio landscape has changed. The the era of all these big mothership studios is has really ended. It ended a while ago. So most cities don't have a lot of mothership style commercial studios. Electric Lady still is one of them. There's only a handful in New York, and it's still one of the best in the world. And it's it's it's booked all the time. It's continuously booked.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Name some of the acts that have recorded there at Electric Lady Studios.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Virtually everybody. So when you saw Taylor Swift walking out of a studio in page six, you know, a year ago, that's Electric Lady, or Patty Smith, the Stones, Dylan, Kiss, um uh um Jay Cole, uh, almost everybody has at one time gone through Electric Lady.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

I mean, do you ever just step step back and say, oh my god, I designed that place when I was 22 or 23 years old, and all the royalty of the music business has been there?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Um I try not to, actually. Uh people ask me, I mean, I I've been there many times. Most of the times you you actually can't get into the sessions. One of the, you know, one of the the uh the the signature characteristics of a studio like Electric Lady is that it's private, okay? So someone like Keith Richards will book the studio for a week. Even the manager can't get in. Um it's these are private events. But I've I've stopped in on studios. I mean, I usually uh for the first years I used to stop in quite often. Ironically, when Jimmy died, almost immediately another genius moved in for a year, Stevie Wonder, who was recording uptown. Wow. He was recording uptown, but he used to have he was recording at Media Sound, but he'd have to he'd have to leave the studio every night or every morning when he was done because they would rent it out to other people, and he didn't like that. He wanted to have the studio 24-7, so he moved in. There's almost like one Mozart left and another one, and then I became friends with Stevie, and I became very close friends with their producers, particularly Bob Margoloff, who had invented a brand new synthesizer that was used on those four great Stevie Wonder albums. Um and and Bobby Bobby Margoloff is still to this day a close friend. And I ended up designing the housing for the synthesizers. They eventually moved to Los Angeles. I designed another studio for Stevie. But I I've been in, I've gone back to Electric Lady, but usually I'll go back because I know the artist. So Jack Antinoff, who's you know, pr maybe pr the best producer in the world right now. Um he's if he'll be there, maybe I'll stop by and say hello. Um but no, I I don't think about it. And we've done I mean, we've done a lot of celebrity studios. We've done studios for Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, uh Herb Alpert, Her Harry Connick. Um I did a a small studio for for Keith, for for Mick in London. Um we did one of the rooms where U2 records in Ireland. Um J. Cole in in North Carolina. So it's it's not like we haven't done studios for well-known people, but I don't I don't dwell on that, Rocco. I people say what's your favorite studio? And it my standard answer is usually it's the one I'm working on today. That's my favorite studio. That's the one I'm I'm working on. I I don't really look back very much. Um I don't mind the question. I'm at I teach a lot. I I teach a a course in studio design, what a shock, at Berkeley College of Music. And you know, I'm the kids usually I welcome questions. In fact, I love questions, and it doesn't take long before one of the somebody's gonna ask a question about Electric Lady and they want to ask a question about Jimmy, you know, and what was he like, and and really what they're asking is how do I get started? That's really what they're asking. They just are afraid to ask it. And they shroud the question in various other questions. And usually I, since I've heard these questions so many times, it's like, guys, my story, it's a curious story, and I don't mind telling it, but I don't dwell on it, and it's my story. Your story will not be. Be my story, I guarantee you. You will have your own story, but it won't be that one. Um, it can't be. That's my story.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

So well, you know, I'm you mentioned that things are very different today, you know. So what you know, yeah, what do you recommend to these folks about how to get started?

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Well, okay. I see now. I thought that question was going in a different direction, but you kind of what direction were you expecting it to go?

SPEAKER_02 22:29

I'm curious.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

No, no. I thought you were going to ask, you know, more like a lessons learned, and you know, why why is it different? Why is the industry different and why are you different? But instead, well, let's get the recommend one out of the way because that's easy. Okay. Um you gotta follow your dreams and you gotta keep your antenna up. Because I could have gone in for the, I mean, going in for the ice cream, that's that's the background noise of your life. Everybody's gonna go in for an ice cream sometime. But having your antenna up to grab it, grab a paper and read it and actually read it rather than just diddle around on your cell phone or you know. The background noise of life is always there. There's always opportunities every single second. We just can't catch it. It's like trying to get rain in a rainstorm. There's tons of water. You gotta figure out how to get it. So if you put your hand out, okay, and Rocco and I are on a Zoom, so you can see hand, you're gonna get a little bit, it's gonna fall through, and you're not gonna survive. But if you get a little bit, you know, if you just kind of look around a little bit and realize that there's some leaves that you could kind of wiggle, maybe get them connected to each other, or maybe there's a bucket somewhere or something, you know, and all of a sudden you could actually get some water and maybe you could survive a little longer. So it it you need to keep your antenna up. Nobody can keep it up all the time. It's it's pretty hard. Okay. Um, why does a baseball player why does why did Aaron Judge drop that ball two years ago? Now you gotta bring that up. Okay, in the sixth game. Now, this is a guy who has caught that ball ten thousand times. Okay, he just he just lost focus for a split second. Why? There's gonna not there's not gonna be an answer to that. It's very difficult to keep your antenna up all the time. And you know, professionals who just keep practicing at something just get better at it. So my message to students is follow your dreams, follow your passion, follow your heart, you know, the sort of answers you'd expect a mentor, which is what I would be if I'm teaching somebody, and I really love teaching. But it's getting that antenna up all the time and keeping it tuned in, that's a skill you have to practice. And you have to, you know, so that's the recommended thing.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

Um well, John, your your antenna, your antenna were clearly up, but the thing that you did was respond to this very odd ad about carpenters needed to to for no pay, and you're and for some reason you're like, hey, I want to do that. That's not just having an antenna up, that's kind of taking a leap of faith or just doing something.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

And I've done that, I've I've never stopped doing that. I mean, obviously, life changed. First of all, 1968, 60s, New York, everybody had plenty of money. The uh people asked me, how did you survive? I said, I don't know. It wasn't like now, where it's such a struggle and the world is so repressive, and it it it was it was easier. I tell my kids and my even now my grandkids, it was just easier. It was easier to survive, it was easier, it was easier to get laid. I mean, the whole thing was easier. Not I guess I could say that. I can say anything I want. Yeah. It's a part of it. Um, you know, it was just it was just easier, and the world had more opportunity, particularly in the late 60s. The time the times were were raging. They were in a in a positive way. And if you were an artist and you believed in art and you believed in social change, they were exciting. And so I'm still a product of that era. I I I can't leave it. I I'm not interested in leaving it. I still believe in the the kindness of strangers and the goodness of man. And I even believe in our political system, even though it's being tested right to the limits. Um and and um and I still am ready to answer that ad. Now, things have changed. Let's go back to your first question. The music industry has changed, the studio industry has changed. So but more importantly, I have changed. I mean, I was a young 22-year-old, no kids. Life is completely in front of me. I can kind of do whatever I want. Um it making mistakes is the was was the was was an everyday event. And if you were smart, you embraced mistakes and you learned from them, and I still do. As you get older, you you you know, you you tend to want to make less of them because they get bigger and they get more complicated. Kids, responsibilities, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, life is completely changed. I I was missing the one major ingredient that has changed my life, which is that partner for life uh piece. It took a long time to find that person. Uh, even that was a serendipitous meeting, which which took years to to to to happen, but it did. And now, you know, married for 35 plus years, and I don't have to tell you falling in love is easy, marriage is work. Marriage, marriage is is uh is work. You have to work at it.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

Sounds like a topic, a title for another podcast episode. Yeah, yeah. Falling in love is easy, marriage is work.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, I'm I'm I'm the wrong guy for that. Well, let's put it this way, there are going to be plenty of others that, but um, you know, the balancing my work with family, kids, wives, girlfriends, whatever, was not something I did very well when I was young. The the work, I was driven to be successful, and I was just driven to keep drawing. I was driven to keep playing in the band until one day, actually, we were doing a studio for Leon Russell very early in my career, even just a year or two after Electric Lady, and I went to went to Tulsa where he wanted the studio in his house, and I lived there for a week and analyzed the studio, and I even did some drawings there. And I woke up one morning very early and I'm hearing classical piano from what was like five parlor rooms down. It was in a he not by then he had returned to Tulsa. He's from Tulsa, and he moved to LA and he came back very wealthy. And I realized as I got closer to the music that it was six, seven in the morning, and he's been up all night, and it's him in his pajamas. Leon's playing Beethoven on a piano, and I and I'm listening to this. I mean, I was a Leon Russell fan because I'm a keyboardist. And I said, I I'm never gonna get that good. I can't play that well. I could I could fool around a little bit, and I held my own in the band, but I I'm not gonna be able to get that good. I just don't, and I but by then the design work had had given me some sense of success and some sense of a lot of sense of satisfaction, and it was a nice combination. I mean, think about it. What better intersection of music and architecture is recording studio design? It's almost perfect. And I got a little bit of a technology bug in me. And so I stopped. I went back to New York the next week and I I I I quit the band. And I regret that. I I've since played at a few pickup bands, and our band, my first band from college, went back 35 years later and 50 years later, only about five years ago, and played at a reunion. And we were pretty good too. We weren't that bad. I mean, we all need glasses to read the sheet music, but it was like it was fun. So, but I did not do a fantastic job in balancing family. I had a few broken marriages, two kids that I didn't really raise, that I'm now very close to. And then I met Beth, and life changed. I I fell in love with her the minute I saw her when I walked in the door at a party at Thanksgiving. We we were both invited to the same actually in Saugerty's, New York, not far from where you are. And um I was dating a girl at the time, which was one of her girlfriends. So I kind of arrived with the girlfriend and basically left with Beth. Not my finest moment, but you know, some enchanted evening. Some enchanted evening, one of my all-time all-time favorite songs from South Pacific. Um, every time I go to that play, and every time I hear that song, I I I go into tears. It's and so at that moment I decided that I need to get better at balancing these two. And it's been a continuous effort for me. I I slip, I don't always do a great job. Luckily, Beth reminds me. And uh we raised two boys. It's one of the reasons now that we have a third home in Durham, North Carolina. Both of our grown-up sons, they're in their 30s, actually, one's almost 40, ended up in Durham, North Carolina. Whole nother story. It doesn't really matter how they got there, but they did. And so we started visiting more and more, and then we said, you know, we should really have a home here. And it's pretty nice, actually, as it turns out. And we needed to shift our doctors because our doctor shifted, so we went into the Duke medical system, which is of course world-class. And, you know, family is everything. There's now three grandkids from one of them. And but I'm still working. I don't really intend to ever stop. Yeah, Ted.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Tell us uh a little bit about what that is, the kind of the work that you do these days.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

Well, in the spirit of everything else that happened in my life, I started off uh, well, as it turns out, in May 1968 with a one-person office, me drawing with pencil on tracing paper. Now I'm the founding partner of a 60-person global design and consulting company that has offices in four countries and representatives in about 10 others. And so how did that happen? Okay, so that happened in sort of the same haphazard happened, haphazard manner that everything else happened. I, if you told me in 1968 that this would happen, I I would have said, I don't even understand what you're talking about. It doesn't make there's no way this is gonna happen. I I am not a business guy, I don't really have any formal business training. As a matter of fact, it caused a little, it caused quite a bit of friction in my family because I my dad's dream is that either I or my one-year younger brother would take over his business. It's a pretty classic immigrant dream. And by the time I was 12 or 13, I had no interest, and then I fell in love, as I told you, at the age of 16, and I became a musician and an architect, and obviously I had no interest in taking over a commodities trading business. And in fact, I in just a total fashion rejected all business. I didn't understand accounting. Um and so that caused a lot of friction in my family. I I got quite distant from my parents for a while. And um but what happened was the the jobs kept coming in, the clients kept calling, and I had to hire an assistant draftsman, and then I hired another one and kind of formed a business. Um I lived in Colorado for two years. It was the only time I really lived out of New York until we now are in our current Durham and Mexico mode. And then I got an office assistant and formed one company, and it just sort of grew haphazardly. I didn't really pay any attention to the business until I met Beth. And then Beth, who also is not a business person, she's a textile designer and an interior designer, but she's a street smart kid from the Lower East Side. Beth is from Manhattan, she's from the village. She was born on the Lower East Side, and she's just smart. And, you know, you want to have, you want to get your money managed correctly, let your wife do it. That's my that's that's my marriage advice right there. And she started looking at things and realizing that I just was not organized. And and by then, I my career was somewhat successful. I had about six people working for me. And then she she recommended that we get some consulting advice, which we did from a very interesting person in our industry, and um who steered us, got us into accrual accounting, and got us into a little bit more management. And then a strange set of events started happening. Um, I reverted back to how I started, which was having an intern program, which is not a new idea. It goes all the way back to Plato and Socrates, if you think about it. And so I because I was teaching, I started inviting students to become interns. And some of these interns became then went on to represent us in different countries because they were foreign students, and one after another, offices opened up.

unknown 36:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

Each of these stories are very interesting that that's how the international side of this started.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

Yeah. It's exactly how it started. Uh each one of there's about six of these stories. Uh I mean, on any given day, I'm talking to a dozen countries. We got two draftsmen in Brazil, we got a guy who works in Portugal, two people are out in LA. We're very remote. We've we're we're global.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

What what are these folks designing, John? What sort of venues?

SPEAKER_00 37:08

What sort of they're not all designing. Some of them are doing analysis work, some of them, some of them do construction supervision on the site, measurement, acoustic measurements. Some are designing, some are drafting. Um, but on the when we're designing, I'm reviewing. I'm I'm involved in all the design projects. Um what happened was the studio design work morphed into other acoustic engineering verticals, okay? Um isolation control. Um, and then we started doing other kinds of projects, small theaters, radio stations, um podcast studios. We we did all the Spotify podcast studios we designed for them. Um the the studios at Gimlet, which Spotify ended up buying, they're in Brooklyn. Gimlet is in Brooklyn. And so we've it evolved into different business verticals. And then each of these interns who became reps, who became partners, now run individual offices which go and seek individual projects, restaurant work. Um, so we're a global acoustical consulting company now that on certain days we're very much leaders in our field. Um, as I said, we got about 55, 60 people. We've put kids through college. It's, I mean, Beth and I sometimes will reflect back on it and we just look at each other and say, did we do this? Did we figure this out? And we said, yeah, but how did this happen? And it just happened. It just grew organically. It wasn't like there was a plan. Now, having said that, we're kind of in kind of in the next phase. And I that's maybe what I want to talk about, and maybe a good way to to bring this to a pause because a few years ago I started to realize, with the help of Beth, because that I got to start thinking about what is commonly called succession. I'm the next oldest person in my organization is not even 60, okay? And I'm closing in on 80. I'm as old as some of their parents. And in fact, I'm older than some of their parents. And some of our leaders are in their 40s. So I'm gonna go first. I mean, one way or the other, I'm going first. So the it started by by even changing the name of our company. It was Walters Storic Design Group. Walters is Beth's last name, Beth Walters. That's how we we formed this this entity that could accommodate this structure, not knowing it would grow. So the first thing, or one of the early things we realized is we got to change the name, or I'm gonna just keep getting all the calls. And this is not gonna, this is not gonna be good. So we changed it, because we always would refer to ourselves as WSDG. You know, so we just changed the name to WSDG legally, and but more of a branding effort and a PR effort. It took a few years to do that. Well, do certain people still call me? Of course. Some people are gonna call me until I die. They're actually gonna call me after I die. Because I've been I've been into business and in that industry, I'm I'm now I I guess a senior statesman. I mean, when I go to a trade show, I am one of the oldest guys there. I mean, I don't know if I try not to act my age. I don't look 80. I mean, I look a little bit younger, so I'm blessed a little bit with that. But, you know, 80's not 20, I can assure you. Um, as you know, Rocco, of all people. You're and um so that that was the first, and then we started a glide path of trying to make sure that all the tasks that happen have at least two people. It's it's it's it's crossing what's called the one bus scenario. You don't want to have one bus driver. You gotta have at least two bus drivers. Because if you have one bus driver, if he gets a heart attack, the bus crashes. And that took a long time to figure that out. And that involves ego shifting and planning and strategizing. We got some help on that. And this is all a little new to me, but I'm a quick, I'm a quick study. And and then in the last two years, the final push was to get me out of slowly get me on a glide path that would pull me away from all CEO activities, okay? And particularly activities that involve how the three offices work together. The three offices, actually it's four offices because we bought a we bought a small firm in Berlin. They they basically buy and sell services to each other, even though the world doesn't know that. The world sees us as one company. But it's very common for one project to have a contract, say with the New York office, but in fact, three offices are involved because we need because we're trading skills. So slowly but surely, I had to get out of all CEO activities, uh, invoicing, proposal writing, um uh HR stuff. It just goes on and on and on. Stuff that, quite frankly, I never liked. And it took a while. I had to get my ego in place on that. I had to get people adjusted to not calling me, schedule shifting. It wasn't easy, Rocco. Um, and you know this because we're the two of you and I are involved in an organization, uh, Walkway Over the Hudson, nice advertisement for it right now in our podcast. And Rocco's about to be the new chair. We're honored to have him as a new chair. I was chair for three years, something I didn't really know anything about. And, you know, when you're strategic planning is hard, it's it's hard to do and it's hard to execute. And the official liftoff after two years was January 1st. And as of January 1st, and by the way, we're now in the middle of March 2026. I won't make that mistake again. I'm the plane is in the air. And I'm January was not good for me. I had many sleepless nights. I was nervous. I saw some things that my team were doing that I was just watching, and I didn't agree with everything. And we have a new kind of organizational constitution, it's uh the MOU that keeps us all together, and a governing body which we call the global navigation team. It's reps from each office, which by the way I'm not on. I I know what's going on, I'm invited to every meeting, but I'm not part of that team, and and it's working. And I'm kind of happy to report, now I'm on a personal level with you, Rocco, that I I'm kind of getting used to it. I mean, you know, a few weeks ago my my CFO, my financial manager had an issue with pension contributions and stuff, and she's you know, she said, I want to talk to you about it. I said, What do you what what do you want to know? Well we have this choice and we have this choice and this one's gonna cost us twenty thousand more and da da da da da and I she sent me the information between you and me. I didn't even look at it. I I said, Laura, what do you think we should do? Well, I think we should go with plan B. I said, Well that sounds good. Why don't we go with plan D? And I hung up the phone. I swear to God, I didn't even look at it.

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Yeah, so so you're you're learning to to let go, trust this new process. Now I wanted to just to uh wrap a little bit here. I ask everyone uh who's a guest on this program what they would put on a billboard if they could, and say it again, John. What is your billboard?

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Follow your dreams, follow your heart, believe in your intuition, and believe in serendipity.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

All right.

SPEAKER_00 44:49

We can I think we can put those four lines on a billboard. Might be a slightly oversized billboard. Yeah, they would fit. Absolutely. They would fit. They would fit. It'd be hard to read it if you're driving fast, but and and put it up in aerial. No put it up in aerial typeface.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Oh, I now we have font recommendations. I like that. My daughter will like that. She's a font geek. So um, well, John, thank you so much for being on the show and for sharing your story with us today. And thanks for to the audience uh for all of you who have listened. Um until next time, so long. That's all for today's show. Thanks for listening to the Life and How to Live It podcast with Dr. Rocco. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review. See my show notes to find out more about the show. And remember, life is not a dress rehearsal. Until next time.

SPEAKER_01 45:45

Life and how to live it. Oh yeah. Dream, create, connect. Live it, live it, live it.