This week on Money & Wealth, I told listeners that school was in session, and my guest was the reason. Dallas Austin is a Grammy-winning songwriter and producer, a Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, and one of the people who turned Atlanta into a capital of American music. I wanted this conversation to be about what sits behind the hits: how talent becomes intellectual property, how intellectual property becomes ownership, and how ownership becomes wealth.
A broken keyboard and a mother who said yes
Dallas grew up in Columbus, Georgia, in a family that ran a soul food restaurant and nightclub downtown. After his father passed, the family lived in a house attached to that restaurant, and a young Dallas asked his mother for a keyboard every Christmas, each one bigger than the last. His reasoning was simple. The bigger the keyboard, the more power he would have to get them out.
Then his brother broke it in anger. Dallas, twelve years old, walked to the Greyhound station and announced he was leaving for Atlanta. His mother followed him there. She told him to give her six months to sell the restaurant, because if he was going to Atlanta, she was going with him. I told Dallas that is what a mother’s love looks like.
The contract he signed at fifteen
At fifteen, Dallas signed a work-for-hire agreement, with his mother signing beside him. Work for hire means the person paying you owns everything you create. By the time he was producing records for Boyz II Men and TLC, millions of copies were selling and he was still contractually tied up.
I made a point on the show that I want to repeat here. Nobody on the other side of that table was a villain. You get what you negotiate, and a young person who doesn’t know what he doesn’t know will sign what he is handed. Dallas said himself he would have signed it anyway, because he wanted in.
Broke, but never poor
The money finally came, and Dallas invested in himself first. He built DARP Studios in Atlanta at a time when no local lender would finance a young Black producer. Then he discovered that a business manager he trusted had left him with roughly a million dollars in IRS debt. The manager wasn’t a CPA, which meant the IRS had no one to pursue but Dallas.
He and Babyface made a pact to write their way out, and they did, one tag-team project after another. About a year later he mailed the last check, and he was at zero. I told him he was broke but never poor. Broke is economic. Poor is a condition of the spirit, and Dallas never had that one. Afterward he moved his accountant into the office next door, because he never wanted to be that far from his own money again.
Georgia stories belong in Georgia
Dallas spent ten years getting Drumline made, then wanted to shoot ATL at home, and he was told to take it to New Orleans for the tax incentives. He took the Georgia film bill to Governor Sonny Perdue and spoke for it at the G8 Summit on Sea Island, thinking at first it was a gaming conference. Georgia’s film industry traces back to that effort.
Dream all day
Today Dallas runs a music distribution company called DAD, Dream All Day, serving more than 200 platforms. His advice to anyone chasing a dream is to find the gift you can’t help doing, run toward it, and let the hours pile up because you love it.
I closed our conversation the way I’d close this one. Talk without being offensive, listen without being defensive, and leave even your adversary with their dignity. Step over the mess instead of stepping in it.
Listen to the full episode of Money & Wealth on iHeart.
Thank you, Dallas. Come back anytime.
— John Hope Bryant
John Hope Bryant — founder of Bryant Group Ventures, Operation HOPE, Inc, publisher of the Bryant Journal and author of his 7th book Capitalism for All: Inclusive Economics and the Future Proofing of America, now a bestseller. Bryant was recently recognized as a member of the Forbes 250 Greatest Living Self Made Americans, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of America itself. Get the book →
