Sahir Hanif: Innovative Music Touring - #71

In this episode, Alex Quin chats with Sahir Hanif, founder and CEO of Ghost Town. Ghost Town sets up and cleans up the pieces of a tour to help make musicians and artists successful. Making art is difficult, but touring shouldn’t be. With the current health and safety challenges of restarting live events, it can be incredibly difficult to manage the complexities and changing landscape of health and safety, education, and planning that goes into keeping artists, crews, and admirers safe. Their mission is to build the infrastructure artists need to connect, thrive, and grow with their audience.

A Southern California native, Sahir’s introduction to the music came from growing up with parents in the industry. His father is an award-winning composer, and multi-instrumentalist, and as a child, he would often play on his father’s recordings, and help pack up all of the gear when his dad would bring musicians from the Middle East to perform live and in the studio.

‍Wisdom Nuggets

• All That Goes Into Organising A Music Tour: There are so many moving parts that go into organising a music tour - travel schedules, budgeting, transportation of equipment, venue booking and licensing. What goes on behind the scenes is so important for making an artist have a successful tour and creating the best experience for attending a concert.
• Ghost Town: From building your crew team, managing vendors, tech and production, managing logistics and travels, budgeting and financial tracking to health and safety precautions, Ghost Town does it all. Their goal is help artists have the ultimate tour and be able to focus on creating art rather than being tied down with all the coordination that goes into pulling off a tour.
  

Podcast Outline

[01:15] What's going on everyone

[02:42] Breaking down what Ghost Town does

[05:34] Sahir getting into the music industry as a drummer

[07:30] The music industry was the place for Sahir to stay

[09:04] Figuring things out step by step

[10:28] How Ghost Town got started

[14:10] Building tours through Covid-19

[15:52] The work that goes into organizing a large scale tour

[16:40] Hey (break)

[17:36] The Ghost Town customer journey

[20:51] Tracking budgets and finances through Ghost Town

[22:16] The ease of coordination through the scheduler

[25:02] How “Clear” works for easy artist travelling

[28:04] Keep growing and learning in the music industry

‍Power Quotes

• ‘’There is no hustle playbook, you learn as you go.’’ - Alex Quin 10:02
• ‘’Change always starts from the top.’’ - Sahir Hanif 14:50
• “It is so important to innovate and become better versions of ourselves.’’ - Sahir Hanif 29:24

Resources

Alex Quin’s Instagram

Hustle Inspires Hustle App

Hustle Inspires Hustle Instagram

Sahir Hanif Instagram

Sahir Hanif LinkedIn

Ghost Town Website