In last Thursday’s Stark Country, we introduced you to several former record promotion vets who recently took on new jobs actually running new labels as the head honcho. In today’s issue, we continue our conversations with them, and find out some of the key skill sets they learned in record promotion—and in radio before that—that are helping them now lead labels, as well as what talents former promotion execs bring to the label president role, and what they’ve had to adjust to in their new jobs. If you missed part one of this story, you can read it right here.

First, meet the players.

• Tom Baldrica (pictured) recently joined Average Joes Entertainment as president. He previously worked at Sony Music Nashville (and predecessor RCA Label Group) since 1993, most recently as VP of marketing. He started his career there in radio promotion, first as Southeast regional and eventually working his way up to VP of national promotion for the BNA Records imprint in 1997, where he was instrumental in the success of Kenny Chesney, among other artists. He was promoted to VP of marketing in 2006, and his duties included overseeing the artist development, media, creative services and strategic marketing departments for all four of Sony’s Nashville imprints: Arista, BNA, Columbia and RCA. Prior to joining BNA, Baldrica was PD at Minnesota radio stations WUSZ and WCDK. Average Joes’ acts include Colt Ford, Josh Gracin, Corey Smith and the recently signed Montgomery Gentry, among others.

• Kevin Herring joined Skyville Records in the newly created role of president in late January. He has more than 20 years experience in radio promotion, including tenures at Mercury Records and most recently as VP of national country promotion for Lyric Street Records for its entire, 13-year history. Herring has been an integral part of breaking some of country music’s most well known acts, including Rascal Flatts, Shania Twain and Toby Keith. Skyville’s first (and so far only) act is Stealing Angels. Herring also jokes that he worked in radio “back before there was electricity.”

• Gator Michaels was named GM of startup Davis Music Group last October. The company includes not just a recorded music/artist development company, but also management and publishing arms, and Michaels is immersed in all three divisions. The first artist signed to the label arm is singer/songwriter Jacob Lyda. The management arm handles popular Christian group Point of Grace, and the publishing division has four signed writers. Prior to that, Michaels had a long stint at Warner Music Nashville, where he had been senior VP of promotion until late 2009. Before his seven years at Warners, he was VP promotion at Dreamcatcher Records, and spent 10 years in Florida radio, including seven at WCKT Fort Myers.

For perspective from someone who made a similar move a little while ago, we also got some feedback from Jimmy Harnen, who was named president of Republic Nashville a little less than two years ago. Harnen started his career as an artist, and made the move into promotion with stints at Curb/Universal, DreamWorks and, most recently at Capitol Records, where he was senior VP of promotion.

With so many promotion vets stepping up to label head roles in recent months, these executives say they bring the right relationships and skill sets to the job.

“I’d like to think it’s good people that make smart decisions being put in a responsible role,” Herring says of the trend. Michaels agrees that the promotion guys in question are all “really smart, passionate people that are incredibly good at what they do.”

Says Baldrica, “I think a big part of it is all those folks [listed above] have all spent time at major labels and have headed up promotion staffs of really big and successful artists.”

Herring likens a promotion exec stepping up to president to a PD landing the GM job at a radio station. “Even though they might not have the complete sales background that a GM may need, they understand what’s important to having a successful radio station,” he says. “Whoever’s running a record label, it’s still about the artists and the music.”

As for what skills they bring to the job that other label executives might not, Herring says, “We bring an understanding to the creative community of what we have to deal with at radio. Some of that doesn’t make sense to the creative community, and it probably shouldn’t… There are certain issues and creative things we have to deal with in promotion that creative heads don’t worry about and probably shouldn’t worry about. [For example,] a song that has less than a nine second intro, is that a problem for a syndicated program that has drops over those intros? That shouldn’t be part of the creative mindset. You should just make the best hit record. But it affects the success we could possibly have on something.

“There’s a chess game out there we have to play, and [that knowledge] can give us an advantage in that chess game without compromising the music. That’s something that promotion people are more keenly aware of,” Herring adds.

Among the things Jimmy Harnen says he learned in his previous promotion roles is that “the hardest workers tend to be the ‘luckiest’” and that “this is a business of music, but it is also a business about people, and both deserve to be treated with great care and respect.”

Baldrica thinks both jobs are largely about management skills. “A head of a promotion team is always charged with dealing with the various personalities of your own staff, and all the idiosyncrasies those people have, and how to keep everybody moving in the right direction. Any time you’re a leader of any organization, that’s what your main role is,” he says. “All of us had practical experience doing that for a long, long time.”

Michaels agrees with Baldrica about the people skills involved in both jobs.

“The No. 1 thing is team building,” he says. “Specifically for small companies, you need teammates you can count on, who are all on the same page, the chemistry is good and everybody has a common goal and a shared vision of how to get there.

“From a promotion standpoint, it’s about relationships,” continues Michaels. “You’re a sales person when you strip away everything else, and you’re selling your music to radio. But it’s not like you’re selling anything in the short term. Our business is about long term and building relationships, and that’s a different thing than just trying to sell somebody a car, or a suit.”

The executives also learned a few things working in radio earlier in their careers that they now say they’re applying to their new gigs.

“In radio, I was on air and a lot of [my job] was events out with fans and learning how to listen to fans,” Michaels says. “My career on air was primarily driven by request shows in the evenings, and I had a lot of one on one interaction and got a sense of what the fans like and why they liked it, because I was having a direct conversation five hours a night for 10 years, almost. It gave me a pretty good handle on our audience and not only how they think, but why they think that way. It’s something that in my entire career has been beneficial to me.

“Then doing promotion director jobs at the radio station helped me [learn] the kinds of things fans respond to,” Michaels continues. “How to put together packages that make sense for radio, not just ‘let’s do a flyaway to go see somebody at the ACMs.’ Let’s get into the theater of mind and make it sound cool for a radio station. In my entire career, it’s been helpful to me to know what matters from an on-air perspective to the station.”

Baldrica says what he learned working in radio is “teamwork, and being able to count on people. When you work in small market radio, I was the PD and on-air talent, but you also are working the weekends and occasionally find yourself cleaning the bathrooms and going out and running all the promotions because you don’t have specialized people in every spot. At Sony, you have a very large corporation with specialists and people in various departments. And now to come back [to a small operation] 18 years later, it’s sort of like [returning to a situation where] everybody does part of everything.

“If there was one thing that would come out of my small market radio training, it would simply be that it’s never a statement of ‘that’s not my job’ or ‘I don’t do that,’” Baldrica adds. “It’s more that feeling of what do we need to do to get it done? Let’s all just roll up our sleeves. It doesn’t matter what your title is. We’re in this together. I feel very much like that again.”

While some admit they have to fight against a natural tendency to micro-manage their promotion departments because of their background in that area, Baldrica suspects he may be leaning the opposite way.

“As I’m making this transition and trying to be responsible to all the people I need to be responsible to, I think I’m letting those four [promotion] folks really do it,” he says of his team. “They’re all really good at what they do. I will come in and help them and back them up where I need to in terms of making some phone calls… But right now, I’m spending more time adjusting and learning these other systems and letting those guys do their thing.” He adds with a laugh, “There may be a moment or two they go ‘Hey, where the hell’s Tom?’”

All of the new label heads say they’re learning their jobs as they go along, and there have been a few adjustments along the way.

Herring admits, “I have a ton to learn.” His biggest curve so far has been “learning what all the other components do. I know the promotion world, and immersed myself in the radio world. Over here, there’s a publishing world and [there’s] a songwriting community, and [dealing with] the booking agents. I know some of those people… but there’s a whole other side of the coin here that I’ve just kind of dabbled in in the past.”

Michaels says the GM job is much more difficult than he expected it to be when he was working in promotion.

“It’s so much harder and so much more work,” he says. “It’s just human nature, but everybody thinks that their boss’ job isn’t that much harder than their job. When you get into that position every time you realize ‘Man, I am stupid. I don’t know nearly anything like I thought I did.’

“When you’re the head of promotion and all the radio stuff stops with you, that’s one level. But when you have a label, a publishing company and a management company, the amount of work is just mind blowing,” Michaels continues. “The amount of respect I have for [all the label presidents and managers] I’ve worked with over the years is tenfold what it was when I was working with them. People really don’t have any idea how much more pressure and how much more work there is.”

Whatever the reason behind the trend of so many promotion execs suddenly stepping up to the corner office role, all say they’re really enjoying their new jobs.

“It’s fascinating and a lot of fun,” says Baldrica. “I’m loving every minute of it.”