Dave Grohl is my favorite entrepreneur by a million miles. Not Grant Cardone, not Gary Vee, not Tony Robbins or Simon Sinek. Dave.
Dave is the ultimate “I will do what I want to do even if I don’t know how and it will be f’ing amazing” entrepreneur.
Dave taught himself to play drums on pillows in his room listening to rush records.
He took one drum lesson and the teacher told him he was holding the drumstick wrong. His family couldn’t afford very many lessons to relearn his technique so he kept going his way. His way.
He put out the first Foo Fighters album by himself. Recording all Bass, drums, vocals, and guitar in a studio in 6 days. Made 300 cassettes and handed them out. Recruited a band to play the songs and played live music in small venues for 17 months straight.
About 12 years into the Foo Fighters, he wanted to pay homage to the studio where they recorded Nirvana’s Nevermind (along with hundreds of other seminal works of music over 30 years) as it was shutting down. It started as a 20 min youtube video with a quick tour of the studio and a few interviews. It turned into a full-blown 90-minute documentary with him interviewing the artists that performed there, the producers that produced there, and the people that worked there. That’s not all.
He bought the original recording board (which is now a part of his home studio), got 12 all-time great artists together. This included Stevie Nicks, Trent Reznor, Paul Mccartney and more. They wrote original music together, recorded an album, and played some shows together. It is called “Sound City” and Dave was adamant about not having any outside Hollywood influence on the project. He had a vision and wanted to see it through. So he did it. By himself, surrounded by a few choice people he trusted.
A few years later, Dave broke his leg at the beginning of a concert in 2015. He broke it BAD. His ankle was a mushy gooey mess. What did he do? He went back on stage and finished the entire set with a doc, holding his ankle in its socket. After the show, and after surgery in a painkiller haze, he drew up a way to finish his tour while sitting on a throne of rock with “lasers and shit” coming out of it.
From a hand-drawn schematic, that he drew up in the hospital, they built the thing and toured with him in it. He even later, loaned it out to Axl Rose when he hurt himself on the opening night of their long-awaited comeback tour.
Dave knows what he does well. He also knows what he doesn’t know. He is endlessly curious and asks the right questions to get a project done in his voice or vision. I love what he says here. At the beginning of his career, some people were really angry about him starting another band after Nirvana. This was his response. “Because that is what I do”.
He really has been an inspiration to me and the way that I run my business. I’ve studied him for years and he continues to impress with the way he does what he wants and does it with a high level of care. I can’t wait to see what he does next.