“We created the roadmap for college tours in dance music,” says Sebastian Solano who is Life In Color’s CEO. In an enthusiastic voice the Miami native continues, “Nobody ever cared or even thought that it was possible for Tiësto or Avicii to go on a college tour. Nobody even knew anything about that until they saw this party called Dayglow/Life In Color that was touring at all these colleges and selling out all these arenas.”
Sebastian Solano co-founded Life In Color in December 2006 along with his friends Paul Campbell, Lukasz Tracz, and Patryk Tracz. Today, Life In Color is known as “The World’s Largest Paint Party.”
Yet in the beginning the company couldn’t raise money. Funding or lack thereof is a resources issue that dissuades most college entrepreneurs from pursuing an idea. According to the WSJ, new entrepreneurs ages 20 to 34 fell to 23%, compared with the 35% of people who were in the same age demographic in 1996 when they started businesses. Life In Color seemed doomed from the start.
“We wanted to do this paint party all over the country, but we didn’t have any money to book the venues, book artists, do marketing, or even buy the paint,” explains Sebastian about Life In Color’s initial challenges. “So we would go to investors, and at the beginning, nobody believed that this would work.”
In 2007, the non-existent market for dance music compounds to Life In Color’s financial uncertainty also. Back then EDM wasn’t even a word. Additionally, Facebook only had 50 million active users, and hip-hop songs like Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat (Soulja Boy),” D4L’s “Laffy Taffy,” and Jim Jones’s “We Fly High” dominated America’s parties and DJ booths.
Despite doubt and obstacles, Sebastian is producing raves with foreign DJs, dance music, and of course 1,000 gallons of paint. Jokingly, Sebastian admits that his first Dayglow parties opened with “hip-hop and open format [music].” Since its inception, Life In Color has thrown an estimated “600 – 700 parties” generating “over $100 million worth of revenue for sure.” A Florida State University drop out, Sebastian emerges as a Forbes 30 under 30-mention and music industry power player.
“But again, at the beginning we were just setting it up, but our website, our artwork, and just our image, to the outside world, was like we were already a big thing,” illustrates Sebastian. “I feel like that was key. That was definitely a key to our success.“
“It’s like a thing,” confirms Sebastian. “That’s kind of how we separated ourselves. A combination of quality, being the only one’s able to book artists, and the fact that we made the right moves. We put ourselves in the right venues, the right markets, at the right time to make ourselves known.”
Recently, GoodMusicAllDay sat down with Sebastian for an exclusive interview about the evolution of his Life In Color paint parties. We talked music marketing, strategic branding, and how he made $100 million in revenue.
When asked about the best advice he’s ever received, Sebastian stammers. “As long as you’re the best you’re going to succeed, but you’ve got to be the best,” he says. He continues, “You’ve got to remember not to freak out. Bad things are going to happen. Competition is going to come up. But as long as you stay true to your strategy and you’re confident that it’s the right strategy I believe you’ll succeed.”
Check out GoodMusicAllDay’s exclusive interview with Life In Color CEO, Sebastian Solano below. Also, purchase your tickets for Life In Color’s anniversary festival on January 16th, 2016 featuring Jack Ü, Big Sean, Ruby Red, Steve Aoki, Flosstradamus, and more. Stay tuned for Life In Color events comings to a city near you. Enjoy!
*The transcription of this interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Where did you throw your first Dayglow event?
The first Dayglow event that we actually threw was in Miami in December 2006.
How many Life In Color tours/shows have been going on since then?
It’s probably around 600 – 700 that we’ve done.
What kind of branding tactics did you learn from college to make this thing cool? How did you approach marketing this paint party as cool?
There’s two things. One: Even when we started and it was called Dayglow not Life In Color when we were very small we made ourselves look big. We created our website when we had just done one city. We created a website that had the map of Florida and as soon as we would lock in a city to do a show in the future we would put that city on the map, [and] put a paint splatter on it. We had a bunch of videos and photos. So we made ourselves look very credible from the beginning. Even though we were just starting up, to the outside world, we already looked like a credible brand. We were very professional like our presentations going into this nightclub stuff. Obviously it wasn’t easy to convince a nightclub to allow us to go and throw paint all over their club. We had to come together with some really cool presentations. We have Lukasz Tracz who’s one of the co-founders and he was the guy behind creating the brand like the image. His artistic genius just made our brand look really good, really cool, [and] really hot. That and the combination of our approach to business was kind of our key to success in the beginning and then obviously we were bringing something that didn’t exist. We were bringing a paint party with house music. In those days nobody had done that before except for in Tallahassee where we got the idea from. Everyone wanted to come be a part of this crazy thing called Dayglow tour – This crazy paint party – it’s touring all over the country. But again, at the beginning we were just setting it up, but our website, our artwork, and just our image, to the outside world, was like we were already a big thing. I feel like that was key. That was definitely a key to our success.
How have you positioned Life In Color to be a leader in paint parties? I know that there are probably a lot of competitors now. How have you kept Life In Color ahead of the competition?
There’s a few things. When we started this like right after we started touring we started seeing all these little paint parties popping up. Immediately, we saw that all these people were catching onto our idea. Our strategy was like, “We need to become Red Bull.” There’s 50 energy drinks, but Red Bull is Red Bull and that is the energy drink. That was basically our game plan in regards to the competition where like, “How do we become Red Bull?” so everyone knows that when there’s a paint party it’s Life In Color. That’s the one that you need to go to. The other one’s are just little cheap copycats not even worth going to. We did that by booking artists and making sure that the artists had a great time, and creating phenomenal relationships with all the agents. When the agents would get an offer from another paint party they were like, “Oh. Hold on this is a paint party. We like the Life In Color guys. We know they’re going to deliver a professional party. Let me just make sure that I’m making the right decision here and putting my artist with the best possible promoter for a paint party.” Obviously we established a very close relationship with all the artists and agents to let them know like, “Look we’re bringing your artists into a sold out arena in these college markets that are now important for you. So we appreciate somewhat in a way exclusivity. Look when it’s paint parties just do it with us and we will deliver for your artists and your artist will always come back to you telling you how much he loved the show you got him.” And I feel like we created such a strong bond that was one of the big things. There were other paint parties coming up, but no other paint parties could book a real DJ because we had all the DJs. The DJs loved us because the DJs just loved our party. That was a big way of protecting ourselves and the other one was obviously the quality of the product. We spent a lot of money. As soon as we started making money we threw it all back in the business. We spent a lot of money building these paint canons, [and] building the paint guns. Our products it’s kind of like there’s a bunch of circus acts or circus shows, but circus related. Again that’s another way we just wanted to separate ourselves. Our product was always on a completely different level than everyone else’s. We would have shows where our party was coming to a market let’s say Gainesville and the tickets were $40. And then two weeks later there was a local paint party in Gainesville and their tickets were $10. You would think, “Oh. Well the college kids are going to want to go for the $10 party.” No actually we did 5,000 people at $40 per head and the smaller paint party would do 500 people at $10 per head. We definitely keep proving over and over that if you want quality, if you want artists, if you want the real deal, if you want the real experience it’s Life In Color. If you want to just have a Friday night of whatever DJ just to throw paint at each other, [then] sure go to those little ones. But when you want the real experience you need to come to Life In Color. We basically embedded ourselves into the college culture like when you go to college you got to go to Life In Color. It’s like a thing. That’s kind of how we separated ourselves. A combination of quality, being the only one’s able to book artists, and the fact that we made the right moves. We put ourselves in the right venues, the right markets, at the right time to make ourselves known.
What were some of the challenges that you came across when you were starting out?
The first one was money. We wanted to do this paint party all over the country, but we didn’t have any money to book the venues, book artists, do marketing, or even buy the paint. So we would go to investors, and at the beginning, nobody believed that this would work. So they wouldn’t really give us money at the beginning and none of us were really wealthy or anything like that, so our parents couldn’t help us much. However, it was our parents that dug into their life savings and let us borrow their money, so we could fund our first few parties just because they believed in us. That’s something that we can definitely never forget. And then every party we were doing, we were going all in. So literally if we would’ve lost money at one of those parties, [then] we would’ve lost all of our money and our parents money. That was definitely one of the challenges at the beginning is just the funding and the pressure that we had going into every event because we were literally going all in every time. Another part was obviously the fact that we were a paint party and it wasn’t easy to convince these venues to allow us to go into their nightclub and destroy it with paint. In reality we would never destroy it, but obviously that’s what they think we’re going to do, so we had to be very professional with our approach. Like every nightclub owner would always tell me, “Sebastian, we really like you guys because you guys are very professional” unlike every other club promoter in those days that would approach them for shows. We had a proper power point presentation like the way we would dress, just the way we would speak, and just the way we would conduct our business was just like on a different level than your average club promoter. That helped us a lot with the credibility that we didn’t have just from our approach to business. And then another challenge was just the logistics of everything. “How do we get the paint?” We were ordering the paint from Michael’s like arts and crafts. So we would go to the store and order like 800 bottles of paint and they were like “What are you doing bro? We just sell for retail.” We didn’t know where to get the paint from except from Michael’s. So then we started making massive orders from Michael’s to be shipped from like all over Florida. I even had the district manager of Michael’s call me one day and he was like, “Bro I got your number from several of my stores. Supposedly you’re ordering paint from everywhere. What are you doing?” I was like, “Na man. I’m doing this paint party and I need your paint.” Then he was like “Alright. I just want to make sure it’s not like some shady stuff.” I was like “Na man. Go check out our website. We’re a pretty legit company. We’re just trying to throw a paint party.” Then one day Michael’s messed up our order. We had a show in Gainesville [and] the paint never showed up. Obviously you know Dayglow [or] Life In Color without paint is not Life In Color. So we literally had to send like 10 of our friends including myself and my partners we all had to get in our cars and drive all over Florida and literally empty our every single shelf of every single Michael’s arts & crafts from Central Florida all the way up to Tallahassee to make sure that we found enough paint for the party. We literally got to the party as it started with 10 cars or trucks filled with paint and we were able to save the show. So those types of logistics at the beginning for an up and coming business that didn’t really have any money to do thing properly was challenging, and then also the credibility with the artists. When I was hitting up the agents about booking an artist to come play Dayglow they were like, “What is this party?” “There’s paint?” “Who are you?” In those days, they didn’t care for playing for colleges. Back in those days like in 2007, DJs were not big into colleges and they didn’t care for those markets. They thought those markets were just about 80s music and hip-hop, which was true. In those days, that’s what it was about music-wise. So to convince them to come and play in C markets, which are what they called them back in those days, was tough to get going.
What kind of markets?
C or third tier markets. That’s what they called the college markets. They just didn’t care about them. It was tough to get all that going, but again, our approach, the way we handled ourselves, and communicated with them we convinced them into booking Robbie Rivera, which was our first well known DJ that played with us. And then after that he loved the party. Then we booked Funkagenda. He loved the party. Then we booked Chuckie. He loved the party and then other DJs started talking like, “Holy sh*t this Dayglow party or Life In Color is freakin’ nuts. The energy is like nothing else. These colleges are going crazy.” And then the next thing you know we were the first-ever dance music college tour in America. We were selling out all these arenas, which is something that nobody had ever seen before.
How much money has Life In Color made since you started?
You’ve got to be a little clearer on that question. Like revenue-wise?
Yeah, how much revenue?
I would say over 100 mill since we started. Revenue is over $100 million for sure.
What’s the best advice for business you’ve ever received?
There’s a few of them. One is…again going back to the point on the Red Bull. When you do something, you want to be first and you want to be the best. If you’re not first, [then] you need to be the best. As long as you’re the best you’re going to succeed, but you’ve got to be the best. Obviously being first is huge, but you’re not always first. So that’s a good bit of advice. Another good bit of advice that I’ve received has been like, “stay focused on your long term vision and your long term plan. Don’t let these little short term distractions veer you away from your long term goal.” Again example, that goes back to all these competing paint parties. Let’s say we would see a little competing paint party pop up in Columbus, OH. We already had our long-term plan for Columbus, OH and we wouldn’t necessarily change our game plan just to make sure that we would destroy or make sure that the other party wasn’t successful. We just stuck to our plan. Obviously sometimes we would make some adjustments, but overall we never let our competition determine our strategy. We let ourselves determine the strategy and we just stayed focused on that. You’ve got to remember not to freak out. Bad things are going to happen. Competition is going to come up. But as long as you stay true to your strategy and you’re confident that it’s the right strategy I believe you’ll succeed.
What advice would do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs?
For aspiring entrepreneurs, I think the first is if you’re trying to start your own business you need to go ALL IN. You can’t [go] half way. You can’t half a*s it. And I understand a lot of us started our business during college, right? So you obviously have to go to school at the same time, which is fine, but the time that you invest in your business you need to be fully devoted into your business. More importantly, you need to believe in yourself. One thing that I’ve realized in life is that it all comes down to you. It’s not about market conditions. It’s not about your competition. It’s not about the funding. It’s not about your friends or your connections. It’s all about YOU. You can make anything happen if you believe in yourself, and you fully devote yourself if you go all in. You dive in all the way. Don’t even look back just go. That’s what we did and we made it happen. And I’ve seen it happen in front of me tons and tons with other entrepreneurs. First and foremost you have to believe in yourself and you have to believe that you can do it. If you do that, that’s all that matters. Everything else, they’re just factors you can deal with. We started this during the worst time in the economy of the United States in over 80 years in 2006. We started this with no money. We didn’t come from money and dance music did not exist in America or it was barely there. But we had an idea that we believed in and we just dropped everything and we said, “We’re just going and we’re never looking back.” We never have ever since. It really is just believing in yourself and knowing that you’re capable of doing everything. It all comes within you.
What kind of impact do you think Life In Color has had on the explosion of dance music in the United States?
Bro, to be honest, that is such a key question because I feel like in a way Life In Color has gotten nowhere close to the credit that we deserve for that specific question. We created the roadmap for college tours in dance music. Nobody ever cared or even thought that it was possible for Tiësto, or Avicii to go on a college tour. Nobody even knew anything about that until they saw this party called Dayglow/Life In Color that was touring at all these colleges and selling out all these arenas. For agents and artists to see this it was like discovering America. Like, “Holy sh*t. We can go tour 50 of these markets and play in these arenas in front of all these people? Wow! We didn’t know that was possible.” The U.S. in those times was one of smaller markets for dance music. Europe was like where it was at. Then the other huge thing is that when Life In Color/Dayglow started doing these college tours kids didn’t come because of house music. In those days kids didn’t really care for house music. They came because they saw videos and they’re like, “Holy sh*t. Look at the party. Look at all those people getting covered in paint. I want to grab paint, throw it all over my friends, and just rage.” That’s why they came. Actually it’s funny when we started Life In Color the first two hours of the show was hip-hop and open format [music]. Then the last two hours when people were really crazy that’s when we would put on all the house music. We had to slowly bring it into them. We couldn’t just give it to them from the beginning because they weren’t used to it. So kids would come to a show just wanting to experience Life In Color, and the madness that they found in those videos that were going viral. And they would walk out of our show as house music fans. They would walk out of our shows thinking like, “Holy sh*t. Partying to house music was the sh*t. That’s what I want to do now.” Then next thing you know all these raves started popping out of everywhere. And again Tiësto announces his first college tour, and then Avicii. I would even get calls from the agents and they would say, “Hey! We’re playing this market on that day. We just want to make sure Dayglow is not coming anytime soon” because they didn’t want to get killed. I feel like our influence on the explosion of dance music in America…Honestly I feel we are the most influential out of all. There might be like one or two other brands that you can put up there with us, but as far as the influence in the population of the United States who do it for the most people - in a year we would do 50 shows [and] 300,000 people – Now Ultra, or EDC none of those brands were touching that many people at a show. The fact that most of these people were coming to Life In Color without thinking about dance music and then they would walk out saying, “Wow. I f*cking love house music.” These are the kids that were going on iTunes, and on Beatport buying music. It’s all these college kids that are the millennials. The millennial generation are the one’s that made dance music explode. Yeah man. That’s my thoughts on that I guess.
The event that you have coming up is that an anniversary event?
Miami, Florida is our anniversary event every year. This is going to be our eighth year anniversary. I’m definitely looking forward to our tenth anniversary. We’re definitely going to go out with a bang on that one. Miami, Florida is a very special event because it’s the biggest event of the year as far as globally. It’s the one that we call the Life In Color festival because it’s the only one that has multiple stages, a massive lineup, and we put so much money into the production of that show that it definitely is the flagship event of our company…and then also because it’s home. We’re from Miami [and] this is where we did our first show even though we all went to college at Florida State in Tallahassee and that’s where we started this whole thing. It was in Miami where we did our first one and it’s Miami that’s our home. For us, it’s just a very special event.
What kind of impact do you think Jack Ü is going to have at your upcoming event at Sun Life stadium?
It’s going to shake the whole city bro. To have Jack Ü who’s obviously the hottest act right now at Life In Color that brings craziest energy than any other show out there right now and you put those two together…I mean Diplo already does a lot of our shows. He loves them because we’re always such a good mix and it’s our first time having Sonny. We’re obviously very excited about our first time having Skrillex. Dude, it’s going to be a first time of a lot of things. It’s going to be the perfect storm in a very positive way. It’s going to be massive like our biggest crowd, [and] our best production with the hottest act right now. It’s just the perfect mixture of like the most amazing time a dance music fan could ever experience.
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