There are countless stories of young hopefuls moving to Nashville with dreams of making it in the music industry. But for Beth Laird, the success she has found helping others achieve their creative aspirations turned into her very own dream come true.
When she first came to Nashville, she never imagined she’d work her way up to become one of the city’s most successful executives in country music. Nor did she predict that she would later meet her Grammy award-winning songwriter husband, Luke Laird, and that the two of them would co-found the publishing and management group Creative Nation. Now, celebrating Creative Nation’s ten-year anniversary and having worked with country music icons like Kacey Musgraves, Keith Urban, Eric Church, and more to release over 60 radio singles and 20 number one hits, Laird has certainly made a name for herself. And with all her success (including recognition as one of Billboard’s Country Power Players) comes a desire to help others.
She has emerged as a champion for women in country music, using her experiences to found Nurturing Outstanding Women, a mentor program committed to creating room for women in the business. She also serves as a member of the Recording Academy’s Diversity and Inclusion task force, examining barriers affecting women in music. Laird’s passion is ever-present in everything she has achieved and helped others to achieve.
Unexpected Love: I went to the University of Alabama and majored in public relations. Ironically, I grew up in Winchester, Tenn. an hour and a half from here. I had no idea about music business, or Belmont, or MTSU. It’s a small town—it’s close but it feels a world away. My freshman year I was coming home to work for the summer. My old babysitter, Regina Stuve, was the head publicist at Capitol Records and she ran into my mom at the grocery store. She asked what I was doing, and my mom said I was looking for a job, so she said, “Have her come intern for me.” My mom came home and said, “You remember your babysitter Regina? I’m going to move you to Nashville and you’re going to work for her for free this summer.” We became the best of friends and I completely fell in love with the music business. I had no idea that you could be a business person and work with a creative person. Because I’m not musical myself, I would have never looked into music programs. Watching that partnership was just amazing. I realized real quick that you need to know people, have great relationships, and live in Nashville. I finished college in May 2004 and moved to Nashville. Regina’s husband, Ron Stuve, took over BMG Music Publishing and the receptionist left, and I got that job. I was just over the moon like, “this is my shot.”
High Risk, High Reward: We started [Creative Nation] from “I want this type of creative environment, I want the songwriters to come first, I want a small hyper-focused company, I want everybody to be put on the roster and over-served.” People told us we were crazy. They told us not to start a company as a married couple and the number one thing everybody said was don’t use your own money. We did both. I realize now it was so risky, but it was like let’s just take anything we had and take the risk. We’ve loved it, it’s been great. Every year the music business feels like light years with technology. I never thought we’d be putting out and releasing our own records and we’re doing that. That wasn’t even an ability we had when we first started so it really is just going with the flow and continuing to do what we love with people we love; that’s really been the ultimate goal for us.
Giving Back: Luke and I have a real heart to give back to our community. Starting our first year of Creative Nation, we partnered with Preston Taylor Ministries. They’re an amazing local organization that helps our at-risk youth and families and they have a lot of different programs, but most people don’t know about them. We saw what they were doing in these children’s lives and we were just blown away. We all want to help our community but to walk in and see them day to day with tutoring, lunch buddies, taking them into businesses over spring break, giving them something to do on Friday afternoons, it was incredible to see people hands-on with these families and children. Luke and I made a commitment to partner with them and spread the word. Every year we have done a show—the one show we ask all our writers and artists to play for free—and we raise money and awareness for Preston Taylor Ministries. This year we did our tenth show with them.
Girl Power: I started [Nurturing Outstanding Women] with my friend Abbey Adams, who is another great female executive in publishing. She came to me with the idea and said, “It feels like there’s not a lot of female mentoring and supporting other females intentionally in our business right now.” There’s more competition between females. Abbey and I were feeling that, and we didn’t like it. We also felt like we were getting calls from females like, “I don’t have anyone to ask this question: Can you help me?” We wanted to start something to intentionally pour into women and connect them. We have ten females (five mentors and five mentees) and we try to pick women across all aspects of the music business and pair them together. We do a lunch every month called lunch and learn; we bring in a guest speaker and it’s something always around communication, skill set, wellbeing. It bridges such a gap to be able to say, “I was in this mentorship group, and you were too,” and opens up this conversation. It starts this whole trend and makes you more empathetic towards others in saying, “I’ve been where she is, let me help her, instead of I’m competing with her.”
Greatest Reward: My favorite part of my job is helping people fulfill their creative dreams. I genuinely love and get excited every day to go to work for the songwriters. I think that what they have is magical. The talent is beyond me and I don’t understand it, but I feel so blessed by it and I think our world is so blessed by it. I love to be the behind the scenes person that champions them and encourages them.