What a Time We Had in the Country Music Capital

Hey y’all, I just returned from four action-packed days in one of America’s liveliest cities, the beloved country music capital, Nashville, Tennessee.

I was there with my wife, Rita, accompanying her as she worked as a liaison to the Brazilianaires wing of Five Rings Financial.

Rita was busy working while I had the considerably easier assignment of enjoying Nashville and following the crowd wherever it drifted after meetings and talks led by Five Rings founder and CEO Mike Wilk and his wife, Monica.

Five Rings focuses on financial education and life insurance, including policies that offer living benefits, which under certain circumstances can provide benefits to policyholders while they are still living.

Category 10

Wow, was it an exciting time, with meetings at the Hilton Downtown followed by visits to some of Nashville’s famous nightspots.

One of them was the cavernous, four-story Category 10, founded by country music star Luke Combs. Its name is a nod to Combs’ hit “Hurricane,” and the place certainly lives up to it, with a dance floor that seemed to have a Category 10 energy all its own.

There’s a bit of that same energy in Mike Wilk and the Five Rings team. The company, headquartered in Littleton, Colorado, has built its business around personal financial education and helping families better understand life insurance and financial protection.

And after spending a few days with this crowd, I can tell you they also know how to celebrate.

Go Eagles!

During the weekend I was there, the Hilton was teeming with Philadelphia Eagles fans who had come to Nashville to see their team take on the Tennessee Titans.

I joined the pilgrimage to nearby Nissan Stadium, hoofing it across the pedestrian bridge on one hot, sunny Sunday with a massive crowd from the city where I was born.

Philadelphia is also where I was educated at Temple and Penn while working as a city-side newspaper reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer. So yes, Go Eagles!

They won by two points in about as dramatic and nail-biting a finish as you can get, with quarterback Jalen Hurts throwing a 3-yard touchdown pass with only 9 seconds left in the game.

Holy cow! What a way to spend a Sunday in Nashville.

Another highlight of the trip was a private breakfast at the hotel with singer-songwriter, concert pianist, composer, playwright and entrepreneur Rebecca Magnuson, known for her one-woman production, She Sings®: A Soaring Musical.

It was my first opportunity to meet Rebecca in person. My PR firm, TransMedia Group, represents her, and it was wonderful finally getting to spend time together face-to-face.

Rebecca has drawn on difficult chapters of her own life in creating SHE SINGS® SURVIVING THE NARCISSIST, a deeply personal work exploring her upbringing, marriage and divorce, and the experiences that helped shape her life and art.

Artifacts Close By

Of course, Rita and I couldn’t leave Nashville without visiting the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

The massive, multi-level cultural center preserves millions of artifacts celebrating the history, traditions and legendary figures of country music.

I got to see Elvis Presley’s fabulous gold Cadillac and countless reminders of the artists, songs and stories that helped make Nashville the country music capital.

But some of my favorite memories weren’t behind glass.

One of our pictures captures Rebecca and her proud publicist, that’s me, after our breakfast together.

And the final picture sums up our Nashville experience perfectly: Rita and me surrounded by a joyful group of Five Rings Financial top performers, celebrating together after four memorable days.

There’s a communications lesson somewhere in all of this, too. Whether you’re building a company, a personal brand or even the identity of a city, people remember how you make them feel. Nashville understands that. The music, the energy, the hospitality and the stories all reinforce one another. For communicators, that may be the real takeaway: a strong reputation isn’t built by what you say about yourself alone. It’s built by the experience people have with you and the stories they want to tell afterward.

Thank you, Nashville. You’re one heck of a great town, or should I say city!

Either way, I sure loved the time we spent downtown.