Successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople share many of the same qualities: adaptability, goal orientation, strong communication skills and strategic thinking, among others. Cal State Fullerton alum John Pantle possesses all of these qualities in great measure, along with one not normally associated with high achievers: anger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up angry that I had to drive up to L.A. to see a great punk band show, or to Riverside to see a great ska show,\u201d Pantle said. \u201cI grew up angry knowing that (local early-\u201990s ska band) the Nuckle Brothers were never going to be on the radio. I grew up angry that the concert scene in Orange County was so limited. So I decided to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boy, did he ever. Pantle \u2013 who earned a bachelor\u2019s in communications-radio\/TV\/film in 1994 and added a master\u2019s in communications-tourism and entertainment in 2021 \u2013 has more than 30 years of experience as a talent agent and manager in the entertainment industry. And his time at the university contributed to his wide-ranging success.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve done many things in entertainment and commerce,\u201d Pantle said, \u201cfrom jumping off stages with the Nuckle Brothers to running punk rock shows at Denny\u2019s restaurants to booking events for the 2002 Winter Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pantle, a trombone player and singer, grew up in Anaheim listening to ska music. A natural networker, he later befriended a number of local popular musicians. \u201cWe\u2019d go to L.A. and see live shows and wonder what it would be like to create a similar scene in Orange County,\u201d Pantle said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a bellman at the local Quality Inn hotel when the Rodney King riots hit. What followed was about 18 months of canceled events in Orange County. The hotels needed to figure out a revenue source, so I offered to rent the hotel\u2019s ballroom on days that were empty and throw a party with my band and some other bands. Mike Watt, from the band fiREHOSE, sold me my first show ever. We later booked Sublime, The Offspring, No Doubt, Samiam, Thelonious Monster and many other shows.\u201d<\/p>\n
With that, Pantle\u2019s days as a hotel bellman were over. As a Cal State Fullerton undergraduate, he booked shows with Beck, Smoking Popes and Inside\/Out \u2013 which later became Rage Against the Machine. He also ran Club 8 1\/2, down the street from the CSUF campus, and later managed Reel Big Fish, a local ska punk band.<\/p>\n
Studying communications at CSUF helped furnish Pantle with many of the skills he\u2019s used for years: carrying out research, developing an elevator pitch, swaying artists to work with him and leveraging his knowledge to assist his clients. He noted that, other than law, communications was the closest academic major to anything relevant to the music industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest considerations for all tours are concept and audience,\u201d Pantle said. \u201cHow do you make the concept work and who is going to pay to go see it? Cal State Fullerton helped me realize that if you can explain a given concept in the language of your buyer, you can make anything happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the early anger has dissipated, Pantle has always been a high-octane go-getter. Over the last three decades, he\u2019s served as director of the House of Blues Club Network; senior agent for both The Agency Group and United Talent Agency; VP of the APA Talent and Literary Agency; and agent and partner of the Sound Talent Group. He\u2019s represented Pitbull, Hall & Oates, Public Enemy and Run-DMC, among other headliners. Today, Pantle works at One Fiinix, a London-based live-music booking agency.<\/p>\n
Multitasking proficiency, another skill shared by successful businesspeople, is something Pantle is constantly honing. During the normal course of a work day, he\u2019s staying current in industry news, dealing with any number of dilemmas, communicating with clients and his team, and scouting and cultivating new talent. How does he do it?<\/p>\n
\u201cI make a lot of lists, and I keep revisiting them to make sure I\u2019m handling things the way they should and working on projects that fuel my clients and myself,\u201d he said. \u201cI end my day by planning out the first 10 calls and five major tasks for the next day. And then I go out back and have a cigar, because I\u2019ve been a good boy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pantle\u2019s vast industry knowledge, his networking and relationship-building talent, his willingness to take smart risks, and his ability to learn from both his successes and his mistakes have paid off handsomely for him and everyone in his orbit, he says. His advice to those considering a career in talent management and event production applies to virtually every endeavor: \u201cBelieve in yourself and your mission, and feel free to change your mission as you see fit. Flexibility and understanding rule all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople share many of the same qualities: adaptability, goal orientation, strong communication skills and strategic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,2627,7,2628,2306,23,611,77],"class_list":{"0":"post-30310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-cal-state-fullerton","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-fullerton","14":"tag-higher-education","15":"tag-local-news","16":"tag-orange-county","17":"tag-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}