Tracy Brown shows her banker, George Goforth, the ins and outs of a radio station studio. (Tammye Nash/Dallas Voice)

When a lesbian business owner needed help getting her entertainment company up and running, a gay BoA banker gave her just the help she needed

Tammye Nash | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com

Tracy Brown said she has been “banking with Bank of America for longer than I can remember.” But last year when she and her former business partner dissolved one company and she was scrambling to get her new company up and running as quickly as possible, BoA small business banking specialist George Goforth really stepped up to the plate.

Brown and her former partner had been in business for 15 years, but last year that partnership came to an end. Her business partner went his own way, Brown said, “and the rest of us went on to form Amplify” Entertainment Group.

“Basically,” Brown explained, “at Amplify, we provide record label services to independent artists and small labels. The bulk of what we do is radio promotion, getting radio stations to play our clients’ music.

“We build what we lovingly refer to as a ‘virtual label.’ We build a team based on clients’ needs. We also do management consulting for those without management who are looking for some prudence, wisdom and guidance. We actually created the idea of a freestanding promotion field staff.”

The company, with seven employees, is based “all over the country, but we all office out of our homes. I am in Grapevine.”

The dissolution of the former company and the beginnings of the new, Brown said, “was a very rough ride.” Thankfully, though, she added, she had BofA and Goforth on her side.

She said that because of how her former partner timed things, with the dissolution of the former company coming at the very end of 2017, it was a mad dash to get Amplify up and running by the beginning of 2018.

“When George came in and started working with us, we were under so much pressure. We were trying to form the company, get a bank account, make sure it suited our needs as a company. We couldn’t have done it without George and without our track record with Bank of America and our creditors.

“I was on the phone with George five or six times a day through the entire month of January,” Brown continued. “He got special permissions for me, joined me on calls to make sure we got what we needed. He made a real investment in understanding our company and what we do and how we do it, so that he could give us the help we needed.

“And I still owe him a drink for all that!”

The biggest reason for the rush was an event planned for the spring called the Gathering on the Whiskey Trail in Kentucky. Amplify brings together musicians, bloggers, entertainment writers, label executives, radio programmers, music supervisors and more for three days of live music, all designed to get new performers and new music in front of the people who can help them succeed.

“It takes an immense amount of credit on the front end to make this work,” Brown said. “This is our biggest event each year, and we wouldn’t have been able to have the gathering if George had not been there to facilitate the right amount of credit to allow us to swing for the fences.”

Goforth, congratulating Brown on putting together an outstanding event, noted “coming off the restructure and new branding, it’s just huge that you were able to do that.” Helping her company do that, he added, is what his company is all about.

“That’s one of our core values, making financial life so much better for our clients,” he said. “Tracy helps people in the music business find management so they can have a better career, a better brand. We do that for our customers; we help them make a better business and a better brand.

“My job as a small business banker is to go to the client, to put time into them and to understand what’s most important to the client,” Goforth said. When we get into a rush, when we don’t put the time in to get to know them, we can easily overlook what’s really most important to them.”

That ties back, he said, to the scramble throughout January to get the new Amplify brand established and the company up and running. “It wasn’t just getting on the phone. It was understanding what was really important, what had to be accomplished. Without that, we would just be spinning our wheels.”

Goforth said he started with BofA 25 years ago as a teller in a branch bank. Through the years, he said, he has developed a passion for getting to know clients and understand their needs. Now, as Tracy and her business grow, I grow with them.”

Goforth, who is openly gay, said he is also proud of the way that Bank of America values its employees and the full range of their diversity as well as diversity in the communities they serve. BofA is involved in LGBT communities throughout the country in a variety of ways.

BofA was the first financial services company to offer partner benefits, and as BofA Regional Media Leader Britney Sheehan noted, the company also has been sponsoring and participating in the Out & Equal Workplace Summit since 2008. “We do a lot of sponsorships in the LGBT community, but Out and Equal is the really big one for us.

“We have a commitment to diversity over all,” Sheehan added. “We recognize that being diverse makes us better. It makes us stronger, and better able to deliver for our clients.”
Sheehan also said BofA has 14,000 members in its LGBT Pride Group and 18,000 visible LGBT employees and allies.

That, Brown said, “hits the nail on the head. “My brother used to work for Bank of America, and he’s the one who recommended George to me. He said George is an ass-kicking mofo. He didn’t tell me then that George is gay, but having someone with whom I could really connect made all the difference.

“Amplify came into the new year with no cash in hand. All that got spent in ‘the divorce,’” Brown continued. “To have someone step in and absorb that situation, and to have some empathy for it as well, and then to have such a direct connection on both a professional and a personal level was very meaningful. I knew from the start George was on my side.

“In these crazy times where people can deny you service based on what they want to call your ‘lifestyle,’ it’s very refreshing to see a giant corporation like Bank of America embrace diversity so fully,” Brown said.

“That’s huge.”

Brown said that even now when everything is established and running, Goforth “still checks in with me regularly to make sure everyone is going the way it needs to go. We know if we have any issues, we can go right to George. It’s rare to get that kind of service in this day and age.”

It is, Goforth said, “a partnership. That’s what makes it work. It’s all about partnership.”