Category: Business Management
Jeremy Larochelle, MBA’s insights into business management from his time both “in the trenches” and in the books.
Building a Music Ecosystem at Sea — and Being Recognized for It
In 2025, Rolling Stone named Virgin Voyages Best Cruise for Music Fans. Awards are easy to celebrate and hard to contextualize. This one matters because of how it was earned.
When we launched in 2020, Virgin Voyages had nine musicians on a single ship. The ambition was clear, but the ecosystem was embryonic. Live music was not yet a defining pillar—it was a promise.
Fast forward to 2025.
We scaled to 64 musicians across four ships, building a multi-venue, multi-genre music program that gives the line that true “Virgin” indie-record vibe. Nearly 50% of those performers were on contracts of one month or less, meaning the system wasn’t just larger—it was constantly regenerating. New artists. New sounds. New energy. A living, breathing lineup that continues to evolve by design.
That represents 7x growth (611%) in scale.
Here’s the part that matters most to operators and leaders: We did it with zero additional management headcount. No parallel growth in bureaucracy. No layers added to absorb complexity. Just sharper systems, tighter partnerships, clearer expectations, and an obsessive focus on repeatable excellence. The work scaled; the structure stayed lean. This wasn’t growth for growth’s sake. It was intentional design.
Music at Virgin Voyages isn’t a series of gigs—it’s a sonic identity. Every venue, every time of day, every ship has a role to play. DJs, live bands, soloists, background music, headline moments—all orchestrated to feel cohesive, human, and unmistakably Virgin. That cohesion is what guests feel, even if they never see the machinery behind it.
Winning Best Cruise for Music Fans isn’t about volume alone. Plenty of ships have music. This award recognizes consistency at scale, creative risk, and the ability to deliver a premium experience night after night while constantly onboarding new talent.
From nine musicians on one ship to sixty-four across a fleet.
From concept to culture.
From startup constraints to industry recognition.
This award belongs to the artists who stepped on board, the teams who trusted the vision, and the belief that music—done thoughtfully—can define an entire brand experience.
🤘
Talking Virgin Voyages Music Strategy
I have been with Virgin Voyages since Scarlet Lady set sail from the shipyard. During that time, I established a strategic direction for the music side of our brand—one built on our illustrious record label roots. I had the chance to chat with one of our First Mates about why Virgin sounds they way we do and this video explains it all!
Ask Questions – You May Uncover More Than the Answers
I have a new employee who is doing a wonderful job picking up all the nuances of advancing music talent for a cruise ship, which if you don’t know, can be quite intimidating. This is because, in addition to the regular parts of advancing a band for the stage, we also have to deal with the complex intricacies of moving talent around the planet. We constantly navigate the challenges of passports, visas, and the border agents of multiple sovereign nations. If that isn’t enough, we have to follow the rules and document policies set forth by the vessel to make sure our talent can board without issue. In short, it is a lot to learn… especially for someone brand new so it is no surprise that my new employee has a LOT of questions.
About a week into our time together, she began apologizing for all her inquiries. She was relieved that I didn’t consider her questions an imposition and quite surprised that I saw them as a blessing in disguise. You see, I (and most of my team) have been on auto-pilot for the past year or so. We have fallen into a nice groove and business has been operating rather smoothly. It wasn’t until our newbie started asking questions that I realized things weren’t operating as smoothly as we thought. Her questions poked holes in our processes. They revealed areas of opportunity to tighten up our operations, streamline our workflow, and make our lives easier in the long run. I went on to explain that with her being new to the game. It gave us an “in” to ask questions across the various departments with which we collaborate. If I, someone with four years in the company, ask a question. I would likely get a less in-depth answer from the recipient. Similarly, if I, a leader in the company, asked a coordinator a question. That person may be hesitant to give me the real story of how things go down “in the trenches.” Now, if a new person reaches out to those same individuals. They will likely get much more elaborate answers because people love to help. They may also get more truthful answers about how the process is “actually” being done. Both of these responses help us find gaps in our process and are perhaps more valuable than the question itself.
One of the greatest minds to ever walk the planet – Marcus Aurelius explained in Meditations. There is nothing so bad that we can’t make some good out of it. We can treat every problem as an opportunity to practice virtue. While he was focused more on doing the right thing when faced with challenges, the lesson can also be applied to many of life’s everyday moments including one where a new employee is trying to learn their job. Sure, they are facing the “problem” of learning how business is handled but they also hold the “opportunity” to turn that same problem into a grand benefit for the collective whole of the company.
So, “YES!” Ask questions. Not only do you learn by getting your questions answered. The educator is forced to explain the process and in doing so. They will likely learn something as well.
Micromanagers Kill the Future of a Company
Micromanaging is one of those business buzzwords. I would say we collectively agree it is a bad thing. Ask anyone if they are a micromanager and they will likely say “Not me.” Yet, the internet is loaded with article after article on the subject mostly focused on how it impacts the employee… but what about the leader? Is micromanaging bad for the ones engaging in micromanagement?
The short answer is “yes.”
I have worked under my fair share of micromanagers and non-microleaders alike. Theoretically, I researched a pile of case studies in Grad school on companies that failed due to the phenomenon. So, today. I want to explain why this practice is also terrible for the leader. To help illustrate this point, I would like to share the infamous four quadrants from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – an awesome read any business-minded person should digest.
If you are a leader, you want to live in Quadrant Two (or as I tell my team “I live in the future.”) This isn’t an excuse to get out of the daily grind of work so you can daydream about where the company will go and how rich it will make you. No… no… this is the key to long-term success. To illustrate, let’s say it is only me (the awesome leader) and my employees. We both know we do not want to exist in Q4. We also know that Q3 is a cost of doing business in any work environment where there are distractions galore (have you used Slack?) so we accept it but try to mitigate living there as much as we can. My goal as the leader is to exist in Q4 and I want my employee to exist, as much as possible, in Q3. With that, we create a nice Venn Diagram.
With this, we see that the employee is living in the “present” and I am living in the “future.” The overlap represents how we combine to propel the organization forward. I lean into the present to support my employee, learn from their pain points, and capture what they do well. My employee leans into the future to help me establish long-term solutions to our collective challenges. If we maintain this relationship, we will ultimately chip away at many of the issues that create crises and pressing problems in the short term and as such we will see fewer and fewer daily fires over time. This will free up the employee to take on more beneficial work for the company while also allowing the leader more time to focus on big-picture items like capital acquisition, strategy, and partnership building. All items that grow businesses exponentially.
Here’s the kicker. This rarely can be done if the leader is a micromanager because when you micromanage. You choose to live in Q3 with your employee. You have abandoned the long view of the business and this creates a snowball problem. Those daily fires continue to burn because nobody is focusing on how to extinguish them at the source. The leader now has less time to focus on the future and finds themself setting up camp in Q3 to solve these daily problems. Likely asking themselves why their employee can’t get it right. The immediate problems persist, but now, with the leader evicted from Q4, the macro-strategy of the business begins to suffer and before too long it is left with both long-term and short-term problems and a future in jeopardy.
Numbers: The Arch-Enemy of Feelings
I currently manage the entire music program for a global brand. As part of my duties, I am responsible for the direction of background music creation for over 30,000 tracks that are cycled monthly across our properties. These tracks are organized in playlists that fire throughout the day to support the experience of each venue. On occasion, we have customers complain that the music is wrong, they would rather hear “their” favorite tunes, etc.
… and this is where the fun starts.
In an experience-based business, employees can become overzealous in meeting the needs of each and every customer, and with that, they occasionally make a decision to impact one customer without thinking about the others in the group. This is where math helps us find an answer.
I was recently in a packed venue of 300 plus. I watched as one customer approached the host demanding they turn the music down “now.” I chose this time to sit back and watch what would unfold. The host turned down the music for this one customer and almost immediately the vibe died. Butts stopped moving in seats and people (including staff) who were dancing around stopped. I decided to step in and offered my take. I started by asking the host how many people were in the room, which was 300. I then explained that we just adjusted the music for less than 1% of the population. You could see the lightbulb go off in their head.
Unfortunately, this happens far too often. Especially in service-based businesses where we are bombarded with the famous “the customer is always right” mantra. In all honesty, that phrase should be “the customer(s) are always right.” Very few of us work in a 1-1 business. More often we work in a 1-many business. Adjusting your business or experience because one person screams the loudest is not a good course of action. Sure, you should weigh their opinion. Even share it with the team afterward for review. However, for every one person complaining. There is likely one who is happy, which was the case in my example where shortly afterward another customer walked up and asked us to turn the music up.