He Discovered John Mayer, Danger Mouse, Jennifer Nettles, and Helped Launch Cartoon Network: Thomas Wages’ Unlikely Journey to Success
“I have supported myself since I was 12 years old,” says Thomas Wages, “No one could hire me at that age, so I started my first company - painting advertisements.”
That was the beginning of Wages story, but it turned out that it was hardly the end. The Chief Operating Officer of Thrive radiates warmth as he tells of his life. In spite of many of the hardships he has faced, Wages has guarded his child-like sense of wonder and used it to fuel his success.
“My dad was a multimillionaire and left my mom with nothing, so I rented a little tin building behind a grocery store in Buford and started painting window ads for stores and washing cars. I detailed cars and ran that business until I was 23,” says Wages. “Back then they didn’t have printers in Buford. So I painted store advertisements. Later in life, I owned an advertising agency. If you pay attention to everything you’re doing and you’ll figure out what you love. Painting windows was, I think, the genesis of my passion for design. The other big change on my life going forward, was in my early twenties - my mom was handicapped from being hit by a car.”
The one gift Wages’ father gave him before he left was a 35mm camera for his eighth birthday. His family was both musical, and deeply into art and science. He remembers how he cherished that camera.
“I paid my way through an advertising and marketing degree with a business minor at the University of Georgia. I went back and got my master’s in photography and design. My mom told us if we wanted to go to college, we needed to find a way to pay for it ourselves. When I was coming out of college for the first time, it was during a recession. I had a maritime captain’s license and was driving boats and dinner cruises at Lake Lanier, which is how I met an executive at Turner Broadcasting. We got to talking and he asked if I’d ever been interested in working for Turner. Of course, I had. He reached into his pocket and handed me his business card… I reached into my captain’s bag and pulled out a resume. After 11 interviews, I joined the marketing team for CNN. Shortly after, I was elected to be on the launch team for Cartoon Network. There were seven of us building the network from scratch. I was also assigned to the Turner Classic Movies launch team,” says Wages. “They still use our marketing and the icon flipbook we designed to this day. On top of the network launch teams, I helped set up T3 - Turner Talent Training. We received more than 700 applicants and hired 6 of them based on creative projects they sent in - no paper resumes were accepted. Many of them went onto positions as high as senior vice president. One of the things I’m most proud of is having helped develop new content with Ted Turner. I also worked with TNT and Turner Picture and was flying to Los Angeles and New York City at least every other week. Being a brand manager was the perfect start to my current career as a COO. In all my roles, I have served as the engine of creativity behind someone’s dream. I managed artists and photographers and wanted to be able to speak their language, so I always studied creative processes related to my jobs. Too often, people don’t understand the people they’re directing, and I wanted to be able to speak their language. My last project for Turner was “Gettysburg,” which won an Emmy. My little secret was that I didn’t actually have cable so I wasn’t seeing my own work on-air. It got me thinking about what my passions really were, which led me back to how much I love music. I was offered a job at DreamWorks, but between taking care of my mom and this ember of an idea of starting my own record label, I decided to turn it down. I loved my time at Turner, but I knew I had to go back to my entrepreneurial roots.”
Athens, Georgia, where Wages is originally from, has a profound history of music with bands such as R.E.M. and the B-52’s rising to prominence there.
“A friend of mine invited me to see an open mic night at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur. There was this girl with an incredible voice singing. I looked at my friend Brandee and said I think I’m going to quit Turner and open up a record label. I had been thinking about it, but seeing this young lady sing sort of confirmed it. When she wrapped up her set, we exchanged information. She was about to go study abroad in Mexico,” says Wages. “Her name was Jennifer Nettles. I signed her when she was just a sophomore in college, long before Sugarland. I gave Turner my 3 months notice and started working on Blue Dot Music. Ted was very forward-thinking, so we were kind of on the cutting edge of the internet at Turner. By 1996-97, that experience translated well to Blue Dot because I wanted to be able to sell records all over the world. I hired a couple web engineers from Georgia Tech and they built out a website and a web store. We also had an 800-line so you could find out where Jennifer was playing even if you didn’t have internet access.
From a consumer perspective, Jennifer exploded onto the scene, but behind the scenes we worked our butts off. I set up a network of touring that focused on Atlanta and Athens. She was able to support herself and a seven-person band. This was back when her and her band went by Soulminer’s Daughter. I passed on 56 bands between Jennifer and signing my second artist John Mayer.”
At the time, John Mayer was a Berklee dropout from Connecticut with a lot of talent and a still-forming vision for his musical career. He went on to win every award a musician could dream of winning, touring with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, and earning renown as a singer, songwriter, and musician.
“I signed John as a duo with Clay Cook. Back then, they went by Low-fi Masters. John moved to Georgia because Clay was from Georgia. They broke up right after we had just finished their debut album. Clay ended up becoming the lead guitarist of the Zac Brown Band. But John, despite all of his talent, really didn’t think he could make it as a solo artist.
“I talked him into getting an apartment by Gwinnett Mall, my mom gave him his first set of dishes, I signed for a cell phone for him - and we began work on Inside Wants Out. ”
People often ask me how involved I was in my artist’s lives. One story that sums it up best: I walked Jennifer down the aisle at her wedding and her father was supportive of it because I cared a lot about my artists. The third big name I signed was Brian Burton a.k.a. Danger Mouse. He also became one half of Gnarles Barkley, now Broken Bells. I met Brian when he was working at Wuxtry Records in Athens. Something I appreciate about Brian is that after all of his success, he has stayed the same guy. When he moved to London, I didn’t feel like I could do a good job managing him all the way from the states. Of course, he went on to create the Grey Album shortly after and moved a million copies, so in hindsight, I should have moved to London,” Wages laughs.
As a serial entrepreneur, Wages also launched his consulting business around that time to leverage his diverse, yet deep experience in marketing and brand-building.
“Today the tech has gotten more and more seamless. I think COVID has pushed adaptation a decade further because companies are forced to open their eyes to it and change. As long as you can do the work, it doesn’t matter where you are sitting. I would say, however, that before you move to St. Thomas, you should have a few steady clients. Having experience means helping people in your sweet spot. As a caretaker for my handicapped parent, I haven’t taken advantage of the location independent lifestyle as much as I’d like to, but the consulting business makes me happy because I can help people build their dreams. I’m also a firm believer that motion begets motion, so I immerse myself in my clients’ businesses. The only thing that I would change if I could, is that at the end of those four or six month contracts, you have to start looking for that next client instead of giving your undivided attention to the present one.” says Wages.
Ironically, Wages has managed to keep two to three jobs at a time in various capacities — an increasingly common act for digital nomads looking for multiple streams of income.
“At Thrive, I’m the only half-time C-level executive in the company. We did a 90-day test run, which has turned into three years and counting. This has allowed me to stay very active in my other businesses. Some people have hobbies like fishing or playing poker, but mine are mostly related to the same things I do to earn a living. My brain is always looking to do things better, faster, and more efficiently, so I have to be as effective as a 40-hour per week employee in half that time. I oscillate between a corporate and a purely entrepreneurial mindset, but I’ve figured out that what I do can be roughly put into three categories: design, music, and real estate. This expresses itself in my life through clothing and architectural design. There are some forthcoming developments happening with music,” says Wages. “My love for working with people and design also merges nicely in the real estate work I do. People often look at things with a narrow view, but when you look at things from the larger human perspective instead, great things happen. In real estate, you’re helping to guide people through the biggest purchase of their life. “I’m a sole broker at my real estate firm. I don’t have agents working for me…yet. A real estate agent helps you buy and sell. A realtor is an agent who adheres code of ethics. A broker is all of that with years of experience and on-going continuing education. As a side hustle, real estate is great for digital nomads because even as a nomad you still need a home base. While you need to be physically present at the closing, you have a good gap of time between entering into a contract and closing on the property. That gap is usually 30-45 days, and the total timeline for each transaction is about 2 months. You’re typically looking at properties for a month, then managing paperwork, inspections, and financing for the next month. Ultimately, you’re serving as the hub of information. As long as you can manage the flow of information, you can be anywhere. My goal for becoming a broker was to be self-sufficient. As an agent under a brokerage, you have to share your commissions. The trade-off is that I have a lot more legal responsibility, but my commissions aren’t split.”
Wages manages to grow his design and real estate companies, while executing his role at Thrive.
“I mark out tentpole things that need to get done daily, what I must accomplish that day. Once that is done, I backfill my day. I’m lucky to be very spatially-oriented. If I need to remember something, I tilt it at a 45-degree angle instead of a 90-degree angle, and it will ping me continuously. I keep everything at 90-degree angles, so my brain zeroes in on anything that’s tilted… working to bring order to my environment,” Wages explains. “The truth is, I’ll always be designing. Everyone wants to make you pick one thing. They say you’ll be a jack of all trades, master of none. I used to feel the need to justify myself, but these days I’m going to do multiple things and if they can’t wrap their head around it, then they’re likely not my target demographic. At this point in my life, I just want to be happy and enjoy what I do. Helping others is my sweet spot. Fortunately, I can express that in a multitude of ways.”