By Barbara Ortutay
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Groupon’s quirky former CEO, Andrew Mason, has been working hard on a new album, “Hardly Workin’,” since he was ousted from the online deals company in February.
The seven-song album released this week drops business knowledge on listeners with tracks such as “The Way to Work,” “My Door is Always Open” and the hip-hop influenced “Stretch.” The latter begins “we all know that you gotta have goals every quarter.”
Groupon’s failure to meet such goals was part of the reason Mason was fired. His ouster had been expected for months given investor concerns about the troubled company’s declining stock price and financial problems. Although Groupon pioneered the daily deals business, it spawned many copycats and faced worries that people are tiring of the restaurant, spa and Botox deals that Groupon built its business on.
Mason, a former punk band keyboardist, calls the album “motivational business music.” It’s available for $9.99 on iTunes, and it’s streamed on Spotify.
“This album pulls some of the most important learnings from my years at the helm of one of the fastest growing businesses in history, and packages them as music,” Mason wrote on his blog. “Executives, mid-level management, and front-line employees are all sure to find valuable takeaways.”
Here’s the opening line: “If you’re seeking business wisdom, you don’t need no MBA, look no further than the beauty that surrounds us every day.”
And it goes on from there. As of Tuesday afternoon, there were no music videos available on YouTube.
Mason, who studied music at Northwestern University, founded Groupon Inc. in 2008. To diversify its business, Groupon has expanded into product sales, payments services, restaurant reservations and other areas.
The Chicago-based company’s stock price is has nearly doubled since Mason’s firing.
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