1. "Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters." -- Albert Einstein
   
   With an initial investment of our own funds of about $10,000, SongU.com, a full-service "distance education" website launched in June 2003 as the first online educational songwriting platform (just a little ahead of Berklee Music Online). From day one, our names as songwriters and educators were attached to SongU.com, which to us meant that we would always treat our members the way we would want to be treated as songwriters, as members and as people.
   
   Just so it's on record, I thought I'd take a moment to let you know where we have always stood and how we intend to continue to operate this site called SongU.com. Below is our guiding philosophy and core of beliefs that we will continue to follow on a regular day-to-day basis.
   
   
   1. We Will Always Be Honest With You - We will never try to mislead you or hold back any information that is relevant and important. We will never operate this site with anything less than our full integrity. As Mark Twain once said, "If you always tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." And frankly, I sleep better at night knowing I'm not trying to hide anything from anyone.
   2. We Will Not Ignore You - We will ALWAYS respond to your emails, questions and concerns. We try to do this in less than 24 hours unless it's a weekend or holiday (we typically respond a lot faster than that). If you don't hear back from us, we didn't receive your message, or you didn't receive our reply. We have no bureaucracy on our site....you will not have to work your way up some chain of command to find someone who will assist you. Sara, Martin or I will answer you and will do our best to help you.
   3. We Will Not Take Advantage Of You -I know some businesses exist where decisions are made based on the question "what do you think people are WILLING to pay for this?" We do not ask that question. Instead, we will always ask "what is a fair price for this?" Sure, some people might be WILLING to pay $5000 to talk or hang out with so-and-so or have what's-his-or-her-name listen to your songs. But for us, we believe it's fairer for you to pay $13 for something like the Golden Ticket Event which includes an educational component where everyone can interact with a hit songwriter while they discuss their song selection process and answer your questions. 
   4. We Answer to Ourselves - We will make our decisions based on what makes sense for our membership and our community. We put up our own money to start SongU.com. There are no investors or bank that is challenging us to become more profitable or bring in additional cash flow. In fact, many of you know that Martin and I have both kept our full-time college teaching jobs all this time, so we would NOT have to make any decisions at SongU.com based on whether or not we needed the money from SongU.com to pay our mortgages or our kids' gymnastics lessons.
   5. We Will Hire Coaches and Instructors Who Are Real Working Pros And Also Value Education - We are very proud that the amazing staff of hit writers, producers and publishers who work with us at SongU.com are not solely educators, but have been in the trenches and have worked extremely hard to earn their own successes and reputations. They bring a wealth of personal experience and insight to our members and like us, they care whether or not you are getting the information you need to reach your goals. They are true mentors (and pretty cool people too).
   6. We Will Only Partner Or Endorse Companies We Believe Operate With Integrity - We will not partner with or endorse companies simply because they are strategic or will bring us additional cashflow. We will continue to only work with companies that we believe operate with similar standards to ours and ultimately have your best interest at heart.
   7. We Will Strive To Innovate - While it may be easier to imitate a feature, design or verbiage that someone else already has in place, we will continue to bring our own experience and creativity to this site and to blaze our own trail in terms of features that we can uniquely offer our members. 
   8. We Will Continue To Do What We Do Best...Educate - For us, any service or feature we offer makes sense only if it includes the support of an educational component that allows the songwriter to learn something to improve their songs and/or their understanding of the music business. Without this vital part, it's more like being on a hamster wheel...just keep pitching the same songs over and over to different opportunities and getting the same results. And while that might be a successful cash flow model, it's just not something we believe makes sense for anyone in the long run.
   
   See You "On Campus"
   If you have any questions or problems, please use the Help/Support area on the site where you'll find lots of FAQ's to assist you. If you can't find your answer there, just submit a Help/Support form, and we'll do our best to help you out.
   
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