Gigi Johnson: 00:00:00

Jeremy, I am so excited to have you on the show.

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:05

And I am very excited because you live a really different

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:08

life than many of our guests.

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:10

Many of our guests are those rebels who can never fit in an organization.

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:15

That they left this big organization to go start their

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:19

own thing, to change the world.

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:20

And you actually kind of flip it around . . . That you started as a

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:24

designer creator person then went in a bunch of interesting areas and have

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:29

mostly thrived in large organizations.

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:32

So I'm going to have you talk about the mid-sized organization you're

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:37

at now to maybe get us started.

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:39

Can you tell us about Merlin?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:00:42

Absolutely.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:00:43

And thanks for having me.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:00:44

And if we have time, I could go back even further and talk about my origins,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:00:49

where I used to be really into punk rock.

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:52

Ok, we're going to do that, but talk about Merlin first,

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:55

but I definitely want to go there.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:00:57

Let's talk about Merlin first, which I am a huge

Jeremy Sirota: 00:00:59

proponent of and still feel humbled that I get to lead this organization.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:04

Merlin's been around for 14 years.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:07

And it was born of a vision to ensure balance in the digital marketplace.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:13

And what Merlin does is strike premium deals with digital music services.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:18

So -- think services like Apple, Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, our recently

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:25

announced Twitch deal -- to ensure that Independents not only can have access to

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:32

the digital marketplace, but that they can have access with best-in-class terms.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:37

And even further, Merlin serves as a bridge into that ecosystem.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:42

So instead of being an intermediary, what we do is we strike the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:47

deals with the partners.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:49

And then our members that are around the world representing the largest

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:54

and most far-reaching collection of independent music -- they can have

Jeremy Sirota: 00:01:59

direct access to digital partners.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:01

They deliver direct, they market direct, and they manage their relationships

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:06

direct -- and they do it through the deals that we strike on their behalf.

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:11

So we're going to unpeel that?

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:14

I keep...

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:14

my metaphor....

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:15

My brain was opening an onion up.

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:17

But we're going to kind of end up back there again, cause I want to

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:21

hear about the punk rock thing.

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:22

Okay.

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:22

So, you were interested in punk rock?

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:25

Or that you were doing punk rock -- or both?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:30

I would say more interested than doing it.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:33

My career in music was luckily short-lived for the fans who benefit

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:38

from me not being in the music space.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:41

And I have a huge passion for music.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:44

I love it.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:45

I've been a devourer of it forever.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:48

It got my start with punk music and I then sort of evolved into Britpop.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:02:55

And then now it's virtually any genre you can think of, I enjoy..

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:00

But

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:02

. . . And represent.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:02

And represent.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:04

And what I learned though, is that my passion at the time

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:10

was -- I'm a huge creative.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:11

I have a lot of creative outputs.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:13

I write.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:15

When I had time, I used to do photography pretty diligently.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:19

I love to draw and I always wanted to be in music, not because I necessarily

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:24

wanted to be a famous artist, but I just love the creative output.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:29

And what I've learned over my career is that I've taken my creativity and

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:35

channeled it into the spaces that I understand and work with best.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:39

And that's in the technology space that intersects with music.

Gigi Johnson: 00:03:45

Growing up where?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:47

So I was born and raised in Los Angeles but then

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:51

spent a great deal of time in Orange County . . . and Orange County

Gigi Johnson: 00:03:56

So this is the Orange County punk scene...

Gigi Johnson: 00:03:57

Or the Long Beach.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:03:59

It was both in fact, so you know, your history,

Gigi Johnson: 00:04:03

I know Long Beach punk rockers, so that's part of it.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:06

I'm actually trying to remember.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:07

There was a store in Long Beach where I used to buy my Manic Panic hair dye.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:13

And I still can recall my dad's face when I dyed my hair purple..

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:18

That was also a very short-lived phase because I have, well, when I had hair.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:22

It's very dark.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:24

Yes.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:24

And I had to bleach it to be able to dye it and I, I can recall 30 years

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:30

ago, I don't think I terribly loved the bleaching process, which may be why

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:35

I'm no longer in the punk rock scene.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:37

So if I had had lighter hair, perhaps I would have very different life.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:42

But yes, there was a very vibrant music scene in Orange County at that time.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:47

And I was a huge part of that with friends.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:50

I can recall going to shows two, three times a week

Jeremy Sirota: 00:04:54

throughout my high school years.

Gigi Johnson: 00:04:56

So Jeremy in high school wanted to do what?.

Gigi Johnson: 00:05:00

And what did Jeremy's parents think that Jeremy was going to do

Gigi Johnson: 00:05:03

when Jeremy was in high school.

Gigi Johnson: 00:05:04

What did you tell, what did you tell yourself?

Gigi Johnson: 00:05:06

And what'd you tell your family?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:07

It's a great question.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:11

So the short answer is I had no idea.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:15

An even shorter answer is I thought I wanted to go into the CIA.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:18

Now, why did I actually want to go into the CIA?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:21

I think I was just really into James Bond films.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:25

And I thought there was something enticing about the idea of what that could entail.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:31

I presume the reality of being in the CIA is quite different

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:35

than the image I had in my head.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:38

And what I then discovered is that I really had a passion that developed

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:43

later in life around academics, which is what led me into college.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:52

Doing what I've now done my whole career, which is always being a bit

Jeremy Sirota: 00:05:55

over my skis, always doing more than I'm may think I'm capable at the time.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:01

And just to give a concrete example about that -- I was taking graduate

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:05

level classes my second year of college.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:08

As one should.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:08

I totally believe one should be doing that.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:12

My favorite people, when I taught graduate students, were the undergrads

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:15

who begged in and snuck into my classes.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:17

Those were my favorite people in the world

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:19

I definitely begged and snuck in and had to convince

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:22

them that I could hold my own.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:25

But I really, I really enjoyed it.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:27

I definitely felt outside of my comfort zone and I realized at an early age, that

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:33

was something that really appealed to me.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:36

So college for you was where?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:39

So college for me was UC Berkeley.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:43

And I, it was a fantastic experience for me.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:06:48

I started off as a rhetoric major.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:51

What is rhetoric for those people who think of Cal as a science

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:55

school or maybe a liberal arts school.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:59

What the heck is rhetoric?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:02

Yeah, the, the best way I can describe it is

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:05

philosophy meets the Socratic method.

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:08

So your parents were going, "We love this.

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:10

Our kid's getting a rhetoric degree.

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:12

We can see what the heck this is going to do for him."

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:14

Yes.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:15

Between my, my punk rock phase bleeding into my rhetoric or potential rhetorics

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:22

degree, which then translated into an international relations degree.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:28

I think my parents just probably threw their hands up in the air.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:31

I was the third kid and I, I think they had just had a sense [of]

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:35

"He'll figure it out at some point."

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:37

I sympathize because probably not a totally

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:40

different period of time.

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:41

Maybe a little, a ways ahead of you.

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:44

I did the same thing and ending up three degrees trials into USC film school,

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:49

and my parents were going, "We don't know what she's going to do with it.

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:52

We aren't really sure if she'll have a job, but we will just hold

Gigi Johnson: 00:07:55

her breath and see if it works."

Jeremy Sirota: 00:07:57

Well that, so if my parents were concerned enough at that

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:02

phase, I then decided to move to New York without a job and without any

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:09

sense of what I was going to do next.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:12

And if we come back to this theme of, I always like to be a

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:15

little bit over my skis because I like, I like to feel challenged.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:20

I started applying for jobs as a brand designer.

Gigi Johnson: 00:08:25

Oh, ok.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:27

And this was, this is a sort of two-year

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:32

journey or part of my journey.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:34

Before I went to law school, I took a job as a brand designer at an ISP.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:40

It was called Juno Online.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:41

It was a competitor to AOL.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:43

I'm now dating myself.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:46

And if there's two things I can tell you, I didn't know how to do

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:48

when I got that job is number one.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:52

I didn't know how to design and number two is I didn't know anything about branding.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:08:56

And so I took a job that I had absolutely no skillset to be in, which also speaks a

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:01

little bit to that initial dot.com boom.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:05

And what they were looking for and the need for talent

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:09

and just threw myself into it.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:11

I think for the first week I probably spent a hundred hours just learning how

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:15

to use different programs and design.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:18

And throwing myself into it and really had a very unique experience

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:23

in New York in the creative space.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:26

I was a brand designer.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:27

I was doing copywriting.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:29

I started a mini fashion line.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:32

I was doing a fashion blog.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:33

I was really like threw myself into the creative space, which is that other side

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:38

of myself that always asserts itself.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:40

This need for creative output, which I get that from my mom, who's an artist.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:47

And then the other side of myself asserts itself.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:50

My dad, who's an engineer.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:53

And that's when I decided to do another 180 and go back to school

Jeremy Sirota: 00:09:58

and decided to go to law school.

Gigi Johnson: 00:10:01

So we go from love punk rock.

Gigi Johnson: 00:10:05

We go to rhetoric.

Gigi Johnson: 00:10:07

We go to Poli Sci, we go to brand design.

Gigi Johnson: 00:10:11

We go way over your skis and to the . . . So, so you've got lots of

Gigi Johnson: 00:10:17

risk-taking of this age and stage and then law school, which is such a risky.

Gigi Johnson: 00:10:22

Now this is, it's a risk-averse field.

Gigi Johnson: 00:10:25

Yes?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:26

Yes it is.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:28

And it, on its surface, it looks like someone who's kind of almost rudderless,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:35

not quite sure where they want to go.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:37

Or do in their career.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:40

For me, it was in fact, a very intentional decision about what

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:44

I wanted my career to look like.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:46

And this was me deciding for the kind of final time that I didn't want the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:52

creative fields to be my profession.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:56

Right.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:10:56

I wanted . . . I wanted to continue with creative output which I've done

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:00

and continue to do at a personal level.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:04

But I had this real strong desire to engage this more strategic part

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:10

of my brain, this logical side.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:12

That's very, process-oriented and likes problem solving.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:17

My wife would call it "figure-it-out-itis."

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:18

I have figure-it-out-itis syndrome.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:21

And when I went to law school, I had a lot of conversations with friends

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:25

that a lot of people told me not to go, but I had a very conscious plan

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:29

in mind about what I wanted to do.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:32

And as sort of, kind of crazy as it might sound I'm actually doing.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:38

. . And my career has reflected, exactly what I've wanted to do.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:41

I had a very conscious decision that I wanted to eventually run a company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:46

And I thought at the time, at least when I went to law school, if there

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:49

would be one little pivot around, I thought I would start my own.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:52

But what I'm doing now as CEO of Merlin is in fact what I intended

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:57

to achieve by going to law school.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:11:59

It was, in a sense, the flip side of going to business school.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:03

A lot of people go to law school with the intention of getting into the business

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:06

side and that's how I approached it.

Gigi Johnson: 00:12:10

So I'm going to play devil's advocate.

Gigi Johnson: 00:12:12

Why have you not started?

Gigi Johnson: 00:12:13

Why did you not start your own business?

Gigi Johnson: 00:12:16

And when you've had pivot times, why have you not started your own business?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:21

Yeah, well, I, I did start a mini business in terms of

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:24

the fashion line I was doing, where I was selling to four or five stores

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:28

and just sort of kicking that off.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:30

So I've always had this entrepreneurial sense to what I wanted to do in life.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:36

If I had to say why, I think there's never been an inflection point where I

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:40

haven't had the next opportunity come my way . . . Where I've had the space

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:46

to . . . To determine what I would want to do on my own, whether in terms of

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:51

starting my own business or creating space to do this to a venture on my own.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:12:56

Whereas the five years I spent at a law firm, the next opportunity

Jeremy Sirota: 00:13:01

presented itself as I was looking to make my decision about what to do next.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:13:07

And that happened, that sort of happened at each stage of my career where the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:13:11

next opportunity has presented itself that I've been really excited about.

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:16

So I tend to call these postcard moments.

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:20

Back in my time and people who listen to the show heard me talk about this,

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:23

that when I was thinking about what I want to do, I had a TA send a postcard

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:30

with my grade to me, saying you should think of applying to film school.

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:34

And so to me, it's the thing that sort of Planned Happenchance.

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:38

. . Actually, there's research on this, which I find fascinating.

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:41

It dumps into your lap and you kind of go, oh -- I'm at the framing

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:46

point where that looks cool.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:13:48

Yeah.

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:48

How, how have these things walked in your door?

Gigi Johnson: 00:13:51

How have the postcards or planned happenchance for the next thing walked in?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:13:57

I like that term a lot.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:00

I've always viewed it as creating enough space that luck finds you.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:06

And the example . . . I'll actually use the example of how

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:10

I got this opportunity at Merlin.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:14

When in between law school and then where I eventually went to work at

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:18

Facebook, I spent nine years working at Warner Music, which is one of

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:24

the larger record companies or one of the big three record companies.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:28

And part of that was working for a division called ADA, which was

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:32

their independent distribution arm.

Gigi Johnson: 00:14:36

I think it all the majors . . . Aren't there independent distribution

Gigi Johnson: 00:14:38

arms at all, all the majors, still?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:41

Each of the majors, yes, has its own independent distribution arm.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:45

Some of them have their own DIY platforms as well.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:50

Think of DistroKid but owned and operated by a major.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:14:53

So yes, they're all looking at that space and have services in that space.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:00

So ADA was the equivalent for Warner Music.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:04

One of the people I got to meet at that time was a gentleman named Dave Hansen

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:08

who was GM of Epitaph Records at the time.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:11

He eventually became, and just recently stepped down.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:14

. . He was the executive chairperson for my first two years of Merlin.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:19

In between where I met him at ADA and the outreach they did looking

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:24

for the next CEO of Merlin, I spent time with him, not because I had any

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:29

expectation of something in return, not because I wanted something from him.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:36

I simply, I enjoyed his company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:37

I thought he was incredibly smart.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:39

I thought he was incredibly talented.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:42

I sometimes went to him for perspective.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:44

And that's what I mean by creating space for luck to find you.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:49

He was the one who recommended me as part of the search to

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:53

apply for the opportunity.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:56

Obviously I got it because of the full board and going through the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:15:59

entire process, But this is just one example in my career, at least where I

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:04

always called this "The network effect with nothing expected in return."

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:10

And that's a lot of what I've found in my career.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:13

The same thing happened to me at Facebook.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:16

The woman who hired me at Facebook was -- who ran the music team -- was

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:19

women named Tamara Hrivnak.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:22

We had actually overlapped at the law firm and Warner Music.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:26

And I'd once again, simply stayed in touch with her when she left to go to YouTube.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:31

Not because I had any expectations of something in return from her.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:35

The same thing as Dave.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:36

I thought she was really smart.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:37

I thought she was really strategic.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:39

And when she went over to Facebook to start the music team, she,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:42

once again, here's someone who reached out to me, seeing if I was

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:46

interested in, in the opportunity.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:48

And that's something that, you know, I would recommend to anyone

Jeremy Sirota: 00:16:52

in their career, which is the outreach without expectation return.

Gigi Johnson: 00:16:57

And that would also suggest the investment too.

Gigi Johnson: 00:16:59

So it's not just the outreach.

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:02

So I've just finished 22 years of teaching at UCLA.

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:05

And I tend to bring lots of people in to come talk to students.

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:10

And what I've been getting more and more from young people -- "get off my

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:15

lawn" -- from young people, is that they go, "How do you know so many people?"

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:19

And it's like, well, you need to keep sprouting and investing in other people.

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:24

And I actually had a a young person -- young person -- talk to me recently and

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:29

go, how do you know who to invest time in?

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:33

And I always have to come back to "You mean, why they should invest time in you?"

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:38

Because it's those people who then, you know, diaspora around that,

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:42

then, you know, you've got that reputation you've invested in each

Gigi Johnson: 00:17:45

other as human beings that then sprout something in the later date.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:17:50

I, yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:17:52

I've always had people throughout my career.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:17:55

who've invested in me and made time and space for me and that's

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:01

become so critical to my success.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:04

That it's a huge component of what I also want to give back.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:08

I, as, as I, as I develop more, as my responsibilities become more, it's more

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:13

challenging to continue to do that.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:15

But because I had so many people who did that for me, it's critically

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:20

important to me to try to get back to that -- to the ecosystem, to help

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:25

that next generation breakthrough, find their lane and figure out how to

Jeremy Sirota: 00:18:30

succeed in what's increasingly a really complicated world that we live in.

Gigi Johnson: 00:18:37

So then you went from law school to time as a lawyer to time

Gigi Johnson: 00:18:44

working with the independent distribution.

Gigi Johnson: 00:18:47

So you were moving into a "I'm in a big corporation and I'm facilitating

Gigi Johnson: 00:18:53

for Independents maneuvering within a large organization."

Gigi Johnson: 00:18:58

How did you bring your superpowers to bear for that?

Gigi Johnson: 00:19:02

And what did you learn?

Gigi Johnson: 00:19:04

Cause you actually, from my understanding, you did a similar role of Big

Gigi Johnson: 00:19:09

Facebook and Independents as well.

Gigi Johnson: 00:19:12

So how does, how do you balance that standing between and working with large

Gigi Johnson: 00:19:17

organizations and smaller organizations?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:22

Each one is unique.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:23

There, there's no doubt about that.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:24

You know, Warner, at least at the time, Warner Music was

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:27

probably around 5,000 people.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:30

Facebook, 60,000 people.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:33

I currently have a team of about 40, around.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:39

Which is great.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:40

It's a, it's a new experience, a very much a new experience for me to

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:43

be in a much smaller organization.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:46

Even the law firm was probably several thousand people around the world.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:52

What's great about a smaller organization is your ability to have a dramatic

Jeremy Sirota: 00:19:58

impact on people and your ability to learn more in depth about each person.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:06

One of the things that I learned about people at Warner was that

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:13

concept of walking the halls.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:15

And I remember when I was first introduced, this is back when we were

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:17

in offices and could walk the halls.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:20

When I was introduced to this concept by someone who once again taken

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:24

an interest in me, I didn't really fully understand what it meant.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:26

What do you mean?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:27

Just pop into people's offices and just wander around and talk to people?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:32

And it's very much like the, the network effect of people, which is

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:36

the more conversations you have, the more commonality you find, the more

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:40

opportunity that you can uncover.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:43

And with my company now I've translated that into, obviously I have my calls with

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:48

my team leads, but I also tried to create space for every individual on the team by

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:53

having one-on-ones and not just check ins.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:20:57

But very, once again, intentional conscious conversations about

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:01

"what are they working on?"

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:03

So each one-on-one I have, isn't just let me pick up the phone and see how

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:06

they're doing or get on zoom with them.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:09

I try to speak with people around their teams, or I look back at the goals that

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:13

they set for themselves for the year, so that I can actually lean in and have

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:16

this much more productive conversation.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:20

And create this commonality, these bonds, within the company that are always being

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:26

created within the company, but that I sort of treasure myself and leading it.

Gigi Johnson: 00:21:33

So you've said a couple of times leaning out over your skis.

Gigi Johnson: 00:21:36

You came into this current role, not that many days ahead of the pandemic.

Gigi Johnson: 00:21:43

So how has this role that you've had since early 2020 b een leaning out

Gigi Johnson: 00:21:49

over your skis and what's been your biggest takeaway from that lean out?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:57

Yeah.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:21:58

Let me provide some context for that.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:00

I started in this role at Merlin in January of 2020.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:05

It was the first time change in CEO for the company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:09

And similarly I was a first-time CEO.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:14

And the . . . COVID . . .I think we shut our offices down

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:19

about 60 days into my tenure.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:24

And suddenly I was running a company dramatically differently, like many

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:29

people around the world, than I expected.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:34

And for me, I felt a huge responsibility, not just running the company, but the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:38

nature of our members is that there's a huge dependence on how we perform to

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:43

ensure that they can run their businesses.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:46

They can maximize value that can provide more to their artists.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:51

And suddenly not only am I a first-tiime CEO of a company, but

Jeremy Sirota: 00:22:56

we're in this really unique situation.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:01

And it was a little terrifying to be honest.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:05

I wasn't, you know, there was that moment where you just sort of like, you're

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:08

a deer in the headlight and you just freeze like, oh my gosh, what do I do?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:12

And then if you just stop and think about all the things you've

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:15

learned over your career, all the people you're surrounded by.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:18

I have an incredible board to lean on.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:21

I had an executive chairperson.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:23

I have a really strong leadership team.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:26

All these were people that I could lean on where I didn't have to solve it myself.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:31

I had to identify the challenges.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:34

Identify the blockers and then put teams in place and process in

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:38

place to provide more, to get more out of whatever the situation was.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:44

And then once you recognize that, then you, you know, once again, if you're not

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:49

dealing with supply chain problem, right.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:50

I literally can't get parts from my machines.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:53

Right.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:53

We're not that.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:54

We're a digital-only company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:23:56

And so we didn't have the problems that, say, you would have in manufacturing,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:24:00

or you would have in retail.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:24:02

And it actually provided us a very unique opportunity to help our members

Jeremy Sirota: 00:24:07

in what was a really challenging time, whether it was through the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:24:10

deals we did, whether it was through the perspective we could provide for

Jeremy Sirota: 00:24:13

them, whether it was the support we could give them behind the scenes.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:24:18

And for us, it was really energizing because it made our mission, which

Jeremy Sirota: 00:24:23

was so important in the first place, even more important for our members.

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:28

So from my understanding of Merlin that you guys bring the

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:32

superpower of both scale and context to smaller labels who otherwise you

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:39

would say, "Hi, Apple Music, Spotify, please give me a better deal."

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:44

"Please give me information.

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:46

Please give me context."

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:48

And you in a business where it's a big company matching up against a big company.

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:53

Help make smaller labels together into a bigger company to talk with you.

Gigi Johnson: 00:24:59

Large digital service providers.

Gigi Johnson: 00:25:02

Is that a decent synopsis or is it way too simplistic?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:06

It's both.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:07

It's a really good synopsis.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:09

You know, we leverage the collective might of the independent space

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:13

and our members to give them best-in-class deals, but still allow

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:19

them to work directly, with digital.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:23

And that means that they get the best of all worlds.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:25

They get the ability to own their futures and their independence to work

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:30

directly with the digital partners, get access to best-in-class deals

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:35

that they couldn't achieve on their own so that they can compete in the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:39

marketplace and then have our support.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:42

And that means if they needed support on operational issues and

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:46

they need support on how to get more value out of the partnership.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:50

And that ranges from small labels that may only have a team of 10 in a single

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:55

country to some of our distributor members who may have hundreds of

Jeremy Sirota: 00:25:59

employees and are quite large.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:01

So we have a really broad range of members, all of whom have different needs.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:06

And the great component to Merlin that's so unique is because we

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:12

operate like a not-for-profit.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:14

All I need to do is cover an operating budget.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:17

As long as I cover my budget, then the rest is really just about

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:21

driving value to our members.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:22

We only succeed if they succeed, our interests are

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:26

entirely aligned with theirs.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:28

And that was what was so ,provided so much sort of value, to our us as a team.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:37

During this COVID period that we knew the impact we were having on our

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:43

members' lives, their artists' lives.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:45

And there's something to that.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:47

And the resilience that it can build by know that you're

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:49

having an impact of that scale.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:26:52

That's provided a lot of, sort of meaning to people during the last two years.

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:01

So you've got an interesting set of challenges or

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:05

set of being "out over your skis."

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:08

We're recording this during the Winter Olympics.

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:10

So I keep coming back to others, you know, snowboarding, I don't know.

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:15

But thinking about that you're having now working from home still largely

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:23

both clients and your own core team.

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:28

I'm assuming you've had a little bit of the Great Resignation

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:31

to deal with, or maybe not.

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:33

I know that.

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:34

A lot of the creative companies I'm working with, they've had significant

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:37

turnover over the past year and needed to create strategic directional changes.

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:44

How do you have a north star into your work?

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:47

How are you kind of dealing with some of these time-based challenges or, or, or

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:53

pandemic-based challenges as a new CEO?

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:56

How do you sort of think about this stuff?

Gigi Johnson: 00:27:58

How do you frame it?

Gigi Johnson: 00:28:01

There's like 12 questions in that question.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:04

No, I love all of them.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:06

Why don't I start with our, our north star.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:09

Our north star is enable Independents and celebrate music.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:15

Those are the two guiding lights for everything else that drives our company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:22

I'll I'll answer.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:23

Let me give one answer and then you can dive into or ask

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:26

one of the other questions.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:28

Yeah, exactly.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:31

When we were structuring our values, our company values, obviously

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:36

we started with our north star.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:39

And one of the values that I found extraordinarily important was this concept

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:44

of build a culture of shared ownership.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:48

And by that, I mean, it's not your anyone's responsibility

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:52

to do someone else's job.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:28:54

But what it is -- is a motto, a theme of value of, I care

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:00

about everyone else's job.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:02

I care what they're going through.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:03

I care that they have their own challenges that they're dealing with.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:08

I'm cognizant of those.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:09

I know that if I can help them do their jobs better.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:14

Then we can have more impact collectively as an organization.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:18

And a simple example of that is I'm cognizant of constraints that others

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:23

might have, whether what week payment runs go out to our members and being

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:28

cognizant of, of their time and how that's a very busy week for them.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:33

I'm cognizant that we've just signed a new deal.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:36

And that our commercial partnerships team is helping all of our members to action

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:41

that and to lean into the partnerships.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:42

So they may have constraints on their time.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:45

So taking this concept of we all here at Merlin, because we want to have

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:51

impact because we love music because we have this incredible platform

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:54

across our global membership to achieve that through our partnerships.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:29:59

Then if I take that interest . . . if I care more about everyone I

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:04

work, with we can do more of that.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:07

And that's been really helpful into reframing how we approach our jobs,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:12

especially when we're working from home.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:14

I feel very lucky.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:15

We have not had a Great Resignation.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:19

I think we have an incredibly strong culture and I think people value

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:23

what they're able to do across our partnerships and memberships.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:27

And in fact, it's very vast, what we do.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:31

We punch above our weight.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:32

If we go back to always feeling a little over our skis right now, we're only 40

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:36

people managing about 40 partnerships and 500 plus members from every corner of the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:45

world, representing every genre and every type of label and other sort of rights

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:50

holder and distributor you can imagine.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:53

That's a really exciting challenge to be involved in.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:30:56

And I think everyone appreciates that.

Gigi Johnson: 00:30:59

So other than the pandemic, which is . . . other than

Gigi Johnson: 00:31:02

the elephant in the room, what has been an aha for you in coming into

Gigi Johnson: 00:31:08

this leadership role and in this opportunity after being in big companies?

Gigi Johnson: 00:31:13

Has there been something about this change that made you kind of go, oh

Gigi Johnson: 00:31:17

crap, I didn't see this coming or I now see how something of my past

Gigi Johnson: 00:31:23

is unfolded into this opportunity?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:28

Yeah, I like this question.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:31

I would say the biggest aha for me that I wasn't fully appreciating when

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:37

I came in is how much, well, twofold.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:41

. . One is how much more challenging it is when you don't have the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:45

same level of resources that you might've had a different company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:49

Now there's all sorts of resource constraints of large companies as well.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:53

So I didn't fully appreciate the resource constraint.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:31:58

But coupled with that is a nimbleness that I didn't fully expect either.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:05

And the ability to quickly move in new directions or spin up new workflows.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:13

We use this concept of strategic popups . . . really effectively across the company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:19

When we have maybe a knotty challenge that we're trying to deal with or

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:23

whether we have a sort of deal cycle, we have these pods that we put together

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:28

and we can spin those up really quick and we can spin them down really quick.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:32

And that really, I didn't, it it's like a tech company.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:36

I didn't expect how quick we could move in certain areas.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:40

And that was really exciting to see that.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:32:43

And then also just to empower people to lean into that at the same time.

Gigi Johnson: 00:32:50

Fascinating.

Gigi Johnson: 00:32:51

I mean, it, you, in many ways are working in a space of kind of poet/quant . . . of

Gigi Johnson: 00:32:56

needing people who can deal with creative and deal with technical.

Gigi Johnson: 00:33:00

And from your description, you are largely on the poet side though, the quant, maybe

Gigi Johnson: 00:33:05

of the law side and the figuring it out.

Gigi Johnson: 00:33:08

How do you think about . . . I'm assuming hiring has been part of most of your jobs.

Gigi Johnson: 00:33:14

How do you think of that in a smaller organization like yours?

Gigi Johnson: 00:33:19

How do you think when you bring somebody in or you're hiring them, especially

Gigi Johnson: 00:33:23

in this remote working dislocation environment, how do you bring in new

Gigi Johnson: 00:33:28

people into this kind of poet/quant world?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:33:33

Hopefully quite successfully.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:33:34

We've almost . . . More than I think, I think it's 60% of people

Jeremy Sirota: 00:33:39

have started in COVID right now.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:33:42

And in fact, we have seven or eight open heads that we're currently hiring for.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:33:48

The, I think, the number one attribute about the hiring process that's

Jeremy Sirota: 00:33:53

been most successful throughout my career, in fact, is transparency.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:33:59

I'm a big believer that when you hire someone, they should know, as well as

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:04

you can, exactly what is going to be expected of them and what the role is.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:09

And similarly, you want to know exactly what their expectations are from the role,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:15

and that's proven to be quite helpful in making sure that you have a good fit.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:22

The second, which we've also deployed which there was a little bit of

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:27

nervousness when we started doing it, is everyone who comes into the company,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:31

whether you're coming in as an engineer, whether you're coming in on the reporting

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:34

team, finance, commercial partnerships, everyone gets some sort of test.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:40

Now, if it's more technical, you might get tested in Python language.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:44

If you're coming to finance, we're going to want to make sure that you

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:47

have really good SQL Alteryx skills.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:52

But everyone gets something that shows two things.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:34:56

One is just the writing capabilities, their strategic capabilities

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:00

to think through issues.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:02

And then more importantly, it also shows how much they are interested in the role.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:06

Right?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:07

Is this something that they really feel passionately about?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:09

Because we want to hire people who are going to be passionate about what we're

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:13

doing, because we think it's special.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:15

I think what we do for our members is really unique and I feel really good about

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:21

our team and that not only the people who are here when I arrived but the people

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:27

that we've hired feel that way and feel really strong about the mission and the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:35:32

culture, sort of how much we can help our members in what they're trying to do.

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:39

So we're getting near the end.

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:41

I kind of have one more question for you and then I'll ask you what you

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:44

want to make comments on . . . we haven't talked about maybe.

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:47

So you are creative and step out of the box person at heart.

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:54

We've shared how that's moved through your work.

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:57

How about the rest of your life?

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:58

Are you, how are you leaning forward into creative spaces or personal spaces?

Gigi Johnson: 00:36:03

Do you leave room for that and how do you challenge yourself?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:08

Great, great question.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:11

I think the personal life is such a big component of finding

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:14

satisfaction and enjoyment out of life.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:18

I have a big part of my life which is my wife and my daughter.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:23

I am fencing dad.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:25

My daughter's 10 now; she's been fencing for four years, which

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:29

is an incredibly amazing sport.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:34

And so I spent a great deal of my weekends at fencing tournaments.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:39

So my job is to record every bout that she has, so we can watch

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:43

them afterwards and take notes with her about who she is fencing.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:47

with So that's become a huge component of my life.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:49

The last couple of years I recently joined their board of directors.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:53

Their mission vibes with me as well.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:55

They're a 501(c) and nonprofit.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:36:58

So I feel really good about being able to give value back there.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:02

And then just at a personal level, other things I spoke about earlier,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:05

you know, I, I'd . . . I can't do them as much as I used to like to, but the

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:09

ability to write, the ability to draw.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:12

My daughter and I draw a lot together.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:15

Those are the sorts of outlets that I still have to sort of tap

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:19

into the creative side of myself.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:21

And of course I listen to music nonstop if I'm not on Zoom.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:24

And sometimes even when I am, I have music.

Gigi Johnson: 00:37:28

And I want to give kudos to your wife, who's a designer, for

Gigi Johnson: 00:37:31

some of the beautiful stuff behind you.

Gigi Johnson: 00:37:33

So giving you a great environment also for everything you're doing as well.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:38

Her visual eye's incredible.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:40

I wish I could achieve what she does.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:43

She's . . . She's a creative director and works a lot within

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:46

fashion and within brand.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:49

And I've always appreciated

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:53

. . . Gigi Johnson: And when did

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:56

Oh, we met . . . We are actually celebrating 20

Jeremy Sirota: 00:37:59

years together next month.

Gigi Johnson: 00:38:02

Oh, cool.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:03

Yeah.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:04

And we met in San Francisco when I was in law school through a mutual friend.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:10

And it was one of those relationships that sort of started off a little slow.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:14

I was in law school.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:15

Busy time for me.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:18

And then when I, when I graduated, I told her "I am pretty serious about moving to

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:23

New York to go work for this law firm.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:25

You know, think about whether that might be a part of your life."

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:29

And, you know, there was almost like asking, it was

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:31

almost like proposing to her.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:33

She said, yes.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:33

And she came with me and we've been together now for all this time

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:38

and really carved out a beautiful relationship for ourselves.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:42

You know, COVID is a great testing ground for, for how much you love your family.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:46

And.

Gigi Johnson: 00:38:47

Or rethinking, do you want to frame that??

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:52

Yeah.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:52

Yeah.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:53

So we've, we've really bonded as a family during this time

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:56

and leaned into each other.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:38:58

We spent two summers a month away altogether on an island.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:04

And it's been really great learning experience for us as a family and for us

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:09

individually and come out stronger for it.

Gigi Johnson: 00:39:13

So coming full circle, but not telling.

Gigi Johnson: 00:39:16

Your daughter wants to do what and how do you encourage that as a parent?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:22

Oh, wow.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:23

What is my ten-year-old daughter want to do?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:26

I've I've heard it all.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:28

She's she's gone through the litany of professions.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:32

So I don't pay too much attention because it seems to change every month or two,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:36

I think right now she wants to be a writer, which obviously I would encourage.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:42

The, what I, what I do is what really my parents did for me, which is give

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:49

me the tools for success later in life.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:52

I'm very much agnostic to what she does.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:56

But what I care is that she has the tools.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:39:58

She has the mindset.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:00

To find success in whatever she might want to do in life.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:05

And you know, when I look at what she's done in fencing.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:09

Fencing is a crucible, right?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:13

You can have a coach, you can have a community and you need both to

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:17

succeed, but similar to tennis, once you get out there, you're on your own.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:21

There's no one else.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:23

And you're always winning points and losing points and

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:26

you always have to come back.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:27

You always have to have the mindset there.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:29

And I feel like between the school and her teachers, her coach and fencing,

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:34

what we try to do as a family, I hope we're giving her and preparing her for

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:40

what I assume is going to be an even more complex world as we move forward.

Gigi Johnson: 00:40:46

Jeremy, it has been great talking.

Gigi Johnson: 00:40:47

Is there anything we haven't talked about that you'd want to mention that this.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:53

Oh, thank you.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:54

First of all, thank you so much for having me.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:55

I really appreciate the conversation.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:40:59

I'm going to share something that matters greatly to me, which is, you know, my

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:05

career has been a tale of two loves I'm huge and passionate fan of music.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:13

It's always been a big component of my life and simultaneously

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:19

technology's been there for me as well.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:22

My dad, my dad, who I mentioned was an engineer.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:24

We used to pull computers apart and put them back together again.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:28

I didn't go down this other rabbit hole.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:30

We could've, I used to do, I used to be a computer coder or

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:33

computer programmer in my teens.

Gigi Johnson:

Speaker: 00:41:36

Quant . . . You've been both.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:38

I really have been both.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:39

And what I've found is I found these two worlds that intersected and I found

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:44

a way to carve a niche for myself.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:47

And what I would say is.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:50

I'm very passionate about music.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:51

I'm very passionate about creative output, whatever form that might take.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:41:56

And I still have that as my, as a part of my life, but I made that sort of

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:00

conscious choice about what would drive.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:04

Sort of my ambitions and where did that lie?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:08

And that's where I made a decision to move from the creatives, into

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:11

supporting the creatives and this intersection of music and technology.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:16

And to me, it was all about making that decision and

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:21

finding that inflection point.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:22

So look for those inflection points about places that you find most

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:27

interesting that you want to spend your life on and dive into it because it's

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:32

where I've really found my enjoyment.

Gigi Johnson: 00:42:36

Well, Jeremy, thank you very much for joining us.

Gigi Johnson: 00:42:39

Can people reach out to you at all?

Gigi Johnson: 00:42:41

And how would you want them to reach out?

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:44

I would welcome it.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:45

You can find me on LinkedIn.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:47

You can find me on Instagram and Facebook.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:49

You can find us on our website MerlinNetwork.org.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:54

That's two N's.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:55

We're across the socials as well.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:42:58

I would welcome it.

Gigi Johnson: 00:42:59

And we'll put those links in the show notes.

Gigi Johnson: 00:43:01

Thank you very much for joining.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:43:03

Thank you so much.

Jeremy Sirota: 00:43:04

Really appreciate this