#69 How They Built It: Vision Music Group - On Finding Multi-Platinum Rapper Logic and Investing at the Intersection of Music and Culture | Chris Zarou, Founder & CEO

Chris Zarou is Founder and CEO of Visionary Music Group. In this episode, Chris and Daniel discuss serendipity, bootstrapping, and the similarities between music and investing.
Last updated
August 14, 2023
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Chris Zarou was nineteen when he started his career in music talent management.
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#69 How They Built It: Vision Music Group - On Finding Multi-Platinum Rapper Logic and Investing at the Intersection of Music and Culture | Chris Zarou, Founder & CEO

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“Being an entrepreneur is like getting punched in the face every day. Because you're constantly juggling, putting out fires. You never know what's going to happen. And when you're the number one guy, there's no one to point blame at. It's all on you.” Chris Zarou

Chris Zarou (@ChrisZarou) is Founder and CEO of Visionary Music Group, which helped shape the careers of artists like Logic, Jon Bellion, and Jeremy Zucker. Chris is also an angel investor, and he’s currently starting a fund which will be announced in the coming months.

To listen to Chris Zarou’s quick interview on habits, routines, and inspirations, click here.

Chapters

  • Chris’ background and starting his own artist management company
  • Serendipity and working with Logic
  • The role of an artist manager
  • Bootstrapping and being a blue collar entrepreneur
  • The similarities between music and investing
  • The 2017 VMAs and aftermath
  • Authenticity for performers
  • Investing and perfect timing
  • Lessons learned as an entrepreneur and investor

Links

Learn More About This Topic

1-800-273-8255 Performance on the VMAs

A key moment in the career of both Logic and Chris Zarou, this performance brought awareness to mental health and is worth a watch.


What is an Artist Manager?

This post from Masterclass gives a great overview of the role and how the manager interacts with and supports artists.


Musicians Who Have Opened Up About Their Mental Health Struggles

Billboard has put together a list of musicians who have talked about their own mental health issues, which in turn brings awareness to the need for support and treatment for all.


36 Hours to Inbox Zero

Chris finds that getting to inbox zero each day helps him stay organized and prevents overwhelm with his many businesses and investments. Inc has a clear-cut guide on how to get yourself there.


What is Web3?

If you’re interested in Chris’ latest rabbit hole, Web3, this Slate piece is a good place to start.

Transcript

Daniel Scrivner:

Chris Zarou, it is a huge honor to have you on the show. So thank you so much for coming on. And I'm so excited to talk about music, about investing and about how much those two actually relate to each other that most people wouldn't suspect.


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.


Daniel Scrivner:

I want to start off, the first part of this conversation by, one of the things that's fascinating about your background and your story is you find this promising artist who was incredibly unknown. This is more than a decade ago, who now has become incredibly well-known, which is Logic. So we'll talk about that arc in being a part of Logic's growth over a long, long amount of time. But I want to start off the conversation by talking about how you broke into the music industry in the first place, because you didn't have that as your background, you knew that you wanted to try to get in.


Daniel Scrivner:

And so doing research for this, I read a story about how you basically went from major label record label to major record label. Applying for internships. You got rejected by all of them, including Def Jam, who later ends up signing Logic. Can you just tell a little bit of that story? What was it like for you to be trying to break in? How difficult was that period of your life like?


Chris Zarou:

Sure. So I kind of started the artist management company and started managing my first clients out of necessity. I had no other choice. Just like you said, I went to record label after record label, after record label, and was getting basically nowhere. I was getting every door closed in my face. So my mentality was like, "All right, I don't really think I have a choice. I'm going to have to do this myself." So what I did was, I went out and just started looking for talent and reaching out to the talent and being like, "Hey, listen, I have no experience. I think I understand how to build audience on the internet. Give me a shot and let's figure it out."


Chris Zarou:

But it was frustrating for me because generally getting an internship is a way to break into the business to get your foot in the door. And I was getting rejections with really no explanation. And the funny part is you bring up Def Jam, that's ultimately where my first client, Logic, signed to. I remember going down that process, and it was probably one of the last interviews I had. I was so frustrated. I just wanted some sort of clarity or an answer on why. And the response from the woman who I was interviewing with was that I didn't have enough experience. It didn't make any sense. I'm like, "Well, that's what an internship is for." So out of frustration, I kind of just said, "You know what? I'm going to end up doing it myself." And that's kind of how I stepped into the business.


Daniel Scrivner:

Which I love, because I think a lot of people wouldn't make that conclusion. Because I think a lot of people look at that and be like, "That seems way scarier. I've got to go find that talent. It's all on me to make it work and to find this talent." What do you think it was about you that that seemed either easy or just like, "This is what I need to do. So I'm just going to go and get it done."


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. I think I had that mentality and I've always had that mentality. It's like, "Okay, by any means, I'm just going to try and get it on and accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish." So if I went through the traditional route and I didn't get anywhere and I kept hitting a wall, let me try and figure out a way to go around that wall. And to me, it was, "Well, let me try and build it myself." And now over a decade in, and being much more self-aware than I was at that time, I was probably 19. It was definitely a right approach for me. I think if I had gone the traditional route and been stuck in a major label system from that age, from an internship and then maybe turning into job, it was a weird and unique time in the business. There was so much that was changing.


Chris Zarou:

And I think because I wasn't in that system, I got to approach everything with a fresh perspective, my own perspective. "Well, this is how I think you should build audience. This is my approach to building an artist's career using the internet. Let me be a little contrarian. Major record companies want to monetize music, let me give that product away for free and build audience and monetize down the road." So I have this whole new approach that I can confidently say now is probably the only reason that I succeeded because it was completely new and completely different. And if I had tried that traditional route, I don't think I would have been successful to be honest.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. Which is fascinating because you go in and you have a very different approach. You find a very different artist who uses a very different playbook to become successful. It's like, literally across the board is, that all seems to line up. Can you share a little bit about what was it like when you first heard Logic's music? And I understand at the time, he was basically just dropping singles for free online on a handful of obscure sites and forums. How did you find him in, what was that feeling or sense of like, "This is it. I need to go, really try to get this artist."


Chris Zarou:

It's actually a really funny story. I call it kind of serendipity. So I was managing an artist at the time out of Philadelphia. And his DJ was from Maryland. And the early days, this is probably 2010, late 2010 on Twitter, maybe early 2011. And his DJ had tweeted a YouTube link. There was no anything description. At the time videos didn't get embedded into it. It was like, click on the link. And it was a minute and a half video of Logic rapping acapella. And I was just blown away. I knew there was something there I needed to kind of dive deeper.


Chris Zarou:

And I searched and looked for things. He didn't really have a lot of music out. There's barely anything I could find. He didn't even have a ton of social media accounts. I believe his name was still Psychological at the time, it wasn't even Logic. So what I ended up doing was finding his personal Facebook account and just friending him and then messaging him and starting a dialogue that way. But I think about it all the time now. It's like, if at any moment I had not been in front of a computer and on Twitter at that given time, his life, and very much likely mine would just completely be in different places right now. So it was a moment like that, where I just curious, quick to click the tweet and then was compelled enough to reach out and start a conversation with him.


Daniel Scrivner:

I love that you brought up serendipity there because I've had that same thought of so many of the best decisions I've made, things I've done in my life have been a result of serendipity. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about, just, what is that? How can I cultivate that? Do you have any thoughts there? How prominent of a theme is serendipity in all of your work?


Chris Zarou:

Oh, it is incredibly prominent. And when you use something that a good buddy of mine is a venture capitalist, his name is Blake Robbins came up with the term, he said engineering serendipity. What I mean, it's surrounding yourself with really bright forward-thinking, innovative thinkers and having conversations, challenging your own beliefs, being open-minded to introductions, getting to know new people. Because that will do is create and engineer serendipity. It's played such a big role in my career, not being afraid of looking silly.


Chris Zarou:

It's funny, I had a meeting yesterday and I was explaining to him my process about how I learned things. I probably was talking about when I went down the crypto rabbit hole, where I reached into my network and I meet three, four or five of the subject matter experts I can meet. And a couple ended up being, Fred Ehrsam who is a co-founder at Coinbase and Anthony Pompliano. These guys are incredibly knowledgeable. And what I would do is set a meeting with them, and at the time, I think we did it over Zoom.


Chris Zarou:

Pomp lived in New York. We grabbed a drink together. And I'll just fire questions at them, just a million. And that's how I learned. It's almost like an interrogation. When I'm curious about something, I want to meet with someone who knows way more about it than I do, and kind of interrogate them essentially. And the individual who I was meeting with, who I was telling that story, he was, "Aren't you afraid of looking stupid?" I was like, "That doesn't bother me at all. What does that matter to me?" I was looking to learn something, and that's kind of what I've done my entire career.


Chris Zarou:

I've looked at it peppered throughout the business, like doing Logic's first record deal, I was 20 years old. I was a senior in college. I was studying for finals and also negotiating his record deal at the same time. So what I did, I hired a great attorney who we still work with this day, and every single little detail in that contract, I interrogated and fired questions at that attorney. That's how I learned. And then the next deal I did, I had a lot more knowledge on it and that's how I've always done and approached things that I was unaware of. It gives me confidence.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. And I love that you have the ability to just lean into that and not worry about how you look, not worry about how you come across, because you're obviously just like, "It doesn't matter. I'm starting from zero."


Chris Zarou:

Never crossed my mind. I'm not there talking at that individual hoping that they like me. I'm there to try to better myself for my client. That's it. That's all I cared about. Or learn about something so it could make me a better investor. That was the goal.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah, I love that. One of the things I learned, researching for this episode, so you find this obscure artist that you think is really promising. You then basically go and pitch him and say, "I don't have any experience here, but here's the things I think I can do, and why don't we partner?" And one of the things I thought was really fascinating was hearing Logic talk about that and bring up the point that what he felt really comfortable was, one, he felt like you had his best interest in mind and everyone else he interacted didn't seem like they had that.


Daniel Scrivner:

But two, and this quote really stuck out to me. He's like, you needed him as much as he needed you. It was this really tight lock-in. Did you share a little bit about that? Or did you feel the same way? And what was your sense when you finally got him to say, "Yeah, let's do this?"


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. I mean, because I think that conversation span from when he talks about to this day, it was just trying to be genuine and authentic. If I had approached it and was lying about some of the experience I had or success that I had, it was me just being incredibly honest and genuine and say, "Hey, listen, give me a shot because I think we can do this together." We're the same age, he was in the same exact spot as me, had previous managers he didn't have any luck with. So it was more just about like, "Hey, let's try this together. And worst case, it just doesn't work out." I didn't ask him to sign any paperwork. I was like, "Give me a shot," and would walk him through.


Chris Zarou:

And I think that's something he appreciated from the early stage of our career. I would take the time to walk him through it, educate him, what I was doing. I remember one or two of the first videos or singles that we released together, and he's talked about this public too. It's kind of funny. We joke about it all the time now. They had done better than he had ever, in terms of views or streams, than he had ever done previously. And he accused me of like, "Are you buying views? Are you paying for views?" So I had to sit him down and kind of walk them through, "Hey, no, let's going to YouTube backend and you can actually see where they're coming from. This is this music blog. I have a relationship with them." And walked him through that way.


Chris Zarou:

So it was very much like, to be honest, we were going through the learning experience at the same exact time. And what that enabled us to do was test and try things. This was the Wild West of the creator economy. It was very early days of it. And, "Okay, who can we partner with? Which creator makes most sense for your demographic." And that's where the FaZe Clan partnership came from. And that was instrumental. And we were just constantly trying things. We were not afraid to fail. And if we did, we kept moving and we tried something new. And I think him, having that open-mindedness enabled us to do that. And it was great.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. And you having, I think the approach to be really comfortable with experimentation, it's like, you guys were both trying to get to an answer together.


Chris Zarou:

I think you have to. And I think any good builder will not be afraid to do that and to try things. And we were trying to build something from scratch. And what also was helpful, and I talk about this a lot is paying attention to the small wins. That's what kept us going because there was never, particularly in the first couple years, there was never this just massive moment of growth or success. So every single day that we saw some sort of positive momentum, that kept us going. We had a thing we'd say, "Hey, small wins add up." And then you get momentum. And it had, win the week, then you win the month. Then you win the year.


Chris Zarou:

That's how we approached everything. And that's what kept us going, especially through the early days when it was really difficult. If his social following was going up or every single we were releasing was doing a little bit better than the one prior, that would signal something positive, "We're doing something right. Let's keep going."


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. I'm curious, in those early years, what was your thought or approach in terms of what your job was as the manager? Was it to basically help bend the curve and help him grow his audience and just to stack up those little wins? Was it defining who he was? How did you think about what your role was?


Chris Zarou:

It was kind of all of that put together. I think more importantly, if I could boil it down, a good manager is going to bring an artist's vision to life. He's the creative individual. And he has certain visions for what he wants to do, whether it's with a single rollout or whether it's with an album and how cohesive is it and what does he want everything to look like? And then me also figuring out what I was good at. I think I understood consumer behavior pretty well. I think I understood this era of the internet and how to build an audience early. And as you start working with a client, you have this phase where you have to feel each other out, see how they work, they'd know how I work. And then you start to gain trust.


Chris Zarou:

Some of the things that I would suggest are kind of try to nudge him or push him. I think that trust enables the relationship to grow and expand. So you don't have to have this constant head button. I think that's healthy in any partnership. The way I look at an artist-manager relationship, it's a partnership. And at certain times, he's got to lean on me and trust me and my vision. There's oftentimes where I lean on him and trust his vision outright. And I think that's what enables any great partnership. But it's kind of all the above, I think. And you manage every client differently. You kind of mold the management style around their personality is the way I've tried to do it.


Daniel Scrivner:

That's fascinating. And I guess, what's going to be most helpful, or even what's needed by that individual artist.


Chris Zarou:

What their goals are. You kind of shift it and mold it around whatever their ambition or goal is. What do they want their brand to be? What do they want to represent in their space? And you kind of shift the style and approach towards that. Some artists want to communicate five times a day. Some want to talk to you once a week. It's totally different.


Daniel Scrivner:

One of the things I thought was fascinating researching the story of you and Logic working together as he continued to get more and more successful was, that it was a lot like bootstrapping a business. Literally, in the early days, you guys started with nothing. No money, giving away free music, trying to build an audience, stacking those little wins with no big breakthroughs.


Daniel Scrivner:

And then you have this major moment where you end up signing a contract with Def Jam after you turning down another term sheet, which we can talk about in a second. But you take all those proceeds and you basically have to put almost all of it back into the "Business," back into Logic to go on this tour, that head towards this next goal on the horizon. Is that how you both viewed it? This was bootstrapping a business. This is how we do it. And we're always reinvesting in order to grow the platform, kind of grow the audience?


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. What's funny is, when you're 20, 21, I don't know if I viewed it as bootstrapping it, to be totally honest, it was what we had to do. That's kind of how we lived our daily lives. "Okay, we're going to do what we need to do to succeed." And it was a point where I felt we were building things. There seemed to be demand there. And again, this is a lot of it is intuitive at the time. This is 11 years ago. We did not have the data that you have today. If I have a backend product from Spotify, the data they give you is absolutely incredible.


Chris Zarou:

Nothing like that existed. Spotify didn't exist in the US at the time, let alone any type of that data. Even metrics on social media weren't really there. So it was very intuitive or, "Hey, I think we can go on the road and probably put a 25, 30-city tour together." He agrees with me. Cool. We checked that box. "How are we going to make that happen?" I didn't know what venture capital was. I didn't know you could raise capital. I had no clue. Let alone would anyone even invest in us at that point. Probably not. We had no track record. I had no experience. He had no experience. We had no revenue.


Chris Zarou:

You just go through that thought process, "Where are we going to get the capital from? Well, we have 25 record deal offers. Should we probably entertain one of them and maybe use that capital fund to tour?" And that's kind of where the thought process. So it was almost like, "Okay, what do we need to do to take the next step?" So that's kind of where that thought process came from.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah, super basic. And it's literally like your backs up against the wall. What do you do next? What's the next move correct?


Chris Zarou:

Very basic. Correct.


Daniel Scrivner:

One of the things I love about that story too is, it's not like that first tour was on a glamorous bus like you typically would see on the road or outside of venues, it was in a minivan and a Nissan Altima. At the same time, you had signed Logic. You had literally been the manager for an artist that signed on with Def Jam. Was on this first nationwide tour. And at the time, you also had a job basically working at a retail store in a mall to earn income as you were doing this. And something that starts to kind of bubble up for me is, I gathered that you just have a lot of grit and determination and that you didn't even think about it for a second. You were like, "This is what I need to do in order to make this happen."


Daniel Scrivner:

What did that experience teach you, of you have this ambitious thing that you're pursuing with big dreams on one hand, and you're also just doing what it takes in order to move forward and handle everything? What did you learn from that experience?


Chris Zarou:

I think I learned that the benefit of hard work. I try to approach being an entrepreneur almost from a blue-collar work ethic perspective. And again, going through so much and learning so much about myself. I know now that that came from insecurity. I knew I didn't have any experience. I knew there was moments I really didn't know what the answer was. And I think anyone who's been an entrepreneur, is currently an entrepreneur, you're going to have those type of moments. So I said, "Well, let me just work as hard as I can to try and figure it out and do whatever it takes to succeed."


Chris Zarou:

And I knew I wasn't the smartest guy in the room, and I'll never be the smartest guy in the room. Again, it doesn't bother me, but that's where I think a lot of that grit and determination came from. And probably mixed in a little bit with my competitive sports background and playing sports really competitively from a young age. You got to see at that basic level, the more I practiced the better I got and I kind of had that approach to business as well.


Daniel Scrivner:

It's a great point. I'm so glad you brought that up because we didn't talk about that part of your background. And that makes me wonder how important do you think being competitive in sports growing up, and that mentality, even just what you said a few minutes ago around stacking small wins together. It sounds like something a coach is going to say to players on the field, get better and better. How much of that background do you think really helped you to be able to be as successful as you've been?


Chris Zarou:

For me, I think it was imperative. Now look at the world of business as a new competitive arena for me. I'm competing against myself. And to me it's just kind of the foundation and is fundamentally who I am. I'm competitive by nature. And being able to do it in this world was everything for me. And I think that's also probably what's consciously drew me to the music business. It's a very small business and very competitive. I would say there's less successful hip hop artists than there probably is athletes in just the NBA, which is one sport. So that's the way I look at it and that's the way I approached it and was like, "Okay, in order to be one of those successful artists or successful managers, we have to compete at a really high level." And I think I was drawn to that and I enjoyed it.


Daniel Scrivner:

I want to pause for a second to ask just a super basic question, which is, something I've never really had a great understanding is structurally how music works. So you have an artist, you have an artist manager, you have a record label. How does that relationship work and what's the record label responsible for on its own?


Chris Zarou:

The record label is, say they're responsible for a lot. Some are great, some aren't. So I guess at the basic level, the way I look at it, an artist's manager is kind of the CEO of an artist brand. So you oversee everything. You're instrumental in a lot of the major decisions being made, you hand pick part of the management team. That's your staff that you need. You also help them pull in an attorney. You help them pull in a business manager to handle their financials. And you're instrumental in choosing partners like a major record company or a major publishing company. And that's kind of how I look at what a manager does at a high level.


Chris Zarou:

And the label is supposed to plug in and be a marketing engine to help you with that. What I look at is kind of an extension through the manager, because as a manager, what people don't realize, you're not only managing the artists, you're managing the entire record company. You're having those conversations on a daily basis. There's very little opportunity for them to interface with the artist generally. It's going through the manager. So you're also managing entire staff of people. You need to keep them motivated. Like a conduit for the artist in so many different ways. And you want to pull a label in where you need to. And they have their staff, they have resources, and you want to be able to pull them and use them and hold them accountable, to be honest.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. It's super interesting. One of the things that fascinated me, and we're going to talk about this more in a little bit, because you've started investing and now you're raising a fund, which is really interesting. But obviously, there's some similarities which we are going to get more into, into music and investing, especially as I started prepping for this interview and thinking about it more. And one of those is just being able to, you have to be able to spot talent, you have to be able to embrace risk where you're basically making a bet on a talent. You're leaning into potential. This is incredibly similar to being in venture capital where you really have to be able to see the potential.


Daniel Scrivner:

You don't earn a return unless your investors do. In this case, you don't earn a return unless your artist does, unless your artists actually makes money. Music and investing start to feel very similar. Is that how you think about it, and am I kind of loosely getting that right in terms of maybe what attracts you to both being an artist manager and being an investor?


Chris Zarou:

Absolutely. And I didn't realize that until I started angel investing and I wrote my first check. Very quickly, I started to learn the similarities. And I can say the way that I look at investments, the stage in which I invest in businesses is probably where those similarities come from. And also, I didn't get into angel investing until, I was probably five years into my career. Was a little more self-aware about what my skill sets were. When I was starting out, I had no previous experience. I was still in college.


Chris Zarou:

So hadn't really worked. Hadn't really done anything. Again, I was working in retail at a mall. So I had to learn by operating on a daily basis. And I think over time, I started to realize, "Okay, that's probably something I'm actually good at and that's probably something I'm decent at." And after the first five years, you start to put together a list of like, "Okay, here's a few things that I know I'm good at and I have that little level of confidence in. And then here's a whole list of things that I'm not very good at."


Chris Zarou:

And I think what good operators and good managers do is you try to find people to partner with and work with who are, their strong suits are what your weaknesses are. And I think I've been able to do that. I brought on a business partner, I don't know, nine years ago, Harrison Remler, who I've worked with on numerous ventures to this day. Him and I are yin and yang. We're polar opposites in what our strengths and weaknesses are in business. So I think that's a first. And then once I became self-aware of those things, and then dove into the investing world, I started realizing, "Okay, my abilities as a talent manager, for one example is the ability to find talent."


Chris Zarou:

That's something I was doing consistently for years from a young age. A lot of the same characteristics and qualities that my most successful clients have, I was able to pinpoint in a lot of the founders that I invested in. And then as years have gone by, and those companies have become successful, you realize, there's overlap there. They share the same characteristics and qualities, and if I can identify those individuals and bet on them, probably going to be in a good early-stage investor.


Chris Zarou:

And then to the second piece of that, and the second bucket is one of the things I've been good at, and I've done consistently as a manager was always, had a unique ability to predict where the world is moving, generally before most people saw it. That was the only competitive advantage I had, bootstrapping the business was placing my clients where I knew attention would be, essentially why real estate was still cheap in that area. So partnering with FaZe Clan in 2011. People weren't talking about e-sports, but I knew this was going to be a huge audience and it was growing really quickly. And it made a lot of sense for Logic's audience. There was a lot of crossover.


Chris Zarou:

So if you can do those things, you can identify talent in individual. And if the business or business model that they're building aligned with my worldview on where I thought the world was moving, I would make an investment. And that's kind of the comfortable place that I fell into as an investor and have been doubling down on that. And now raising a fund in order to do that because I have a track record and I have a portfolio of 20 plus companies that I've been able to invest in, and it's focusing on that. So I think it just doubling down on what I've identified as my skill sets. That's all.


Daniel Scrivner:

It brings up a really interesting point where I get the sense, or I guess I would guess that as an artist manager, I'm sure that it feels at times there's infinite ideas, infinite things you could do. Infinite partnerships you could explore. Platforms you could make a bet on, or have a presence on. Do you have an intentional process for whittling that down? And it could be just intuitive, it could be something that you've articulated. But how do you weed through all the possibilities in order to identify what you actually want to do and what you think makes sense?


Chris Zarou:

You have to be aligned with the artist. I think a lot of times an artist can be super ambitious in whatever they want to do next. You have to be the adult in the room. And a lot of situations are like, "Okay, I love that. Can we talk about executing it realistically?" And I think that's what a good manager can do because you don't want to go down the path and waste time. And maybe it's an ambitious idea for an album rollout, and then you totally botch it and fail. It's probably not a great outcome for that album. So sure, it's not necessarily all my ideas, it's also working with the artists and figuring out how to bring a lot of their ideas to life in a reasonable way where you can execute it. And especially, timeframe, you can't roll an album out for 12 months. That's just doesn't happen. You can't sprinkle 12 songs over 12 months. You've got to also have a realistic approach to it all.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. Going back to Logic for a second, one of the things I thought was really interesting is, so I listened to the interview you [inaudible 00:24:08] on Guy Raz, How I Built This, which is fantastic. Anyone listening to this should listen to the interview. It's just so much fun. It's from back in 2018. And one of the things that you do talk about in that interview is, so we touched on this earlier, where you have these first few years with Logic, you're, "Stacking up small wins." You feels like there's no breakout moments. And yet you guys start getting pretty close to a breakout moment, which is when the first studio album drops.


Daniel Scrivner:

And you talked about how you would look at how other artists would break out and try to reverse engineer that. And I guess the question there is, what did you learn in that process, and is that still something that you try to do today? Or you always have a loop going in your brain?


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. That's something I definitely try to do today. And I think so much has changed in my very short career in the business. I think what I talk about is how, I say 100 years of disruption and innovation has happened in the music business, but it got squeezed into one decade. That's really how I approach it. And I started my career right at the beginning of that. So a lot of things, the way we'd approach breaking an artist in 2011, 2012 and 2013, they don't work together. They don't even apply because the way people consume music, the way people consume content has dramatically changed.


Chris Zarou:

So I think you constantly have to be a student and learn and watch and observe. And that's something I've always been good at. If I find something interesting or if I'm watching a new artist explode, I'll go deep and I'll want to know why. I'll usually get the manager on the phone, say, "Hey, listen..." It's small business, so I generally have relationships with everyone and could say, "Hey, listen, walk me through one or two things that you'd identify as a moment that helped. What were breakout moments for you and your artists. Explain to me why." And then, that's how I'll approach a new artist that I'm working with, "Hey, are we paying attention to Discord? We can build community on there." And things like that.


Chris Zarou:

And I also think that's what makes me a good investor is approaching it the same way. If a business or a business model is really interesting to me, I'll kind of dive deep on it. And like I said, go through the same thing. I'll talk to a handful of people and interrogate them and learn as much as I can. So the next time I see an opportunity that's familiar in this space, I can make a more educated investment because I went down that rabbit hole.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. No, I mean, that's huge overlap and investing where I think the idea that you should specialize in be narrow as opposed to being super broad and looking at a bunch of stuff. Because oftentimes you don't end up making investments and a lot of stuff you're seeing for the first time, but it's laying this foundation that you're going to be able to build on later. I want to ask the inverse question, which is, if I called you up on the phone and said, "I've been impressed by Logic's career in this massive breakout he had." What would you say are one of those two iconic moments are? Or if someone just thinking to themselves, trying to do that deconstruction of that success, what would you hope that they would take away? And what would you hope that they wouldn't point to and look at as a success?


Chris Zarou:

So the one thing I would take away as a breakout moment, there was really one of them that was just far and above all the others, it was his VMA performance for his single, 1-800-273-8255. That was an immediate overnight reaction. Woke up the next morning, it was the number one song in the world. Number one on Spotify globally, number one in the US, Apple Music, same thing. And then went on, on terror at Top 40 radio in the US. Turned into Grammy nomination for Song of the Year. Grammy performance. That was a moment. That was not overnight. That happened, I believe the VMAs was the end of August. So it was probably the last day of August, I believe was a Sunday. That song came out April 15th.


Chris Zarou:

It was several months in the making, trying to keep the song alive, trying to get creative, slowly build it. And it was that performance and that idea behind it that just blew everything up. But aside from that, it was compounding small wins. Yes, there was bigger moments. LeBron James would tweet something out, or Instagram, single out. You had those kinds of moments that would create larger awareness. Or you'd have a song that do really well for a couple of weeks, but not really crossover to become a big hit. That was the one moment. Honestly, it was just a lot of grit, a lot of hard work and a lot of compounding small wins. I think that embodies his career to this day.


Daniel Scrivner:

Which makes total sense. But I also feel like that's not the answer anyone wants to hear. We live in a world that's looking for silver bullets and like, "Tell me the one thing I can go and do in 30 minutes and that's what I want to take away." Not the, "It's an endless journey and I better just keep going."


Chris Zarou:

If I could jump in there, the example I could give you, and I use this a lot. Logic had that moment with 1-800, because he had worked for five years. That was on his third studio album. And we had done four mixed tapes together prior to that. He had perfected his craft. He had put in the 10,000 hours. So when we got that opportunity to perform it at the VMAs, he hit a fucking home run because he was prepared for that moment. If that moment came on his debut album, no shot, no way. He'll tell you, he would have shit his pants in the performance. That's what people don't realize.


Chris Zarou:

You don't look at LeBron James playing an NBA game and go, "Oh, I could do that." I laugh all the time. You can watch the Grammys and watch this artists who had put in the 10,000 hours just absolutely nail a performance, but you can have people sit at home and go, "I could do that." No. There's so much that goes on behind the scenes and the years and years and years of small wins compounding and adding up that enabled that moment. It's just so funny to me that, I don't know why people can look at an athlete and say, "Oh, they're special. They're superhuman. They've worked at that their whole life." But then you can look at an artist and think that you can just do it tomorrow.


Daniel Scrivner:

Especially someone rapping.


Chris Zarou:

Yes. It's something about human psychology. I don't know why that is, but it's funny.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. I want to explore this more later in the episode, but just one of the things that has struck me and I've been thinking about a lot is that music and investing are both power law businesses, where you're going to have these incredible outside successes that make up for a lot of failures and a bunch of losses. And so I want to ask one question, which is, when you guys booked that VMA performance, especially knowing that that song came on in April, was there any part of you that was like, "This is it. This is our moment." Or were you just like, "This is just another thing we're doing?"


Chris Zarou:

Just another thing. First of all, if everything went right, it was very complicated, complex performance with a bunch of extras, timing walking onstage. There was two artists featured on the song that each had their moments to come out. So many things could have went wrong, first of all. So you just hope that the performance goes right. And then if the performance was a home run, you can't predict what that turns into. Because then it was still another four-month journey to get that song to go number one at Top 40 radio. So you don't know.


Chris Zarou:

And then it was still another four months need to get the Grammy nomination. So I approached it like we did everything else. "Another opportunity, let's do the best we can." And that's it. And I think that's also what kept me sane when you're in your early and mid-20s, managing careers of artists, it was the approach of, "Let's do the best we can. I can't control anything else. Let's just approach us and make sure we're prepared and give the best effort we possibly can and move on to the next one." And that was always the approach.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. On the flip side, when you do have one of those amazing successes, what is your approach there? Do you embody, "This is great, but let's just keep moving." Is it like, "No, we need to celebrate this. This is a big deal." Obviously, it just seems like there's inverse psychologies. When you're in that kind of stacking small wins, you just need to keep moving forward. And then when you have a win, I feel like a lot of people can, I don't know, it just becomes tricky because you almost don't want to lean into that because you're so trained that those are so few and far between. So what's your approach there when there's just a massive win?


Chris Zarou:

I struggled, I still do to try to celebrate and enjoy that moment because it was always like, you can get on this never ending race of like, "Okay, well that was such a win. Now we're going to have these 20 opportunities. Let me go back into my battle station and make sure we're prepared for those." And that was kind of how it was for a decade example like that performance. You knew that moment and you knew that night something was going to happen. Did I know that it had started to become the number one song in the world the next morning? No. But I do. I immediately woke up, I canceled my flight back to New York. I'm like, "Nope, I can't be on a plane for six hours right now. Got to work. Got to grind. Got to figure out what I could turn this into."


Chris Zarou:

And I think we had that approach, and I can't say that it was wrong because it definitely played a role in us being successful, but we could have absolutely took some time to celebrate a lot of the wins that we had. And I think Kim and I both, we talk about it and we both wish we did a better job at that. But you also got to find the medium because when you do have a win, it's going to propel you to the next opportunity that you need to be ready for and make sure that you hit a home run at.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. Talking about that song, I mean, it's an incredible song. I was just listening to it on repeat. I was preparing for this interview. And one of the things I learned, kind of in all the prep is that, so this song, this was really important to Logic, to have a song about mental health, about depression, about suicide, about stuff that no one wants to talk about. And yet at the same time, he's hearing all of his fans talk about and bring up. And so obviously it's incredible to go and do a song about that and to do it in this beautiful and really vulnerable way.


Daniel Scrivner:

But there's this kind of masterful take where then the song, the title of the song is the number for the suicide prevention hotline. And one of the things he brought up was that, that was your idea to have that be there. Where did that idea come from? And when you were working on that song with Logic, was there any part of you that was like, "This is it. This is going to be a massive success."


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. I definitely didn't feel that way at any point about that song until probably it came out and I knew that there was something happening. On a daily basis, I kept feeling it. I actually called Logic and convinced him to make it a single. It was never even a single, it was just an album cut. And where the idea came from, I'm very hands-on with the marketing. I think it's one of my few strong suits, marketing and branding. And when I was approaching that song, when I had my marketing hat on, I kept reminding myself to be authentic because this is such a special subject that you didn't want to seem like you were commercializing it in any way, shape or form.


Chris Zarou:

So my approach was, how do you approach this song and this rollout and be super genuine and super authentic to the subject matter of the song? I was like, "Well, what better way to do it than highlight the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline?" So I had the idea, I kind of floated it by Logic. He loved it. And then it was like, "Okay, let me get ahold of the Lifeline because they're probably not going to be into this whatsoever." So I get on the phone, we did our first initial call and they were very open to it. And then I ended up speaking with the president of the Lifeline and they were like, "Loved it. Was amazing." So we said, "Cool." And we had permission and we made it the title.


Chris Zarou:

And like I said, so many things were stacked against that song from ever being successful out of the gate. Never bothered us because we just wanted to be genuine and approach it. For example, that ended up being a global hit. That number doesn't translate XUS. So that was it, out of the gate, was it-


Daniel Scrivner:

Doesn't become +1 [inaudible 00:34:47]?


Chris Zarou:

No, that's only a US number. So that was very complicated in terms of being a Top 40 pop radio and number one hit record, the song opens with someone rapping singing, I want to die today. That's not very family-friendly. And so many things were stacked against that song, that it was just a perfect storm of things happening. I think culturally, socially, what was going on in the world that it ended up making it, become a hit. And I think the performance solidified it. And what helped that performance was he ended up saying some really powerful words after the performance that I think just helped everything and was the cherry on top to it. And like I said, everything aligned socially, culturally to make it become what it was.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. It seems like the start in a lot of ways, honestly, of the mental health movement that now I think people are very open about it and are increasingly open about it. And there's everything from psychedelic therapy that people can embrace to just a lot. It's just feels like a topic that's no longer taboo. Did you get any feedback as you talk to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, did you ever have a followup conversation on like, did they see a massive influx in calls? I don't know, any stories that came out of just people that listened to that song?


Chris Zarou:

It was incredible. And I'll botch the stats if I say it, but we've put out a document that they actually shared with us. We went to there, they have a office down in New York City and the West Side. And Logic was in town, and I live here and we went in and we did a meeting in the middle of the campaign and they printed out a document, and we walked into one of the conference room, they gave it to us. And all these incredible stats on record call volume, record website volume, and 100x increase across the board and I actually asked permission, I said, "Can we put this document out?"


Chris Zarou:

So we literally did. We made them send it to us. And we put out on Logic social media. You can go out and find it, it's out there. And how powerful of an impact that it had. And forever what changed, I think is going to be his interaction with the public. And one example I can give you why it's completely different than a normal say celebrity or musician's interaction. I'm a big Knick fan. So he was in town for maybe as a Grammys. I don't know what he's here for. And the Knicks invited us to go courtside. And Logic is not really sports fan. I'm like, "Dude, come on, we got to go." So he goes, we sit in courtside.


Chris Zarou:

And the whole first quarter, maybe the whole first half, there's this woman a couple of rows behind us trying to get his attention. It's the middle of the games, it's very difficult. So at halftime, being the nice guy he does, he turns around and he goes to interact with her. She hands him a FaceTime with her son on it and he takes the phone and he's talking to son. The son is bawling his eyes out. And she tells a story that he was crippled with anxiety. He wasn't even able to go to school and that song completely changed his life and gave him the confidence to say, "Okay, well, if Logic is this successful guy and he's having this moment, I can get through it too."


Chris Zarou:

And that's what I realized it did because this is 2017. So there wasn't a lot of people, the level that Logic was at in terms of celebrity and awareness, that were confident and comfortable enough saying, "Well, hey, I struggle with these mental health things too. And I battle it and I get through it too." So it gave a lot of people, I think, hope to move on and try and get past whatever they were struggling with.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. I just want to pause there and let everyone process that. It's a pretty profound story. It's amazing. I want to ask one more question about Logic in this period. And then we'll shift to talking about music and investing. One of the things you brought up when we were preparing for this interview that I loved is, in your mind that Logic is an artist that's broken so many norms. And everything from sponsoring an e-sports team, to appearing on a Comic Con panel, to having a song about mental health and depression and rapping he's going to kill himself.


Daniel Scrivner:

Talk a little bit about that. One, it seems like that is very much just in Logic's DNA. And it also seems like it's in your DNA. Do you feel like that's just the two of you coming together and jamming on that, really taking it to the highest level?


Chris Zarou:

Totally. Very well said. I would agree with that, but we also didn't have the confidence to do it out of the gate. I tell people, they can go back because the cool part about an artist's career is everything is public. So I said, "Go look at Logic's debut album." And we try to fit in what we thought the box of hip hop was. He was doing his debut album. We got invited to do, he was a XXL Freshman. A XXL Freshman is a hip hop magazine, legendary hip hop magazine. And they pick a freshman class every year. It's kind of picking the who who's, who's next.


Chris Zarou:

And we go. We got a stylist and he's wearing this ridiculous jacket. He's wearing gold chains. And it was so not who he was. I knew him. He knew himself. He's nerdy. He's a nerd. He loves video games. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies. He loves anime. And couldn't talk about that, couldn't portray that because... And I didn't guide him to be himself because we thought we needed fit down in hip hop. Went through that experience, and it was in between his debut album and his sophomore album, where again, it was a reverse engineering someone else. And it was completely outside of hip hop. That's the era where Ed Sheeran started to explode. Become one of the biggest pop artists in the world.


Chris Zarou:

And I was like, "Look at this guy. He's kind of the antithesis of what a male pop artist is." And I was like, "He's so authentically human." And then I started realizing, Adele was having a moment. I was like, "Wow. The more people lean in at being authentic human themselves, the more success they're having." So that was my takeaway. So what I tried to do as a good manager is called Logic and started having those conversations. And I believe that inspired his sophomore album, which is called, The Incredible True Story. And it was this story he wrote, and there was a theme behind it. It was about anime and it was so him. It was like nerd hip hop.


Chris Zarou:

And that's when everything changed. His career just started to really take off to a different level. And we never looked back. Another one of ours, Jon Bellion, "Just be authentically to yourself and be human and be vulnerable." And then we started having tons of success with Jon. And my takeaway was, I think every boundary that we pushed... My takeaway from his career so far is I believe we've broadened what hip hop is as a genre. And I think there's a lot of artists out there today that are having success. And I won't name any names that Logic paved the way for by us being contrarian in our approach and being confident and brave enough to say, "Well, I'm a rapper, but I'm doing this too. I'm going to speak at Comic Con." So that's something I'm super proud of.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. It seems like in a lot of ways, it's just really broadened what hip hop is. And I guess, who's interested in it, who wants to listen to it, who thinks of it as [crosstalk 00:40:58].


Chris Zarou:

Well, that audience was there, we just exposed it. And said, "Hey, you can be a fan of me too, because we look the same, we dress the same, we like the same anime, we like the same nerd stuff. That's cool. Be a fan of Logic."


Daniel Scrivner:

That's cool. So I want to transition to talking about investing. And something I thought a lot about preparing for this interview is just the overlaps between the two. And we've already talked out a few of them earlier on, everything from spotting talent, embracing risk, leaning into the unknown in terms of making a bet on potential. But the other one is, they're both power law businesses. So you're going to have some massive successes. Great example is that song, 1-800-273-8255, that you don't think is going to be anything, ends up being literally the breakthrough moment you've been working through for years.


Daniel Scrivner:

And I've had that experience myself as an investor where I make an investment, and I don't know if I'd say I underlooked or underestimated or overlooked or whatever it is, but I just didn't see what this company ended up becoming. Have those moments when you've maybe underestimated something and you've had this massive success taught you anything, or given you more humility, or changed the way you kind of approach how to think about hits?


Chris Zarou:

Yeah, great question. I think nobody really knows. You can have your confidence in what you believe is your strengths and what you're good at. So what I try to do is just double down on that. And if I can do that, I believe the rest will take care of itself. I'm a very specific early stage investor with a very specific check size because it enables me to be nimble and squeezing competitive rounds because I believe I have a unique value add, from my experience, my network to founders, but I understand people.


Chris Zarou:

And it's very intuitive for me when I identify those founders and know that they have what it takes to achieve whatever grandiose ambition they're trying to build. For example, my first investment ever was a company called Negotiatus. And I'm dear friends with both the co-founders now. They're amazing, amazing guys. My business partner, Harrison, bumped into one of the co-founders in his laundry room, in his apartment complex.


Daniel Scrivner:

Serendipity.


Chris Zarou:

Serendipity. And he goes, "Oh, my partner, Chris will love you. Come in sir." They came to the office one night, we had a couple bud lights. I don't know, we were probably there for two and a half hours going back and forth. And basically, from that meeting forward, I just begged them to let me invest off of them. It was a very early idea of what their business was, it was their seed round. So there wasn't really a business there yet. That was me just betting on these guys that they're just complete winners, they're going to be able to execute. They're so impressive. They're brilliant.


Chris Zarou:

I ended up doubling down on that. I did the Series A. They're on their way to becoming a unicorn, four and a half years later, but that was my level of confidence. I know I can win if I play the game that I'm good at. So that's kind of always been my approach and believing in my ability to say, "Okay, I understand consumer behavior. I understand where the world is moving." Because I think I'm constantly curious. I go down these rabbit holes, I meet with people who are much more knowledgeable about a certain area than I am and I pepper them with questions. So then I can see around that corner of where I think the world's going in this space and just try to stay within that. And that gives me the confidence.


Chris Zarou:

And there's definitely been investments that I've underestimated that have been great. And I don't know if it's taught me anything because I do realize we're all human, nobody knows everything. And then there's certain things where, throughout my career timing is everything. If 1-800 had happened 12, 18 months prior, probably wouldn't have worked. If it happened on his debut of sophomore album, probably wouldn't have worked. So I step back sometimes after I have a successful investment and like, "Okay, am I that good, or is the timing right in the world right now?" It's probably a mix of everything. So you got to stay humble, I think, in it all.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. I think that's the right approach because the world's super complex. There's so much stuff that's not known. You never know how something's going to play out. I mean, I've had that experience so many times with investments where you just, nowhere in your wildest dreams, could you imagine what this... I had that experience at Square. And I joined Square super early and I thought that this was an interesting idea that had huge potential. Did I ever think it would be the company that it is today? Absolutely not, but that what's amazing. And I think that's one of the gifts that we get as investors is you get to see that play out.


Daniel Scrivner:

And I think that gives you a tremendous amount of humility. And it also, I think gives you a lot of intellectual curiosity because you don't want to underestimate something. I feel like that's why venture capitalists are so much more up to embrace crypto, which seems like this radical idea that most people want to shit on.


Chris Zarou:

Sure, exactly.


Daniel Scrivner:

You start making these kind of initial investments. When did you decide that, "Okay. I want to do this in a bigger way and I want to start raising a fund?"


Chris Zarou:

I think when I had the confidence in my approach and my thesis as an investor, I wanted to get there before I asked anyone for their money and to be a fiduciary. And four years, I was like, "okay, I got it." I stepped back. I looked at my portfolio. I looked at my ability to do it, my ability to do it at scale, the relationships I built with founders, the relationships I've built with people like yourself in this space to the point where I said, "Okay, now I can go out and raise a fund." So that's something that I'm in the process and I'm embarking on right now.


Chris Zarou:

It's a great new challenge and I'm still sticking to what I know is my wheelhouse. So that approach has not changed. I'm raising a certain size fund so I can continue to write the certain size checks that I've had, success writing in the types of companies and founders that I've had success betting on it. That's it. Nothing's going to change.


Daniel Scrivner:

So that's somewhat unusual. I love that you're doing that. I feel like it's really common for people to almost get overconfident. They don't really think it in their minds, but it's almost overreaching. Someone's not saying, "Let me do what I've been successful doing." They're saying instead, "Okay, I've done that now I'm going to go do this thing I haven't done before." Does that come from lessons you've learned managing artists or is that just somewhere in your DNA, one step at a time?


Chris Zarou:

100%. I think if you have the discipline to just continue to stay focused on what you're good at, the way I actually gave buddy of mine, the analogy when I was explaining my approach and stepping into this new arena of investing, over the course of a decade I realized, and I'll give sports analogies because I love sports. I realized my approach to business is I'm Stephen Curry. It means I'm really good at shooting three pointers. The way I'm looking at stepping an adventure, particularly doubling down on those two buckets of what I've identified as my skill set, I'm just playing a three-point shooting, contest and perpetuity. That's all I'm doing.


Chris Zarou:

I'm just tripling down on what I know and have the confidence that I'm good at because I have a 10-year track record of consistently doing that. Anytime I step out of that, and I'm not shooting three pointers, I don't play well. So I'm like, "Okay, let's not do that." So I'm just tripling down on that. And it's took me a better part of a decade to figure out what that is.


Daniel Scrivner:

I love that analogy. One of the things you and I talked about that I want to explore a little bit is, I think that you have a fascinating window that really no other investor has by being an artist manager, because you've had this window now for a decade plus with one of the biggest artists that's taken off into culture, into music, into changes in technology, into changes in consumer behavior. Talk a little bit about what you've learned through that window and then where that leans you to be able to spot opportunities as an investor.


Chris Zarou:

It's something that gives me such a unique insight on a daily basis. As the world, because of the internet and technology is changing so rapidly and so dramatically, I've seven clients in the management company. As were going through numerous single campaigns, album campaigns, we're trying all new things and we're testing on a daily basis and I'm identifying what works, what doesn't work.


Chris Zarou:

That just gives me a really unique insight into consumer behavior, which I believe has made me a better and will make me a better investor on a daily basis because I know what to look at and what companies to invest in. Are they going to be able to get that product or business off the ground? The way consumers are, whether it's a creator economy or the attention economy, the way that they're behaving right now, is that going to work? Is that going to work in 18 months, 24 months, 36 months?


Chris Zarou:

And I think I constantly think about that, and also stepping back and looking at as a whole, for example, one thing I would've said to you 24 months ago is consumers are stubborn. They don't like to change and whatever you think is going to happen is going to happen slower. The pandemic has completely changed my insight into that because I realized how quick we are as humans to adapt and change. We did it relatively overnight when the pandemic started, our entire behavior. So now you look at Web3, 24 months ago, I would've said, "Slow down. Everyone's getting excited. It's going to take a little bit longer." But now, because I was able to witness that and step back and analyze it the way that I look at consumer behavior, I'm like, "Okay, Web3 is probably going to happen quicker than I think it is. I should start paying attention to the space a little deeper." That's kind of my thought exercise.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. I want to ask you a closing question, which is, this has been an amazing conversation and I could talk for 30 more minutes. I want to be respectful of your time. So the question I want to ask is, going back to the experience you've had with Logic, but you have many other successful artists now. So I guess the question is really, as you reflect back on the last decade plus, where you were breaking into a new industry, finding these artists that were unknown, helping them be able to achieve their ambitions and realize their ambitions, what has that taught you about success? What are maybe the biggest positive lessons you learned and what are some of the painful lessons that you've learned on that time?


Chris Zarou:

I mean, you can never underestimate how difficult it's going to be. I had no idea what being an entrepreneur was and what that looks like on a daily basis. I make jokes a lot, but it's like getting punched in the face every day. Because you're constantly juggling putting out fires. You never know what's going to happen. And when you're the number one guy, there's no one to point blame at. It's all on you. And if you want to be a founder, you have to know that that's what you're taking on. And it takes a really special individual to build that.


Chris Zarou:

And I think that's probably my biggest takeaway from success. And like I said earlier in this conversation, you step back and you look at LeBron James, you have no idea what he's gone through. You have no idea when he has a rough game. The backlash and bullshit that he has to deal with. I mean how he gets through it, people don't realize. They just see the amazing moments when he wins a championship. You have no idea what he went through to get there.


Daniel Scrivner:

Where can people go to find Visionary Music Group, to follow you? And I guess, is there a website for the fund or if people are interested, how can they find that?


Chris Zarou:

We have not publicly announced the fund yet. It'll be coming very, very soon. So there we'll be a website. I haven't publicly said a name or anything just yet. Visionary Music Group, you could just Google it. You could find all the artists. Go down that rabbit hole. They're really, really talented, special artists. And then for me, Twitter's probably the best space. It's just, @ChrisZarou. And I'd love to chat if you want to hit me or DM me. I think, Daniel, that's how we met over Twitter DM.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yes. That's true. Thank you so much, Chris. This has been just a really special, amazing conversation. One of my favorites today by far.


Chris Zarou:

My pleasure.





20 Minute Playbook: Chris Zarou of Visionary Music Group


Daniel Scrivner:

Chris Zarou, thank you so much for coming on 20 Minute Playbook. I'm super excited to have you.


Chris Zarou:

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.


Daniel Scrivner:

This should be a lot of fun. It's a totally different interview than our longform one. This shows a little bit faster pace. So I'll ask you the same 10 questions we ask every guest. Let's jump in it. The first one, we always ask every guest, if there's something you've been excited or fascinated about recently. Just like, what's been living in your brain that you can't stop thinking about?


Chris Zarou:

This wasn't recent. It's probably been 18-month fascination for me. I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, which led me to crypto, which led me to Web3. So that curiosity has kind of evolved. But I'm just enamored by it. I can see the ways it's going to change everything. It's so exciting to me, the disruption that it's going to create, which is better for everyone. So it's probably just entirely Web3, if I could boil it down to one thing. I don't have enough time in my day to learn as much as I want to learn. But I'm very excited about that space.


Daniel Scrivner:

That's a deep, deep, deep rabbit hole [crosstalk 00:53:22].


Chris Zarou:

Oh, it's so deep. It is.


Daniel Scrivner:

In the last interview we had, you talked a little about your process for learning. And I feel like I can't not ask you to share a little bit of that here. So if we could maybe just roll back the tapes on whether it's Bitcoin, whether it's Web3, whether it's DeFi stuff, you're interested in this. What is your process for taking that from zero to one and feeling like you really understand it and you're going down the rabbit hole?


Chris Zarou:

Sure. I try to reach it in my network and find a connection or an introduction to what I've identified as subject matter experts in the space. And I think you'd be surprised, and maybe people aren't fortunate to have a network that I've been fortunate enough to build over the decade of my career. I think you'd be surprised is cold reaching out to somebody, they love to talk about what their passion is. And people love to talk about what they love. And I think just being able to sit across from them over Zoom, on a phone call and I just pepper them with questions that I have going on in my head.


Chris Zarou:

And maybe it's, when I started to develop my thesis on what I believe Bitcoin was going to represent in the world, talking to three or four or five of the people that I thought were experts on the subject. Basically, spitballing them my thesis and seeing if they thought that was right, which it could be that simple. And I don't care how I'm viewed. If I'm looked as ignorant or I'm looked at as silly or stupid, it doesn't bother me. I'm going into that conversation completely selfishly to try and learn everything I can about what I'm interested in.


Daniel Scrivner:

And so coming out of that, I'm sure you leave with so many questions, so many sites to visit, so many things to go and pull up. Do you then also have some process where you're focused on finding height? Because I feel like there's two phases. There's like, you're kicking it off and you're really trying to understand it. And then there's the, now I need to keep my pulse on this thing. What is your approach to that?


Chris Zarou:

Yeah, I think keep my pulse, I care less about because once I fundamentally believe I understand something, I can kind of let it go and move on to something else. So I'm not in daily Bitcoin stuff as I used to be because I spent months going down that rabbit hole and learning everything I needed to learn.


Daniel Scrivner:

And that frees you up for the next thing?


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. And then it's compounding knowledge because then maybe I'll understand other stuff up in the Web3 space much better. Then I went down the Ethereum rabbit hole and started it. It's just compounding.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. And there's new rabbit hole is every day. It's in crypto?


Chris Zarou:

Sure.


Daniel Scrivner:

I'm super interested to hear your answer to this. So one of the things that we always ask every guest, talk a little bit about their superpowers, superpowers, and then also just some of the things they've struggled with. And so in that first camp, what do you think of as your super power? And this can be you as a manager or this can be you as an investor, you as just Chris Zarou. And how do you harness those strengths?


Chris Zarou:

If I had to boil it down to one thing, not just as a manager, I think me as a human being, which has enabled any piece of business success that I was able to have, it's probably emotional intelligence. It's kind of how I navigate my daily life from people that I want to surround myself with, to people that I call friends, to founders that I invest in, to clients that I want to manage. It's simply just reading people. I have this intuitive way of doing it from reading situations.


Chris Zarou:

When I was stepping into the music business at 19, 20 years old, completely blind in business in general, but even how the music business has worked, I just kind of navigated it using my intuition and IQ. That kind of led me to everything, like picking clients. A lot of my clients are really disciplined, really hardworking people. And there would be people in the music business who would made comments, would go, "Oh, you're so lucky." Well, no, I'm not. Really, I chose who I wanted to work with. It's not a coincidence. I'd to say emotional intelligence is number one for me.


Daniel Scrivner:

Super interesting. No one has given that answer. On the flip side, we all have things that we struggle with, and this could be just the way your brain's wired, or just the way you like to work, it could be the industry that you find yourself in. What do you feel like you've struggled with and how have you either improved on those things or worked around those things over time?


Chris Zarou:

If I had to come up with one thing, I'd probably say, being organized. I tend to have a monkey mind a little bit and jump all over the place. So I've had to create that discipline out of feeling that I owe it to people who work for me, owe it to my clients. I can't let things slip through the cracks. So that's something, from when I first started to now, I've completely, it has been night and day in terms of... I've put things in my life in terms of just keeping track of tasks and notes. And I play inbox zero now, which is funny because there was periods in my career when it was just the madness of it. I didn't do email at all. I know that sounds funny, but if someone wanted to get a hold of me, they would have to text or call me. I just couldn't keep up with it. It was too much. I felt it slowed me down. And to the evolution of it now I play inbox zero.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah, it sounds like now you've got a lot more discipline, I guess. And maybe that's another way of saying it. You just have a lot more discipline about process.


Chris Zarou:

When I started I was a kid. So I've gone through a lot of maturity too.


Daniel Scrivner:

Unsurprising. On the habiting routine side, and you can kind of take this in two veins. I think one could be, do you have set habits and routines that you've refined over time that you do every day? And if not, then are there things you've experimented with that you would tell others, "This was great. This had a great impact on my life. This had a great impact on my performance." How do you think about that?


Chris Zarou:

The one under lying thing that has been constant, it's dramatically helped me and every aspect of my life, especially businesses, just morning fitness time. So I've always been into fitness and now I've become a distance runner. So I'll do, minimum an hour, maybe an hour and a half run in the morning that centers me. I generally get up, will have a coffee, take 30 minutes to get ready and then I'm out the door. And that has been imperative to me because it's one of the only times, it's less about the fitness. I really enjoy feeling fit. I really enjoy feeling healthy. But for me it's more about the mental health component of it.


Chris Zarou:

I couldn't explain or articulate why it was so important to me throughout my career. It was my one non-negotiable. I don't care. I haven't took a breakfast meeting, God, in 10 years maybe. It's just not negotiable for me. And I couldn't figure out why it was so important. What I realized is, being an entrepreneur or just even being a human being in 2021, you're constantly being pinged. And it was the one time in my day where my thoughts got to just roam freely. And I realized, I thought out issues in my life and career and business and found solutions just by being able to think freely without being pinged.


Chris Zarou:

Well, you don't realize when you have your phone attached to you, or you're sitting in front of your computer and your emails are popping up, or your text message are popping up, you can't even have a free train of thought because you're constantly getting pulled out of that moment. So it's like getting to that flow state every day is so productive for me that it's a non-negotiable.


Daniel Scrivner:

Do you run and listen to music or do you run and just, with nothing, no phone, no music?


Chris Zarou:

50-50, depending on how I'm feeling. So I do podcasts or I do music. If I found myself lacking the motivation that day, I'll generally do music. If today, where I have a high, low motivation, I can do a podcast. And then I'm also fluid. If I'm listening to the podcast, because I really try to take it in, and I notice my thoughts are just going and I'm tuning out of the podcast, I'll flip over to music.


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, we talked about this non-negotiable of running in the morning. On fitness, is there anything you do with diet and sleep that's been an amazing unlock for you and, or how has that evolved over time, just your approach to fitness in general?


Chris Zarou:

Great. I've always tried to be very conscious of my diet. And I think when you're working out to the level and degree that I do it, so I did my first marathon in 2019. I also lift several times a week. There's a lot of days a week. I know it sounds odd, I work out twice. I'll do two days. That was a habit that I started during COVID because of the extra downtime that I had, that I realized has improved my life so much, and also my business so much that I didn't want to let it go. So a couple days a week, I don't take a lunch and I'll use a lunch hour to go lift. And then in terms of sleep is a area of my adult life that I've tremendously struggled with.


Chris Zarou:

And I think it's part of what I just said about a monkey brain. It's hard to shut down and wind down for me. So one of the things that has dramatically helped me, and this may sound odd. I can't stop talking about it to people in my life because it's such an easy hack, is getting sunlight early in the morning directly into your eyes. So I live in Manhattan. I'll go on my balcony and have a coffee all year round. And I started doing this about a year ago, and it's been the only thing that has been able to help my sleep schedule. I know it sounds funny. It helps you set your circadian rhythm. So what I noticed is at night, I'll actually be tired and it's easier for me to fall asleep. When, if I wasn't getting that sunlight in the morning, I tended to feel tired at night.


Daniel Scrivner:

Is there a set amount of time? And are you looking at the sun [crosstalk 01:01:44]?


Chris Zarou:

No, you're just making sure that there's sunlight in eyes. If it's cloudy day, it doesn't matter. 10 minutes is all you need. It was actually from a neuroscientist that I follow who has a great podcast. His name is Andrew Huberman, where he gives that advice out a lot. And I tried it and it worked tremendously.


Daniel Scrivner:

I'm blanking on the name of the artist, Rick Rubin, I think talked about doing that as well too. And that was a major unlock for him. It just goes to show how amazing your body is this fine-tuned machine, you just need to give it the right inputs. Making sure it knows that the day started. On the idea side, you talked about podcasts, what books and podcasts have had a biggest impact on the way you thinking work? And is there any that you give away to others, recommend?


Chris Zarou:

Yeah, there's a handful of them. I'm not a huge reader, but there's actually been one book that I would say has profoundly changed my life. It's called Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi. And it's about the power of networking. And I didn't realize the power of it. I tended to be head down focused all the time. And one of the issues that I found, it was coming from a place of insecurity, where I wouldn't network with people as much, because I feel like I wasn't accomplished and couldn't add any value to their lives.


Chris Zarou:

And what I realize now, is being a little further along in my career, I'll take meetings all the time. If a young person reaches out, wants to get together, wants this, I may even leave that meeting with just the energy from them and I got something out of it. And I didn't realize, that is a beautiful part about being collaborative and networking with people. And that book had completely opened my eyes to it. it changed my life, changed my business. And podcast is a handful, and that's like the best, how I built this, that I'll kind of go through. Anthony Pompliano has a great podcast that I really enjoy. This is a handful of them.


Daniel Scrivner:

That's awesome. I love that you brought up Never Eat Alone because that's a book that I believe I have. I don't think I have ever read it. So [crosstalk 01:03:27] good nudge.


Chris Zarou:

It's fantastic.


Daniel Scrivner:

On the software and tool side, you talked about inbox zero. Is there just broadly in tools, this could be pieces of software, like Superhuman Notion. This can be physical. Just things that you rely on. What do you use? And what's helpful to you in terms of tools?


Chris Zarou:

I've started. Like I said, inbox zero is a newer thing. It's probably two and a half, three years now. What I realized that did, it lessens my anxiety around everything that's going on in my business life. I have a lot of stuff going on and I feel like I'm super well aware of everything when I'm at inbox zero and it's helped me kind of find that balance, and just to be honest, be more productive. And in terms of task, I use a pen and paper. It's right here on my desk. I'm very old school with that. It works for me. It really does. It's a little to do checklist for me and I keep it on a daily basis. When it's done, I'll move on to a fresh page.


Daniel Scrivner:

I found myself switching to that a couple of years ago. And I still will use Things, which is the app that I use just to be able to put stuff in almost to get it out of my mind if I'm just not near that piece of paper, but there's something, just one really gratifying about being able to check something off physically and seeing that page start to fill up throughout the day. Is that what you like about it? What is it that you think is so helpful about using pen and paper?


Chris Zarou:

Yeah. Because it's kind of a business journal of my week. The same paper is in front of me, the same notepad is in front of me when I'm on calls. And I might jot certain things down. And it could be an issue if you're not in front of it all the time. So one of the things that I've done is I email myself. So if I'm out and about, and I have something that I need to remember or remind myself of, I just drop myself an email. So when I am going through my email, when I'm in front of my computer, I could jot whatever I need to down on that paper.


Daniel Scrivner:

One question that we like to ask everyone is, which is a question that I just want to ask it because I wish this was a more common conversation, which is, obviously, on this show, we try to get people that have achieved incredible success in something. And one of the insights there is everybody fails. And why aren't we asking people to share a failure more often? And so this is my favorite question and it really is just really broadly, if you can share a favorite failure. And I think what we're trying to get across there is something that I'm sure in the moment was probably painful, but that after the fact, that just ended up being really valuable experience or propelled you in a better direction. Is there anything there?


Chris Zarou:

Listen, there was hundreds of them, millions of them throughout my career. I was fortunate enough not to make a tragic mistake in any one of my client's careers. I'm very grateful for that. I don't know if there's one in particular that stands out to me. I think, so I can answer in a different way, I think part of what's played into my success, I have zero fear failure. Just zero. Has never crosses my mind, does not bother me, has never deterred me from starting anything. And I think that's part of the reason I've been successful is I will dive in without any fear of failure. And that's probably why I've failed so much because the more you're trying things, the more you're trying to build, I think the more you're going to fail. And to me, I look at it as a positive thing because I learned so much from it. Right?


Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. I think that actually makes a ton of sense because that's also why you're like, "That's not a failure. I tried it, just didn't work." It's like, it's not even in your vocabulary.


Chris Zarou:

Sure. Sure. And I have this unique ability, and my business partner, Harrison reminds me a lot. Literally, probably why I can't answer the question right. I don't think about it ever again. It's over. Just move on.


Daniel Scrivner:

It's amazing. I wish I had that. On the success side, how do you think about success and just what that means to you personally? And do you have a definition of success for yourself? And that can be super loose, can be super refined.


Chris Zarou:

Success means something different to everyone. Personal life success for me is dramatically different from my business success. But I think where I'm at now in my life and career, if I can feel like I'm competing in a field and get this competitiveness out every single day and truly enjoy the process of it, that is success to me. It's not attached to any financial outcome. It's literally like, can I achieve both those things on a daily basis? Not every day is going to look that way. Am I feeling like I'm being competitive in this field that I'm playing in? And number two, am I enjoying the process? That's it.


Daniel Scrivner:

I think that's kind of a wonderful combination. Last question, what are you most grateful for in this phase of your life?


Chris Zarou:

My family and friends. I think that should be everybody's answer coming out of the year that was COVID. That's certainly reminded me and highlighted that for me.


Daniel Scrivner:

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I know anyone can find you on Twitter, @ChrisZarou. You're also at Visionary Music Group. People can Google that, people can find that. This has been a ton of fun. Thank you so much for coming on 20 Minute Playbook.


Chris Zarou:

Thank you.







On Outlier Academy, Daniel Scrivner explores the tactics, routines, and habits of world-class performers working at the edge—in business, investing, entertainment, and more. In each episode, he decodes what they've mastered and what they've learned along the way. Start learning from the world’s best today. 

Explore all episodes of Outlier Academy, be the first to hear about new episodes, and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Daniel Scrivner and Mighty Publishing LLC own the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of the Outlier Academy podcast, with all rights reserved, including Daniel’s right of publicity.

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