All About The Joy
All About The Joy is a weekly hang-out with friends in the neighborhood! We share insight, advice, funny-isms and we choose to always try and find the positive, the silver lining, the "light" in all of it. AATJ comes from the simple concept that at the end of the day we all want to have more JOY than not. So, this is a cool place to unwind, have a laugh and share some time with friends!
All About The Joy
Josh Simons: From Indie Music Roots to Tech CEO Building Creative Communities
Josh Simons' journey from musician to tech entrepreneur reveals the fascinating intersection of creativity and technology. As a child surrounded by music after losing his father at age two, Simons found comfort and direction in musical expression. This early passion took him from managing bands in high school to performing internationally, though his path was never conventional.
The pivotal moment came when Simons, attempting to rebuild his music career in England, recognized a crucial gap in the creative ecosystem. While platforms existed for artists to build fan bases, nothing connected creative professionals directly with each other. This realization sparked the creation of Vampr, what Simons calls "the LinkedIn for creatives" - a place where musicians, producers, videographers, and all manner of creative professionals could find each other based on highly specific attributes like musical influences, skills, location, and experience level.
What distinguishes Simons' approach is his commitment to community over gatekeeping. Unlike platforms that filter users based on perceived quality, Vamper welcomes all creatives, using sophisticated algorithms to match people of similar skill levels and interests. This philosophy extends to his broader business vision with Vinyl Group, which now encompasses media properties like Rolling Stone Australia alongside technology ventures including Vampr.
Perhaps most inspiring is Simons' perspective on success. "If your version of success is just being able to do what you love and earn enough to pay the bills, everything above that is a bonus," he shares. This grounded outlook has allowed him to navigate the unpredictable waters of both the music and tech industries while maintaining authentic connections to the creative communities he serves.
Whether you're a creative professional seeking collaboration, an entrepreneur building community-focused platforms, or simply someone searching for the intersection of passion and career, Simons' story offers valuable insights on building meaningful connections in an increasingly digital world. Connect with Josh and explore how platforms like Vampr and Vinyl.group are reshaping the creative landscape for professionals worldwide.
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Music By Geovane Bruno, Moments, 3481
Editing by Team A-J
Host, Carmen Lezeth
DISCLAIMER: As always, please do your own research and understand that the opinions in this podcast and livestream are meant for entertainment purposes only. States and other areas may have different rules and regulations governing certain aspects discussed in this podcast. Nothing in our podcast or livestream is meant to be medical or legal advice. Please use common sense, and when in doubt, ask a professional for advice, assistance, help and guidance.
Hey everyone, welcome to All About the Joy, the private lounge. We have Rick Costa in the house, cynthia Lopez in the house and our guest, josh, and I'm going to mess up your name, but I'm going to try. Josh Simons, right, Simons.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Simons very close.
Carmen Lezeth:Simons, okay, it's so nice to meet you. I always like to tell people how I know our guests, but I actually don't know you. Julia reached out to us because I guess she listened to our podcast.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, julie's my assistant and I asked her about a year ago to start listening to more and more podcasts that might cover things that we like to talk about and that I might be valuable in in some way, and I think she's doing a great job. But, yeah, that's how we like to talk about and that I might be valuable in in some way, and I think she's doing a great job. But yeah, that's how we came to be.
Carmen Lezeth:Well, we're so glad to have you on the show, and I did as much research as I could, and so didn't Rick and Cynthia. So we have a million questions, but the first one I want to start with is you were a musician, or you're still a musician, and I see guitars in the background, so can you just tell us a little bit about that before we get into how you became the CEO of vinyl? And creating vamper. Do you say vamper?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:yeah, that's, it's, however. It's however you want to say, but that that would be considered correct in 190 countries um yeah so I I, I, um, yeah, I started in a.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Well, you know, actually I'll go back a step. So I, I started managing friends bands when I was in high school and, um, I really loved some of the music they were making but, um, where I wanted to take them probably a bit more commercial, they wanted to be indie and cool, and that's why they got the girls and I didn't. And I, I, I wanted to make something a bit more, something that you might hear on the radio. So I, I ended up stopping management and actually just making the music myself, and that actually, I mean it wasn't a conventional career path in that it broke really quickly. So it got on the radio and we started playing festivals and touring within the first six months, which is unusual.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:And then it kind of stopped and started a lot because I would pursue other things like technology companies and just other little ventures, and so it went in these weird fits and bursts, but it's taken me around the world. It brought me to America, it became a citizen of that great country and it introduced me to my wife and all these wonderful things, and so that's, yeah, in a nutshell, that's kind of my playing career. But then that obviously then led to other things that we'll probably talk about today, such as running a big technology music group and things like that.
Carmen Lezeth:Right, Well, I'll just say, you know we don't really do things conventional here, Although last time we had someone on the show I read their entire resume. It was pretty crazy, but it was also cool.
Carmen Lezeth:I will say this for you Pretty crazy, but it was also cool. Okay, I will say this for you. You are the CEO of Vinyl Group and the founder of Vampyr, a platform that's been called the LinkedIn of Creatives, which I found interesting, but it's really something more human than that. You're a former musician turned tech entrepreneur. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Someone sent you the right information or you're a really good researcher.
Cynthia Lopez :She's a really good researcher.
Carmen Lezeth:I'm a really good researcher. But also she did send me your bio and then all your links, but I'm not done. Baby, Hold on one second.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:All right all right.
Carmen Lezeth:You've raised millions, you've acquired iconic media brands um. You've stayed throughout that whole thing, you've stayed pretty focused on one thing and this is gonna say, I think you're gonna say, stayed humble.
Carmen Lezeth:I was like, yeah, okay, no I don't think you're, I'm just kidding. Um, you've stayed focused on one thing, which is empowering artists and then trying to build communities, and that's what I think. Julia, your executive assistant she's brilliant, by the way, only in the way that she's interacted and she communicates, and because I work with so many people who are executive assistants and I fired them all the time, but that's a side thing, but I think that's what she saw. She's my first.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:EA, but I think that's what she saw. That was probably. She's my first EA. Really, I've held off having one for about 10 years because, for various reasons, I also just believe you can do most of it yourself. But then I got so busy to a point that I was like no, no, it's actually becoming detrimental not having one.
Carmen Lezeth:Let's give her props. It takes a vote of one. Yeah, let's props, props, yeah, but yeah, one. Yeah, let's props, props, um, but yeah. But I think that's what we do is we're trying to build community around all different types of subjects or whatever, and I think that's the connection. So we're excited to have you here thank you so much cynthia. I think you had a question, yes, um what inspired you to to build vampir?
Cynthia Lopez :what makes it different from other, like social platforms?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:yeah, thank, that's a good question. I was, um, thinking back, I think, as in england and we might so my band had had some like success in australia and, um, and then, like a lot of australians, um, when you start to break in a market that's quite small, like that, you go. Can I do this in a bigger country? Because I could probably make a bit more money and blah, blah, blah, reach more people, and I'm english like I was born there, so it made sense to give it a crack there. At least on paper it made sense.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:And then what everyone underestimates when they move for, you know, for an artistic endeavor often is you're starting from square one in any given city, so you probably don't have a network around you of folks in that space. You certainly wouldn't have access to, say, managers or publishers or producers or promoters I don't know why they all start with P, but these are people that can sort of get your career, I guess, into that next level. And I think you underestimate or take for granted that the first sort of, let's say, the years between the ages of I don't know 15 and 20, even though you're still a kid and you're probably living at home, you're still building your network during that time, and so that's kind of it's almost free time that you get. And then when you're an adult and you're paying rent and you've got to earn a living and all that stuff, you don't get that free time a second time. So it's a long way of saying went to another country, couldn't or didn't have the time to build the career a second time over.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:And I and I sat back and reflected on it and thought, well, technology's done a great job of making it easy to build a fan base. You know, anyone can start an instagram account, youtube channel, you can put your music out there through cd baby, and you can. There's all sorts of ways you can sort of build your, your audience. But there's no tool in the music industry to connect professionals one-to-one. And that was the sort of light bulb. That was like, well, surely someone, if they haven't built it, should be thinking about it or starting to build it. And so then I just kind of got on with it and that was the start of vamper. And it wasn't like a calculated thing or aha, we're gonna go and conquer the world. Anything like that was just like this might be a useful idea.
Carmen Lezeth:And then we just started building can you tell people why it's called vamper?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:yeah, so the vamp in music is to like jam around a set of ideas, usually like a chord progression or um, like a rhythm, over and over again in a bit of a loop, until everyone sort of starts to get into it and you start creating something really out of nothing, and so that's to vamp. And then it was 2015 and everything had an r at the end of it, so it was tinder and tumblr and um, and, and so we just were very uncreative in that respect.
Carmen Lezeth:I was trying to figure it out and like I'm glad I was, like I'm just gonna give up on that for a moment yeah, no, it's it's pretty yeah, what.
Rick Costa:How old were you when you kind of thought like music is going to be the trajectory of my life?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:probably about the age of four, because my parents both were in the music industry and my grandparents in quite senior roles and my father passed away when I was two. So a lot of very raw memories from not quite two but certainly the ages of three or four. Quite visceral memories of basically me and my twin brother living in England with a single mum who had to move her kids back to Australia because her English partner had just passed away. It was such obviously a formative time but in and amongst all that was this family that was just immersed in the music industry and we coped as a unit, the three of us, by listening to old records and mum introduced us to like Diana Ross and the Supremes and like Tubular Bells, which is like an instrumental album, and there's just all these old sort of classics Toto, led Zeppelin, I could go on for hours.
Carmen Lezeth:Toto is a big deal in Europe, right.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we deal here with like two singles or something.
Carmen Lezeth:Yeah, the two big singles, yeah, Africa Wow that's a name I haven't heard in a while. Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:But no, so that was just around. And so then you know, again we were this kind of protective unit of three that we're just trying to get through a really rough time for any family and and you know, we were such young kids and so I suppose my mom was trying to do things to give us hope and and, um, not and I don't mean it wasn't negative, by the way it was a really actually kind of amazing time. As kids we had no idea that it was an unusual upbringing, um, but she just surrounded the household with music and stories from the industry, and pianos and and acoustic, you know, guitars and things were just around the house and so it just it felt like it was a given. It was never, it wasn't, I wasn't forced into it, but at the same time it was like never really a choice. It was like you're gonna be somehow, you're gonna be involved. How did you?
Carmen Lezeth:switch from not doing being a musician. I mean, I think that would be hard and I only know it because I was a dancer and then I couldn't do it anymore, Like there was no choice, so I had to go to college. You know what I mean. How were you able to reconcile those two things, leaving that field and going into basically the business end of it?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I really think they're the same muscle. I think they're the same muscle. See, the main thing I think I thrived at when I was a playing musician more actively is songwriting, and songwriting to me is problem solving. It's like I've got this thing that sounds catchy, but is it a verse or is it a chorus, or is it a pre-chorus or is it? How are we going to end the song? Are we going to fade it out? Are we going to end with a bang?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:There's all these sort of micro decisions In any given song. There might be a thousand little decisions that you're making along the way, maybe more. And running a business is identical. You know, this staff member is not behaving particularly well, or they did this thing and maybe we should have a chat to them. But if we do that, that might disincentivize them, and so we've got to do this thing over there and maybe we can give them a bit of leeway. But we're going to launch this initiative and maybe take off some responsibility. So anyway, I'm still making up hypotheticals there, but the point is it's all problem solving, and I think that's the part of the brain, that sort of part of my French gets turned on a little bit when it's working.
Carmen Lezeth:You get really passionate, like did you guys just notice him.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:That's what it's like every day, and I think that's what attracted me to music making and then, ultimately, I found that same satisfaction running a business. So you know, same, same but different type thing.
Carmen Lezeth:So tell us how then you got vinyl, how vinyl come into fruition, I guess it's a good question.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:So I started vamper in america and we launched that in like 2015 and then something happened in about 2021, um, if I'm sure we all remember, sort of halfway through the whole covid thing, tech companies plummeted like the valuation of private tech companies plummeted.
Carmen Lezeth:Oh right, it was like COVID yeah.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:So there was this big crash and then there was this huge rebound and everything was like to the moon to the moon and GameStop and crypto and all that. And then what happened, like immediately after that, is this kind of steady, almost recession-like in the private markets behavior, where we were a company that had and I'm not going to bore people with this but we'd raised money at about a $20 million pre-money valuation and that means it's bloody high for the amount of business that we were doing. And then what we were finding is we'd come to the end of the runway, which means we sort of run out of money to spend to develop the products and bring in more customers, which is the life cycle of a startup, right? You raise money, you spend it. Grow the business, raise more money.
Carmen Lezeth:Is this for vinyl?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:This is for Vampa.
Carmen Lezeth:Vampa okay.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:And so then this sort of thing happened to the world where the valuations plummeted and our valuation went down to about $ 5 million and our board that's like quite a big haircut, it's like a 75% discount.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:So our board was like you know, you've done a good job, you've worked really hard, but it's, you know, I think, year seven or eight into the project and maybe it's time you found a buyer and you know we don't really want to do a down, what's called a down round, where we would have had to raise money at a lower valuation and given away more of the business.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:So I started looking for a buyer and I found a company in australia called jackster. That was like imdb for the music industry, um, and they had their own unique challenges and it was a tough time for everyone, that post-covid period. So someone you know smarter than me said maybe, if you can find a way to bring those companies together, um, they might have a fighting chance to sort of not only survive but thrive. And that's exactly what we did. So, long story short, I sold my business to a company called jackster. I then took over jackster within a few weeks and we rebranded it as Vinyl Group, which was a big portfolio sort of play, and now we've bought a whole bunch of other music businesses.
Carmen Lezeth:Wow See, I should have called you first, because now that all makes such sense to me, you know what I mean. Tell us what the focus is now with vinyl.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I think broadly and lazily you can probably break the business into two parts. There's vinyl media, which is, um, a publisher that owns titles like rolling stone, australia, variety, australia. Um, we have an ad network in there too that represents the australian web traffic for sites like deadline, uh, hollywood reporter, right, rotten tomatoes coming. Hollywood Reporter, rotten Tomatoes Coming Soon. That's a pretty big business. And then on top of that we own a bunch of music publications that are more native to again Australia. So that's very much an Australian media business, but it's the product of I think I bought about four or five different companies to assemble that as to what it is today, and that's the media thing that we call vinyl media. And then there's our technology businesses on the other side of vinyl group, and that encompasses thamper, obviously we've talked about right jackster.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Um, we've got a business called serenade, which is like nfc merchandise. So you know, if you go to a concert and you buy, I don't have anything handy, I've got a little percussion thing here, just. But like, let's say, you bought a frog at a concert and you buy, I don't have anything handy, I've got a little percussion thing here, but like, let's say, you bought a frog at a concert and it's a piece of merchandise from your favorite band. Nfcs is like a chip that would be embedded somewhere in this and when you touch it with your phone it activates a digital experience. So it's like a merchandise company that's trying to blur the lines between physical and digital, and that's really cool. That's an English business that I bought in, I think, september, and so you know we're working with some really major international artists that I can't talk about to bring those products.
Carmen Lezeth:You know that's all we want. Now, Like what is this, what is this? You can't do that. We're going to delete that part. That's not fair.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:It's fine. You know what is this? You can't do that. We're going to delete that part. That's not fair. It's fine, we're a public company, so we can never talk about things that haven't happened yet, right?
Carmen Lezeth:No, no, I know, I know For you, it's international, but it probably means people from here in the United States.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, sure.
Carmen Lezeth:And I see that you've worked with Lady Gaga. I was just checking out.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I you've worked with lady gaga, you know, I was just checking out.
Carmen Lezeth:I've not worked with gaga, oh well. Why is lady gaga on your instagram or whatever? What was?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:that I don't know. She might have been in one of our magazines or something oh, yeah, I don't well, it was nice talking to you. We were really I wish I could say that I've personally worked with mama monster.
Carmen Lezeth:That'd be very cool god, you know what I didn't realize. This was going to be more business oriented, because I just learned so much anything no, no, it was so, that was just I. I feel like I just learned so much about business in general and I like to pretend I know so much about business and I just felt so educated well, I, I do too.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I my life's been, um, nothing if not strange for the last couple of years. Well, this is all coming together and I'm obviously driving it, but there's a degree of being a passenger in the journey as well and watching it happen. It's like this is all. Yeah, I mean, my mom doesn't believe. When I go go home some Friday evenings and have dinner with my folks or whatever my mum and her new partner I will sometimes tell them what I'm up to and she just thinks I'm lying half the time until it becomes a news story. Really, like last year, I think, when we got to December 23, 2023, so call that 18 months ago we had this cold play tour coming up which was like 11 dates or something. We had this and that was. It was a whole year away, so we had to keep that quiet for an entire year. And then, on top of that, we just bought rolling stone australia and that was a big deal here and, yeah, they just thought I was lying about it all. It wasn't until it started is it?
Carmen Lezeth:is it kind of like imposter syndrome?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:probably. Yeah, I think everyone has that.
Carmen Lezeth:I think everyone has it, yeah but, it's kind of cool to hear someone who is, who is as successful as you are, to admit it, because most people would never yeah, well, most people you called it being on the passenger right, like like you're just watching it happen as, as opposed to being the person who's driving it. So it's kind of the same thing as yeah, I think it's the same thing.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, but hopefully. Hopefully, though, like when you're busy, you're not spending too much time looking backwards, and I certainly don't. It's more about trying to be present sometimes and appreciating what's going on in real time.
Carmen Lezeth:Right.
Cynthia Lopez :Go ahead. Cynthia, you spoke about having a twin brother. Is he also in music and is he part of the business too?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:No, he's a lawyer and he's a really quite high-powered one. I try to convince him to be part of the business, but he's so far resisted. He's smart law somewhere in england, yeah, yeah because someday you might need him I know, I know I'm trying to get it.
Carmen Lezeth:I'm trying to get a good rate yeah, I, I, I heard the twin thing too.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:So when you said, I was like because I didn't see any of that in your bio or anything, yeah, yeah, no, we don't know he's much skinnier and just a smaller frame I'm I'm the bulkier one of the two. He looks like my dad. I look like my mom.
Carmen Lezeth:Okay, cool, okay, I have a question. So what does the music industry get wrong about community? Because you seem to be centered on trying to get artists and musicians specifically community-based. So I'm trying to figure out what do they get wrong or what are they not doing right that you're filling that void for?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, I think historically there's a lot of gatekeepers in the music industry and there's good and bad reason for that. Well, gatekeeping in general is not a great thing, but there's understandable reasons. And then there's just people being assholes, but the main reason is it's a very hard industry, like any creative business, to crack into and then once you, once you achieve a certain level of success, you kind of want to protect your position. Um, now, there's big exceptions, that.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:So one thing I noticed, particularly when I lived in america, is, um, when someone makes it like an ariana grande or um or Kanye West or thinking of people that were sort of working in studios that I was around, they have their whole crew with them and that crew is usually there from when they're in high school or in their really early years. And I love that, because that's the positive side of the music industry, where we talk about like a rising tide lifts all boats. And that's what I really try to promote in everything I do, which is reminding folks that, in order to be successful, you don't need to try and find out how you can get in touch with Jay-Z or how you can get in touch with some music executive. You actually just need to really invest in your friends and the people around you, because if everyone's helping the people around each other like, it only takes one of you to make it for everyone to really ride that wave, and so that's what I'm big on promoting.
Carmen Lezeth:But you know, I also lived in LA, so I've seen I was just going to say how could you even believe that when, nine times out of ten, those are the people that end up?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:No, that's not true, though, because when I've been because living like the truly successful ones I can think of I'm not going to name names, but there's a few not very nice people that have kind of effed up, you know, as in gotten successful by going, we call it vertical networking versus horizontal networking, but I would say, far more often than not, the really famous people, like I said, are surrounded by people that came with them, and that's a great example and that's what restored my humanity in the industry, because they'll always be the gate. So they might themselves be gatekeepers and not allow someone to come up, or might shut a door on someone and not give them an opportunity. Whether that person's owed one or not is kind of up for debate, but I do see, typically people bring folks with them, and so, again, I think that should give everyone hope that it's possible to make it.
Carmen Lezeth:Sue, I know what you're saying and I like your viewpoint better, so I don't want to be negative, but I'm going to be Go for it, but in my experience. What I've noticed is that money changes things.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, but I think money is that money changes things. Yeah, but I think money corrupts in any industry. Yes, I think it's separate to that fame piece that comes with being in creative industries.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I've seen people that aren't well-known but who have come into or maybe they've gotten really high in their careers suddenly have a lot more wealth than they used to, and I've seen it corrupt them in a really ugly way. Okay, fair, suddenly have a lot more wealth than they used to, and I've seen it corrupt them in a really ugly way, and so I think the fame part is separate, maybe related. I've also seen, um, what a harsh spotlight can do to a person and really make them go inwards as well, and, um, that certainly has its own interesting, weird side effects. But I think when what I try to do when I talk about this topic is push all of that other stuff to the side and just talk about practical ways for people to earn a living in the industry that they love being in, and that's that's how I'm able to just stay quite optimistic and and focusing quite tightly, narrowly how do we do that?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I think I've said it, I think it's, I think no, like I said, I think it's about um doubling down on the people that are already around you and asking questions and and being an interested person I found generally serve most people pretty well we joke all the time about when one of us hits the lotto, we're gonna take care of the rest of us.
Carmen Lezeth:I say it, but I'm lying.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I'm lying every time I'm sitting here in my office looking at my neighbor's house and him and I have a pact where, if one of us wins the lottery, we're going to buy a couple of the other houses and build a big, nice compound for us all to enjoy.
Carmen Lezeth:We come visit. I think we should do a podcast in person with you. Cynthia doesn't want to come because she's afraid of the spiders.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:That, uh, that's only up, that's only up north, which is like queensland's the name of the state, it's like it's like our version of florida, um, and that's where you get all the crazy stuff. But people think that that's all of australia. That's just one, one part. But okay so, but people think that that's all of Australia, that's just one part.
Cynthia Lopez :Okay, so now we know we're staying away from the north Right right, but do you?
Carmen Lezeth:have the big spiders where you are too.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, Australia has the big Occasionally, but I think, since I moved back here in 2022, I think I've seen one.
Cynthia Lopez :That's enough for me, yeah.
Rick Costa:Somebody just sent me a postcard from what's this called blue mountain australia.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Oh yeah, that's between melbourne and sydney, so I live in melbourne but our office is in sydney and we I fly back and forth it fairly frequently. It's about an hour flight, um, and we fly over those.
Carmen Lezeth:They're beautiful how do you? How do you balance I'm gonna get us back a little bit how do you balance innovation, technology with authenticity? Like you're very grounded, um, not that I would expect you not to be but how do you deal with kind of just having all this tech and all this innovation and staying kind of normal? You're speaking on my level, I get you. How do you do that?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I don't know. I've never liked things, even though I own a social media platform. I've never really much used or cared for social media, um, which I do think is can be a corrupting force if it's monetized the wrong way and is taking advantage of vulnerable people and their state of mind. So I've stayed away from social media.
Carmen Lezeth:But we don't want to promote that. We want people to go check out vinylcom.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah no, I have a weird I do. I have a bizarre relationship with self-promotion.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I mean, I say that as someone appearing on this podcast, but I'm pushing, I'm also pushing myself right, like this is also like I want to be out there speaking more because I know that I've got something to add, but I just think there's um, there's probably digital. I've heard the term digital health before. It's a bit wanky, um, but I think being mindful of spending too much time with technology is something that everyone should probably, at the very least, consider Just the nature of what I do. There's a lot of thinking that goes into pretty much everything. As I was saying before, there's a lot of decisions every day, countless, maybe hundreds of decisions that impact the business or some other person's life in some way, and so there's a lot of thinking time and thinking. I find that during thinking time, you're actually away from devices a lot. You know I've got an incredible like you can't really see it, but I've got gadgets all around me, and I've got gadgets all around the house, but I find that I very rarely touch anything. Yeah, much more time is spent.
Carmen Lezeth:For the audio. But for the audio, I want people to know that you should go check out vinylcom and vampirme. But, um, okay, if, if you weren't doing this, what would you be doing?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I don't know, probably playing bad piano in a cover band. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know he's been doing it since he was four.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, it's kind of. I mean, I suppose when I was in my 20s I worked as a toilet cleaner and a gardener for about altogether, about four or five years, somewhere around that, and that was how I afforded. That's how I afforded to make my first album. That's how I was able to pay for rent in my first apartment. So I'd probably just go back and cut grass again. To be honest, the happiest I've ever been was there was one year where I took one year off creating. It wasn't planned that way, it just happened that way. I was a bit burnt out, like way too young to be burned out, but I was burned out and I I wanted to just not be creative for a year and just make a bit of money and have some fun and drink beer on the weekends and just chill out.
Carmen Lezeth:And I've got to say it's still probably looking back with rose-colored glasses, but my favorite memories are from that year I think that makes sense, though I think all of us can go back, because it was simply you didn't have all this responsibility, you didn't have all these people that you my biggest responsibility was was making sure I was clean before turning up to a party so that the pretty girl might kiss me up to a party so that the pretty girl might kiss me exactly yeah same thing honestly, I think that's what.
Cynthia Lopez :That's.
Carmen Lezeth:What's keeping you humble is that you started small and you worked your way and you knew, you know about hard labor yeah, 100 yeah I think it's important to have what I call real jobs, like real hard jobs that are are more about manual labor and not glamorous, before you start then acquiring companies and selling them and buying them and doing all the stuff you're doing.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, because that is the natural progression.
Carmen Lezeth:I've heard yeah, no, it's not, but it should be, it should be required that everyone who's like a teenager or a young 20-year-old should have to do like hard labor I don't mean like prison work but it teaches you something, it gives you some character.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:It gives you discipline. I think it teaches you how to start and finish a job. One of the reasons, I think, a lot of people who say they want to own a business and want to do big things, one of the things I observe, at least sort of from a unique perspective, is people's inability to get things finished. And so a lot of people are very good at I mean, almost everyone's good at starting ideas, but I think the key to success is often completing, and sometimes completing doesn't mean the vision that you had when you got started. It just means having a finished product and something to give to the world. Typically speaking, when you put something out there into the universe whether it's effort or a product or a combination of the two things you will get something back. And again it might not be what you think you want, but it will get something back. And again it might not be what you think you want, but it'll be something, and that something, that concept, that idea. I've built my whole life around that one idea.
Carmen Lezeth:God, I'm so jealous of you. I also think that a lot of reason why people go into wanting to become entrepreneurs or getting into business is because they think they're going to make a lot of money.
Rick Costa:Yeah.
Carmen Lezeth:It's really if you're passionate about something, you will continue to do it and you will find your way doing it. You know what I mean.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:There's another thing in that which I really hold on to, which is, if your version of success is just I want to be able to do the thing I love and earn enough from that to be able to pay the bills um, I think, then, everything above that is just an added bonus yes and, and that gives you a real freedom.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:So I I have that as well and that's from, that's from doing those years of labor, because I was just like I don't know. I can't remember what I was on back there, maybe $800 a week, not a huge amount of money, right and I remember thinking if I can earn that same amount from doing something I love.
Carmen Lezeth:That's like the jackpot oh man, yeah, yeah, we want to do this and make $800 a week.
Rick Costa:That's right.
Carmen Lezeth:We want to do that. That's why we all work 40, 50 hours a week and we still do this. Show you, that's why we all work 40, 50 hours a week and we still do this show. You know what I mean. That is the goal. You want to be passionate about it and you get something back from it.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:That's right, yeah.
Carmen Lezeth:What brings you joy in your work. Now I mean, I think I kind of can say it for you, but go ahead. I want to hear it from you. I think it might be more interesting. Well, you know what's so weird? I think that you embody joy. I wasn't expecting this. Look, I'm going to be honest with you. Julia is great. Is that her name, julia, right?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Julie, julie, julie, julie, julie.
Carmen Lezeth:Renton, I'm so sorry. My neighbor upstairs is Julia.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Shout out to Julia upstairs.
Carmen Lezeth:And then my goddaughter's name is Juliana, so I'm having a little bit of a confusion here. Okay, she's great, but I never have had someone on the show that I have not interacted with. So I think you noticed I reached out to you on linkedin and then I was like you know what? I'm gonna leave him alone though, because I don't think he wants to be bothered, so I'm just gonna go with the flow. So I was expecting somebody really kind of snooty no, I, I don't like you know.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:what might have happened is, I have this thing and I've told Julie this. I want to meet people, but one thing that I've learned from being on some other podcasts now is folks often want to do this sort of pre-interview get to know you first and I've never found that to be helpful because it actually it removes magic moments like.
Carmen Lezeth:I think we're having now Wait, wait wait Before you go on before you go on. Okay. So, rick and Cynthia, I'm about to reprimand you in front of our guests because do you remember that other person? And you guys were like, oh, maybe they do, you should let them do a pre-interview. I'm like I'm not doing no pre-interviews, remember? Okay, okay, go ahead, josh well I?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I sometimes when I get a sense, either through being cc'd on an email or I get sent something whatever. I get a sense sometimes when maybe someone wants to do a pre-interview and I have to. It's so hard because I don't. It's actually me trying to be the opposite of snobby by going no and like putting setting boundaries. I'll tell julie like I'm not doing that, like I'll turn up but it's actually for the, it's for the benefit of their show, right, and? And so we have these interesting debates about that because, again, it's trying to actually come from a really good place but it can sound probably not so nice.
Carmen Lezeth:No, no, usually we have the person. So this is we're small boutique, we're I mean, we're awesome and we are definitely international now, so it's so. It's not just you. I don't know why so many people from all over the world keep coming on the show. It's amazing. So we're excited and we're getting bigger. But usually the person who wants to be on the show is the person who emails me, right? So it was really interesting and I was like, okay, you know, we're just gonna go with the flow with this man and so, yeah, no, I love it, but you just seem like a regular guy, like I'm coming to Australia to visit you, spiders or not, I don't care.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:You're welcome. There's a. There's a spare couch somewhere in the house, A spare couch.
Carmen Lezeth:I thought you said a spare cat, I'm like okay, not friends.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I'm not a cat person either. Okay, we're best friends again.
Rick Costa:Cool, this actually brings to my remembrance. Somebody wanted to interview me for their local TV show thing and he wanted to meet up first. So he went to a diner and he's asked me all kinds of questions beforehand. Then when we got to the thing, it seemed really stiff because it was like and flat it was like. Now I feel like I wish I didn't talk to him ahead of time. That's right Because it just looked stale and yeah, I agree.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I'll tell you exactly where I learned that lesson. I was doing a TED Talk in 2015, and the producer said the night before and this was probably one of the biggest things, if not the biggest thing, I'd done up until that point the producer the night before said do a run-through for all of this here, just for time. And I was like it's good. I was like I've timed it, it's good. And then she said no, no, we just need to do it for time, don't worry, we're not going to give you notes. So we did it and they gave me a list of notes. Oh no, and I went and even though I ended up going, I'm going to ignore most of them. It was still played in my mind and then, when I delivered the speech, it was can I swear?
Carmen Lezeth:you only did. But yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, it was shit.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:It was incredibly shit, and I've ended up having it taken offline and all that. There's still, I think, one small part of it on YouTube, but the point is is like I learned a big lesson from that, which is like no back yourself. You know you got an interesting story. You're a decent communicator, at least as far as I can tell story. Um, you're a decent communicator, at least as far as I can tell.
Carmen Lezeth:and um, you don't want to blow that by sort of doing, yeah, exactly what we've been discussing so that's funny because usually in, in in the future, if you were ever to do, nobody would ever ask you to do that probably you mean like now because of your now you are, and also even if they did, then you'd be like, yeah, I'm not doing that that's right, whereas I was.
Carmen Lezeth:I was 10 years younger and, yeah, polite yeah I'm not sure the same way too, like I've had people just work wise, ask me you know what? Can we just go over what you're going to say in the presentation? I'm like okay, no, like yeah, you already. You hired me because you wanted me to do this.
Cynthia Lopez :So I hope you don't.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:There's a reverse of that as well, which is and this is more family life. I find, after a big work thing or like we've been in the news for something or there's been some announcement, then I spend time with like more distant it's not like my immediate family, but more like, you know, cousins and such and they'll go. What happened then? And can you rehash that? And it's like no, absolutely not. I live it Like I'm not going to spend my spare time and weekends and leisure time revisiting what I do in my professional hours, like that's just not, that's not exciting to me, that's, it's painful. Anyway, we're just now. We're just now. We're just having a group therapy. Love in. Who's complaining about annoying family things?
Carmen Lezeth:exactly where do you see your career going? Or you know what? Not even your career, because I think you're. It's not a career for you. This is like your life, that's right but what do you see happening in the years to come? Like is it is final, going to get bigger? Are you going to do other things outside of it? What are your kind of life goals? Yes, awesome answer yes, I love that. Yeah, um, okay, no, I think yes. Awesome answer yes, I love that.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, okay, no, I think vinyl gets bigger and I do other things and hopefully get a little bit of balance back too. I have been defined by my career for my whole life and I think maybe there's a world where that eases up a little bit, because I can now can now, to be honest. So, maybe take a bit more time for myself.
Carmen Lezeth:Yeah, is there something that you love to do? Kind of like, what would you like to do? Like, have you ever been skydiving? Like tell us.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:No, and I wouldn't Cause it, just scares the.
Carmen Lezeth:I went skydiving. Are you kidding me?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Come it just scares the kids out of me. I went skydiving. Are you kidding me? Come on, I'm scared of that feeling of the drop, I think.
Carmen Lezeth:But then other people told me you don't feel it. No, can I tell you the worst part of skydiving. But I would do it again.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:And if I come to.
Carmen Lezeth:Australia, you're going.
Rick Costa:We're doing it. Okay, here's the thing.
Carmen Lezeth:The worst part is going up in the plane because they're not going to bring you back down. You have to jump.
Rick Costa:Yeah.
Carmen Lezeth:So, and then the worst, worst part is watching everyone before you go.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah.
Carmen Lezeth:You know, but I had the whole thing filmed and every time I'm I watch it, I'm like, yes, I got to do it again because I have kind of forgotten going up in the plane, which was scary.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:When you watch it back, do you? Do you look panicked at all, or no, you guys have seen it right.
Carmen Lezeth:I'll send you the clip. I'm having a blast because I'm talking to the camera guy. Well, I think I'm talking to the camera guy, so I, so it's tandem, of course. Um, but we had the camera guy nathan, and I was like talking to him and I'm laughing. I love.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:It was pure joy yeah, okay, maybe look, I'll tell you what I am doing in in about two or three weeks, and I'm I've been waiting for months for this is I'm buying a jet ski, and I've because I'm moving. I'm moving to a house that's on like an inlet, um and and so we my wife and I actually weren't planning on moving at all this year, but we found this place and it's. We've kind of always dreamed of having a place on the water, and when we found it happened to be in our price range, we were just like, oh my god, this is too good to be true. So we we bought that about four months ago and we finally move in in a couple of weeks and the first thing we're going to do is get some water toys. So I'm looking forward to those Jet skiing.
Carmen Lezeth:That would scare me. That would scare me.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Well, the only times I've ever done it have been trips down to Mexico. In fact, I love doing it in Mexico so much that one trip we went down just to go jet skiing, and so if I can make that part of what I have in my everyday life, then I think that's probably a net positive.
Carmen Lezeth:Oh, that would be cool.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, I can see going out after a tough day at the office and just blowing off some steam out in the bay on the jet ski. I think that to me sounds like heaven, so I'll let you know in a year if it's worked or not.
Carmen Lezeth:Oh no, that's going to be cool, Rick. What were you going to say?
Rick Costa:Yeah, I have friends that absolutely love love doing it. It's like they just feel the freedom and it's a joy and it's a thrill and it's just they love it, Absolutely love it. You're not an ocean person.
Carmen Lezeth:I live a block from the ocean. I live in Santa Monica, you've been to los angeles yeah, I live right here, but I respect the ocean. I will not go into the ocean, especially here in santa monica, but just in general yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, fair enough.
Rick Costa:I do want to ask about the emperor though. Oh yes, how it compares to like a linkedin, like sure now you go to chat gpt, explain like I'm a six-year-old. What does this mean?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Carmen Lezeth:But it's only for musicians, but I thought it was also for creatives.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:It's for creatives. It is because it started off as a place for drummers to find guitarists, singers to find producers, like really fundamental roles in the music world. And then what happened is like people would hit us up and go, well, I make artwork for music, can I join? And we're like, yeah, we'll create a category for you. And then someone would go and go I'm a videographer, I like to film bands and go on tour with them. Okay, well, I'm a choreographer. And it kept going and going.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:And then now we've got, I think, like 27,000 different role types in there, so it to sort of linkedin. So, in terms of like, if you look at the global workforce and and the number of people who work in creative adjacent sort of fields or creative fields and adjacent creative fields, you're talking about 10 of the workforce thereabouts. Um linkedin, only four percent of their user base identify as working in creative fields. So what that says is that it's not an efficient place for creative people to network, which I think anyone who's used it would probably agree it's gotten better over the years, but it's. You know, if I want to go and see someone's portfolio and find other people who are fans of Kendrick Lamar, who also, like you know, who also have these following skills and have, you know, worked in these spaces, specifically in music or in film.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:You just can't do that on Link To Like. The example we always give is like if you wanted to find someone who listened to both Led Zeppelin and Kendrick Lamar and lived in Tampa and played drums for five years and was in their early thirties and I'm trying to think of all the filters we have and listens to blues, right, if you want to do all those different pieces like you can't do that on any platform in the world, but you can do it on Vampa and that's. That's like we built that, and it doesn't matter what city in the world you're in If you go in and customize it like that you, you will get results.
Cynthia Lopez :Can anyone join? Yeah, yeah, so like, like I like to write poetry. So like say, for instance, if I wanted to join, and is there a category where, like people can write their poetry if somebody may want to use it as in a song or something like that?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:yeah, so there's, I think, the most relevant category, so that would be like lyricists. Um, I think there's, I think the most relevant categories for that would be like lyricists. I think there's like lyric composers, separate to lyricists as well, and then you can do custom categories and type whatever you want. So, probably, although I don't know how active people would be looking for poets, if I'm honest, I've not heard of that use case before. But the thing I think I like about Vampyr is that anyone creative can go on there, create a profile, have a look around and if it's not for them, they can leave, and if it is for them, they can stay. It's like anything in life, right, no one's forcing you to join, no one's forcing you to stay or anything in between, and I love that. That's why it is designed.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:There's other platforms out there that try and do what we do and they've got, once again, gatekeepers, like they're, um, you know they have to look at your, the work that you've done first or decide if you're quality enough to be on there, and we're just like, let the algorithm sort it out.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Like, obviously we built the algorithm, but we you don't want, you know, really, really very careful here, but from from an objective standpoint. You don't want people that are sort of such low quality that it degrades the overall experience of other people. But at the same time, who are we to judge what's low quality? And so the way you sort of get around that is certain algorithm tricks that will see that hopefully you're connecting people at similar levels of skill and similar levels of experience and similar sounds, and some of it, you know, get easier with ai and we're sort of starting to look into that too. But right now it's more mathematical matching based on certain attributes. It's all a bit nerdy, but we do our best to try and match appropriate people with someone that they might get value out of.
Carmen Lezeth:How do you know so much about social media but you don't use social media Like you know a lot about the algorithm.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Yeah, I mean I do use them. I just I'm not active on them. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not building yeah, I'm not building a fan base on any platform. I think some things I'm on have 10, I think, like LinkedIn, I might have, you know, 10,000 followers or something I don't spend. I don't spend a lot of time on.
Carmen Lezeth:Can I just say like you, just that's so funny. Like people don't just have 10 000 followers on linkedin, that's not but I've got, I've got plenty of friends that have, but I've got plenty of friends that like have over 100 000 or whatever
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:well, I was going to say no, I've got like plenty of friends that have thousands of instagram followers. I've got like a hundred and I don't really use it. That's why I don't have many, right. So what my point is? I think like when you use a platform actively, you can build an audience. I just I haven't personally built an audience, but I've built brands. So my companies have pages that have hundreds of like. My Vamper has hundreds of thousands of likes my all. Between my media companies that I own, we've got millions of likes and followers. So I know how social media works. It doesn't mean I personally you don't use it.
Rick Costa:Yeah, that's right. You don't personally use. That's not for you.
Carmen Lezeth:Yeah Well, you know it isn't of the time. I mean. I think that also makes sense. You're not spending your time scrolling and whatever.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:I'm jealous of the folks that can, because it is folks can. Folks can run the job. Yeah, okay, we're struggling.
Carmen Lezeth:We're no, no, because I know, because, opposite, we're using your services because we're trying to be creative on it. Yeah right, I mean that's kind of the difference. And we're trying to do what you're doing. That you've been doing since you were a kid and you found your way through it, and but you're doing something you love. When I asked you the question what you would do if you weren't doing this, you didn't really have an answer, which kind of means you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, whereas I think most people, myself included, are always pursuing doing what we love and making a living at it.
Rick Costa:So that's why we're using your services, you know, yeah, yeah so, um.
Carmen Lezeth:So before we sign off, do you guys have any other questions? Because I just want to make sure that we promote vinylcom vamperme, which I did not know that. So it's dot m e um, and will you come back and be on the show, josh?
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:100%.
Carmen Lezeth:Okay, because we're coming to your house. We're not going to wait for you to move. We're not stupid.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:We'll do it live from the jet ski.
Carmen Lezeth:You can be on the beach. Me and Cynthia will be on the beach. I don't know where Rick will be, but Okay.
Carmen Lezeth:On the beach. I don't know what rick will be, but okay, on the beach watching you and your wife on the jet ski amazing and your cat. No, I know you don't log off yet, but um, so everyone remember we are always on on friday nights, um at 6 pm. Pacific 9 pm eastern. On sundays, 12 o'clock, pacific 3 pm eastern josh, it was so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. It was really fun.
Josh Simons, CEO of Vinyl.group:Thank you Carmen, thank you Cynthia, thank you Rick.
Carmen Lezeth:Yeah, and remember everyone. At the end of the day, it really is all about the joy. Bye everyone, Bye. Thanks for stopping by. All About the Joy. Be better and stay beautiful folks. Have a sweet day.
