Darrel Sheinman: Founder & CEO of Gearbox Records

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1:20Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss in partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musician shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today, I'm really pleased to say, is Daryl Scheimland, founder and CEO of independent record label Gearbox Records. Starting his career in financial services and commodity trading, Daryl founded in 1998 Polestar Space Applications Limited, what a great name, providing maritime satellite tracking to the shipping industry, a company he later sold for$100 million.

1:55As a lifelong drummer and high-fidelity enthusiast, Daryl noticed in the CD generation of the late 2000s a decline in recording and production standards. Wanting more high-caliber live recordings released on vinyl, he founded jazz label Gearbox Records in 2009, initially as a hobby and started scouring the British Library archives for unreleased live recordings. Now, based in London and Tokyo, Gearbox Records operates a full analogue and digital studio, and their dual output includes previously unreleased recordings by Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey, alongside new music by jazz artists such as Binkra Moses and Abdullah Ibrahim, and an expanded focus to ambient electronic and folk.

2:35Lovely to have you here, Daryl. Thank you for having me. Very easy to start with the record label, which I want to get into, but actually I want to go back a little bit. What moved you from the world of being an employee into the world of founding a business way back when with this first business? tell me how that happened and why you were drawn to not working for somebody else good question actually oh when i was working for somebody else i was in banking i was a trader in the city so it was sort of entrepreneurial anyway to be honest and i actually had a spell of trading us what they called a local on the exchange floor trading for myself which was not that great but uh so i went back to working for a big bank but um i think i'd always promised myself to sort of get out of trading.

3:20You know, I didn't want to be in it forever. And 12 years later, I carried on with that promise and decided to set up my own business. But I had an idea which had come from trading. And that was, you know, being able to track ships around the world. I wanted to track containers, but it was impossible because of various technical reasons at that time. And so when I left the business and Credit Suisse versus Boston, who were my employer at that time, I'm very supportive and invested my shares, which gave me some cash to be able to do the business on the condition that if I came back to banking, it had to be with them nowhere else.

3:57Which was easy because you knew you weren't going to come back. Kind of, yeah, exactly. So I started the business Tracking Ships by Satellite, which was so early on in the Internet's history that although it was a great product, a lot of our customers or potential customers couldn't use it because they had dial-up, you know, Internet. It's very embarrassing. And how did you know what to do at that point? I mean, obviously, we're going to come to how you set up a record label, which in itself is a thing. How did the trader know where to go in terms of a company that was going to have a satellite functionality that tracked ships around the world?

4:33I mean, that's quite a move. Well, yeah, I guess so. I teamed up with a guy who was at Cambridge and at Imperial, finishing off his PhD, and he did all the programming. So we used to spend time in his digs at Imperial on a whiteboard, working stuff out, and then built this product. And then it was sort of, well, how's it going to be sold? And what I had made a mistake on was that I hadn't realized that the data we collected from the satellite airtime was proprietary data to the ship owners. And I couldn't therefore use it. If you wanted to, say, relocate from London to New York, I had this false idea that you could actually see where your ship was, and it was great, and I could sell this to the mass market.

5:20Well, that didn't happen. So we nearly went bust, and then 9-11 happened, which I had to say turned the business around because we changed the law of the sea with the International Maritime Organization. All ships over 250 tons had to be tracked, and we were the only people in there. Who were doing it. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's competition now, and there was pretty soon after, but we got that first mover advantage. And the one lesson you might have taken from all of that, that was it all about the luck? Or was there something else? Was it sometimes the market isn't ready for the technology but you know what it will be?

5:53Yeah, I think being an entrepreneur is a roller coaster, largely because of cash flow, largely because your timing can't be perfect. So the best advice I always give people, and I have mentored people on this sort of thing, is to try and stay in the game for long enough so that the opportunities come and you spot them and take them. Because, you know, if we had gone bust at that point, I wouldn't have been around to take advantage of the whole security, maritime security world changing. And that was luck. That was purely luck. There was no skill in that whatsoever except for being around and bootstrapping it until the opportunity came along.

6:31And we wouldn't be having this conversation now about the passion venture which has turned into something a lot more, which is Gearbox Records. So I love that stay in the game for long enough thing. that's absolutely right your game though in reality has been passion wise about music and we you leave this the world of kind of i've made enough money and i can do what i want when you were younger did you always have that plan to say at some point i'm going to do the thing i love and were you working towards that daryl because i i talked to my kids and my kids friends about being more intentional than i was as a kid but it sounds like you might have been quite intentional from a young age.

7:07I was, not in terms of the goal. Harvard Business School and all these places say, you've got to be goal-driven, goal-driven. Actually, there's a lovely phrase which comes from our martial art that a samurai has no goal, only a path. This is jiu-jitsu, and you call it kabudo. Kabudo, yeah. Which is the original. We just call it budo, yeah. Budo. Yeah. So say that again. Say that phrase again. A samurai has no goal, only a path. And what does that mean? It means that it's never linear to get to any particular goal or place. And if you're too goal-driven, your expectations are going to be dashed.

7:46So whilst you have to have the idea of where you want to be or what you'd like to do, that's good. But I think people get it slightly wrong in that they think that means I've got to be really prescriptive about where I want to be, when, and whatever. And just life doesn't work like that. So how did you frame it? And at what age were you framing it? Well, I wanted to be a racing driver at three years old. Did you? Yeah. And still wouldn't draw. I did actually have a spell go-karting actually down at Buckmore Park in Maidstone. But obviously that dream never happened and I actually did try to raise some money for a Formula One team with a guy called Guy Edwards.

8:20There's a bit of motor racing. I was born in Northamptonshire near Silverstone and our neighbor was a guy called Tony Southgate who was very famous for doing the Audi Le Mans car. designed that, he designed the Bentley, he designed, he was the S in Arrows, Southgate. So I had a bit of exposure to motor racing and as a result, wanted to get involved, but never did as a driver and then moved on to more sensible ideas. But the music thing, was there something in your head that say one day, because I read that you were a drummer from a young age, like my number one son, who's been a drummer from a young age.

9:01Did you say, you know what, I'd love to be in that industry? That's the path? No, because I was really avaricious, and I basically thought there was no money in it. And I think I'm right on that one as well. But I wanted, so I never wanted to be a professional drummer. I wanted to just be in a band and play and have fun. And that's what I did, and I was in a band all the way through my banking career and the maritime security career. and really until half my band moved to different countries. So, no, I never wanted to take it professional. But your path was then more about I need to earn money.

9:38I want to earn money so that I've got some freedom to do whatever I want. And at that time, it may be A, B or C. You weren't fixed on what that would be, just the sense of freedom. The concept of freedom was what was driving you. Yes, exactly. And I ended up in my degree. I had a year out and I worked in New York on a trading floor for Mercator Metals. And I just really liked the atmosphere. And I liked what people were doing. I was in the research division and thought, you know, when I'm finished, I want to come back and do this. So it wasn't, there was, there you go, there's an example of no specific pathway.

10:14But there was a pathway and a bit of a goal. and just really briefly without sounding too coarse um why the focus why were you so clear about making money is going to be useful to me and i mean obviously everyone needs to earn a living i don't mean it like that i mean for you though there was a sense of actually it was going to be significant for you you were going to go for it what what made you the person that wanted to go for it like that well the first thing that i mean it sounds like that again was a linear thing it wasn't. It was actually at the same time as being intrigued by the trading world, I thought this is also a great way to make a lot of money and thought that I'd like to come back and give it a go.

10:55I'm probably quite good at it because I had a sense that I knew how to sort of buy low and sell high and I quite enjoyed the people in there. There were quite smart people who were also going on the same journey as me and so I never really had the intention, oh, I need to make, there were certain traders who said, oh, I've got to make X million and then I will quit. And of course, those guys are still in because that never happens because you get used to the trappings of life and you spend more. You spend more. And usually, actually, people who are quite wealthy like that actually just can't even afford to leave, right?

11:29So I wanted to get out before I got to that point and did so that the cash was actually like, yes, sort of a ticket to some business freedom. and the business freedom has led to Gearbox Records, which we'll be hearing much more about very shortly. And that will be with my guest, Daryl Scheinman, who's the founder and CEO. He's coming back in a couple of minutes. Right now, though, we're going to hear a taste here from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Leader Kellett invites business founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing.

12:00And in this clip, we hear from Amber Hill, founder and CEO of AI Startup Research Grid, with advice for founders looking for funding in the UK. The Mishcon Innovation Series. Inspiration from founders of cutting-edge businesses. In association with Jazz Shapers with Mishcon Derea. Founders looking for funding in the UK, I think, should start initially with expanding their network. So one of the things that I did to expand my network here as an American is going through different accelerators. I think I've participated in maybe six accelerators that have given me access to investors within the UK.

12:41Pretty much all of the investors in the UK, I would say. Any investor that could be here would have been in the room for Entrepreneur First or for Morgan Stanley. So I think that is the first step. And then kind of building out from there and understanding the tax incentivization for investors, understanding how to pitch those investors as well is really important. Investors are extremely time poor and you need to have a deck that you are presenting to them that answers fundamentally every question that they might have from overall, what problem are you solving, the solution, your team, the traction that you've made so far, what you're aiming to do or what's special about it, the market and what you're asking for in terms of capital.

13:30Always raise more than what you think you'll need because you'll need it yeah i would say that that would be where i would start the mishcon innovation series in association with jazz shapers with mishcon d 'orea this is jazz shapers with elliot moss in partnership with mishcon d 'orea it's business but it's personal you can enjoy all our former business shapers on the jazz shapers podcast and you can hear this very program again if you pop the words jazz and shapers i know it's complicated into your favorite podcast platform my guest is darryl shimon founder and ceo of independent record label gearbox records so we were talking about passions and music and freedom and then the opportunity comes you have delivered you have your stash of cash you are ready to go i'm kidding but you know you have you have freedom darryl you have freedom you have enough to say i have no i have agency i have a choice and then you go and set yourself up with a record label with the but there's a bit obviously before around the discovery of fabulous music yeah i think that's right so i was brought up in a jazz household really my dad was listening to jazz he was a skiffle player he met my he's english my mom's nigerian and they met in soho you know he used to hang out with the garnetans and nigerians and whatever and um even though he's a good jewish boy from the east end or from Highbury.

14:51What a combination. Yes, I'm the United Nations, but that's another story. Aren't we all? I mean, look at me as well. We like a bit of everything. It's good. Yeah. Well, black Catholic and white Jewish in the 60s getting married. Pretty unusual. Very unusual. In fact, his dad didn't speak until I was born. So that was quite an interesting environment, I'm sure, for him. So I think that passion for music came out, once I'd earned a little bit of money and was able to lose it all in music, I decided to set the label up because, to me, there was something missing. What was missing, I came from a sort of sonic audiophile kind of angle and felt that a lot of the productions that were coming out, largely on CD and compressed massively, were just not really making good listening.

15:42Would I notice the difference if I'm a regular person? 100%. Okay. We've done that test in our studio so even with people who are not audiophiles completely okay so what we do we've done in the studio where we've done two different variants one's all analog say on tape one's a digital compressing and people notice they face the wall and you play it and they don't i should say actually just on that there is in in your world that you've created you have a studio with incredible facilities and and you also obviously you have new artists and you have unpublished gems on your label as well a very i kind of i think about it looking forwards and looking back and celebrating what's going, what happened before, but also what's coming next.

16:20Exactly. In fact, we have a phrase called future analog. That's our tagline, which is essentially because the whole record label is set up to try and be as analog as possible. We do use digital. We don't shun it. That's not the point at all. In fact, we do third-party mastering for lots of acts, and they want digital or have digital sources. so we don't shun digital but we know that it sounds better done in an analog way with the right equipment the right transformers the right valves and so on but the initial thing for Gearbox was actually finding these gems which hadn't been released before but you found in the British Library archives of all places just help me understand how you knew that you wanted to go find those why were you in there and what was it like I think because, so if you've got this sort of technical methodology that you're bringing to the table, you've got to find the right content for that.

17:16And for me, that was jazz, because a lot of jazz was recorded live to tape, and those sources were available. And then I was asking around, and I found out that you could probably find these sources at the British Library, because they had a wonderful archive, especially for the BBC. and that's how I found the first few titles, just literally sitting in the library in the carousels, listening to the jazz. So little booths, like those voting booths almost, but you're sitting down and you put your headphones on and you can literally just spool through. Yeah, you'd have to get the engineers to put on the right thing.

17:49They'd put it on. Your carousel's ready, Miss Scheinman. Oh, great. Amazing. I mean, that's like a very, it's a bit like studying. You know, I remember studying for my politics degree in the big University of Leeds library and you go and find this thing that you have to sign out and you can only use pencils and you're wearing gloves and things. It must have felt like you're really, you're in history. Oh, completely. And in fact, to the extent that the curator, sadly, Andy Lennon, who's passed away now, but he and a guy called Paul Wilson, they were the music creators at the library, would help me with that and bring out beautiful things, lovely tapes or books about the South.

18:26and just even the cataloguing of it was all really nicely done. And yeah, it was completely what you're saying. And I thought that was great. Daryl Scheinman's my super upbeat business shape today. He's the founder and CEO of Gearbox Records. And I love your line, Future Analog. It's exactly that, this sense of new talent. And we've got, I think, Binker and Moses are on your label. And there's a few others. I interviewed last summer at the Love Supreme Festival, or Jazz Shapers Live with Janine Irons and Gary Crosby and an amazing festival. And they, of course, Tomorrow's Warriors, are the people that have curated so much of the jazz acts that you're now signing on.

19:05Why do you think there's been an explosion from your perspective? What's happened to this country, which is brilliant? But, you know, why is it not just you in the carousel? Why is now the wider population going, wow, there's this thing called jazz, it's brilliant? I don't know. I think it was lucky, again, luck, lucky timing. I was really in there to put this music out on vinyl. That was the primary interest. And it seemed to time with vinyl coming back in 2009. If you look at the chart, vinyl dropped off the chart and started coming back in 2009, and it's continued that trajectory today. Everyone keeps saying, oh, it's a bubble that's going to burst.

19:43It isn't. It's growing faster, and even my kids have record players. Yeah, mine too. They love it. It's definitely here to stay. It never went away, but it's really here to stay now. so I wanted to bring some of this music to a wider audience that was mastered properly and really sounded different and gave people an experience that they perhaps hadn't had before especially if you have a great playback system and that's how I wanted to bring it and when I was researching for the program I saw some names which I hadn't heard of because you know what you know Sean Davis engineer, Adam Seif I think as a mentor for you and someone who's obviously once I'd read about him, I'd go, oh, it's him, head of jazz here, big labels at Sony and Tower Records and all the rest of it.

20:28It seems like you're really good, if you don't mind me saying, Daryl, at sort of spotting talent, whether that's talent of yesteryear, talent in the business world or talent in today's musicians. If that's true, why do you think you're good at it? What's going on? I think it's actually being honest with yourself. That sounds quite cliche, but you know, if you like something there's a good chance that somebody else is going to like it but if you but you have to be honest with yourself that i like this not i like it because it's i'm trying to chase the market i think chasing the market's a mistake and i've never really done that so if i like a piece of music if i like yeah an artist if i like someone who's special doing business i will work with them and it's my choice if i get it wrong so be it but it's just because i particularly like it so sean davis taught me how to master records he restored our lathe and he was one of the geniuses from the past and of course tell me what the lathe is so that's a cutting lathe to cut the masters for vinyl which we have in our studio and i hadn't even realized that he was one of the leading guys in his era um and therefore i was downloading information from one of the masters and but i just went with my gut because he was a nice guy and he seemed to know what he's talking about.

21:50And why do you trust your gut? Just before we go to our final chat, what is it about your own sense of confidence in that? Because we always hear trust your gut, trust your gut. Well, I'll tell you what, to trust your gut, you have to not be scared of failing. So failure is not a problem. If you fail, it's okay because you learn from failure. But I think a lot of people might have a feeling and they get really indecisive and scared about going forward because they don't want to fail. I don't really care about failing. It's part of life. And I've failed many times. So I think that, and therefore it makes it look like you've made a good decision because you haven't seen all the crap ones before.

22:29We'll keep those up. We don't need to talk about that. Stay with me for a final chat with Daryl Scheinman. He's the founder and CEO of Gearbox Records, and he's got a ton of insight. Delivered in an incredibly humble way, he's back shortly. And we've also got some Ezra Collective and Yasmin Lacey. That's in just a moment. Don't go anywhere. This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. Daryl Shimer is my business shaper. Just for a few more minutes. Two quick questions. New world of music, the music industry has changed. You talk a lot about, and I've had other guests on, including Dave Stewart, actually, in his new entity, talking about you need to create relationships directly with fans, and technology can now do that.

23:13just give me a quick sense of how you're looking at that and what you're doing specifically so we've just launched we're well known for for high-end um hi-fi vinyl you know playback systems and so on and mastering so we have just launched a club uh called the gearbox kisa 10 club and the kisa 10 is a japanese coffee shop or bar where you listen to music on a great hi-fi usually tiny little places and you don't talk inspired actually spirit land and paul noble was a guest on the show as well similar thing exactly the same thing and in fact we're probably going to do our first venue for album playbacks at supermax which is one of one of his yeah this is underneath um happy face pizza that's right and we're working with now the hi-fi and audio note hi-fi um to create a spectacle down there and we will do these playback sessions you can only come if you're a member and we're doing loyalty points and there you can get loyalty points if you're not a member but if you want to come to our events and our artist showcases, which we did one recently for Robin Katz at the Souchi Yates Gallery, you're going to have to be a member.

24:20But basically there's an access to the music directly happening. Access to music directly and us as a label getting to know our customers and mingle with our customers, you know. And we hope to get great DJs like yourself down there. Anytime, you just ask me. Supporting ones. If only he was being sincere. That's the first time Daryl Shimon has not been sincere on this show. But you know what? I'm only kidding. I'd love to come. I'd love to be part of that. And that makes perfect sense. I think the world has changed. You absolutely need to change with it. Just one last question before I let you disappear back to your world.

24:54Are you now in a place where you can say every day you wake up and you go, I'm not stressed anymore because the things I worried about when I was younger, I don't worry about. Or have you actually fundamentally not changed despite the world, of the material world around you changing, despite you moving from the world of satellites into music. I'm just wondering where Daryl's at in his life. Oh, no. I mean, I don't wake up with no stress at all. In fact, I probably got the other way around. I don't... There isn't this nirvana, weirdly. No, it's the same stuff. Disappointing, Daryl. It is disappointing.

25:26But I'm sure you've found the same. I mean, but I think what you do get as you get older is just that confidence and belief that actually whatever life chucks at you, everything will be all right. To end on another cliched phrase, we have something called ban pian fugue, which means 10 ,000 changes, no surprises. In a way, that is how my life runs at the moment. There's change every day. It's all different. It's all a bit stressful, but why be surprised by it? this has been great talking to you and yeah you're right why be surprised by it we should expect it shouldn't be really and yet we don't as humans no no um just before i do let you disappear what's your song choice and why have you chosen it i've chosen in a silent way by marz davis and um why because that was played by my dad and in the house when i was young probably six years old and we used to dance to it around the house it was brilliant um alongside other things like dave Brubeck's time out and take five and whatever.

26:32But this track particularly, I remember, and his best friend was a hi-fi nut, and they used to play it really loud and watch the VU meters go up and down on their reel-to-reel machines, and that's a memory. Amazing, and it's a 20-minute track, but we've chosen an excerpt just to be clear. Brilliant, here it is just for you. Miles Davis, In A Silent Way, the song choice of my business shaper today, Daryl Scheinman. he talked about the samurai the samurai has no goal only a path i absolutely love that be flexible 10 000 changes no surprises another great aphorism think about that in the reality of your own life it's certainly true in mine we shouldn't be surprised by the changes being honest with yourself he talked about do you like the thing you are creating is it really something you love in other words create a product that you love don't chase the market to use daryl's words and finally stay in the game for long enough he talked about the luck that you need as an entrepreneur and that moment when it all happens is only there if you're still in the game and that's a focus issue a resilience issue and of course a luck issue be around long enough to get lucky really good stuff that's it from jazz shapers have a lovely weekend jazz shapers on jazz fm in partnership with mishkondorea it's business but it's personal we hope you enjoy that edition of Jazz Shapers.

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