Custom Soundtracks, Creator Power: Jeff Perkins on the Future of Audio

Justin Levinson (00:00.64)‍

Hey everybody, welcome to the Agency Side podcast. I'm your host, Justin Levinson, and I'm here today with Jeff Perkins, who is the CEO of Soundstripe. They are an amazing licensing platform that works with the creator economy and beyond. I'm always excited to hear from people in the music business. Jeff, thanks so much for being here, man.

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Jeff Perkins (00:23.106)‍

Justin, thanks for having me. Excited for the conversation.

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Justin Levinson (00:26.474)‍

Yeah, well let's get into it. I'd love to just start for the folks who may not be familiar with Soundstripe if you could give us just a little bit of information on what you guys are doing.

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Jeff Perkins (00:35.896)‍

Sure, Soundstripe, we are really one of the leaders in music licensing across the world. We have a library of about 57,000 audio tracks that content creators can use in any way they want. So you can hear Soundstripe music in everything from feature films, television shows, commercials, social media ads, podcasts. It's really, the use cases are sort of endless if you need music in your projects.

So, yeah, we're really proud of what we've built. The company is about nine years old. It was founded by musicians in Nashville. We have three full-time composers on staff, two full-time sound engineers who are actually Grammy award winning. And every week we're just releasing new music and we try to have a mix of, you know, sort of tried and true stuff that we know our customers want. And then we also...

create a lot of music that's really on trend. So customers come to us and they want music that feels like a certain popular artist without having to pay that artist millions of dollars for their specific song. And we have great musicians that can create similar kinds of songs that give you a similar kind of vibe for whatever project that you have. So a great library of music. And then we also give you really extensive tools. One of the hardest things about music for content creators is actually finding the music.

Right? you know, you have your project you're working on, you go into the library of music and there's, you know, 50,000, 50,000 plus tracks you have to figure out. we have AI search capabilities. So you just kind of enter in anything from like, I'm looking for this kind of vibe or I'm looking for, Taylor Swift meets Metallica where I'm looking or I'm doing a project about, girlfriends going on a girls trip to the beach. And it'll give you smart recommendations that you can really start your search from. And that really helps.

Get to the right song a lot quicker. And then once you figure out that song we have AI editing tools that let you rearrange the song in a way so you're able to actually Create it the way you want it and then it remasters it So you're actually able to have a completely new version of the song built for the way that you want it And and so it's just really the possibilities are endless when it comes to what soundstripe offers So if you need really high quality music for your projects where we feel very

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Jeff Perkins (02:59.788)‍

confident that we're the source for it.

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Justin Levinson (03:01.996)‍

Yeah, that is so cool. And I wonder if that ability to have the AI, you know, to be able to add things into the song, if that gives the creator almost like, it gives them more power because they almost feel like they're part of the composition as well. Is that sort of like a, is that a thing you guys find?

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Jeff Perkins (03:20.386)‍

Yeah, that's exactly it. So a lot of the content creators out there, they're not professional sound engineers, right? And so they don't, they kind of want a song to hit at a certain time or to have a slow burn to a certain climax within their video. But maybe they don't have all the tools or experience or skills to actually do that with the individual tracks or stems of the song. That's where the AI tool comes in. So if you have a video,

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Justin Levinson (03:44.673)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (03:48.59)‍

And say your video has a very slow build to the action and you want the song to kind of start with that slow build as well. But then the track you selected, you know, kind of shot out of the cannon and it just starts right away. You can rearrange that track in a way that really gives you that slow build just the way you envision it. So it's just a nice way to, for creators to use our music in the way that they really want to use it for their projects.

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Justin Levinson (04:16.064)‍

And that music can be adjusted even if it's not put on a grid, like quantized to a click. Does it have to be that way for it to be able to be manipulated by the AI?

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Jeff Perkins (04:28.63)‍

No, actually, if you go into our product, there's a little scissor icon and it's that simple because AI basically breaks up the song into chunks and then you could move around those specific components of the song in the way that you want them and then the AI basically remasters it. So it comes out sounding like that's how the song was intended to be when it was initially created. So it's a really cool feature that just again,

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Justin Levinson (04:56.246)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (04:57.31)‍

makes it really fast and really easy to use music. Even if you aren't a professional sound engineer, you can manipulate the music so it really fits whatever project you're working on.

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Justin Levinson (05:07.628)‍

Yeah, that's amazing. I guess who is like your, you know, who are your top customers? Is it mostly like just content creators or I'm sure you guys work with a lot of creative agencies as well. What's sort of like the breakdown of Clientel?

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Jeff Perkins (05:23.98)‍

Yeah, it's a pretty even mix. We serve everyone from your individual solopreneur who's just cranking out YouTube videos every day and uses our music in their YouTube videos to major brands. We work with some big, big global brands, everything from Delta Airlines to Bud Light. We were actually featured in a Super Bowl commercial this year for the Circle water bottle.

so yeah, we're, used by all kinds of content creators. So sometimes it's an agency that's using us. And so as they're doing their work for these big brands, they'll use our music. Other times it's the brands use us directly. They might have an in-house creative services team and they're a subscriber to our platform. And so, you know, we're, we're serving any real and really any client that needs music, we can serve, but we really found probably with, with our library, our library is very high quality.

And so that's, that's really important because there's a lot of places to get music today, that where it's, you know, maybe it's AI created music, or it's just, it's a lower quality, lower fidelity kind of music. and so, and that's pretty cheap. so we tend to cater to clients, and customers where music is important, where they see the value of professionally created music that's expertly mixed by sound engineers to get that.

perfect kind of sound. And so that's really, I think, where we're different than a lot of the other options out there and why a lot of the customers who come to us, maybe they've tried a very cheap option or they try these AI tools, but they realize, hey, this just doesn't sound great. And I really want a certain kind of sound and a certain kind of quality in our project. know, creating a film, a television commercial, a TV show, there's so much quality and craftsmanship goes into it.

You want that same music quality as well. And so for people that where they care about quality of the music, we really, we really feel like we have probably the best library out there on the market.

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Justin Levinson (07:29.804)‍

Yeah, that's a key differentiator. Do you guys get very much custom work as well? Is it strictly all subscription based or do some people get come up to you and say, we got this brief, we're looking for this trailer or this or that. Can you guys make it custom? And is that come at sort of a different payment tier or how does that sort of work?

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Jeff Perkins (07:41.869)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (07:48.738)‍

Yeah, so you have different options when you're working with us and a lot of our customers like this where they'll, they'll subscribe to Soundstripe and they'll have access to our full library of 57,000 audio tracks. so they really like that component because you know, if they're just doing videos for maybe internal communications or just things that just need, you know, music, but it's maybe not critical to the, to the project or it's not central to the project. They may choose to use the library.

Other times it's a very specific project with a very specific tone vibe that they're going for. And they know they need a custom song for that. And because we have three composers on staff and sound engineers, and we're neck worked with tons of musicians all around the country, but especially in Nashville, where our corporate headquarters is, it's very easy for us to create a really high quality track for customers. so a lot of our customers will use us both for our library of songs plus.

they'll come to us for custom music that we'll do as well. And so that's another big part of our business that we can do custom music for any customers that come to us.

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Justin Levinson (08:57.26)‍

Is there ever a circumstance where like a brand finds something in your library that they absolutely love, they want that to be exclusively for them and not have it be licensed to other brands or other places? Can they purchase the exclusive license on a specific track if they want that alone?

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Jeff Perkins (09:20.002)‍

Yeah, if they want that, we can work with them on that for sure. Either we could, we can create a new track for them that kind of has a similar vibe, but actually is very specific to what they want. Or we can negotiate so they can use that track, exclusively for either, you know, for a certain amount of time or in perpetuity. So yeah, we were very flexible with the way that we work with our clients. It's really whatever you need from a music perspective, we can help you out.

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Justin Levinson (09:45.758)‍

Yeah, and you're an Atlanta guy, Jeff?

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Jeff Perkins (09:48.82)‍

I live in Atlanta. Soundstripes headquarters is in Nashville. So I'm back and forth. It's a pretty easy trip up to Nashville from here.

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Justin Levinson (09:56.236)‍

Yeah, I love Atlanta. I go there every year for opening day for the Atlanta Braves. So I love to go out there and I have a great friend who works for Microsoft. Yeah, it's one of my favorite places to go. They call it, guess, like Hollywood East, That's the Lisbon California we call it.

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Jeff Perkins (10:02.83)‍

nice, nice.

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Jeff Perkins (10:14.21)‍

Yeah. Yeah, man, there's there's tons of film work being done in Atlanta right now. It's a really exciting time to be here. Everywhere you go around town, you just see people out shooting films and television shows and you see, you know, famous actors all around. So it's it's a pretty cool. It's pretty cool vibe. The film industry has really been built up here, though. It's it's pretty impressive now what the city has become. I mean, I moved to Atlanta in

2007 and it was, was a totally different city back then. Everything revolved around Coca-Cola and Delta airlines and Home Depot and Georgia Pacific, these kind of big fortune 500 companies and they employed most of the people now between the technology industry and the film industry. It's really become a much more vibrant ecosystem.

where whatever you do, whether you want to be in the creative arts or if you want to be in tech or you want to work for enterprise companies, you really can do that here in town.

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Justin Levinson (11:17.964)‍

Yeah, it's super cool. I even noticed a ton of just content, like creators, you know, out there filming themselves in the park, dancing and doing all kinds of interesting things. Yeah, super cool. Big Atlanta fan. Yeah, maybe you could tell me how, I guess, in your personal story, I was just sort of like looking back on LinkedIn and kind of seeing what you...

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Jeff Perkins (11:26.264)‍

Hahaha.

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Justin Levinson (11:44.394)‍

You actually had a lot of experience working in the creative agency space. It seems like early on in your career, you were on the account side. Is that sort of, am I accurate in saying that that's where you sort of got your roots?

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Jeff Perkins (11:58.51)‍

Yeah, I started my career in New York City ad industry. So I worked at an agency called Saatchi and Saatchi first, right out of college. had a great opportunity there to work on the Procter and Gamble accounts. So Tide laundry detergent and Cascade dishwashing detergent. And it was funny that I worked on these two like iconic soap brands all while living in like a 300 square foot apartment in New York City without a washer, dryer or a dishwasher. But it was, it was a great

way to start my career because Procter & Gamble does almost everything right when it comes to marketing and advertising. So I feel like I was taught the right way and that served me well throughout my career. And then I went from traditional advertising to more digital advertising as tools like Yahoo and Google were starting to emerge and this whole new

ecosystem of digital advertising was coming in, I kind of jumped on that wave. And so I was at a couple of the early digital agencies. And then I went to a large agency where I ran digital marketing for Volvo for some time, which was a great experience. And so, yeah, I spent a ton of time in the agency world. So I really know that. I know that environment very well. as I then became a CMO and as a CMO, I had lots of agencies working for me.

And so yes, I'm very well entrenched in, I think, the advertising world.

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Justin Levinson (13:27.892)‍

Yeah, I thought that was very interesting. And what part of in your career sort of like analogous to the, or got you into the music part of it? Like what's your music background?

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Jeff Perkins (13:42.83)‍

You know, I probably, I'm not a music guy traditionally. Like I love music. I'm passionate about music. I'm actually not a musician. Like most, most of our employees at Soundstripe are musicians. I think I've just grown my career more on the business side and the operations side. And so I, I left the agency world and around 2007, I went client side.

I worked at a company called auto trader. And then I worked at a company called park mobile and sort of worked my way up to be the CEO of park mobile park. Mobile's the largest parking app in the United States. And I, you know, I've just become sort of a, um, uh, all purpose business guy and, you know, soundtrack was founded by musicians. Uh, the, the three founders are actually still with the business, but they wanted to bring in someone who is more operational focused and, uh, to kind of help.

Continue to run the business and to grow it and scale it. And so that's why they brought me in. probably unless I'm not the, you know, definitely not the founder of the company, but someone who has a long track record of growing businesses, helping scale businesses. And that's why they brought me into Soundstripe.

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Justin Levinson (14:58.592)‍

Yeah, totally. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Do you have any, if you can share, like strategies or sort of goals that you sort of have in the future for Soundstripe?

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Jeff Perkins (15:11.02)‍

Yeah, I think Soundstripe has a really exciting future ahead of us. We've grown a lot over the last nine years. We've got about 47,000 customers that are using the Soundstripe platform. About a thousand of those are larger enterprise customers. And that's really where we see our ICP fit is with larger companies or agencies where music is very important to the work. And they see the value of the music.

We also have a lot of people who are the individual content creators that use our platform as well, but where we see the best product market fit is more in that upmarket customer. And so that's a really big push for us to really get deeper into larger companies so they can use our music library for all the things they're doing. And it's interesting where, you know, the use of music is becoming more more important for these large companies, especially when it comes to the

copyright laws and securing the rights for the songs that you're using in all of your creative work. There have been some lawsuits recently. Marriott was sued and University of Southern California because they had people out there doing social media posts on behalf of the university or social media posts on behalf of Marriott brand. And they weren't using they weren't paying for the music they were using. So they were doing maybe a tick tock.

And on Tik TOK, you can pull in popular music for your videos, but it specifically says on Tik TOK that it's not for commercial use. So if you're an influencer using Tik TOK to make your videos and you're using a popular song, you're going to put that brand sort of at risk. And so brands are sort of catching onto this now and they're saying, okay, I need to make sure that, my influencer marketing strategy and program.

I'm giving the influencers the music that they need to use. And so we're working with this major cosmetics brand globally now that uses a ton of influencers across the world. And all of these influencers, as they're doing their TikToks and Instagram posts, they're pulling in Soundstripe music. And so for this brand, they know that they are protected. Like they don't have to worry. Like all the influencers are using music that is cleared. And so they're not going to have to worry about a major

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Jeff Perkins (17:35.755)‍

publisher or record label coming after them and saying that they've basically stolen or they're using their work incorrectly. And then are then legally liable to pay for that work.

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Justin Levinson (17:48.042)‍

Yeah, so because you guys are royalty free for the most part, you've paid for the rights to my music and then you no longer have to deal with like the backend and all that stuff. It's just ready to go for the customer.

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Jeff Perkins (18:00.908)‍

Yeah, we own the music. The music is our music. have composers on staff who create the music. so everything that's in our library is available to use if you buy it transactionally or if you buy a subscription. So can use it for any of your projects. So we may try to make it very easy and you just don't have to worry about it. We have high quality music, tons of different genres, whether you want something with vocals or something instrumental, we have everything. And so you have a great

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Justin Levinson (18:08.054)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (18:28.128)‍

Library that you could then use in all of your creative projects and again, you don't have to worry about do we have the rights to use this song and this you know for commercial use? When you work with us, know when you buy our songs You can use that those songs in all of your projects. So make it very easy and you know You've probably Justin you've probably done this in your career. Like you want to use a certain song for a project

it's really challenging to go if you want to use, especially a popular song, you have to go to label and sometimes the artist directly, or if that artist is not alive anymore, you go to their family or whoever owns the catalog. It's really tricky and challenging to go and procure a popular song. And so we give you a library of songs that sound like popular songs, but you can use them in all of your projects. So that's probably, that's the.

core of our business right now. And that's really where we're leaning in. The other side of the business that I think is also interesting is we're starting to bring other publishing libraries into our platform. And so, like I said before, it's hard to get popular music license for your projects. We're working right now to try to make that a lot easier for content creators, agencies, and brands. And so we're actively talking with a lot of the major labels and publishers out there about bringing some of their music

Into our platform so that we could then sell it to our customers. So say you have a specific project and maybe you want to use a popular song in it. we will have that song in our library and we'll have a way for you to actually, buy that popular song from it through us. And then you can use that in your projects. so something that used to be very complicated, we're trying to make that a lot easier for agencies and brands so that they can then use popular songs in their commercial projects.

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Justin Levinson (20:21.996)‍

Yeah, now that's brilliant. How are you guys, I know you have people that are already, that are like full-time composers that you guys have staffed. Do you guys have like an A &R team that's also looking for talent outside for other artists to come into your ecosystem?

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Jeff Perkins (20:44.77)‍

Yeah, yeah, we have a full-time A &R person on staff actually. And that's what she does. She's always listening to new music, going and finding new artists and trying to bring them into the Soundstripe tent so they'll make music for us. So yes, we're very proactive in going out and kind of understanding, one, studying the trends of where kind of, what are the hot music or the emerging music or emerging artists out there? And then also asking our customers, what kind of music do you want?

is not in our library that you would like to see more of and then going and making sure we have the relationships with those artists so we can bring them in and have them work with our composers on a variety of different songs.

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Justin Levinson (21:25.77)‍

And are your artists typically anonymous once like the people that have actually created it? Or is everything sort of released under the sound stripe name and sort of the artists are sort of on the DL?

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Jeff Perkins (21:39.158)‍

No, no, actually, if you go to our website, we put our artists right up there front and center. And so we love our artists. We want to help market our artists. And we also we also pay our artists royalties. So we, as songs are used and we're getting paid royalties for those songs, we we will split that money with the artists who created those songs. We like to think we're very we like to say that we're very artist friendly. Being a company that was founded in Nashville by artists.

It's very important to us that we're taking care of the artists that are helping us make the music for the platform.

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Justin Levinson (22:14.026)‍

Yeah, in a way it almost seems like it functions as a label in a way. You're sort of releasing the music, you're also sort of representing the artist a bit on your, and they're getting back into royalties. I mean, it's not quite, but it's similar. You're kind of repping them in a way.

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Jeff Perkins (22:28.29)‍

Yeah, we are a label. It's not a traditional label though, where you're trying to make these artists famous and get them on tour and do all that. We're a label though for music that you would use in different projects for agencies and brands. And so it kind of a different spin on it, but a lot of artists like this kind of work. were, know, a lot of artists have made great careers, you know,

creating the kind of production music that we sell on our platform. And so it's become a very, very nice business for a lot of artists out there to make this kind of music. It's very hard to become a popular artist today, but that doesn't mean you can't have a great career in music. And doing music for platforms like Soundstripe is one way that a lot of artists could make a good living and be able to continue doing what they love.

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Justin Levinson (23:21.964)‍

And in terms of when you guys are looking for, when you're hiring artists, is it typically in a bulk? Like you're looking for seven or eight songs that are fitting a mood? How does that sort of work for you?

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Jeff Perkins (23:39.534)‍

It really just depends on what we're trying, what gaps we're trying to fill in our catalog. So one of the things we're hearing from our customers a lot now is that they want more and more songs with vocals in them. And so that's a big change for us because we've traditionally done a lot of instrumental and now we're doing a lot more vocal work. And so you need a different kind of artist that will do the vocals for you. We are doing more hip hop and rap, and then we're doing a lot more international. We're hearing from clients that they want.

maybe a Brazilian flavor or an Indian flavor to the music that they're looking for. And that's really fun for our A &R team because now they're looking globally at like what artists can we work with and partner with. And as far as how much we work with the artists, it just depends. Sometimes we'll do just one song. Sometimes we'll work with artists. Some of our artists have been with us for many years. So it just depends on what the need is and what kind of relationship we could build with the individual artists.

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Justin Levinson (24:21.12)‍

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (24:39.574)‍

Yeah, that's super cool. I guess on a personal level, what kind of things do you like to do outside of work? What are your personal hobbies?

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Jeff Perkins (24:51.662)‍

Um, you know, so I've, uh, I'm a, girl dad. have two daughters ages, uh, 14 and 17. So a lot of my free time is going to their activities. One's a competitive dancer or the other does volleyball and golf. And so I spent a lot of time, uh, you know, going to, you know, high school or junior high school type activities with them. Uh, so that's a big part of what I do. I'm also a huge, uh, Bruce Springsteen fan.

So I've been to 34 Springsteen shows. So I'm always, I'm always looking to go to my, my next one. And then I, yeah, I've, yeah, I'm kind of like midlife crisis mode right now. So I've taken up running marathons. So that's like sort of my new passions. I ran a New York city marathon two years ago, last year in the Washington DC Marine Corps marathon. This year I'm running the Chicago marathon. So very much into health, wellness, fitness. and I'm a also have a

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Justin Levinson (25:20.278)‍

Nice.

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Jeff Perkins (25:49.646)‍

I have the full Peloton suite of bike and treadmill and rower in my house. And if anyone wants to ride against me or run against me, my leaderboard name on the Peloton is bald guy. So you could come, come, you know, take your crack at racing the bald guy.

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Justin Levinson (26:06.732)‍

That's awesome, man. Well, I have two girls as well. One's three and the other one is six. So I'm wondering, were you able to be active when they were like that age? Were you this active? Were you in terrible shape like me when they were three and six? And why have a chance to be in as good of shape as you when they're 17 or whatever?

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Jeff Perkins (26:27.278)‍

Ha

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Jeff Perkins (26:30.798)‍

You know, it's, um, I've, I've gone through different phases in my life with like health and fitness and wellness. I think when I was young, I was a basketball player and I was always, you know, just super skinny. And then when I got into college, I stopped playing basketball. gained a lot of weight and I came out of college and I was just not very healthy. I was living in New York city. I was probably doing takeout almost seven nights a week. Uh, and, so I kind of got, it was a little chubby.

And it was really when my first daughter was born actually that I was like, I kind of want to get fit. you know, it just, I started, you know, thinking about, you know, I want to be around and I want to be an active, healthy, high energy dad. And so at that point I started doing these, these fitness boot camps. sometimes you see these, these lunatics who are out in the neighborhood, like at five in the morning, running laps and doing pushups. So I was doing that for a while.

Then I got, you know, I got the Peloton and I, I just, do all kinds of different workouts, but I it's, you know, it's like they say, it takes a 30 days to form a habit. Right. And so once I started working out all the time, I just couldn't stop. And so if, for, for probably you, Justin, if you want to get started, the best way is just like commit for a month.

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Justin Levinson (27:51.67)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (27:51.71)‍

And at the end of that month and work out every day for like 30 minutes to 60 minutes, and then see where you are at the end. you know, my guess is you'll probably get, know, once that habit is formed, it's, it's kind of hard to break and you're like, all right, how am I going to get my workout in today? And, and so, yeah, I think it's important, but I've really found in my life and my career, it's sort of been a, an unlock for me. Like I think if I'm, if I'm

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Justin Levinson (28:07.297)‍

Yes.

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Jeff Perkins (28:19.04)‍

staying fit and healthy. I'm a better dad. I'm a better boss, a better executive, a better person overall. So it's very important that I can get my workouts in every day and I'm staying healthy and fit. And I think the benefits are, have been just kind of life-changing for me. And so I highly recommend anyone if you're

You know, if you're kind of thinking like, I can't do that, you know, there's always, there's always 30 minutes to carve out of every day when you could do something active, whether it's, you know, you don't have to do crazy stuff. You can go on a walk. could, you know, you can go do, you know, some, cardio, some weights, but, I always encourage everyone like spend time every day, taking care of yourself because it's super important for your overall, you know, your, your, your physical health and then also your mental health.

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Justin Levinson (29:10.636)‍

Yeah, well, I think that's really fascinating. I think knowing that what you've done in your career, sort of working your way up all the way to being a CEO of a really established company, I think people kind of want to know what that secret sauce is. Like what is keeping your mind clear? What's like getting you up in the morning, know, helping you sleep better at night. So yeah, I am definitely heeding some advice here about

getting into some better shape. I have a tendency to get in a groove for a minute, but then I'll get like sick or something and then I'll be like out for two weeks and then I'll have to get back into the gym. And so I'd like to get to be more consistent. I think that's what I really need. But I actually used to be an athlete as well. I used to be a sprinter, believe it or not. used to run, I ran in college as well.

I ran the 100 meter dash, 200 meter, four by four, four by one. Grew up in Vermont. I was really fast for Vermont. Like as fast you can be in this state. But outside of Vermont, if you look at the folks that are in high school that are running 100 meter dashes in Georgia or big places.

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Jeff Perkins (30:08.575)‍

wow.

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Jeff Perkins (30:17.004)‍

You

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Justin Levinson (30:33.448)‍

my times would not have held up very well. But I do, I think part of my, you know, I am very, I'm an avid learner and I'm a very hard worker and I'm very competitive. And I think a lot of that comes from when I was involved in athletics. And I do know how great, how clear your mind can be when you're really, you know, when you're really sweating it out and keeping your body in good shape. So.

That's some great stuff.

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Jeff Perkins (31:04.622)‍

Yeah, you, that's exactly it. mean, you read, um, there's a lot of research studies out there around links between, uh, physical fitness and, uh, you know, business performance, you know, cause I think about it as, know, it's being a CEO, it's super stressful, right? Like, you know, every day there's something that is probably going wrong or some issue that has to be resolved or.

just pressures of, you know, growing the business, driving the business forward and, know, having an outlet where you could, you know, make yourself feel better, both physically and mentally is really important. And for me, that's always been exercise. Like I, I finish a run or I finish a ride on the Peloton and, know, just, I always feel better than when I started. I've never, I've never finished a workout and said, gosh, I wish I didn't do.

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Justin Levinson (32:00.65)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (32:01.374)‍

Right. It's always the opposite. like, Oh yeah, that was, I'm really glad I made the time. Cause a lot of times when I get on, you know, the bike or when I'm start the run, I was like, Oh, I really am not feeling it today. I really prefer not to be doing this. And then at the end, I'm like, gosh, I'm really glad I did that. And you just kind of have to force yourself for a bit until you form that habit. And then once the habit is formed, then you're like, you're like, all right, when, when am I getting my workout in today? Like.

Like let's go and then you can take it too far like I do when you're trying, you're over 50 and you're still running marathons, which I probably shouldn't do, but it's super fun. Yeah, the thing that really I think is important though, especially from a fitness workout perspective is to set a goal or sign up for something. I always found like,

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Justin Levinson (32:38.821)‍

That's good. Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (32:54.69)‍

You know, signing up for a marathon is sort of a, a 10 K or a half marathon, whatever you want to do, or an adventure race or something. It's sort of a forcing factor. Right. Cause once you sign up and you pay your money, you're like, all right, I kind of have to do this. And, and it really motivates you to get a training plan together to make the time. So if you're, if you're struggling to kind of make the time, you know, sign up for a race or sign up for some kind of activity that's going to force you to kind of.

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Justin Levinson (33:03.852)‍

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (33:08.79)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (33:23.436)‍

get ready and to train. And that sometimes really helps. When I signed up for the New York Marathon, it was my first ever marathon. And I was like, I gotta do this. I signed up for the thing. Not doing it is really not an option. And so you just have to really, I think that's sort of a hack is sign up for something.

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Justin Levinson (33:25.516)‍

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (33:41.974)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (33:48.962)‍

because that'll get you kind of, you know, kind of force you to get your act together and to make the time to prepare for the race.

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Justin Levinson (33:56.3)‍

That's it, Jeff. I'm signing up for the New York Marathon right now. I don't know how you did that. That is a lot. mean, that's really training. If you're going to run 20-odd miles, that's not a small feat.

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Jeff Perkins (33:59.34)‍

There you go,

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Jeff Perkins (34:09.932)‍

Yeah, it's, it's very intimidating from the outside, but once you start doing it, you realize, okay, it's not, it's not that big of a thing. hardest thing about then you're training for a marathon is that it kind of, it wrecks your weekends. so, cause usually your long runs are going to be on a Saturday. that means you really aren't going to probably go out on Friday night and then you're going to be wrecked on Saturday night. So you kind of lose your weekends for a couple of months.

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Justin Levinson (34:38.028)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (34:39.032)‍

But it is worth it. I mean, it's so fun when you are there with 50,000 people, you know, and you're running and everyone's out there cheering for you. I think the New York Marathon was probably, it's probably the closest I've ever felt to being like sort of a professional athlete because you just, you're there and there's crowds everywhere and people are screaming your name. And it's a really just special experience for someone who's just kind of like an amateur athlete to be a part of.

and very, very emotional. You see people just crying as they're running and it's, it's a really cool thing. Now you don't have to run a marathon. mean, for some people, their marathon could be a 10 K or it be a trail run, or it could be a, you know, a triathlon kind of thing. There's, plenty of ways for you to sort of get your fix and do these races. But I think it's, they're just, it's really a fun thing to do. and it's very rewarding.

at the end of all the training to be able to get that medal and celebrate. And it's a really, it's a really cool.

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Justin Levinson (35:41.42)‍

love it. Do you, are you a reader or do you have any sort of any books that you really suggest or maybe mentors that have sort of guided you? kind of curious on that front.

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Jeff Perkins (35:55.234)‍

Yeah, I read a lot. I actually have a book, too, if your readers plug my own book. Yeah, a couple of years ago, I wrote a book called How Not to Suck at Marketing. And so that's that one. It's available on Amazon. was it was released in about twenty twenty one. You asked me what I read and I was like, I read my own book. But no, it's I I actually you know, the the genre of books that

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Justin Levinson (35:59.126)‍

Really? Yeah. We're gonna pull. Yeah. For sure.

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Justin Levinson (36:08.671)‍

Awesome.

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Justin Levinson (36:17.962)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (36:25.302)‍

I've gotten probably the most out of have been books by like former military guys who then with their experience in the military and translating that to business. there's a book called Extreme Ownership. That's a very famous book. There's a book called It's Your Ship about a naval commander who turned around the worst performing ship in the Navy into the top performing ship in the Navy. And there's a book called Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins, which is a very popular book.

He was in the military. It's not all about the military. But I find sometimes like the leadership lessons from these military books are very inspiring to me and the way I think about my career and the way I lead my teams is just a lot of great lessons from the military that I think can be taken into the business world. And so that's usually the genre I look at, which is kind of weird because I didn't come out of the military at all.

I really appreciate sort of the training and discipline and leadership skills they instill in military leadership. And I think there's a lot that business leaders can take from there and adopt in their companies.

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Justin Levinson (37:35.208)‍

Yeah, no, that's genius. really appreciate that. And did you have any mentors that sort of kind of helped you become a leader as well throughout your career?

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Jeff Perkins (37:50.218)‍

I've been lucky in my career. think everywhere I've worked, I've kind of found pretty good mentors that have kind of coached me. I mean, all the way back to early in my career, I worked with several women in the agency and they were kind of very high up in the agency world, but they really, they took the time I think to really.

you know, work with me individually. And we did a lot of lunches or drinks. And, I always found that, having those mentors really, you know, really helps in so many ways. And it, think the, the, was very fortunate actually when I was at, when I was at, this company park mobile, I came into park mobile as the chief marketing officer and I got to work with a CEO there named John Ziegler. And, you know, I think like,

he really mentored me for my time there. And then as he left ParkMobile, because he was my mentor, he really teed me up to be the next CEO. So I can say I probably wouldn't be a CEO today if it weren't for his mentorship and leadership and helping me as I was there. And I try to mentor as many people as I can as well. I think it's critical that, you I think at this stage of my career,

I'm just constantly giving back and helping younger professionals be their best self and figure out what they want to do and share whatever wisdom I have to help them navigate through their career.

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Justin Levinson (39:28.406)‍

And what do you look for in people that you hire and you bring on? Like what are some important qualities?

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Jeff Perkins (39:33.326)‍

I generally look for for a couple things. One is energy and enthusiasm. Like I love people who just are totally geeked up about, you know, the company they're working for or sort of like what they're doing. And that's something that I really try to suss out in an interview. It's like, how excited are you about the business? You know, are you, you know, like, like, are you just like a geek about like

this stuff, like you just so into it. You know, that's an important thing. Like, so what kind of energy are they bringing? I try to evaluate their expertise specific to the function I'm hiring them for. So if I'm hiring someone who's a, you know, like a performance marketer or demand gen marketer, are they really deep into all the tooling out there and all the martech they could be using and all the platforms where you can advertise? And then I look for stretch. Like, are they, do I think there's someone who

Beyond the day-to-day responsibilities, can they do more? Because I want to hire people that over time I could give them more responsibility and really help them. So they come in as a performance marketing manager, but ideally they would be a director of marketing within 24 months managing a team under them. so do they have that stretch? Are they intellectually curious? they?

good leaders, are they good people? Do they have a lot of EQ? So those are the things I generally look for. It's like the energy, it's the expertise, and then that ability to stretch so they can move up into the next position.

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Justin Levinson (41:11.948)‍

Are there particular positions in your niche that are, obviously, you guys are hiring musicians, but are there any roles within your ecosystem that are typically difficult to fill or jobs that are difficult to find people for within your industry?

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Jeff Perkins (41:35.398)‍

yeah, I think we're very fortunate at Soundstripe because we're in a, industry that a lot of people want to work in. We're in music. you know, not everyone wants to work in CRM technology or, or cyber security. mean, nothing wrong with those spaces. but because it's music, we, we tend to get a lot of interest from people who maybe have not worked in music before.

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Justin Levinson (41:43.403)‍

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (42:02.798)‍

but they've come out of B2B SaaS at another company. They have a really formidable set of skills, but they love the idea of working in a company that does music. And so, you we just had a couple of roles that were open and I couldn't believe how quickly we filled them. Just because, you know, we were kind of a company that, if you want to work in tech, we're a great tech company. And if you want to work in music, we're a great music company. And so those are the, you know, having

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Justin Levinson (42:11.916)‍

All right.

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Jeff Perkins (42:32.728)‍

kind of those two components to the business make it, I think, fairly, I don't want to use the word easy, but it's probably easier to recruit for than maybe companies that are in less sexy categories overall. But yeah, we've been very fortunate. I've also, you know, we just hired two people that I worked with at previous companies. And so that's another part, you I think for leaders, want to...

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Justin Levinson (42:43.724)‍

you

Yeah.

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Jeff Perkins (43:00.302)‍

Uh, you know, stay connected to people that you really liked or, know, that were very talented in previous companies. Cause you never know as you move to different places, um, who you could bring with you and who could be a fit at your next company.

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Justin Levinson (43:14.476)‍

Totally good people always refer or bring other good people into the ecosystem. So I imagine having you on board, you probably had wonderful contacts also to bring in, which is really cool.

Cool, Jeff. Well, yeah, man. Thanks so much for speaking with us today and giving us so many insights on Soundstripe. If folks are interested in sort of learning more about Soundstripe or signing up, where can we lead them?

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Jeff Perkins (43:48.302)‍

So if you want to sign up, can go to soundstripe.com and we have a free trial. So you can kind of play around with the product a bit, take a look at our music library, see if it's the right fit for you. So definitely sign up for a free trial and go check it out. And if I could help you in any way, or if you need custom music or anything, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. That's probably the best place to get a hold of me. So just Jeff Perkins on LinkedIn. I post a lot there, so I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn.

But connecting me, I'd love to hear from your audience, Justin. if we can help anyone with their music needs, do not hesitate to reach out.

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Justin Levinson (44:27.276)‍

Totally. Yeah, and I came to you because I've wanted to speak with you because I've heard that Soundstripe has been used by a lot of our clients at Coming Up Creative. So you guys came highly recommended. I actually had asked several of our clients, like, hey, who do you guys use for your music? Soundstripe was a common name that came up. So you guys are come highly recommended by a lot of our clientele.

Definitely go check out Soundstripe. Jeff, it was so great to speak with you today and I look forward to continue to follow you on LinkedIn and stay in touch in the future.

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Jeff Perkins (45:05.646)‍

That's great, Justin. Thanks for having me.

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Justin Levinson (45:07.468)‍

All right, Jeff, be well, Bye.

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Jeff Perkins (45:09.262)‍

Take care.