Jake's Road Report is Gemini Sports founder Jake Schuster’s weekly update from professional football's frontlines. He travels globally, meeting club executives to share candid insights on AI's role in football. These raw, actionable thoughts are delivered weekly, with meeting details kept confidential and specific intel omitted.
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At 18 years old, David Geffen moved from Brooklyn to LA to be amongst the beautiful people. The trouble was, he wasn't any good at anything and fled from every job.
A struggling actor told him: “You can't do anything? You should be a talent agent—they don't do anything." Geffen took him seriously and got a job in the mailroom at William Morris Agency.
While delivering mail, Geffen watched what agents did. “All they do is bullshit on the phone all day. I can do that.” And guys from Brooklyn, as everyone knows, are better at bullshitting than anyone.
He noticed they were all chasing established acts. This made no sense—established acts were expensive. Needier. They had greater competition. To Geffen, it made sense to find acts before they were established.
So while other agents went home to their families, Geffen haunted clubs and bars, signing talent before anyone else noticed them. Pretty soon, he became the most successful agent at William Morris.
By 27, he'd opened his own label: Asylum Records. He made famous Neil Young, Crosby Stills and Nash, the Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits and Joni Mitchell—some of the best-selling records of the 70s.
In 1972 he sold the company. Five years later, he opened Geffen Records, signing Donna Summer, Cher, Aerosmith, Guns N' Rose and Nirvana. But who he really wanted was John Lennon.
The only problem? So did everyone else.
Geffen thought: “How do I get upstream of this problem?” Other labels talked directly to Lennon. Geffen figured Yoko Ono must feel excluded. So he didn't talk to Lennon—he talked to Yoko. He persuaded her, and she persuaded Lennon. Lennon signed to Geffen's label and released
Double Fantasy, his masterpiece.
In 1990, Geffen sold the company and left to open a movie studio with Steven Spielberg: DreamWorks SKG (Geffen is the G). Today, Geffen is worth around $9 billion.
Not by being better, tougher, faster, smarter, richer, or better educated than other people. Not by trying to beat others at their own game.
But by looking at what everyone else was doing and thinking:
“What aren't they doing?”
