A Man With The Ripple Effect | Tyler Barth

This interview, “A Man With The Ripple Effect” is of Tyler Barth, Founder and Partner of Legacy House Ventures where he is an active investor supporting founders with impact-focused businesses. Legacy House Ventures’ portfolio currently includes sustainable consumer goods and services and projects focused on Edtech, upcycled healthy candy and Cleantech. Tyler has been a Strategic Advisor for Guggenheim Partners for the past seven years, working with CIO Scott Minerd, responsible for making introductions in the finance, entertainment, media, and climate crisis spaces to help support their $400B AUM. As VP of Marketing, Business Development, and Entertainment Relations for Blue Microphones, Tyler helped to build the brand into a market leader in consumer audio, selling to Logitech in 2018. Working to mentor and influence the next global generation of philanthropists and entrepreneurs, Tyler is heavily involved with the NEXUS Global Summit, Milken’s Young Leaders Circle, and the Young Investors Organization. His non-profit work focuses on global health initiatives and he is a Member of the Ubuntu Council for Charlize Theron’s Africa Outreach Project, Co-President and Board Member for City of Hope’s Future Hope Committee, and has served as an Ambassador for the Prostate Cancer Foundation over the past two decades. In his early career, Tyler worked at Creative Artists Agency, managed international bands and musicians, and was an executive in private equity. He has his B.B.A from the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado

Transcript for A Man With The Ripple Effect | Tyler Barth:

Alan Olsen: Hi, this is Alan Olsen and welcome to American Dreams. My guest today is Tyler Barth. Tyler, welcome to today’s show.

Tyler Barth: Thanks for having me.

Alan Olsen: So Tyler, you have a very unique background. I’ll call you one of the serial entrepreneurs very connected in the music industry. But for the listeners, can you give us your background? And what brought you up to where you are today?

Tyler Barth: Oh, boy. Yeah. I think, it’s interesting to answer the question, because I always feel like it’s changing, right? You’re reflecting on the past, to really, put yourself in the position to move forward in your life. And so I reflect on my past a lot. I grew up a big fan of entertainment growing up in LA. I think the first form of entertainment that I loved was going to the Laker games, with my dad and showtime was that entertainment .For anybody that knows the Lakers, that was the Magic Johnson era with Kareem Abdul Jabbar and James Worthy and Jamaal Wilkes and Norm Nixon. And it was at the Laker games that I knew that I wanted to be in entertainment. And then of course, the entertainers went to go see the Lakers. And you see Jack Nicholson and Diane Cannon on the floor. And so I was always really driven by being entertained and wanting to be a part of that. And then music played a role in my life. So I became obsessed with films, but because of the the scores of music that were actually composed for them. And so that didn’t really dictate where I chose to go to school, I really just went out to University of Colorado saw that campus and fell in love with it. But it was there that I brought my entire VHS collection. And I was like the blockbuster for the dorms, and then ultimately, where I was living thereafter. And so I knew that I wanted to be in the entertainment business. I started going to see live music when I was old enough to drive. And then of course, prior to that, I would ask my mom and dad drive me. And yeah, I guess it was it was inspired by the Lakers showtime parlayed with some scenes, some of the most classic movies of all time. And then of course, as I was growing up in my teens, ultimately seeing movies, like usual suspects in Memento, and just seeing great, great, you know, Bryan Singer, and Christopher Nolan, and then respecting the Steven Spielberg’s of the world, and the amazing work that these directors were creating. So  that’s what got me going. And then ultimately, my career started CAA, which is Creative Artists Agency, an agency that record that worked with the top talent, you know, so our clients at the time when I was there, and of course, I have all kinds of stories was, you know, George Clooney, and Robert De Niro and Tom Cruise. And then of course, we represented a ton of the producers and directors from Oprah to Steven Spielberg, to a lot of the studios we would work very closely with, but every major movie that was happening at the time, had to go through CAA, because if it was their writers, or was it their director, or producer or talent, somebody was adjacent or touching that film. So it was really exciting to be on the center point of that, but it was very transactional for me. So I ultimately went out and formed a music management company, and we worked with brands. And I went over to Scandinavia to launch that. I was inspired to go out there. A band that I met in Spain, convinced me to come out and see them play in Denmark, and they told me their dream was to go play the Sunset Strip in LA. And I was like, wait, I can make that dream happen. I’ve been on the side of being on the agency side, as a manager, I was like, I could probably make that happen. And of course, it was music that inspired me that I just wanted to be around. And then so that took on its own and then we got into private equity. And then we got into working in financial services a little bit and then family office. And how I would say I’m an angel investor now is focused on early stage companies that really have a focus on impacting the world for better, what is this world look like with my two and a half year old and my four week old? When they asked me, So what do you do? I want to say, I’m improving the world, through, building great communities and finding great co-investors that, we can share ideas and really impact the world. It’s scale to. So I tend to take advisor roles in those businesses and work with the founders a few hours a week. And it’s been very rewarding, especially coming from like the entertainment side of things into something that’s a lot more tactical. And, you know, not to say that media isn’t improving the world. But I would say that I think my growth now, close to 44, I’ve recognized that time is the most valuable resource that we have. So how you spend it, and who you spend it with is pretty much everything. Now I’ve surrounded myself with a community of people that I just want to spend all my time with. And so that’s, that’s where we are today. And I know that I sort of gave you a probably a much longer answer than you were looking for. But that should definitely give you a little bit of the context as to why you know where I am.

Alan Olsen: Okay, so it’s next level here. We’re moving from web 2.0, to web 3.0. And essentially, that’s dealing a lot with community, we hear things about blockchains and NFT’s non-fungible tokens. When I think of a non-fungible token, I think of the analogy of a concert ticket that you’re seeing you’re sitting on the front row, and the face value of that ticket is not what people will pay for that seat, they’ll pay a lot more. As you move into this new realm of building communities. Can you talk more about what it means to build a community? How does that go about? Because you’ve done this time and time again, being in the entertainment industry?

Tyler Barth: Yeah, that’s a good it’s a really good question. I’m glad you’re asking that. So first off, fundamentally speaking, let’s not jump into the metaverse quite yet, I think there’s there’s little steps along the way that that we can definitely dive into. And that is, building authentic relationships is being a good listener and understanding the the commonality that people have with each other. But trust is the most important thing, right? When we connected, Alan, immediately within seconds, I was like, okay, this is somebody I can trust. And then we had a really interesting conversation, which touched a lot of different things. In fact, we probably talked for 45 minutes, there was no reason to go talk to anyone else when we connected, because while there were very interesting people around us, I was so engaged and understanding your story that I was like, I need more Alan in my life, right? So when you have that moment, you know, it used to be in entertainment, you would have to go work the room. And it gets tiring, it’s, it’s totally exhausting. But putting out this shaking hands, trying to build a real connection with somebody, it’s almost impossible to do that when you’re trying to spend what three minutes with everybody. So what I found over the years is when you find something that really inspires you, you stick with it. I did this last night, I met a guy and we spent 45 minutes together, and we’re gonna follow up. And he inspired me because you know, he health and wellness was his thing. And I have a background in health and wellness. So immediately, there’s that commonality. And then there’s that trusted factor, because we both had somebody in common you and I had Jim in common. So it was very, you know, sort of one of those things. And when you get to know somebody, and you can build the authentic relationship and the trusted friendship, then all of a sudden, it’s like, Alan, I want you to meet my friend, Jonathan, you basically say, look, I trust Tyler, I’m sure he’s going to introduce me to somebody that obviously, I understand your value proposition. And I understand what Jonathan’s bringing to the table. And so before the two of you meet, I’ll even say, look, Alan has an incredible podcast, he’s got an incredible company, you definitely want to meet Alan for more than just the fact that he’s a great guy and a father, you know, a world change maker and you know, a guy that I am inspired by, but you’re gonna have a really tactical conversation, because you’re both aligned in so many different ways that you don’t even realize. And so you have to be on my end, a super connector in that world to understand that. But it can only happen, just through trust. And so having built maybe 30 or 40 communities in my day. And you know, those communities could be five people to 2000 people, right. It just depends on what you’re really trying to create. And I think it’s about having a clear idea of what that community does and what it represents.

Alan Olsen: I’m going to turn the page here. We going to go down to one of your fun communities about cars. You’ve traveled the world. You’ve been to different countries and you got this club, of a certain type of car that you drive. Can you tell us a little bit about how that came about?

Tyler Barth: That is such a good question. I haven’t answered this question for a while. But in 2012, I was at the Shore Club pool in Miami, with a couple guys I had just been introduced to, and one of the guys was started talking about cars, the way I talk about music. And I took it, I took an interest in this because I’m not really a car guy. And he’s just like, Yeah, this road trip I do with my dad, it’s really hard to do. Because in Brazil, we don’t have the greatest roads in the world. So our dream is to come to Europe and do this, and I kept listening. And next thing, you know, Alan is 45 minutes down the rabbit hole talking to him. And we have more and more people coming into the area. And I recognize that everyone has this like, really interesting background around sports car enthusiasm. I was kind of the odd man out and I was like, I want a piece of this, I want to I want to learn a little bit more about this, because I like all these guys. And I want to have a seat at the table. Because of the position I was in, and because of this new relationship I forged with a guy named Leo from Brazil. It was the following fall of 2013, that we did our pilot program through Germany, where we took 30 guys from 16 Different countries that we had through our network. So they were all friends. It wasn’t like we went out trying to like make money on this thing. It was really just about let’s find people that will buy into this. So I brought my dad, Leo brought his dad, our friend Fernando from Mexico City brought his that his dad, Patrick came from Brazil or from Germany. And I mean, it was just sort of like this, when we all had these meals. You know, imagine doing 24 consecutive meals with this very unique group of people that are brought together by sports cars. So when that program when we finished the eight days, everyone was so jazzed by what we what we had done, it was like, Where are we going next? And so here we are 20 roadtrip club, you know, trips later, we’ve been in like 32 countries, we’ve really driven every country in Europe, we’ve been to the Middle East, we’ve done the US there obviously ambitions to do many other road trips, some in Southeast Asia, some in Canada. I mean, there’s an endless amount. But what we accomplished on those trips is we build real friendships. And even for those that are not even sports car enthusiasts, you might ask what those trips are about, like we drive on Formula One tracks. We go to the auto assembly lines; you go see the cars being built. And then you know, there’s just different things that we get to do that whether it is a visit to the vineyard, or it is, going out for some really unique experience that a hotel wants to give us, we go with an open mind, the curation is done by Leo and myself. And I think it’s safe to say so not only was Leo one of my groomsmen in my wedding that I had three years ago, but I would say that from that roadshow club, I might have had 15 people that that were at my wedding. And these were all forged on these road trips of having 24 consecutive meals and diving deep into that you can only I’ve always I’ve always prefaced it in these communities that you build, there’s only so much small talk, you can you can have. And yes, you might be brought together by Golf, or cigars, or whatever that is. But at a certain point, in that five hour golf rounds, you’re probably going to have some really like you’d be able to dive a little bit deeper into what’s keeping you up at night, or what’s getting you out of bed every day. So I really value in place a tremendous amount of value on these on these communities. And for the road trip club, just to give you a metric, we’ve taken over 200 people from over 46 countries on these road trips. So you know, not only is it diverse, not only is it just you know, providing an experience for people that may not ever get to meet somebody from Chile or Peru, or Indonesia, or I know the world is very global now, but having 24 consecutive meals with those people. We’re all doing really unique things in business, and you know, who are great family men and everything else. It’s just a great, great group of people. Thank you for asking about that.

Alan Olsen: Who do you find are your inspirations or your heroes in life?

Tyler Barth: I was very lucky. I grew up with a dad who believed in me and continues to believe in me and so what better than to have a hero that you get to call Dad. He instilled in me, the belief that I have to give back. It’s part of, you know, the culture that I grew up in. So, you know, philanthropy has been a huge part of my life as a direct result of my dad giving back. And so you know, my dad is just a guy who does a little bit of everything. But what I love most about my dad isn’t the love that he gives me. It’s the fact that he still has these incredible friend groups. And he’s always meeting new guys. They’re like, Oh, your dad, your dad, and I went to a three hour lunch. And I’m like, wow, like, I want to be 74 and have as many friends as my dad. And so he’s definitely one of my heroes. And then of course, you go to like the sports that I grew up with, right? So of course, Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, these are guys that, again, without doing the name drop thing, I get to see magic pretty regularly. And I became very close with Wayne over the years. So what better than gets to meet your childhood heroes who literally were, who shaped the way that you viewed entertainment and gave you so much joy. I mean, my first tears, I think I ever experienced, were just how happy I was to be at a Laker game with my dad, when the Lakers came back and be Boston in the finals. And I saw it live. I mean, the, just the, the joy that I had and could share with my dad, you know, was something we both got to go often, you know, together to the game. So anyway, that’s I think, probably my greatest hero–my dad.

Alan Olsen: Tyler in this world of constant change, and then I kind of have the analogy of we’re going through a paradigm shift right now. But what do you see things three to five years from now, as it relates to Tyler?

Tyler Barth:  Well, one thing that I think we can all agree on during this crazy last 18 months or so (almost two years, I guess) is this idea of what what is grounded? Like what you know what? Sure we’re all stuck in our house, right? And we’re most of us are not traveling. But the idea that we all had an opportunity, and we still have the opportunity to be working on ourselves, right? If you don’t love yourself, how can you love others. So I believe that the next three to five years for me are continuing to be working on myself finding my you know, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual balance that allows me to be a great dad, a great colleague, a great husband, a great son, and just be better as a human. Because when I’m centered, and I am clear on purpose in what fulfills me and what I’m most passionate about. I mean, there’s a guy, Adam Robinson, who co-founded the Princeton Review of is such an inspiration to me, he, he looks at every relationship, and he leans in with the idea that magic will happen. Like he expects magic to happen when he’s talking to somebody. And I think having that ideal, right, he’s very clear on who he is. He actually funny story about Adam is, he actually is a US chess master, who was one of the understudies of Bobby Fischer. So he knew Bobby. And so he’s got an extraordinary story about that. And I’m sure there’s like 10 podcasts out there, where he tells a story. But anyway, I lean in a little bit inspired by Adam, because I lean into these conversations that I’m having with you. And the conversations I’ll continue to have throughout the course of my day, my weekend. And thereafter, that if you know who you are, and your value proposition, and you’re clear on purpose, and you’re centered, and you’re in, you’re thriving, and you’re in flow, Alan, you’re going to see me when I my best version of myself, even though last night we talked about I did not get a lot of sleep because I have a four week old baby girl who kept me up all night. But, you know, the three to five years for me is around personal growth. It’s about spreading the magic that I can create with amazing guys like you. And it’s about, you know, really just being is honest as you can with the intentions that you that you have. And just having focus in the things that we do have intentionality and really just establish boundaries with certain people if they’re getting you off the path. So that’s me. And then in terms of my business, it’s, you know, it’s following exactly those fundamentals. I’m going to invest in companies that are impact focused, that I can really, really move the needle with some of my relationships that I have, and also give the founders great advice in terms of you know, a way that they can excel on a personal level and then on a business level. And that could be protecting their time.

Alan Olsen: Tyler, you mentioned that impact focused investing. Do you have a favorite type of philanthropy that you like working with or cause that you like working with?

Tyler Barth: So it’s a loaded question, Alan, because impact focused investing, they are for profit companies, and I’ve always looked at philanthropic means being something that, you know, again, it’s more giving your time or your energy toward a cause that supports let’s call it education. So there’s a lot of crossover in education. So I’ll say, Look, I have an edtech venture that I got behind with a brilliant founder, Nick Gross, who is just a guy that operates on such a high level, I’m inspired to be around and you know, actually, it’s how I met Adam Robinson. So it all ties together, that in my business life, I’ve been able to meet some incredible people because they also believe in the venture that I’m involved in. I’m from a philanthropic side, I’m really passionate about about education, I think everybody deserves a great education, I know that you feel the same way, because that was one of my takeaways when we spoke. And I would also just say that we all want the well being I want my daughters to be able to go outside and have green grass. So I am concerned about the climate. And so there is a lot of effort, there are a lot of efforts that I’ve made to be very clear on the types of investments I’m making in that space. I give back to Cydia Hope and Charlene the actress she’s got an African outreach program that I’m just unbelievably passionate about, which addresses the needs in South Africa and Sub Saharan Africa, who need a lot of the, the means that we provide especially now during during the times of COVID. So I guess you could go on about philanthropic means and investments in that in that realm quite a bit. But But I am, I believe everyone should get great health care, I believe everyone should have an education, and should of course have the means to live. And that’s, you know, water, food, shelter, and whatnot. So I guess you could say it’s what keeps me up at night.

Alan Olsen: Well, Tyler, it’s been a pleasure having you with us today. You live a full life, and you got a lot more to go. So it’s always fun hearing about, you know, hearing from individuals that have so many different aspects to the life and communities and their builders and leaving a legacy behind. So at the end, what do you want to be known for? Tyler? When everything is said and done?

Tyler Barth: Yeah, it’s a really good question. Because I would say that it changes often, right? You’re inspired by these conversations, you’re obviously you invest in something you’re like, wow, like, I want to be around these guys that inspire me to be better at what I do. I think at the end of the day, if you’re reading my like bio, 100 years down the road, how do you get past like page one is the way I look at it, right? And I would say that I would love to have impacted lives, like my dad has impacted mine, but it’s scale, right, you know, through a ripple effect of just connecting the right people where it’s one plus one equals 1000. And doing that a couple different times and allowing that ripple effect to take shape. So if it’s me connecting you with x, it’s recognizing that we’re not just impacting one or two people. I mean, this is something that that has the opportunity to affect people of 10,000, 30,000 just it’s an amplification of utilizing resources and recognizing the magic that can be created when you bring two amazing people together. So I want to be known as the ripple effect guy that brought the right people together that created change in the world for the better.

Alan Olsen: Tyler’s been a pleasure having you with us,

Tyler Barth: Alan. I hope we can keep the dialogue going, my man, thank you for having me.

Alan Olsen: Thank you

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

Alan Olsen, is the Host of the American Dreams Show and the Managing Partner of GROCO.com.  GROCO is a premier family office and tax advisory firm located in the San Francisco Bay area serving clients all over the world.

Alan L. Olsen, CPA, Wikipedia Bio