What we talked about
Joe Sanchez is the CEO and founder of 1826, a tour and event production company born in London and now based in Los Angeles. In this conversation, Joe shares the unlikely, very human story of how a music fan became one of the most trusted operators in global touring and experiential events.
Show notes
Joe Sanchez got into the music industry in 1989 by lying to the members of The Cult outside a New Jersey arena, telling them he had come all the way from England to see them. He had not, he was staying four miles down the road. They got him in anyway, and six months later he was their personal assistant on a four-month arena tour, earning $100 a week carrying bags, walking a pit bull, and recruiting backstage guests. Thirty-six years later, his company grossed $40 million.
What we covered
- Joe’s first concert was Queen at Wembley Stadium in 1986, when he was 16. His entry into the industry came three years later through sheer nerve: he talked his way backstage at a Metallica and Cult show in New Jersey, befriended the singer, and parlayed that into a touring job with three actual responsibilities, luggage, the band’s dog, and finding girls for backstage.
- He spent the 1990s as a tour manager for artists including Sophie Ellis-Bextor, then transitioned into production management around 2000, the role that runs the show itself: lights, crew, video, trucks, buses, staging, power. He ran Pet Shop Boys’ touring for eight years before moving on to Sarah Brightman, then a $30 million Oman National Day celebration in 2010.
- Rihanna’s new management team at Roc Nation called him at the end of 2010 after getting his name from a contact. He flew to Sydney, met Rihanna briefly, and was hired on the spot to take over all her touring. He ran her production through the Loud, 777, and Diamonds tours, what he describes as her biggest peak stadium era, for three years straight.
- 1826 launched from the spare room of his house in Laurel Canyon with one assistant. By 2019, it had 18 employees and was running tours for Calvin Harris and Harry Styles. COVID reduced it back to five or six staff; the US government’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program helped them survive. By 2026, the company has around 55 employees, with 60 expected within a month.
- Formula One came to Joe in June 2023 in a crisis: the company they had hired to produce the Las Vegas Grand Prix opening and closing performances fell through. Joe said yes immediately, figured it out, delivered, and has since become Formula One’s de facto experiential agency. The relationship now represents about 50% of 1826’s income as an experiential business.
- For Tyler the Creator’s 2026 Grammy performance, Joe’s team had nine days to build a life-size replica Ferrari F40 that could drive itself, because Tyler wanted to drive it on stage in a performance described as shooting a music video live with no ability to stop or retry. The base was an electric golf buggy; the car was built to look identical to Tyler’s actual F40. The show also included an exploding gas station set built from scratch.
About Joe
Joe Sanchez is the CEO and founder of 1826, a tour and event production company based in Los Angeles with offices in the UK. The company produces major concert tours, live events, and experiential content for artists including Tyler the Creator, Calvin Harris, Ariana Grande, and Rihanna, and for brands including Formula One, Airbnb, Nike, and Spotify.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-sanchez-8541161a
- Website: https://eighteentwentysix.com
Episode 106 of the PreVetted Podcast.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01) Welcome back to the pre-Vered podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Today we’re joined by Joe Sanchez, his CEO and founder of 1826, a tour and event production company founded in London in 2007 and now based in Los Angeles. Joe and his team produce major concert tours, live events and film content.
and have worked with artists like Rihanna, Olivia Rodrigo, and Harry Styles, plus brands like Spotify, Nike, and Snapchat. Joe, welcome to the show.
Joe Sanchez (00:41) Hey, how’s it going, Frederico? You good?
Federico Ramallo (00:44) I am doing great. I’m honored to have you here today.
Joe Sanchez (00:47) Happy to be here.
Federico Ramallo (00:49) So what first pulled you into live event and tour production?
Joe Sanchez (00:54) I was always a fan of music. Like when I was a kid growing up, I always loved music. The very first concert I ever went to in 1986, which shows my age, was Queen at Wembley Stadium with Freddie Mercury singing. So it was downhill from there, basically, forevermore. yeah, so Queen was my very first ever show.
Federico Ramallo (01:13) Yeah.
Joe Sanchez (01:17) I went to as a fan as a 16 year old kid. you know, I kind of was into rock music and I was a big fan of rock music. a couple of years, I kind of dropped out of school, like, I don’t know, 17 or 18. And I met this girl who lived in New Jersey in the USA, in the UK, when I was in the UK. And I
was spending the summer of 1989 in New Jersey, because didn’t have anything else to do and I was just goofing around and drinking and hanging out and stuff. And I was a big fan of a British rock band called The Cult, who were on tour that summer opening up for Metallica. And Metallica and The Cult were playing at the local arena in New Jersey.
like two nights I think it was and it was like five miles down the road from this girl’s house and I I went down there and I didn’t have any money and I stood around outside at the top of the ramp down to the arena and the Colts tour buses arrived and I went up to them and I was like hey I’ve come all the way from England to see you guys like I’m your biggest fan can you get me in for free?
And they were like, no way, you you’ve come from England to see us. And I said, yeah, yeah, I’d come from four miles down the road kind of thing. But so I got here, they got me in and afterwards I went backstage and was hanging out with them and having some beers and stuff. And I kind of sort of got to know the singer a little bit who’s a guy called Ian Asprey. And the cult is still going, man. They’re still touring all over the world and they’re still a successful rock band. And so me and him kind of became buddies.
like six months later, they’d kind of graduated from opening for Metallica in arenas to headlining their own arenas. And they did a four month long arena tour in the US from January to April 1990. So was 19 years old. And Ian was like, hey, come on tour with us, have a job. So I was the band’s personal assistant. So…
Federico Ramallo (03:19) Wow.
Joe Sanchez (03:19) I basically had three jobs to do. I used to carry the bags for the band in and out of the arenas. And then the guitar player had a little pit bull terrier on tour. So I was like the dog boy. I used to look after the dog, you know, like if the dog went to the bathroom inside the building, the tour manager or someone would get me on the radio and say, Hey Joe Sanchez, that dog has gone and…
done some, you know, mess in the corridor, go clean it up. So I’d have to go find a Janice mop and pick up dog mess and clean it up and walk it. I was the dog boy. then my third job was, and bear in mind, this was a different time from today. I was the boy who would go around the concourse of
the arenas and look for pretty girls to invite them to come backstage to meet the band after the show. Those are my three jobs. Yeah, And I did that for four months and I got 100 bucks a week.
Federico Ramallo (04:15) Wow.
100 bucks was worth something, right?
Joe Sanchez (04:26) No, when a hundred bucks was worth nothing. ⁓ But I got all the beer I could drink and it was a blast, man. I used to travel with the band and, you know, go for dinner with Slash and hang out with whoever and do all this crazy cool shit at 19 years old. And then I came home from that and I kind of wanted to be, I started my own band and we never really got anywhere. then
Federico Ramallo (04:28) haha
Joe Sanchez (04:50) I got another job working for a band from Wales called the Manic Street Preachers. I was helping a friend of mine sell their t-shirts. And I did that for a couple of years in the early 90s. And then they kind of got big. They went from being like kind of a little club band to like playing arenas and even stadiums in the UK and Europe. their manager started managing other artists. And he came up to me one day and he was like,
Do you want to be a tour manager? And I was like, sure. Yeah, what do I, you know, he’s like, he had other artists that he would need to just help like little, little artists at the time to tour manage. And one of them was Sophie Ellis Bexter, who had a big hit back in like 2000 or whatever. And so I started tour managing her and tour managing some other artists. And I, I did that for like all of the nineties, really. I just worked as a tour manager, going on the road and running these tours and doing the budgets and you know.
figuring it all out. And then I got to about 2000, about around the millennium, and I kind of decided I’d had enough of dealing with bands and artists and, you know, people complaining about like, you know, the fizzy water was too fizzy and the ham was the wrong ham and just nonsense stuff like that kind of thing. And a friend of mine said, why don’t you be a production manager? And I was like, what do I know about being a production manager?
Basically, as tours get bigger, once you get above like theater level and beyond, the tour is run by the tour manager who looks after the artist and the artist needs and things like that, specifically for the artist. And then the production manager looks after the show, the lights and the crew and the video and the trucks and the buses and the power and the stage and the blah, blah, blah. And I kind of gravitated towards that.
started working as a touring production manager in 2000 for a singer called Lisa Stansfield. And then I got a job after that as the production manager for Pet Shop Boys. And I did that for eight years, running all of their touring for eight years. And then I did a bunch of other tours in between here and there and whatever. And then I was a pressure manager for Sarah Brightman, the opera singer for a year or so. And then
What did do after that? I went to Muscat in Oman for six months and I produced Oman National Day in 2010, which was like in the Middle East. It’s really popular to have these huge kind of national day celebrations, you know, like when whatever happened. I kind of it was a 30 million dollar show back then, which was huge in today’s money. So.
I did that for six months and just towards the end of that, I got a call from a guy called Jay Brown, who had just started managing Rihanna. And he was like, hey, your name is recommended to me by someone. Could you come and meet Rihanna in Sydney? So I flew out to Sydney at the end of 2010, maybe.
And I met Rihanna briefly and met Jay and I was hired on the spot to take over as her new production manager. And they just come in. this is Jay Brown who was partners with Jay Z and those guys from Rock Nation. And they came in and started managing Rihanna and they fired everyone and brought me in to basically take over running all of her touring. And I did that for three years, which was…
through Lout and 777 and diamonds. And it was basically the Rihanna’s kind of biggest peak era in stadiums and arenas and all that stuff. And I basically ran all of her touring for that whole time. towards the end of that time, I kind of knew that I wanted to step off the road at some point and that I didn’t want to be a 65 year old kind of roadie, I think.
And I’d met my wife on that tour. She was going to Rihanna Singers. And we were dating while we were on tour and stuff like that. And then the tour finished at the end of 2013. And we settled down in LA and she got pregnant. And I started 1826, you know. And the idea was that instead of going on the road and having one tour, I could stay.
back in LA in an office and have people run tours for me and just oversee them and do four or five tours at one time and not have to be on the road and actually make more money. And that was kind of where we started. We started in the spare room of my house in Laurel Canyon with one assistant. And we kind of started there and…
you know, kind of work with various different artists for the first four or five years and just slowly grew from like one employee to three to five to eight to 12. And I think by the time we got to the pandemic in 2019, 2020, I guess it was, I had about 18 employees and we were running a bunch of different tours like Calvin Harris and, you know, I don’t know who else we were doing back then, Harry Styles.
stuff like that, you know, and we, you know, we’d started to do a handful of events and stuff. And then the pandemic came along and just destroyed our business. And we kind of limped through for two years with some US government assistance. They were pretty good at helping companies like mine. They came up with this program called the SVOG program, which was the shuttered venue.
Federico Ramallo (10:01) Right.
Joe Sanchez (10:20) operators, grants or something. Anyways, we’ve got we’ve got some money off the government and I created an event in partnership with the LA Dodgers, the baseball team at their stadium called the Dodgers Holiday Festival. And we did that two Christmases in a row. And, you know, we kind of limped our way through that and then came out of COVID like 21. And just, you know, from there, we just kind of grew.
really rapidly, you know, like from 21 through 26, we went from like five or six employees that I had left after COVID to like 55 or so we have now. we started our own design studio three years ago. We started a experiential creative agency, which, you know, produces events for people like Formula One and…
Bitcoin and Airbnb and those kind of companies. We started our own travel agency. We opened an office in the UK in in 24. Yeah, and here we are kind of, you know, life just sort of leads you where it leads you. And here we are today with, yeah, 55.
Plus actually we’ll probably be 60 full-time employees within the next month or so. It’s a bootstrap company that just kind of, you keep putting your foot in front of the other and I made as many mistakes as I had successes and you just hopefully at the end of the day make more right decisions than bad decisions and I guess that’s what happened for me.
Federico Ramallo (11:59) Amazing, amazing. That’s very interesting. mean, as a 19-year-old, I can see that a couple of bucks and an unlimited beer is a blast. It’s a dream, yeah.
Joe Sanchez (12:08) Man, that was blast. sort of… Man, that was a guy.
My only downfall is at 19, I was kind of shy around girls. Otherwise, it could have been real fun. You know, like, I mean, the guys in the band, I used to scoop up 40 girls and put them in a room. And the guys in the band would go and meet them and, you know, hang out and stuff. But not me, I was too shy.
Federico Ramallo (12:21) Right. ⁓
Joe Sanchez (12:35) But there you go. You live and learn. Yeah, man.
Federico Ramallo (12:36) very interesting. Yeah,
and congratulations on starting a family, given the, you know, how the world is getting more and more challenging.
Joe Sanchez (12:44) Yeah, yeah for sure, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (12:47) Yeah, I have a 10 year old and it’s, know, yeah, a boy, yeah.
Joe Sanchez (12:50) ⁓ boy or a girl.
I have an 11 year old daughter and a five year old boy.
Federico Ramallo (12:57) congratulations, They grow so fast that you have to be there to be with them.
Joe Sanchez (12:58) Yeah, yeah. ⁓
Yeah, and
that was it, know, kind of like I never really wanted kids. And then I met my wife and she was like, within weeks of us getting together, she was like, I’m having a family kind of thing, you know, you’re either into this or you’re not. And I kind of came around, you know, was like, yeah. And so we had our daughter, yeah, she was born in 2014 and she’s 11 now and she’s a singer herself and a performer. And she is, you know, like
She writes songs and she plays piano and she’s an artist and she’s already performed at Coachella Festival. We’ve worked with Tyler, the creator, for the last eight years, producing all of his live shows and tours and events. And in 2024, Tyler was headlining Coachella, the main stage. It was a huge show. And he’s a great guy to work with, but he’s also…
very, you know, like crazy artistic, you know, ideas come to him. And about a month before the show, he comes to me and he’s like, Joe, you need to get me a goat. And I was like, what do you mean a goat? And he was like, a goat? I need a goat on stage. Cause we built this big set that was supposed to be like this desert rocks stuff. And he had this idea that a goat was going to come out and headbutt him.
Federico Ramallo (14:08) the
Joe Sanchez (14:28) off the back of the stage into this big ball pit that he would fall like 15 foot into. And so I phoned up Coachella and I was like, hey, Tyler wants a goat. And like, I literally like the main guy at Coachella got on the phone to me and he was like, we love Tyler and we love you, but tell Tyler to go have himself. He can’t have a goat. And so I went back to Tyler and I was like, hey, T.
Federico Ramallo (14:51) Hahaha!
Joe Sanchez (14:58) They’re saying, go buddy. And he pulled up something on his phone that it seemed Drake had got on tour. And it was like one of the Brody’s dressed up as a dog in like a dog costume or something. And like, you know, it was like part one of part of Drake’s show is one of the crew was dressed like a dog. And he said, man, what’s Drake doing here? And I was like, it looks like it’s a little dude in a costume and stuff. And so I started trying to figure out.
We have this company that builds puppets and costumes and stuff for us and so we started talking to him and we were like, I was originally looking to hire like a little person to be inside the costume to play the goat, but the goats have quite small bodies and they have really long thin legs and little people are quite well proportioned, they’re quite big and they have quite short arms. And so I went home from work one day.
Federico Ramallo (15:38) Right.
Joe Sanchez (15:50) like in like February or whatever, you know, like of 24. And I walked in the door and I saw my daughter who was then, oh, she’s nine, nine years old. And she’s all skinny and tall or whatever. And she’s a performer anyway. And I was just like, hey, how would you like to perform on stage with Tyler, headlining Coachella this year dressed as a goat? And she was like, kind of thing. And so we built this costume, this custom goat costume.
with all these funny stick things, which are the hooves and stuff, and it covered her whole head with this big kind of thing. And she came to rehearsals and practiced with Tyler. There’s this whole bit of the show where she kind of comes out from behind the rocks and headbutts him off the back of the stage. she did… Coachella is two Saturdays, it’s two weekends together every year. So she came out to the…
Coachella twice and performed in front of 80,000 people, headbutting Tyler off the stage dressed as a goat. So she got some pretty good bragging rights at school, you know. And I got paid, she got some money. She’s still got the money in the bank from being the goat.
Federico Ramallo (16:55) Yeah
amazing!
Joe Sanchez (17:04) Yeah man, even better.
Federico Ramallo (17:06) Right, right.
And that gives her a rough curriculum to have ⁓ an artistic career.
Joe Sanchez (17:11) Yeah, I’m like, you know,
yeah, five years from now, I’m just going to be sitting back, hopefully, managing her career as she becomes an ex-Billy Eilish or something. You know, that’s the plan. Well, we never know. So maybe she’d be a marine biologist or something sensible.
Federico Ramallo (17:17) you
Right. Yeah, I I do the same thing with my son. I’m like, well, he could go to this university, he could do this. But at the end of it, I’m thinking, well, it’s his choice. you you put everything and then they make decisions. Yeah.
Joe Sanchez (17:32) Thank you.
Yeah, life, just.
I get asked so many times, like, you you built this company that’s, we, you know, we grossed like $40 million last year, you know what I mean? Like, and it’s like, I look back at it and I’m like, how the hell did that happen? You know what I mean? Like, you know, like, and people are like, how did you do your, you know, how you become so successful and how did you get to where you are in life? And I’m like, I don’t know, I just kind of go up and put one foot in front of the other every day and.
I think I had the balls to see, when I saw an opportunity, I had the balls to stick my foot in the door and just go, you know, if someone says to me, hey, can you do this? I’d be like, yep. And then I’d go figure out how to do it kind of thing. And I guess I had that entrepreneurial spirit where it was like, if we didn’t have it or we couldn’t do it, I’d just say yes anyway. And then we’d go figure out how to do it, you know?
Federico Ramallo (18:27) Right.
Joe Sanchez (18:39) And even, you know, as recently as like two years ago, you know, just over two years ago, we got approached by Formula One. And they had actually a company, they hired a company to produce the Las Vegas Grand Pre-opening and Closing performances for 23.
- And that this company got on fire or something had happened and they approached me in like June and they were like, hey, we have this, you know, big, you know, like multi multi million dollar event and we need producer and company could come in and produce it. You know, could you could you could you do it? And we’ve never done anything at that scale before. And, you know,
But I was just like, oh yeah, of course, absolutely. And we went in and we hired a bunch of people and we killed it and we did a great job. And Formula One have hired us a number of other times since then and we sort of have kind of become their sort of de facto experiential agency for their promotional events and for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. So this time last year we produced a…
Federico Ramallo (19:34) Yeah.
Joe Sanchez (20:01) a big event in London at the 02 for them called F175, which was their launch for all of the new teams, car designs and all the drivers and stuff. it was again, a multimillion dollar show that was live broadcast, televised. And, you know, we produced all of that side of it, you know, and, and then, know, so again, that sort of, I guess there’s sort of like
In my career, when I think back, there’s been two or three kind of turning points that kind of like put you on another level kind of thing. I think, you know, one of the first ones for me was really becoming Rihanna’s production guy, you know, and then her becoming the biggest artist on the planet, you know, at the time kind of thing. And that moved me from being like this kind of like B-level kind of guy in the UK to being one of the top few guys in the world.
doing that kind of job. And then, you know, I set up my company off the back of my success with Rihanna. And then really the next big kind of pivot for me was picking up Formula One as a client. And then a lot of other corporate clients have kind of come to us seeing the kind of work we do with Formula One at the level we deliver it at. And
And I think that sort of helped us sort of pivot into this experiential business that now is 50 % of our income is experiential events. So, you know, and I think that’s kind of, it’s always interesting that there’s like these pivot points in your life where something could go one way or something could go another way, but none of it was ever really planned, you know, it was just kind of, just things worked out and I saw opportunities and always said, yes, you know.
Federico Ramallo (21:48) Organically, you develop new businesses based on the opportunities you see coming.
Joe Sanchez (21:48) That kind of like.
Yeah, and we’ve, you know, continued to do that, you know, as we’ve grown the company, we’ve kind of grown like, I guess I learned two or three years ago was like, let’s not leave money on the table, unless it’s either too complicated or risky, or too expensive to do it. So we started our own travel agency that’s dedicated on concert touring events travel, which is
very different from like, you know, the travel agent that would, you you go book your vacation with or whatever. And I partnered with the, friends of mine who have a company called Alias, which is part of Pro Travel International, which is one of the biggest event in touring travel agencies in the world. you know, it’s like we’re now, we have our own travel agency. So we keep that business in house. I started a rigging company a year ago.
just on a small scale with like a million and half dollar investment. you know, rigging is the chain motors and the truss and the hoist and stuff to support the lights and video and sound in an arena or whatever. And so we put that system to work on Tyler the Creator’s 105 day world tour last year. You know, so and that will go and do Ariana Grande’s tour this year. So.
Federico Ramallo (22:57) Right.
Joe Sanchez (23:07) You know, it’ll only need to do three or four tours and it will have paid for itself and that equipment lasts for 30 years. So, and each year we’ll add another 100 motors and slowly grow it organically, you know, as part of a kind of like a side business kind of thing. And the same with our design studio, you know, as we started getting into the experiential work, you know, people were coming to us and saying, you you design shows as well. You do all your own design.
Federico Ramallo (23:24) Right.
Joe Sanchez (23:36) Before then, we’d always kind of partnered with other design people. And I started our studio just over three years ago with an old friend of mine, guy called Rob Sinclair. Rob actually was, I hired him in 2004 or five on the Pet Shop Boys as their lighting designer. So we go back to when we used to go on tour together and kind of over the last three years, me and Rob have grown.
the studio from just him to now we have, I think, eight or nine full-time employees with designers and rendering staff and drafting people and, you know, GM and head of the studio and operational and all that kind of stuff. And we’re designing so many shows now. Rob is now one of the top five set and designers in the world for concert touring.
You know, he’s so in demand, he’s booked up till November kind of thing, you know. you know, and we’ve grown the studio in his way, kind of as part of that, you know. So we have all these different sort of areas of the business that we’re sort of focusing our growth on. You know, we do set storage for all our clients and stuff like that now. So we have a giant warehouse up in just outside LA, north of LA with about…
50,000 square foot of storage and we store all these old sets for Calvin Harris and Tyler the Creator and Rihanna’s stuff and whoever’s up there, you know, and a lot of these artists that they’ll use a set or a prop, you know, for a period of time and then they want to keep it. So we store it for them and that’s, you know, another income stream as well.
Federico Ramallo (25:10) Wow, amazing. Yes, because that way you have less dependency of other vendors that could, you know, they could deliver a super work which would affect your reputation with the client. Right. Bye.
Joe Sanchez (25:25) Yeah, it’s
just, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of like, you know, we don’t want to overstretch. And there’s been a couple of ideas I’ve had, which, you know, we, now have a company with structure. I never went to business school. never, I didn’t know anything about running a business. I learned everything by just making mistakes, you know, succeeding or failing and stuff. And, you know, but then now we’re at the stage where we have, you know, almost 60 employees. So.
Federico Ramallo (25:42) Yeah.
Joe Sanchez (25:49) In the last year or so, you know, we have a COO, we have a CFO, we have a president, and then we have department heads underneath them. We have four or five department heads. So we have like this real structure, you know, you know, operations and accounting, all that’s in house. And there isn’t really, you know, people say to me, who’s your nearest, you know, who do you compete with? Who’s your competitor?
And there’s a lot of experiential agencies that do work for corporate, you know, for companies. So there’s tons of that. And we’re still quite new in that world. But in terms of concert touring, doing what we do, there really isn’t anyone else. Like, certainly not at the scale that we do the kind of business at. There’s a number of companies where there’s two or three guys, you know, working out of the house or something or…
There’s one company in LA that kind of does what we do, but they’re more focused on design. They don’t really do that much touring, tour work and design. They’ll design the tour, but we don’t just design it. We’ll also take the tour out on the road and staff it and run the whole tour and produce the whole thing and put all the crew on it and deliver everything all the way through to the final.
know, P &L that we deliver to the artist, business manager or manager. And there really isn’t anyone else, certainly not at our level that I’m aware of in the world that kind of is like, does the same as us, which is kind of And it wasn’t necessarily by design, it was just kind of happened that way, you know.
Federico Ramallo (27:26) Right, because they will need to have all your experience and all the services that you are integrating, ⁓ which make it harder to find.
Joe Sanchez (27:32) Yeah, yeah,
yeah, and we kind of like, we’re at the point now where we’re kind of big enough and successful enough where like we can be a little bit picky and choosy about who we work with, you know, and I kind of like, I kind of told a few managers and stuff and people that we’ve met along the way that like, you know, we’re like, we’re like the Mercedes or the BMW dealership.
of concert touring or whatever. We’re not cheap, but we’re really good. And we put the kind of care and attention to detail and things like that, that we put into everything we do. Other people, if it was an individual tour or production manager, or if it was a smaller company, they wouldn’t be able to do that. And it’s like, if you don’t want to buy yourself a BMW or a Mercedes,
or you don’t have the money, well, you can go down the road and buy yourself a Honda for, know, $8,000 or whatever. You know what I mean? Like you pay for what you get in life. you know, we just proved it on Sunday here, you know, we produced Tyler the Creator’s performance at the Grammy Awards. And if any of your listeners want to check out something insane,
Federico Ramallo (28:45) Right.
Joe Sanchez (28:52) go Google Tyler the Creator at the Grammys 2026. It was the most complicated, insane, awards show performance that not only I think I’ve ever done, but I think I’ve ever seen. It was basically like shooting a music video for a five minute long song, but performed completely fully live. You can’t stop and…
Federico Ramallo (29:09) Ha
Joe Sanchez (29:21) try again or you know it’s like there’s a live audience it broadcasts live and there’s so many different beats and you know like props that we made you know like you know i made him a life-size replica ferrari f40 that could drive itself in nine days you know and and you yeah i mean and it’s like
Federico Ramallo (29:39) Wow.
Joe Sanchez (29:43) It was back, you know, it was the second company that we have a long relationship with and I literally called the owner up and I was like, you got to do this, you know, and it’s because I have a relationship and put that much business his way. He dropped everything and he put his whole staff on building this car for me. And, you know, you got, you guys can go watch the video. It looks just and Tyler, of course, has a real F40 that he bought last year for like, you know, whatever millions or whatever. And it looks exactly like the real thing.
Federico Ramallo (29:50) you
Joe Sanchez (30:10) It’s just based on an electric go-kart. It’s a golf buggy, electric golf buggy. just for the awards show performance. So and then we have like, we built this big gas station set that explodes at the end of the show and we have all these extras and you know, it’s like, I don’t think anyone else could have done that. Not in the timescale we had, you know, like it’s…
Federico Ramallo (30:13) Right.
just for a concert.
Wow.
Joe Sanchez (30:38) It’s quite a niche kind of business, I guess.
Federico Ramallo (30:44) Yeah, I think that you don’t need a business degree in order to solve people’s problems, figure out what the problems they have, being able to solve those problems, provide that service, and start generating revenue with that.
Joe Sanchez (30:54) Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah,
it’s I agree with you. mean, as I said, I, you know, I think I dropped out of school when I was 17 or 18 and and I was I was just self-taught after that. I I I learned by my own mistakes and by watching other people. And, you know, I had a couple of mentors along the way that kind of like helped steer me, you know, a little bit. And and I learned.
I learned business just by trial and error, you know, kind of thing. And it’s strange in the last year or two, I’ve sort of kind of really transitioned from being like the, like a production kind of hands-on kind of guy that ran the company in a very hands-on way to being a CEO and having, you know, I have a crazy idea and I call my president in to see me and I say, hey,
Federico Ramallo (31:33) Right.
Joe Sanchez (31:55) I think we should do this. And he looks at me like I’m crazy. And then he goes and figures it out. You know? And it’s like, I listen to a few kind of like audio books and stuff. I kind of learn a little bit about company structures and stuff. ⁓ But I’m certainly no expert on that. I think I’ve always been good at having good people around me.
Federico Ramallo (32:11) Right.
Joe Sanchez (32:21) You know, like, you like you, gotta have, if you don’t know something, you gotta have people who really know their shit and you can, that you can turn to and go, what do we do here? You know, kind of thing. And I’ve never been too proud to be like, I don’t know the answer, I’m gonna ask him and I’ll be right back. And then, you know what I mean? And that’s, that’s that. And I think kind of, I think that and.
The other thing I think is part of our success is kind of like, it’s kind of like my, and it’s really like a kind of core belief in life, right? It’s it’s karma, know, treat people how you want to be treated yourself, you know? Like all the people that work here feel like it’s family, you know, like all of the freelancers we use, which there’s hundreds of them, you know, we treat them great. You know, we pay them before we get paid.
You know, we pay our bills straight away on time. We never screw anyone around for money or anything like that. If I said, I’m going to pay this guy half a million bucks and we’re going to pay it, you know, kind of thing. And we go into all of our projects with all of these artists and these companies with the same hope that we all be treated the same way. there’s only really been.
three occasions that over all the years that it hasn’t happened that way. And I took two different people to court, one court case, one is still ongoing. And then I had a money lender get me my money back off this other guy. And it was like, stupid sums of money, like 30 grand here or 60 grand there. It wasn’t about the money, it was just about the principle that.
they owe us the money, you know? you know, I kind of always approach work and my personal life, I think, you know, in that sort of way of try and put yourself in other people’s shoes and think about how it will feel for them and try and take that into account, I guess. Something like that. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (34:20) Right. Yeah,
I I think that, I mean, the idea of a company is to generate revenue and become profitable. But I think that doesn’t, that is not, that is compatible with having a social purpose within the company, which means that you’re not just doing things for profit, you know, above everything else, right? Because
Joe Sanchez (34:42) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (34:46) When I have the company meetings with my employees, and we have people that has been with us for seven, eight years, I appreciate they stay with us. I appreciate how much we changed their life through our company. There is a synergy there. That gives me the…
Joe Sanchez (34:53) Mm.
Thank
Federico Ramallo (35:06) the motivation to keep going, right? To saying, well, what we’re doing has an impact on their families, right? ⁓
Joe Sanchez (35:12) Yeah, man.
I’m exactly the same. I not only support my family and extended family, but everyone who works for me, I’m kind of effectively supporting their families as well by employing them and paying these guys a good salary. And all of our full-time employees have a goal, PPO health care, which no one does here in this industry. they get 401ks after a year. We do all that kind of stuff.
I like to think that all of our, certainly our senior management team, that they get paid well enough that they can afford to buy houses in LA and have nice cars. You work hard and you get rewarded. And I’ve always believed in that. We will bonus out or commission staff that bring projects to us that we make good money on. And we encourage everyone to be creative in their thinking.
Like if they succeed, we succeed, you know, that’s kind how I’ve always looked at it.
Federico Ramallo (36:08) Right. Yeah, for me, when one of my employees buy a car or a house, I felt proud of what we accomplished together. Right. ⁓ Or when they decided to have a kid or, you know, or they travel to another country. had we had employees that never travel outside the country and they were able to travel, you know, to fly in a plane for the first time with us. Right. So.
Joe Sanchez (36:16) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man.
Yeah, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (36:32) For me,
I’m proud of that because we are part of their journey, part of their life. Hopefully for a long time, but at least for a little bit, we support them, give them lots of growth opportunities. And every once in a while we have different situations with.
Joe Sanchez (36:42) Thank for your time.
Federico Ramallo (36:52) with other employees or whatever. And that takes me down kind of rethinking why we’re doing what we’re doing. And then when I see great employees, people that are committed, are helping the company move forward, I realize, well, that’s why. That’s why we are doing what we’re doing. And then every sacrifice makes sense.
Joe Sanchez (37:13) Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it’s true, man. Like, you know, I kind of feel the same as you and like a lot of people who work here have been here. My CFO has been with me 10 years. know, the company has only been going 12 years, you know, like we’ve got other guys been here eight, nine years, you know, like they take back to some of our earliest employees, you know. And people don’t tend to leave, you know, like every now and again, they’ll move on or whatever. But
Federico Ramallo (37:29) Right.
Joe Sanchez (37:40) But most of time they kind of stick around. And I think we created a pretty good culture here where, know, my door is always open to anyone from like, you know, the receptionist to whoever, you know? Yeah. And I don’t know, like, as I said, like, I think if I’d gone to some sort of business school or if I had some sort of education in…
any kind of business type thing. Maybe I would have done things very differently and things would have turned out very differently. But I’m pretty happy about how things worked out. And there’s a couple of little things I’d change along the way or silly mistakes I made that I wish I hadn’t made or things or whatever. otherwise, I don’t really have any regrets about any of it. And I wouldn’t really change anything that I’ve done. And I think that our plan is just to keep organically growing over the next decade or two decades. And that just…
without trying to force it, without taking on a $10 million, $15 million investment or something like that, which I’ve been offered a number of times and I’ve turned down. I’m like, nah, I’ll just do it organically. When we can afford to do that, we’ll do that. If we need to borrow a million bucks to buy some equipment for the rigging company, yeah, we’ll do that, of course. But I’m not going to…
Federico Ramallo (38:52) Right.
Joe Sanchez (38:54) sell equity and I’m interested in selling my company, know, at the moment, 20 years maybe down the line, who knows, but like, I’m not building it to sell it, I’m building it because, yeah, and for me, for the challenge, you know, like, kind of like, I would hope and I would think that, you know, 10 years from now, we’ll have like 300 employees or something and have offices, you know, in
Federico Ramallo (39:04) for the people.
Joe Sanchez (39:19) Career, actually I’m already thinking about opening an office in South Korea. You know, I’m thinking about opening an office in Ibiza. We have a lot of our artists do big residencies every summer in Ibiza and I like spending time there. know, Calvin Harris is there every summer, Swedish House Mafia, they’re there every summer. You know, Charlie XCX, a lot of these artists that we do, they’re there. And I Calvin has…
30 something shows there now this summer. He plays Ushuaia, which is the biggest outdoor club in Ibiza as a residency. And now he’s doing Tuesdays and Fridays all through the summer. So it’s a good excuse for me to go and spend a few weeks there, know, like make up an excuse that I’ve got to go kind of thing and just hang out, get out of the beach and have a few beers and stuff.
Federico Ramallo (39:56) Alright.
Right. I was going
to say, you know, if you need anybody to, you know, take care of Ibiza’s office, let me know, right?
Joe Sanchez (40:19) You know what?
Man, know what? Sooner later we’ll open one there. and I mean, you know, I’ve always enjoyed going there and I’ve been there many, spent many summers there and it’s definitely, it’s not slowing down. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So it’s interesting, you know, like with having the kind of artists that we…
have and that we represent and we design and that we produce, you know, like Tyler or Calvin or Ariana Grande or Post Malone or My Chemical Romance or Rosalia or whoever, all of these artists that we have, it kind of, it makes us look sexy compared to competitors in the more corporate.
kind of world that don’t have these kind of artists that they do that they know we they look at our Instagram and our website and stuff and it’s like, damn, those are the guys that do so and so and they did Rihanna for three and a half years and you know that kind of stuff and and I think that I’m not saying it’s it’s it’s a deciding reason why we pick up certain clients but you know it definitely is part of it.
Actually, mean, we picked up Airbnb as a client last year. We were producing Charlie XCX’s tour and someone from Airbnb was at one of the Charlie XCX shows and just loved it and tracked us down through our Instagram and then found our way to our website and there’s like a, you know, info app kind of click button and they clicked it and all the info app emails come to me. And it was like, hey, I’m Simon Zou from Airbnb and I’d love to…
Federico Ramallo (41:37) wow.
Joe Sanchez (41:59) connect with you to talk about work. And I was like, yeah, all right, bullshit. This is just some scam or something. And I forwarded on to our head of our experiential department who kind of tracked this person down and did some research. And it was a real person from Airbnb. And we connected and we did two projects for them last year. One in Seoul in South Korea that lasted for two months. We built a museum from that there. And then we did a…
Federico Ramallo (42:13) Hahaha
Joe Sanchez (42:24) Another experiential thing for them with Patrick Mahomes, who’s the famous American football player. So it’s like totally random, just like came from them seeing Charlie XX’s tour and thinking, shit, we want to work with those guys. It’s funny how it just falls together sometimes.
Federico Ramallo (42:46) Yeah, I that I can imagine that once you build a reputation of being a trustworthy event
you can solve their issues, their problems, then it becomes easier to get the next client, the next project, because now you have all that branding that you’ve been working through all the years.
Joe Sanchez (43:03) Yeah
It’s like we don’t have business development person like work just kind of, you know, like, it just comes to us, you know, like the majority of work, you know, really comes to either me or my partner, Rob Sinclair directly. Like often it’s a call or a text on our cell phone. ⁓ You know, even Formula One, like someone tracked me down and text my phone, hey, you got a minute, you know, kind of thing. It’s not like we have this like big business development team that do all this.
Federico Ramallo (43:22) Right.
Joe Sanchez (43:33) go to conferences and stuff and yeah, it’s people see stuff we do and go, damn, that’s cool. How can we have them help us? And I guess that’s just how it works, know, so yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (43:46) That’s amazing. That’s great. Yeah, I mean,
it sounds easy when you say it, sounds easy, but it’s really, really hard to get there. So congratulations. That’s a great achievement.
Joe Sanchez (43:50) it’s
Yeah,
I mean, you like, I’ve basically been in the music business for 36 years this year. know, 36 years ago, now I was picking up dog shit. Literally, I literally was cleaning up after that damn dog. And here we are 36 years later and I kind of run the biggest company in this space.
Federico Ramallo (44:11) Hahaha
Joe Sanchez (44:21) really in the world. And it’s kind of crazy to think that like, I don’t know, it’s it’s strange.
Federico Ramallo (44:27) But
the way that I see it is you’re solving problems. Even if it’s a small thing as picking up dogs, dogs, a mess. But it’s solving problems. Yes, somebody has to do it. Making sure that it happens. And then from there, you can build a relationship. You can…
Joe Sanchez (44:34) Yeah, we’re problem solvers. ⁓
That’s still solving the problem, right? Someone’s got to… Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (44:54) find other opportunities and you can keep growing, is the same ethos, right? It’s the same philosophy. ⁓
Joe Sanchez (45:00) It’s the same. mean, like, you know,
literally just before we started chatting, I was on an hour and a half long Zoom with our technical team and Rob, my partner, who is designing Ariana Grande’s tour this summer. And we’re producing it. So the company is doing all the production and the technical stuff and staffing it and the financial stuff. But we’re also designing it. And so we’re on a call for an hour and a half trying to work out.
the mass technicality of what this tour is going to be and the scale of it. Tyler’s tour last year was 23 trucks, semis in America. Hers is going to be even bigger. And the amount of complexity of man hours and technical and experience and dedication and thought that goes into that to make it happen in a
Federico Ramallo (45:36) Wow.
Joe Sanchez (45:52) vaguely cost effective way in that the artist makes a profit, but also in a safe way that no one gets hurt. And also in a way where night after night, you can recreate the same show without technical errors or faults. You we had 105 shows last year with Tyler and we didn’t have a single major mechanical fault or error during any of the shows. You know, and that’s us working with like the top class.
Federico Ramallo (46:17) Wow.
Joe Sanchez (46:21) vendors and stage builders and video companies and all that kind of stuff and us supplying the A level crew that we have access to to make sure that night after night the shows are seamless. And again, that’s like comes back to that kind of Mercedes dealership thing. It’s like, want a Mercedes, it’s probably gonna cost you a hundred grand, but it’s gonna run and it’s not gonna break down and it’s gonna be.
You you want a Honda, you can buy one for $8,000 or whatever, but it might break down every day or, you know, whatever. It’s not going to have the same AC and it’s not going to have the same sound system and the seats won’t go back. you know what I mean? So you pay for what you get, you know? But.
Federico Ramallo (47:05) Yeah. But,
but think of how many people would have said no to, you know, picking up dog poop, right? How many, and, and what you’re doing, you know, it’s, you know, it’s all these problems that you’re talking about are messy, right? So it’s easy to say, ⁓ I can do it. You know, I give up, right? But you’re there with your team. Your team is there just, you know, following through, making sure that things happen.
Joe Sanchez (47:14) Yeah, man. A service thing. Yeah.
Yeah, thanks.
Yeah. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (47:34) And that’s why I’m saying that it’s the same philosophy.
Joe Sanchez (47:34) Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, as we’ve grown, you know, like five, six, seven years ago, I was very personally involved with all of the tours and shows we did and, you know, had personal relationships with the artists that we work with. And really, these days, there’s only two artists that have our whole, you know, roster of artists that we work with.
have a personal relationship with and I’m still really directly involved in, which is Tyler the creator and Calvin Harris. Tyler we’ve done for eight years and Calvin we’ve done for 11 years. Tyler texts me, hey, we want this or whatever.
Adam Calvin emailed me this morning to set up a call to talk about his shows this summer. And those are the only two that I’m really directly involved with. And I’ll be, you know, a number of their shows. Like I was saying, I’ll be coming down to South America with Tyler in March. So I’ll be in Guadalajara. But, you know, Ariana, I’ll just go to the first two or three shows and the last few days of rehearsals and make sure that it’s all cool and that our production team and design teams are.
doing what they’re supposed to be and her management’s happy and she’s happy and the tour’s running smoothly and then I’ll be back in the office, you know, so. And really with just Tyler and Calvin, it’s just, you know, 10 years of being around, it’s trust and you get to know someone, they get to know you and trust you and they want you there and that’s fine, you know. But yeah, it’s crazy.
Federico Ramallo (49:11) Yes, yes, but amazing. I think it’s an amazing journey and very inspiring.
Joe Sanchez (49:17) Yeah, yeah, I, every now and again, you know, kind of take a second to stop and think about it. And I’m like, yeah, that’s quite a story, I guess. It’s not the most common one, that’s for sure.
Federico Ramallo (49:32) Yes, that’s why we’re talking with extraordinary people like you. So we’re running out of time. Any final remarks before we wrap it up? We learned a lot and I truly appreciated you having here today.
Joe Sanchez (49:33) Thank you.
Yeah, that’s cool.
No, I don’t know. I’ll see you Guadalajara for a beer.
Federico Ramallo (49:53) We’ll meet you here. mean, it’s going to be a blast to have you here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Sanchez (49:56) I’ll be there. I’ll be there. just,
you know, hit me up. You got an email. Just, you know, if you and some friends want to come to the show, come on down and we’ll get you in and take care of you and have you see the show and say hi.
Federico Ramallo (50:12) Yeah, that’ll be amazing and I can take you places. We can do something fun together with you, with Tyler. Happy to take you around, right? Yeah.
Joe Sanchez (50:17) Yeah, man.
Yeah, I
mean, we get in the night before from Monterey and then we’re in Guadalajara for two nights and then we leave to go to Puerto Rico for the last night of the South American run. So it’s kind of in and out, but that’s always been the way with touring, know, so it’s funny. is the first time I’ve really been on the road in, I don’t know, 10 years or something. So, but let’s.
Federico Ramallo (50:48) So it’s special.
Joe Sanchez (50:50) Yeah, kind of, yeah. It’s a little bit, but it’s good. It’s good to kind of remind yourself of what really happens, you know.
Federico Ramallo (51:00) Right, right. Amazing. I’m looking forward to it.
Joe Sanchez (51:04) Yeah man, bigot to see it.
Federico Ramallo (51:06) Sounds good. Thank you, Joe.
Joe Sanchez (51:08) Yeah, thank you.