The Australian Financial Review
One thing I don't like is someone saying, this is a problem and we can't move on from
The best response you can get from me is, okay, great, thanks.
They're pouring their hearts out, they're being open and transparent and honest with
They're the ones that actually tend to have long careers because people can relate to
Hi, I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review, and welcome
to 15 Minutes with the BOSS.
A podcast about success and failure and everything in between, and along the way, we're hoping
to get some really great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Sean Warner, the chief executive of Universal Music Group in Australia and
Hi Sean, how are you?
Thank you so much for coming into the studio.
Hi Sally, thanks so much for having me.
Now Sean, you're the CEO of Universal in Australia and New Zealand.
Universal being the largest record label in the region, with nearly 200 staff across
three offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland.
And the artists you represent locally include Troy Sivan, Dean Lewis, Empire of the Sun
But of course, internationally, you represent some really well-known acts like The Beatles,
The Rolling Stones and Taylor Swift.
So you've got a fair bit on your plate, I imagine.
As the world's biggest record company, we represent some of the most iconic artists
who've ever put music out.
I'd love to know exactly who your best friends are in the industry, but perhaps that is for
Thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with you, the boss.
Let's start the clock right now.
We haven't got long.
So Sean, my first question is, what do your mornings look like?
What time do you get up?
When do you have your first cup of coffee?
It's an ever-changing feast.
I don't have a set routine.
My being a global company, a lot of emails come in overnight, a lot of information happens,
all comes through.
Usually up by 5.30, 6 o'clock, first cup of coffee kicks in straight away.
And I probably spend half an hour just looking at what's happened overnight.
In your company or news or?
So I have a look at the news to see what's happening globally, but I also look at what's
happened overnight.
I work really closely with the US, UK and Europe with the time zones.
You really have to be on top of what's happening, what's coming out, what questions are being
My boss is based in LA, so quite often there'll be a couple of questions from him or some
notes and things like that.
So do you end up having to answer emails at 5.30?
No, I prioritise and I look at how my day is going to start or what I need to do.
If there's quick yes or no answers that I can get away, I'll do that then.
But the other side of our business is obviously the live side.
And whilst we don't tour artists, a lot of our artists come into market and I might be
out three, four, five nights in a week and then nothing the next week.
So if I'm out three or four nights in a row, I might not get up until seven o'clock that
morning the next morning.
And then my day starts a bit later.
So trying to get into a routine really depends on what activities are happening in the market
Is it kind of tiring going to gigs that many times a week?
It's quite punishing, I imagine.
And that's where you've really got to manage not only my sleep, but my diary as well.
But I'm not dictating the artist schedule of when they're in market.
So I'm trying to adjust my routine around their touring schedules.
It's something that you just live with and I enjoy it.
I mean, I get paid to go to gigs and hang out with rock stars.
So it's a lot of fun.
My next question is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Was there a time or a project that you worked on that really changed the nature of what
you were doing or changed the trajectory of your whole career path?
The biggest change I, at 15 or 16, decided that I wanted to do accountancy at university.
So I studied accountancy with a major in law as well.
And I was working part-time in accountancy all the way through.
And so I was, as I was finishing, I was 20, 21.
And when you're 20 or 21, when you're meeting 50 year olds, that's very old.
And I was in the accounting firm.
And I thought, that's not what I want to be.
I don't want to be that guy.
And I had a passion for music.
I call myself a music tragic.
I'm not an artist or a musician, but I love music.
And I had this light bulb moment where someone had said, if you can do what you love doing,
it's not like a job.
And so I kind of pursued a career in music and using the commercial skills that I had
all the knowledge.
I ended up going into sales and then into commercial and into music and media and entertainment.
But certainly that pivot going from pure accountancy into sales and music was probably
the biggest change in my life.
And did you start by just applying for jobs with recording companies?
I applied to every record company in Australia.
I couldn't get a job.
I ended up getting, taking a sales reps job at Cadbury Schweppes, which was amazing because
I just learnt so much about presentation skills and overcoming objections and all those kinds
of commercial skills.
And then eventually got a job at BMG Records.
So you thought if you got into Cadbury and get sales experience and you could take that
back into the record industry.
Is that something that you decided to do with that plan?
I also had that complication that my then girlfriend, who had been together for three
or four years, fell pregnant.
And so I had to get a job.
I had to provide for my family.
So I took a job and kept applying all that way through.
So I was 23 when my son was born.
So yeah, I kind of set my sights.
That's what I wanted to do long term, but I needed to gain experience and skills along
the way to get to where I wanted to get.
So how many years was it between getting into Cadbury and then finally cracking in
Probably about four or five years.
And then I went from BMG to PlayStation and launched PS1 with the team in Australia.
And again, I'm not a gamer, but I knew that this was something on the cusp of technology
and changing culture.
And so I learnt a hell of a lot about brands.
And then I went to Foxtel and learnt about subscription and then ended up going back
into music as almost a bit of a unicorn that knew FMCG, brands, consumer, retail and subscription
at a time when the music industry was changing and having the passion for music kind of set
me up for the rest of my career, which has been the most exciting thing I've ever been
involved in, in that I've been able to do the commercial side as well as the creative
But you still have to pick trends.
And I guess what you've done throughout your career is pick trends.
What's the secret to picking trends?
That's the million dollar question.
It's surrounding yourself with good people who are on the cutting edge of the trend and
And even if you look at the business today with Instagram and TikTok, I know how to use
I don't live in there.
I don't want to live in there, but I have people who work for me who live in those platforms
who are probably age appropriate and on the edge of culture.
And a lot of our artists are involved in other things outside of their music where they're
at the cutting edge of culture, whether that's a form of art or gaming or AI or whatever
that the technology might be.
So you end up kind of understanding more and more about what's happening on the face of
So staying close to culture is a way of perhaps of really picking trends.
My next question is, what is the best piece of career advice you've ever received?
In its rawest form is winners make it happen, losers let it happen.
And I've always been of that ilk to say, I want to control my own destiny and I want
to be in charge of what I can control.
So I've made conscious decisions to lean in and look for solutions or drive my own
career path rather than sitting back and waiting for things to happen.
Can you give me an example of that?
We were the first music label in the country to move to consignment with our retail business
Up until then, it had been very transactional.
And when we saw that the digital economy was starting to move forward or digital consumption
was moving forward and retailers were finding it harder and harder to compete and adapt,
we chose to move to a model where we effectively kind of de-risked them.
I'd seen what had happened in the US and the UK where the record stores had disappeared.
And we knew that if they disappeared here, they weren't coming back again.
So let's look at a different model.
So can you explain consignment and how did you de-risk?
So rather than them buying stock off us, we would put it in there at no charge and basically
charge them when they sold it.
So they didn't have to hold inventory, you held the inventory.
Which is what the magazine companies in Australia have been doing all around the world forever.
There's a lot of other industries that do that and we'd never been down that path.
So it was a way of maintaining the footprint so that we could service consumer demand.
We looked at a different business model entirely.
So really, rather than sitting back and letting events play out, you actively took charge
and created your own luck.
Sean, on that note, don't go away.
We're going to take a short break and when we come back, we're going to open our famous
Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss.
I am here with Sean Warner, the chief executive of Universal Music in Australia and New Zealand.
Now Sean, this is our section called the chatterbox.
In front of you is a beautiful brown cardboard box, not mahogany as you expected, but it
is actually cardboard, inside which are about 20 questions all folded up on pieces of paper.
I'm going to ask you to pick out some and we will have another conversation.
Do you want to have a fish?
And I'm going to read out the question.
Thanks very much.
What's the one thing that others worry about that you don't?
Probably finding a solution.
You always think there's a solution.
I always think there's a solution and a way of coming up with an answer and it might not
be the one that everybody wants, but there's always a way of going through things.
One thing I don't like in the workplace, I don't like it in my family life as well, is
someone saying, this is a problem and we can't move on from that.
So do you have a particular process that you use to find a solution?
Generally looking at it from everybody's perspective.
So you'll do a lot of listening first and do you take that on board with you a lot?
My first instinct is to talk, but generally I have to try and listen.
So if we asked your staff, what would they say?
I would hope they'd say the same, that I listen and I encourage kind of participative management
where I do seek input from other people.
I don't profess to know everything and surround yourself with good people and knowledgeable
and skilled people and take their advice and input.
So do you tell your staff not to come to you with a problem, but come with a solution?
I was just talking to someone this morning saying the best response you can get from
me is, okay, great, thanks, or okay, because it means you've come to me with, here's the
issue, here's my proposed solution, I've thought about this and here's what we could
So it's to encourage them to think and be the best version of themselves.
Have a fish in the box.
Let's go to the next question.
What's your favourite podcast or streaming show and why?
There's one that I've been listening to quite a lot.
It's called The Hustle.
It's a guy called John Lammerow.
He's an American DJ.
He's about my age.
He was a DJ on college radio in the US, which is a bit like what Triple J was in the kind
And he goes back and finds all these musicians from all over the world and interviews them
and says, what are you doing now and what keeps you so passionate about music?
So recently he's interviewed everyone from Mark Seymour from The Hudders and Collectors,
Dave Faulkner, Paul Kelly, Steve Kilby from The Church, all who had great careers in the
US in college radio in the 80s and 90s.
And he goes back and talks to people, Dave Grohl and kind of some of the bigger bands,
And it's just really interesting to hear these guys' perspectives.
And most of them have been on the same journey as me through that time and the changes that
they've seen in the industry.
It's really interesting.
So is there a key thing you've learned from them about how they maintain the passion?
I think it's just being involved.
If you're a music tragic, you're a music tragic, you know, and being able to go to work every
day and work with other music tragics, being able to be in the orbit of global international
music tragics is a really interesting thing to be involved in.
And I think as a fan of music, part of the fandom comes from the narrative around the
music and understanding where the artists went to school and what they like to eat and
what they like to do in their spare time or how they came up with songs and who it was
about and all those kind of things.
So that to me is that's the romance of music.
So have you noticed any similarities between the top artists that you represent or that
you have listened to on the podcast?
It probably comes back to the nature of our business in its total.
We call it different and interesting and everybody needs to be different and interesting.
You don't listen to the same style of music over and over and if you go back over the
last five or ten years from Amy Winehouse to Adele to Gautier, even Billie Eilish and
Taylor Swift, they've all carved out their own unique niche in terms of being different
That's something that you want to listen to and you might hear influences there but they're
doing their own thing and they're creating their own culture or their own cultural moment
But actually then it sounds like it's just them being themselves.
It is, absolutely.
And to take that further, the artists that are most relatable, and that's what it comes
down to, building engagement, are the ones who talk about whether it's their first kiss
and car or a breakup or something that you can relate to and so they're pouring their
hearts out, they're being open and transparent and honest with you and I'm sure everyone
can remember their first breakup album or whatever it might be because it meant something
So the ones who are not trying to be something that they're not, and authenticity is the
key with transparency and openness, they're the ones that actually tend to have long careers
because people can relate to them.
And I guess that issue of being relatable is just a really good skill to have anywhere.
Like the more relatable you are, the better, for example, you're likely to be in business
It really is about openness, trust and respect and transparency and the more you can do that,
back to what I was saying before about the negotiation space, if you can be completely
open with someone and say, here's what I want to do and here's what I need, you're going
to get a hell of a lot further than being guarded or trying to get an upper, you know,
the upper hand in everything that you do.
Yeah, no, I love that.
That's really good advice.
Okay, let's go to another question from the beautiful chatterbox.
When you're in school, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An accountant, an AFL footballer or an accountant?
Yeah, I played a lot of football when I was a kid and from when I was probably five until
I stopped playing when I was about 21, 22 and then played again when I was 27, 28.
I was okay, but I was never really good enough to get to that next level.
And then I moved from, I grew up in Adelaide, I moved to Brisbane and in Queensland in,
I was at the end of the late 80s, AFL wasn't really a thing.
So while I thought I wanted to be an accountant who could play football on the weekends, neither
of those things actually came to fruition.
So who gave you the idea about being an accountant?
I went to a friend of my parents, we went to a barbecue.
I was probably 14 or 15.
And this guy lived up in the Adelaide Hills and he had a BMW and a Mercedes and a Porsche
I thought, wow, this is European cars, that was pretty fancy.
And I remember saying to my parents, what does that guy do?
And they said, he's an accountant.
I was like, oh, wow, what do you have to do to be good at, and they said, you've got to
be good at maths.
And I was like, I could do that.
So I literally kind of set myself on this trajectory of doing economics, accountancy,
maths one, maths two at school, and then got into university and then went, I don't like
And working in an accounting firm, doing tax returns and things, but an incredible background
to have and being able to not only obviously be able to read a P&O on my own sheet, but
negotiate and understand financials has been a great background and set me up for life.
So I have to ask, what car do you drive, given that you wanted to drive a Porsche or a BMW?
I'm currently driving an Audi.
Oh, so you've got the European car.
On that note, Sean, congratulations, round of applause.
You have passed the chatterbox section.
I now have one last question, and that is, if we gave you 12 months off unencumbered,
you could do anything you liked.
What would you do?
I would probably move to the south of France and renovate a chateau.
Oh dear, that sounds expensive.
Yeah, you know, it's not that expensive because I've looked into it.
It's something that I've always done outside of work is kind of renovation projects or
getting into the garden and I like to get my hands dirty and having seen a lot of those
And I love living overseas, engrossing yourself in the culture.
So just being part of a completely different culture, disappearing for a while, getting
My wife's studying interior design.
So between us, we thought we'd like to go and do something like that and something completely
Do you think you would actually be there doing the building partly yourself or would you
outsource the whole thing or do you really, really want to get your hands dirty?
And if you found an area where you'd like to live to renovate a chateau?
We spent quite a bit of time over there on holidays and it's something that I'd absolutely
love to do just to go and disappear for a little while and immerse ourselves in the
culture and enjoy the southern coast of France.
So do you know how long it would take you, do you think?
Probably a couple of years.
Yeah, they're quite long projects, huh?
And generally the roofs are pretty terrible.
That's not the kind of thing I could do myself, but there's lots of things I can do myself.
And that is our 15 minutes up.
Sean, I love your theory that winners make it happen and the way you try to make sure
that everybody wins from a deal.
There are no losers, so everyone can walk away happy.
Clearly, you need to be flexible in your job.
You can't get into too much of a routine.
I really like the way that you are so confident that you can always find a solution and the
tip that being relatable is so relevant to success in general and, again, negotiating
deals. So, Sean, thank you so much for giving us those great tips and for allowing us to
spend 15 minutes with the boss.
It's been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you, Sally.
And thank you to everyone for listening.
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This podcast was hosted by me, Sally Patton, and produced and edited by Lapfan.
Video and audio assistance and our music theme is by Alex Gao and our executive producer
The Australian Financial Review.