A Conversation with Agent Jad Dayeh - WME Senior Partner
A Hollywood mailroom success story turned super agent and die-hard surfer.
Jad Dayeh is enthusiasm. He has an earnest and infectious love of life and all its mysteries. And I mean all of ‘em. He’ll quiz you on English literature while driving you to a UFC fight. He’ll put Pharrell on hold to ask you where you just surfed. He’ll leave his house 2 hours before daylight to meet you for a dawn patrol at your home break and call it a surf trip.
After immigrating with his family from Syria at age 7, Jad landed in Ohio, became a Buckeye, then stopped in Arizona before finding himself in a Hollywood mailroom at one of the oldest institutions in entertainment. He’s since climbed his way into a partnership role at WME — one of the biggest agencies on earth and picked up surfing along the way. And when I say he picked up surfing: I mean he threw himself at it full-tilt and likely surfs more than all of us.
We have become close friends, biz partners and surf buddies. I trust his instincts in all matters of life and I think he at least trusts me to let him know when HB is peaky.
Since picking up surfing a touch later than most of us, he has become a fully committed “core lord” in every sense of the word. He is a 16 year old surf grom in a man’s body and I can’t tell you how much fun that is to be around. Surfing with Jad is good for the soul. —Travis Ferré
Inherent Bummer: Before we get into your surf life, can you give us the background on how you ended up in Los Angeles with your current job?
Jad Dayeh: I had a very circuitous path into both Los Angeles and my surf odyssey. I'm a senior partner at WME — I've been there for 17 years now. I'm a talent agent at my core, representing music artists and creatives and culture icons ... I also run our digital media business and spearhead a lot of our emerging brand consulting business.
I was born in Damascus, Syria, moved to America when I was almost seven, and grew up in Ohio — completely landlocked. I was actually on a path to go to law school and become a lawyer. I dropped out before my first class even started because I knew I really wanted to get out into the world of business and start creating opportunities and building something.
Right out of college, I went into real estate finance and built a company over five years with a partner. It did really well, then got decimated by the 2008 financial crisis. I was looking for something more fulfilling than what I'd been doing, which was very transactional. During those Arizona years, I would spend summers in San Diego or LA, and that's when I got my first dose of that Southern California beach lifestyle — a different side of life that really doesn't exist in many other places in America.
When that company dissolved, I picked up and moved to LA. I learned about the agency world and realized it was an amalgamation of all my skills — deal making, negotiation, representation — all things I was already doing in a much less interesting industry. I applied cold, started in the mailroom at William Morris Agency, and worked my way up through this 150-year-old Hollywood institution of a company.
So you're literally a mailroom success story?
Yeah, they still exist! I started from the actual bottom and worked my way through. Interestingly I always think of Hollywood as one of the last bastions of the apprenticeship model which is why this mailroom approach still works. This apprentice mindset is something that has really come to serve me in my surf journey.
You obviously have creative instincts given your work with artists. What was your introduction to the arts and creative world?
The arts have always been, at the core, the most important thing in my life. I literally learned a lot of my language skills when I moved to this country through music and television. I was obsessed with hip hop and the lyricism, and I would study word choice the way one studies diction in poetry and prose. I was obsessed with literature, from the classics to the modern works .
I actually had a music promotional hustle in college that organically came about, so I was immersed in the business side of music even then without really knowing it. When I came to the agency world, I thought I would be a music agent, but realized they didn't do exactly what I thought they did. So I ended up representing very large music artists and helping them build full media companies — doing everything outside of booking their music tours. Music has been the most prominent through line for me, but the arts as a whole have been incredibly important. I grew up going to museums and historic sites with my family, my dad was a photographer and I also picked that up and really immersed myself in ancient arts, history and all the rich literature around it.
During your move from Damascus to Ohio to Arizona, had surfing or surf culture popped up at all, or was that discovery strictly the SoCal introduction?
Well I'm obsessed with subcultures and have always gravitated towards them. Surfing was one I kind of grazed the surface of, initially through music.
Music and surf are for me inextricably intertwined, and I was discovering little elements of the surf world through music I was listening to and discovering in those years.
But it felt really abstract and far away to me. Given my origin, it was never something that felt like it was for me or available to me — the same way I never thought Hollywood was available to me. I'm an outsider in many aspects of my life, even now working in the center of Hollywood, I still sometimes feel like an outsider, though I'm assuming from the outside I look like an insider. My surf vantage point was similar. It felt like it wasn't something I was supposed to be engaged with, but I was always enamored by it from the second I set eyes on it. Who doesn’t want the forbidden fruit?!
How did you take the plunge into actually surfing when you moved west?
I've always been very connected to nature. It's been a reprieve from my stressful job. I find it meditative, something that allows my brain to freely work through its day. As I spent more time in California, that nature component pulled me closer to the ocean.
But the real turning point was kind of funny. I had an assistant named Ben Cohen almost 15 years ago who was obsessed with surfing. Every time I walked past his desk, he'd be watching a surf video. I was perplexed because when you don't participate in something like surfing, the untrained eye doesn't distinguish different types, styles, or proficiency levels. But I started noticing this guy would come into the office some days after surfing with a clearly elevated perspective on his day.
When I promoted him, he said, "I want to take you surfing." We went to Venice Breakwater which is not the sexiest place for your first surf. He gives me this gigantic longboard with a huge skull on it and a wetsuit that didn't totally fit. I grew up playing sports, was competitive and athletic with some degree of proficiency in all the sports I played, but I remember paddling out and getting absolutely crushed trying to maneuver around. It was incredibly humbling.
I finally made it out, looked around and saw people of all ages and skill levels gracefully moving around, and I couldn't believe how fucking terrible I was. I got obsessed in that instant with not being daunted by this thing.
And then you went to Nicaragua?
Shortly after my first experience, Ben invited me to Nicaragua with a group of friends. It's one of those trips I should have never taken, but it changed my life for the better because it threw me into the deep end — which is how I believe in doing things. I don't believe in half measures. When I wanted to go to Hollywood, I went to the epicenter. When I decided to get interested in surfing, I went full tilt.
I was totally unprepared. I almost drowned two different times on that trip. The whole thing was relatively humiliating but also cathartic. But I caught my first real wave on that trip, and I'll never forget the sound and the feeling and that initial harnessing of nature's energy. Once that happened, it all clicked and I understood what it was all about in that second.
I came back from Nicaragua determined to make this a regular part of my life. I honestly didn’t even have to be “determined” because it’s almost like this dormant obsession was awoken and it kind of took on a trajectory of its own. My lifestyle started to modify to allow for this new thing, which has now had a tremendous impact on how I live my daily life and how I view the world.
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