 Wow, what's up everybody once again is Fran, man, Sean, and we got to talk about a serious issue when it comes to women networking in the music industry and being taken seriously. First, I got to start with the question that really got this popping off. I'm not going to read the whole thing I'll put up on the screen, but essentially a woman asked me on Instagram, she slid into my DMs and said, I see all of these independent successful male artists, but how are women treated when trying to make their own business moves and meet people without a man representing them? How can a female artist network and avoid groupie treatment or that she's expected to sleep with people to get ahead? Oftentimes, the advice I see on networking is to build a personal relationship first before moving to business, but that seems impossible for women to go that route and people not expect a romantic slash sexual relationship with them. I get it. So first and foremost, I will say no matter what you do, no matter how official you are, you will get tried. If you're in the industry long enough, some man will try you. It doesn't matter if you were in a pants suit and some stockings and sitting on your boyfriend's lap, a man will try you. That's just the way some of these people are. And if you're in the industry long enough, it's probably going to happen. But just to help that situation, let's get into some tips. Number one, if and very likely when you do get tried, you have to be straightforward and let the person know that you're about your business and you are not interested in intimacy. I know that could be intimidating given whatever the situation might be. And that's not always easy to do as it is to say. So that leads into number two. Just in general, whether it's fair or not as a woman, you probably need to have your business together more than anybody else. But that means the LLC, your split sheets, depending on what position you are, you know, you might be a PR manager, you might be an artist. But having your business, whatever that means together, moving that way accordingly so people know that you are not playing. Number three, look for a respected woman to be a mentor or sponsor for you. That way, when you get in certain opportunities, you have this person vouching for you. If this person has a lot of people's respect and they understand that that person's about their business, they're serious, they have a little authority, then they aren't necessarily going to try you if they know that you have that association. It doesn't mean they won't try you again, dudes are going to try. No matter what, there's nothing that can stop them. But a lot of people will be less likely to do certain things if you know you have associations with certain people. So make those things clear and have somebody who not only can make certain things not happen just because that respect is there, but also they will be able to walk you through certain situations. There's going to be women who can give you way better advice with some nuanced things that I'm not going to be able to. So I do hope to get a woman on the channel who's really credible in the business and been in there a long time to talk about this subject exactly. It doesn't necessarily have to be a woman's sponsor. It can be a male sponsor as well. But understand that a lot of guys might use honestly sex as some sort of leverage. And at the end of the day, when it comes to being a sponsor or mentor or having some sort of association, then it could be a male as well. As long as you notice that type of person who's not looking at you that way and they truly look out for you, men really do play a very similar role for a lot of women in the business as well. As you build relationships, hopefully you have multiple men and women who look at you a certain way, take you seriously and make sure other people treat you correctly. Because there will be people who try to use opportunities as leverage, sexual favors and all kinds of bullshit. And when you have those other people around, they will be able to call those people on that bullshit in situations you might not be comfortable doing yourself. Those are some small tips. There's more. I want to go deeper in this conversation, but I'm going to wait until there's a woman on this channel where we can just chop it up and I can get real deep on a lot of different scenarios for you guys. Or gals technically most likely in this video. But I want to hear your comments in the section below, the comment section that is. And especially if you've had any particular situation that you've been through with that you might be able to offer advice or just an instance that happened that was wild and you want to let other people know about it, put it in the comment section. And again, just a reminder, every Sunday I'm answering my followers questions on Instagram. So hit up at brand man Sean every Sunday for the rest of 2018. And I'm answering as many questions I can. But I almost forgot to mention that at the beginning of the year after a lot of people asked, I dropped a master music networking guy. It's been helping a lot of artists, producers, engineers, so many people make a lot of quick connections in the music industry and start building real relationships with meaningful people. I'm talking about getting custom made beats from serious producers, getting playlist placements, getting connected with A&R, sponsorships. There's the gamut of ways people have been using it, but you can check out the results and what other people have been doing with it at mastermusicnetworking.com. I'll put that on the screen, link in description, all that good stuff. But check it out for yourself, see if it's something that you wanna look further into. Other than that, if you like this video, go ahead and hit that like button. If you like it, you might as well share it and if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button.