 I mean, I think it's just obvious. It's just ridiculous to just give some celebrity a Creative director role of anything. There's only like three guys that I think could even possibly work You know consistently and that's Ryan Leslie me and will I am? Oh, what's up everybody? Once again, it's brain man, Sean and today I have to talk about arguably one of the most successful Independent artists as a matter of fact one of the most independent Independent independent artists there is in the game that would be Ryan Leslie I mean, I'm talking about somebody who did two million dollars in one album cycle without any major record label and without Having his music on streaming services first I got to give a shout out to all of you guys out there who'd asked me to do a video on Ryan Leslie because y'all have been Asking for a minute now here it is for those of you guys who don't know what who Ryan Leslie is He hit the scene hard with the song Addiction back in 2008 which was featuring Cassie, but not only is he a good singer and rapper He also is an off-the-chain producer and got a lot of traction for a video that went viral of him Just producing the song addiction in the studio But what makes Ryan Leslie so unique in terms of being independent when I think about what makes Ryan Leslie unique I always go back to my personal experience when I first met Ryan Leslie It was actually at a conference a tech conference and they're only like five black people there It was me Ryan Leslie One of the guys was Ryan Leslie's team member or his assistant or something Paul judge and maybe somebody else me and Ryan Chopped it up a little bit alluded to following up and then he told me to take down his phone information He gave me this link that was basically similar to kind of a B card type feel a couple of months later We hadn't necessarily followed up, but then my phone vibrates I pick it up look at it and it's a happy birthday text message from Ryan Leslie I remember thinking hmm like this guy can't be like me because me I know I'll schedule a text so far in advance I mean, it's not even December yet, and I already got a happy Valentine's Day schedule for my girl I did a little bit of research about Ryan Leslie's Superphone And this is what makes Ryan Leslie so unique Ryan Leslie a Harvard government major who became a Grammy Nominated recording artist has removed his music from iTunes and launched a company to reach fans in new ways And he's made more money as an independent than ever before Superphone is basically a CRM for fans Now if you guys are not familiar with the concept of a CRM CRM stands for customer relationship manager And a lot of companies use CRM because they have a large amount of customers But they want to be able to be as personal with their customers as possible Especially in sales at the very least you want to understand your history with that customer So whenever you reach out you're not started from square one because you know, you don't talk to the same people every day It might be months in between, but what's all that mean, bro? Just imagine you're outside You know going through your everyday life and then somebody walks up to you like oh my god I'm your number one fan. Imagine yourself being able to go really. Oh, man. That's dope. Let me um, oh Actually when I look it up it looks like you're really my 57,000 and 304th fan because you haven't bought any of my projects in about three years You actually haven't been to any of my concerts. What makes you think you're my number one fan again Ryan Leslie can do that. I want to talk about why this is the future But first check out this example of one really cool way that Ryan Leslie used the platform and so just over this last new year's I threw a party and I just put it out there to all my fans I said look if you guys reserve at a 200 euro price point a ticket to my New Year's Eve party I'll throw a private New Year's Eve party. I didn't have a venue. I didn't have anything 48 hours later I was up 40,000 euros and I rented a palace in Vienna, Austria and 200 of my top fans came to Vienna, Austria And had a big party with me for New Year's Eve And then this year we did it again and this time I said well if you guys wanted a super exclusive package The tickets are 1700 dollars That intimate experience that access it's not really about the money. It's it's really about a priceless moment So go ahead and just let that soak in a little bit. You can simply have an idea text your fans directly No marketing in terms of having to pay for advertising get on certain platforms Don't have to get a graphic designer. None of that time You can just come up with the concept get the money in return or at least your fans are pens and then Executed if you still decide you want to do it the amount of money and effort that that saves especially if somebody that's independent Is invaluable as Ryan Leslie says he does with no manager. No record label. None of those things He has a record label of his own that he's running from his phone Now check out this other really unique thing that Ryan Leslie was able to do because of this platform and his access to his fans I realized that maybe they didn't want to support me by buying a digital copy of my record But I did have folks that decided hey, wine if you want to make a video I'd love to give you my services If you need 30 lamborghini's in a video I run the lamborghini club in belgium and I can have them all pull up His name is t-ball venrini And the cool thing about it is when you have a fan base You have no way of knowing what every single person does what they have access to this person ran a lamborghini club So you've got all these lambos for free. Once again as an independent artist Any resources are extremely valuable and when you have this access to resources in these unorthodox ways You're going to be able to create experiences that other people can't recreate with their fan base Now let's talk about themselves though. Look at my major label release 180 000 copies album one and 60 000 copies album two. How does that make sense? You know when the second album was grammy nominated The real disconnect is why wasn't the marketing plan to personally reach out to the 180 000 people that got my first record? Well, that can't be the marketing plan because we don't know those people. All right. Well, if you want to continue Chasing that dream with those people that don't know those people then be my guest for everybody else Man, I'll lead you to the promised land take my hand what super phone allows him to do is say hey y'all like my project Here's my next project speaking to the people who actually bought the first project He alludes to this and talks about this, but it really is a true Business principle that it's cheaper to maintain a customer than it is to create a new one You spend a lot of money trying to create these customers But once they're in the house all you have to do is maintain the relationships They're the ones who are most likely to buy more a lot of the brands that you use are partaking You do it more than once and they don't really have to convince you again But the very first time that you were ever introduced to that it costed them Something to get that brand in front of you many of you have heard of the concept of a thousand true fans I never did a video on it because I thought it was enough video was talking about it out there So I'll do a link in the description below somewhere Ryan Leslie is truly an example of that concept because as he said in one video He did two million dollars for an album cycle and it was whipped around 15 000 fans Now if you think about that you do the math, that's about $133 per fan, but if you do the math if he only had 1000 fans He could have did $133,000 off of that one project with a thousand person fan base But he's only able to get the most out of his fan base with the least amount of effort because He's able to identify and communicate with his strongest fans You get his music through his platform through his website Even if he decides to put something on a spotify or apple music His fans his biggest fans have access to it first and they literally get it through a text message link This is exactly why this is the future of music if you want to be successful in the digital era You need to know who your supporters are and what this type of contact does is it allows you to cut the marketing costs? And it also allows you to cut out the middleman for independent artists That's a lot of money saved which is important when they don't have a lot of money to spend This is why if you listen to steve south talk about the music tech company that he just launched united masters Two big things you hear him talking about is marketing and also his company has its own CRM that next level of connection with fans is going to be huge as a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised if ryan lezzie had something to do with the united masters crm Because when I think about it andries and horowitz is actually an investor in united masters And they're also an investor in bevel ryan lezzie and tristan walker are good friends So it probably makes sense they all run in a similar circle I'm pretty sure if not at the least he's very aware that there's that competition at play Competition and those sorts of spaces just let you know how real the opportunity is but also validates how much that really is the future I want to end this video in a slightly different way because I want to end it with some words from ryan lezzie So that's it. You know what to do Hit that subscribe button And number two is it's about sales, right? It is actually about sales when music is available for free Every sale counts. And so you have to understand that one percent Of releases accounts for 77 percent of money spent on music, right? So that means that less than Three less than three percent of albums released every year sell more than a thousand copies And so for me, I'm interested. Well, I'm first of all, I'm part of the three percent, right? I might be part of the one percent, right? Yeah And um, what's also interesting is that I'm interested in teaching young musicians how to be part of that three percent There's so many kids out here, man. They put so much passion