 What's up everybody once again is brand man Sean and once again you can see I have a very special guest for you guys you really want to make sure you watch this entire thing this is Wendy Day she has been I'm gonna go ahead and to their home for and say that she's been a part of brokering some pretty legendary deals namely cash money she's done things for no limit records as master people you young people who don't know Eminem she's managed people like Twista David Banner see murder and she's just all around advocate for artists which is something that's really important right we see a lot of people these days who are talking about artists getting their money but she's been doing this since the 90s so I'm really excited without further ado to introduce you to Wendy Day so let's get going what's up Wendy how you doing brand that I'm gonna match your energy today it's so funny when people talk about like energy and things like that cuz I never noticed and even thinking about myself that way but I love that about you though thanks thanks so let's have one quick question and they will roll right into what I want to get right to is cash money but how did you get into the industry in the first place because you weren't no I came to this as a fan like in 1980 and most of you weren't even born yet in 1980 I started listening to rap music and I fell in love with the energy and the passion of the music I went and got a master's degree in African American studies because I heard a line that Chuck D said and it inspired me to like really delve into black studies and then from there I went and got an MBA so that I could make money so I wanted to do something where I could combine my knowledge of the struggle with making money and and one of my goals was to help rappers really make money because the artist is always the last one to get paid as you know right so I got into this in 1992 by starting a not-for-profit organization to help artists become more knowledgeable about the music industry kind of like what you're doing right and also to help pull them out of bad deals or negotiate them into better deals okay man I mean that's what's crazy is when you like just you talk about that part of your story we talk about the impact that music has the potential to make and a lot of artists try that it doesn't have that impact or it can't have that impact but you literally just said you got a degree in African American studies because of the one line a white one got a degree in African American studies because of and I went and I got my degree from Temple which is an Afrocentric school really like I studied under Dr. Malefica Sante if you know who that is he wrote the book on after centricity okay so I have a very I have a very extreme perspective all right well so getting into the industry and your experience there what was that first move that you made when you got into the industry because I mean you're an outsider how does how do you even what do you do yeah because I'm white I'm female and I was from the suburbs and I was trying to immerse myself into black culture in New York City in you know in the inner cities so I spent a lot of time going to events I didn't really go to clubs because I'm not a club person yeah but I spent a lot of time going to events where up-and-coming artists would hang out in the Bronx and in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan so I really spent a lot of time immersing myself into the culture and understanding the artists and what their needs were what the strengths were what the weaknesses and then I started supplying events and tools that they needed in order to build their careers like I started putting together monthly panel discussions for free I started at NYU and then when we grew out of the classroom space out of that size I moved them to ASCAP in New York which had a bigger like a bigger I don't want to say it was a convention room but it held like 300 people so I was able to grow to a bigger size and I did that once a month and then also once a month I put together cipher sessions and I would go to the bigger producers that I was meeting and asking them to supply like an hour long beat tape or a two hour long beat tape so that up-and-coming rappers could wrap over their instrumentals and they were new beats they weren't like instrumentals that were already out so guys like Premier, RZA, EasyMobile, like the producers who were the leading producers at the time were giving music for the up-and-coming artists to rap to because a lot of these guys would never have the opportunity to rap over those kind of beats unless they were signed to like a major record label. Got you. It was really hard to answer your question directly. It was really hard when I started because I am an outsider. Yeah. So you know it made it really difficult. A lot of people in the industry thought that I was just there to either take advantage of artists or to fuck or whatever. Can I swear? Yeah go ahead. So they thought that I had ulterior motives but with time came proof that that's not what I was there for. Yeah. I mean I think one thing that you did say though is something that's still true for a lot of people's entryway into the game especially on the business side but just events throwing some sort of events and yes waiting and becoming a part of people's of the community first and didn't figure out where you fit in from there that's still a common thread that. Yes plus I came I came from a position of service like I was really and still am you know 28 years later really trying to help people. Yeah. Like I was I was finding out what their needs were that weren't being met and then supplying those needs for free. So like everything that I did was free. I made sure that the artists didn't have to pay for the knowledge. They didn't have to pay to come and wrap it to Cypher sessions and it also brought together unity amongst artists because in New York New York is made up of five boroughs right plus New Jersey. So it created an opportunity from artists all over the city and I did it in Manhattan on 48th Street which is very like centrally located and it brought together like all of the underground at that point in time were coming to my events. So they really got to know each other and they got to be comfortable with each with each other and they started to network and this wasn't a planned consequence. It was kind of a happy consequence where they actually got to get comfortable with each other and start to work together. So there was a sense of unity amongst the underground especially of lyricists in New York City and it made it easier for people to work together. So I want to get into the in-between a little later but fast forward from there to brokering a deal for cash money three years thirty million dollars. Yes. I met Cash Money in New Orleans. I went I was down there for a music conference and I walked into Peaches which was like the record store. It would be like walking in the Spotify today right. And I looked at all the music that they had from underground artists because that was my passion and when I flipped a couple of them over I noticed the Cash Money logo and I'm like oh who are these guys. So I started to put out feelers. I finally was introduced to them by a street team guy in Houston and I realized they had put out 31 releases over a six year period. They just didn't really work them to go beyond just New Orleans. So when I met them that's what I did. I extended their fan base. I brought them through the Midwest through the Mid-South and when they hit a larger area they just naturally sold more CDs because back then CDs were the you know were the litmus test. You know they were the they were the Instagram followers if you will. They were the proof of concept. Did you do touring. How did you expand their fan base? Did you just set up touring? Through touring, through marketing, through promotion and just through like hard groundwork like going out there and hitting all the different cities and spreading the word and spreading the music. You know with CDs it was a little bit easier and I guess we could argue that it was also a little bit harder because it was physical. You know we could walk up to somebody that looked like they might be a fan of the music and say hey do you listen to rap and if they said yes we could hand them a cd and most people would either pop it into their Walkman or pop it into their car and they would listen right then and there and if they liked it you know it was like score. If they didn't like it and they threw it on the ground we would just pick it back up and give it to the next person. Nice. I love the fact that y'all just pretty much just waited to see if you're gonna waste the money or not. Let's recycle this. Let's recycle this all the time. Now how did you can you give me a little bit more insight on to how they were moving because everything I've heard about them has pretty much been like they were moving like they had a lot going on before they got signed. Like they they were yeah they had a lot of money moving from various places. They had a lot of power and influence. They just us getting signed just unlocked what they already had going on. It did. It was like a it was like a turbo boost you know what I mean or or steroid. It intensified the work ethic that they already had. I mean they had the artists already signed to the label and like I said they had put out 31 projects over a six-year period you know so they were pretty well entrenched in the music industry. They were pretty solid doing what they were doing. So when you got to the point you were broken or a deal like what made what made who who made that decision what made you guys to even decide to go into. Well I went to them under the guise of let's let's do a deal. So I put like the day I met them I put together a business plan for them and started shopping a deal but the major labels didn't really understand Southern Rap at that point in time. Like for example our first offer was penalty records for just juvenile for 75,000 and I knew that their value was so much higher than that because they had already made way more than 75,000. I was like every time they put out a CD they were selling it you know somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000 so at $10 a CD you can kind of figure the math. You know you can see what kind of money they were making so it would have been a pay cut to for them to take less money. Yeah okay so now knowing that you actually approached them with let's get a deal like that whole thing and you had to plan what did that overall strategy look like you said if you look at an artist you say all right I know these guys they're moving they have something now I just need to get them to a point where they can sign a deal. Exactly well what they what they had was local it was New Orleans a little bit of Houston sort of like that I-10 interstate that's really where it had spread and because I had been working with Twista in the Midwest and with Eminem at that point in time I knew that I had the relationships to bring them into the Midwest and into the Mid-South areas like Memphis, Tennessee, Chicago, Illinois, Detroit, Cleveland like I knew I knew that their sound would expand it wasn't just a regional sound so when I realized that the deals weren't conducive to the guys signing yet that's when we took them into a larger regional area like for example the lawyer that was my lawyer at the time which was also their lawyer was also the lawyer for Three Six Mafia so he was able to unite them with Three Six so that Cash Money opened for a bunch of their shows in the Mid-South area so they were able to spread just from you know opening for shows and I don't want people to think that you could just open for somebody and get a fucking record deal it doesn't work that way right like there was so much more going on than just that that was just one aspect of what we were doing we were also doing you know groundwork in all the areas where they were where they were performing you know we were building the buzz at the street level and the club level back then we weren't going for radio because guys like Cash Money couldn't get on the radio it just wasn't realistic at that point in time this is you know 1997 and 98 so things were much different than they are now but the the principles that we were using were the same that you use today to get a deal and that's build a buzz prove to the label if your if your goal is to get a deal right which I could argue with you why that shouldn't be the goal but let's just say the goal is to get a deal if you can build a buzz and show a label that you've got a fan base in place and you're making money it reduces their risk and makes them not only want to sign you but it sets the tone of the financial parameters of your deal if you're already out here making $1.5 million on your own the deal from a major label is going to have to start around three million so by I call that getting leverage right if you're building your fan base and you're showing them that the risk is reduced that's leverage so when you go into the deal you're going to be able to get a far better deal than somebody that just has great music and you know 30 000 followers on instagram so today if I have an artist right and it's the exact same scenario right I believe guys are moving it's a group or is this an artist they have something going and I may be a manager right and I'm coming in how would what would I say I would need to do in steps wise to build that buzz or get into this standpoint they actually sign they can sign a deal that has a decent amount of leverage exactly okay everybody that's watching this is going to hate this answer because the first thing you really need is a budget and for some reason artists are allergic to finding money I don't know why that is but the best thing that a manager could do or an artist himself or herself could do is find somebody that believes in them and is willing to invest in them for a fair rate of return meaning if you can find an investor that's either going to lend you the money to market and promote or they're going to want to own a percentage of your company that's small enough that it makes it worthwhile then you can utilize that funding to blow up not only on the internet but in the real world what what what my clients do is we work like I call it a five-hour driving radius it's usually like a three to four state area but it's an area where they can easily access and drive to different cities and towns in the area and market and promote their music and we do it old school and we do it new school you know we get out there and shake hands and kiss babies and take pictures and we also do digital marketing where you know we're we're advertised we're doing facebook ads we're doing google ads we're boosting the followers on instagram through engagement I mean real followers I don't mean you know this bullshit get a million followers for 1999 I mean the real engaging with potential fans and and putting out music that's amazing and creating great visuals and videos for the songs that make people want to share your music with their friends you know and and that's that's always the goal you know if you start with a great budget and you start with music that's marketable there's no reason why you can't do this yourself and the great thing is that as you do this and you realize that you're you're developing a fan base and you start to get paid for shows you know you start making a thousand dollars fifteen hundred twenty five hundred your music starting to grow in that in that in that regional area that we just talked about you may find that you don't even need a label you may be able to do this on yourself like Chance the Rapper you know like Frank Ocean like little Donald like the folks that are out here doing this now independently they realize that they don't need a record label so I I think that part about the five hour radius that thing is strong I've heard people use six hours but I'm a lot of artists especially in this internet age they get followings that are across the world right and then there's double down and create an intimate fan base relationship because you don't have the money and I see a lot of finding doing that with with you and the artists that you work with in that five hour radius you said you guys do old school and new school what is we hang posters we hang we hang posters we give out postcards that have all the links they'll have the Spotify code the QR code we give out business cards that have all of the different platforms you know one of my philosophies is I don't want to force a potential new fan to come to me I want to meet them where they go so if they prefer SoundCloud I want my music on SoundCloud if they prefer Instagram I want my shit on Instagram if they're a Facebook person I want my shit on Facebook so we make sure that we go to all the platforms to me they're like cities you know I make sure that we're everywhere that the fans are and then once the fan base gets big enough like once you become Drake you can define where your people should come to find you but until you're that large you've got to go where they're comfortable being and where they're hanging out because somebody that's really comfortable with Facebook is not going to come to SoundCloud they're not going to come to YouTube you know I'm I'm an Instagram YouTube person right that's that's my that's where I live so I can count on this hand how many times I've been to Facebook I hate Facebook so if you're trying to get my attention and you're sending me stuff on Facebook I'll never even know that you're alive you know and that's me as a fan you know so if you're an if you're an artist and you want to reach your fans you've really got to go to them you know you've got to humble yourself you've got to change your attitude where you're so dope that people should come find you and you've got to go find them and you've got to you've got to share your music with them without spamming them like you can't just act somebody on their Instagram and expect them to go check out your music because there's just too much music out here but if you have a freestyle that's so amazing or if you have a song that is really spreadable or you've got a video that's just a great video people are going to share that with each other and they're going to and they're going to go in and become like your best resource they're going to become your brand ambassador if you will brand man I I think that's really cool because in marketing in general which artists don't realize you have to create as little friction as possible right it's over it's easier to overcome certain barriers when you're like on a one-on-one sales basis but you're just out there when the shit's just out there like that and there's these barriers oh I need to go over to this website or I need to go over this website I need to click this link you're making the decision harder and harder like you said I mean I've had people who have messaged me on Facebook and you know I wouldn't find out until maybe half a year later you know what I'm saying exactly exactly happy to be on Facebook and I'm not and I'm still not going to go click on my inbox and read through it but I just say oh man I didn't know if you were messaging on Facebook because I'm just not there that's not my preferred but exactly right so you know exactly I don't win in how you market you have to like you said you have to be where the people are build the relationship and then when you yeah you know build that trust you deposit your work then they'll you know come back to you if they like you um there's something that I don't want to pass over because I haven't really heard anybody talk about this much you said the investor relationship right and then that's the relationship you talked about two things you said you can either have them be a part of your company or they ingest investment or right right they're an angel they lend yes which one would you say is probably I know it can be subjective but it yeah it's different it's different for everybody you know um I guess see if you if you borrow the money then you have debt so you've got to pay somebody back and you've got to set the terms of when you're going to pay them back before you take the money and you know like when I was working with trouble it took us two and a half years to get him to explode again you know in the southeast um with Donald it took six months so just to give you like the extremes right so if I had if I had counseled trouble to take out a loan to work him and he had to pay it back in a year we would have been fucked because it took us longer than that to really to really get him bubbling you know with with Donald it was opposite Donald's partner is is an investor it is a um an angel investor you know he has no ownership so paying him back is going to be a breeze you know when that when it comes due nice so it's it's very hard to predict also you got to you got to understand that what the investor wants is kind of dictates this too right like we can sit here and talk all day about the kind of investor you want but if you go out there and you find that the reality is that the people that are willing to give you money want 50 ownership of your project or even of your company you know that's a decision you have to make individually like is that too much is that just enough is that too little you know you don't get what's fair you get what you negotiate yeah speak speaking of that obviously you've had such an integral role in negotiating contracts how does how do you get into that in a first place like having that i i i got into it because i had seen so many bad contracts like i had seen so many so much fuckery on paper that i started to recognize what wasn't good for artists so i was able to sit in meetings with labels and ask for the opposite of things of areas where i saw artists getting screwed that's how i got into negotiating contracts how would somebody do this that one you know just woke up today and says i want to be in the music industry the best thing you could do is take some some law classes so that you can understand you know what's fair and acceptable in the contract and then start talking to artists find out you know um and and it's not always easy to get to establish artists but maybe you get to them by doing um interviews with them so that you can then start to ask them the really in-depth questions like okay what in your contract have you stumbled upon that wasn't to your advantage oh you know well in my contract it says that um they have to recoup 100 before i see any money so i've been broke for a year and a half okay well then that tells you that in the contract that you negotiate you want to make sure that you get your artist some of the money like maybe only 80 percent of the money is getting recouped from so that the money is so that 20 percent is feeding through to the artist you know i don't know that that's the solution because every situation is different but that would be that to me would be the obvious way to learn how to negotiate by finding out weak spots in other people's deals does that make sense yeah yeah okay good like just learning and hearing those small yes yeah um i mean yes i learned a lot of things just by talking to people to myself so i do that's how i learned you just hear something and then they'll be complaining and now you know oh i don't want to do that you learn yeah and you learned who not to fuck with exactly when they complain they complained about something right someone so you know to keep a little distance yeah i think that's just it should be life in general right one would think okay like so what about people that are so notable right is it because you work with these people from ground up because yes remember you mean everybody is all the way up to you know the cash money m&m and all these people those are some day one oracle maybe not day one maybe like day maybe like day 50 but yeah from from from the beginning i mean they had to be doing something to catch my eye so it's not like they started rapping on wednesday and i called them on friday right but you know let's say that it takes the average person three years to build a career i've usually found them around the first year maybe a year and a half because i really i really travel at the ground level like the underground level for me like i love that artists get really successful i love how big m&m is i love how big drake is i love you know that these guys are are you know almost at a billionaire status but that's not interesting to me yeah the level that's interesting to me is not when brands are calling the artist artists to do things but when we have to figure out okay how do we get redbull to support this artist or how do we get samsung to give this artist 20 grand so that they can travel around that little four or five state area like that's more that's more interesting to me is that ground up level you know yeah it definitely makes sense so i'm thinking all right you come in in year one because it's really interesting to me to hear that you it's not like you're a nr or something but you keep your your ear to the ground and then very much so situations where selectively you'll say a i want to work with his artist right or well it's a little it's a little deeper than that like i i don't want you to think that i'm making a decision based on just the music i'm not um they need to have an investor in place like there has to be money right me to be able to market and promote them you know what i mean also i don't work for free anymore i'm 28 years in the music 27 years in the music industry i'm not free i'm very very expensive yeah you know because my track record speaks for itself and then the artist also has to have a level of grind and a level of willingness to do what it takes to succeed and most artists don't we all know artists that are incredibly fucking gifted but they just want to sit around and play playstation all day or they just want to smoke weed all day or they want to hang out with their boys you know if if you're not out there doing something for your career every day you're not going to be successful because you know other artists are gonna outwork you shit i'm gonna outwork you see that's really dope because i think it's cool to hear you clarify that they're you they need to have all their facets of business together yes yes but really what i when i when you when i heard you talk about finding certain artists that fit you know your skill set where you say hey i can do something with it kind of made me think about steve stout saying that he like went into the hood to find knots right i mean i'm sure that was like there's it's just interesting the people who are like trying to find all types of business or i just want to work with somebody and they're not being selective versus hearing people that actually are selective and who they decide to work with and from what i i have to be i have to be selective i have to be selective for two reasons one is i charge a lot of money so if i take money from somebody and i don't deliver my reputation is going to be gone so i could destroy 27 years of brand building by fucking one artist right so i'm very careful that i make sure i work with people where i can deliver and then the second thing is that i've banged my head for many many years i've i've tried to do this for free i've tried to do this for cheap i've tried to do this for next to nothing and i've learned from failing because i can't do this for free or for for cheap so i need to have the money to do the minimal level of marketing and promotion and there needs to be some proof that there's a tiny little fan base that likes the music so if you've got great music but you've got no one paying attention to you i would have a hard time working with you because there's no proof that you're going to be able to build a fan base and i don't want to destroy my reputation on a treadmill you know i want to be able to keep moving forward and keep building and keep growing you know i'm in the process of building an incubator so my brand really matters to me you know the money is secondary the money is going to come but if if i'm able to build success and do what i love that's what builds my brand got you don't brand man what's brand man well what type of incubator i hadn't heard that what type of incubator are you trying to build um i'm trying to build a company for artists that have money but they don't have enough money like it really takes about $150,000 to do this properly that's like the starting level right but there's artists out here that have 50,000 or 75,000 or they have found an investor that's willing to put up some of the money but they don't have all of the money so i'm trying to help that niche market like the guys because what's happening out here now is guys that have some money are giving it to people that can't deliver so they're losing their 50 grand or they're losing their 75 and because they don't have enough money to do this properly like i can't help them so i feel like there's a middle level of artists out here that have the ability to succeed they just don't have 100 of what they need so i'm trying to build a company that will like a safe space for them that will support them and teach them and encourage them and show them how to do this properly for their limited funds meaning the incubator is going to supplement the money and and give them what they need to succeed and we're going to do it without taking ownership which is fucking amazing because most people when they give you money they want to take half of your company we're not going to do that so and don't call me about it because it's not set up yet i figure around second quarter second quarter 2019 it should be up and running nice nice digital or physical space um both both cool everything i do now is digital and physical cool all right i have clients like all over the country not all over the world just the us i haven't quite gotten the relationships that i need to succeed offshore yet okay so that's just domestically cool so i hear a question a lot actually from artists that have 30 000 or 50 000 right what are some general things that you would say as far as spending that budget if if i only have 30 or 50 and understand that's not enough money to succeed it's not enough money to build enough of a buzz to monetize your fan base and for me you making money as a rapper matters so much more than you just being like famous in your hood i really want artists to be able to live off of the money they make from rapping so because i know it's not enough money my best suggestion of where to spend that money is either to make investments that are going to legally increase that money so real estate is a great place doing shows is a great a great way to increase your money if you're not willing to do that i would spend that money um instead of doing that five hour driving radius that i was talking about i might just do two cities and the internet you know i would definitely have a digital campaign because digital really really really fucking matters you know so i would just maybe do a one-state area or a two-state area but my focus would be not just building fans it would be trying to find an investor i would take some of that money and i would put it into um assembling a business plan and i would start attending different events that attract people that have money um the most basic one that i can think of off the top of my head is chamber of commerce chamber of commerce meetings are people that own businesses in the community they are people that have money you know the rotary club they are people that have money and want to better the community so there are places you can go and become part of that community you know i'm i i invest in real estate personally so i go to real estate investment meetings all the time and these are people that have money the money's from real estate but these are people that make money and have money to invest you know so you you'd be the only rapper at a real estate investor meeting if you came there you know you can't just come and be greedy and be like yo give me money you got to sort of invest in the community and with time and become part of that community let people get to know you you know maybe come to all the meetings for a year while you're still building your career and working on building who you are but as people get to know you and they see your hustle you're more likely to attract an investor than if you're sitting home playing playstation and you know sending out facebook posts saying yo i'm looking for somebody to give me 150 grand like that's not a productive way to find money letting people get to know who you are and building a relationship is a very productive way to raise money got you i think when something's super important about what you said is just the fact that you have to build relationship with those investors like i don't care what you're like what you're moving you can't just say oh i got even 50 000 fans and i just had this many streams in approach of an investor you have to we have to trust you because you're giving you money when they give you your money they don't know what to do with that money like no one's coming to 50 000 and not knowing if you yet even as a person move correctly if you're going to be in jail tomorrow if you are going to scam them out are you going to return phone calls are you going to get off your couch and do what you need to do with that money or are you just going to buy chains and smoke weed exactly so you know that part is very important that's a long game but you have to keep yes moving and moving you know keep doing what you do as a rapper but as you said start to move in different communities and you talked about real estate which is interesting because i find today like being a rapper is like the new restaurant in terms of it's the new dope game yeah like for investors they're like oh you know i might have a restaurant or i have this cool like oh no i have a rapper now right you know everybody everybody has a rapper it's becoming really popular to invest in rappers so it's probably easier than ever to make money off of it because it's just accessible in so many different ways yes it's the it's the easiest i've seen it to get money like when i was coming up you almost had to sign to a label to get money you know they were the gatekeepers you couldn't do this independently and today you can do this yourself you know and it's the easiest i've ever seen not to say that it's easy to find money but it's the easiest i've ever seen it to find money and i'll say this it's easier to find an investor than it is to find a record deal 100% far easier far far far easier 100% now my question to you then from your perspective what's the advantage from having an investor an advantage for having a record later i love that question um for me the number one thing is oh losing you there sorry yeah are you there yeah i wish she drops the gym i know right the secret to life is but the sorry the the the difference is that ownership the ownership is the number one most important thing is with the ownership that means you're going to make the lion share the money and you're going to have the control if you sign to a record label they're going to dictate where you go and what you do and you're going to make about 12 to 15 uh oh 12 to 15 percent sorry about that you're going to make 12 to 15 percent of the income right after you pay back that money that's if you sign to a label but independently you're going to have 100 ownership of what you're doing so you're going to be able to collect 100 percent of the money you're going to give some of your distributor your distributor is going to get somewhere between five percent and 20 percent in order to distribute you but you're going to own 100 percent of your publishing you're going to own 100 percent of your masters and that's the control and the decision making that comes behind the music so if a label for example who owns the masters and probably part of your publishing if a corporation comes along um let's say Donald Trump Donald Trump comes along and wants to license one of your songs for his rally the label gets to say yes or no you know if if there's if there's gay porn that wants to use your song as part of the soundtrack the label could say yes to that i doubt a label is going to say yes because they don't want to piss off the artist but still if you own the masters and you own the publishing you get to say yes or no and that's really the power in the music interesting so what about what would you say the advantages are left today in terms of having a label versus an investor the advantages for a label is that they have to know how they've been doing this for a long time they're a giant machine the difference is sort of like a major label is a cruise ship and an independent label is a jet ski if you're on a lake and you want to move around a jet ski is the perfect choice because you can move around really quick if you start to go down a road and a road right on the ocean i mean on the on the lake if you're going down if you're going down a path in the water and you see that it's it's got rocks and stuff you can make a u-turn really quickly a major label is like a cruise ship you're going to take a cruise ship to go across the ocean you're going to take a cruise ship if the water's really murky and you can't cross it easily and on a jet ski but a cruise ship can't turn quickly it can only go forward or turn very widely and very slowly it's got a really wide berth right so the difference between the two is with an indie label you can make quick and easy decisions with a major label you can't there's a plan in place and you can't veer from that plan even if things go horribly wrong it's very hard to stop dropping one song and turn around and drop another one you kind of have to just go down that path see so when you say that i think that's beautiful because it makes me think about startups right more just in a strictly business sense and that's how you know when you think label it's like startup versus corporate right indie label versus corporate and a startup like a legit startup is truly in an experimentation phase so an artist early on is like that and if you sign too early where you really are learning so much about what's going to be right for you and before you actually have a true defined path that you know are we want to drop a bomb in this direction and drop a lot of resources it doesn't even make sense in most cases like outside of you know money or you know just wanting to be on a label all these other things but you don't even necessarily know what the best product is yet so you're over you could over invest in the wrong thing i guess absolutely absolutely and then there's also artists that just want to be artists you know when when i was working with trouble um Interscope made an offer and he wanted to sign to Interscope like he saw the value in being signed to a major label if that were my decision i would have never done that because he was making too much money on his own to actually join a major label and sit in a row of people waiting to come out you know we could drop every four months i think with him we dropped every four or five months you know it's hard to do that on Interscope could you not find like a ceo as an artist um meaning could you could you find a ceo like would you do that as an artist i would would you recommend that yeah that like instead of you know if you still i'd much rather get a ceo and they handle all this right yeah because you're making a hundred percent of the money instead of you know like i said the average record deal is 12 to 15 percent even if you've got a track record of success like supreme leverage you know you're still looking at somewhere between 18 percent and 21 percent to sign to a label you know i've seen deals that are 50 50 and that may make sense for some people but for me because i have the access and i have the knowledge in the relationships it just makes sense to keep everything 100 percent and if the artist has me i just don't see why like i hire all the same people the labels do you know yeah and they're far cheaper to hire as an independent than to hire as a major label but then on the flip side i don't know if i could build somebody as large as drake like to become drake you might need a major label i don't know i haven't done that yet so i can't speak on that got you what inspires you to do youtube to get the knowledge out here um you know i got to give props to jordan tower because he's actually the one that called like i've been thinking about it talking about it thinking about it talking about it you know how you like you do in life you have all these plans and you never make time for them and jordan tower called me one day and said why the fuck aren't you doing this and i'm like i don't know you know i didn't really have a good answer for him so he said come over tomorrow bring your laptop get this camera get this get this um microphone and be at my house at noon we're gonna set up your youtube channel and i did and he did and he set it up for me you know he did the background artwork like he really made it easy for me he showed me how to record um he showed me how to edit although if you've seen my videos you know i didn't edit um but he he basically showed me how to do it the reason that i wanted to do it once he made it easy for me was because i find that there's so much misinformation out here there's so many people that haven't really achieved success in the music industry yet that are teaching artists how to monetize their music and they haven't done it and it's one thing if like yourself you've taken the time to learn and you've interviewed people and you've you've become a conduit of knowledge but there's so many people out here that haven't like there's guys that have failed careers as a rapper that have never made more than you know five grand teaching artists how to become superstars and that scares the fuck out of me you know what i mean it's like it would be like i know shit all about basketball it would be like me getting on youtube and teaching a guy how to have a career in basketball or how to be a cardio surgeon you know here's how you operate on a heart like dude if you have a heart attack do not call me you do not want me to come and repair your heart because i'm not good at that you know but i am good at monetizing music and i am good at building brands and building buzzes for artists so i just wanted to share knowledge from my point of view and i don't know everything i'm not always right you know and you'll see that if you watch my videos i tell people all the time like go do the research like don't don't use me as law use me as a catapult to get to the next level as as inspiration to go and study this more you know i don't know everything that is about soundcloud i don't want to so if you're taking advice from me on how to build your sound cat cloud page you're fucked yeah you know but i do know who to go higher to do that i do know who's legitimate i do know you know where to turn to read books on soundcloud i do know you know what to do to get the knowledge and get the information right right right i think that's really important because people don't realize especially in like the music business there's no set structure like there's there's structures in place but there's no true one path to success and i know there's many right there's so many and i really try to say especially when it comes to marketing that overall what i'm trying to do is present things for you like frameworks of thinking so whenever you encounter a situation you have an additional way to think about it because there's no one path i can tell you this is going to work but if i can give you different ways of analyzing a situation when you're in your particular situation you can say yeah does this thing he said no this doesn't make sense this time but that's what i want people to do i'm not really that's why i try to find people like you are super valuable once again i appreciate what you do as a whole i'm so happy to do this and the reality is like most artists out there can't afford to hire me but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't have access to the knowledge and the information and that's really what keeps me going you know i'm going to start doing my videos i took a year off from the videos because i found that people were asking me the same questions over and over and over and over as i'm sure you know like they'll watch a video about how to get a record deal and then they'll email me how do i get a record deal and it's like are you serious um so i took a year off just to kind of like you know first of all to make money for myself and to sort of like regroup and figure out okay what other topics can i delve into that are really important so i've been making a list over the past few months of what people want to know and i've done the research on who to go to to get that knowledge if it's something that i don't know you know a lot about if i don't know it intimately um i've also discovered in this industry that there's a lot of fuckery that goes on in this industry there's a lot of sharks and snakes and people that say they can deliver but can't deliver and i don't know whether they do that purposely to hit a lick or whether they're doing that because they're inept i don't know but the bottom line is there's a lot of people out here that are taking money from other people and not delivering and as part of what i do i really want to highlight the people that are out here doing right by others you know the people that deliver a service for what they're getting paid for so there's a lot of people that i want to interview but i'm kind of afraid to because i don't ever want to co-sign somebody that's out here just fucking people left and right you know so i've also taken this year to get to know a lot of the other players that aren't on my team and people that that i don't hire but are worthy of being hired you know and that research alone has been time consuming i can imagine a lot of crazy a lot of people wouldn't put energy into doing that like but that's value because you got to this whole i mean got to really see how much you value your brand and you understand alone oh my god yes as everybody should like the money comes and goes the brand does not once you fuck your brand you know take heat to that people take heat to that well it's been great i don't want to keep you for too much longer so you guys you can follow windy day you need to follow windy day on youtube she has her instagram at rap coalition but you need to follow youtube because she's always dropping knowledge um it's just her perspective is value obviously valuable obviously you can see that she's had a lot of experience um is there anything that you would like them to know like a last word um probably i'd like them to know that my youtube channel is youtube.com slash this is windy day and the reason the reason i'm promoting it is because i don't normally like it's it's you would have to google windy day youtube channel to find me it would be very hard for you to go to my instagram and watch my feed and say oh well she'll talk about it eventually i won't i'm not big on self promotion i just that's not what i use my instagram page for i don't promote on instagram my instagram page is more about dropping knowledge and like sharing who i am with my circle of friends you know so that people see you know what me and my husband tony are doing you know what i'm doing with my dog gangster you know it's it's more of the personal side of me as well as the business side right you know i i don't i don't i don't get real promotiony with it got it awesome well you heard it from her youtube.com slash this is windy day i'll put that in the description below i love that i really love what you're doing thank you for doing this i know that you don't make money doing this because i don't make money doing this you know what i mean you're doing this because you love it and i love what you're doing like when you reached out and said i could i interview you i think i said yes within three seconds like i hit you back so fast i was like fuck yes like whatever i can do to help you let me know because i would love to so i really appreciate that i really appreciate you thanks for doing this awesome hey well once again everybody hey and always make any comments what you think is interesting just share all that stuff in the comments below other than that if you like this video go ahead that like button if you like it you might as well share it and if you're not subscribed you know what subscribe for real hit that little bell and don't forget to troll because we all fucking love that hit that subscribe button