 Wow, what's up everybody? Once again, it's Brandman Sean and I'm back with another episode of Acts Brandman where every Wednesday I answer your questions from the comment section below so keep those questions coming. It's the network. Now, today I got a question from SickSkills who says, who helps you get sales, streams and develop fans? Now, to really take this question in because it's pretty general, I think you should focus on the manager. But before I get into why the manager is critical in this particular space, all those sales, streams and developing fans, you have to really understand how to choose to write in manager, how to look at managers and know that it's a real relationship. So if you don't get this that I'm about to go through right now, you're possibly giving a good portion of your business 10, 15, 20% of your business to somebody that's not even right for the role. So this is how you look at managers and this is gonna give you an idea of how you share your business with them, all right? Now, number one, there's a role manager, production manager, a tour manager and tech manager, right? We split it into two categories, your tour show in terms of responsibilities and then your business, general business responsibilities when we're talking about management. Well, if you're a big artist because we're gonna start at the bird's eye view so you can know what it typically grows out to and then how do we hone it in for an indie artist or somebody who's just starting out, right? Role production, tour tech, technical, those are all different roles and somebody like Drake has a manager for every single one of those categories, right? Technical managers is like set design, tour, that's all the logistics for your tour and they're coordinating with the role manager who's handling things on the ground that they're closest to you in terms of a lot of the things that they're doing while you're on the road that you have the production person who's working on literally the production, right? Of your shows. So that's something that you probably don't need early on, right? Pretty clear on that. So don't get too worried over there, right? A lot of people will have a sense of a role manager but really the role manager oftentimes it doubles as one of the business roles which is the day-to-day manager. All right, that's a little messy but you should be able to read it, right? And then you have these other categories of an actual business manager and then you have a, some people call it a music manager, some people call it an artist manager but that's the one that people typically just say this is a manager, it's just a general role. Then you have a booking agent, right? And the booking agent falls under that category because when we go back to who gets you sales, streams and developing news fans now let's break down into these roles because this is more growth. These guys over here or those responsibilities that's handling something that you already have. These are the people who help you grow and maintain and sustain. So let's check this out. Your day-to-day manager, this is the person who's with you all the time. You'll wake up. A lot of times people look at it as a babysitter, right? You'll wake up or you'll be at this appointment here handling some admin work or going to go pick something up to make sure that the studio vibe is right. You know, are there some rellos in this thing? Or what do we have going on? They're making sure your vibe is right, right? In many ways I don't wanna seem like I'm not looting the impact of a day-to-day manager but it's a really a glue guy. They're making sure stuff gets done on a ground level and making sure the artist is comfortable. That's who makes sure the artist is comfortable to do what they wanna do or need to do versus focusing on things outside of creating, right? Oftentimes that's how it gets looked at. Then you have the business manager. This is your money. Your money, right? Your money and oftentimes this person might actually be a accountant. It could be a firm that you're using, right? And you have an account manager who's your business manager. There's different ways to flip this but I'm gonna get into something really important pretty soon, right? The booking agents obviously, right? The person who helps you get booked, right? Because there's agencies who specialize in that as a business, right? But everything comes down to the music and artist manager in terms of how people view it. All of these different roles and responsibilities, people usually just look at as the music artist manager, right? This is my manager. Oh, they should do all these things. I'm expecting all these things and that's not necessarily fair to a manager and this is where a lot of disconnect comes from, right? So, here's what you gotta understand. Number one, your music manager, your actual manager, right? Should not be doing business manager responsibilities, right? That's your, you don't want that person being that close to the money in that particular way or handling all of your money, right? Now you're just literally giving them everything. You got your own taxes that they handling all the money telling you what you should be getting and it just becomes a conflict of interest in a lot of ways. At the beginning, with a little bit of admin and some of those things, it might make a little bit sense in the beginning just because you're running super lean, but as quickly as possible, you need to have some kind of differentiation of, yo, who's actually handling the business and making sure they keep track, right? The, what word is it? The bookkeeping, right? Like how much money's coming in? Who's old, what money? All that type of stuff. That should be a business manager, not a music manager, all right? Now, with that being said, again, the music manager gets a lot of flack because artists are expecting all these things from this guy and it's starting early on, the hustlers, they will be all these things. It just is what it is. However, this is what things need to actually look like long-term because this is where people mess up. Now with the music manager, the regular manager, a lot of those guys, they're day-to-day managers. And what I mean by this is you're hiring somebody or you're work partnering with somebody and you're giving them a percentage of your business when long-term their value might not be any more than a day-to-day manager. And why is this? Well, if they're just starting out, they might not have the connections and when you get to a certain level, right? In terms of connections, the actual skill set to know how to close deals, find sponsors, where do certain things go down and even what's the timeline to make sure certain things happen within, it ends up becoming, now we just have a general manager term, right? And that guy that you had at the beginning, well, I'll just say this is square one, he ends up going here, right? And this is for the best. A lot of times there's a breakup that happens when this guy comes in, right? And there's another manager, but in a lot of the great working scenarios, what happens is, yo, we start off together, now he's the day-to-day manager. So I shouldn't be giving this guy who doesn't have experience 20% of my business, 15% of my business, right? We're growing and we're getting into this career together. You're helping me, right? But at the end of the day, I'm gonna have to start splitting with other people and I need to make sure that money is there because in a great relationship, this guy in a lot of ways begins to mentor that person in some ways, right? So the day-to-day manager or cut his teeth being the role manager, getting all this idea of how the business actually works because they're with you all the time and they're going through the business with you. A lot of these managers started here, but when you're trying to rise in the game and you don't wanna take forever, you can't rely on this one person. You just can't, right? You oftentimes need to find, okay, what's another situation, a greater situation, where they'll be able to help me elevate, right? It just is what it is because this person's gonna know how to do certain things with labels. This person's already gonna have brand connections, industry connections, just all types of knowledge and even a sense of system that they work within. So that's one thing in terms of why you need to not be so easy to give out how much whatever your percentages is. Here's a bonus manager because today, today, traditionally, this didn't work, right? But a bonus manager is your marketer. A lot of times people didn't, but before people didn't look at marketers even as having a role. But once they started the manager, right? The manager was doing more sales back in the day because I'm making a relationship with the labels. I'm making relationships with all these people directly. Once the internet happened, once Indies started to have a lot more of their own platforms that became in control, marketing became more of a farce of serious thing on a level that was beyond, hey, what marketing can the label do for me, right? Now you can go to a marketing agency and possibly have some kind of management agreement because a lot of these management companies are essentially just marketers and know how to move online and digitally. So if you can find a really good digital marketer, that's a good person to start off with as your manager as well, right? If you're not, if you're the whole day to day and you just learn cutting your teeth because you go on the road or you're doing tours and things like that, that's still great, right? But one of the fastest ways for those of you who are managers or want to be managers to get your value is to learn marketing, digital marketing as fast as possible and then bring that value to that artist. In that way, artist, that's what you wanna find, right? Still, when we get to the upper level, there are people who hustle and learn fast and they're able to grow into this role, but it's very rare because everybody needs some level of insight that you can't get unless you start connecting with these people. So they might find some mentors that are the big time managers and they have that type of experience to guide them along the way or you are going to have to find a direct person to actually be a part of your business, they're a manager and still even that marketer is gonna have to fall not maybe into a day to day type role but some type of role that allows them to continue to work for you but they're gonna need to get some learnings from that other manager guy. Now, this is another thing though. A lot of times, just like any relationship, people get into relationships and have completely different expectations of how they should work out. You saw me list those roles before, right? Now, all those roles are very real things like six skills he said who helps you get sales, right? Who helps me get streams, who helps me develop fans and if you're expecting the wrong thing from the wrong person, then you're gonna be unhappy, they're probably gonna be unhappy. You have some managers who are really good at this marketing thing. You have some managers who are really good at moving and shaking and, you know, like just making stuff happen from a sense of finding new connections and getting you in certain rooms but they're not good at any kind of digital marketing, right? They don't really understand anything else, right? And then you have a lot of those day to day managers who will ride for you and do whatever but they just don't have the business capacity or the insight to really help you grow from your business side of your career or from your fan-based side of your career. So with that being said, you have to be clear on that and you have to push consistently to make the manager be clear on that and what they wanna do because there's managers, right, who don't like sales, right? And if you don't like sales as a manager, then at this end of the day, then you probably shouldn't have but so much connection in terms of the manager who has a percentage. As I'm getting the percentage, you should only get the so much of a percentage as a manager if you're not willing to bring in sales for an artist. That's just a reality of a situation, right? But that's cool or you are able to really grow them from a marketing standpoint and bring in that fan base, right? So if you can't be tied to any of those results, then how do I justify paying you, right? A percentage, right? Which is more of a commission-based agreement. Maybe it should be something more fixed and I pay you the same type of deal. We hear percentages from a traditional business, right? But we don't have to stick to those rules. You can hire somebody just like a regular job and they have a salary. There are plenty of people, all right, who run and tie like million dollar, a hundred million dollar lines of business for companies and they're making $500,000 a year, right? That's a relatively small percentage of a hundred million, three hundred million dollars, but that's just a normal thing in the marketplace where for some reason in music, we believe that it has to be 10%. So if you make a hundred million dollars, this person makes 10 million dollars. That doesn't have to be. There's plenty of people who are working a regular job who are working and controlling larger than that, right? And are getting paid less than 10 million, right? They'll be happy to be paid a million or just be happy to pay $500,000 a year salary. And I don't buy the whole argument that I have to be inspired, right? So I need a cut of the business. If I work more, I should get more. There's like in a sales company, right? Commission is a very real thing and that's a relationship that a lot of people are used to, but there's a lot of people who don't work on that. A lot of people work their ass off at their job, right? And continue to grow it and they're killing it, but they get paid salary, right? And they're trying to grow and they want to get paid more over the years, right? And you do want to find new opportunities, but that also allows you to, one, keep more on the table to invest back in your business in other ways versus just always looking at every percentage. That's a deeper conversation for another day. Oh, I don't want to go get too much deeper in that the point of this video again is understanding all the roles I said before, right? Then when you have your manager, especially if you're starting off, know that this guy probably isn't going to be the guy that takes you to the promised land in most cases. If you're all starting off together and he's brand new, this guy is probably going to evolve to more of a day-to-day manager, right? If y'all are rolling successful where he's continuing to learn to get the business, but so you can accelerate and don't mess up a lot of things, you're going to have to find another manager, right? But if y'all can get that agreement and understanding starting off, then you can really talk about what that looks like. You can really avoid this person resenting you or feeling like, oh, so he thinks that other person's better than me or they're switching up. The right relationships won't be ruined by that, but it always helps to avoid that if you understand that from just ground zero. So know that and then know that the roles of your manager actually can entail getting you sales, getting you streams, developing fans, all that stuff, right? Traditionally, it was an even deeper stick in that, but now this might look like, hey, I know how to find the right marketer. If I can't do the marketing, I know how to find the right marketing, which is a huge, huge asset for the managers who know, yo, I know how to go find this other thing and filter to find the right marketer, right? I know how to go find anything that complements what I already do because you have to build a team and a manager who tries to do everything is gonna end up wasting the time, right? It's gonna feel like you're saving money on the front end, but long term, it's not gonna really work out. It just is what it is because this stuff takes a lot of people, right? When you get to certain levels, but even if it's not a lot of people in the sense of this massive team, it takes a lot of different skill sets and the amount of time to do each skill set well, even for somebody who has the ability to do each of them, is just not possible, right? I have to spend one time, a lot of my time in our business on a lot of things that I can do very well when there's some other things I can do very well that I can't do well because I have to focus on these other things and that's what it becomes to feel like as you start to grow, right? So those are a few things, particularly in management, and that's how they also can integrate to sales. Hey, booking agent and booking manager, that sells the tour, right? They sell and puts you on shows. The fan base, there's a lot of managers who actually grow your fan base, right? If not, you have to find a marketer to do so, but that managers often times the one who can best analyze a lot of these things or help you analyze a lot of these things. And then let me see, streams, I mean, that's a subset of marketing, right? And that's a byproduct. There's so many of these roles. This is such a deep category. We'll probably spend more time on it maybe with some managers or something like that, but the management is, music management is something that is going to evolve massively over the next five years and the artists who can get ahead of the game knowing that, yo, this is how you look at this situation versus going by the traditional model that does not work in today's model. You'll win, you'll have a happier manager, right? Y'all have a more fluid relationship and you'll be able to better navigate the indie space as you grow to then have a system that can then scale out when you actually blow up, right? But most people build systems that you get all these situations, you leave their manager or this artist switched up on me. They had a situation where the expectations and the system that was worked out just completely did not apply to a bigger level. So they had to leave their old situation because the team didn't understand. If you figure that out at the beginning, you don't have to go through that later, all right? So that's it for this video. I know it was a long-winded explanation in terms of management and six skills question, but management is something that artists do not understand enough based on the amount of bad situations artists are hitting me up about that I've heard again and again and again. So that's the answer to today's Ask Bramman, just another episode who are only gonna answer one question because of the length of it. However, keep those questions coming. I got a lot more of these coming soon and a lot of cool news that y'all will love to know about. Other than that, if you like this video, go ahead and like button. If you like it, might as well share it. And if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button.