 It's the network. Oh, what's up, Brandman Network. It's Sean and I'm back with video number four of the pre-programming series. And we have to talk about independence, right, being an independent artist. Number video number one was essentially about being an independent thinker, which really will empower you to become an independent artist. But let's really break down some key things that it takes to be an independent artist. Self-sufficiency, numero uno as it sells efficiency. You have to be able to and be willing to take on multiple tasks, multiple pieces. You can't be the artist that says, hey, I just write and that's it. Like I just make them, I make the music and that's it and say, oh, you want to be independent. There's artists that they, they write the music. They perform the music. They record the music. They mix and master the music. There's those artists, right? And if you can do all those things, that's great. That's self-sufficiency. And then what does that help? That helps you save money. You don't got to pay for a studio or you don't have to pay for beats all the time. You don't have to pay for mixing or mastering. Great. But you also need to understand and have self-awareness as well. That's a huge thing about being independent because it's just a huge thing about building business because essentially that's what we need to learn and think about building business. Why am I saying that? Okay. I mix my stuff. Saying you mix your stuff and you're not good at mixing yourself. You don't have that ear. It's irrelevant, right? You're just creating a bad product and you're wasting your time. So maybe you're like, Hey, mixing isn't my thing. Or maybe making beats isn't your thing. So you figure out other ways that you can be self-sufficient. Maybe you shoot your own videos. I know some artists doesn't like one guy I'm thinking about in particular shoots extremely dope videos. And he doesn't create beats. He doesn't mix, master any of that stuff. But he shoots extreme. Matter of fact, two artists, actually a guy and a girl that I know, they shoot extremely dope videos and it's them. They direct, they get the whole thing together themselves. That's a thing that's going to save them a lot of money in the long run. Picking up that one extra skill is probably saving them not only thousands of dollars from the videos they create, they can actually create more videos than other average artists because they don't have to be restricted by that normal budget. They just go create it themselves, right? Pick up an extra skill, pick up multiple extra skills, graphic design, whatever that stuff is, getting good at marketing and understanding how to run Facebook ads, YouTube ads, all that stuff. That's what this space is for, right? To help artists ultimately become more self-sufficient. Hope you build your own infrastructure in your own system because that's what's required to build yourself as an independent artist because you're essentially building a business and a company around yourself. A company is a group of people. Sometimes at the beginning, you have to be multiple people, right? Until you can get other people to fill those roles. So we're trying to help artists not just rely on us or any mentors or coaches or experts that can be tapped into through the network. We're just trying to help you guys tap into those people and resources only to bring back to yourself and then build your own system so you can be more self-sufficient, right? You know how to do ads, Facebook, YouTube. So you don't have to actually always use somebody else or pay for a marker. You don't have to pay for a playlist or something like that, right? You have to figure out these areas that you can become self-sufficient in, right? Can become self-sufficient in. Because once again, there is a level of talent at play. Some people just aren't good. They don't have the ears for the mixing or mastering or whatever. Some people just can't really get a full hold of the graphic design or the marketing or whatever that thing is. But that's a huge part of this independent thing. You've got to be able to do that. And with that being said, do not hire too early. Too many people are looking to hire people before they need people. Not just a manager. People are just trying to hire other roles too, where once again, you don't necessarily have to pay if you actually spend the time to learn it. But especially managers and PR people, too many artists are looking for those people too early. If you don't have this consistent flow or some set of systems and some really proof of concept and proof of product that people are rocking with you, you probably don't need a manager yet. If you haven't tapped into any sense of a fan base, haven't had one song start moving where it's like, oh, this is doing something, then you probably don't need anybody else yet, right? Maybe you can get some people to advise you and help you throughout your process, guide you, right? Once again, that's what coaching and things like that is for in this network space, but you don't need a manager, right? We're trying to help you get to the point that you need something like that and doesn't mean that you can't have a manager at the beginning. Let me make that very clear. Just because you don't necessarily need a manager yet doesn't mean you can't have one. If you happen to be one of those fortunate people that has a dope person in your life that could act and work as a manager, right? Or you happen to have a connection and your mom's ex-boyfriends, I don't know, brother happened to be connected and he's a music manager and he's dope. Cool, go ahead and take that connection if it happens to happen like that. But more often than not, people, if they do have a fortunate person that's willing to help, it needs to be more of a partnership and y'all are building a company together, y'all are building something up together, not weird artists and manager and this guy is like really raining over my situation or really the go-to guy that everything filters do because you don't need to be minimizing what you know, and you don't need to be holding yourself hostile to somebody who doesn't necessarily know the business yet or doesn't have connections. If there's happened to be any managers in here or people who want to be managers watching the video, the most valuable thing you can do is go find connections, go put yourself in a position where you're interning for people that helps you get to know not only the business but know other people, get yourself in that position because that's what you want when it comes to manager. You want connections and know how. Connections and know how. That's the ultimate thing you're gonna be building up to and of course there's various levels of that but there's a lot of dope people who can become day-to-day managers and they're partners at the beginning and they help you build and they're learning with you. Yes, take on those roles but don't hire too early. Be self-sufficient, bring on to your team, build but don't look for people to fulfill roles. Here's an example, right? So on my tech side of things in the experience I've had a lot of the companies that go into incubators or accelerators, these are these programs that are, you can call them some version of a record label for tech companies, right? These companies, there's a CEO that starts off a lot of times but the advisors will encourage, oh, okay, you got a team of five people rocking with you, okay, this guy is great. He's doing the things with the products. This guy is kind of helping with the finer details but you don't need a chief executive offer. You don't need a chief operational officer or a chief marketing officer. You can be the CEO, that's you, the artist, right? You can be the CEO at this time but you gotta let things develop before you start giving other people that specific title of a chief marketing, right? Chief operational, like making them other executives because that's the position that should be reserved to people with a specific levels of experience, certain levels of ability to take you somewhere. You add them in its go time. Let them be there and they can learn, right? So that person who in the tech side of things might be handling a lot of operational things but when the business gets to a certain level, whoa, because I'm starting to move, all right, we bring in a real chief operational officer and made in that chief operational officer. If that person has the right mentality that a original person was there, he'll look at that COO as someone to learn from, right? Cause this is just my first time at the rodeo. I need to learn from this person quickly, work with this person quickly and get that experience because they are all moving on experience. Of course you treat them right, you compensate them, have whatever makes sense and you treat them well but certain positions should be reserved for certain titles, especially should be reserved for certain people because what's gonna happen is if you have somebody in a certain role and you give them a certain level of title, once you get to a certain place and now it's like, they're not right for my growth right here and you're trying to bring somebody else in, now they feel like you're minimizing them. I go from COO to no title and trust me, I've seen it, it's ugly. All right, I go from chief marketing officer to marketing specialist or ad specialist, right? That hurts the ego, so it's better for them not to be in that position and some people do grow and graduate into that position. Trust me, you realize, oh dang, that's the ideal situation. Dang, they were there all along, I'm so glad, I don't gotta look for anybody. They learned that maybe a COO type person now come trains him from an advisor perspective versus like taking over the business. I'm saying all these things because the artists who are watching this, especially those who watch it all the way through, you will be finding yourself in these situations that are real. People don't talk about these things, but they are real. So back to self-sufficiency just to close this out, summarizing this, have self-awareness of what you can and can't learn, what you aren't good at, have some capacity for and then go learn those things, be strong in those places. Do try to find some other people to help in those other places, but at the beginning you might have to even be okay at stuff and be comfortable with just being okay at stuff just to get it done until you can find other people, but that's a part of the independent game because if you don't build your own infrastructure, you're losing. If you do not build your own infrastructure, you will lose. A record label won't want you unless they just say, know what, we can take full advantage of this artist, but a record label today, a lot of times they will not want you, they want to be able to fund you and help accelerate your situation and trust that your team can handle it, right? And your team, you are the beginning of that. If you start to take on a lot of roles and mindsets, the other team will do that same thing as well, right? You run lean, you are so sufficient, the rest of your team will probably be the same way. You do that and then you'll be on your way to building something that's real and sustainable, whether a label or investor or whoever comes in or not. So that's it for video number four when it comes to reprogramming. Let's get to work. It's the network. It's the network. It's the network.