 Boy, do we have some topics today. We have social media being worse than a record deal. Don't pay just any artist for a feature and expect that actually to turn out well. We also gotta talk about Twitter versus Threads and the war going on. There's also a sneaky entrant that might be taking over the game soon. We'll let y'all be the judge and some other cool topics to get right to y'all with. But first, what's up everybody? I'm Sean. And I'm Cory. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. This episode was actually not supposed to be an episode, but we ended up making a clip that was too long. So now it will be an episode. Cory's catches every Tuesday and Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, wherever you stream your podcast. Here at the intersection of creativity and currency, I'm not gonna do the rest of it because you just about to go right into this clip that we just recorded and it went too long. But it's a great episode, I promise you. Let's start off with this statement. Being on social media is worse than signing a bad record deal. Run that clip. Let's look at the music industry as these artists, they signed their rights away, they gave away their masters or these different executives, they took advantage of these artists and I would never do that. If I was in a position and I would always control my master, you signed your masters away for free. If you're on social media, you agreed to let them use your content, repurpose your content, have it, they feel free. You agreed to promote their platform. You're actually making content for them, which they're selling ads against and you're not getting paid anything. And you can have a question at one time. So anything that's free, you're the product. That's like an artist going into the studio for 10 hours a day and making an album every single week and never receiving one royalty, because that's what we're doing. You think you're just making a post, you're making content that they're selling ads against. If there's no platform and nobody's making content, then there's no revenue model for them to make money from. Never thought about it like that. You're literally working for them and you've never got paid for it. You don't own your content, you gave the rights away as soon as you signed up for it and you want to complain about Diddy. Y'all got 360 deals for free and you okay with that? I've never heard one person complain. Think about it. They tricked you to think that this is all fun and games or they call you a content creator or influencer or just a regular person. You got 300 followers, 500 followers. It doesn't matter. You're still making content. You are the product, they are the business. You're working for them for free. You don't have any control of what they do. You can't control who you reach. You don't control your content and you're not getting paid. Now there is a truth in the fact that if the product is free, you are the product. We've seen that time and time again. That is the model of the internet. User-generated content is where we hit scale. But I disagree with a whole lot of this shit, right? Yeah, same. Just because of the sensitive topic of actually being in the industry, seeing what artists deals look like and the choice you have to wake up and create social media and be on there, right? So yes, I think it rings true that for sure. Yes, they use your content. Yes, they have rights to continue to use your content. You're helping build their platform 100%, right? But one, they're building it on the aggregate of everybody popping out and being active on the platform. They're not building it on the individual head of the artist and I go on a tour and now I just individually sold these tickets and then you're taking my shit, right? That's one thing. But let's look at what deals really look like when we talk about artists. You're in the deal and it's contractually obligated for you to be able to, like for you not to be able to leave that deal until you have a certain amount of metrics you hit, right? You also are getting a loan. There's no loan occurring on social media, right? That you didn't have to pay back to get your music to be owned by you again. Or shit, you might've given away your ownership on top of the fact that you took a loan against it, right? On social media, Doug, yes, they might be to use your content but you still own the content. Like there is more licensing than anything, right? Now that might not be the technical term when you get into the real legal aspect of things but you still have the ability to take your content on different platforms. You have the ability to stop posting. You have the ability to like literally delete your content and not be seen on those platforms for the most part, generally speaking. On top of that, the opportunities, they blew up on social media. Rashad, who's speaking? We have blown up and built a massive like base on social media. So the opportunity to me is so different. You can't say that it's worse. Now, if you say like there's some resemblance, you know, that's not as viral as a statement, you know what I mean? Or you say, shoot, there are some aspects of it and or it just sucks. Like, bro, they kind of screwing you over and just leave the record deal out of it. They're not more with that. But once you compare it to a record deal and how bad these record deals really are and how you actually locked down and they taking your life and your product, nah, bro, it's different. Yeah, I agree. Because I think it's the part that's not thought about like the long term ownership aspect because, you know, I've taken my TikToks and posted them on Instagram. We've used them on the YouTube channel. And as far as I'm concerned, or as far as I know I haven't received any letters in the mail telling me to stop. Versus if I was an artist and I recorded a song with Atlantic and I try to take that shit to Columbia is not going down like that, you know? Not without some type of very intense legal battle. Yep. And then I think to the point about not being paid for the content. I don't know, I think that's really similar to the streaming model in a sense. Like I give them that, right? Like, hey, if you're a creator with 500 followers you're not getting paid as much as the creator with 500,000 followers. Just like if you're an artist with 1,000 monthly listeners you're not getting paid as much as the artist with 10 million monthly listeners. Or not at all on social media. There's a lot of people who aren't getting paid at all on social media. Yeah, exactly, yeah. And, you know, which I get, man. You know what I'm saying? It's a battle of attention. We're going to pay who gains us the most attention. Which, like I said, that's the only real similarity I kind of see between data music. It's like, you know what I'm saying? But that goes back to the creator and then the artist themselves, right? Because every artist isn't going to get 10 million monthly listeners, just like every content creator is going to get a million followers. You know what I'm saying? It's just the reality of the nature. And you know what you're dealing with. Now, I will give them this. I think both industries are similar. And the fact that they are both pushing for the creators to monetize their audience and not really look at the platform to pay them, right? Instagramers are like, hey, bro, get these motherfuckers to give you these badges, right? Set up these subscriptions, you know what I'm saying? Get your fans to pay you. Same where labels are like, yo, bro, go build community, man. Go sell some experiences, go put XYZ together, merchant stuff that you can sell to them. Those two similarities I see beyond that, when you talk about the ownership of things, the license into your point, how long you're contractual obligated to these people, that is what makes it vastly different. And then check this out. He threw out the term 360 saying, we've complained about Diddy, but then we already signed in 360s for free. That is not the same. If I am an artist and I'm in a 360 deal, I'm dropping music on this streaming platform, got it, that's my money. And then I drop some merch, got it, that's my money. I do a tour, got it, that's my money. The label is taking a piece of all of that. But if I'm on Instagram, and then I go drop some content on TikTok or YouTube and I make some YouTube ad revenue, Instagram is not taking that money. If I go drop some merch on Shopify, Instagram is not taking that money. If I go do a live show, the show that we're doing on August 12th, coming soon, you know what I'm saying? Make sure that y'all check out this show. We're gonna give you all free game, artist, marketing, in person, me, Jacory J.R. McKee, who has a Grammy, literally just helped an artist get over 300 million streams recently. But I digress, they don't get none of that money. They show what we're about to do, you know what I'm saying? No labels necessary.com, by the way, y'all check that out. It's not only 60 people that can be there. So it's a vastly different agreement. And I think if you consider free marketing costs, and the level of being able to build your business up for the cost of social media is nothing. That's what's allowed so many businesses to be able to grow the way they have in a way that you couldn't do in the past. I have distribution for free to get this attention in ways that I never could before. Yes, they might be monetizing it. Now, when you get into privacy and how people feel around that, that's a different conversation, right? And what data you want to be seen or not. But in terms of just a sheer opportunity, when we're talking about economics, because that's what he's really referring to, more of the economics of a record deal versus a social media deal, if you will. The economics for the individual who's trying to actively use it as an entrepreneur, especially a business person, far outweigh the economics of a record deal. Yeah, so that's the point that I kind of was thinking about, too, like I'm wondering if Rashad was speaking on like the actual content creators that really do get deals, because we know, man, like certain platforms would strike deals with certain creditors on, say, reach a certain level, but that's like 1% of the influencer, the influencers in that base. If he's talking about them, I get it. If he's talking about just like the everyday content creator, you know what I'm saying, like to your point, the one is making videos to grow his business, but he don't know he might pop in three months and get 500,000 followers out of nowhere. It's not the same. It's not even close to the same. No, it's not, it's not, it's not. But keep on posting and bringing out those takes, man. I appreciate their content, but that one, nah. Can't let that one run, man. A 360 deal is just a whole another thing in social media, you know what I'm saying? And it will be wild for us to all be using social media and they wouldn't be using social media if it really was as bad as a 360 deal. But let's get into this next topic because we've spent way longer than we were on most topics. TJ is DJ, shout out to TJ. If y'all know TJ, he is BOB's manager, track backwards manager. He said, if you pay an artist for a feature, make sure you get clearance from the label so you can release it. I see all kinds of artists pay for features that they can't ever release because it wasn't cleared. If they do release it, it will be immediately removed from all DSPs and radio stations with a simple cease and desist letter. What is he saying? Yo, if you get a feature from Chris Brown randomly, but then his label has no idea about this, it can easily be blocked by the label. That's not anything official. You need to make sure it's cleared. So all these deals y'all think, oh, I got a feature, I got a feature. Do you really? Or is it just a feature that you can show at the family reunion on your Walkman or something? You know what I mean? Because once that thing's on the streaming platform, that shit ain't going. He's on your Walkman, man. I'm sorry, bro. I'm sorry, man. I don't know where that came from. We're gonna let that ride. But no, you're right, man. And artists have to stop letting bigger artists finesse them and to bind these features that they're not gonna get clear. Because I've seen that, right? I do think there's a portion of artists that don't care that will in the shoot the shot. See if I can slide it through. Probably hoping that the song catches attention to the points where the label's like, we'll let that rock, you know what I'm saying? But the reality of it is, bro, is really the bigger artist finesse in the smaller artists. Hey, bro, I thought you this deal, you know what I'm saying? We not gonna go through the label at all. It's just gonna be me and you. And then shit gonna be cool. And then you don't gave, I don't wanna say Chris Brown, I don't wanna ruin him like that. But it's like, you gave whoever big, who the fuck whatever, you know what I'm saying? 50 bands thinking you getting the deal. And then, you know what I'm saying? You get cut out two months later by the label and they not give you the money back. They did their part of the transaction, right? They did what they were supposed to do. You just didn't know the game. And then you ask out or whatever you paid. So yeah, bro. Like this is what will happen. And I first heard this from an artist that, you know, did I know he got a feature from an artist that pretty much all of y'all would know. And he was like, 50 bands is the price of this feature if you want it. But he was willing to give it all up. It's damn near his life savings, 50 bands. However, if you pay this shit in cash, I give it to you for 30 bands. Red flag. Hey man, saving this 50K all my life, it'd be nice to hold on to 20K of that. So I'm gonna pay for that. Who's not gonna go with that deal? You still gonna get the exact same thing for less money? I just gotta pay it cash instead of credit card or whatever. Now, if you're not thinking about refunds and having to be able to call the bank and say, hey, that's not official, then whatever. But who's not gonna take that deal? So why are artists doing that? Why would a major artist do that? One, if I put this, do this shit officially on my side, well, I gotta pay the label. I don't want the label to get any of this money. And depending on the artist's deal, out of that 50K, I might only be keeping maybe 10K, maybe 20K. So why don't I just charge you 30K, keep all that to myself, just like the candy at the gas station. I don't know if you know that, a lot of people at the gas station, like a lot of these gas stations are when they get paid cash. Candy is one of the main things that they would use for particularly back in the day, when they get paid cash, they don't report that. And that's why the candy was like so profitable for them because they didn't keep that to the size. Like I just bought this off the damn near candy lady or like you're not really tracking the inventory, right? Yeah. It's a similar effect. It's like that inventory can't be tracked. Nobody knows. And then if something pops up and the label's like, yo, where did this come from? I don't know what happened. I don't know where that came from. You know, these producers just be taking my joints and leaking them out to everybody trying to do a flip. I never said anything about that. We don't have it on paper. Right. No paperwork, no system transactions, none of that stuff. All cash can be tracked. So like TJ said, hey, if it's not cleared, then shoot, man. It didn't happen. It never happened. It never happened, bro. Again, say that for your homies to brag at the family reunion or the next meetup. Next clip though. We got to talk about this Twitter war, this Threads war because it's getting interesting. And Gino the ghost, I've seen a couple of clips from his podcast, man. It seems to be pretty dope. And he's having an interesting conversation about Twitter and Elon Musk. Wanna talk about Threads? The game changer. The Twitter killer. Twitter's not going anywhere, unless Elon literally kills it. But I do think the reason Threads has legs. What other social media app have you got on and instantly had like thousands of followers? Not having the daunting nature of having to grow another following will make the app feel like I'm not screaming into the void. You're a producer, I'm a director. There's a bit of this that's nerdy, so let's get very nerdy. Let's get nerdy. There's a book called The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. One of the main laws is the first one there owns the territory. Coke is the first cola. You can never overtake Coke, but Coke can fuck up. Like when Coke became new Coke, Pepsi actually had that moment. Another one about knowing where you stand. If you're number two, play as number two. Positioning. Pepsi's whole thing was based on being number two, and then they didn't know how to adjust. So they actually let Coke get back to being Coke. When they said, oh no, fuck new Coke, we're back to being Coke. And everybody said, okay, we'll just pretend that didn't happen. The question is, was Twitters move over to Elon? The mainstream saying you're now a right wing platform, enough of a fuck up or enough of a shift that people will go to Threads. All right, so there's a couple of things in that video. First of all, that whole positioning, he references to 20 immutable laws of marketing. Really great book, y'all, check that out. The number two strategy is a very real thing. See, in racing or being, like in school, number two is a loss. But in real life, in business, number two is a great position a lot of times because a lot of marketplaces at least need one alternative. So he said Pepsi and Coke, you got Uber and Lyft. You could be a billion dollar number two business and ride that out. Most businesses have a number two, all right? Google and then you look at what it was Internet Explorer and Yahoo, like there's always gonna be those bing, all right? There's always gonna be the loiterers who can just stand by and catch the drift and end up getting some money. By the way, I realized a week ago, why catch my drift is catching my drift. Like drifting and racing, I never put that together. So the thing I disagree with though, or is a lot of people feel like Elon's fucking Twitter up, but then if you look at what he said he wanted to do from the very beginning, he actually didn't want to make Twitter better. He wanted to create this whole ex.com super app idea. So he said to Twitter killer only Elon Musk and kill Twitter, I believe the same thing. I think a lot of the pushback and the conflict that people are having with Twitter and saying it's not like that anymore is the fact that he really doesn't want it to be like that. He said he has this idea of an app, this super app and he said it would take like maybe nine years to bring it to fruition if he built it from ground zero but if he bought Twitter he think he can accomplish it in like four or five or some shit like that. That was what I remember him saying from the very beginning. So we should expect more of Twitter not being around or like downsizing and then maybe that's why like Mark wasn't just looking like, let's take advantage of this moment. Like Pepsi took advantage of the new Coke moment, which was a wild thing for a new Coke to do, like trying to fix something that wasn't broke. I think he might also understand, no this is something worth deep diving in because not only is there a weak moment in a need because people are looking to go to an alternative. I don't want to be on this right ring person app or who I perceive to be right ring. I want to, so where's my alternative? He also is like, no, this is actually about to be a real business void possibly depending on where Elon goes with this old super app shit. Yeah, I can see that, I can see that. And I do think that made a good point too about why Therese is so popular, right? It's all just shiny object syndrome. It's a new platform. One of the most intimidating things about Twitter, Twitter's a very hard platform to grow on. So if you ain't been on Twitter since like 2008, nine and you start today, 2023 moving forward. So it's a very hard game to jump into. And that's intimidating for most people, right? We think about just, even if we just narrow it down to all the Gen Z kids to just decide to try to become, you know what I'm saying, Twitter influencers, they got a 15, you know what I'm saying, like they had a 15 year gap, you know what I'm saying, between the people that's been building for a minute. What's the growth strategy? How do I grow on Twitter? Exactly, I mean, here comes Therese. And to that point, it's easy to get followers. You can just invite your Instagram following over. So if you already have a decent to big following on Instagram and you had a couple thousand followers within minutes, you know what I'm saying? Like I know when I set my threads up, I was at a couple hundred within like 10 minutes, you know what I'm saying, just inviting all my people to follow me. So it appeals to that dopamine receptor part of your brand that likes quick hits and quick growth. I think Instagram knows that and that's a large part of the reason why they put it into it. But now once we get past that, you know what I'm saying then, what can we say it really offers that Twitter doesn't offer? And I'm thinking about this from a couple of different things. I remember seeing some report that said like threads, user base dropped by like 80, 90% or something after like the first week or two, right? So we all was on it from Shiny Object Syndrome and we all was kind of like, it's really just Twitter. And then, you know, the people that liked Twitter went back to people that never cared for it, stopped using it anyway, because I'm one of those, I didn't care for Twitter. So I'm not enticed by a new Twitter. You know what I'm saying? And then on top of that, it was just like a month ago or four or five months ago where everybody was like, oh, Instagram needs to go back to photos and videos. And so now y'all want me to believe y'all or hype about this text feature when half a year ago, y'all were saying that Instagram needs to abandon everything that's not photo. So even the user base opinion on it isn't all the way stabilized. They don't know what the fuck they want from Instagram. So that's enough for me to say like, nah, Twitter ain't going away. Like you're saying, unless Elon kills it off, it's the only way. He's the only one that could put the bullet to the head and take it out, you know what I'm saying? I mean, it's a full blown culture. I don't know about that, right? Because there's already a different culture on Instagram. So you're just pulling a feature of Twitter, but you can't copy Twitter's culture. Exactly. Just like you can't copy TikTok's culture. And I don't think they want to, man. Twitter culture talks it. That took years to build, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, they've invested a long time in that. But I think the utility still is going to last in it, unlike IGTV, because at the very least, you have all these people who are using Twitter, reposting from Twitter onto Instagram, the screenshots. So any business person especially, or one of those people who do quotes and things like that, they're probably going to use threads just because it's easier. Yeah, right there. So why do I not continue to do that? Hype culture, I don't know, but business utility and actually beneficial for the platform, I think it's a great add on. Killing Twitter last thing I'll say on that is, what is it, is it Zach this morning? They just mentioned the fact that they're getting rid of like the Twitter logo and all that stuff. Yeah, they're changing it to X. Yeah, so they're changing it to X. So the X.com shit was a shit he wanted to do from the very beginning, right? So he's doing that. It'll be cool to see like that transition in general, just to watch like a real time case study because there's a lot of brand equity in Twitter and a lot of people don't like that, but companies die every day be, you know what I'm saying? Just here's what it is. We know it's not super been profitable. They know it's been struggling. So we might have an emotional attachment to it and think it's so hard to build this up, but he's a billionaire. He's not like doing it just for that. He has a different vision. And when he comes down to it, like Twitter is, no, I'm gonna say that. But at the very least, he does have the IP of Twitter and we'll see the cool shit that happens with Twitter. Like people might be wearing like Twitter, like merch in about five years or whatever, depending on what the company does with it. Next topic, this is an interesting one. It's about making money and not solving your problems emotionally. Yeah, we going deep, bro, we going deep. Right, Jim Carrey once said, I wish everybody reaches every single goal that they have so they can realize that none of that matters. I made more money than I ever thought I would ever make in one year. I thought that was the missing piece, right? Because happily married, I got kids. And so I said, wow, I need to make millions of dollars, right? Because if I make millions of dollars, I don't know, I just thought something would change. It actually made me depressed. Like it made me feel bad. Like I expected, you know, I was running a race, you know? And I'm looking back and I'm running and I'm like, oh, I see the red tape and I run through the red tape and I just think that there's gonna, I don't know, I don't know. I thought it was gonna be confetti. I thought there was gonna be, the crowd, I thought it was gonna be something and there's more pressure being successful than kind of flying under the radar. What'd you think about that? I don't know, man. It's always such a weird thing when rich people try to convince me that money doesn't mean a lot. So I'm like, this is easy to say from where you at, you know what I'm saying? Like I'm not broke, I'm not poor, but I'm not rich. I can afford a 10 piece a couple of times a week, you know what I'm saying? If I choose to. And I feel like that's a good position to be in. And I've seen the studies where, what is it, they say you're a level of happiness, doesn't really rise once you hit, I think like 150K a year or something like that. It used to be 60K, but with inflation, it's probably somewhere around there. So, and I can see that, you know what I'm saying? Just kind of just thinking about certain things where it's like, all right, once your basic needs are met and then you can like afford to splurge on like little things. Like the average person doesn't wanna go out and just buy like a bunch of Lamborghinis. You know what I'm saying? The average person is cool with like, I can eat out two or three times a week. I can buy the playstations every time they drop and I can afford to like travel, you know what I'm saying? Which isn't like, that's not a crazy amount of money to be able to do that, you know? And I do think that 89% of people would be perfectly fine with that. So I, but I don't know man, like I said, it's always weird when rich people try to tell me that this shit don't matter. It's like, well, give me something then. And there are a million responses, no. And it's like, all right, that's all I need to know. It's everything I need to see. I mean, to me, like I think it's always simple, right? I want, I only look for money to solve money problems. Yeah. Finance solves finance problems. The emotional shit, I can't expect it to solve that. And even then you can afford therapy, so it kind of can. See. The therapy ain't, therapy ain't cheap, man. That is true. Now, does therapy solve problems or make you want to send in them? It depends on the therapist. That's a whole another conversation, you know what I mean? But there's some unpopular opinions. Therapy can get you a daycare so your kids can leave the house. You're not therapy money, can get you a daycare so your kids can leave the house. That's a money problem, right? Okay, fair. It's a money problem. But the kids an emotional problem. The kids can be an emotional problem, I agree. The thing about that though is, once you have all these problems solved financially, now people only have themselves to blame, like, shit, what is it? So you've been telling yourself, oh, it's because I can't get these kids out of my way or because I don't have time for myself or because I can't afford this. And once those things are solved for, now you're like, damn, why am I still tripping? Then you realize you got all this trauma and you've been seeing things all weird and then you realize, dang, man, like, do I even like myself? You know what I'm saying? Like, how do I even solve not liking myself? Because I've been blaming the world instead of taking accountability for what I do. I remember, I tell my kids, like, oh, daddy, I'm bored. They're like, dang, why are you so boring? Like, because I've never bored when I'm by myself. I gave it like two minutes, I'll say, you still bored? He's like, oh, no, I'm not bored, no, no more. Like, why, what'd you start to do? Started to think about some kind of like, imagine, use her imagination. She found a way not to be bored by herself. Like, that's it, there it is, right there. Find ways to like and entertain yourself without other devices, material things. So that's the way I look at it. She looking like, man, daddy can leave the house when he feels like he'd be coming back home with food. That's what happiness look like. That is the mentality you have when you're a kid. I thought happiness looked like when I could finally afford fruit gushers, I can get all the cereal that I wanted to. Because my dad said, no, we can't afford cereal. And I thought that just meant we were broke, broke. But apparently that just meant that I ate too much cereal. And I can't afford to keep paying for as much cereal as you want, bro. But like, that was what I saw money as, bro. Like, I was like, I could get all these little random snacks. And if you got like soap and a dispenser in your house, oh, bro, you got money. That's how I used to look at it. Yeah, I feel that. I do think one of the points, cause he kind of touched on the right way. He was like, you know, sometimes it's happier. I don't know exactly what he said, but like he mentioned being able to fly under the radar versus when you got money, you kind of above the radar. That's the last point that matters here. Yeah, you know, which kind of touches on the old saying of more money, problems like the more value you are bringing, the more people want to work with you, talk to you, the more just energy is coming your way, which can get stressful. That I 100% agree with. You know what I'm saying? The more money that you have, the more money that you have to lose. Yeah, that too. Yeah. Maintain the lifestyle, the expectation. So I get that. Yeah. And it's like, you know, I don't know, man. Like I said, it's just always go back to it. But it's so weird when people with money you be trying to convince me that money ain't gonna fix it. All right, let's leave it like this. Let's not act like we don't have no experience. You know what I mean? In the money category, we all made one level of money before. And now we have a certain level of money now. We're not necessarily rich or anything like that. But, shit. You know, I remember when I was, like my first paycheck was $200, you know what I'm saying? And then they took like $50 out of that shit for taxes. Crazy. You know what I'm saying? And I was like, wait, what? You learn that whole thing. Then I remember making like $1,500 in a month between like two jobs at a time or something like that or whatever. And having to grind myself to that. I'm trying to think like, did that feel different than where I was when I was working at Pizza Hut? It's interesting because then your responsibilities change and your responsibilities change with it. And that's the game I always feel like it's more about I look at it as trying to get ahead of the life that you're about to live, right? It's by having 300K in the bank before you have kids. It's different than having kids with 300K in the bank. You know what I'm saying? So, I don't know, like have your first job and how much, well, let's just think about how much money you were making four years ago. Let's go there, right? Because I think the first job and the responsibility you had to get at that time, you probably were happier in some ways or freer in some ways. My first job, I also even had a barber shop making like, I don't know, like $50 a week. But you were freer. The guy work was pretty strict. I mean, but outside of work though, I'm talking about the amount of money that you were making. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, teenager shit, you know what I'm saying? No real responsibilities. So think more like four years ago to now, are you significantly happier because of the amount of money that you were making now versus then? Yeah, definitely. I can definitely say so. Cause I'm trying to think, what job did I have four years in? That's when I was working at the clothing store. I think I was making maybe like 1,800 a month or something like that. Easy. All right. And Atlanta was cheaper back then. So I will give it that. Atlanta was cheaper last time I had a real nine to five. You know what I'm saying? So that causes it to be life inflation, you know what I'm saying? And trying to keep up with that maybe has made me feel a certain way within that. But yeah, I can definitely say so. All right. So I think the only way we can truly speak on this experience then would be, cause like money did make you happier, which is along the lines of this, right? But now the next point is getting over that curve. That point that they say, like once you get past this point, it don't do much more for you. Yeah, that's all I was gonna say too. Like I didn't have that significant of a chance. When I was like, oh, I was making 1,800 a month and now I got 400 can of bank. Yeah, that didn't hit me yet. You know what I'm saying? But maybe, maybe, but I think about future me and future me plans to make that much money. And I see him smiling and laughing and running through fields and shit, man. So I don't know. I don't know. It just might be in between tears and the right way nights. Let's play this last clip from Jason Derulo. We're gonna get out of here. Jason Derulo has a side business value at $2 billion apparently. Crazy. Let's listen to this quick clip. How many sources of income do you have? 13. What's the highest? It's a very unsexy business, but it is a monster. It's called Rocket Car Wash, and Rocket Car Wash is basically changing the way that people get their cars washed. It's an amazing facility, you know, you go in and you pay a membership and you can get your car washed at any time. It's kind of like the Spotify motto and how Spotify changed the music industry. It's like Netflix and how Netflix changed the film industry. People want things that are recurring and that they can do anytime they want. I think the point of the fact that he's making this much money doing a business outside of music is a great conversation. And that's what all content creators should be trying to figure out. Like, yo, I'm creating content while I'm getting it from YouTube advertising, but how can I create a course or how can I invest my audience and start a makeup business or whatever, or artists doing the same thing? How do I find other forms of income that are more traditional business and more predictable because we already know the creative economy can go up and down. You're hot, the algorithm's loving you. And the next thing you know, the algorithm breaks up for you and finds that new bitch, right? But at the same time, rocket car wash. Having a subscription and comparing it to Spotify and being innovative. Like, so that's just like, and this is not less of a critique on the idea because I think that idea is beautiful. Everybody should do that. I just want to make one quick comment on that. One, we already know places that do that. Like, so it's interesting. He's probably just not the spokesman for this. You know what I mean? So just not have nothing to do with rocket car wash. He's just an artist. That's might be how he got pitched on it. You know what I'm saying? We just got to tell him where to sell him and bring him in. And now he's talking about us. Cool. Like, Justin Drew ain't washing his own cars. Yeah, Jason ain't washing his own cars. But what I do find will be innovative, which I don't know enough about him. Y'all let me know if rocket car wash does this or not. When you really could do it, like if it was like 24 seven and there were no humans involved, maybe it was just that one person, like some, you know, watching over the facility or something. But if I could just slide in, not really have to wait for the man to like tell me, oh, come on up, stop, like any of that stuff. And I could do this at like one a.m. in the morning if I wanted to, like eight a.m. in the morning if I wanted to, like something like that. Now, I think that'll be a little bit more interesting. And as many times as I want to, now we're getting something interesting. Most of the ones that I know that our subscription have still, I don't know about complete unlimited. It's like a more amount of times, but y'all got rid of those workers. Now, I think y'all might let me be able to come unlimited. Are you here for the AI, the AI car wash worker? Not AI automation, I mean, I'm against AI. Don't let AI take over. I mean, yeah, I see that. Well, first of all, I do want to say playing the Jason Derulo $2 billion business clip after the money that doesn't matter clip is sick. So whoever put this together is crazy. But yeah, no, I think, like you said, that's the bigger point right now. I think a lot of artists will be surprised to learn how many artists don't make majority of the money in music. Cause he's not the first to say that or show that. You know, we've seen even people as iconic as like a Snoop Dogg or a Dr. Dre. Come on, bro, look at all these other businesses I got. The music is really just the marketing it keeps my brand active. So these other lucrative opportunities continue to come my way. And so whenever I hear artists, you know, especially newer artists ask the questions like, man, when am I going to hit the point where I'm making a lot of money from my streaming, my music? It's like, that may never happen. You know what I'm saying? Like you may never hit a point where your music is making a large chunk of money, but it doesn't mean that everything else about you won't allow you to enter opportunities where you can still make a lot of money because of the music. You know what I'm saying? So I think it's a narrative that needs to get out there more. I think it's a narrative that would put a lot of artists in a happier place and make them move better and more strategically and even view their music different. You know what I'm saying? Like just view that music and music are a different. And I do wish more artists like Justin Derulo would come out and just blatantly say like, hey, bro, this music shake was cool. I maybe made 10 million, 20, whatever. You know what I'm saying? But this shit over here. This car wash, this energy drink. You know what I'm saying? This fucking weed brand I got. This is where the real money at. Like, I mean, look, that's all I can say to that. But I agree with that point. This is yet another episode. But we're real, real quick. Don't let jacquery spread the fake news. I'm not in love with the AI. I mean, I love machines. It's automations, right? Not any better. I love machines, not machine learning. I like keeping them stupid so we can control them. You know what I'm saying? This is yet another episode. No labels necessary podcast. I'm Brandon Sean. And I'm Cory. And we out. Peace.