 As many of y'all may know, we started a successful music marketing agency as how many artists blow up, have great moments, millions actually legitimately billions of streams is not even a joke when we say that. And in this episode, we wanna unveil behind the curtains of music marketing agencies and why a lot of artists end up down bad when they deal with these agencies. I'm Brandon Shine. And I'm Cory. And this is yet another episode of No Laters Makes It Safe. All right, Cory, I got a clip for your brother. Oh man, okay. There is a young man that has a music marketing agency and he's, he buried it all. He gave a lot of the inside of what he's doing with artists. And shout out to David Shans, social proof podcast for doing this sit down because this is something that we see as agency owners and we know what's going on. But we can't save everybody. Save everybody. So we're gonna break down a lot that y'all need to understand about these agencies, but I think y'all need to hear really what's going on with, I'll just say one of these guys and then, you know, I'll let him talk for himself. I'm paying $1,000 a month and I get all the stuff on the sheet, right? No, yes. Magazine, EPK spread for 24 networking events, product placement, social media promotion. Who's promoting it on business or social media when I give you the $1,000 a month? Who? Yeah. Us, I mean, ready to go records. If we post, I mean, follow me. I have about 2,500. All right. All right. So he just named an array of sort of services. Social media promotion, PR, like five things. Product placements. Product, we say what play? Product placements. Product placements all for $1,000 a month. Then he asked him, how many followers do you have? 2,500. Now, I want to say, having 2,500 followers as a service company isn't the worst thing because your job is not to promote yourself on social media, even though you can use that to gain clients, it's not necessarily so. Cause a lot of like dumb people think, oh man, how's this dude going to be popping because, you know, he don't have any followers. But then on the other end, they'll get finessed by people who got a lot of followers and are doing bad business cause they only focus on having followers. So I do want to say that right there before we go further in here. However, let this thing roll. But the social media promotion means you're promoting it on your page. Yeah. Okay. Now that's where he fucked up. Wait, you going to promote my stuff? As a part of your $1,000 on your page that only has 2,500? All right. Now that's wild. Let's keep this going. Also what I get for this $1,000 a month, top level endorsers and top level influencers. Top level. The confidence that we each repeated it. I'm going to sign up for your program. I just need to know who are the influencers you're going to eat. For one, you can start with Pee Lu. If you want to- Pee Lu? Pee Lu, that's my artist name. That's for one. You? Jeffrey, you're sitting with the guy. But that's for one, you know- I don't want to talk about this anymore. I can't do this. This is not a, no, no, no, no. Because this is- For those of y'all who are just listening, when he says, I don't want to talk about this, by the way, this is a sit down between David Shans and I'll just call him Pee Lu, his artist name. And he is talking through his business plan. And David is basically giving him commentary and helping him with his business plan. So he's revealing all this stuff. Because I think I can run a good business providing these services. Yeah, so that gives you context of what's going on right here. He's almost kind of like Shark Tank style giving out my business model. I very rarely tell people stuff isn't gonna work. Let's talk about something else. So we have, what I'm saying, outside of myself to- You're a scam. No, outside of- You cannot provide all this stuff for $1,000 a month. You can't. Yes, I can't over a course of 12 months if I'm gonna do it one more month. No, you can't, bro. That's $12,000. A thousand dollars a month, that's $12,000. Yes, I can. Yes, you can. This is the biggest, most helpful thing for most of y'all artists. I know we get watched by some artists that are pretty far along executives and y'all are successful, y'all. Y'all know what's going on and what's popping and y'all are thinking correctly. But for those of y'all who are starting up and learning your way through business and just don't have enough experience to be enticed by these too good to be true deals, the easiest way to realize it's something to scam or not is this actually possible for this amount of money? And I know you don't have context. So I'm gonna give you a little bit of framework because I remember, so I told you, I already told you a deal hit me up recently about a deal, a record label deal because I tell people, go ahead and DM me or whatever. I'll give you my commentary on if a deal is scam or not. And if it's a real deal and what your terms could or should look like. But in this particular case, I remember a guy basically breaking down a deal. It was a marketing agency for some services. And I said, yo, bro, for this amount of money, it might've been like, I don't know, like $200 running ads and influence. It was something crazy. I was like, there's only a couple of things that can come from it. One, this is just straight scam. They're gonna take your money. Two, they might not be scamming but they gotta be really bad at their job because that's too little money to pay because I know the labor that goes into that. And boy, I will not do that job for that amount of money because I could barely live off of that. It takes way too much time. I can only do but so many clients for that amount of labor, right? And I remember, and this is how legitimate this is, remember we have our program where we would be helping other marketers, other agencies build out their agencies. One of the guys I was talking with on a call who was interviewing to be in that program, he was doing a very good job, like running ads going crazy. But his price was so low, I was like, bro, like how are you living off of this? And he said you have like two partners or whatever. I instantly knew all of his problems because I was like, it's impossible for you to do this. You're actually dope, but it's impossible for you to charge this price and actually be able to live off of this long enough. You need to up your prices. So again, that goes to show y'all, like even when somebody wants to do it for the low, they had, because in this case, he was just like an artist almost and scared to have a conversation about charging people more money. And he didn't wanna make that jump. But like, even somebody who wants to do it good, I mean, do good or charge people as little as possible, it's actually impossible to do certain things at scale for the low. And that's why people charge for their services. Yeah, and that's why I was looking at this guy's situation. Cause I tried to give him benefit of the doubt as he was going through it. And I was like, all right, well, outside of the social media promotion, most of these services are more so like relationship-based services, like product placement is more a relationship thing. Where he's getting them access to like 20 networking events or something. It's a relationship thing. Most of the stuff he said is something that like, the right person can come along and justify him by saying, like, if he's really that guy, he could pull a lot of these strings for you, you know what I'm saying, in their price range. But then just like you said, we know that if there was a guy that could pull a lot of those strings, he would not be charging that. Like he'd be charging, he's probably at least five K, you know what I'm saying? Cause it's worth more. It's worth more. Like the product placement and networking events alone, the networking events alone is already worth like $1,000. You know what I'm saying? Like you tell me, I can put you in 20 good rooms for $1,000. Like actual good rooms. Like actual good rooms. Yeah, that would be that. Right, that would. So that what would make it special to me. He's like, damn, this is the, the value has already been hit here. You know what I'm saying? I mean, I could tell myself, yo, this is such a great guy. He's trying to give me $10,000 worth of value saying for $1,000, but in business and in music specifically, very rare as that the case. Very, very rare. But here it is. And this is a part of the issue too. Y'all call people scammers. Oh, and that was part of my point. This guy who understands business, right? Not in the music space. Yeah, he ain't even in music. He's just heard this. Oh, you gotta be a scammer, bro. It's no way. Like obviously dude thinks he's doing right, but he's basically saying, there's no way to do this without scamming because it's not feasible from a business standpoint. So when we talk about a lot of stuff that we talk about and then artists would be like, oh, they just only wanna hear the direct, should I check this box, this box and that box? My frustration is like, bro, you're trying to stay stupid. You're trying to get further along and stay stupid. And if you get further along and stay stupid, you're just gonna make an even bigger mistake. But we're trying to help you understand how do you see the game? How do you think? So you can apply to different situations no matter where you are. So if you can't understand a lick, right? Then you gonna get licked. You know what I mean? And that applies at every single level. Yeah, you might now have a million dollars in a bank, but now you're dealing with somebody else and they're coming along with this tech opportunity or this, you know, what is the hedge fund opportunity or something like that. And you don't understand that business and what makes sense for those numbers. And you don't realize, oh wait, if you understand just a little bit, you would know this isn't possible for this amount in this way. It's a very repeatable and like mentality and way of thinking. But the cool thing about it, and I think the most important lesson people should understand, which is unfortunate, is a lot of these people that are doing this bad business aren't necessarily scammers. They're people who just don't understand how to do business, right? No different than we'll have customers who don't know how to be customers. They don't know how to do business. They'll be frustrated and they'll be so afraid instead of having a conversation to get a better understanding, they'll just be afraid of all their experiences with scammers and just assume I'm scammed, right? All these guys that scam me, it's like, bro, if you just email me, I would tell you, if you look at the bottom of the sheet, there's a link right there, you know what I mean? Or you already have access to it. That was sent to you yesterday. I'm just making up a scenario because it has been that easy, but we know it comes from people having all these. Yeah, scammer experiences is really real out here. But all these scammers are not scamming you. A lot of them are just bad at business. Let me take a quick second to say if you're looking for a music distributor that cares about educating their artists so they can get in a better position, you should check out Two Loss because every single Monday, they have office hours where they bring on dope people in the industry to hop on calls, give artists insights on the future of the music industry and answer some of the questions they have going on in their personal careers. So if you aren't a user of Two Loss or just wanna have a little bit more information about them, go to Two Loss on Instagram. That's T-O-O-L-O-S-T Two Lost on Instagram and it'll take you to everything you need to see and for me about the sessions and more. Back to this episode. Yeah, cause even like looking at his model, at first I was like, man, maybe this was meant to be like a yearly model. Like, oh, I'll get you like all this stuff over the course of a year. I was like, well, that's a lot more realistic. But then I was like, well, no, cause he's promising high level influences. And if he really goes and get a real high level influence, I mean he's gonna kill like a quarter of the budget just off of something like that. You know what I'm saying? So I'm like, then that will make it to like, you say it's not even worth it at this point to do it. You know, so it's a lot of red flags in here. Like a lot of them that we're able to see just because like you said, like we're working behind the scenes. But I mean, to your point, bro, he caught that shit without being the music. You know what I'm saying? But in his defense too is also I think because the influence side of it was such a, the influence side was made of the red flag. Like it was just like the networking events, product placement is vague enough. They're like, yeah, you go, yeah, you could be mad at that, but you get exactly, you could justify, but it's like influence of marketing typically has a price attached to it. You know what I'm saying? And you know, what he also lost him was high level influence because I've been like, oh, I'm gonna get you on some influences. Yeah, maybe you could have got about. But I'm telling you I'm gonna get you, you know, macro or higher influences for a thousand a month, bro. It's like a thousand a month when even get them to send you with drafts. You know what I'm saying? Like most of the ones at that level. You know, it's really important like Sean said, as you kind of like walk through these things or even as you're on, you know, meetings with different service providers that you trust and you know, they're doing good work. Like to pay real close attention to some of those, my new details and things that they talk about as you feel like doesn't matter. Cause those will be the little things that help you point out like a scammer, you know what I'm saying? Like you said, not necessarily a scammer, but someone that may be over promising. Over promising. Yeah. Everybody I think they need to over promise cause they're afraid and they're just trying to get the deal, whatever. But that goes again. Artists wonder, why do I need to understand business? Like this is why. So you can protect yourself. It's that simple. It's not all about like you need to be the goat of making great deals and building out operations. It's not even all that. It's just at least understanding like the fundamentals. Or else you'll end up in a situation like this man or you'll end up starting a situation and go about it the wrong way just like he is. Cause if you y'all didn't catch this, he is an artist as well. He is an artist. Y'all want to blame everything on the executives? There's plenty of artists doing artists wrong. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like started, but again, you know, like I said, it might not be purposeful in this situation. He's on this platform offering this up, you know? So he thinks that he's doing something right. But let's let's see when we finish the clip. I don't know if it finished out already. Let's see what's up. You can't. Everybody can't. Okay. Yeah. He did. Let me make that. There's actually another big statement too. I think on this, I mean that comes from also understanding the business. So these high influencers, level influencers and all a lot of things he offered, he said, wait, no, this is a scam, bro. There's no way you can offer this for a thousand dollars. And then his response was a thousand dollars a month, like over a year, $12,000. Yes, you can. Anybody can. And here goes my rebuttal of that again. You know what, bro? $12,000 is a decent amount of money. But splitting it up over a year, not possible to do that stuff. It would be more likely to do that stuff in one chunk of $12,000 being spent, making some deals work. You know what I mean? Splitting some things up is more possible than splitting it up over a year. And a lot of times, you know, Corey, I'm having a epiphany, bro. I think, you know, how we'll have like a form, you sign up for the agency, you want services, and you know, we might have a call with you and there'll be people that look at the fact that we have X number of dollars as a limitation or we'll just ask them what their budget is and they'll be like, oh, it's $10,000. But then when you get on a phone call with them and it'll be like, oh, it's $10,000 over 12 months. I'm realizing that people don't understand that's not the same. They think, no, $10,000 is $10,000. That's a big amount of money. It's like, no, you don't understand. And I have all kinds of conversations with artists. I'm like, yo, bro, save your money. People say, oh, Sean, I got this amount of money. Like even, and it's not even necessarily applying to work with us or anything like that. And they're like, what should I do with it? What you should do is not spend that money. Wait till you have more stacked up. And then apply it to the right moment. So you have more flexibility and you can get more out of it than just nickel and diamond, throwing pennies in the lake over and over again. It's like, wait till you have a boulder to drop in the pond. And then everything splashes and goes crazy. That's what you need to wait for. That number still might end up being you having $3,000. It might be hard for you to get to $10,000 or whatever. But that might end up being you having $3,000 versus trying to put in $100. You know what I mean? Like the mentality is I'm trying to spread this shit out over time that way is not effective. And I think this video makes me think, made me realize because I would, I'll be like, man, people trying to finesse us. That's how I always saw it personally. It's like, bro, you trying to finesse me? You just trying to get in this conversation. You said you had 5K just so we could start talking. And now you're like, oh yeah, but it's over six months. I was like, oh, you just tried to finesse me. But now I realize that some people actually think that that is the same thing. So, you know. The context is definitely, even at $1,000, but a $1,000 campaign over three days, pretty good campaign. $1,000 over two months, you know what I'm saying? Exactly. I'm not touching that. Yeah, exactly. It's all very, very relative in that way. I'm glad you said it like that too. But yeah, that's it. Hopefully this is helpful. I mean, y'all should drop some comments, man. And y'all know some scammers out there, man. You know what I mean? I call them out and no, but don't be afraid, man. Send them this video and say, bruh, I don't know of you scamming, but I want to think the best of individuals. So just in case you should be aware. I know. That I know or that you just need a little bit more education on why your business is not what you think it is, man. Yeah. There is a good point out that you made that I don't want to go where people have. Sometimes people aren't trying to scam you. They are just stupid. And it really is a simple, like I've seen in scams, I'm like, all this person genuinely doesn't know anybody. You can only feel so bad. So don't let it go if y'all have, man. There are scammers and they're just idiots. And there are the people who are really great at marketing and they're horrible at customer service and operations. They forget that, oh yeah, I got to give them the product and like, oh, I forgot about that. And then they- I got to talk to them. Yeah, I didn't expect them to go that big, go this big and that's a legitimate thing that many businesses, even quality businesses go through sometimes. Like, oh, I'm growing faster and I thought I would now I got to figure out my operations because I haven't had to fulfill that at this level. And then it messes up your ability for customer service or your product quality for a period of time. That's a part of natural business. But the biggest thing about, you know, to solve for that for those of y'all who do have business businesses or, you know, even artists and how you handle yourself is the communication. You know what I mean? If you can communicate that, yo man, things aren't right and let people know where you are. Sometimes that might end up with somebody leaving because it's like, yo, bro, like, well, I got a project, let's say from an agency standpoint. Yeah. I got a project coming out tomorrow and I get it and I'm not hating on you for this moment. But, hey, bro, I might need my money back because I need to, like, cap now. I'm in the middle of a moment. But that doesn't mean those people won't come back. People have come back. Like, in many situations where we'll say, hey, nah, like, things aren't right or this didn't work out, da, da, da. Then you'll have some people who they might look at you bad, but then you'll have those people in the middle, again, that'll kind of work with you and try to figure some things out. And two of those categories, two third of those categories are pretty solid. Yeah. So, you know, 60% hit rate over a 0% of it all falls down is pretty damn great. Yeah, that's true. Look at that one. That's a good point. Well, yeah, y'all let us know what y'all think. This is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary podcast. I'm Brandon Shun. And I'm Cory. And we out. Peace. Appreciate you for watching. Like content like this. You'll love seeing our music marketing strategies that we use as an agency to actually blow up artists to millions and even billions of streams that are available for free at nolabelsnecessary.com and the cool part about it that's gonna really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some views that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success. And you have the ability to have communication with us. We get on live talks, a lot of cool things for members and it's free just to hop in. So check it out right now at nolabelsnecessary.com.