 It's the mat work. Oh, what's up everybody, we're back with another link up and today I'm linking up with Carol Anka, made up of Rohan and AP, but hey man like I have so much to say about these guys because I've seen so much progress. This has been touch bases over a matter of two years you said basically. Two, two and a half. Yeah, first discovered them, well I wouldn't say discovered them, first linked up with them, talked to them a couple years ago and they were super early in their process experimenting with a lot of things on streaming and all types of tactics and now they've worked themselves up, grinding themselves up in an indie format and from text message marketing, which we'll talk about and get heavy into, from interesting networking tactics and a whole other lot of details y'all get into, y'all will, it's definitely gonna be a useful one. So definitely tune in, stay tuned because you're gonna get a lot of hard practical tactics and I know that's what y'all need as indies. So you know Rohan, AP, what's up man? What's up man? This is dope to top it up with you again. The first time we chatted was like I think you were doing your hour long consulting calls, we just linked up there. Yeah, we had like one song out, that's crazy. Hey, y'all were learning and doing the way y'all spoke back then, I knew that y'all were actually like, y'all were approaching things from a scientific fashion, which I loved. For sure man, that's why we vibe with your channel, right? Yeah, very tactical, very, very methodical, right? So yeah, I mean I love that approach because it's the only way to get real results if you don't want to do it yourself and y'all actually spoke. So we're gonna jump right into your text message marketing, right? For sure. Because speaking of those results and being practical and scientific from that standpoint, y'all said that you did shows in Russ-inspired fashion, which meant y'all had no openers so you can get the hard numbers. Like everybody who's here, they are here for me, right? 100%. Tell me about the importance of that to y'all. Why did that in particular resonate with y'all? And then we're going to talk about how y'all got the numbers that y'all got at shows. Well, it's good because I think they tie into each other. But I think for us, like from day one, like what we've cared about is like the philosophy of just depth over breadth, you know, like we're not really in it for, like playlists are cool, like all these, all these sort of top of funnel tactics are cool. But for me personally, like I think there's so much fabrication on the internet, like so many things that, you know, are at the end of the day inflated. And even if they're not inflated, don't necessarily lead to like what we care about, which is like which is like real world results, right? Like being able to pull out people to an actual live show, like getting them out of their house and like coming to watch you. Like I feel like we both live on that where it's like, that's a lot more important to us than the streams. Because those are like the, those are the people who become the die hard fans, you know, they're not just listeners at that point. Yeah. And so like a lot of our, a lot of our influences, whether it's like Tyler the creator or Brock Hampton or Russ, like whoever have employed this tactic of like everyone in the venue is there for them. And having attended those shows as fans, right, just as fans of music to see the sheer difference in those shows where everyone is just saying every word and like, there's this huge, like incredible community feel versus like, you know, there's like five or six artists in the bill and everyone's sort of like kind of engaged, but they're talking to their homies and then they're like, once they're, once they're homie, who's like one of the openers like is done, then like you see a drop off in the audience as well, right? Like, yeah. And that's like that to me, that's like a nightmare, man, because it's like, I want y'all to like listen to me. I don't want to be that annoying guy who's like speaking into a mic where it's like, no one's actually like, no one's actually there for the music. They're just there to get drunk or whatever it is. So for us, it was very important from day one that we ensure that everyone was there for our music and everyone who's there was there for us and our brand. Yeah. 100% man. I mean, that's definitely all those experiences. I think most artists have either experienced or seen those, especially, you know, those friends leave and that's half of the show, right? That's a wrap. All right. And then that sucks. But when you go through the experience of seeing, as you say, the people who are there for you understanding the hard numbers, most importantly is the fact that now you know, and I'm all about the fact that you can't take action on fake numbers, right? If you are real with yourself, you're not going to be able to make progress. And that's like an all-around philosophy for me. You have to be hard, like the hard truth. And now I can make progress, right? So if you guys know that you only got five people who came out, at least you know you got five people. Real man. And I'll say that it's like, yeah, I'll say that it's like, before that first Domino Falls or that first show, it's a much tougher path because from this standpoint of like constantly people seeking validation and everything, it's like, you might see lower numbers from like a streaming perspective or whatever, because you're so focused on like the bottom of funnel and like creating those certain super fans. I think there's like that lack of validation, unfortunately, in a lot of ways where it's like, you're not seeing like a hundred thousand monthly listeners or whatever it is that other people are looking for until you have, until you actually hit that stage and they realize, shit, people are like singing along to my music. Like there's no better feeling than that at the end of the day. If I'm getting you clear, you're talking about the fact that, hey, I might have 500 followers and because I'm being on my resources versus I'm an indie, I don't have the ability to maybe work heavily on new people that see me and increasing my relationship and frequency with the people who already know me. So it might look like 500, 501, 502, 505, 510 and over a long period of time. But in that time, I'm actually pushing people down the funnel so I can still get real results, right? Exactly. It's like, how many of those 500 can we like actually convert over time to become like actual fans of our music, right? Compared to just increasing the top of funnel, but then not getting enough people down to the bottom level. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about how you guys did that and the technologies you guys used. For sure. Yeah. So we'll get into SMS towards like that just recently became a thing because our manager like Cheyenne was pushing us on that heavy because he's like a commerce founder and that's big in the world, the commerce and everything. But I'll go back to like March 2019. So basically for a while, like AP and I had the sort of vision statement where we were like, yo, we're going to play like the Mod Club in Toronto, which is a legendary club. It's like weekend, like debuted there, like now have a bunch of like Toronto legends, obviously. And it's like a 650 cap room. And for the longest time, we were pushing off our show because we're like, yo, our first show's going to be at the Mod Club. Since like December 2017, right? Yeah, crazy. Yeah, since we knew like talk to you. And you know, it was really our manager who like shook us up and went like, yo, y'all are tripping. Like if you can bring 80 people out to a show, bring 80 people out to a show, you need to experience what it's like to actually get on stage. Right. And that's when we were like, yo, like, like, let's pull the trigger. Like, why are we waiting? Like, we'll get there. But it's like, it's going to take 10,000 steps to get there. Right. It's not like overnight, like you're at the Mod Club, like you don't have a label deal or anything that can like instantly grab, like push you there. And so that's when we were like, all right, let's start looking up like 80 to 100 cap venues in Toronto. And unfortunately, there really aren't any because like that's a very low cap, obviously. And like, it's not, it's not going to make a venue like a ton of money in terms like bar sales or everything. So what we did is we found this DIY attic. It's called the attic. It's literally called the attic. It's a, yeah, it's dope. It's called the attic and oh, you back. Yeah. So it's called the attic in Toronto. And we went there and we rented out this like space like held, like, I think it's like owned by like some not for profit. And we like, we built out the bar, like we literally got a liquor license hired a bartender bought all the alcohol, brought all the sound equipment, built, built, built our own stages, wooden stages, because there's no stages. Obviously had to do all the audio and everything. And the approach we took from a marketing standpoint was let's frame this let's ensure because we only have so much capacity. Every single person in there needs to be like super deep on our music. And so what we did is for like a year and a half to two years, we actually kept a spreadsheet of every single person who had either DMed us, messaged us, like basically performed any action that would indicate that there was any sort of interest. Yeah. And so it's like every time we got like someone who either like posted a story went like, yo, these guys are so fire. Like one of my favorite artists out or they DMed us or literally anything we put them down on the spreadsheet. And so when it came time for the show, we basically had like you say on a spreadsheet, was that just their Instagram profile? Was there any other data that you had around? It started with Instagram because you weren't even doing email marketing at this point or nothing. It was all Instagram at this point, right? Yeah, I think it was all Instagram at that point. Yeah. Yeah, all our folks said that and Facebook a little bit Facebook too. But it was, yeah, it was all that. And then when it came time for this, we were like, okay, let's frame this whole entire first show as basically almost like a public private event. So before it went on sale, we had basically already sold 50% of the tickets because the way we went about it is we like personally messaged every single person, we said, yo, so we're throwing this show unfortunately capacity is very limited. So we want every single person to be in there to like who's truly a fan to have a chance to get a ticket. So I'm going to send you this ticket like early. And this is when that ticket link expires before it goes on public sale. And so like all of these people because they had already expressed interest, they're already qualified leads in a lot of ways, they were like, yo, let's get it. And they brought friends along. So before we even like announced the show, it was already 50% done. And then, you know, scarcity and all this stuff, like you announced that it's 50% sold out, more people buy, you say 75, then people are like, oh, shit, people start panicking, they buy. So before we knew it, like we were able to like sell out to get that 80 person show, which is that first person, that first show. And yeah, so the approach we took with that first show is just purely like, let's let's frame this as like every single person in there needs to be like a diehard. And that's that's what it turned out to be. And I think like sort of framing it from a standpoint of like, this is like almost like, you guys get this exclusive chance to get in to the show like really helped it. Yeah. And it's also like, also, it's like that first show was a lot of also just tapping into our own networks, like just any first degree connections we had of people who we knew were supporting us along the way already. And I think like, at one point we had like, we were kind of reserved to that idea. But then we realized the value of like, wait, first, like, before we jump into getting new people into the funnel, let's think of the people we already have in our networks. And then let's tap into our own networks first. And then we can use our network to grow even larger, right? So I think a lot of that first show came down to that as well. How do y'all reach out to those people that first time around with this through DM? Yeah, DM, yeah, DM mainly for the very for the people who like we're very close with obviously like text message or whatever. But that's like the low hanging fruit. But like for fans who's like numbers and whatnot, we didn't have like all these all DM. How much was it for a ticket? It was not that much, man. It's $10 per ticket, which a lot of lessons learned from that because, you know, the lower your ticket prices, the more likely people are some people won't show up, you know what I'm saying? So, but that was that was the first show $10 per ticket. Yeah, I had to learn that through free events, right? Even Hey, man, let's make it free and everybody is gonna come. Nope. Nope. Yeah. Because it's not enough holding them to that commitment, right? At that point. Exactly. So, nah, man, okay, I get it. And I love to see that you guys did do that before here. And it's always about whenever it comes to shows, especially when you're working as heavy as possible from any perspective, it's always about how many can I create without, you know, overdoing it. But even on a larger scale, that people are still creating triggers. Coachella puts out the tickets 60 months beforehand. Right. They're still as sold out as those shows are, they're still essentially the early birds, right? And there's a reason for that. You need them. And to see that you guys are starting to execute, you'll just be doing the same thing over and over and over again. We'll get into that like for the third show, which was obviously a 250 cap, like way above the first show and second show. That's something we had to employ is just like the idea of like pre-sale and like different tiers of like pricing and everything. Yeah. So that was the first show. And that was that was in March. Went very well. It was great. Sorry, I'm not gonna say. Do the text message messaging marketing. What's up? When did y'all start doing the text message marketing? Yeah, yeah. So, okay. So basically, I'll actually get the emails. I'm in the text event, right? Like the ticket sales help getting emails. Obviously, like make that a mandatory thing. The second show that we did was basically a repeat of the first show, except with 100 new unique people. Because there were enough people that basically were like, yo, this looks crazy. Like, I missed out like, please let me know the next time you have one. And so those people, like, we had 100 new people for the second show, which was great growth, but same venue and everything. Just like 20 more people basically. And then that first one. What's up? So you had video for that first one. Exactly. Yes. Like that's, I think that's where we really utilized social media was like just making sure we got content from that first one. And we posted it and also just like user generated content, like anyone who's there like posted stories. And I know like friends of people who came to our show were reaching out to us and being like, you'll this looked really like this look crazy. Like, when are you guys having another one? And then what we ended up doing is actually we built another spreadsheet with like a brand new people until we hit that hundred number. And then we're like, you know, we can, we can definitely do this. I think, yeah, like it was the whole first 24 hours after that first show was like us messaging people and being like, yo, send us all the videos you have before they expire on Instagram stories, because we need every single video. So that was that was very important, like those having those assets for sure. You guys should, if people when people send those, you guys should also record screen record those videos as stories as well. Yeah. Just so it can like story and act as social proof later. Even those compilations of social proof and putting those into one long video is just a reusable asset. You can use that to market shows. You guys at least have that those videos that you already have for people sending direct to just having those stories as well, because it then show like you can have your pre right is beautiful produced video you put together. But now this is social proof from different angles. It's a beautiful thing, man. It's a beautiful thing. It's crazy, like what effect that has on it, like actually having a show and then like showing it in real life yet what effect that has psychologically on people who are like now I want to come out the second time or third time. It's insane, man. So yeah, so that the SMS stuff came in the third time around. So we had our first show, March 2019, second show, July 2019. And then we were really gearing up. We were like, yo, we want to like basically make the like we want to wrap it up with three shows this year. Third one we wanted to hit 250 as the cap. And so what we did here is we knew we had to obviously like there were people who were like, yo, I want to like similar to the second show like yo, I saw the other ones I want to come out. But we realized for us to hit that cap, we were really going to put in, we had to put in some work from a standpoint of I guess like the multiplication effect for sure, like getting people that already experienced the show to come again and bring at least one friend or two friends or whatever it is. And then also like the idea of like doing things that don't scale. So what was important there was we took this approach where basically for all of our super fans who had already been to a show, we told them, yo, our brand is it's corny as fuck with the music bangs. That's like the tagline of our brand. All right. So we framed it as like, yo, if you've been to a Carolina show before your cornball, but for us to like sell this show out for us to shell this show out, we need to like bring new kernels in like we need kernels. We don't like we need cornballs, but we need kernels too. It's hella corny man. He's corny. He's corny. You know what I'm saying? So we were basically like selling our super fans on, yo, we need to hit this goal together because this is like the Carolina universe. This is like, we're one big like cornball family. Like we need y'all to like help us hit this goal. And so we need you guys to bring kernels, people who've never been to a Carolina show before. What we did is we basically equipped our super fans. What I mean by that is we actually made personalized invites for anyone that they messaged us with, like anyone's names, who would possibly want to come to a show to give them the extra push. If you mind pushing, throwing up like a wall of fans. So basically is what we did, right? Is we have this thing at our shows called the wall of fans. And it's like, it's a lot of work, but for us, it's like super important. It's basically like we take our album covers, sorry, our single covers and we photoshop every single one of our fans faces on there. And so like this is one of our single covers with a fan's face on it. No. All right. So we basically, what we did is we created a bunch of those for people. Our super fans would be like, yo, I want to bring like 10 people, here's all their names and here's their photos. And we're like, all right, cool. And then we'd send them like basically that as like a personalized invite. And so when people got that, they'd be like, yo dope, like I'm trying to, I'm trying to come through this show. And that's essentially how we sold out the third show was the multiplication effect, but also like also the level of personalization we went into, like, because also like we also ended up filming, we incorporate skits into our live shows. So what we ended up doing is actually, we filmed a personalized skit invite on IG that we would send to like each one of these people on which list was that for the skit invites. The skit invites? Oh, you're talking about like the presale? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's for everyone who had come to a show before. That was, yeah. For everyone who had come to a show before, we sent them like, literally every single person got a personalized invite for the presale, which was crazy. And so when they went to checkout, going back to SMS marketing, we now made it a mandatory field at checkout to also do SMS. So they had to put in their number in order to like actually go through the checkout. And so when that happened, that's when we got super phone and started like building out CRM from that perspective. And then leading up to the show, we basically started to send like nurture them and like be like, yo, this is a playlist with all our music, like get hype, because this is way more fun if you sing along to all the lyrics and people are like, yo, I'm gonna listen to this. And we can see the plays going up on Spotify, which is beautiful. And then we'd be like, yo, this is like what you did. This is the time you arrived at like be pumped, like just giving them more context so that when they arrived at the venue, like even new people who were like kernels, like they would even they're sort of entering with so much context that like the actual event itself like felt dope as fuck. And then yeah, so that was tight. And then how we incorporate it into the actual show itself. So yeah, this was the interesting way in which we got numbers like a more creative approach to it. Yeah, because because real quick, like, like, so let's say like you have like a cornball who's buying a ticket for three other people, right? Like someone who's been to a show before and they're bringing three friends, they're only going to put their number in. So we only get one number out of four numbers, because they'll just copy and paste their numbers sometimes. So it's like, how do we, our thing was like, how do we get the other three numbers? Yeah. So what we ended up doing was just for like a bit of context, the show, our last show was a, there was an election theme behind it. So basically what we did is during one of our skits, we framed it as a, like, we need you as our fans to vote on who you want to be your president to be your president, right? And basically, we put up the our super phone number on the screen. And actually the craziest part was like, we didn't know how well it would work. We had a feeling it would work, but we were backstage while the skit was playing because Rohan pulls up his phone and literally as soon as the number goes up, like, I've never seen notifications come in like that fast before. It was crazy. But like, that's, that's like, just using the power of live and finding ways to capture info through things that feel like they're part of the experience, not just like, hey, give me your number. But like, that's, that's a reason why we need your number, right? Because, because yeah, I think it's like, if you're, if you're just going to be like, give me your number, so I can text you. It's like, okay, that's not enough value at the end of the day, right? But if it's like, you're gamifying it, and it's like, yo, there's this, there's a larger purpose behind it. And you're part of an experience like people are a lot more, I think just willing to do that. Yeah. Now it's a fact. I mean, two things I want to make sure aren't missed is one, the level of detail that you guys paid attention to things and how much work that So when people say, yo, man, I can't do this or I'm, or I've been grinding or I keep trying, like there's so much work that goes into this. I don't think most people can understand the context. We really can't describe it so they can understand it, even unless you've just done that type of stuff before to that level. And I have so I understand that you guys put a lot of work into it. So I appreciate that y'all have done that because it's not, it's not even just the work itself, the thought that goes behind it. That stuff doesn't just from, hey, all right, I want to set this up and oh, do you feel like you put these triggers in place? Now there's so much creative thought to make everything contextual to make it effective. One guy, I remember you guys maybe think about a guy I did some work for maybe two or three years ago, but he had music video where he was, it was this whole where it was a guy who had a new girlfriend and he had a crazy ex-girlfriend, right? Pretty simple. He was still working on the video. Supposed to be, all right, but the last thing you guys heard. We heard something about the thought, the thought behind it. Oh, no, the music video you're talking about the, there was the girlfriend and the crazy ex? All right, cool. Yeah, so we'll figure out how to edit this. Yeah. All right. So, yeah, he had this music video idea. So the music video actually wasn't complete yet, right? But we already had the concept and it was already underway. He had the show and what I had him do was in mid-show say, hey guys, I have this cool music video. Stop, have this interaction with the crowd. And one of these girls is going to be the crazy ex, right? One of these girls is going to be my new girl, provided contacts around that and had them go on their phones and both, right? Which one did you think was the, you know, the new chick or whatever? And of course, as you guys experience a huge boost, right? Like you don't in a short period of time. But it's always about context. People ask for too much without giving a reason to and it always comes back to when we try to give general advice. Yes, you can say, oh, collect emails, collect text messages, collect all these things. It's really meaningless. People think, oh man, you're just saying the same thing and it's fluff. Well, you can't get too much detail, much more detail without having context. Because it might be derived from a song. It might be derived from your brain as all like who knows what you have going on with it. So I love that you guys were able to figure out something that I was contextual to y'all made sense and actually worked with the relationship you had with your audience. So, um, and that was show number three, right? That's show number three. Yeah. So nice build up. And what, when you got those text messages, have you guys leveraged that much outside of shows? Because I know you said you send something a week, one text a week. We do a text blast once a week to everyone on our list. We do two things with text like basically we do that one text blast. So there's like, we think about it as like one text blast a week from us to them. And then like we also give them an opportunity once a week to text us. I mean, obviously, if they just randomly text us, we're going to text them. But like scheduling wise, we also have this thing called, oh, you're gonna die. It's called corn hub. It's not what you think it is. All right. The whole idea is we beat it up in front of you, but not it's not what you think. It's basically we make a let us explain. We'll explain. I promise it makes sense context. It's all about context. We make we make a beat on IG live in 15 minutes, but we make a beat using rules that our fans text us. So a fan might be like, yo, I want you to like sample a Star Wars like theme song or something like that. And there's three rules. And basically we give them the opportunity to text us as well. And so there's two like basically like larger text touchpoints per week is that's one. And then we do like a general text blast on the Saturdays as well, which they it tends to it's not always like, yo, we have a new song that's dropped. Like sometimes it'll be like, you don't want to ask too much either, right? So about, again, it just comes down to like delivering some sort of value. Whether that's as simple as like, Hey, what are you guys listening to this week? This is what we've been listening to this week, or this is what's on our playlist. And it's like, it's about like not always just pushing your own music, but like also just like nurturing yet, yeah, just building those relationships really. Yeah, I mean, because now you guys have the opportunity to put them on to some music they haven't heard before. And then that's the wrong thing to remember. Exactly. And it feels it doesn't feel transactional, right? Because and I think because of the natural, the other thing is like for us, like that's dope. Like the fact that we get to like our fans are our friends, and we get to like have genuine conversations with them, that's dope. Like maybe for a lot of artists, like that doesn't feel genuine. Like I see a lot of like larger artists who are like, text me now. And it's like sort of just like a bot texting back for us. It's not really about that. Like we like having genuine interactions and conversations with our fans as it gets bigger. Obviously, it'll be harder. Yeah, right now we got a scale. But like, again, like, I guess the theme of like a lot of what we're talking about today is just when you're at a smaller level, it's a lot of it comes down to just doing things that don't scale, right? Just finding those creative ways to personalize. Yeah. What tech software do you guys use? Superphone. Cool. Yeah. And you guys wouldn't say it's expensive for y'all. I mean, I know you guys aren't like, I know you guys aren't way up here as artists, right? Financially. And I know you guys probably aren't the, you know, just on the streets as well. But generally speaking, for you, based on a typical artist budget, all the things you guys have to pay for, obviously, I think you guys think it's worth it, based on how y'all use it, because you have to leverage. But would you call it, would you say it's generally expensive for you? It's variable, right? Like, it's like, as it scales, it's going to get more expensive. But as it scales, you have the more opportunity to sell like merch to more customers. So it just like makes sense, like from a standpoint of like scaling for us, it's like, if you can't afford to like take, like, let's say $50 a month out of your like, Facebook ads budget or something else to have this deep level of connection with your fans, then it probably isn't right for you, you know, because for me, it's like, it's much more effective than like nurturing through like retargeting on Facebook, because it's like you have a direct line with these fans, like the private channel is just so effective. And so for us, it's like, it's a no brainer, like it can run like, yeah, it can run like 50 bucks a month sometimes, but it's, it's totally, it's also about like just owning the means of communication, right? That's something a lot of managers actually just like, talk to us about. And like, he'd always be like, you know, like, Facebook could shut down, Instagram could shut down, but like, it's when you have, when you go through text or email, it's like, those things are going to last, you know what I mean? So it's like, no matter what, you have that information to like, even if something else shuts down, you have that direct to consumer. Like that's Ryan Leslie's whole philosophy as a founder, right? It's like data ownership. Yeah, that's like, just so important to us. It's like, it might not be leading to like, likes or any type of public validation, but it's something much stronger, which is just like individual one to one sort of relationship building with their fans. But yeah, no, I wouldn't say it's expensive, like from my perspective, like 50 bucks a month max, like right now at our scale, with like 200 numbers. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay, well, I want to go back for a second to the corner of situation. Give me an idea of like paint the picture a little bit more in terms of what you guys exactly are doing that hold the beat and the fans can actually text you. How do you even prime them and let them know? Hey, you can text me during this time. Because to me, it sounds like you're saying, Hey, you have my text message, but don't come text to me anytime just about random stuff. You guys have figured out a way to control it. I'm sure they do text you random stuff at times, but it sounds like you guys are creating a way where you want to allow them to feel like they can text something and there's a useful for a two way conversation. But you don't want it to be completely open where it's completely informal. Like honestly, at the scale we're at, we're okay with it being completely open just to clear that up. Like if our fans like text us out of nowhere, like we're totally fine having conversation with them. I guess I'm more so met like formally like the formal touch points or like twice a week, like with once like with the cornhub stuff on Thursdays and then the Saturday like text blast. Like what we do is we'll go on Instagram stories and we've started trying experiment with TikTok, but that's a bit harder because like you're getting people for the most part you're getting people who aren't as nurtured. But like mainly like Instagram stories and be like, yo, this is our, this is our number right here. Like text us a rule and you have the chance for this rule to be picked. We're picking three random rules this week. These are some examples of like fans who have like actually got the rule picked last week and they're excited just sort of showing that like social proof that it is possible, you know what I'm saying? And then and then from there, like people are usually like just happy to text in and be a part of the creative process. So you guys will say, since you really focus on this part of strategy, because you know, obviously you've tried a lot of other tactics, right? But when you talk about the show strategy and then adding in SMS point, how long have you been working that to get from zero to nurtured list and a 250 people show that's based all on you guys? And is that still a change? Sorry? Is that still a what at $10 a person? That's a good point. So the first show is $10. The second show is 15. This show is $22 per ticket. $22 and 250 people. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. Dude, making for us to like have that little bit of gratification like side point for us because we lost money on the first two shows because of the venue and everything was just so DIY. But like for us, like going to that third show and be like, fuck, like we walked away with money, regardless of how much money it is, even if it's equivalent to like one or two paychecks, my old job, like amazing feeling. Yeah. And that that as an artist that can keep you going for like an entire year, man. Yeah. I get it. Like 50, what 22, you said 22 times 250, 5,500, right? And that's far more than the nothing that so many people make just to get the show right, let alone to be able to do that alone. That's a strong number. And I know you're now at the point, well, you probably did this when you made $20 or $50. But now you see 5,500. Holy shit, have I doubled this? Yeah. And I keep in hope that you already have a system. That's what I like what you guys are doing. And I try to explain to people, right? It's getting these random results. They're cool. But you guys have a level of certainty where you just say, okay, when are we going to do it again versus what do I do? How did I do what I did? All right. So it's a really cool space to be in. Before we move on, I want to make sure we actually like don't skip out on this. So that question I asked, how long has that been though? Yes, you guys were really committed to that process. March to December, 10 months. So that would be like, I guess, I guess it's coming up on a year now since we did our first show, which was March 2nd, I believe. Yeah, March 2nd. Who shows in 10 months? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Before you guys started the, so when you say March, is that when the first show was? Yeah, that was March 2019. Yeah. All right. When did you start marketing that show? February 2019. Yeah, February 2019. Yeah. So February. And now, when you guys started marketing that show, probably how many Instagram followers, how many Spotify normal listeners did you guys project that you had at that time? Not that many, man. Like, and to be honest, not that many now either. But like, probably like, followers wise, probably like just about like 900 or something. I think so. Like 900. Yeah, 900. And Spotify, like Spotify listeners? I think at that time it was maybe around 2000. 2000. Yeah. But that's because like, because of playlist. Oh, because yeah, we had more playlist placements before than we had now. So it was at 2000 before. Yeah. 2000 monthly lists. Yeah. Yeah. But like, I feel like that really goes to shows just like, this is like, like, Spotify numbers can be inflated. But like, like right now our monthly listeners are lower than it was when we did our first show. But that's just because of playlist placements at the time, right? And it just really goes to show that like, sometimes those numbers can be inflated due to other factors. But like, our live numbers have grown, right? Yeah. Because before we were also experimenting with like, you know, like playlist placements and like, all that stuff. And it's, it's really tough to see like, you can look at save rates and all this stuff for sure. But it's like, to be honest, like, a lot of like these shitty playlist game companies have gotten really good at even like gaming that like, they'll legitimately like get bots to save your like, they know artists are looking at that. So it'll be like, Oh, get at least 10% of the bots to save your thing, right? It's so for us, it's like, we've actually let it taper off. And now we know that like every single person who is listening on Spotify is actually listening. They're real people. But that you're right, like that goes to show that it's more so about the percentage of people that we've captured and less about the top funnel. What's your monthly listeners now? It goes between 1200 and 1400. All right, perfect. Yeah, I definitely just wanted to make sure we got the numbers that walked all the way throughout that process. Even at 2000, right? No, they didn't start, you guys didn't start a huge number. No, you just worked the process all the way to this end result. Exactly. There are people with 100,000 listeners who, oh, my bad, there are people with 100,000 listeners who can't do 100 person venue, you know what I'm saying? Because like you get on New Music Friday, like one week. What's up? I say you're getting in your restaurant bag. Yeah, for real, for real. No, but in seriously as well, when you talk about those pre-saves and how smart a lot of the people who are gaming the system are at making the things look like that, it really saddens me at some point, sometimes, because I've had conversations where, you know, to be honest, like our artists might want to hire me for a marketing situation, and they'll be explaining all these things that they have going on for them, and I'll say, hey, well, we can do this and this. And they'll be like, no, I don't need that. I'm good. Like those numbers you're giving me are lower than the numbers that I have. Like, you don't know that these numbers are fake, do you? It's like, oh yeah, but you know, but I got great engagement and all that stuff. It's like, no, like they can fake engagement too, right? They can fake likes too. Like it's not just the, like all those aspects and you can tell, it's like, it just doesn't. A lot of artists are just living in a dream world, man, and we have to like pull ourselves out of that. Like it's like, there's only one thing that matters, and that's why like we double down on this, because like, you don't have bodies in the room, like you ain't shit, in my opinion. That's it, you know? I mean, at the end of the day, you have that, and you know that is for sure, right? Unless there's, exactly, somebody scamming you a fucking hologram from the room, buying people off the street. And by the way, by the way, that's why Spotify just took away like the number of listeners that you can, you can't see the number of listeners on the playlist tab anymore, right? It's like, they've realized that they've like indirectly created this sort of broken ecosystem. So yeah, yeah, I mean, there's so many ways, man. So the artist definitely aware that you can have a complete 360 scam going on that looks great from all these angles. And don't fall into that trap. I've seen it all the way into the detail where there have been people that have had all this great engagement, great content, content, no comments and everything. And I gotta reach out to this guy because we refer, he was the one who asked me about it and started to investigate. But essentially, he reached out to some of the guys who were commenting on that person's videos about the artist. And the people were like, who the hell is it? My profile essentially was used to comment on somebody else, right? That's the example. It wasn't my profile, it was used to comment on somebody else. And I don't even know that I'm out here commenting on all these other people's profiles, right? They took my stuff. And now someone asks, oh, man, I saw your comment on such and such artists or such and such page and like, I don't even know what that is. But the artist themselves, now they can see, oh snap, brand man, Sean is a fan of me and he's definitely a real person, right? It looks so how can you convince them if they just don't understand how fake this stuff is and then you already have the delusion and some of that stuff that comes with being an artist and thinking you're awesome period, right? Like, you know, and break that philosophical issue too, around like how we like what type of success do we prop up as, as like a community or society of artists in general, right? It's like, we put the wrong things on the pedestal at the end of the day. Like we're not necessarily like, like we're putting things like Instagram followers and likes and like all this shit on a pedestal when really what we should be putting on a pedestal is like, are you building a fucking fan base or not, right? Yeah, that's, that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. This conversation makes me think I want to, I want to hear artists up. Heart to heart, man. It's like, you don't need to work with me. You need to have some honest conversation sometimes, man. What's going down? Well, let's do this. I want to talk about your networking situation and how you guys were able to get in contact with YB and Corday's manager. Yeah, sir. Yeah. So basically, this is a, this is a funny story, actually. So like, basically, like, we, we make our own music, but we also produce and like it's, you know, we're inspired by like Kanye, Ryan, Leslie, like all these guys who sort of have this sort of double edged sword where they make their own music, but just as great as they write songs for other people and produce songs for other people. So that's definitely something that we want to do and that that should, that we want that to be part of our legacy. And so I was going to the YBN Corday show, AP and I meet up like four or five times a week, just like work on music. And I'd gotten like the day before the show, I got this like email, basically, and it said like, your meet and greet package with YBN Corday comes with this, this, this. And I'm like, I didn't even get a meet and greet package. This is crazy. But then I was like, fuck, if I'm getting a meet and greet, like, what am I doing? I'm going to make something happen, right? And so just sort of like hopped on like a group call. This is back when I worked at like when I was working my nine to five, too. So just like hopped into like, you know, meeting room real quick, like had a quick conference call with like AP and like our manager and we're like, yo, what can we do that's like unique to get his attention? AP came over that night. We basically like just did some research and we like figured out that he was hella into like Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, like just anime in general. And so we were like, yo, like, let's not just go up to him and give him a USB because bro, he's going to like slap that shit out of her hands be like, let's not pull the like, here's like 10 beats card, right? Yeah, no, it's just not going to work that way. And so, so we're like, yo, let's think of a unique way to it's about framing it right. And so we realized because he's super into Yu-Gi-Oh, I was just like, yo, I think actually AP said this as a joke because we're corny, like we like just cracking dad jokes and shit. He was like, he was like, yo, we, he was like, yo, we should, we should make him the YBN core deck. And I said it as a joke. I just, I was like, but I was like, bro, stop. This guy looked at me like, that's genius. Like that's genius. And then I was like, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, right? And so what we did is like, while AP was working on the beats and mixing and mastering them that night, we were up until like 5am, that night was crazy. I was just like photoshopping his face onto these Yu-Gi-Oh cards, basically. And yeah, you can show. Yeah, why don't we pull up like the Yu-Gi-Oh card real quick, real quick. This is one of him on obelisk. If y'all know obelisk, you know about Yu-Gi-Oh, then you know obelisk the tormentor. Yeah. So these cards, basically what we did is I went and I printed these cards out the next day because I was going to the show. AP wasn't with me, but we put QR codes on these cards, which basically the QR codes with like, if you scanned it would go to a SoundCloud link. And it would basically, like those are the beats, basically. And so I get to the venue and lo and behold, the security guard's like, anyone who got an email about meet and greet, it was a glitch. You're not getting meet and greet. So now I'm like, shit, like, what are we going to do? Put all this work into this? It's like, you've got to get to it. Yeah. And you know how venue people be like, you're going up to the bartender security and they're like, I don't give a shit, bro. I don't give a shit if you need to get this to him. Like, that's not my job. I'm like, all right, whatever. I'm just in the crowd real quick. And I'm like, I'm with like five of my boys. So I'm like, guys, I'm a tweet this real quick. I need this tweet to go viral. So I need you guys to share this with like every single one of your like WhatsApp groups. And then everyone needs to start tagging YBN Corday because I did the calculation. He gets like 50 mentions in an hour. So I was like, yo, if we can get him like 20 mentions in like 10 minutes, like he's going to see it for sure. And he's backstage and everything. So I took a photo of like the Yu-Gi-Oh card deck and I was like, yo, we made this for you. Like, like I'm in the I'm in the crowd. They won't let me into like meet and greet. What's up? He saw it within 10 minutes. And then he was like, yo, my man's about to DM you. We linked up with his manager. He like took it. Like obviously we chopped it up real quick. Now has YBN Corday hopped on one of our beats? No, no, but if I'm being real with you, like it's we don't necessarily look at this. Like I'm thinking I'm thinking six, seven, I'm thinking 10 years, man. I'm not thinking like, like, you know, like, why didn't he use one of our beats? I'm thinking like, we're crafting this relationship with someone who's obviously killing it in the game and like coming up. And to be honest, like probably even more valuable is like connecting with his manager. Because if we ever need to connect with like a booking agent, I hope he doesn't watch us. But if we, if we ever need to like connect with a booking agent or something and like, we need that intro, like hopefully he got us, right? Or someone else or whatever it is. And so he came back actually, like he really, like he loved the, he loved the ego cards, he put it on a story and everything, which is dope. Then when they came back, this was even more important, they came back again, six months later recently, he opened for logic. And at that show, we were like, yo, we have to like follow up because the follow up is just as important. Like that's how you build a relationship. You can have like the first touch point, but the first touch point doesn't mean shit if you just like drop off. And so we made him Harry Potter cards, but this was what was really important. We made cards for every single one of it, like everyone in a circle. So we made cards for his producer, for his engineer and his manager, because those are the people that matter man. Like YBN Corday is getting like, he's getting a million messages a day. These guys, they're doing just as much work, but they're not necessarily getting this. So like, when we hit them up, they're like, yo, we appreciate you for thinking of us, right? And we met up with like all of them gave them the cards. And now like where it's at now is like, we just hopefully have good relationships with them. How did you get their attention the second time? What's up? How did you get their attention the second time? So I have like notifications like on Insta of like whenever they go live or anything like that. And I don't know if I can say, I can probably say this, it's fine. Like so they went live like Cam, his manager and like his producer on the tour bus. And they're like, yo, man, we're just brah, like where there's no weed out here. Like this fucking Washington's boring as fuck. And I'm like, yo, y'all are in Toronto, right? Like I got y'all on that loud when you come here. I just said it as a joke or whatever, but he was like, yeah. And then they were like, oh, shit, that's the Yu-Gi-Oh card guy. Yo, yo, link me up, link up, link up. And I already had Cam's number. So I texted him. Cam's the manager. Cam's the manager. Sorry, I texted him and you know, linked up with them, like gave them the cards. I showed them the cards and they're like, yo, dope. How I reached out to the, oh, sorry, this is really important, my bad, skipped over this detail, but we had a direct client with Cam, but like, you know, the producer didn't know us, the engineer didn't know us. These other guys obviously didn't know us. And so we emailed them also, like we emailed them, like we planned it out so that a week before the show, we were like, yo, come link with us in like Toronto in a week, we have these for you. And we sent that to the engineer and the producer because we knew that if this guy didn't respond, at least this guy would respond and this guy could get everyone else the cards. Like it was basically like hoping that like one of them, at least one of them. Yeah, one of them would be the gateway at least. But it turned out great because all of them responded. But like, we just had that sort of in mind to bulletproof it. Yeah, I love it. I mean, once again, it's thoughtfulness and it's detail and a big thing. Like when you guys first mentioned the Yu-Gi-Oh card thing to me, it's so funny because I tell people this all the time that I get business cards and artist cards, like any kind of business, let alone artists, right? And I try to actually keep, you know, a healthy amount of them. And especially if I'm talking to somebody and try to follow up or something. But also it comes that time where I have to get rid of cards, right? I was like, just look, I don't want them or I just have to clean stuff out. Every single time that I've cleaned stuff out over the last, it's probably been, let's say, eight months at this point. There's this one card that I have not thrown away. And I refuse to as an artist who basically made his car in a Yu-Gi-Oh style, right? So it's like, and it wasn't like, and that wasn't even about me in Photoshop. Like I just thought it was like, it looked, it looked dope. I love detail. I love Yu-Gi-Oh. So it's like, it's like, man, you know, I gotta, I appreciate this, you know what I mean? So like, it's so funny how people are unaware at those small details having a huge impact. For real, man. It's, it's, you know, I think about it, it's like, again, you know, this is our whole philosophy is like, do things that don't scale, right? So it's like, if you put in an extra 10% of effort, then everyone else, you will get 20 times the results. That's what it is. Like, yeah. And that's a little bit of a miss. No, man. I think it sounds good to say, do things that don't scale. But the funny thing is, when people say, do things that don't scale, they typically result in do things that make an impact and impact scales better than anything else. Sure. That's a good way to look at it, actually. Yeah. Just, it knows below ground for a while, right? But overall, we know what it does and we know it has a greater effect. So I definitely love the fact you guys do that. Oh, it's one more thing, of course, that we need to touch on because you mentioned it a few times in one way or another throughout this call, which is quitting your job. All right. Are you for real? For real? I work no job at all. Or do you just not work your own job? And now you're doing things that take less commitment? Yeah, for me. And is it AP2 or just you? So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, so AP. Yeah, actually, I'll start. Yeah. So like, actually, after I graduated in 2016, I was like, yo, I'm going to move back home. And where's back home? Back home was like an hour away from where my campus was. But like, basically, I'm like with my parents right now. We're in Toronto. Like, we're in the greater Toronto area. Yeah. Yeah. We're still in Toronto. So, okay. Yeah. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to move back home and I'm going to, I'm just going to go all in on music, right? And that's when we linked up and all that. And then like, for a long time, like I was being supported by parents, I still am. And then right now, though, like I'm, I'm now trying to find ways to like just make money through the things I've learned over the, over the past like three years now, almost four years. So that's where I'm at right now. Beat store. Yeah, yeah. Beat store engineering, like just offering the services that I've learned. And like now I feel like I'm at a level where it's like, like my engineering is good enough to offer as a service. Like I can sell people beats because I have so many beats on my laptop that I'm not even going to use, right? Like, and I'm like, why would I let these go to waste? Because like, I like the beats, right? And it's like, it's just about finding a placement for them or finding someone to give them to or whatever that comes down to. Yeah. And for me, yeah, I was working at Shopify for two and a half years, which is like a tech company. And amazing, amazing experience. Like I wouldn't know half of the things that I know now, obviously without it. So it had its purpose for sure. But for me, I actually wrote it on our board, even before I started Shopify, like when I initially got the job offer, I told AP, I'm like, yo, I'm a quit this job. When I hit a threshold, the problem is I didn't define what that threshold was. And it came as often, you know, happens. But it came to a point, probably like one year ago now, or like maybe like last April or something like that, after we had our first show where I started to sort of see enough momentum that I could see, like, yo, time is going to be my most valuable asset right now to 10x this thing. And what I realized is like the money because of my broad skill sets can be acquired in other ways, but me being cuffed down to a nine to five and having that very defined time schedule and the switching costs of having to consistently contact switch, like go from like business development and partnerships to like music was just mentally exhausting, right? Because they're two different minds, you have to work. And I decided and I had like a I built like a five month exit plan, like I didn't go like I'm a quit my job and quit my job. I think that's something really important to just know it real quick. I was right. Yeah, I didn't just do it overnight. I told these guys, I told the team and then I was like, I'm gonna build this out over the next four or five months. I did it properly. Like I saved up enough money, sold my stocks, all that. And then got to a point also where I was able to make money in other ways. And that's where I'm at now is music like Carolina doesn't necessarily it's not at the point where it's on a month to month basis sustaining my income. But obviously, like with the show and everything we have like money in our bank account that we're now reinvesting, which is great. And then the other thing is like I take consulting calls and things that basically pay just as much in a lot of ways on a per hour basis, but take a lot less mental exhaustion. And also like the amount of switching costs like me having to like edit a video and premiere and then go take like a business development call for like four hours, that's not happening anymore, which is like super important. Yeah, but it took a lot of reflection honestly to get to that point. So switching costs is huge, man. I think people undervalue the dissipation of energy when you do all these different things. And that's why I always, you know, I push against diversity in a way sometimes if you don't understand, it's not that I don't want people to be diverse at the end, but just understanding splitting your efforts when you have very little to work with and you're trying to cut through at this moment, right? The point of a nail is concentrated for a reason. You have to focus, right? And I think that you guys are doing that. It's why you guys have been able to have the results you have because you is no way you would have been able to do it otherwise. Right? But not working your job. I'm not telling everybody they need to quit their job now. And I think most people though also face need to face reality that it's not even if they weren't working their job. Some people just don't have to work ethic. So some people don't have a job. And they're still not putting in the level of effort, or they just think I'm done. This is enough. And it's almost stressful and anxiety inducing the level of work that you have to put in in those moments. All right? So I'm almost like, you know what it is? It's like, if you couldn't, like for us, we knocked down that first domino with the first show, right? If we weren't able to sell out an 80 person venue and then 120 person like sort of show with me working my job, I wouldn't have quit my job. Because then that's at the point where I realize like, okay, now to go to 250, we need to put in twice the effort. And I'm like, I'm running myself very thin right now in terms of like mind space and everything. I'm at the edge right now in terms of operating capacity. So how can I like create more capacity and 100% like we would not have been able to do that, like 250 person show if it wasn't for like honestly, like if I'm being real, like 12, 14 hour days, like on end, you know, of just like ticket sales, rehearsals, like everything you need to realize content, like content, all that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because doing this shit is multiple jobs already. For real, right? So if you're doing the multiple jobs within this, which is hard enough, and you really need to find the most important priorities within that to focus in, and then you added a type of job on top of that, right? It becomes a lot. It is a lot. So that's why it looks, if you're working a job, I'll just say it's generally speaking, you can't figure, you can't work all of those things going on in music. You need to pick the top priorities. And then when you're ready, you need to understand how to take on all those things. So I'll end it with this, because you talk about all that work, y'all put in 14 hours, the days, the third times, quick jobs, jobs, all those things. What is your actual team look like for context as well on top of all the stuff we talked about? Yeah. So it's purely just, it's us too, obviously. And then we have one manager, Cheyenne, who works on like just sort of day-to-day stuff, strategy, strategy and whatnot. And we just recently brought on a homie, Muzzy, who's now helping us out with just researching on like festivals and like taking on more of like a booking agent role. So that's very early now, but essentially his role now is like, how can we get booked in other places? Like sort of like whether it's festivals or like other opportunities and almost like a business manager kind of thing. Also, how can we reinvest the money? But it took a while to obviously be able to expand. It took a lot of like everyone wearing multiple hats. And it's still, it still is that, right? Everyone has to work like five to six jobs at once, even with our team right now. But yeah, I'll be right even with like having like those two extra people on top of us. It's like, we can already start to delegate a few tasks to people like, to like someone who's like, like Rohan is like great at the video editing. So it's like, yo, you just do that, like, because you're really good at it. And you do the engineering. And I'll just trust you, like, and when just show me the end result, I'll be like, yes, or like, maybe let's fix this, right? But just like, just that getting a few things off your mind so you can really focus in on the things that each person in the team is good at. Huge. But that being said, I'll say there's one thing Will Smith said recently in the interview, which like really resonated with me is like, no one is going to join your team or like hop on board until you are so fucking crazy, like with your own self belief and capacity that they're like, all right, something's happening here. You know what I'm saying? So like AP and I had to like for sure do so much by ourselves for like these guys to even be like expressing interest and working with us. And obviously we're blessed now to be in that position. But it takes a lot of elbow grease in the early days. And we're still in the early days. Yeah, early days. That's what's up, man. That's what's up, man. You get moving and then people will hop on a bandwagon. Everybody wants to move. Exactly. Sure. Well, hey, tell everybody where to follow you guys. Where is the most important page to follow? Yeah, it's Carolina, k e r a l a n k a on YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, all the above. We're on TikTok. We're posting like five times a day on TikTok. So TikTok, please Carolina, k e r a l a n k a everywhere. So yeah, y'all see it right there. Yeah, I'll see it right there. We got we got the corn emoji. You already know we got the corny skits. If y'all want to understand what the karaoke universe is, we have some of our homies playing characters. So people who come to our show are in love with these characters too. That's part of part of what this whole experience is about. So I love it, man. Appreciate you guys again, you everybody. This is yet another link up. If you like this video, go ahead and like it. If you like it, like it. Share it and if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe button. It's the matwork.