 Congratulations, you played yourself. That's exactly what every artist who doesn't learn this skill will be saying to themselves when they look in the mirror. For a little bit of context, let me tell you a story about an artist who had a massive moment, super viral, viral track, right? Taking off millions, tens of millions of streams, but one thing was wrong. He had a label deal and the label wasn't really doing their job. The label, they sucked, right? I'm not gonna go in on the label, but just imagine the label's not great. The label doesn't quite understand that they're not doing their job, but they still want their cut cause they got you under this contract, right? That's what's happening. This artist having the biggest moments of their career. Like truly indie, he doesn't have money like that, right? And he has a decision to make because this is literally the last song that he has under contract with this label. Literally the last song, the biggest song of his career. By far, I'm talking about 10 to 20 times bigger than anything he's ever done before. And I can confirm that the label wasn't really doing anything. They were just sitting back collecting that money because a lot of the bigger looks that this artist got, me and my partner Jacory were getting him those looks and not for a cost or anything. We just mess with him. We had rocked with him for a while. So we were getting him big looks on platforms and helping him leverage the moment becoming bigger and bigger, right? But to be fair, in some ways, I honestly don't think the label even knew what to do. They didn't know how to create the moment and they didn't know how to capitalize on them a moment. They just happened to get the artist there. However, this created a really, really uneasy feeling in the artist, right? You kind of hate this. It's like, yo, y'all want all of this. Y'all aren't really doing anything. Y'all aren't responsible for this. And this is my last song. I wish I dropped this song after that other song so it wouldn't be under y'all. But now you have a decision to make. This is the big moment in time where you have the skill or you don't and you need to get the skill. That skill is emotional intelligence. In this moment, this artist made one of the biggest decisions of his career. It seemed small, but he could have just kept moving, dropped some more music and said, I'm not about to put any more fuel behind this thing because these people own it. I don't rock with these people and they don't deserve anything. But he was able to see the bigger picture. This is my career. This is my big moment. And momentum like this, not only is it expensive, it actually can't be bought. You can try to create it, but the organic nature really taking off, taking off for real, you can't buy that. So what do you have to do? You have to suck it up. In that period of time, knowing that he was gonna split with the label, stuff that he doesn't necessarily think that they deserve. However, what did he get out of that? A huge moment that was a stepping stone for him to continue to create more moments and expose himself to fans that never would have experienced him if he decided to just suppress that moment and act like it never happened because he was so petty or so hurt by the label. And this is a decision that you might have to make again and again and again in this industry and life navigating your career, being emotionally intelligent. Whether it's a manager situation, I know many artists that are dealing with some manager situations, right? A label situation, a distributor situation, a partner, whatever you have going on, it happens again and again and you have to be able to make that move for the bigger picture. Future is actually a perfect example of this. Surprisingly enough, y'all might say, why is he bringing up future? I got three examples where I've seen this with future being extremely emotionally intelligent when it comes to his career. And you're gonna wanna hear these examples because it will give you a perfect idea of how you should move and how you should see this entire game, this entire industry. But before I get into that, I just wanna remind you, these are my Saturdays with Sean video series where I'm dropping videos every Saturdays. I mean, if you could just subscribe to the vibe and you aren't subscribed to the channel already, I appreciate it. It lets me know that this series is worth continuing to do. I can see the amount of people that were subscribed to this video in every other Saturday video. So if you love when I do this style of video, these types of topics, which my whole intention is to give deep insights from behind the scenes, behind the curtains in the industry for this particular series, just subscribe to the vibe, that's all I ask. But back to future. Future example number one was when Future had a beef with Drake. Not a real legitimate beef because he didn't even let it get there. But I remember in this particular case, people basically said that Drake stole something from Future. Maybe a flow or a song, something was similar. And that was the first time. There's been a couple of things that the public has brought up between Future and Drake where they felt like Drake was kind of being a little slick on Future and Future felt kind of away, right? But the point is in this case, Future didn't really do much about it. Like publicly, he didn't come out, he could have lashed out of Drake, called him fake, called him whatever, whatever, whatever. But instead, he saw the long game. And I think I even saw a picture of him. I mean, a clip of him mentioning something like this where you know what happened a few years later? Him and Drake did a project together and they went on tour together. And the positioning of Future as an artist to be able to do something like that with Drake was massive for him, massive. So he basically said, yo, yeah, we're gonna piece this up in a way that actually benefits me. I don't wanna like lash out, ruin my career and then come back and finally try to have some moment together when I just wasted a lot of momentum that I could have gained in that period of time, not that he wasn't confident and what he could do on his own without Drake in his career. But he just knows, hey, there's more money if I can figure this out. If I can't, I'm sure he probably would've got to the point where he would've been like, eh, whatever it is, what it is. Another situation with Future. Beyoncé is drunk in love. He didn't get credit for Beyoncé's Drake, Drunk in Love. And if you go find a video and look up Future, wrote Beyoncé, Drunk in Love, you will find a clip of somebody asking about it. And they're like, what, but you, I didn't know you were on that song and you weren't credited. And Future's basically like, we'll figure it out or something like that. All right, he's just letting people know, yeah, there's an issue there, but I'm not about to come on his platform, go crazy on this person because I rather figure a way out of this situation that's better for me. He did the same in another situation with Jay-Z when Jay-Z basically put out a line in his song referencing when he got caught cheating and he thought he was about to break up his family and he was gonna end up like Future watching his son play catch with another man. Basically, that's what it comes down to. If you know the line, you know the line. Future came out a little bit, right? You gotta bark a little bit, especially when you talk about the kids and bring that into the fold. But even the situation where he handled that situation was still, all right, now how can we get to the bigger business and not ruin this entire career? Three situations of high emotional intelligence and how do you do that yourself? I can tell you, I've known artists who've had moments in their career that they've regretted not being emotionally intelligent, letting the emotions get the best out of them because that is what you do a lot of times as an artist. You might wear your emotions on your sleeve and I can guarantee you there's a lot of people who are doing that even on the executive side where they're mistakenly doing things like that and messing up moments or slowing down their own personal momentum. You have to ask yourself, is this person, this entity, whatever it is that you're beefing with or feel away about, worth more to you than your own personal goals, your own life to the extent that you allow yourself to be distracted from the ideal outcome that you have for your life, right? Buy some bull. Simple as that. If not, if the answer is no, then you have to step back and say, well, what do I want? What's best for me to get to where I want? Do I need to lash out? Could I lash out? Are they wrong? Maybe, but that doesn't mean that you have to knock down a house of cards just to get back at them. It's not gonna be worth it. There's another situation I can think of with an artist where there was just a lot of lack of trust with the label situation and in this particular situation, the artist didn't have a real reason to distrust the label. A lot of it came from lack of communication and some things like that. Just some misunderstandings, but knowing the entire situation, this label situation, those people were like the best that this artist could get the best situation. But rightfully so, you know, there's reasons that artists can be weary and afraid, right? But here's the thing. The lack of trust was there. It was there. And in this moment, the artist was having a moment and he had to be able to decide, am I going to maximize my moment? Like, is what the label saying right? Because I hear what they're saying and I don't trust their intentions. I don't know if they have my best intention in mind. I don't know if they care about my ultimate outcome and no one's gonna care about that as much as you regardless, by the way. But even with that said, independent of their intentions is what they're saying right or not. Because if it is right and it's going to help me get towards my specific goal, then I need to ignore my lack of trust for them in general and just focus on the moment right now. Is what they're saying right? Is it wrong? And is it going to help me get to where I need to go? And how can I get maybe independent advising and information to help me determine if that's the right move? Because sometimes good news comes from bad people. It just is what it is. So again, this situation though, it actually, and this is the worst situations that I see a lot of people mess things up in. I've seen a lot of people waste energy, ruin relationships, ruin their own outcome in their own career or at least slow and delay things all because they were feeling the type of way and felt done wrong in a situation where they weren't done wrong or they were thinking that somebody was trying to sun them or diss them or dismiss them when in reality they weren't. For example, anybody who's been in this industry long enough knows that you can meet a lot of people quickly, some dope people, but the way time is set up, you might not be able to spend as much time with everybody that you would like that seems cool. You might have messages from people that you would love to get back to, but you don't even see those messages or you see them and then you go do what you need to do and by the time you come back you forget what messages and who hit you up and you got more messages and piled up so next thing you know, matter of fact this happened with me. An artist, a dope artist that I'm cool with hit me up six months after I hit him up about something and he was supposed to get back to me and he just hit me up like, yo bro my bad but I wasn't wasting any energy feeling the type of way because I've been there and I am doing that actively to some people by mistake as well but I know I might have to in a week realize oh snap there's somebody I'm supposed to hit back up. So in a weird way you have to be optimistic, you have to expect or believe in the best side of people but then be pragmatic in watching what they actually do because I'm not telling anybody to be like a blind follower or a blind believer in any individual character in the industry but I've seen too many situations where it'll be something like that and somebody will genuinely rock with you but they might not have gotten back to you but the miscommunication just messed things up and they really did mean one thing and it's where y'all texted and it just felt like one energy or you were having a bad day so you misread it and now you're going off on a rant, you're doing some BS you're messing up a relationship and didn't even realize that that person actually wasn't against you in the first place. But now because you did what you did, they have to be against you. You just went and created an enemy that you didn't even have but you thought you did and that comes from a lot of insecurity, a lot of fear, a lot of desperation, grinding and grinding and grinding and putting it in work and maybe having some legitimate situations where you did get done wrong but please, I implore you to take a step back, right? When you're going through these situations, analyze the field and determine is this best to get me where I wanna go before I hop off the roof, right? Do I need to figure out how to piece it up? Because if I can, that'll be beautiful or do I need to just remain quiet, get the maximum I can out of this situation and just take note, let that individual profit however they need to profit and then get whatever I need out of the situation as well. That's the reality of being emotional intelligent in this industry, it's so easy to let your emotions get the best of you but if you can discipline yourself in that way and I know it's hard because especially as an artist, you're wearing that on your sleeve, you get used to letting that out. It's benefiting you so much in this creative space but boy over here, who that thing can backfire so make sure you share this with any of your artist friends with your manager friends, your music professional friends all y'all need to see it all of us need to get the reminder I'm having this conversation cause I have to remind myself of the same thing sometimes it is what it is. But anyway, this is yet another Saturdays with Sean video if you wanna go deeper in how I approach building out artists from ground zero or taking them from level three to level five to level seven we've laid out all of our strategies and are now supporting artists with the tools that we use at www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days and it's only $1 to get that initial access so if you're interested while we still have that deal available, check the description here on YouTube Spotify, Apple, wherever you're listening or again, go directly to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days have a beautiful day.