 Everybody else does a service to the artist. The artist pays in confiscates everything. Everybody else is on a service base. So by the time you spent 20, 25,000 to make sure everybody else's straight, ain't nobody paying you. You gotta wait quarters for streaming. And we all know how that looked, you feel me? So it's like, the artist takes on all the burden most of the time. We just crossed over a hundred episodes of No Labels Necessary podcast. And now we're reflecting back on some of our favorite episodes and the parts that you might have missed that you shouldn't. So in this episode, we want to reflect back on five truths we found in LaRussell's episode. Shout out to LaRussell, by the way, he just released another proud to pay album called Family Business. Check it out, but let's get into the first truth that you can't miss. And they just don't understand. The artist pays everybody for everything, right? Like everybody else does a service to the artist. The artist pays and conversates everything. Everybody else is on a service base. So by the time you spent 20, 25,000 to make sure everybody else's straight, ain't nobody paying you. You gotta wait quarters for streaming. And we all know how that looked, you feel me? So it's like, the artist takes on all the burden most of the time. Like I'll spend more money than he collaborator, I know. So this is part, big truth for the artists who are moving independently. And this is just a part of that game that I think people should be prepared for. This should be an expectation. I think some artists complain, right? That this is happening, but when you are independent and you're truly considering yourself a business, right? This entire operation, you are that CEO role. You are that founder and you are paying out others before you eat. And that's just the way it goes. And I think we do a bad job of helping artists understand that aspect. It's more, hey, everybody's eating from me from a negative standpoint, but if you repurpose it into the sense of a business, no, you're feeding everybody, right? And that's a part of your responsibility if you want to buy people's time, right? If you want to give people to build your business and build your dream, that's just a part of the game. Yeah, you're also have to look at it from the service provider's perspective, right? Like I was just having this conversation with artists where I was saying like the business people in music get paid quicker because we're providing a service. There's a media value for the thing that I do. You give me $3,000, I run ads next that we see the ad out there, right? There's a media value, but your upside as an artist is much higher than my upside, right? Like you can pay me $5,000 that creates a moment for you that leads to you getting $100,000 deal or brand deal or something down the tab, right? You're not coming back and cutting me a check as you shouldn't, right? Like service providers don't typically expect like a cut of what was generated through that service, but that's the perspective that most service providers approach it as. It's like, hey, like I'm providing you with a really high chance for upside with very little to no chance that you will come back and reimburse me in any way doing that. I'm fine with that. And there's an immediate value in the thing that I am providing for you. So it's not like, you know, you got to wait to see it. It's like, no, if you pay a publicist in a week or two, you start seeing articles, you pay a marketer in a day or two, you start seeing ads and influences go up, right? So it's like, I can justify why the money should be paid now, you know what I mean? There's no difference in any business, bro. Like a T-shirt brand wouldn't expect a vendor to make their product for free, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, you're gonna have to pay me to make it and then you're gonna go do with it where I'm gonna make this hoodie for you for 20 and you're gonna sell it for 150 and everybody happy, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, yup. To me, like going high quantity, you're really building a muscle at that point, right? And once you got the muscle, you can be selective. But a lot of people being selective, they don't have the muscle. Exactly. And that's the thing like, my thing is I always have it. So whether I share it or not, doesn't matter because I have enough. I'd rather have more than I need than I have what I need at all. You feel me? So I'm always okay with us ending with 100 and it's like, all right, now we can narrow it down. But that's one of my favorite things to remind people that you can do quantity and quality and quantity is the best way to get to quality at a high quantity, right? You have to build the muscle of being able to post, the habit of being able to post and then you should be able to use that frequency to more quickly learn what works for you, what doesn't work for you, et cetera, right? And then not only are you gonna learn faster, but then you're gonna build your platform faster. And at some point you can drop less content and have just as much of an impact because you actually have a platform at that point. Yeah, yeah, I get that. I look at it like quantity is where you build the muscle quality is where you build the eye, right? The eye is vague, is broad, it's a harder thing to explain to people. You have to kind of just like see it and see what people are responding to to build like whatever your version of the eye is for your audience. So that comes through paying attention to what people react to. But to your point, the only way that you can get enough information of what people are reacting to is to post a lot in advance, so. Debbie, you talking about industry, like how do you view the industry personally? As the industry, the industry is everything you've heard about since you was a kid and more. Everything that you think exists about the industry exists. It's true, you feel me? It's not vague, it's really true. On the good and the bad side, like all the good shit, the crazy shit they do is like, oh, they took the flattening by doing this, this, that. That's true. All the other shit too? About niggas going crazy and having to deal with. And I just found out that nigga print signed away his birth name. You know how crazy that is for a nigga to say I want to do business with you, I need your birth name? What kind of nigga take your birth name? A nasty nigga, like that's insane. I want to do business. Yet another truth. Yeah, man, the industry come with good and bad, man. I don't know how much of our audience that watches us as aspiring to be in the industry, you know what I'm saying? I would, if I had to put it that way, I feel like it's at least 60%. Yeah, no, it's shit crazy. It's shit crazy. No, I think there's a blueprint of people like LaRussell, us until recently. That showed that, hey, there is a way to kind of work around the industry, and you can still find moderate to a lot of success. But yeah, the moment you decide to traverse that traditional path and go through the industry, yeah, shit get crazy. So I'm gonna push back on your point. So there are plenty of people who have a blueprint of not having to fall prey to the industry or just go the traditional industry route where your entire career is built off of the industry. LaRussell's done what he's done. Before LaRussell, you had Russ, who built independently and then did some deals, but he still has Russ's leverage. Nipsey Hustle, built independently, but still had leverage in how he dealt with the music industry, right? And I think that's the more important part, and that's what we still have ourselves, right? We built our careers, right? Dealing with independent artists, building our platform, helping more and more artists, whether they were signed or not, all right? And now, you are working with a label, right? I'm consulting, that's a way different. I'm holding on to the thing, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, I'm gonna throw it out of there, buddy. Crazy, buddy. Oh my God, damn. But the point is, you still have leverage where your entire career is independent on that label. You would not have the same tolerance as others who just have that label to depend on. Oh yeah, my patience is thin there, because I don't know any time I like it, I can just walk out of this bitch and be all right, you know what I'm saying? And it takes a lot to get to that point, to your point, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you gotta have the infrastructure. And even, I mean, I think what we consider the industry, right, is so different today. I think label people still look at it as the higher ups in different companies and organizations. I don't know, man, I think the industry is different. Like, if I network with five high profile platforms and I make my own connections as Spotify, like I'm still moving in the industry, you know what I'm saying? I'm just not in the traditional way. So this is the thing that becomes unavoidable with success and longevity, right? You build a network of friends and allies and just associates, and over time, if y'all continue to be successful, y'all become the next one. You look around and be like, wait, people think, I'm the industry, I still don't see myself as, you know, I'm just a dude who do what I do, like I don't know what's going on, I don't get in everybody else's business, right? And I think that's something that is more important on a professional side to understand. We hear on the artist side, there's not enough professionals to understand that you can enter, right? Independently, stay independently. You don't need a label to build your career. You don't have to just try to situation to exploit and hop along and attach yourself to a big artist just to pretend like, you know, you're doing something and also subject yourself to a lot of things just to be in that position, just to finally have a career, right? Build independently, move independently, but if you are dope enough, right? And you're gonna be found and come in contact with dope people who also recognize you're dope and over time, right? Everything will fade away. You'll see who's there and y'all will be a sense of new industry. It's gonna be a bubble maybe, right? But you will become industry without having to fall prey to that side that the Russell's alluded to. So I wanna give a reminder that being independent is not just about not being signed to a label. It's actually making money without being signed to a label, being able to have a sustainable career. And for those of y'all who actually want to be able to make money from your fan base, you're serious about figuring out how to monetize. I have a free video that you can check out. I don't need your email. I don't need your phone number. I don't need any information. All you have to do is go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize. And I'm gonna show you the lies that artists have been told that have been keeping them, probably you too, from monetizing your fan base and how shifting that perspective has allowed one artist we're working with to be on track to make over $500,000 this year. This is a different era. Don't fall for that trap saying artists can't make money. Artists do not have to be broke. So if you want to escape that trap, go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash monetize. You do have to make sure you put the www in the beginning when you type it in your URL and watch this free video again. You're not gonna be asked to put in your email. You're not gonna be asked for your phone number, but it won't be up forever. Check it out. To me to actually be able to turn down deals, I'm sure you've had some deals that were relatively good sums of money, right? But to turn it down, that means you have to have a vision, all right? You have to believe in yourself and you have to believe in whatever you're building. What are you building? Disneyland. I mean, that's the best way to put it. You feel me Disneyland? Are you going to Disneyland? Everything you see, feel, touch by, express life. That's how this shit feels from people when they come in here and it's only getting bigger. That's why we skeleton, we build a Disneyland. People become familiar with the characters. They know who Tia is, they know Splashy, they know Millie, they know Chow. That's all the characters when you go to Disney and people want to take their pictures, like we're building that type of infrastructure. So there's two really big sides of this. One, the question I asked was really important for me because I think it is something that every artist who wants to be, no, every person who's trying to do something great and finds themselves in situations where there's other options, they are only able to think through and not fall prey to some of these options like a horrible record deal because they can see a better way out. They can see a bigger picture. If you don't have a vision, right, and you see how clearly and quickly Laressa was able to say Disneyland, right? He had a North Star. And of course it's not Disneyland in the tradition, it's his version of Disneyland, right? You're only able to not go off track when you have a vision to keep you on track, right? And realize, oh yeah, they want me to do X, Y, and Z, but that doesn't add up to where I want to go, right? Or that detracts from the story that I want to tell, right? Or I need to do these things, like build the characters in my story, right? Because the characters are, the world that I'm building, what I'm building is bigger than just me. It's Disneyland, I might be Mickey Mouse, but the power of Disneyland is there's more than just him. Yeah, I agree, I agree. Cause I think too, it shows experience. I think it's hard for artists to have vision without having experience, right? Cause to your point, you don't know what you don't know. Like you don't know what a better situation looks like if you haven't had the conversations or garnered the information to kind of help you see that. So that's what I got out of that in real time, listening to him say it was like, okay, cool. Like you have the vision, you have this bigger goal that you're working towards, but that vision sounds like it's been shaped by experiences. You know what I'm saying? Like whatever you've kind of gone through and I think that's a part, a really critical part that a lot of artists either miss or try to skip over. Right? Like we all want to kind of skip the bad experiences and go straight to the good, but hearing him saying and contacting him, what you say is like sometimes that experience that you think is good is only good because you don't have any other experience. You know what I'm saying? So it's a warped view of what a good situation looks like. And then you get a year, three, five, 10 years into your career and you get new experiences which shape your perspective. And then you're able to look back and maybe truly say like, oh yeah, that was a great decision for me. Which we have heard from artists been a lot of times we have artists that look back with a new perspective and be like, damn, I fucked myself up. Like I ruined the situation or I killed off my bigger vision that I now have and I'm trying to build towards. It kind of makes me think of that saying, a man who stands for nothing will fall for anything. Right? Well, again, that's your vision. Standing for something, you know? But if you don't have that, anything that pops up looks good. And you don't understand the domino effect it could have on that one thing, right? Well, because the one thing doesn't exist. I always say distractions need focus to exist, right? If you're not supposed to be focused on anything, where are you really being distracted from? It's just another thing, right? So, like the Russell, I think what I love about him the most is a vision. Cause we also talk to a lot of artists that don't have a vision, right? It's like, but you're the artist means you to have a vision, you, right? The entrepreneur, whatever. He's a great entrepreneur story, I think, just building up as well. Like you should have the vision cause you should be leading, right? As everybody else follows us as marketers or us as music execs or partners or whatever, you know, who falls in along with you. People can add and sauce up your vision add, but you have to still be like the driver, the engine that people are pulling from or even more importantly, being inspired by. Yeah, exactly. This should be there to either strengthen or give you the proper tools to make the vision happen. They shouldn't be there to build a vision for you. That's a fact, that's a fact. And that ends our reflection on some of the top truths we found in LaRussell's interview. Make sure you watch the full interview. We'll put it below and somewhere in the side section because there's a lot more. We just gotta stop cause the battery's about to die. Keep watching. Bye, what's up? It's Brandon man, Sean. And if you like this clip, you can listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple or wherever you stream your podcast. But if you want to keep watching, we've placed a video that will be so useful for you conveniently above. Go ahead and click that link.