 Next subject, how to break an artist. All right, bro, I've been waiting for this one, bro. Like I've been waiting for this one, bro. So we got to get context to this topic, right? All right, go ahead. Mike Sean said we're on this retreat since the 80s and they had us do a really interesting team exercise last night. And the exercise was they had everyone out here go around the table and write down and let's say it was like 10 steps or less. I think, I don't think it was a limit on the steps, but basically however many steps, how would you break an artist? Like if you was a manager label person that has vested interests in the artist and you had your game plan on how you gonna take that person from whatever situation you see in your head to big star or a pop and act, basically the breakthrough point, how would you do it? And yeah, bro, I feel like we need to share what we put because we have really different answers. Some of them were alone, but I feel like the way we went about it was pretty different, which I thought was interesting. I think we can run through mine and yours quick and then get to the bigger conversation that came from it. So it's more of the lesson that comes from this than anything. So my number one was music. I'm gonna focus on the music, make sure that the music is right because the way I'm looking at it, I know from all the campaigns we ran, look, nothing works like good ass music. Like in this bad music, you're really pushing uphill. So we wanna make sure that it's an artist that has some really solid music. I'm not talking about full blown development that in our production production, which is a great thing that I could have thought about that, but in my personal life, I don't have that investment to just throw into an artist or the infrastructure set up. So I'm just like, I'm picking an artist. I'm gonna pick an artist that has really dope music that's unknown. That's when I started. Okay, okay. So we're just gonna step by step. Do your number one, yeah. So my first step was just getting the artist to believe it's possible. And so what I was coming from that is mentality thing, right? I think before any of the other steps can really be enacted, like you gotta get that motherfucker to believe. You know what I'm saying? Show him some tune core statements, show him some results of campaigns, right? Give them something to make them go like, oh, this is possible. Cause I think especially, you know, in my head, I was thinking of a complete like ground zero rapper, like a motherfucker I heard like rapping in the hallways. I was like, oh, you foul. You should make music and get popping, right? See, you almost gotta sell them on the vision. On the dream, yeah, exactly. And that's the difference, man. I don't like working people who hit, you gotta have it for yourself. Cause I can't want that shit more than you. So I'm immediately thinking you have to want it big. You see it big. I can sell some on the vision along the way, but it's gonna feel like work at some point. But I, but even with somebody that already sees it, I like that for reaffirming the possibility and just showing them how real it is, like getting them in environments like this, like little stuff, you know what I mean? Like I said, tune core statements, whatever it is, just so they can know and that their dream can be real. Yeah, cause it changes at every level. Like I'm sure there's an RSI that are making a hundred car a year that if somebody come along and show them, you can make 10 million and it might completely change where they move. Even though they're doing well, they're probably gonna change what they're doing. So yeah, that's me. It was like first step, bro. Let them taste what it looked like. Gotta make them believe it's possible. So my number two, which I kind of pushed to, the argument became I made two steps in one. But I said, get your vision, right? You have clarity on your brand and what you want to do in the marketplace, right? Because to me, I've encountered so many artists that have good music that get confused once they start putting music out there. They wanna release this song and the next thing you know, they wanna release on their totally different style or they don't like their fans and they're making music that won't connect with the people that they wanna connect with. But it's popping. Remember we got one artist that he got popping with people that he didn't wanna like before for, right? But it was going crazy for people that he didn't like and wanted to be his fans. He was actually kind of like creeped out by him, right? But it was, for that fan base, it was a really good, big thing. So like you have to understand like that clarity of what you want and does what you have and the approach that you're gonna take actually connect with those people, right? And then my pairing that was illegal apparently was see the void in the marketplace because you can have something but present it in multiple ways, right? So like Justin Bieber was like there was a missing place of like a young kid at the time he came in of like this young boy pop star, right? So there was a void in the marketplace. If there was another guy who already existed they might have approached it a little bit different. Like he might have had to go a little bit left of that guy who already existed, whatever that might have looked like. So understanding, oh, there's a complete void of this. Now, oh, we can go straight for these little girls' hearts, right? Make him the heartthrob. There's nobody to move on this and we need to move real fast and make sure we dominate this before as anybody else's chance for another five years, right? So like that's what I was thinking. Let me take a quick second to say if you're an artist trying to blow your music up or if you're a manager, a music professional in general trying to help an artist blow their music up I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral, completely free step by step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free. But the thing is, we're not gonna let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com, check it out, back to the video. Yeah, wasn't that Usher that had that vision? Usher sound just to be right, I'll find him. Usher, it was a bit of a war between Usher and Justin Timberlake. Usher ended up getting them. You know, it was him and Scooter Braun from the get go. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. All right, so my number two is just make the artist look presentable across the board. And so what I was thinking about with this was like visual branding. Let's make sure the DSPs look nice and professional. Let's make sure the socials look professional. I don't think at this stage, I'm necessarily looking for the artist to have like a look. I think I'll be looking for them to like, actually, yes, I would. I'll be looking for them to have a look. At least a look that we get, we feel like we could translate well visually, whether that be, you know, content, hard access and things like that. But yeah, bro, the second step for me is that we gotta make you look like somebody people wanna listen to. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. All right, so I think for the lads ones, we should just run through them so people can hear our vision then we can talk about the different visions. Okay. All right, so my next step was content development, meaning, hey, we're gonna help you understand how to create content that people actually are going to consume and enjoy, but it has to reflect your brand and give you that muscle. Because I look at content development today as a similar thing to music development. Right? That has to be a muscle. And I'm not saying to have you posting three, five times a week, seven times a week, it's really just to know how to do it and communicate your brand in an experiential way online, not the post-tik-tok and put my music behind stuff, right? It's a completely different thing. Once you know how to do that, now we're gonna push your music. Okay. Because you know how to create the music, you have the vision, and you also know how to present it in the context. So let's push your music using all those elements and hopefully start to find the first hit. Then we're gonna double back and do some shows and now you have some music out there to do shows with and help you build that muscle of doing a show. Cause I'm trying to build a superstar, right? So that means you need to, I mean, you don't need to today technically actually to have shows, but the ones that last, we already know that the cream of the top, cream of the crop, a statement that was made by somebody very well established here who's done that thing, made a lot of money in this with artists. The moment you can be identified as an entertainer, your price goes up. Yeah. So we're trying to create the music between artists and entertainers, right? Beyonce, Bruno Mars, the like, different price, right? So working on that side of the muscle because we're thinking long-term is not just, oh, we're trying to cap off of the music and make some money. That's nice, but it's more so for the long-term. And then we're gonna get some PR so we can get you everywhere, be omnipresent. You know, you think of the ice spice type stuff, give it about eight weeks of going hard. Like you're popping up, being in a video collab with an influencer who's popping at the time in your space. There are campaigns around that influencer, but again, mostly not that influencer, the artist, but more from a social media standpoint. So just popping up where people get the narratives, whatever the narratives make sense for that artist. And then we're gonna start working up on a follow-up song because in my mind, all right, we built you the skill sets. We got you popping and then we developed your skill sets a little bit further through shows. And now we made you omnipresent, all right? So got the skills. Now you put yourself into the marketplace and launch. And now we start dominating to break the artist, not just the music. That's what the PR stuff or the social media PR stuff was for. Got you, okay. And then we follow up and assume that we had one song that was strong and maybe you might've had a couple that had a nice little level of visibility, but now we're looking to find a second song to really touch it in. Yeah, cement them. Yeah, to cement you as like you're a legit artist, right? And not just somebody with one song that we happen to know a lot about because you did the PR stuff. We still need to connect with music. We want to like keep going the artist route. That's how I saw it. Okay, solid breakdown man, solid breakdown. Whoa, let me look at my next step. Oh, so my next step from there was release music, right? So like I said, in my head, this artist is complete ground zero. So this is what I'm thinking of, right? So just get them to start putting music out there and really start building a catalog and having something for the fans that we ideally build to experience. After that, develop a content strategy because I'm all about the free. How can we get shit shaking with little to no money involved? And kind of like what you said, man, it's going to teach them a lot about communicating their vision to their audience in a way that is not going anywhere. So I do think that's a very valuable skill set. My next step was find the song, right? So that kind of makes me think about Lightning Ride concept. We have an agency. I once heard another marketer say, hey, bro, let me take one song to get in the game. And I've lived and died by that ever since I heard that quote, you know what I'm saying? That shit just changed my life when I heard that shit. So my next step would be like, yo, let's figure out like what this song is. Ideally, this will come from the content strategy and just kind of watching how people move on that stuff. You know, but it might be some gut feeling. Maybe we take it to people we trust, but either way, the goal would be to find like this song. The song we about to try to push the single. After that, man, build a paid marketing funnel. All right, so this is the ads. This is the influencer strategy. This is the PR campaign. This is us building out our fan building funnel, using things that we can control. That's how I look at it. You said what? Like what? Like the ads, like the influencers, like the PR stuff that we're like, we can't really be gate keep out of getting it. Cause I'm looking at this too. Oh, so when you're, all right. Last night I was thinking about like a paid marketing funnel, like ham selling merch, cause I'm going to get paid off a merch. It's a marketing funnel. You were talking about things that we can pay for. So paid, okay, I got it. Yeah, like paid marketing funnel. So things that help grow the artist fan base that we can control that we can't be gate keep out of. Advertising influencers, things like that, right? Whatever that looks like based on resources and budget at the time. Set next, that would be, and this one might be kind of, and then I look back on it, but I put get the artist to a hundred K streams no playlists, no playlisting. I'm not including playlisting in my paid marketing funnel because I want to have a very clear assessment of the artist fan base and who we're talking to. I don't want nothing muddy in up my data. Maybe down the line, but not, not at this point. And I'm looking at that hundred K streams as building proof of concept. Cause it's going to, it's going to tie into my, my next step, but I believe in like building proof of concept of a artist. Like let me, cause every artist thing they're lit and they can make it. Everybody says that about a artist they working with. We need proof to believe that, right? But like I said, my next step is now I'm going to start looking for industry partnerships. So DSPs, platforms, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, things like that. Other artists, right? Trying to figure out like who their peers are and get them associated with those people and next to those people. Maybe execs, you know what I'm saying? Can I feel about it? I'm not the most like exec, chasey type of guy, you know what I'm saying? But maybe, maybe for the artist, you know what I'm saying? If I feel like there's some value there. But at this point, I've already built my funnel to get the artist's music fans and get them awareness in like the music space. Now I'm trying to get them industry awareness, right? And get them in front of people and things that can help them just. Why industry, why fan awareness before industry awareness for you? Proof of concept still. I think a lot of, so the conversation we had one of them last night changed my mind a little bit on this, but I think they're a different breed of people since that is a different breed of people. Cause Barry was like, you know what I'm saying? He don't always feel like he need to see numbers to believe in somebody, which I think is noble and even cool to hear. I haven't really heard that before. This goes into the latter conversation though, right? This is one self-belief in that, as an individual, I can make some shape, but that also becomes from the position too, right? You've done a certain amount of things and you have a certain amount of leverage, knowledge and resources that you can see something and move on it a lot quicker and build afterward where someone at the beginning you might need a lot more proof of concept to know that this thing is gonna happen. This is like the analysts who watch NBA games and they're so focused on stats. Why? Cause they don't know what that shit really looks like cause they haven't really moved through the motions. They don't have the instinct for it. And what they try to discount is this instinct isn't just some woo-woo shit. My instinct got built through legitimate experience and actually seeing it from the ground level. So it might seem like, oh, I'm just making it and I'm not being scientific, but I've already gotten evidence on evidence on evidence and I've seen the things that the numbers can't reveal, which allows people, I think, to move like that. That's what I thought about cause the other buddy number, number two, you know, Zeke was like, oh, I'm locking them down on them papers to make sure, again, understanding that experience, when an artist takes off, how many times do artists blow up and then leave the manager who's done all the work, right? Which, again, going back to artist decision-making and award, just artists always assuming they're the only ones getting screwed over. No many times, have no idea how many times managers and people dealing with artists have gotten screwed over by the artists, but people just don't fuck with the people they don't know as much, the people behind the scenes. So it doesn't become a big story. Like you're never gonna have an interesting campaign. Oh, Beyonce got screwed over. Oh, that's a big story. People are interested in that. It's not gonna be news that this manager from Milwaukee got screwed over that you don't know, by your favorite artist, you don't even wanna believe that. Cause you love the artist too much, right? So artists are never gonna have that. That shit do happen. That shit do fucking happen. Oh, more often than you would love to acknowledge. And that's why I say, like, I know those type of people exist cause I even think about like Sam, Sam is like that. You know what I'm saying? One, a good friend of mine, he's like that. But I think once you start getting to DSP- Well, he's just a good guy in himself. Yeah, like, if he believes in something, like. If he believes in something, even though I don't have the numbers, like he'll stand behind it and try to help him out. Cause I've seen him do it before with Todd's, right, with Todd's Keaton. He was helping him build from ground zero. Well, all right, before you get to your next thing, I think another, and hearing him in that same example, I think another thing that goes with that is curse the belief in that artist and also having a vision for what you wanna build and be a part of as well. So which, when we talk about recruiting team members early on, if y'all are part of the same vision, and they have a similar vision to you and what you can accomplish, that's all you can ask for as an artist, all right? You can't expect them to give you everything or have a lot of resources, but they have a similar vision. Shoot. And that's how I say, like, those people, yes, but for what I've seen with the DSPs, maybe the DSPs sometimes, but the social platforms, they don't usually move like that. They wanna see some numbers. They want proof of concept, right? Hey, before I give you this TikTok partnership, I wanna see a quarter of a million crates, right? So that's to me why the proof of concept building is so valuable, because I do think that if you push the arts in the right way, you will come across those people who don't care, but I'm thinking about the ones that do care. And I'm saying, it's gonna be a lot of them, you know what I'm saying? We'll be honest. So like that's what made that my next step of, well, so looking for industry partnerships, oh, next step would be trying to figure out how to monetize the arts. So figuring out your, how can we get some money back in? This to me ties into the proof of concept conversation, because I do think that more doors open for you when you can prove that the artist is making money, right? It's kind of like that last conversation we had last night where they were saying that if you can build a profitable artist, like you live, you know what I'm saying? Cause everyone doesn't build a profitable artist. Very few people build a profitable artist. It looks like there's a lot because we see all the big dogs. But if you think about how many artists release music that are not making money, the fact that you get someone making money is seen as a very valuable thing in the music industry. Even if it's not like a crazy amount, then you got your artist making 10 cap a month. Damn, that's far, you know what I'm saying? I know 150,000, what the fuck is that? I wish that was making 100,000 a month out of that, right? So figuring out how to get the artist making money. And then my last step was start looking for funding. Cause now we got that pipeline. We have the music fans. We have the industry awareness, you know, we built proof of concept. We started monetizing the artist. Now we just need funding to like gas it and like really break them through. So that's why that to me is my last step cause I wouldn't want to approach an investor personally without the other steps in place. Cause it's about leverage. You want to move without leverage. So I think the big takeaway from all of it because there were so many other perspectives and people who approached their rollouts different than us. It came down to a couple of things. One, the way you're going to go about it is based on the resources that you have in hand and your main primary skill sets and experience, right? So there's that. Two, EJ went crazy on a very specific artist that he imagined who was a gig. Yeah, basically speed. That's pretty much who he built, right? It was a gamer, right? Streamer, culture artist that he was able to build everything around. So the specificity is going to change how you approach to use artists. Most of us gave some general tenants and more framework approach of how we would approach it. But when you have a specific artist you're working with it's actually going to change how you do it, right? Which leads me to the ultimate point that Zeke mentioned, both of them mentioned, right? It was like, hey, if we knew exactly what to do, the amount of money they have be crazy. We do it every time. And they've done it, right? He said, we'll do it every time, right? But you don't know exactly what to do for every single artist because every single artist is different where they are. They're fan base. There's new things to learn, but it's more about taking those frameworks and moving on them, learning and then learning how to navigate and fill your way through it, which is the instinctual part that can't be accounted for. That's why labels like to buy momentum is already established because they can skip the learning phase of who this artist is, who their fan base is, how do I learn to artist and how they move, what song's gonna pop. That's a new thing to learn and training just like when you hire new employees, right? It's extremely expensive. So that was like the big value in the conversation. Just remembering, even for these people who have helped break multiple artists or been a part of not just, we talk about the Earth Gang and Jig, but being a part of Wiz's situation. Mike Dimes, that's a new act that's starting to push through. Who else was an older one around Wiz Khalifa stuff? I forgot. Oh, Mac Miller. Mac Miller. These people have been a part of multiple situations and they're still not like, oh, there's just one step that I can run every single artist through, right? Or this one set of steps I can run every single artist through and break an artist guaranteed every time. That just is what it is. So never forget that. Now, would that be a fit?