 What's up everybody once again it's Brand Man Sean and I'm back with another episode of Inside the Network where we share exclusive conversations from Inside of Brand Man Network dot com where we're talking to artists, managers and even sometimes producers where we get specific to their particular situation because we have actually a time and space and place to really get into that. You'll see the way we get to talk with artists and go back and forth before we answer questions versus general advice but this clip right here is a convo with Russ B. Do this though, been in the music game for a minute, been at record labels, all that good stuff but I want you to see his advice when it comes to building a team and not just building a team, the other aspects to look at it to get the resources you need pulled together and I'll see you at the end. Let's get to it. I'm at the point now where I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to post or what I can do organically to grow like my account because I know that you know like influencer marketing and I know a couple different Instagram, Facebook ad strategies are just paid advertising in general that I can do you know to grow but like other than like getting in front of other people's audiences so like collaborating with other artists, producers, even having like other graphic artists like do my art. Just trying to think about other ways I can like grow organically while I get the budget. Right, right. Well definitely grow your team locally you know. The thing that can be done with money can essentially be done with manpower. So definitely build out your team you know what I'm saying, build out a roster of artists, producers, marketing guys, PR guys, all types of guys and just build out your team and just try to make it as big as possible and then that's another way if you have the skill to sell them on your vision you know that's another way you could cut costs because you know if you put in up you know $200 a month that comes out to what? 2400 a year right but now if you got two people putting that up then you got 4800 a year but now if you got 10 people putting that up you get what I'm saying so it's like you know that's another way that you know a lot of these artists that you see make it it's not just them you know but sometimes they got three people behind them putting up 30,000 sometimes they got 10 people behind them putting up 10,000 sometimes they got one person behind them putting up 100,000 you know it all varies but yeah man so I would say anything that anything to do with money you could definitely do with manpower. So how would you even really go about so like the closest thing I ever had to like a team I guess was like like I think like when I graduated high school I had like some friends they are I think a few of us wanted to rap and then like over time like they saw us doing it and they all you know they got into it and wanted to rap too and it didn't it just didn't work out because everybody wanted to rap nobody wanted to do it but like outside of that I just haven't been successful in trying to find out you know build the team and I know that I think I've seen some stuff on Sean's channel where you know he's talking about like you know like first reach out to your own network you know your family friends or just you know people that you know are people that support you but then like shit about you know after that honestly I would I would say my motto is those people don't really count my motto is actually to ignore those people because your family and your friends that's your family and your friends man you know what I'm saying like and I feel like most times what are the odds that um they're meant to be on your professional journey with you you know what I'm saying like so I would tell people don't be mad at your friends because they ain't doing like they are friends man they ain't they ain't become your friend for that they became your friend because y'all was playing basketball or doing whatever y'all was doing you know what I'm saying you know people be mad like oh like my friends don't I'm like man they're your friends like hey you know like they should they should show to your events but if they don't they don't stream your music that should tell you more about your music than it does you about your friends you know what I'm saying like so yeah man I will say um like even even how I said like radio radio for example right yeah was was about 70 grand in New York to get thorough radio play right but if I had 150 interns right now and I say oh all y'all comment this song already this whole list of DJs Instagram mention them on Twitter spam them call the station all y'all all 150 y'all right now and don't stop do it for the whole week you think we're gonna get through you damn right you damn right so it's like um yeah there's ways to cut corners there's ways to cut that course you know what I'm saying that course the things is if you're not willing to do but there's always a free way you know so like say say you're in my situation or you're like you're you know dealing with artists in a situation where he's uh in between cities right now so like if you remember I'm in Iowa right now ain't shit in Iowa right now um and you're trying to build a team how would you and you don't have like anybody like pending or like you do literally literally be starting from like scratch as far as like team building goes how would you even like initiate that whole process for the road to start how old are you 26 the reason I asked college would be the first thing I would say I would say move to in New York move to an Atlanta move to L.A. get you three videos that's popping three videos for Google ads in them get them in six bigger views build your grant to like 1015k do those things on your own then then seek out and then join music networking groups and just start talking to people piece by piece and on board and people piece by piece and pretty much like selling them you have to sell them on it but before you even verbally try and sell them on it you want to already have some groundwork laid in so it's not just a bunch of talking like yeah and you want to actually show them like look I've already done x y is he on my own you know you're the missing piece to bring it home but this ain't something that I need you to start I'm already started I'm already gonna go it's gonna move with it without you truth be told but I would love for you to be a part of this this how you could be valuable to what I'm doing and this is how what I'm doing can be valuable to you all right that was that clip and I just want to add a little bit to it or recipe said was extremely important because I think a lot of artists miss the fact that you don't have to play this game exactly how people say you got to play it it sounds simple no rules to be specific however you can get creative right I don't know why people do not but in the same way you can get creative in your your artwork right is the same way a lot of artists fail to be creative in their ads but in this particular situation right you can be creative in how you build your team your team does not have to look like a normal team especially at the beginning so check this out it might be ideal for me to have one graphic designer to do my albums I'm like the artwork from that to do my logos to do my animations and things like that maybe my video editing as well I would love that to be in one person who could do all those things dope or if not above average but at the same time when I'm just starting off I might need a guy to just do my album covers because he's dope is out album covers but he might be trash at animations alright so I got this animation guy and this is my team right and they're both on my team until it gets to a point that one starts to learn I could do both or I just end up with them both half time full time is the same way he talked about hey you can get a hundred thousand dollars many ways I can get 30k from somebody 20k from somebody and 50k from another person I can get 10k from 10 people I can get 20 20 40 40 like there's so many different ways I can break that down in alright and actually 20 20 40 is 120k which is even better but the point is you can also get it from one person and get a hundred k crowd funding there's so many different ways to slice it make sure that you look at your resources as such and understand that it doesn't have to be in this whole pool of I need one person that does this one person that does that another person that does this like it's great it's ideal but it's not always realistic especially at the beginning you might have to have somebody contracted through Upwork Fiverr or something like that that does all your Instagram posts in the beginning and then you only pay this other person that does graphics for some other stuff right and here's another thing last but not least and I'll leave it that there's priorities that you should have when it comes to the quality control right when it comes to your brand specifically or certain types of business specifically there's a pecking order right so let's say when I'm signing a deal I probably want a lawyer lawyer you know what I mean but when I go further down and it's not so heavy it's not a record deal maybe I'm just checking out a distribution platform and then I might not want to do that some people I know don't even read a deal at all but you know I got a guy you can check him out George I'll put a link to the description below and he helps read through contracts right up but or you might have a whole another level that's so low that you don't care at all and you can take that risk that's a pecking order but the purpose of looking at that pecking order is I can pay a lot of money for this person I need to pay a lot of money for this person this person I'll pay a little money it's important but not so important and maybe that person can be contracted right not on my team or this other person look I might try to get them done to do pro bono the maybe my graphics or my covers extremely important to me so now I need to make sure that this person is a higher quality I might have to pay them more money or I might have to try to get this person on my team but then only pay them like whatever the specific deal is but my IG post maybe depending on your brand my IG post might not be that relevant so I can pay that off on fiber as long as it's getting done I'm good all right versus places that really really matter understand the pecking order and this goes in all categories from your video quality and which videos you're working on your music video versus a IG video versus a IG you know TV or IG story video or Facebook video whatever all right TikTok video same thing for financial situations signing deals graphics your marketing you know management there's so many aspects to management because you can get a booking manager and you might not even like Russ right Russ got a booking manager and he got a booking agent right and all the other stuff he already had he basically didn't need a manager in that situation right because he had so many of the tasks split up towards other things that might be considered management duties he covered a lot of them just by itself in his own capabilities so with that being said he has an order another an another an unorthodox fashioned team but we see that he's winning in the way that he's winning a lot of times taking this general advice or how your team should be built or how your resources should be looked I mean how it should look that actually leads to a lack of success because you're trying to put yourself in a box that you likely can't even afford likely doesn't even make sense for where you are at the time and oftentimes is built off of an old system of rules that is actually bound and set up for you to fail and only possibly to win when you have a certain situation behind you and oftentimes that situation again is set up for you to set to fail based on old institutions advice industry etc so that's a little advice little insight and I love how Russ made sure you focus on a different way to get to the resources that you have in mind this video is brought to you by brandmannetword.com because I signed myself if you like this video go ahead and like button if you like it you might as well share it and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe button it's the matwork