 What's up everybody once again, it's Brandman Sean and this video is brought to you by brandmannetwork.com because I signed myself. Now it's music Monday so I'm talking about something music related and I got to cover this topic right here. Managers. There's a few things that you need to know about managers. One, we're going to talk about managers are not your investors. Two, we're going to talk about what makes a great manager. Three, we're going to talk about some things that are in the contract that you should keep in mind artists especially. And four, we're going to talk about a few people that are good prototypes for who might be a good manager. Some people you should look at to consider to be your manager because there aren't too many managers that are already established as managers. If they're in a period without work then they probably aren't looking for a brand brand new artist but that's a whole other point. So one, let's go ahead and hop into it. Managers are not investors. Why am I saying this? So many artists are expecting managers to put up money. They're expecting managers to pay for stuff. They're also expecting managers to tell you what time to wake up, go get you some money and bring the money back to you in this opportunity and do all these things but you have to realize they're the fine line. Not just because your manager just might not have the money to give but you have to think about this. I did an interview with an artist by the name of Lejit figured it out and when I was interviewing Lejit he actually talked about a situation when his record label was trying to manage him. And you have to think about the fact that record labels are essentially a bank. That's the money, that's funding but then he already had a manager, there's a conflict of interest between your manager and being also the owner of the record label. There's a conflict of interest because their best interest is the record label. As a manager your best interest is supposed to be the actual artist. So if a manager is funding you heavily, it's one thing to say, you know what man I'm a spot this show I believe in a vision or we need some studio time I'll spot a little bit here and there. That's just really some homey homey help stuff but it's not an obligation that they have at all because once they are funding you and once they are investing in you truly right now their obligation is not going to be to you as an artist. Ideally that would be nice but still they have money wrapped up into you. So that means their obligation just intuitively right as just as a human is probably going to be trying to get their money back. So that's a completely different relationship. Do not have those expectations of your manager because your manager is supposed to be completely aligned with you meaning when you get money they get money. When you get money they get money that's why they have that 10 to 20% because that is the only way they will be getting paid primarily if you get what I mean. Now of course here's some other things to consider what makes a good manager period. And let's just call this number two of four. So first and foremost one of the things a manager needs to be is organized. Why is that so important? Because it sounds simple but if you aren't organized when you're dealing with an artist right? Artists are not going to be organized by nature for the most part right? So much of it is the freedom and the lack of boundaries whatever but so you have to be able to organize the artist schedule just to be able to combat that but then also there's so many different categories you're pulling from. You're dealing with the booking agents right? You're dealing with maybe setting up studio time. You're possibly setting up other collaborations with artists for them. You're possibly looking up brand deals. You're dealing with so many random things that if you aren't able to figure out how to organize those to make sure they get executed because you're also helping plan the album rollout and all these things that come with it then there's going to be something that falls by the wayside and that's why one of the key things to successful artists is literally their team. It's not talent. Come on. There's so many talent artists that even have money right? They have the funding but the ball gets dropped. Even with these artists that we know that are huge and loved already and they might have a project that just doesn't hit because the team dropped the ball on that particular project but then they pick it back up with something else. So keep that in mind. Your manager has to be organized. I'm spending time on that because you have to make sure if you can tell you got a manager and like they're dropping a ball and they can't remember stuff and they're missing meetings and all that stuff that's probably not going to be a good manager for you. Another thing is they have to be great with relationships because for the most part a lot of artists are going to spend time with a lot of artists right? Or they're going to spend time in that studio. Some of these artists don't even want to deal with any of this industry stuff at all and as a manager they have to be the people who move and shake the people who stay out late or get out early and deal with these business circles and build these relationships because so much of this stuff is again not money but connections as well. They're going to be able to help you, be able to spend less money if you can build these relationships. It's a key, key part to being a manager. If you can't build relationships, maintain relationships and make sure you understand how to utilize these relationships then you're not going to be a good manager. So if you could tell that the person that you're looking at to be your manager doesn't have that then you want to keep that in mind as well because hey just to give a little insight on what being a manager is like for a lot of people a lot of times they're being this barrier for the artist because artists sometimes y'all got some BS going on y'all y'all are messing the situation up and a manager has to either say hey yo you know what I mean I'm sorry they have to either put their name on the line and say you know I'm gonna fix it or sometimes they might even say you know you know they're artists just be real they might the artist you know they don't understand and they're in their films but I got you I'm gonna make sure we handle this situation or they might even sometimes tell the artist that this is what they're gonna get and they'll negotiate something that is actually reasonable versus what the artist might think they deserve at that time. There's a lot of little things that go on in that middleman situation just for the manager to juggle these personalities you have to be good at juggling these personalities and you have to have the type of personality that really can be clutch you know I mean if you don't know sports and you don't know clutch you know you have to be good under pressure because there is so much pressure dealing with these personalities and still trying to achieve something at the end of the day last but not least a manager should be great at research because that's the way you find people that's the way you find relationships that's how you get to the right information whether that's knowing how to google online and find stuff and that's a real thing because a lot of people they know how to use google but they don't understand how to use google for research and they know how to consume information but they don't know how to actually sift through and find good information versus this is just the information that google is popping up on the first page right there's a difference between that a great manager will know how to do that whether it's online or speaking with people and now let's get into some contract things that you should understand as an artist because these are some basic standard things that you'll see in manager contracts and a lot of times they start off manager friendly on purpose but you can negotiate these things if you see fit you just have to understand what you're looking at all right so the first thing to understand when it comes to the contract is there's a commission you have to understand what that commission is going to be again that's that five ten fifteen twenty percent twenty five thirty percent that they will take from all the money that comes in whatever that number is you have to agree upon that figure that part out but that number it makes sense i know some people are like why are you taking a percentage of my money well they only get paid when you get paid and you need somebody who gets aligned artists who don't understand why they're paying for people they don't understand business right you have to think about the fact or if you actually look at the numbers the amount of money that a lot of these companies make right i'm talking about apple amazon any company versus the amount of money they take home then you would clearly understand where the money is going right it's not just artists a lot of times they say oh you're making this much which are only bringing home this much it's not necessarily because you're getting scammed or you're you're using money on something bad a lot of it is just an actual part of business so sometimes i wish people would take that negative stigma off of it because people have to get fed people have to get paid they have families and not only are you paying for families you're paying for maybe the building that you're in or the studio that you're using or or the trucks that are that are moving the freight all these things they cost money so the basic business you will be paying people if you think everybody's going to be doing everything for you for free or for the low then you're wrong so that's commission the second thing is the term of the agreement their short term management contracts and then there's long-term management contracts and then i know a lot of people at some points are moving on an agreement that doesn't have any particular time frame is more like yo i'm your manager we don't even talk about when i'm going to be your manager until we're just that's it i'm the manager it's kind of maybe assumed to be limitless or just not have been thought through in that way especially when you're starting out because one everybody's is trying to get on which is understandable but a term of agreement is something that i suggest doing i mean it's a part of a standard contract you should keep that in mind because hey one manager might be saying i'm going to blow you up and get you signed and i don't want to deal with you after this another manager might be saying we're on a three-year agreement because that's just our standard contract and that's what we do because they're in that position of leverage it depends on that situation but understand that's a valuable part of the contract and then there's another duration that's separate from the duration of the actual management agreement right because a manager cannot be your manager anymore but still be making money from you oftentimes this is in situations when a manager gets you signed to a label and you're still with that label there's artists even legendary artists i can't think of the names right now but they've been with the same label for like 30 years where that same manager theoretically is still getting that commission from that same artist even if they haven't been their manager in 20 years unless there was some kind of renegotiation of course right that kind of thing might have been in place i'm kind of buy out who knows renegotiation are always possible but the duration of agreement or a duration of commission right is one thing to keep in mind as well because it's hard to think about this stuff up front but when you start moving and this you know dream and this hobby starts to become a career then all of a sudden everything that you've done starts to make a lot more sense and seem to be a lot more impactful that's why artists really start to get salty it's not even i feel like sometimes other people doing them wrong sometimes you so much just want to get on you're ignoring things that are simple and plain right in front of you and maybe you are i don't know maybe you don't even believe that you're going to get on so when you actually get on and you have to deal with those repercussions of how you chose to get on is different right um and you feel salty feel a little remorse so that's another thing and last but not least that we're going to cover when it comes to management contracts there's so much more to it but who collects the money understand a lot of managers don't even want to touch the money for one you know it's they're already dealing with so much and there's so many things that come with money in itself right when we talk about accounting right and all of the things that go with accounting to make sure that y'all are filing properly or just to even have to make sure that you're checking from this situation where you're supposed to receive money or making sure that you're paying out the money that you were supposed to be paying out to whoever you owe it to there's so many additional things and so much of it is really tedious right it's tedious but it has to be done is real work and your manager likes to focus a lot of times on bringing in new business not literally managing the money that's already come in so a lot of people end up getting business managers but that's another cut and another thing to pay or accounting however you want to say it so those are some things to consider though when it comes to your contract because you got to figure out who the money's gonna go to if your artist like I want the money to come to me I don't know how that works out I don't necessarily know that type of agreement that that there is but I'm sure it's out there there's a little bit of everything out there so moving on to the fourth thing we already covered the fact that your manager is not an investor number two what makes a good manager number three some strong things to consider when it comes to your contract just some standards some basic stuff and number four some of the people to look out for that could potentially be good managers and a little bit why so let's go ahead and get in number four people who are in PR right if people are out doing music PR they work for an agency or they're interning up under somebody whatever that is people who have some of that experience could be good for managers one to be in those type of jobs you got to have some organizational skills to at least do it well and also they're already in the business and seeing some side of business and they understand a lot of that image and marketing type perspective how a lot of that works with the media so somebody already having some of that perspective it works it doesn't mean everybody who's in PR doing PR is going to be your manager or a great manager but it is a good prototype to look for because also those type of people are in a position where they have to build relationships and once again what's key to being a manager relationships relationships relationships another good position to look out for is anybody who's in promotions if they're a promoter like clubs like Scooter Braun Scooter Braun was a club promoter at at opera right like anybody who's doing that is probably good at once again marketing they probably have to deal with a lot of people because that's a part of promotions you're managing the both sides you're getting the artist you're building the image but you're also dealing with the business on the back end and they're in these positions that force them to know some stuff right and then in the same vein you're looking at people who might throw shows might have their own show they might have their own festival or something like that these people are starting to get a gist of what these sides of the business look like so yes when we talk about a manager there's a lot of entrepreneurial aspect to it and you could just find somebody who's an entrepreneur and doing that well so they know how to figure it out that's a good thing but if you want to talk about people who already might have a nice leg up and they're already in and within music then those are a few good positions to look for now of course there's so many other positions to check out for and anybody again in those positions doesn't mean that they're going to be good at being a manager but you do want to find somebody who's already out in the business getting some sort of experience hopefully because they'll already have some assets to bring to the table probably that they aren't activating and using for themselves in that way because they're just doing their job at that point also a lot of videographers and photographers kind of end up having a lot of those connections and getting to see certain things as well something to consider but that's it for now in this particular video this is Music Monday so we're talking music stuff and this video is brought to you by brandmannetwork.com because I signed myself we have artists build their brand and develop their fan base if you want to check it out go ahead and check out the link in the description below if you like this video go ahead and like button if you like it might as well share and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe