 I think social media is incredible. It's also horrible. It's like, it's lowering the bar. There's a reason why on average, it takes about seven to 10 years. Did I hear you correctly when you said it takes seven years to become an artist or discover who you are as an artist? It takes about average, and it might be a little longer now because the burden is solely on the artist and because of social media. But the average is about seven to 10 years, I'm gonna put in quotes to find your voice. Right? You think of a painter and you can see like their painting series and like their pathway and then they kind of hit something. You go, oh, that's when they hit. Like that's when they hit their stride and everything after that is in that realm. And they'll have different series but like they found their expression. And that's about a seven to 10 year journey on average. So is it seven to 10 years from the moment they decide to start, I guess, creating an art or the moment they start deciding to seriously pursue being an artist? That's a good question. Probably from the time that they're just creating art, but I think there has to be a little bit of like, the word might not be seriousness, but clarity to it, right? Like at some point someone might be like messing around and then they go, oh, wait, I wanna like, I wanna get behind this. Like I wanna pursue this. And it gets a little like, seriousness isn't the word. It's more dedicated or yeah, like I'm on this path. It's probably from that, you know, that's probably more of where you kick in, but it takes about a hundred live shows to be at zero. Like I've done a hundred live performances. Okay, I got something now. Like everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong. So when it happens again, I'm not freaked out. I've been through this before. I'm understanding how to engage with my audience. Like I'm feeling it. I'm not trying to please them anymore. I'm just showing up being me. Like there's so much that has to happen. Live audience touring. Like there are things I cannot teach an artist. It will only happen on tour. Like everything that you're learning with me, when you start implementing it night after night, that's when lessons come in that you're like, oh yeah, like the coins start dropping or, hey, I realized this or like, I'm actually working my voice better because I have to use it every night. So I'm not blowing it on this night. Like I cannot teach it to you. You can only learn it in the experience of touring. I can prep you for it. I can give you the tools to use when you're in it, but the lesson won't happen like in my space here. It'll happen night after night with a different audience in every city. You know, and you're looking at like, for example, when people play LA, New York and Nashville as a rule, a lot of bands don't enjoy those gigs because they're full of industry people or Nashville is full of a lot of musicians. And people are like, ah, no, sorry, Nashville, I'm not trying to be bad at you. It's just that what happens is, is the audience are fully musicians. So they're often not being their fan. They're being, they're like going, oh, wow, that chord change. Oh my gosh. They're like, they're studying, right? Or if it's an industry thing, everyone's kind of going, hmm, the hell is this band gonna sell? Like they're not showing up like a music fan going, you know? And so when people, when you play those audiences, you gotta learn like, okay, how do I still deliver? How do I do my job when I'm not getting the kind of feedback I get from, you know, Atlanta and Ohio where people are just mad for the music? And only on tour do you figure that out. Do you experience it? Now, do you see social media as a challenge for artists when we're in an era where an artist can record and we see this especially, especially in hip hop, but it's now in a lot of other genres these days too, where it could be a young teenager on TikTok, they record their first song or a few songs in for fun, they blow up and they haven't had that seven years that you just discovered. How do you look at that? And maybe have you even like worked or spoken with some of those people who have had troubles in that experience personally? I totally have. There's so much, I mean, like anything, they're pros and cons to anything. I think social media is incredible. It's also horrible. It's like, it's lowering the bar, you know? There's a reason why it take, you know, if it takes seven to 10 years, I don't think anyone should wait. Like you can't, if you're a person going, oh, I have to wait till it's perfect, you need to be releasing your music because you're gonna wait forever. If you're a person who's like, no, no, first draft is good. You need to do 10 drafts before you release it. Like you gotta, you gotta see your tendencies here. All right, 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. Because the fact that anyone can release anything, so the really good side of it is we're hearing more voices, right? We're getting information that we've, we're having conversations that we have never had. It's incredible, right? People are learning things that they didn't know were existing because you can, you know, you're hearing things from around the world. But also you can put anything out at any time. So people are putting out their first songs, which can be awesome, but also can be not ready, right? Like you gotta develop yourself a little. You gotta get yourself somewhere to a certain kind of standard before you go public, I think. At the same time, people love to take a journey with you. So don't wait till you're like, you're like, you're not gonna be Beyonce on your first release. Please don't try to be. That woman has decades of experience and releases and teams and teams of people. So let people go on the journey with you. So, you know, that's why like nothing I say is like 100% right for everyone. You gotta see like your tendencies and your resistances and be like, oh, you know, if this is the center, what side of the line am I on? So I can bring myself to that center. Oh, I'm a procrastinator. Okay, let me do, do, do, let me release, release. Oh, I just go, go, go. Maybe I gotta slow down a little and put some thought into things. So with what you're talking about is, yeah, it's a problem because they have no leg, like they have no groundwork. They have no foundation underneath them to build upon. So I see a lot of burnout where they're like, okay, like fire, I went viral, let's go, go, go. But they don't know what they wanna actually put out next or there's a lot of, they just really get burned out. Like, okay, this is what my audience is responding to. So I'm gonna just keep doing more and more of that, but it's missing like layers and qualities of who they are. So they're not being seen for who they are. They're just kind of highlighting one thing really a lot. As opposed to like Alec Chambers, who's an artist that I've worked with since he was a teenager. And he put out music, original music already. He's done a little touring. He's definitely done a lot of performing. He's a multi-instrumentalist. When he started going viral on TikTok, he already had years behind him of like dedication and practice and being in the business. And then so then when he went viral, he was able to ride that wave. It wasn't all easy. I mean, he has his challenges for sure, but he just, he had a lot underneath his belt already that he's like, I'm building on something rather than like, whoa, I just, I feel like I'm like on a surfboard all the time, right? Nothing stable. So I think it's important to get like team around you that can support you and also sometimes like, take your time to like take steps forward. You know, in the world we live in, like content is on demand. Capitalism is like, you know, put it out there, make people like monetize it, you know? And you've got, not everything is for consumption. Like you've got to write a bunch of songs to find the two that are really good. You got to write the same song 10 times. So you go, that's the one. That's the best version of that story. That's the one I'm putting on the EP. And meanwhile, make other content, like show other things that maybe some songs are just like, you share them, but they don't record and release them. Maybe some things are like, this is my process. Like you have to decide what you're sharing with the world. But I think that, you know, I used to go to, well, I can't say I don't, but the gig economy has made everything commercialized and not your whole life shouldn't be commercialized. You know, like one of the artists I work with, she brought this into play and I was like, that's a really smart way of thinking about it. Child actors historically don't fare well in their lives. Like if you think of people who were child actors when they were young, they didn't really mess with their lives. But they went to a set, they acted, they went home, they had a family, but now because of the social media, like everything, you're just on all the time. You're on in your bedroom, you're on home, you're on when you go out. Like it's just constant on. Like you need downtime, you need quiet time. You need time in nature. You need time to marinate and be inspired. Like input days, you need these that are for input. You know, I think I have a thing called practice with that. Make a list of all the ways that you can practice when you go into your space. There's vocal practicing, there's songwriting, there's making beats, there's getting up and like, and performing like you're on stage. You gotta rehearse that. You're not gonna go on stage and just be like, I'm ready, you have to rehearse that. I'm gonna put a, my computer over here, my iPad over here, my phone there, I'm gonna hit record on three cameras and I'm gonna perform. And then I'm gonna watch it later and see like, what works, what doesn't? What's weird? Oh, that's cool. That's a good weird. Like, so all the ways you can practice so that when you go into your space, you have a blend of dedication. I'm dedicated, I go in regularly and room for inspiration. Like, oh, I'm inspired to do this today. I haven't done that in a while. Oh, I've been avoiding finishing that song. I gotta finish that song. Okay, I'm gonna practice live. And then you gotta have input days. Input days are, I'm gonna go to a museum and look at art outside of music. Input days are, I'm gonna watch music videos of iconic artists and just watch live performances. What are they doing that works? What's, I wanna learn from them. I'm gonna listen to an album top to bottom. So every day is not an outward production day. You need inspiring days and you need rest time. And in our capitalistic society, like you are not encouraged to do that. But artists and creatives, you gotta have downtime and you gotta have, gotta live too, right? You gotta live and get your heart broken and take risks and be wild and you gotta live to have something to say. Appreciate you for watching. If you like content like this, you'll love seeing our music marketing strategies that we use as an agency to actually blow up artists to millions and even billions of streams that are available for free at nolabelsnecessary.com and the cool part about it that's gonna really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some views that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success and you have the ability to have communication with us. We get on live talks, a lot of cool things for members and it's free just to hop in. So check it out right now at nolabelsnecessary.com.