 What's up everybody once again is Brandon Shawn and we got to talk about how you can use social media to make the industry come to you. I'm talking about managers or producers, whoever in the industry come to you without necessarily doing these big marketing campaigns or even having a lot of you's followers. Perfect example is an artist by the name of Pretty Boy. He has about 18,000 followers on Instagram and Teddy Riley reached out to him. He slid in his DMs saying, bruh I got to get in contact with you next time I'm in Virginia. Now if you don't know who Teddy Riley is, he's a certified legend in the game. Do your research. He's been in an entire genre called New Jack Swing. He's wanted for Rails mentors. He's like the Metro Boomin of the 80s for you guys who just like need a new producer to put in context. Except as dope as Metro Boomin is, he didn't, you know, invent a genre himself. So the question is how did Pretty Boy make the industry come to him and it's not just Teddy Riley that came to him and reached out to him by the way. Now there's three primary things that can really make somebody interested in you and reach out to you. So of course you got to have some kind of social presence when it comes to Pretty Boy. He has his social media following on Instagram but he also used Facebook heavily. There were periods of time earlier on where he had viral videos on Facebook doing in the upper hundreds of thousands and millions at times every once in a while. And it was just him saying by the way, which leads me to number one, talent is one of those ways that you can get people to reach out to you. I know it sounds crazy because everybody believes that nobody has talent these days yada yada yada yada but having talent is a key. One of the keys actually, you don't necessarily have all three of these things but at least two of these things will put you in a solid position. So him, he can sing his ass off. I'm just going to play a few quick videos of him singing. The guy has a voice. I'm talking about old school voice can sing for real and he can sing in various voices. He has all that you need vocally to be a star. But you don't even have to have as much of a voice as he does. Not to say Ella May can't sing. However, DJ Mustard reached out to Ella May the same situation. She didn't have an amazing amount of followers. I think she might have only had 15 or 30,000 followers at the time that DJ Mustard reached out to her a few years ago. I did a video about that. I'll put it in the link in the description below. But what he said about Ella May was there was something about her voice. So you need the right person to hear it who can understand what you have. Because I hear a lot of people hating all the time talking about some people can't sing or some people can't rap, but they don't have a certain talent. So you're going to need the right person to happen to stumble across your talent that understands your talent or it resonates with them. That's very important because I've had plenty of people ask me, yo, how come this person blew up from doing covers? But I've been doing covers from a long time. One, you might not be able to sing or rap as well as you think you can. Or two, the person who actually resonates with it and can see it like the right A&R type I might not have come across it yet. And some people don't even see the full talent while other people actually know how to nurture what you have and present it on a level that you become a star. Number two, now when it comes to Pretty Boy, this is one of the most important aspects and that is a unique image. This guy is a complete character, a fool, blown, pimped from the 1960s, 70s combination of Prince, who's one of his huge inspirations. And why is this so important? It's important because obviously your image makes you stand out, but when you look at his image, especially, it's an image that a lot of people won't understand at the very beginning. And those are the type of things that actually work a lot more than you would think they do. The images that make people curious versus making them say, oh, that's cool. Or I understand it immediately. The curiosity is what's going to bring attention, make people wonder about this person or make them think negative or positive things about this person. We've known that about being polarizing. And his image will definitely do that. I've shown his page to people before, looked through his comments and then you'll always have some people who might think he's gay at first. And then you'll have some women who are like, ooh, this guy is cool or he's fine or all those types of things. You're going to get this incomplete mix. But when you have these doubts and this type of energy, first of all, at least it's energy. A lot of people, once again, you get seen, but nobody is thinking anything about you or the image that you're presenting because it's just not interesting in any sort of way. Takashi did that brilliantly because not only was he doing colorful hair, he wasn't the first to do colorful hair, but he was looking like a borderline clown. And that just made it even more interesting, right? He really committed to the image change that he did. And just like we all know standing out is key, right? There's so many people who are doing this colorful hair type stuff and things like that. That's not anything new. That's not anything interesting. You're not seeing people do this guy's image. Not yet, right? There might be some people who try to do it after he blows up, but you're not really seeing anybody come with this, whether you like it or not. What's important is that it eventually gives you some sort of reaction. And at some point it's going to turn people into understanding what's going on and making other people want to copy. And number three, this guy is super entertaining. Being entertaining is one of the most important things there is when it comes to social media anyway, right? Cause you have to keep people's attention. You have to keep them coming back engaging. We already know that, but when it comes to him and why he's so entertaining is he brings a certain level of authenticity, right? If you actually watched the video with Teddy Riley, Teddy Riley was actually saying when he met him, he was wondering if this was the real deal, right? A lot of people are these social media faces, but in real life, they're kind of boring. They aren't those stars or they don't bring that same type of energy. And he basically said, no, this, this guy was the same character from Instagram in real life. And that's important, especially when we're talking about making the industry come to you because those people who feel something and feel like they can mold and help bring a vision to life, they need to feel that same thing in real life that they see and feel when they see you on the internet. A few things about pretty boys image that make him so entertaining is for one, like he just walks around randomly singing all the time, whether it's coming in the store, coming out the store at the mall, singing the girls at the club, singing with his mom, but he's singing and he's just doing it casually like he's in his own world. Another thing is that whole pimp type persona that he has in his own, right? He brings like this cockiness. But he does it in a way that is actually kind of funny. And keep in mind all while you're watching this, there's people who are still kind of confused. Like, what is this guy? It's something interesting. I don't know what it is. I don't know if I like it. He's weird. Why is this guy like this? But at the end of the day, it's him. Like he shared tales of himself growing up in the hood in Virginia, but then he's also shared his first trip to Miami and how that made him feel. I've never seen anything like this. But what it's done is go put it on my mind. Sometimes that's all you need. Where a lot of people might just flex and make it seem like, Hey, I'm larger in life. I did this. I'm a beast. I'm studying on these folks. He gave it a slightly different perspective and continuing to push that authentic narrative of his within this whole other umbrella of just being entertaining. Those things make him attractive to people in the industry. So when we're talking about drawing people to you and just producers or managers, people like Teddy Riley, just legends, they have to be able to see something in you, right? They have to be able to see some sort of vision, something interesting, because these people have seen a lot. They see stuff again and again and again and again. This guy breaks that pattern. It's all about fear and not how to zig when other people zag, but being able to do that authentically. Unless you're just the type of person that hops on other people's waves and there's nothing wrong with being that kind of artist either. So once again, each of those things are something that you can keep in mind, especially if you can do at least two of these, but that would be one, just have the talent to have a unique image that gets projected and three be entertaining. So you keep people's intention and they engage with you. And these things can work for you. They've worked for him. They work for Ella May and so many other artists. When it comes to him, it's brought a situation where somebody like Teddy Riley legitimately wants to work for him, like to work with him and help him present himself to the world on a larger scale. And I honestly believe if this guy can find the right sound, something that could be done in the present day, because a lot of his singing style is old school and it gets appreciated in a live show. But when it comes to being on the radio or being, you know, Spotify playlist, just catching on with a younger demographic, there's going to have to be some modernization, but you don't want to lose what's interesting and unique about him and his voice. And once he catches on with a few songs, then he can branch back out and take people back to that old school like he has. So that's three ways that you can make the industry come to you. I would love to hear your examples that you might have seen, or just your thoughts in general. Definitely check pretty boy stuff out. I put some links to his information in the description below. And other than that, if you liked this video, go ahead and like button. If you like your mouse, we'll share it. And if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe.