 Artists can make thousands of dollars selling their art to just one person, but to do that you have to understand that you don't just have to settle for pittings at a time, you don't have to be afraid to ask somebody to buy from you and all in all it requires a big perspective shift. Now what do I mean by that? We get so this idea all the time of if I just had a thousand true fans and they spend a hundred dollars with me every single year, then I'd have a hundred thousand dollars from the year, but what if you only had 100 fans, but those 100 fans spend a thousand dollars with you every year? It's less people, but they're spending more money and you still have a hundred thousand dollars in that year. The numbers are actually arbitrary. What's important is understanding the depth of a relationship and how do you create that depth? And we're going to go over the four elements in this video. Actually, we're going to go really, really, really deep into one of them, the most important and you'll start to see something that personally I don't see out there enough. I have multiple clients, friends, artists that you've seen us with actually on the channel or talk about and they've sold multiple pieces of art, their music or a single show and did thousands of dollars, one thousand dollars and they've done it multiple times, but it's all from understanding this and I want to be clear, the multiple time part, it's the important part because anybody can pull something off one time, I think personally. So in this video, I'm going to break that down and really get into the details, but before I do that, there's two things I really want to speak on just really quickly. First, I want to let y'all know that this video is actually inspired from my video last Saturday. I got some feedback where one of the things I mentioned, people were asking me questions about, some people hit me up about it and it made me realize, oh, I should go deeper on this. So I appreciate that and I pay attention. And the second thing is at the end of this video, I'm going to make a free offer and I mean truly free, you're not going to have to send me any links, you're not going to have to give me your email, none of that go anywhere, none of that just trust me. If I steal you wrong, if I steal you wrong, then blast me in the comments and all that good stuff. But I mean like a truly free offer, but you got to just wait to see what I, when I'm saying you could fast forward, but it's too much value to skip in between. There's four levers of value that you can pull to increase and decrease value. And if you want people to buy from you, they have to be able to understand value. And how do they understand that? You have to communicate that. Make sense? Right. Now what are those four levers? The primary four levers, I want to make sure I say I'm right, is economic value, social value, emotional value and functionality. I'm not going to go super deep into every single detail on each one, but I want you to hear these for one more time, economic value, social value, emotional value and functionality. There's one of these that artists focus on more than others. Take a second and guess the answer is economic value. And this is why that's a problem. Most people who don't understand value, what that looks like and how you truly create it, they think about money first. If I only understand economic value and I don't understand the other forms of value in terms of communication, you know what I'm going to do if I want you to buy something? I'm going to start to say, man, if I want these people to come to my show, I don't want them to feel like they aren't getting enough value. So what am I going to do? It's only $5 to come to my show or it's free to come to my show or I made this visual art piece or vinyl to go along with my project. I'm going to charge only like $10. It forces you to lower the price to increase perception of value. And that's all artists do over and over again. Most of the artists that I work with, right? And this is what we're usually like coaching them through is like, no, if you want people to buy from you, your art does have value, but you have to understand how you extract and communicate that value to people otherwise. The only thing you're going to be left to do is use the economic lever, which forces you to just drop the price. And nobody wants to drop their price and get closer and closer in this race to zero. Do you? The worst part about that for an artist is you're building something that comes from you, right? This is your mind and their end result is basically an expression of you. It's one thing to take something from your mind and then I build, I don't know, a software or something like that. It doesn't feel as direct as a part of you. But as an artist, you're basically building out, right? An end result of yourself or a capturing of yourself in a moment. So when you devalue that and you only see a way to cheapen that as a way to get other people to see value in that, you have this internal impact of cheapening yourself. You feel devalued. And even when you make the sale, it doesn't feel good, right? You would think anytime an artist wants to make a sale, it feels great, right? It doesn't feel that way if you made the sale for way less than what you feel like you're worth, right? Now I'm not talking about the delusional. Oh, I think I'm a billion dollar fella and, and you know, no, you give them some like not the delusional stuff. I'm talking about straightforward, like, all right, what's a fair, fair price? What did you put in it? Where are you in the spectrum of your career? Okay. So because this cheapening of yourself can be so detrimental to not only your finances and ability to support yourself from a career standpoint, but to your internal confidence, right? Emotional state of being. It's important to understand that every artist should become a luxury brand. And I truly believe that. And if you have any artists and manage your friends, share this with them over and over again. Every artist should be a luxury brand, all right? If you are not one, become one. And if you think they'll think you sound crazy, send them this video. And before I go further, by the way, I appreciate those of y'all who have said, yo, Sean, keep doing this Saturday series. I really do. And again, I only ask that you subscribe to this series, just subscribe to the channel, because it just lets me know, we can see the steps, right? That it's worth doing, right? We can see that people are subscribing to these videos. And as I said, even the commentary on my last video is actually what inspired me to go deeper on this topic today. And for those of y'all who don't know this Saturday series is really much more of an open, real insight style of video that we know is only going to reach the people who are already subscribed or watching this channel for the most part. It's not necessarily formatted to go viral, where it's going to touch people who don't care as much about the deeper topics, because most people just don't. You might be surprised. But back to the concept that every artist should become a luxury brand. What do I mean by that exactly? Well, luxury brands cost how much? A lot of money. Don't have to insert exact price, but we know the idea of luxury means it's going to cost more, ultimately, because people perceive it as a luxury, right? Where really, if you think about it functionally in life, a luxury means something that you do not need. It is a luxury. However, we get people to pay more for things that are luxuries. How is that? Why is that? Because we're not focused on the economic value when I'm selling Gucci, when I'm selling Louis, when I'm selling whatever the most expensive car you can think of is. You know what I'm selling? I'm selling something deeper than that. I'm selling an idea. I'm selling a feeling. I might even be feeling a void in ways. So I'm not focused on the price in order to communicate value. You know what a luxury brand does? They communicate value and then they give you the price of that value they just communicated. It's the difference, right? Most people say, this is the price. And now how can I make you feel like it's worth that price? I promise you this project is worth $50. I'm telling you, it's so good. I've done all this and this is the real art, but that's what the people do versus saying, like a luxury brand, I show you the imagery of being on an island. I show you the beautiful women that come around you and the successful men that come around you and do big deals, talk big business, and this great life that you have all because you have this cologne on. What? Smelling good changes your life to that level, to that extent? I mean, you know, in some level, I ain't gonna lie. Smelling good does impact your life positively, but to that extent, not necessarily. But what's happening there, I want to make sure I don't leave anything out. What's happening is they're focused on how they make you feel, right? How they make you feel. And then they focus on the function that that feeling feels in your life. For example, if you're an artist, what are you feeling for somebody? I've said that you're the hero for somebody, right? You are somebody's hero. They're looking up to you. They admire your traits, your personality, the type of music, right? The feeling that you give, you make them feel pumped up. So they appreciate you as an artist because of that, you might give them courage or you might give them the ability to have a conversation that they need to have with somebody else in real life because you said something. You might also give them confidence in something that they just personally feel inside. A lot of that falls into the hero world, but then some of it just falls into the friend role. You might have music that's like depressing or something like that. And there's the rah rah. You can be better. You can get over it. There's versions of that. Some people go to that for artists, but some people just want to sit in it, right? And they hear your depression and you talk about your experience or some of those feelings and them hearing that helps them to relate to you and it's more so relating to a friend. You hear what I'm saying? And then we just summarize it all because there's multiple ways I can talk about those two roles and there's other roles that people play, but it's really, you are feeling some type of void and the void doesn't have to be super deep. It doesn't have to be depression, right? It doesn't have to be confidence or insecurity. It might just be, I need this party to get lit. How can I get this party lit? Here's my artist that I go to for that. All right? I want to chill vibe. Here's the artist I go to this. Oh, I need the vibe. I got this void where I need to feel romantic. You know what I mean? I need to create the energy in the room. Oh, here's my playlist for that. But a big thing, the deeper thing when we get into brand identity is validation. Validation. And this is when we get back to the luxury brands. Validation. What does this mean? If I have a certain belief system and I hear you communicate that belief system, you're validating how I feel, how I think. But sometimes you might not actually truly communicate something directly. You might just represent something. Tupac is really good at this to this day, right? He still represents something. J. Cole. I think the Russell is doing this in a lot of ways. If I think about like younger artists, there's a lot of artists in the rock space that do this well, the ones that have made it to a certain degree, where me just wearing your shirt, your merch validates a certain belief system about my identity. It validates who I am. People are looking for that sometimes. That's when you think about the functionality of value. It's not just does it work and how well something works. That's the quality side when we get on that part of functionality and value. But even if we're not talking about building hard products, there's a functionality in saying me listening to this artist says something about who I am to the rest of the world. That's what artists do more than anything for people. When you go that deep. So now I'm willing to support certain things about you. I'm willing to buy certain things from you because it's deeper than buying a varsity jacket because you did some capsule or merch release or just buying a project or a vinyl. There's a representation of myself in you. When you understand that, then you start thinking, well, what do I represent or what can I represent? How do I communicate my value and point of view so clearly and deeply that people see that in me and now they're connected with me beyond that because my function in their life goes beyond just hearing the music directly. And it doesn't mean you have to do all this silly stuff, give speeches or anything like that. Nothing wrong with giving speeches. You can actually do it purely through your music based on what you're saying. But everybody's music is in all like straight message. You can represent this in so many different ways. So with that being said, luxury brand. Let's rethink this concept a little bit. When most people miss, and I hope I kind of painted a picture for you where this is going to drive home correctly. But what most people miss is luxury is relative. What is one of the elements that I spoke on in the beginning? I said there's economic value, all right? There's functional value, emotional value, and then there's social value. A lot of the emotional value, I think, has become pretty clear based on a lot of things I said. But if you think about social value, another lever that luxury brands pull is if you have this watch, or you have a Lambo, or you have whatever type of luxury brand you're representing a certain level of status, which is relative to other people, right? To have status, there have to be other people that do and do not have status. There has to be this spectrum that exists, right? So why is luxury relative? Because status goes into more than money. People just think about it that way because that's what we think about when we hear luxury brands. But you've probably been in environments, let's say when you're in high school and money might not have been a thing. Some people might not even have money, but somehow there was some level of status that existed based on what? If you're a gamer, you're not worried about how much money somebody has for their status. If you're in sports, what is your status, right? It comes from winning. There's different forms of status in different environments, and one can be completely counter for one audience than another. So what are the things that people view in your category as status? How do you increase and decrease? And ultimately, how do you make your brand become a status symbol? Not to the point of elitism or anything like that. But what luxury brands focus on heavily is what do I mean socially, right? How do I connect with people? And simply focusing heavily on the emotional side of it and that identity, right? Where people can see themselves in you, validate themselves from you, find you as a hero, find you as a friend, and then having some type of message or mission, those are key levers that really start to get people to build an idea of status around you, whether you're trying or not. So that's the luxury brand aspect of this. Now if you want to see me go way deeper in this, I actually have a four hour workshop that I did last year and it was completely free. I did it with a partnership and that's actually something you can see when you join our 30 day challenge. That's only $1. You've probably heard me speak of this if you've seen multiple of my videos, but I just don't touch on that part. There's a bunch of free stuff that comes with that. And people who ask, well, why don't I just throw it on YouTube? It was done as a part of a partnership, right? So I don't have all, I don't have all say in that. So you can check that out at www.knowlabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days, link in the bio description wherever you're watching this. And even with that, I actually want to say something because a lot of artists are afraid to do something like what I just did, right? I just spoke about something that I do have to offer people. And by the way, this is not the free offer, like completely free offer that I was talking about when I said that $1, knowlabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days, you do have to do the www. But I do want to use this for the last point, right? A lot of artists are afraid to mention their value. They're afraid to ask people who are in their audience for something. But the way I think about it is differently. And this is something that we coach artists through again and again. It's, look, do you have something to offer? Do you want to fund your career? Do you want to be able to continue to do what you're doing? At some point, right? If you're actually trying to do it right, right? Build infrastructure around it and do it at a high level, at high quality, and give of yourself, of your art, right? No difference than a huge part of what we do is give of information. Then you have to be willing to be brave enough or get out of your own way and out of your own head to let people know that you do have something available. But how do you decrease anxiety around that? You have to believe in what you're doing. Right? You have to believe that I'm not offering a trash show. I'm not offering a trash project. I think everybody should hear this. That's what a lot of people like about Kanye. Kanye believes he's so dope. He doesn't mind talking about how great he believes he is. He doesn't mind to talk about why everybody should get his product and his product is better than everybody's product because he has that level of confidence in it. It's not just, oh, because I want you to buy. I want you to buy. I'm greedy, right? There are some people who are like that, but there's also just, look, well, what am I here for? One of my mission, right? And if I know on the other side of that rainbow, after they interact with me, after they engage with me at my show, my concert, they'll be happy, right? It only feels bad if you feel like they're going to come to your show and they're going to buy your project and then they're going to be disappointed, right? But if you know that, yo, everybody's like, yo, this is life changing. I love this. Do it. Do it again. If that's the experience you start to see, you get these testimonials, you become more and more confident. And all in all, I say that it just comes down to being a professional or not. If you are a professional at some point, it means that there's going to be some level of transaction. You can perform your butt off for free. You can make music all the time in the studio for free, right? And just live your art, be your art, create your art. Never has to be for sale and deal with any of this pain of offering value. But if you want to support yourself, if you want to try to reach more and more people, inevitably, there's going to become a point where you have to determine to pursue it professionally, which goes beyond just the actual skill set, no different than being a professional athlete has to do with way more than just being an athlete, but somebody who can schedule themselves, eat correctly, become a team player. All right? There's all these elements that come into play. So all the time I tell my homies, look, I have to do it too. All right? So I can back it up and tell you how to walk through that and how to think through that and look at all these other artists I helped do the same. But it starts with understanding the things in this video. So before I go too far, and I just don't want to spend too long on this video, because like I said, I did an entire four-hour workshop that was done in four separate parts, so I could talk on this for a very, very long time. And I don't want to be too much on a tangent. I want you to just be able to go through the specific parts. I want to make this free offer before I forget. I was speaking with an artist earlier this week, and it got put on my heart. So what is the offer? If you have a contract deal that you're working through, feel free to reach out to me for my thoughts on it. That's it. All right? That is the offer. All right? I don't make money from deals. That's not my expertise. I'm not a lawyer. And this is not legal advice that I would be giving you. And I want to make some boundaries around this. I do mean a real deal. I don't mean for any reason at all like, hey, Sean, what are you thinking? It's like the smallest thing in every decision you're making. But throughout my career, I've definitely got a lot of understanding from the business, right? And I've helped artists negotiate some pretty big deals, right? Some pretty big deals. At this point, can accumulate over a million dollars, many hundreds of thousands of dollars in single deals alone. And that's looked like management situations. That's looked like negotiating for booking situations, individual venue situations, signing deals for record label contracts and distribution contracts, or not signing in a why they don't make sense, right? So that is my offer. Again, but it has to be serious, please not for anything. And the artist I spoke to earlier this week, she was meeting with the label and she asked my feedback. And it just reminded me that we've come so far, but there's still a lot of nuances to this business and artists still could use help, people could use help, right? When it comes to not making bad decisions that can impact their life to dire extremes. Because boy was the offer that she had on the table that she was seriously thinking about a bad deal. And all of them weren't bad situations. But again, it did remind me that I do want to make that offer to people. Let y'all know that I am somebody that you come to in those situations, not for the legal aspects of every single point on the actual contract, but for the general pieces, the core pieces of the contract that are being exchanged. And I have to speak generally in this video because I don't know exactly the type of contract. And I will tell you also, Hey, this isn't my thing, but there have been very, very, very many of these situations that I've helped with. And I never have or will take a dime as far as I can personally foresee. And I want to make create a super never because maybe years from now I decide to take on a role like that in the business. But again, I do ask if you want me to look at this, make sure it's something serious. And I also do not promise that just because you reach out to me about something like this, that I will be able to respond because I do still have my life responsibilities. I think that part is only fair. Don't feel bad or like I'm sonning you or something like that just because I didn't respond. And I guess with that being said, how do you reach out to me? Just do it on like social or however you know how to reach out to me. And I'm not going to create like a form or something like that. But just know if two years from now you have a situation, you know, you could feel free reaching out. And I will be honest about the fact that most of the situations that I have helped out with these have been people that have been like clients of the agency and we built a relationship over the years or many of them, like the young woman I helped earlier this week, she's in that 30 day challenge that I referenced earlier. So we have opportunities to like build a relationship. All right, we're talking, we're having conversations and I'm already prioritizing you to some extent in my life if you are a client or in like one of our programs or something like that. However, there have also been people who have just deemed me on Instagram. It's just that I don't have as high of a prioritization to answer random DMs. So this video is already going long enough. Again, that is the free offer. I truly do mean that and I do ask still one, please be serious when you, if you ever reach out on something like that to don't use it to try to like finesse into another situation and get a free marketing plan and all this other stuff, please don't do that because I will sniff that out. And three, know that I do have a life and when I say this, this is something that's truly free, but that also comes with the fact that I might not get to you or get to you fast enough. Like, oh girl, she got lucky. She was like, yo, I got this situation I'm about to have tomorrow and with this meeting with these executives. Can I get some feedback? And I actually happened to catch it and be able to respond within a pretty decent amount of time just because where I was in life for that weekend. So that's it for this video. And again, any of y'all who really want to go deep into brand identity, understanding yourself and how to sell for yourself and also how to use that as leverage to prepare to build 1000 fans in a 30 day span. You can get all that for only one dollar, see other artists that we're working with that are doing it and get real feedback from me at www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days. I hope you've enjoyed this video and I wish you all the success.