 Baw, what's up everybody. Once again, it's Brandon Shawn and today I got two very special guests for you guys, Michael and Malone, aka Catalyst and Moxes. Now, these guys are special in the fact that for one, they're two artists that are managing each other. And some really cool thing is if you look at Moxes' page on YouTube, he built a following of over 6,000 subscribers in less than a year. And we talk about some hacks and some things that they went through. And it's going to be very helpful because since they aren't blown up yet, that you can actually get some real practical things that they've done to build the audience to the point where they are. Because a lot of people could benefit from just having 6,000 subscribers on YouTube. And we also touch on the fact that they had a bad manager at some point, but you'll get all that information in the interview. Let's get to it. Just to thank the picture for you guys, Moxes has what, 6,000 followers on Instagram, around that. And around 6,000 followers on YouTube. Catalyst, what do you got? What are your numbers pretty much? On YouTube, I have, it's 150. And then on Instagram, it's around, I think it's like 400 or 500 around there in the 500. Perfect. Got you. So I just wanted to paint that picture for you guys because they aren't like super far along. They aren't, you know, doing huge shows and huge numbers yet. But when I got a chance to look through some of the things that they were doing, I first found out about Moxes when he was came alone. And when I was looking at the engagement, although he's only around 6,000 now, now he wasn't at 6,000 when I first started looking at his stuff. But there was always the engagement activity and signs of a legitimate fan base. And that's where we really want to dig into certain things. So before we get into some of the management and business situations, I want to talk to you guys about how y'all built your fan base in the first place to where it is now. So what kind of, what were some of the things that y'all started to do after you give a little bit of overview of your situation and how y'all even came together? All right, well, essentially as far as fan base goes, I met him when we were what, we were probably seen, you've seen him in high school, but I've been working actively on my fan base since before then. But I started off on Twitter and my strongest following is actually on Twitter. I have about 14,000 followers and that came about by me like posting, I used to do like memes and comedy like that and I always knew I wanted to do music on the side. And it was always in the back of my mind and it was always something I was working on. So I was posting the memes and posting the comedy and actively growing my fan base there. And on the side, I was working on some music that I knew I could promote to them, which is how I got my start. And then I kind of took it over to Instagram for a while and I was doing heavy promotion on Instagram, you know, strictly through the music. So I kind of filter out the people that supported my comedy, but they weren't supporting my music. I kind of filtered them out as far as Instagram goes because I wasn't doing comedy on Instagram and it was strictly music. And then I'd say that I started to do some shows. People are going to have some questions. Right? So when you said Twitter, you were just building out you're doing purely comedy memes, all that kind of stuff. Were you doing that as a personality or were you posting memes of other types of people? Well, it was my Twitter account and it had my name, which was just Malone at the time. And I was building it as a personality, but it was Malone the personality who was making memes and stuff. And I had a bunch of viral tweets. I have several tweets over like 10, 15,000 retweets. If you scroll way back in my Twitter, you can see them, but yeah, it was a while ago, but that was how I got my initial, you know, the initial attention that I needed to then start pushing my music into them. And then from there, like I said earlier, I filtered them into Instagram and the ones that really messed with my music were translated over to my Instagram and my SoundCloud and things like that. Right. So when you posted on Twitter and started posting music on Instagram, did you tell people, I mean, will you start posting music on Twitter? Did you tell people to start following you on Instagram? Yeah, that's exactly how I did it. And that way the people that weren't interested in my music and they only wanted the memes, they would end up, you know, just staying on Twitter for the memes. But the people that were actually interested in, you know, the music and my craft, they would end up being on Instagram and finding my SoundCloud and things like that. Nope. So obviously that's a common way where people are doing one thing and they translated to everything. You know, obviously, Cardi B was comedy. Booth says he wants to transfer into rap and hasn't really done it like that yet. But I mean, there's a lot of different versions of using one thing to get into another. One last thing about the Twitter specifically, because I want to move into more of the music, but I know people are always like, how do you build a following? So I just want to talk about how you specifically built that following when you're doing a meme page. There are some people who have not figured out to build followings even when they do a meme page. Did you just post a lot? Did you get posted other places? What was your particular experience? I'd say essentially I started off by just posting a lot and I didn't develop a fan base. But you know, when I had around a hundred followers, me and a bunch of other people that did the same thing decided we would all team up and promote each other. And there was probably, I want to say, 30 of us. And that cross promotion is what led to the growth at exponential rates. Because it was a lot more than just me. If I have 100 followers and 15 other people have 100 followers, that's a big fan base right there alone. So we would cross promote as far as memes go. We kind of built up that way. But was that a, did y'all formalize that through a tweet deck or did y'all just like come together? We started off, we started off with just a with just a group chat and we would kind of just promote that way. And then once we figured out about tweet deck and who tweet and all that, then we kind of moved on to that as we got, you know, larger fan bases and things like that. Okay, dope. All right, so then you went over to Instagram and obviously you have YouTube as well. And I mean your YouTube is doing better than Instagram at this point. So how did that process happen? Well, I would say I was on Instagram, you know, strictly Instagram promoting my music for about four to five months, you know, around the time where I dropped my first like collective project and things like that. And when I was doing that, I was doing local shows and stuff like that. You know, I opened for Bone Thugs and Harmony, which I just got through an old manager. He was able to set that up. I opened for Gucci Mane and a few other artists which helped develop my fan base as strictly a musician. And then I also was entering in different, you know, skill-based rap contests. There are a lot of those and, you know, I figured I would go in those and go as hard as I could and see what I could get out of it. I ended up winning a lot of them, but that, you know, helped build up my Instagram and my Instagram was pretty active even more so than it is now. About this time last year and that's when I decided that I was going to start a YouTube channel and, you know, promote my YouTube through my Instagram, which I've done and my YouTube has been growing the fastest. I think I've grown about four to five thousand subs in the last three months, which is the majority of my fan base. Cool. Okay, so where are you guys based off out of just for those who don't know anywhere? What was that? I said for those who don't know where you guys based out of. Oh, right, yeah. We're both, we both live in Tempe, Arizona right now and a lot of the shows that we do, do are out here. You know, we don't travel too far away from home because we're known for that here, but with a limited fan base there's only so many places we can go. So we're based out of Tempe and we, most of our shows are out here. Got it. And when we talk about this YouTube, what's been your process for building on YouTube? When you talk about, I don't know, I mean, I look at your YouTube man, I know that you play games with your fans, all these kind of things. What kind of stuff, what was your strategy and approach to YouTube? Well, when I had initially started it, you know, it was, it was, I wanted to build a stronger community because, you know, with things like Instagram, Twitter and things like that, it's kind of something that everybody does, you know, like most people are consistently on Instagram and Twitter. But as far as YouTube, you know, the consumers on YouTube are a lot more active and they consume it more and they support you more, I guess, because you know, you can follow someone on Instagram and it's not, it doesn't take a whole lot of time out of your day and you don't think about it much, but for you to subscribe to someone on YouTube, you have to, you know, at least watch one of their videos and enjoy it. So on YouTube, you know, I, the way that I grow, there's a bunch of different ways. Consistency is obviously very important. Quality of content is obviously very important. And then, you know, keeping in contact with my fans on a personal level, playing games with them, you know, holding polls, seeing what they want and, you know, really feeding them to what they want because they're the ones that support me and the only way I can grow is if they're out here showing people. So that's, you know, keeping in contact with them is pretty much the main way that I grow. You know, like I'll play, I'll hop on Xbox with two or three supporters and we'll play for hours and, you know, talk and then I'll switch out. And the best way that I can let them know what's going on is through Snapchat. So I really promote my Snapchat on my YouTube channel because it's, you know, nice and quick. And if I'm gonna play with my supporters, for example, I'll put it on my Snap Story and then, you know, whoever's the quickest and the most active in response fastest, you know, I'll hop in a game with them or whatever it may be. Okay. But how long did it take for that YouTube to build up? I think I started my YouTube channel around, was it April of last year? It was in April, yeah. Yeah, I started my channel around April of last year and it's January now. So it hasn't taken a full year yet. I mean, 6,000 in that amount of time is definitely really notable. Did you have a like constant, when I look at your stuff, man, I'm like, there's a constant strategy in terms of he's posting frequently. I'm looking at your videos. Your videos aren't even like completely over conceptualized and over thought in a lot of cases. Like it's just you, right? And you're releasing the content, but as you wrap in it, you might be in a different location. Like what's the y'all's thought process and like how do you consider your brand where everything meshes together? So where you say I have my brand correctly, I have my strategy correctly and then we'll actually make building a fan base at the same time. Well, at the end of the day, for someone to support you, they have to either, you know, relate, they have to have a reason and oftentimes it'll be that they relate to you or something. So on my channel, you know, whether it's, you know, I used to rap just on the microphone, whether it's that or whether it's my music videos, I like to keep it very simple and personal because I'm a simple and personal person and I'm sure he can say the same about his videos and his content. So, you know, we are just being ourselves on this website and if people are drawn to that and they support it, then they can support it. And, you know, you know, being the size of my fan base now, it's not hard for someone to, you know, have a long conversation with me, whether it be DMs or, you know, over FaceTime, I FaceTime or call everybody who pre-orders my album or Mixtape or whatever project I'm releasing at the time. So, you know, it's not hard to keep in contact with them and I think, you know, me just being myself and putting out what I want to put out and how I want to put it out is the reason that I can consistently grow and brand myself as the person that I am. So, I'm going to ask what a lot of people who watch this channel are going to want to know and were there any tricks that you use in terms of building your fan base? We know having a Twitter following was already there, right? Like, so that kind of helped. But were there any additional things that you feel like was a hack that kind of pushed your fan base? Well, yeah, I definitely say, I don't know if you could consider it a hack, but if, you know, if you're trying to grow as a rapper, rap contests are one of the biggest, one of the biggest ways you can grow your fan base. And he started to grow his fan base initially completely separate from mine on Instagram through different rap contests and things like that. So, I'd say rap contests are good. And making yourself known in a certain community. So, there are certain YouTubers who I watch frequently and, you know, I will make a presence in their community because, you know, I support them and if I'm watching their videos. For example, I'm a moderator for a certain YouTuber who has about 500,000 subscribers. I'm a moderator for his live streams. I'm one of the chat moderators. So, you know, I've kind of made a presence in his community and people, you know, see me frequently in his community and then decide, okay, you know, I know that he makes music and he's had such a presence here, maybe I'll go check him out, you know. And you do pretty much the same thing completely separate from me and you're able to grow on your own as well. Yeah, completely separate. It's really just about like making sure you engage too because everyone's different. So, that's why I like what you said about playing Xbox with the fans too because it's like some people might not even be on Instagram or Twitter as much as some other platform. Right, exactly. And, you know, I'd also say another hack is finding and, you know, other creators that are around your size and working, you know, to not only grow their fan base but grow yours and growing together and surrounding yourself. You know, there's at least probably five or six artists who have YouTube channels who I've collabed with. Yep, right after classes. Exactly. I'd say I spend a lot more time on music than I do on the actual classwork just because it's such a commitment of mine but yep. Well, as far as I can say, you know, being able to balance really ambitious ideas off of him and getting his honest opinion is really nice because, you know, there's other artists that I communicate with that maybe aren't local or, you know, they are local but they're not as established or whatever it may be and I can, you know, throw something at them that may end up being whack and they'll just support it because, you know, they're supportive and it's real hard to, you know, kind of tell someone that something's not working out but with him, you know, if I throw something at him that isn't going to work out or maybe he's not too interested in it, he'll tell me to, you know, revisit it and look at what I can do to make it better and, you know, bounce it off of a few other people and things like that but I definitely think that's a major benefit that, you know, having him around gives me that, you know, not a lot of people have. And guys, I'm gonna add on to that and it was when we first started to, like, I wasn't even rapping, I was just producing so then it was just like perfect, it was just perfect to go just to only produce and then what were you producing? I was pretty much only rapping. Yeah, and he was only rapping so then once we just both started making music and we both started producing and rapping then it was like we could both give each other feedback on both things and we could grow even further that way. Exactly, when it came to sampling I had absolutely no idea how to do it and he was able to teach me that, you know, and then I was able to teach him, you know, maybe how to flow in different ways or experiment with delivering and things like that. So yeah, I'd say that it's not difficult if you're genuinely interested, you know, if you actually are really enjoying whatever the YouTuber is or, you know, whatever the page is, if you're actually enjoying it and it interests you, it's not hard to develop thoughts about it and then post your thoughts because there's thoughts you would have anyway, you know. Yeah, I definitely agree with that and it's just, like you said, it's really all about engaging and I think a lot of people might not want to do it just for the simple fact that they might not even know that it's being read but like you just said, like you read through all your comments and they might not even know that but you do anyway and they just might not get that connection through. Exactly and if I can add on to that I would just say that, you know, being in these other communities so often, you know, you're really exposed to a lot of eyes and a lot of people will see your name and if they're seeing your name over and over and over eventually they will, you know, see check out why they're seeing your name so much, you know. And I get, you know, top comment pretty frequently in a lot of different comment sections and it's because people are used to seeing my name, you know, and they'll always say, oh I see you everywhere. I get that comment all the time so it's if, you know, I've made myself present in these different communities that I have a genuine interest in and people have seen that and, you know, came to my channel and oftentimes, you know, they want to stick around so. Exactly, well basically what happened was a little over a year ago, you know, I had been doing big shows like I stated earlier, I opened for Bone Thugs and Harmony when they were in town and then I was also on the ticket for a Gucci Mane show so I opened for Gucci Mane which was all, you know, pretty good for my fan base but there was another show and they were about, you know, five to seven truly marquee artists on the show, you know. I'm not sure if Big Sean was on it, he usually is but I mean Made in Tokyo was on there, I don't know who else was on there. There were a lot of big names like Designer and I think Kanye was on that show so there were, you know, a bunch of huge names and I kind of had a spot secured on that show, you know, to get the opening spot but the manager that I had at the time, you know, was slacking and he wasn't really doing his job and he wasn't really being attentive and so I ended up losing my spot on that show and when that happened I decided it was time to, you know, part ways with him and explore other options and since he was making music and, you know, being very consistent with it too, I decided, you know, why not just have him manage me and then as he started to develop his artistry, you know, I was like why not, why don't I manage him as well, you know. So that's kind of how that idea initially developed to where we would manage each other. Currently I'm a part of a YouTube network which, you know, gives me different creator tools and I have a really specified thing going on there and then, you know, locally with radio stations and local artists and things like that, there's its own kind of web, you know, and so I have people, you know, in different places out here that can assist with things, you know, if I want some radio play, say I have a single coming up, you know, there's someone that I can contact about that and they'll get me on there, on the radio station or whatever it may be but as far as, you know, the basic elements of management, we handle that for each other but, you know, the more political, the more the bigger ones basically. Yeah, as far as, you know, like radio and, you know, monetary gain and things like that, we have someone, we have someone else, you know, kind of doing that. There's a few separate people doing that. Just through time, I mean, as far as my radio relationship, there's another local artist, there's another local artist out here who I'm not gonna say his name but he kind of introduced me to different radio personalities and things like that so I kind of got to know them and then actually one of my supporters hit me up on Snapchat and got me in conversations just a day or two ago with another local artist who kind of has his own wave so different, different situations have arisen from different things but I'd say, you know, as far as like radio personalities, I've gotten contact with them through different artists and things like that and just being in the community locally and then I'd say, you know, as far as shows, I know a lot of the promoters and a lot of the people put on the shows so that's how I've been able to get, you know, kind of placed in those positions. Well, as far as marketing goes, it's not necessarily like a policy of ours but we don't really spend any money at all, you know, to promote us, whether it's Facebook ads or Instagram ads, we don't really do that at all whatsoever but, you know, getting placed on a show, I'll, you know, I'll conversate with the promoter about how much each ticket will be and how many we need to sell and then we'll kind of come to an agreement as to what my profits will start to be as I sell more tickets and things like that so, you know, getting placed on these shows and things like that is a form of income but I wouldn't say we spend any money on any promotion in any avenues at all. Exactly. Exactly and at the end of the day, you can't pay someone to support you and a lot of times if they see it as an advertisement, that's all it will be. It will be an advertisement and they won't be able to connect with you on a personal level but if they are conversating with you, whether it be comment sections, discussion boards, whatever it is, then they'll kind of get to know you on a personal level and be a lot more inclined to support you that way. All right, I hope that was helpful for you guys. Michael and Malone are real hustlers, they're real grinders and they really put in the work to build their fan base. They're one of the favorite approaches that I love in this day and age because they really use and leverage the internet to build their legitimate fan base as opposed to getting lost into a lot of the promo that doesn't go anywhere or trying to pay people to get them boosted up quick and, you know, losing money because of it. So I hope you guys benefited once again from this. I would love to hear your comments in the description below and all that stuff. You know how that goes. 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