 Artist, if you want a manager, if you need a manager, if you have a manager, you need to watch this video. And managers, don't get mad at me for the things that I say in this video, the things that I break down. You can watch it yourself. You can make the corrections in the places that they need to be made because I'm about to walk through seven traits that you want from your manager and the pros and cons of different types of managers. But there's ways to fix this. I'm going to go through all of it. Sit tight because we're about to go through seven traits that every single manager needs to have and how you need to pick a manager for yourself depending on the level you are as an artist. The trait number one is operational. What's an operational manager? An operational manager, that's somebody who is like a CEO of a company, right? That's somebody who's focused on the operations. They streamline stuff. They got all the logistics in line. And the beautiful part about this manager is you don't have to sweat the small stuff because they're sweating the small stuff. And boy is that freeing. You can stay in your creative bag, you can just show up, everything's handled, right? Sounds like a dream, right? You can stay with the music. They'll make sure that if you're on tour, everything's lined up. They'll make sure everything's set up for you in the studio. If you like water, they'll make sure you have water. If you like weed, they'll make sure you have your weed, whatever you need, that will be there for you. However, here are the cons of the operational managers. And by the way, when I go do cons in this video, this is from real experiences, things that I've actually seen, right? And how they've ruined situations. So here's one of the drawbacks of an operationally focused manager. A lot of operationally focused managers focus too heavily on operations and not enough on growth, like actually helping an artist level up. So they come in as helpful at first because you have all this chaos. And they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to add this system here. We're going to add this system here. And we're going to automate this automate that. But the next thing you know, there's like, all right, like it's incremental at this point. We don't need another bit of automation. What we need is growth. That's what's going to make this thing worth it. However, I'm going to be short of tell levels and where people apply for a bigger artist, a legacy act, a purely operational manager can really help or any artists that's not looking to grow much past where they are. An operational manager can be amazing as like that's the main in the head of everything. However, if you're a brand new artist, you know, I need to grow from here. If you're a mid tier artist, you have two million monthly listeners and you want to still get bigger, then you need more than operational management because operational management, again, they're great at those details. Boy, growth. And this other one, number three, tapped in. Oh man, it's going to be tough because a lot of them don't have these two things. I'll tell you this, a lot of people can come in and do the operational side of things in terms of if they have business acumen, they can handle the crossing the T's and dotting the I's. These are a little bit harder when it comes to music. So I'm going to get to the second growth. Growth, a manager that knows how to get things going. They know how to find deals. They understand marketing. All right. And those are two different types of growth. I'm not going to break it down between different ones, but that could be a completely separate one of you wanted to. They can grow you in the brand deal space. They can grow you in the music space, the marketing space. They have certain like contacts or they understand it from a true tactical standpoint where they can run your ads. They can hook you up with the influencers. I know some amazing managers who knocked that out of the park, right? They've knocked that out of the park. And a starting artist, you most certainly want that a mid tier artist, right? You definitely want growth, of course, but you do need some level of operation, what that same at that point, because all that growth that's coming in, if there's no legitimate management, it's just going to be a cluster chaos. You're going to start missing out on all the opportunities that they're actually creating. So you start to need some level of balance. And we're going to talk about how you solve for this as an artist as we go through it. Make sure you send this to your people. Make sure you send this to your homies. Subscribe to this vibe. This is the Saturdays with Sean series. If y'all appreciate this, please subscribe and again, send it to your folks. All right, growth tapped in. And I'm going to I'll go deeper into all three of these areas because they interrelate so much. And these are the primary three that you really need to pay attention to to start tapped in culture. That's what I mean by tapped in. Do they understand culture? And when I say culture, I mean the culture of what's going on in your niche. Culture looks different in different places. So everybody thinks something differently when they use that same word. Here's an example. I've seen managers have artists that are having a moment, but the manager doesn't even know the artist is having a moment. So the manager can't make the artist aware or they're not going to move fast enough. Or the artist is even worse in situations where the artist doesn't get it either. So they all just think they're good. And who suffers from this the worst is when you're at like the mid tier because y'all have enough going on to feel like, Oh yeah, man, I'm seeing my streams increase or I see this song popping again or I'm still getting shows or whatever. Right. I can take care of life and we're optimizing. These are the worst, man. Like the super operational people that don't quite know how to make these things happen. They'll justify everything with operations. I'm not going to lie. I know some of y'all might be hurt by that managers out there, but boy, they will hide behind what they can do operationally. And it's it causes you to struggle and miss as big as you could be missing those moments. Cause they don't know the moments are happening and they can't create urgency in you because they don't understand it. Right. You have to be the one who makes them aware. But what happens if you're not aware yourself? Right. If you don't understand the value of paying for this type of marketing or being on this platform, it might be a free platform. And you're like, why would I do that platform? They don't have X and X amount of views. Right. But the manager should understand. Oh, wait, no, this platform is important for this niche. It might have less views or subscribers than that other platform. But this is where most people really are tapped in in your particular audience. Or doing this platform is a great way as a launchpad to the next platform or that person who's over it has relationships. Right. There's so much strategy that needs to go behind it. And your manager needs to be able to think in multiple dimensions. All right. So let's break this down. I remind you, legacy acts like you're big and you're not trying to grow. You can even be mid tier and you can just be good with where you are. If something happens naturally, cool, but it's not coming from my team. You can do a purely operational manager, a growth style manager. That's great, especially if you're trying to grow. However, at some point, somebody has to be able to manage what comes in. And it ultimately can lead you to missing opportunities and even ruining relationships. Let me get to that side of the con. So the growth, right? When you're moving so fast, doing so much, you can fall short in places that actually ruins relationships, maybe making promises that you can't even like truly handle as a team. There's a lot that can come from that and it can stress the hell out of you as an artist, because you don't have somebody that's able to really bring systems. So they might be just as creative as you. I've seen this in a lot of creative managers, right? Tapped in culturally, very similar, but that's such a small thing. People don't pay attention to that new eyes. Is your manager somebody who understands the culture of your audience? Relational. Now, what do I mean by relational? One, they understand the value of relationships in the business. Two, they have relationships in the business and if they don't have them, they understand the importance of building relationships in the business. You'd be surprised. We just talked to somebody recently who worked with somebody who has a significant name in the business and he was in an agreement with this person. He was partnering with this person. And basically he said, yo, this person had the world laid out for them in a carpet. Like they had all these deals and the person just ruined everything. Everything got ruined because this person and this person wasn't technically their manager in this particular case. They were more of a partner, I guess you would say. But they ruined everything. I'm talking about all the big outlets, well-known people in the business coming to see the project and come in and be a part of rollout and these things got stopped just like that, right? But that's the real thing and I've seen this happen with managers. I've seen artists have distribution deals and then the manager decided to soup somebody at the distributor. All kind of crazy stuff. All kind of crazy stuff. So I'll leave it at that. Please understand that the relationship, there's no downside to relationships and understanding the value of relationships. The con is just not understanding the value of relationships. So you want this in all your managers period. It's cool to have these like a growth or operational different periods, right? But relationships, that's not something you want to sacrifice. Tapped in, that's not something you want to sacrifice, in my opinion. I don't care if you're not looking for growth. You at least want somebody tapped in enough to realize that there's an opportunity that will come to us organically that we didn't work for heavily, but they need to be able to capitalize on it. Next one is likable. It's related to relational and it's enough of an important thing by itself to actually make its own thing. What do I mean by likable? Period. People have to like you. People will literally not work with you because they do not like your manager. You will think the world hates you and the world is against you as an artist. And then one day you get rid of that manager and next thing you know, people are like, oh my gosh, man, I love your music. You want to open up for this artist? Or you want to collab with this person? Yeah, I got you. They're connecting. You're like, yo, what's the difference? It's like, oh man, you thought I didn't like you? I just didn't like your manager, man. Your manager was horrible. I've seen managers get into artists' heads and do like some weird stuff. I've seen managers just do all kinds of things that are against the artist's best interests. So you want to make sure they definitely are aligned with you in terms of best interests. But before I get to those last two things, I want to announce that we're officially taking the 30-day challenge to another level. Many of you have already opted in, but y'all haven't gotten fully activated like you should have been. And now you're going to really want to make sure you're taking advantage of this because we're adding all types of prizes and helps. I'm talking about free marketing campaigns, interviews, and putting your music on platforms, shooting professional content for you, doing strategy sessions. All these are simple prizes that come with hitting the levels as you grow in the 30-day challenge, which is only $1 to join, by the way. And if you're like, yo, Sean, what are you talking about this 30-day challenge and all this free stuff, go to www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days, and you'll see exactly what I mean. Make sure you don't forget that www will put a link to this also in the description below the video. But the best part about this is you're not competing with somebody else. All you have to do is grow your fan base, which we're helping you do. And as you grow, we're going to give you these free opportunities. You'll get access to opportunities like free campaigns and more for doing something that you want to do as an artist anyway. All for a dollar. Last thing, again, you are not competing with other artists. So tell your homie. Tell your managers. Shoot it to the other managers and homies you know. Everybody can eat. We're not here to compete. Back to this video because there's two more things that you must know. Number one is awareness. Awareness, awareness, awareness. You want to have somebody that is aware of if they have these traits or not where their strengths off are here, here, here, here, or here. They should have an idea and they should be able to build number seven, a team around you to compensate for their weakness. So if I'm super operational, I need to be truthful about that. I need to be transparent about that and acknowledge it, not feel all ego shot and find somebody who can help us grow. Maybe that's interns that we get around us that are tapped in. Maybe that's marketers that we hire, consultants or people that we bring on to advise and help us figure out what growth looks like. Help us analyze the situation to let us know, is there a moment that we're about to miss? But I'm going to handle all the operations and everything that comes in. Or maybe I need to hire another manager. Maybe I need to be more of a day-to-day manager and find somebody that can help bring brand deals. Or maybe I'm cool here in the music space when it comes to helping you grow, but I need somebody to help you in the management of brand deals, like the non-music stuff, right? Bring in an agent or something like that. Bring in a booking agent. Like little things like that only come from the manager being aware. And boy, when I tell you there's a lot of managers that are not aware, there are some of these managers, I tell you men, the operational ones can be the worst because they get super protective. They get super protective. They optimize and pushing the button and making sure that everything is 1% better. And it's like, bruh, if we do 1% better every year, over a year from now, I'm only going to have 50,000 followers in 10 years, you know what I mean? Like we can't do that. We got to make some big jumps too. So please make sure your manager has the awareness and ability to build a team more than anything, right? Because they can compensate for a lack of these areas. You do want them to have as much of these as possible. But if they have that awareness, it can make up for a lot, right? And they have like ability, it can make up for a lot. They have relationships, it can make up for a lot. But these three, you don't want to have to hire somebody for everything. You don't want to have to rely on your relationships for everything. Please make sure they're strong in at least one of those areas, hopefully not too weak in the other ones. And like I said, be able to hire, fire, whatever they need to do to help y'all make a lot of money winning this business and retire. This is yet another Saturdays with Sean's video of y'all like these Saturdays with Sean's videos. Again, I just ask that you subscribe if you enjoy this content and send it to your friends, send it to the other artists who need to hear it. And last but not least, if you want to join the 30 day challenge, this is official now, we're taking it to another level. Many of y'all have already gotten some growth and done some really cool things. One guy just got 500 fans in seven days and sold some stuff. But again, we're taking it to another level. And I want to be tapped in with you as a part of this 30 day challenge. Check out www.nolabelsnecessary.com slash 30 days to get a full explanation of exactly what I'm talking about. And if you are already in that, you are already subscribed. Check out the next video. Have a great one.