 We got some really dope advice that any of y'all that want to get involved in music, the industry in terms of your career, take this advice, and it's coming from our guy K-Von from who works at Genius. But I'll let him speak a little bit on himself because he does that in this clip, too. Industry is something I've learned in my career that might help you in yours. I'm the director of A&R Genius and I've been in the industry now for about seven years. This is something that I've learned that I think has helped me even now. Make sure you can identify and understand your value and skill set. This is super important. If you're applying for jobs, if you're interviewing, if you're looking for your first job in the industry, this is important. And if you do stuff that isn't necessarily a real job, but you have experience, this is even more important for you. Employers want to know this stuff about you. They want to know what your skill set lies. And if you can back it up with the results, that's even better. So you can demonstrate exactly what your value is and not condescend yourself. Beautiful, beautiful shout out to K-Von. Matter of fact, y'all follow him. He's always looking for quality music. You know what I mean? Don't spam him. Don't spam him. You know, that might have started that off the way I said that. But no, like he drops and shares like really dope upcoming artists. And obviously he works at G. And so really, really dope person, follow him and he gives great tips. K-Von, y'all see his info on the screen or for y'all listening. K-A-Y-V-A-N-M-D. Now about the sauce that he just dropped, though, and getting involved in the music industry for jobs. This is where I start and this is basically what he said, right? Being able to know your skill set and communicate that skill set, regardless of it was a formal job or not. I think a lot of us who are inclined to be in the music industry are tend to be entrepreneurial or self-starter. So we might do some shows that we might work with the artist or two just starting off and it might not feel like it's official. But how do you communicate that and bring that down into a skill set? And that's extremely valuable, right? Extremely valuable to have done that because there's a lot of people that aren't doing that type of stuff. Yeah. All right. And whenever I talk to music execs, whether it's the OGs or the new folks that are actually like hiring, building businesses to us ourselves, that passion shit don't mean nothing, bro. That passion. Everybody is passionate about music, damn near plenty of people who aren't in music that are passionate about music. That's not enough. And a lot of times people try to sell themselves that. But there's a few things that you can do specifically to bring value. And I'm going to base it off of a convo that I had with the VP, the former VP of sales at Bad Boy. He really broke it down to be pretty clear before I get into that detail. I want to get your thoughts to Corey on like the things that cave on to it. Yeah. I mean, the other way I was kind of looking at it, looking at it on top of what you said is being able to communicate value outside of the music stuff that you might have. You know, I think a lot of people tend to forget about those things. Oh, you know, I'm just a manager at, I don't know, some clothing store. I don't see how that ties into music. But it's on the other side like it might show like that you're a good organization or you know how to run a team or something like that. Right. So that's that's the part that kind of stuck out to most of me is like you said, all those things are how can you kind of build your value and build these skill sets that people kind of just want to see you get. But then like, what are these other things been teaching you that could be valuable over here? Because, you know, what's one of the things we always talk about with music is they're more than glad to pull people from other industries because a lot of times a lot of these music businesses don't have, you know, some of the most like serious infrastructure that some other industries have, right? And so you might be looking at like, oh, man, they would never want to be. All I did was work in like sales at this insurance company. I'm like, no, no, no, you know what I'm saying? We've never had a formal sales structure before. We would love to have some money from that world come over and teach us how to set it up, you know what I'm saying? So yeah, man, don't don't knock these these non music skills that you're building, you know what I'm saying? Like people are looking for them. Hey, speaking of, right? Sales, you already mentioned sales. Y'all hit us up if y'all are already doing formal sales jobs. We got some spaces and places that we might be able to help you out with and some work for y'all to do if y'all are interested in applying that sales to the music industry. Now, let me take a quick second to say, if you're an artist trying to blow your music up, or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands to millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free step by step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free, but the thing is, we're not gonna let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com, check it out, back to the video. Again, back to, it has to be more than passion. Now, the conversation I had, Sean Prez with him, he broke it down to me like this. And it's very simple, it makes the most sense in the world. Literally just showing progress in working with an artist, for instance, is enough. It doesn't mean, oh, you had to blow an artist up. Just say, oh, I worked with an artist and did some PR for them. And I took them from 1,000 streams to 1,500 streams. And to be able to say, I took them from 1,000 followers to 1,200 followers over three months and break down your process, exactly what you did to be able to show that is actually more than most people who would just come in and say, hey, I'm passionate about the industry, right? And I'm creative. That's like a prerequisite. We assume that you like music and that you have some inclination or attractiveness to creativity. We get that. Yeah, we know you're here for a reason. Yeah, that's the core of it all. But saying that I've taken an artist from here to here or saying I put on a show and got this many people out, no matter how big the number is or how small the number is, hey, I'm this super creative guy and I do fashion. Well, and I want to be a creative director. Well, show us some pictures of some people that you've dressed up or at least your outfits and show you a taste or show that you've done graphic design work, right? So now, oh, I can see, oh, you can do this graphic design work for me or maybe he's done these really dope videos using some footage from his friend's show or he's done these really dope videos just taking shit online. And I like his editing skills and I can do these editing skills on your music video. Right? If you have a hard example, it puts you far above most within the music industry. And we love to see some example of skills because it's also an industry where so many people can talk and talk and talk. You know, you don't want to get finesse where you got somebody that you have to train on everything. Nobody wants to do that in any industry anywhere if they don't have to, but in music where things move fast and a lot of people don't have strong infrastructures, they really can't afford to have somebody waste in their time and teach them from ground up and everybody likes to come with, oh yeah, I'm passionate, I'm gonna give you all my time, just teach me. And you understand, like college charges you money to teach you. Right? Like me giving you my time, you think, oh, you're not charging me any money and I'm building you up, I'm giving you massive value. What value are you giving me? Yeah. You know? Yeah, I mean, I also look at too like, it's like talent A and R, you know what I'm saying? And you're looking at this person, you're like, okay, well, you put together this show, yeah, it only brought out 50 people, but you've shown and you have baseline competence and this type of organization and these skill sets. Practice. All right, cool, yeah, maybe I'll bring you in. I can see you being much stronger in this position in a year or two, right? So I do think a lot of it happens, you know what I'm saying? Like we tend to think about organizational AR from like the creative aspect, right? The RSI, but I don't think enough people think about like the backend aspect of it, like you're looking at employees almost kind of the same way, right? So yeah, like you're always gonna want to take the person that has proof of concept and has shown you, I can put this thing together, even if it doesn't like hit like crazy, you know? So especially, man, if you like listening, you like a curator or something, you know what I'm saying? Cause I know like, especially in Atlanta, you see like a lot of like local curators putting on shows and things and they'll be sick, you know, only got 50 people out. But like you said, bro, how many people are even putting the work together to bring out that amount of people? I know you're gonna do work. Yeah. We, I know people are at least willing to do work half the time like instead of just wait for me to tell you to do every little bit of the task, you are way far ahead and you can pay us into what you might think you are. Yeah, I understand. Yeah. So one more thing that actually made me think about is you mentioned the curators, right? It's a talent for A&Ring, right? That you have a taste in music, so you're showing that you have taste. But at the end of the day, look, it's the same shit everywhere you go, right? You know, today we talk about, hey, people don't wanna assign artists unless they've shown that they got a fan base, unless they've built some momentum. Why? Cause they don't wanna have to go through all this expensive process of training or finding your fan base going and then putting money into it and helping you get some progress and possibly being a bad product. Quote unquote, right? Yeah, bad, hurry or hire. It's the same thing, right? Got that with the artists. I could train somebody for three months and they not be a good hire. And no one wants to spend that time. And there's too many people that come in, just like the artists, we talk about artists feeling entitled and thinking their industry should give them things. There's people on the job and skill side that come in thinking about, well, what are you gonna do for me as a company? You owe me X, Y, and Z before you have an established skill set that has true market value, right? Not the value that your mom has in you. You know what I mean? Not the value that you have in yourself from talking to yourself in the mirror. We have this culture and community today where we focus so much on people only having ownership, stepping up and not being afraid and knowing their self value and self worth that is going a little bit too far on the other side of the spectrum where people are out of whack on understanding. You got to also show improved, right? Starting out in the industry. If you're going from one really applicable job and you're getting paid a certain market rate and you're killing it, you have systems, you don't need training, you're not raw, then you probably can demand a certain amount of things and you probably have multiple opportunities coming right at you. If you're not in that position, then look for the opportunity, not the immediate payoff, because I can be associated with this company, associated with this artist and then I can flip the fact that I worked with this artist and done these two, three things to build out my portfolio and I'm more competitive, right? So there's a lot of different ways to look at the marketplace and I know a lot of artists, y'all are interested in working in music because y'all might be like, look, if I don't win as an artist, at least I could be around something I love, right? At least I can touch it. Yeah, at least I can touch it. Be around the energy, be in a better space, work on something that I actually do care about or you're like, shoot, I'm still trying to work my dream, but at least I can be in the space and not hate my job while I try to be an artist and be in a job that teaches me stuff from different perspectives that I'm gonna apply to my own artistry. It all works, but you have to keep these same things in mind just as somebody who wants to be a, you know, regular professional in music does as well. Yeah, man, it was well said. It was well said, man. Well, it was well said. We don't even need to go deeper into the topic.