 Y'all haven't been watching Brun Fias for years. Then he's somebody to really go back, do a deep dive and the way this man is built up. You just gotta do it. Cause he's built Indy. I mean, he's performing better than a lot of R&B artists. And I think what is he around? Like 10 or 17 million streams. Some crud. Like something he is up there. And we're talking about, you know, pretty legit and Indy as Indy can legit and be leaping. You know, let's say that, right? So that being said, in this clip right here, Brun Fias's manager reveals how he built his fan base with independent touring and ads. Last year, 22 year old R&B singer Brun Fias called a break. What were they offering? Well, I know the highest offer we got was kind of like a quarter of a million dollars in advance. And it was like a $300,000 according budget for album one. I always said it was never about the money. It was always about the time. They began by incorporating Lost Kids, LLC, and investing $30,000 out of their own pockets to record Brun's debut album. They then went on a three-month tour using streaming data to guide the way. Yeah, no, definitely. We need to know about all analytics, all data. There has been several evading steps for me to render. Ty minds the data for those streams to find out exactly where and when a show will sell out. I'm looking at my Spotify and my SoundCloud analytics, like the top 50 market. I'm doing ads based on those top 50 markets. I was spending money there because that's what the data already told me. All right, all right. Now, many of you might have seen this clip. I shared it on my page or reposited it before. It's been nothing new. This is a vice move story. EJ, if you could put the link in the description for folks who want to check out the pool thing when they watch the pod. But what I love about this clip is it's very simple strategy, right? We do shows, we do music, we do ads. All right, very easy, very replicable. Very easy, very replicable. And we've seen this and we've done this before with multiple artists and it works. It's an older school strategy. It's crazy, like they school the ads. It's like old school now, right? Or Instagram ads are just ads in general, but it does work. And the thing about this though, that I love the most is just strategy. And I'm always bring this up. So many people are running ads thinking how cheap can I get ads? Like my clip through, how cheap can I get my conversion? If you're clever, nobody's attaching it to an actual strategy though, right? And the part that takes it away from the strategy is just focusing on those direct numbers. These guys tie in brick. Oh, these are my cities that are like top for my music. We can all see this, we're all aware of this. Like we're like, oh yeah, a lot of people in Atlanta like my music. A lot of people in, I don't know, LA seem to like my music. But then people get afraid. When they start running some ads and they see the ads are more expensive because you're focused on a tighter market. You're not just doing the world wide ads where everything's gonna be cheaper because you got more people to just, you know, into auction with. Cool, but it's more meaningful and worse having more expensive ads if it's tied to something legitimate at the end. If you're gonna do a show there, yeah, it might suck that you're getting higher cost per conversion at that time, but if it's gonna lead to you doing something real that you can't get done when you're doing world wide ads cause I got a hundred fans in this city, five fans in that city, a thousand fans over here. Like it's so spread out, you lose out. And so now I don't know how to just, I can't go do a show in the market where there's only five fans. It's not gonna be worth it. I can't even break even in a lot of these times the goal is just to break even to make them stronger fans, right? But you do this for years and you're touching it, like target the market, touch base with the fans, target the market, touch base with the fans, sell them some merch, all right? Making it a little bit more real. I break even with the show, I make money with the merch, break even with the show, make money with your merch. And that starts to build. Next thing you know, I might make money with the show and then go crazy with the merch, right? You repeat that enough. Things build, you end up with a breath of ice, so when the music's good, right? And other factors out here. But it's really not like, you know, rocket science. But it is having strategy. It doesn't have to be targeting a specific city and planning to do a tour or anything. There's other strategies, but you have to attach it to something because all of these cost per clicks are meaningless when if you're just focused on how cheap can I get my ass and how little money can I spend? Like that's always my gripe when it comes to ass and how people approach it. There's no long term and people really in this space we get caught up or we conflate strategy and tactics. And really people are very tight school. 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. Yeah, I mean, that's even when I liked about his clip is, you know, I'll have a lot of artists who will hit me asking exactly like, what is the ass strategy to start with? And yeah, you could argue that his strategy was, you know, a touring based ass strategy, which anybody could do, but where you target is gonna change that strategy for you exactly, right? Because we don't even know about the other nuances that went to that, right? I'm assuming that if I'm an artist that's, and my day is showing me that I should tour in let's say like DC, Virginia and New York, that's gonna move my strategy differently than the artists are saying they have. I'm big in Houston, Dallas, Austin, or something like that, right? Because I know like culturally, the places are different. So that opens up to different types of activations and partnerships and things like that, right? So I think just even just realizing that the data can be there to be a guy for you is really valuable because I think that so many artists try to fight against the data because they don't wanna feel like the algorithm is controlling that career, right? Like yeah, it's Spotify telling me Atlanta's my pop and city, but fucking Atlanta, I don't wanna walk in Atlanta. I'm gonna go building LA because I wanna do a show at LA, which, you know, like you said, that's a strategy behind it. Go for it, the other thing, you know what I'm saying? But, you know, for most other cases, it's almost like wow, you know what I'm saying? Like you've already kind of done some of the free leg work to see that this is where your money should be spent. Why not go along with that, you know what I'm saying? Why not dig the hole that's already spitting up a little bit of oil, you know what I'm saying? It's still digging up completely new. So that's what always got me about that clip was he was one of the first people I'd ever heard be so for the data that way, you know what I'm saying? Especially at a time where a lot of artists at that time were bragging about not looking at analytics and stuff like that, you know what I'm saying? So, but I agree with you, man. I think like this is also a show that ads can be a lot more useful than a lot of artists think they are. And I think because of what you're saying, there's a stigma behind ads where 98% of people's objective is just to get the cheapest cost for quicker conversions possible, right? And so when that's the bar for everybody, it makes it to where it's easy for people to say if this thing works or if this thing doesn't work, right? But ads are a lot more nuanced in that, you know what I'm saying? Like we've had campaigns before where the cost of the ad was expensive and from the artist's perspective, it was a fail. But then once we start explaining certain things, it's like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. It's worked. Like, yeah, man, like you're paying for a more premium of a market, you know what I'm saying? You're paying, so you're paying, it's $2, so this shit don't optimize the Brazil. We get you that point, oh, one, that's what you want. You know what I'm saying? But, you know, if we're gonna build towards some type of a lot of long-term play, then this is just the cost of like doing that. This is the cost of that strategy, right? And so people have to think about it like, there is a cost with each marketing strategy that you implement, right? My ad strategy for an artist's only one to build internationally is gonna be cheaper than my ad strategy for the artist that wants to build domestically, you know what I'm saying? It's just the nature of the game. But I will be wrong to tell either of them that if they have strategy behind them, either of them is right or wrong, right? Like this artist is like, hey, I got this grand vision of popping in Brazil first, and then I'm gonna go over there and I'm gonna do a Latin tour and I'm gonna take that money and come back and then America and I'm gonna invest and blah, blah, blah. His or her strategy isn't any more wrong than the artist is like, hey, I'm gonna pop it on first and then build a buzz in my own city and then I'm gonna set a merge to my vocal shows and I'm gonna take, right? It's the same end result, you know what I'm saying? Different path that you walk, that you kind of walk together. And right there, there's a level of focus which implies strategy. Brazil first, that's still specific, even though Brazil has many cities and states or provinces, whatever they call them, right? And then your hometown, that's something more specific, better specific, more specific, more likely you actually have a strategy, right? Or something closer to it, resembling. Because you got people who are, like their strategy, quote, unquote, is to run ads and try to make money from streams. Yeah, crazy, everybody that ever has that, I just want you to know, it's a hassle with a little mission that you run now, unless you crack in the point, oh, one place, you know what I'm saying? Even then, that stream is on payback. It's a hard thing to do, to literally just run ads to your stream. That should not be your plan. There are moments when you do make your money back because triggers and algorithm starts to move. So your song starts to work beyond the money that you spent. But if that's your plan going into it, the expectation you want to put on the marketer or your manager or whoever, that's a faulty mission. That's a four or five of your play. Well, I always ask them, like, hey man, do you have the time to do that strategy? That's a four or five of your play right there. Yeah. It's definitely gonna be a longer play in many cases. Now, maybe think about something. Well, I was gonna say, you know who this whole conversation makes me think of, but we're literally watching this happen in real time. We're like, oh, recently, Adrien campaign, bro. Like Adrien Milano, one of our clients who's having a lot of success right now in Thailand and the Philippines. And I remember 2020 when he was like, hey, I think I want to take the next couple of years and just focus on the Philippines and Thailand because I think that they'll take me because I make army music and I look the way I do. And at the time, you know, the traditional, you know, what's pink, what's red and green basically? What color is that? Red and green is purple? Oh, that's red, blue. Red and green? Yellow? Maybe? I don't know. I don't know my color, man. I don't roast me. But whatever that color flag is, and we would see those flags be away, it was like, all right, man, your Koffman clip in Thailand is looking suspicious, but he's telling them, hey, but now I'm getting deals in their language and they telling me things, right? And so like he stuck that strategy out for two years and then the song sparked on Spotify, viral 50 for those countries. And now that long-term play has worked out at his yellow. It's yellow. Oh, I'm good, bro. Let's talk about that. Man, I knew, man, art school, bro. I'm a color wheel. I grabbed his arm and I'm like, bro, pay off, man. No, I'm a color. But it's like, that's the same shit, right? Like he, it's like, who are we in the moment to say like, this is wrong or right? I was just glad he had a strategy. You know what I'm saying? Like, I mean, we could always look back on this a year or two from now and say, hey, that was a good idea. That wasn't a good idea because the reality of it is to your point about the tactics versus strategies. That's how I look at it. Tactics are something that could be completed within a couple of days to a couple of months. Strategies take a year. You know what I'm saying? Like, how do I know if my strategy to build my social prominence in Atlanta worked if I don't at least have two years to go by to see how people talk about me? You know what I'm saying? Like, it's the same shit. So like to enact most of those strategies, like you need long term vision and the patients to kind of act it out. So I a lot of times, and even if I disagree with clients' marketing campaigns sometimes, like a lot of times just them having a thought behind or having a why for why they want to do things that enough to convince me. You know what I'm saying? Like, well, maybe they thought about this deeper than I thought about it. Maybe they've seen something. Or at the very least, I know that they have a vision and idea that willing to trust it out long enough to make some assessments off of them. Like you said, music is good and other things there. Typically it works out a long time, you know? And I'm really big on paying to at least the clients I get to talk to, but definitely any artist that talks to me where I'll tell them, hey, you know, there are gonna be things that we do for you where you won't even really see the impact of it for like three or four months, you know what I'm saying? And so in the moment, it's gonna feel like it's not working, but then three or four months later, you're gonna look at them like, damn, no, that should work. Like I can feel where this came from and people are saying certain things to me and my shit just spiked out of nowhere. Right, like I literally had a client a couple of weeks ago hit me. Her manager hit me. It was like, yeah, man, you know, in the moment, like the artist wasn't really happy with our campaign, but she was just talking to the other man, they did a great job. Like, I'm looking at my analytics and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I told her I was like, I love to look at what it is. It's three, four months ago when we did the campaign, and I'm saying three months have went by. I'm like, so, so I think that's a lot of times where the turds are for like making strategies, like those kind of concrete strategies. Like you can't really gauge them in the short term, like a strategy or a real strategy takes faith. You know what I'm saying? Like you got to believe. Yeah, man, day by day, man, this shit dropping down or spiking weird, but you're like, nah, man, I feel it. Man, I got one new follower from Atlanta. He's saying great things. It's the strategy to build me in Atlanta. It's moving, it's moving slow, but it's moving, you know what I'm saying? Man, I'm big on it. It's moving up, man, it's, man, as long as it's uptrending, that's what it's actually, keep it pushing. So, but that was what I liked about the Todd Club, man. It was like, one, just, I think more artists need to be understanding that the data can be a tool for you, you know what I'm saying? And sometimes if you don't feel like you have enough information to make these strategic decisions that Sean and I are talking about, like that's why these different tools exist, to give you as much information as possible to help you make the best, the most calculated decision that you possibly can. And the second thing is like, yeah, bro, I had an ad strategy at the, you know what I'm saying? Like, he talked about one who essentially is doing like the tour building strategy, but it's like, it can get deep, right? Well, I know we got at least like seven, eight different ones. We can just whip out the bucket, you know what I'm saying? Shit, it needs to go a certain way. And so it's like, if you're reading this, or not reading this, listen to this, and you've had just skipped the decision of the advertisement, you feel like advertisements don't work for you, you know what I'm saying? Rarely is the canvas the reason that the paintbrush tries, you know what I'm saying? Very rarely is the paintbrush the reason that the paintbrush tries, you know what I'm saying? I'm gonna leave that one there, let that one soak, but I will say the other benefit of like focus that people have to have faith to get to that moment in time when you're focused on a specific thing. I've said this play at times, all right? You can have a moment like, Chacor, you pull up today, you play a song, and I'm like, oh shoot, brother, you know that song? Right, that's my song, I just discovered that song on some ad the other day, or some influencer in this market, then you have somebody else, oh snap, you know that song? Like that organic spread is something that's not gonna happen, or marketing in all these random different places, right? So that's been more money marketing here, again, it's more expensive in the short term, but once I had a certain threshold, you start to have an organic effect where all these people in that same market actually know or have had some type of experience. So then they start to spread it and share it, and now they have that powerful experience of experiencing it with other people, and we know that's the lock. We talk about how nostalgia really builds moments up and makes music more important to us than it actually was and even the time. Well, if more of us know this song, we can create these experiences together. If we have experiences together, especially if they're positive, we're gonna wanna replay this song, right? This is how you start to build that and become a part of people's lives as an artist, by being focused in a specific place and being able to take over that location and then find another location, and then next thing you know, you got the whole state, you got the whole country, and maybe, you know, you're that type of artist and that's your goal, you might have the whole world. So it's something to consider, but staying in the touring space, LaRussell.