 What's up everybody once again it's Brandon man Sean and this is Inside the Network where we show you exclusive clips and artist sessions from InsideBrandManNetwork.com. This particular clip was with Russ B where we were talking about a subject that a lot of artists don't get into enough. It's more than just how do I build a fan base on Instagram. It's more about how do you choose where you blow up. You can get so much deeper nuance so I'm going to go ahead and let Russ V talk and then I'm going to give you all some gems at the end. So you know how in other paths like you know if you're trying to be a doctor or a lawyer it's kind of like a set path or pattern you know things that you need to do like you need to go to higher school, you need to go to college, you know grad school and you know there's like there's a way to track your progress per se. There's like a lot of different things that you know as an artist that you can that you can do that you might you might not necessarily know if they're like the right things to do or it's just a lot of different things that you can do like performing, trying to get on somebody's tour or you know going in that workout with you know music executives or like really honing and focusing all your attention on social media like just a lot of different things that you can do. So my question to you is with I guess some of the stories and come on story that you've heard recently what are some of the most important avenues I guess I call them to like focus on when you're trying to you know when you want to come up trying to do it and then for yourself. Yeah well obviously the elephant in the room is social media you know that's the most obvious I don't think social media is everything some people preach that it's damn it everything I don't believe it's everything but I believe you know it's it is what it is and you do have to play to it after that I would say really just really just like creating I feel like a lot of artists are waiting on like a label or like to be big to like actually monetize the dip themselves and actually like create their brand identity I think that's some artists should be doing on the ground level I think you should in 2019 I don't care if you have seven fans if you have seven fans you need to sell seven t-shirts you know I'm saying you need to you need to like brand yourself now because that's actually the whole game you know you look at like Travis Scott's and everything and they'll sell 500,000 he didn't actually sell 500,000 he was selling clothes Nikki was right you know I'm saying but that's actually the way these artists coming in the game now especially like going into like this next decade like yeah artists should you know artists with a thousand fans without a deal should be selling like 200 something 200 pieces of experience to 200 people you know and I think once artists really have that mindset of just like complete independence and just like figuring it out like like like a real business that's really like that's really the route to go you know what I'm saying so as far as like what's most important I really can't say anything is more important I'll tell you one thing as an independent artist don't focus on radio don't focus on television those things are they don't matter but as far as the clubs you know without the clubs but depending on where you live I wouldn't suggest it you know you said you're like Idaho I'm in Iowa right now yeah so Iowa you can skip out on the clubs yeah I mean like that's not gonna that's a couple a couple of bars yeah those those areas you could probably skip out on the club but you know it it also really depends on the artist man and I can't stress that enough some artists are YouTube's dream some artists are Spotify's dream some artists are the shit on Twitter look at Lil Nas X some artists you know it really depend on the artists you know some artists are are you know it really just depends on the artist man because depending on what you're talking about who you're talking to all of these different things that'll tell you where you belong you know if you're if you love dancing and you're 16 years old and you rap I'm not gonna tell you go to Twitter I'm gonna tell you go to TikTok you know I'm saying I'm gonna tell you go to Triller I'm not gonna tell you go to Twitter you know I'm saying so it really depends on who you are and you know the type of music you're making and all of that all right all right I got to start here Bress V said something that was it was pretty big I don't know if you caught it but he said branding yourself is the whole game today he said go ahead and get that merch started you have seven fans you should be able to sell seven shirts and get that whole business in line because branding yourself is the whole game is that true I wonder I know a lot of people are wondering that yes it is true in so many ways when we look at the fact that so many of the artists are looking at how do I flip the brand that I built into actual income when we look at the top of the Billboard charts and that's where artists even the big artists who have a whole lot of streams right who have all these record sales quote-unquote whatever they're still looking to monetize outside of music you need to be building your infrastructure to do that as soon as possible it doesn't mean that you can't focus on building your music and getting your streams first a lot of people still need to start there but at the same time brah you got to monetize right and to monetize and especially if you want to consider yourself independent means you have to have business systems in place you have to know what your merch plan is going to look like you don't have to sell merch immediately but know what the plan is going to look like start getting into those designs get an idea of what your system would look like other things that you can sell in other ways that you can monetize outside of just a regular tour show right can I do private sessions with my fans somehow online how can I connect with them and what kind of calls can I do maybe there's there's so many different things that you can touch on maybe I do shoutouts for my fans birthday shoutouts for my friend fans they charge for maybe I don't charge for there's so many ways to flip this or maybe you can write little custom songs for your fans there's so many ways to flip it but you have to get those business business systems in place and see the opportunities because especially as an indie right you want to be able to figure out how you're going to bring in more income and you are a business and your brand is the core of how you flip that brand because we're not working on needs this isn't needs markets where we're selling soap or I mean you know some people are you that you don't need so but we're selling I don't know some medicine or something like that the people need to live they don't need your music so you need to have a brand that makes them want to make some kind of exchange with you that's first and foremost we got to start there of course there's some people who just have music and most of their old business is built on selling music through placements and and you know just scoring and and so many other ways of monetizing music where you don't have to be a front-facing artist but if you want people to see your face as an artist and you're building that type of brand the typical celebrity artist brand whether it's a huge celebrity or a minor celebrity you're trying to build a brand and that is the core that's what it's all about now something else I know a lot of people are really weird on this pick your platform everybody's like yo why are we even talking about this because we already know what the platforms are we already know that you need to be on ig and youtube or we need to be on I don't know maybe tiktok today I know that that's what some people are thinking but the reality is no you need to be able to reverse engineering we'll talk about that in a second your particular brand and how you decide where your particular brand and fan base will lead you to a particular platform why is that it well here's a perfect example there's an artist I just spoke to we were sitting down yesterday and he was telling me that most of his fans right are on facebook double his fan bases and this is in like some old guy he's a pretty young guy um and he has and as a matter of fact and it's not even like he only has a little views on youtube he has videos with a million views but he's like literally if my video has one million organic views on youtube then I have two million on facebook and really I think one particular video it probably added up to like 13 million on facebook went with all the people who shared it to other channels and other bigger channels on facebook that started to you know post it and get views themselves so when you think about this you got to remember at the end of the day where are you the best fit and I always try to tell people even if you're winning a game if it's not your game you're probably losing right chances are you're losing so what does that mean in this practical situation that might look like you doing your thing on instagram 100,000 followers maybe 500,000 followers and getting good engagement and all that stuff but maybe if you were doing the exact same thing almost on tiktok you might have two million followers and who knows what your engagement or maybe you should be on youtube right so even if you're winning don't get stuck in the fact that you're winning to keep you from experimenting and finding if there's someplace better and don't just listen to the general places that people are talking about because all of these things at the end of the day are opportunities that we talk about but they don't mean that you need to be there and that's the beauty of reverse engineering where you belong there's a few questions that you can ask that can help with this so here they are number one what are your strengths are you really really good with the visuals are your visuals funny are they really short and you're good at doing that really short content do you need long form do you do good at telling stories what are your strengths are you really great with lyrics there's there's so many types of strengths figure out what those strengths are number two where is your audience this is a huge one right your potential audience not the people that you want to follow you the people who are likely to follow you where do they spend a lot of attention but that's not the last thing because we know there's you know big platforms that have some of everybody's audience so that's not the only thing number three what type of content do you want to create remember we already talked about what are your strengths what is that lean towards this should help you and inform you on the type of content that you want to create because you should want to create something in the lane of your strength because it's going to make it easier not only you to do one video but to create content at scale and we know that social media you know quantity is a very real thing those simple questions your what are your strengths what type of content do you want to create and where is your audience that's a great place to start because then you start to look at the platforms and say what are the platforms with all of this criteria and consideration actually speak to these things and where I need to go listen from there and figure it out from there and that's pretty much it is that simple because after that it's all experimentation so once again this is another episode of inside the network what is inside the network where we show you inclusive clips and artist sessions from inside brahmannetwork.com to show you how we go deeper into the artist process and we can go back and forth as opposed to just answering these one-off questions get the nuances of whatever your situation is so we can give you a custom answer for you but not just a custom Q&A session we're building your marketing strategy with you we're building your advertising strategy with you and even greater what so many people need is just developing your brand which is the foundation that you do the rest of that mess on top of in the first place so keep that in mind especially if you're an artist on a budget and you can afford a full-time marketer we help develop you into the systems that can market for you we become your ongoing marketing and business managers and mentors so we can help you build those branding and marketing systems where you don't have to actually need a full-time marketing manager you can do these things yourself but it takes true progress and guidance versus just taking random information and trying to piece mill it together and then starting back at square one after a year hard time of work we're seeing artists make far more progress in four months than they made in one or two years of just watching or in consuming random information from other places on the internet that's another episode of inside the network since you've been on a couple calls what's been your impression of the network or your experience so far yeah i like it man i like how there's the cause i mean only joined like less than a week ago and i've already this is my third call already so like i feel like it's very um you're very approachable like if i had an urgent question i've run out of questions already pretty that way