 What's up? What's up? What's up? We're back. We're back. We're back to those who can't be boxed in, to those who will build a table with or without a label. You are in good company because this is No Labels Necessary. I'm Bram and Sean. And I'm Colvin. And again, this is No Labels Necessary. You can catch us on YouTube, Spotify, clips on TikTok, everywhere that you consume your podcast every single Tuesday, as we explore the intersection of music, culture, and money through hot topics and casual conversations. So let's get into this first topic. As y'all know, we like to start with a little bit of advice. But I want to let y'all know some of the other topics we're going to talk about today as well. Number one, all right, we're going to get into that advice. Hold on for it. But we're also going to talk about how you get a job in this industry. If you want to navigate this industry, start making money just beyond your music or maybe until your music pops off. We're also going to talk about the power of branding, using her as a template to break down some of the elements that y'all can grab for yourselves, making money outside the music, but using music as the platform. And you don't have to wait that long. You'll be surprised how early you can start. And last but not least, we're going to get into the problem with fan subscription programs. A lot of y'all are going about doing a subscription program in the wrong way. So we're going to talk about what that looks like, how you should go about it, and some of the major problems that people face. So let's get into topic number one. First and foremost, would you want $500,000 to record or do a meeting with Jay-Z? Jay-Z, bro. Jay-Z, easy? Yeah, easy, bro. Jay-Z, easy. I'm eating with Jay-Z. Okay, okay. So look, y'all might have seen this topic. It's been out there for a while, but I found a clip that says everything I feel like we need to say without us having to say it. So, of course, we want to bring value from y'all, not just from us, but around the world. And this Earn Your Leisure clip says it so perfectly. Check it out right here. Opulation, that's actually commenting on this, have never seen $500,000 at one time and they've never met with a billionaire before. I'm not, this is just a fact, right? So technically, you're not qualified to even answer this question. So by the grace of God, we have been able to do both several different times. So we're actually qualified to answer this question. So this isn't a hypothetical for us. It's actually a real life scenario. So I'm going to give you a real life scenario so this could actually potentially help you. And so what happens after that conversation of meeting Steve Harvey? He decides he wants to become business partners with us and we become business partners. We make a lot of money from that situation, obviously, so does he. He takes a liking to us and he opens up his network to us. The first person that he introduced us to is Robert Smith, who's the wealthiest black person in American history, right? He makes a connection because of that. So we only know him because of him. So that's a billionaire that we got introduced to because of him. What else happened because of that? He made an introduction and made it possible for Tyler Perry to come to InvestFest. As a result, we get a guided tour Tyler Perry studio. We get to have a conversation with Tyler Perry live on stage and behind the scenes. And we develop a relationship with Tyler Perry in some regards. What else comes from that relationship? He makes the introduction. It makes it possible for Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A, one of the richest people in the world worth $7 billion to come to InvestFest. What am I saying here? Okay, let's say that we didn't we never met Steve Harvey. We just took $500,000. So what people don't realize is that most businesses fail. And most people have never started a business. So and most people with money end up losing money. So just because you have $500,000, everybody though, if I get $500,000, I'm going to turn that to $100 million. Well, probably not. Probably not. Even if you invested stock market is down, you would have, you would have, you would have, yeah, you would have lost money. You would have lost money in crypto. Maybe real estate, you would have lost, depending on where you invested. There's no guarantee you even wouldn't, it's not even that easy to flip the $500,000. Okay, you want to start a business. We know that 90% of businesses fail, even a higher ratio than that. So just because you have money doesn't mean you're going to be successful. You don't have enough information. You don't have enough knowledge because you don't even have enough resources to actually know what you're doing. So it's like people ridicule and like, oh, that makes no sense. Why would you, well, I'm just giving you a real life example. Now this is our story. So not to say that this is going to be true for every single person and every single situation is different. Every meeting is not going to work out the way it worked out for us. But just be careful who you're taking information from because everybody's not qualified to speak. 99 points. Not a businessman. I'm a businessman. Let me handle my business, damn. Hey, so that was a lot to unpack, man. Beautifully said verse. Beautifully timed to play it with that very such cord. But like, I have to say this, man, like usually we don't play clips that long. I think it was worth playing that clip. That should need to be heard. That full clip because we know what type of time a lot of people are on. And, you know, that's the, I don't even want to get into it. I know what, but this is the same type of person that will say 500k in most cases are the same type of people who will not consume an hour video. And they'd rather just watch a TikTok and expect all the valuable advice and insight to come out of a TikTok versus an hour long video. The sauce cannot be sped up when it's real. You hear what I'm saying? But it's a certain mentality. And this is what we need to address more and more, because I feel like a lot of people just exploit artists thinking wrong versus actually trying to explain. No, that thing that you want is nice. And I'm going to try to feed you some shit in the way that you want it. However, if you actually want to get to where you want, you also are going to have to reprogram how you consume, period. So, you know, that's kind of a side for me. But how do you see that advice? I mean, like I said, I think he said everything, but like that example says it all. But like you've had these kind of a lot of conversational artists that I know like allude to this same type of shit. So what are your thoughts? I mean, he essentially said the network is not valueless. What am I looking for? Invaluable, pretty much? Network is your network that whole time? Yeah, the ceiling on the network is really hot, or you can't even see it right versus the money. There's a lot of barriers with like even doing something with it. Because I know even at the start of the conversation, what I will always think about is, I think back like when I was a new business owner, like somebody just gave me half a million dollars, I probably would have fucked it up, you know what I'm saying? Because I didn't know what to do with it, right? I didn't know where to put it. I know I probably would have blew it on stupid shit. And I think like if most people were honest with themselves, like that would be the case for most people. Because most people aren't taught how to handle that type of money, you know what I'm saying? Or know like what to do with it in the business sense. But the biggest thing is when he went through all the introductions that he made from this one introduction, right? So from Steve Harvey to whoever, to whoever, to whoever, is like you can't even really put a number on the value of that network. But if we try, that's probably at least a one to 10 billion dollar network right there, right? Which is however many X to 500K, right? Versus he just got to 500K, went home. And then, you know what I'm saying? I'd be like, okay, well, fuck it. He just wanted the money. He ain't even about the shit, like we bought the shit. Because we both know, I don't know if everybody knows this, but like interestingly enough, the people that are the weirdest about money are people with money, you know what I'm saying? Like they're the ones I was like, aw man, that's about the money for you. Like that's crazy, you know? Because they have so much of it. Like they don't, they allow them to like move outside of it sometimes. And so I think you, like they would judge you for that. Like then you gonna take the money and not even try to attempt to get into my network? Or you not filled, you not covered. Right, with that being said, how many rooms can you not get into no matter how much money you have? Facts. It's plenty of rooms like that. And people just assume that, oh yeah, I'm gonna get rich and then they gonna want to do business with me. It's hard when you have those opportunities, you can't guarantee, oh just because I have money, I'm gonna be able to fuck with these people. Or I'm gonna go and track them down. Literally, oh I somehow met his grandma or his cousin and they connected me and now I'm in that space and I might not have as much money yet, but as a result of being in that space, I have money. Like there's rooms that you cannot buy yourself into because these people don't need no money. So you can't pay them, right? And there's people who literally just stop doing things like consultations and mentorships because they don't need to. Oh, if I mentor anybody, it might just be somebody who happens to be in my network, my friend's son, right? Or someone who somehow makes their way to me and I take a liking to them, but I'm not trying to do paid mentorships, right? I mean, even with us, right? We've had plenty of offers that we've turned down for people who say, oh yeah, I'll do some work for free or I'll, you know, for whatever type of money. And it's like, well, that's not enough money for me. It might be enough money for you. I'd rather just spend my time working on the thing than I'm working on, right? So that's the biggest thing I think about. How many rooms can you just not buy yourself into? And I think that's understated and overrated. But then you talked about when you first became a business owner and not knowing what to do with that 500K, right? And we overestimate our abilities in spaces that we have not yet to be. It's like, dog, yeah, I get it. You think that all you gotta do is X, Y, and Z and that's why we're always so smart. Oh man, I can't believe this person lost all that money. All you have to do is X, all you have to do is Y, like you do this and then you get a financial advisor. It's not that easy, especially 500K, it's not that much money, right? You talk about 60 mil, that's enough for you to do some things, lose some taxes and then have enough money set aside just in case you do some stupid stuff and you're still good. 500K is not really that kind of number, right? Like to be real, so when you think about it, going back to being a business owner and actually knowing what to do with it, how many people win the lottery and then they lose the money? So down there all over. Right? So much so that it's a story when someone doesn't lose money, right? All right, you've heard about those few people who actually kept the money. Now, next question. How many people have you heard won the lottery and flip the money? Won the lottery and flip the money. I can't think of one off the top of my head. I'm sure that is one, but I can't think of one off the top of my head. Exactly, bro, exactly. So it's level of skill sets. Keeping money, which is a skill set it is on. And at that point you're just preserving, which means you're just dying slow. Investing, so you can incrementally gain, but still really just not lose. So you're managing and then actually having the skill set to flip it. Just because you get the money, you don't get the skill set overnight. Yeah. And then it's hard to have the willingness to go get a skill set if you just got some money overnight. It's one thing's like, oh, you're working on this business and then you have a windfall through this business, but you're already in this groove where at least it's clearer how you can continue to build this skill. You've built momentum towards building that skill. But if I'm just in college having some fun and then I win a hundred mil. That's it. I'm just going to go find the skill. I still got to figure out a skill and then building skills are hard. Isn't this the right skill? Do I like it? All that stuff, you're just going to stop, right? It's hard, right? It's hard. So like that meeting, man, like that meeting is the way for me. It's always been the way. There is like one scenario in which I could see you taking the money. Like if a Jay-Z consultation is like 300K or less, I'll probably take the money and pay for it. But I feel like it's not. I mean, he probably is around that number. I would guess. And if somebody out there works for Jay-Z, please let me know. But I will ballpark the consultation with Jay-Z. Some of it between quarter mil to mil. That is a smart, smart approach to it, bro. Your answer is hold up, let me check. How much you charge, but 250? I know. I give me the five. I pay you the 250. I keep the other 250 when in a situation. But you know, but in the context of it, I'm interested in taking the meeting, bro, just because the amount of doors are open, bro. It's like there will be no one in that situation you couldn't touch or get to. And I mean, like Rashada mentioned in the clip, the value of your network could easily 10, 20, 100X like what you would have initially got. Like I'm sure, bro, they probably made, I don't know, a lot more than 500K. A lot more than 500K. Just from having access to that network. And I think like... If he didn't, he wouldn't be telling that story. Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, I think it's one of those things where it comes down to confidence in yourself as a business owner. Right? Like, do you feel more confident in flipping a network? Or do you feel more confident in flipping money? I know people who feel way more confident in flipping a network and flipping money. Right? Like now, give me access to people. Now let these people figure out how to do X, Y, Z. Now I'll make money out of that, right? Yep. First, you have some people who are the opposite. Now give me the money. I don't want to figure people out and how to use them and things like that. But you always want to hit that people ceiling eventually. Yeah, eventually, yeah. At some point, you can't do the money thing without people. Because it gets trapped. The money gets trapped behind boards of directors. Or I'm so big that I got to deal with government and lobbying. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or partnerships. And there's all these other aspects where once you hit a certain level of money, and that's, you know, it's considerably high up, especially depending on the industry and all that stuff. Like, it's a real thing. But the thing is, what are we here for? We're here for talking music. Yeah. Bro, that's a low ass ceiling. Yeah, very low. You got to talk to people. You talk about making 10 bands. You got to talk to folks. Right? Like deal with folks. You got to go to the club if you're an artist. Right? Deal with the people at the club, the promoter, or whoever, and maintain that relationship with that promoter because they can come back to you. You build over time and music. This is relevant by ASAP. So then you talk about meeting Jay-Z and you're in music. And you have that relationship and everything that cascades from that in terms of resources and opening doors. And oh, you know Jay-Z and he's cool with you, da-da-da. That might also create some enemies depending on who might not like them. But that's part of the game anyway, right? So in music, this is especially relevant to have this mentality because it's so few places that you can just throw that 500k in and get it out immediately without, it'll leave you don't have a real infrastructure already. And if you don't have the relationships, you're also going to be kind of blocked out from most of the opportunities. So, you know, I hope all of y'all understand this because we actually also are going to, we're going to, the next subject is actually this, but 10 times deeper, right? You gotta know in the music industry, this game is about finesse. This game is about putting in work. And you have to be able to see the opportunity beyond the opportunity. Just point blank. And where most people mess up in the music industry is not seeing the opportunity beyond the opportunity. So we want to talk about that because this came to head recently with a very, very interesting circumstance. Gloria, the budding artist, made a post talking about a job opportunity that she had and it ruined her and her friend's relationship. So let me go ahead and play this clip where we're going to talk about it because it's some real conversation that needs to be had when it comes to this music shit. All right, let's go. Let's go. Boom, they're talking about $5.52. You really need to be five. You're pointing with them today. No, I'm just playing, but for real. First of all, your flights get paid for. Your flights and your travel. All right, let me read this because you didn't play the beginning. Gloria responds to backlash after she posted a personal assistant job for $550 a week. So that's the context. They're talking about $5.52. You really need to be five. No, I'm just playing, but for real. First of all, your flights get paid for. Your flights and your travel. If you want to have pay, then pay for your own flights and your own travel and see how much them $500 flights you get. Did you think I've been to pay you $1,200 a week and pay? I take flights every day. You think I've been to pay $500 for you a flight every day plus pay? No, they don't work like that. Anyways, after that, I think the point is understood. We don't need to play that whole clip. The whole point is, one, she's not just paying $550 every single week. She's also paying for all these other things that come along with the job. She's taking you around with her. It's going to cost you for a flight. It's going to cost you for multiple things. And I want to post the Nick Love tweet because we can really get into it. But some people might just have an attitude like, hey, well, that's the cost of doing business, right? You go to a certain jobs. They pay for the laptop. They pay for the phone. They're paying the light bills for the facility. So that's just a part of the job. Why do I have to take a hit for the fact that you got to pay these other expenses? First answer is, you do take a hit. Anybody out there, if y'all have a regular employed job on paper, that means your job's paying health insurance. If you were a contractor, you would get paid more money. You get paid less because they don't have because they're paying for your health insurance, right? I know some jobs. 60,000 is if you're if you work there, the contract is getting paid 80,000. All right. It's just what you want to do. All right. So it looks better, but now you got to take these other things into account. So the reality is everybody's getting paid less if they work a regular job based on the expenses. The employer always has to consider all their expenses. But get it into the real. Y'all need a rude awakening. Some of y'all, when it comes to, again, how this music stuff works, how y'all need to flip opportunities. But let's get into Nick Love's tweet because of conversations around it. It's interesting. So Nick Love referencing this said, nobody wants to intern to be in the music business anymore. Okay, I can ride with that, but 500 plus a week isn't enough either. What's the right answer? How much should someone be paid for entry level work in 2023? Now, when he says nobody wants to intern, he's talking about nobody wants to do free because music industry perception is nobody want to work for free. And but 500 a week ain't enough. Now I'm off a lot. I never did the work for free thing personally. I never was going to do it. I was always entrepreneurial, so I was always going to make some money. I did and the things that I did do work for free, quote unquote, I didn't look at that because I always was working and making money. And it's like I'm just kind of like building something over here, building a relationship over there. So that might have been looked at that, but it was never like a main thing or a through line career path. So, you know, Jacory, give him a little bit of your life though. Your life is different in my work. I don't work a couple of free joints, but first off, I managed for a couple of years. That's basically an internship until that motherfucker started making money. You know what I'm saying? I should have another tweet. I should have dropped in the chat, but that was a tweet where somebody was like, oh, like something people don't want to enter and wait till people find out that there's a job in the music industry where you might not get paid for years. You know what I'm saying? Like alluding to the manager shit. So I did that, but like my very first industry experience was I was a social media intern for a side of the prince. Like I helped write tweets and things for that. That was free, no money, you know what I'm saying? We got like a piece of party, you know what I'm saying? Just started off. That was pretty cool, you know what I'm saying? But no money hit my pockets. But my very first real industry job, I think I've told the story a couple of times, but there was a point where I got interned for a publicist. And he ended up somehow becoming friends with this very, very rich guy. Like one of the first millionaires I ever met in my life. I always remember this. And he just pitched me and he's like, yo, we want you to come out here to North Carolina and help us with this project. It's gonna be like two weeks, right? We not gonna pay you, but it'll be fun. And I got me young, I'm hungry. So I'm like, fuck it. Like let me go free. I'm like, can y'all just pay for my travel and make sure I eat? I'm like, yeah, we got you. You know what I'm saying? Just come. So I'm there for the two weeks. And I always remember there was a point where they were like, man, you're great. Like how can we get you to stay? And I was like, pay me. So that was like, that's similar. That's literally it, bro. Pay me. So I don't have to go back home. Back to my job. Cause I like lie to my job like crazy to get out. I don't even want to lie to them. I just know with some shit. I was probably 19 years old. Me coming up with like, that shouldn't sound beautiful. But it wasn't a lot. Like I think I was making $1,000 a month. And this is 2014. You know what I'm saying? So I don't know what it's equivalent to today. It's still not a lot of money, right? Yeah. But they were also paying for my apartment. That rent for that was maybe like 7,900 a month. And that got me a rental car, which I'm assuming the payments by between two to 500 a month. Did you have your own individual apartment or were you living with somebody? No, I'm on apartment. Cause at first I was staying in a hotel. They put me up in a hotel every night. Right. And one of the people we were working with was staying in the house. But then he wanted the hotel room. And I was like, bro, you tripping this shit. This house is nice as fuck. I'm taking the house. So then we switched. She got my hotel room. I got the house they were. Cause they had bought the house for the artist that we were working with. Oh. Like I said, the artist didn't want to say he wanted to get the hotel. I'm like, no, this apartment. Nice, bro. I'm taking the apartment. So the pamphlet apartment, they pamphled the rental car. I had a gas car. So I didn't have to pay for my own gas. And they would reimburse us for meals. Like if it was a meal I was eating like when I was off the clock, I'm on my own. But if it was a meal I was eating between, I was supposed to be doing shit. It took care of me. You know what I'm saying? So it was like on one hand, cause I always remember talking to my mom about it. And she was like, they only paying you $1,000 a month. I'm like, yeah, if you include everything else, it's really about $2,800, maybe $3,500 a month. You know what I'm saying? I was paying for all that shit by myself. And I was like, yeah. But even outside of that, cause you said something earlier that I think was at least one of the reasons I took it was I was very entrepreneurial. So I'm like, this isn't a lot of money. By that time, like I had like a blog I was building up. You know what I'm saying? So I was making a little money off of that. I was doing like video editing on the South side. Like, you know, you started to plan your day out. You got me working from 8 a.m. to like nine at night. It means I got 10 to one to make some of the money real quick. You know what I'm saying? Like I'll do XYZ. And I do think that a large part of the reason that the music industry moves the way it kind of moves in this is that we naturally assume that everyone in the music industry is entrepreneurial. Yeah. It breathes entrepreneurs. Cause almost like the barrier of entry is if you aren't the type of person who's going to figure out how to make money in some form of fashion, we don't want you in most cases. Now, of course there's companies, you know, you get to a certain point, you have at least your core team, but outside of that core team and the people who've had the most, we can only do so much for you. Yeah, exactly. Bro, it's like you're not working for like a big label or, you know, an established publishing company or something. The rest of the music industry is like their small businesses, right? And like, at least most of the small businesses I've seen like a lot of the employees tend to be entrepreneur. And then plus it's music, bro. There's no employee we've ever had. There's no one I've ever seen workers out there. I don't automatically assume isn't doing something else to make money on the side. Even if we were like paying them great. Like, you know, it's like, I'd be paying you 10K a month, but if you want 15, you don't go figure out another way to keep making some money. And I can't do anything about that. But then even as a business owner, like I'm kind of glad that you like that, right? I'm glad that you always thinking that because you're going to ideally transfer that same attitude to like the shit I hired you for, you know what I'm saying? The thing that I put you in. So I think that sometimes there's the disconnect because I come into it assuming like, let's say in this situation, like, well, really probably thinking like, yo, I'm going to put you around all these people in these situations. Like you probably going to flip it into your own shit, which if she's right and you do, then that experience is worth more than whatever the money is that she paid you. Then if you don't, or you don't plan to do something like, for you, your ceiling is just that position, then yeah, they're right. Like there's not enough, you know what I'm saying? But as an employer, she's probably considering like everything, right? Like she said, travel. I'm flying every day. That's at least probably like 1500 to 5k a month, you know what I'm saying? Right there. You know what I'm saying? Or maybe a week shit, you know what I'm saying? She really flying every day, you know what I'm saying? Plus hotels, because she probably don't want her staying in her hotel when Rice and I put you up. They probably reimbursed. Usually like interns and assistants, like they'll pay for your food and stuff, you know what I'm saying? But then the opportunity flip, you know, going back to the orang-a-ligia, because she's probably thinking like, bro, you're going to be like, if you were a producer, and trying to figure out really like, think about all the artists you meet and all the placements you might get, right? Yep. If I was a marketer, you know what I'm saying? And trying to figure out really like, think about all the campaigns out, like about 100% be doing something on the side. So I think most people in music, assume that the people that you hire underneath you are going to have other things that they're doing to make money. Because I haven't made anybody yet in music that's really just doing like their one job, you know what I'm saying? Well, I won't say anybody, but it's been a very small amount of people. Like, I could probably count them on like both hands, you know what I'm saying? If I thought about it. I'll say this, man. Like, it goes back to that same, would you do 500k, or would you have a meeting with Jay-Z? Most of the opportunity in these space and places are meeting people. Yeah. All right? Meeting people. So you're talking about one of the hottest artists in the game right now on the hip hop side, Glo Rilla. She's really piping hot at the moment. She's about to meet a whole lot of people, period. That's a whole lot of relationships that you can make. We know one of Diddy's personal assistants, right? And he has this entire plan, right? After this, because I'm getting all these connections, the people I'm on the phone with, like you can insert all the big names you could think of that Diddy would talk to, literally he's talking to them sometimes. And what I can do with my brand name that I established with them, because trust is the biggest currency once everybody has the money, right? Now, after this, I can leave and then go flipping and build something big. If you all know what the crew league is, where you see all these rappers, artists, playing ball or whatever, that was started by one of Diddy's ex-personal assistants. He got all those relationships with the Chris Browns and all these other folks built his name. And this is information we got from him because he was Diddy's personal assistant, probably not making the most money in the world. But also, I'm sure they got a little bit, but not making anywhere near the most, but you got Diddy's name on your resume, you built a relationship with Diddy where he'll be willing to open some doors, probably as long as you aren't like probably violating him every single day, right? The obvious type of stuff. And then everybody around that you're coming across, that you don't even know how to get in contact to, you don't know how to get in those doors. It would take you, I don't even know how long, right? Know how long. Think about just the stuff that happened when we were like traveling with Macy those times. Yeah, that was crazy. Just like random. Yeah. Like you never know, right? In the moment type stuff. So like, bro, that shit is so valuable. I encourage anybody, if they see a job like that for an artist like that, y'all take that. Easy, bro. Like easy. If you're young, because I was doing $1,000 a month jobs, $1,500 a month jobs, even when we were starting our business, we weren't paying ourselves like $1,000, $1,500 for the longest, right? So like, you got it, especially if you're like in her hometown, wherever she's mainly based, so I guess I'm so Memphis or whatever, right? But somewhere where it's like, you could just live in mama's house when you're at home. You got to take that job. I would take that. You have to take that job. Part of the interruption, I have to take this quick commercial break to let you know that we are sponsored by me because I signed myself. We signed ourselves. It's this brand-man network. That's why we're calling no labels necessary because no label, nobody else is necessary for us to get the train moving. So if you could just subscribe to show appreciation, we'd really appreciate that. Back to the program. Easy, bro. Like you said, bro, if you're not even young, bro, if you don't have any kids and like serious bills, bro, like 100%, bro, because I would do that shit now. You know what I'm saying? I like to be real with you. Like I said, I'm thinking about the flip, bro. If I was around her, well, we're making at least 200k a month in campaigns, bro, because I'm trying to sell everybody I come across. You know what, I'm lining it up. And that's the biggest thing, too, because even going back to the intern conversation that Nick brought up, bro, you listen to the stories of motherfuckers entering in the music industry in the 70s, 80s, 90s, bro, that shit was real abuse, you know what I'm saying? Like so we've come a long way, I think, as an industry that was like, we at least are willing to pay people at that spot. But it's like you were essentially getting paid to learn about something you don't understand. You know what I'm saying? Like you're essentially getting paid. It's like being paid to go to school. And in her case, you're getting paid to increase your network, bro, because if you're her assistant, it means everybody that she comes in contact is going to have to talk to you at one way or another. So you really meet every single person that she meets. Or like, let's say like 90 to 95% of the people that she meets in business dealings are going to have to deal with you in one way or another. If even 3% of those people actually converted obviously your network, that would be crazy, you know what I'm saying? You know what, though, most jobs, there's two things working against people. One, most people go to college. Now you're thinking about these student loans, I got to pay off, right? You don't need to go to college. You don't need it in this industry. But of course, it might help for those of y'all who are out there or whatever. Then the other thing is most jobs actually do not give you an environment where you are meeting people like that. So yeah, I'm going to give you this 60K because all you can expect is a 60K and to go home, right? You come to the office, you're inter-cubical. You might talk to the people on a group call and you might have a way of going up the ladder in this company, but it doesn't create additional opportunity for you outside of this company. Where music kind of is this constantly moving thing and the people within music move around so much that they don't necessarily expect you to be stagnant, especially if the company isn't like more of a startup and it's growing. You know what I mean? It starts growing. You have a more strong core team that you're looking for and you're trying to build something. It's a different type of vision, but it's like the labels. I was just on a call with someone the other day, yesterday actually, over at one of the bigger labels and he was like, yeah, man, I don't plan to be here next year. He just got here this year. Don't plan to be here next year. And he was like, yeah, because all the label, all the money is outside the labels. I'm here to learn. And actually, he's probably, I didn't ask him what he's making. He's probably getting paid over 100K, but this is just a natural mindset of music though, right? If I'm not attached to an artist or I'm not building something on my own, there's a ceiling. So it's 100K, 150K, whatever. I'm not going to go too much higher than that here. I'm trying here to learn the system, get out of it, apply it to my own artist label infrastructure and blow things up here. And again, this is a great job making money that probably most people would love to make in any other industry. But music is like, all right, now I gotta get to my own. So I think that setup is, it attracts the people who think like that. And all the commentary are for people who aren't going to win in music anyway, because if you don't think like that or understand enough to know that there's opportunity, maybe I'll get a raise with this person. Maybe Glorylla gets even bigger and she needs assistance under her assistance. Like the Diddy situation, like Diddy got assistance, managing assistance, you know what I'm saying? Like there's either growth here or there's the opportunity that come from it. So music is a really weird space. So I want to read some of these comments because maybe some of these people, we probably should look at, try to get a gist of some of these people are in the music industry or not. Because I can understand you're not in the music industry why you think all this shit is just crazy. But let's say Jabari McDonald said, someone managing your calendar and schedule, having the names and numbers of all personal and business contacts traveling with you, knowing where you live, coordinating your safety protocols, and you call it entry level, the answer is yes. The answer is yes. You also have that exact same person and it could be upper level, but Glorylla is a new artist first and foremost. People are probably pocket watching. She don't have the money y'all think she has yet. She literally just started popping. She ain't seen that money yet. She probably hasn't had a personal assistant before, so you have to be entry level because everything is developing now, the infrastructure is developing now, so there's no high level skill sets that are acquired just shit. All right, she's learning this shit on the go. Yeah, she's new, but if it's like Drake or something, this would be a different story. Yeah, exactly. If it was Drake putting that up, I'd be like, come on, bro. No way. No way. Like Drake personal assistant, easily over a hundred K. Yeah. Right, easily. Easy. All right. Let me see, $500. That's a minimum wage in Jersey for an industry that I would hold my value higher in than a cashier at McDonald's, even as a newcomer. Man, this is about the same, bro. Personal assistant for a new rapper, cashier at McDonald's. About the same. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you gotta look at the business that you're attached to. Yeah, exactly. Right? Like McDonald's a billion dollars. It is a cashier for music industry. Maybe not. The mail room. I'm not going to go with the cashier in the music industry. Well, a new personal assistant. Okay. It's about the cashier. Brand new. Okay. I can see that. I can see that. The season, like good ones run out. Yeah. A hundred percent out. Let's get through a couple boardies. These people be living outside their means. If you stay within your means and not try to live a life that you see on social media, two bands a month is more than enough for you to save and stack while you make your next move. This is my thing. There's a lot of people out there who are not making two bands or are just making two bands. Yeah. Including, yes. Let's say people who are working at McDonald's, people who are working in some of these grocery stores. Right? Yeah. But they don't have the opportunity this shit has. Exactly, bro. They're not introducing you to the people that this does. By the way, y'all should know most of these jobs are not something that people expect you to be here forever. Like this is not only an entry-level job. It's a temporary job that's supposed to be a stepping stone. I don't plan to pay you 2K for the rest of your life a month or $500 a week over the rest of your life because that's a little bit more viral statement, right? $500 a week for the rest of your life. I plan on you to graduate. Maybe you make a little bit more, but you're probably going to graduate and then I'm going to pay somebody else $500 a week. And then they're going to keep learning that in the system. People build that into their business models where they know because of the infrastructure and their needs, there's not that much more opportunity in this space. So I just want someone who can do it while they're there because it doesn't require that long of a skill set, that high of a skill set so I can train you quickly. They move on. Did I add somebody else in? And it just keeps cycling in, cycling out. And then maybe there's one person who's staying and managing that. That's a legitimate business model. 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, go viral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we 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 going to 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. Sometimes you just got to see a model for what it is. But like not seeing the opportunity here, like it's funny you said that though, like you, like you would do that shit right now. I felt the same way outside of like my circumstances. You know what I mean? Like obviously we got a business going and then I got the wife and kids situation. But like as a single person, especially if I wasn't popping popping and I do well, I was in music. Why? Why would I not? Why? Nah, man. Yeah, I would flip that. But maybe you have to kind of be in it long enough to see and know exactly what to do with it. And I think that goes back to the 500k or a meeting. When you know what to do with a meeting, then bam, that confidence checks in. I'm going to take the meeting because then you mentioned confidence earlier. A lot of your decision making when it comes to being a business person and not playing yourself or just making better decisions. One is long term thinking, but two is the confidence to be able to cap off or something. Yeah. Like sometimes people just do some stuff because it's like, oh, I might intellectually understand it, but I'm not confident in myself to figure that shit out. I don't think I'm going to be here to really figure it out. I don't know. Yeah, I might not be here tomorrow. So let's enjoy the day. You know, that's the mentality. Yeah. I do think sometimes too, like general employers sometimes don't respect the personal development aspect of someone and stuff because I think about our stuff and it's like, we probably spent at this point in time, I would guess what, we probably spent at least like 70K, maybe 200K on courses and stuff. Not think about it, bro. Everybody that works for us can go through $100,000 worth of information for free because we give everything that me and you have ever went to to all of our employers. Like they have the options to at least go through it, right? Yeah. Jocelyn today wanted to go learn how to grow an agency. She can take the same agency, building resources. I took right and do something with it. And like that in itself is, I think, very valuable, you know, because I think like the bigger entities are going to ideally give you that. I actually saw BMG was hiring for like a digital marketing manager or something. That's one of their selling points. You get access to this. I can't, is it Lydia or something? Like the, the course. Oh yeah, Linda. Linda. There we go, right? Like one of that big selling points is like, we give you access to Linda. They're basically like, we're going to give you like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of educational resources. Like, yo, going back to what you're saying, like, we don't expect you to be in this year forever. If you do, then we thank you fucking up. Because I mean, you're not either, you're not growing enough to know what we can push you to something higher or like your, your spirit just ain't there to where like you going to work your way out the shit anyway. So that most people in those jobs, like the job ends up firing them anyway. You know what I'm saying? Because it's like, I don't, I don't think most employers go into it, saying like, how I want to pay you a low amount forever. It's like, you know, something is gravely wrong. It is that they do. Yeah. Like it means the business isn't growing and doing what it's supposed to. Or you're not doing what you're supposed to. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so going back to even what you say, like, go real is the equivalent. It's like a new startup right now. Yeah. Right. Hot in the marketplace. So we talking about, but she ain't, she ain't legacy yet, right? The revenue ain't, ain't stable as stable as it could be or it is. So it's like, this is the equivalent of like a, you know, like a new app launching us some shit and they're hiring you for an entry level there, right? Do you have enough faith in the company that you're going to work for that they're going to be here long enough that you can make more money? Yes. And if you do think there will be, then that's me is even more of a reason to take it because you get to get in early on something like that, right? And now, like imagine being like an entry level employee for like YouTube or something when they first started. And then you still be that today but you'd be crazy, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. You've been making so much money, you know, so many people you have such a crazy brand to flip. And I'm looking at the same thing with that. I was like, yo, if you are someone that believes that like Gorilla might even be here and it's not even so long time. Let's say for at least the next three to five years. That's good enough for music, bro. You make it for at least three to five years. You saw it, you know what I'm saying? And the advancements you're going to get in that time because ideally her business stabilizes. And I mean she seems like she wants to do things right, right? Like you said again, bro, like she's a new business on us. She probably, she's probably just just now starting to even think that she needs to figure this stuff out. But it's like she grows. She's going to want to grow you with her. But personal system be some of the closest people to ours. You know what I'm saying? They'd be damn near like their thumb or some shit, bro, right there with them. You know, so down there probably end up becoming BFFs. You know what I'm saying? Like brother and sister, sister, whatever you are. And like you just get the benefit completely off of the rise of that because like you're right there with all of it. You know, just like employees that work for startups that end up blowing up and become the next best thing. You know what I'm saying? Like that some of those people in some of the best positions. You know what I'm saying? Because like they were just right there with it all. And I feel like a good business owner that sees the company go through that is going to want to pay you more. You know what I'm saying? Like it's a very special type of business owner. It's like no, I'm trying to pay these things less. You know what I'm saying? Most of the most of the ones like I've known even especially in music are all trying to figure out how to pay everybody that works for them more. You know what I'm saying? Like it's like, yo, my this person that they're happy with this about really wanting to make at least double. That should be making double that for the job and how much I think they do for me. But this is all I can for it right now. You know what I'm saying? This is all I can do. We only make maybe only doing 500 care years. I can't give you 200 care year. You know what I'm saying? Like I give you 40 care a year. But if you grow me over these next three years and yeah, three years I should be able to pay you 200 care. You're easy. You know what I'm saying? Like best on the way this is going. So it goes back to that confidence thing. But like not even just the confidence and you being able to flip it and get outside value out of it. Like confidence in the person that you're working for. You know what I'm saying? Like do you do you think that business is going somewhere or there are artists that you're working for going somewhere? Because the answer is no. I completely feel everybody that says not enough. But if you if you say yes and you like man I can see glow really becoming the next Cardi B. Then it's like well would you not you don't think in five years from now you you will want to be attached to that person. You know what I'm saying? Like in some way shape of form. Crazy. Right. Cap. Well said and I want to cap it with a couple more comments because they they got real interesting. This one right here. Oh yeah I saw that one. This is why record labels have no future. Gen Z kids political awareness is going to radically change media consumption. Also Web 3 is here. Y'all just used to exploiting. Y'all normalize it. Generations of creative squeeze till their breaking point. These are the statements of someone who doesn't run a business. Period. Or doesn't run a business well. Because like you said there's one it's a difference between a bad business owner or like some bad intentions doesn't want their people to win. And then most people which in some way you want to be able to pay your people more. Find the most quality people and grow with those people. That's just most cases. And I will argue with that bro. Gen Z kids are some of the most entrepreneurial kids I've ever seen in my life. They are. That would a hundred percent be like oh no I'm flipping this shit. Many of them yeah. Many of them will like the person I was just talking to who's working at the label. He's Gen Z actually. Yes young as hell. Flipped opportunities. Yeah. You know I mean flipped opportunities. Doing just that. Matter of fact he said he was making a round 2k. I feel like he might have. But I don't know. But yes. So bro. I don't want to get it to the Gen Z argument. I mean y'all acting like people can live off that. All they're asking is that a millionaire pays them. Stop calling go real little millionaire bruh. She just popped. It's probably been six months maybe. Maybe yeah max. How often the checks come in music off the mute. Every quarter. Every quarter. So we're just now getting to the second quarter. Yeah. Yes she's toured or whatever. And. I got some advances. Yeah some of course the advances. But advance doesn't make you a millionaire. Yeah. Right a millionaire is a stable position. If you want to label somebody a millionaire not somebody who has a million dollars a millionaire. That's a stable position. I've seen money through probably at least a couple seasons. Yeah. All right a couple seasons. And when I say couple seasons I'm like couple years. Right. Like. So and this is stagnant and not not stable. It's stable and I can continue to grow from there. She is not a millionaire bruh. Like it's way too early to go from where she would came from and to say she's a millionaire from a standpoint. I treat you like a millionaire and judge you. Amon Shumpert was talking about he's a NBA player. He was talking about you know these players who might be like oh yeah you know I'm making 15 million dollars or whatever and and feel like that they're on the same level as him. But he's a veteran now. He's like I've been making that money for 10 years. Yeah. It's just different. You're a rookie and it's nice. Of course congratulations but I've had time to mess up to put money away again and again and again. You can make 100 million right and that's not the same as making 15 over 10 years. Yeah. Yes. Technically it's less but it's also just the habits and the lifestyle and the stability that comes with it while you're still in the phase of figuring out where do I put this shit. Yeah. You know what I'm saying. So yeah stop stop doing this with artists. And this is becoming a industry navigation episode and how you think episode but it's very very real for anybody who wants to get a job and a lot of your artists you know we know a lot of artists who have gotten different jobs and then flip it into their artistry or or you know to at least work in the industry that they want to be in until they pop off as an artistry. So it's invaluable nonetheless. Let's let's get a couple of the tweets. What's the all issue with everyone deserving to be paid a livable wage. Why is that so hard to understand. So quick math 2k 550 you know this round it up will down say it's 2k a month 24k a year. I get it. 24k a year is not a lot of money per se like when you look at the full scope of things but when you talk about being early on I have lived off of less than 24k and somehow there were people I knew who were making more money than me and living off of 24 and 30 and 40 and slowly doing that over the years I had a similar financial position because I wasn't living what my means. Yeah. They're out there doing whatever they do you know what I mean and I'm just working you know that little bit of money I stay out of credit card that like I was like on that type of time so everybody assuming that livable wage you can live I'm not saying you can live good I'm not encouraging that I'm not saying that we want anybody there permanently everybody please get that this thing I'm gonna be balling for sure but look I've done been there I've done that and if you're working if you're living with a parent especially hey so also look bro that might just might mean this job ain't for you don't get mad if this shit ain't for you that's like me looking at a job listing in LA and being like man why don't shit have to be in LA yeah or why they're like you're not forcing me I'm not in the job I'm not working for you and then all of a sudden you come in A'shine know what you making 10k a month but we're gonna drop this shit to 2k a month no you chose this so if you're just not the person for the job what's the uproar and she probably is looking for somebody that's like you know and hungry I see one in the comments is about what if they have experience you know what I'm saying but it's like one I feel like they would have truly meet a personal assistant that was just like really on their shit had years of experience they probably be willing to have the conversation of paying the mortgage the conversation exactly but might not be able to pay you what you think you're worth because of this is just what my budget is right now now see the vision and you go ahead and you know take less than you feel like your experience should get you and then grow with me and go that way cool right that's like you said believe in yourself and believe in the person who's running the company or do you want to just say all right cool I understand and then not take the job but you have the option to not take this job so let's see I'm just running to like three and then we'll do a last wrap up for this comment because we ended up up on this longer than I thought but again I ask who said it's entry level what if one has expertise or experience already in that field that's that person you talked about look it doesn't you creating hypotheticals you think you should be getting $500 a week for entry level work first of all that's objective entry level yes in certain industries you know because some industries entry level is like a hundred K damn near like some of these programming jobs that I had and I was looking at when I was on that side of things and I was programming and stuff they were starting that 80 K out of college yeah yeah bro like and I know some dudes who made more than that so entry level is relative after watching that video she posted I really just think Shawty did a horrible job of explaining the logistic behind the job requirements etc but then again I think that job is for somebody that has potential wanting to gain experience from scratch yes well said man I do think she probably could have done it better you know a little rough around the edges but at the same time look if I'm somebody without a skill your your value is judged on a skill if I'm somebody without a skill I'm gonna definitely take this job you more so because this gives me ability to gain a skill and actually be able to demand more from anywhere else bro and and you know motherfuckers that's posted job listen before bro you know sometimes you're just gonna be snatching shit off Upwork to make it look more serious than what it really is and that's not really what you're asking for because she in that video she explained like what she really wants the assistant to do you know what I'm saying like what you would really be doing that job and you compare it to what she put on the post yeah the post does look crazy I ain't gonna lie but then she's like nah I know okay I can see I kind of went overboard you know what I'm saying but she probably they probably got that shit off off of Upwork post brother's copy and pasted that shit and threw it on there so these last two she didn't say it was an internship she said it was a job and kids are making bank and internships now I got paid more than that at a non-profit internship in 2011 I love global the pay is a note I am 25 and was making 37k and still couldn't pay my bills efficiently I am now making 52k and pay and can pay them but still cannot purchase much entertainment ain't nobody feeling empathy for that I'm not understanding what doesn't stretch as far as it used to especially if you single I don't know where you live but bro like you making like 52k and can barely pay for your own entertainment I was having a I was I've never not been having fun when I had the opportunity but Stacko 500 get you a PS5 Stacko put another 180 get you a couple games and you stay your ass on the house and you know what I'm saying play Fortnite online that's my shit bro you know yeah yeah yeah your Netflix description now again well 100% we know that inflation we get all these things so some numbers might be a little bit skewed from what we were used to when we were getting you know a thousand among 1500 a month it might be slightly different cool I understand that so 2000 today might feel a little bit different whatever but please understand that this when you're looking at jobs in the music industry don't let people trick you off your block yeah like people don't understand this industry and that's cool it's no difference than you know my mom not understanding entrepreneurship and how much I'm paying myself at the moment how come you're not paying yourself more how come you're paying other people more than you how come like that is like hey look chill out I know you don't get it but we gotta we gotta build all right like that's the moment and of time it is so people might not get it don't get your context and advice from outside that industry in most cases because they just particularly when it's something like music like they just don't get it and if it's not for you that's 100 percent understandable understandable game ain't meant for everybody but hey like I ain't gonna say I just hopped in and like oh this is a beautiful place yeah like I wasn't like that at all I was like do I want to be here if I if I am here how do I want to go about it that was my my way that I came came into it so make that decision for yourself yeah man so I wanted for her assistant to one center her nigger the five attachments you know what I'm saying that's pretty that's part of the job because I don't know if you get that I thought I thought that went over your head wait you said send her five attachment I wanted for her assistant is the one center her nigger the five attachments oh yeah it did go over my first I ain't quite on here all right yeah yeah yeah yeah light words bro you you three for three with the verse but I've been on it bro bro I've been on it bro you on it man I don't know where it's coming you had your tea this morning or something you know nah man I had uh actually I did I've been on the matcha wave recently man I forgot to tell you that I told you bro once you figure it out yeah it's a different little space man yeah bro it's like three minutes on the cure 45 seconds on the matcha bro easy easy hey hey man shout out shout out to Lee man for putting us into the the match I know you out in a Malaysia so you probably are not hearing this but shout out to you anyway um and y'all look y'all try matcha we might have a matcha yeah we might have a matcha I don't love that bro sure bro I ain't gonna lie put yeah I definitely put the world on that they could pay us in Prado too I'll take that this shit is kind of expensive all right so the next next story these other ones are gonna be a little bit quicker but I feel like for a full video when we clip that other one that we needed to be as long as it was now they paid her so much she took her glasses off what is this about this is about her her the artist now this is a joke this is a meme the artist her if y'all don't know who she is uh well look she's an R&B singer y'all should get y'all gotta know who she is look her up if you don't but she played Belle in ABC's Beauty and the Beast special oh shit for real yeah she did I know that it was a live special and she was on tv yeah playing Belle all right I should god damn yeah exactly level up these these uh women artists but she especially in the R&B space I've been seeing a lot of them make these type of crossovers and they're they're killing that I would like to see more of some of like the male rappers and artists like do those type of crossovers these days I'm not getting enough of but why but why is this a story like see the baby play like Scar and the Lion King or something stop it man stop it stop it why is this a story though why is this a story that's the whole point of bringing this up they paid her so much she took her glasses off her glasses are only a big deal because they're a part of her brand yeah yeah how did they become a part of her brand she wore them again and again and again yeah the same thing we talked about the other day something could be extremely simple and basic but if you do it over and over again you can turn it into a brand and you can make it more extraordinary than it actually is and sometimes people overthink what an actual brand is they think that oh I need to do some type of massive gimmick I need to figure out how to be bright and stand out in all these other ways but literally just doing something repeatedly can be good enough yeah all right it can be good enough so that's the main highlight that I got from this headline of course you know this shit's funny actually but the fact that it was something worth mentioning only comes from how well established her brand is is this the first time we've seen her without her glasses on it's not it's not okay it's not okay not at all this is my first time seeing her without her glasses on nah man now she see there it is right she I went to her page actually and she actually has a couple of pictures maybe because of this where she's taking her glasses off now like she was trying to get ahead of it maybe maybe that's what it is I would see oh shit yeah damn I gotta go I don't I don't think I follow her but she does I don't whip my phone out man I don't follow her but she had like 10 minutes probably got 10 million won uh-uh hey and she she still wears glasses by the way but now it's more alluding to the brand and I love the way her did stuff because she walked people through yeah her brand she was first this mysterious artist you literally do not know how they looked how she looked at all all you knew was a silhouette yeah yeah I forgot about that yeah exactly people didn't know who the person was she could have been black white whatever now you finally see her but when you see her she's in like these shrouded environments right it's dark it's silhouette so even though you understand it okay this is a black young lady she got glasses on she's in these environments so it's still a little bit mysterious and you can't quite nail her face people did like background and they I found out who she was as a kid but she's still playing the game and now as long as she's still playing the game and you know she's playing the game you're still in the game as you experience it right then she start kind of taking away some of the dimmer environments it might be a sunny day in LA in the video or something like that right but she still got the glasses on so she's still not letting you in all the way right slowly graduating now there's been quite a few moments in time at this point where yeah no glasses I'm out here just like a regular person however people aren't making as big of a deal her face car isn't as strong which is probably what she desires or at least that's what comes with it but she can always put the glasses on and it creates this element of like the Clark Clinton Superman effect right it's like oh yeah I'm in that zone now you know what type of time I'm in when I'm on that when I put my glasses on so walking people through your brand experience this is the perfect example of what I try to tell artists when it comes to trying to do everything at once first is giving yourself time to evolve having the confidence go back to that confidence to know that things are strong things are real when you do them over time and so many artists are thinking I have to go so big and make this massive oppression in a second and go viral and do everything at once that's why they get paralysis analysis right that's why they get overwhelmed and thinking man I can't make this stuff happen but the best cases are usually like her yeah but they were trying to figure out how to make five years about the decisions in three months facts and then wonder why your heart about to give out man it's like y'all chill out bro like we got time man chill out chill out chill out nah this is father but they basically so they basically built her like the weekend like they took a similar approach to the early weekend I didn't know that because I came in when she was at least showing herself a lot more that's what that's why I came into the story and then yeah like I said this is my first time saying who out the glasses on so this is I'm still taking it in right now you got the follow on her now so you won't catch it every step of the way yeah I'm in there I might turn the post mode because it's on I feel like I got a lot of catching up dudes you know what I'm saying find yourself in the DMs I ain't gonna lie bro like real random but every now and again I do shoot a shot at a random celebrity just to see if it happened just to see just to see because you never know man you never know you never know who watched the podcast she could be watching right and I'm like you know what I'm saying I'm just fine but hey bro I'm hoping for you you know what I'm saying thank you I'm hoping for you thank you man thank you I really do mean that I would love a 500k or Herb's boyfriend I'm gonna take that meeting with Herb's boyfriend if it's jacquory I thought you were saying would I take 500k or be her boyfriend no no I think that's the same answer though yeah I was like I'm definitely second to be her boyfriend bro easy hey but we might have revealed your car too early though because now you're out here looking like a like a trap that's true I ain't mean to Herb if you hear that I'll take it back it's just for the content yeah yeah yeah he only a thought for the content he not a thought of real life our next subject though let's get it to Wiz Khalifa because Wiz Khalifa dropped some game but I think it's more context he didn't put enough of the game in the content itself he just gave you a touch of it we're gonna we're gonna unpack this because artist I've seen more and more artists think this way he's one of the fewest fewer artists that I truly feel like he living his best life I see Wiz I'm like yo Wiz living good I forget about him and then I come back and I'm like yo Wiz y'all healthy and shit yeah dude healthy dude look like he not in the drama and the headline so let me play this clip uh-oh but I don't even have to physically show up for so if I have companies that I don't have to physically show up for that to bring in me millions of dollars for that I can spend a ton of time with my son you know what I'm saying passive income for that yeah I afforded myself that and I made sure that you know I made that comfortability for myself a lot of people don't think about that shit they just think money money money show show show blah blah blah but or my all right now first thing I think is important to to note about this Wiz Khalif is talking about oh I own all these businesses I'm investing things I don't have to be there we we are familiar with the concept of passive income but I was like you know what what is Wiz a part of because you don't ever hear it you hear Jay-Z announcing all these deals and making PR so I looked up a couple companies all right Wiz you go to Crunchbase all right one company in this portfolio here is called let's see where'd he go they only got him under one company personal investment there we go LiquidDeaf what? yes what? yes I did not know that I had no idea either that's crazy LiquidDeaf if y'all ever had LiquidDeaf LiquidDeaf is some water and actually if you know what LiquidDeaf is it makes all the sense of the world it makes all the sense of the world that Wiz Khalifa is invested in I just got him in LiquidDeaf definitely like two weeks ago because that regular water is disgusting the sparkling water the best sparkling water I haven't had there a sparkling one amazing bro I've seen you with it before though like I thought it was the regular though hell no regular water grows bro sparkling amazing but S tier S tier sparkling water I'm gonna have to check that one out I'm gonna have to check that out so LiquidDeaf is one of them all right crazy and obviously why does he need to be there Wiz probably wouldn't even know do if he was there yeah you know what I'm saying like that's the business he put his money into right investors make sense for your brand all the sense in the world see another brand that he's a part of I saw some kitchen Rapstar Wiz Khalifa has invested in PFL MMA and will serve as an advisor to the fight firm that's fine yes professional fighters league and they're making real deals it's a league again they have MMA but there was some big fight that I saw that they were trying to get the contract for I wish I could remember who it was it would be like a set it might have been like Jake Paul or something like that trying to get his fight or sign Jake Paul or Logan Paul okay they give us something like that right but yet another thing put his money into make sense for his brand he can be present but he doesn't have to be involved in the day to day is more him being him I get it I love it see it he just said voz him bro oh yeah that's a couple phone calls a month exactly now we can go to the core competition yeah Taylor gang entertainment all right or of course that was one of his first that was the business that you know he ran business for himself through that as an artist who were there who was their contract with because didn't they have some kind of JV or still have a JV probably I don't even know I mean about the my interesting set in a scope but I don't even know let's see independent record label so he's he's independent record label which I didn't either I didn't know I forgot that burner was involved in that which is crazy considering that burner has the like damn near billion dollar weed company at this point yeah let's see he had a juicy J right but he had his own indie record label we're in a lot of times a lot of people an artist y'all assume that the artist is going to be the active person when you sign to their label but typically they're just offering you their resources yeah all right yeah that's the reality look at they even know what the fuck going on yes you are lucky you are lucky because if it's an active artist they do not have time yeah to be the business person for you yeah so the benefit is there should be some level of competency for within that artist team because obviously they know how to make moves for that bigger artist here's the other problem I'll throw this in there though even though this is an in the main game that we're trying to talk about in this segment artists have completely different resources right so you think about a manager what was the surprise when we first started like leveling up and having all these clients where they have a big artist right as they're this manager as a big old artist they make however many millions yet they have this other artist that has a budget of what was that one five thousand dollars for a year about a year bro and you're like yo but this person also manages who I want to say let's just say this person manages Glorilla Buster arms and Drake and Drake and literally it could be those three and this other artist that they have will be a five thousand dollar budget for the year you have to understand that each individual artist is their own individual business so it's not like a regular business where you're like oh yeah I'm gonna put my resources and financial capital and reinvest they're gonna flip resources that they have from the relationships they built with Drake Buster arms Glorilla and then try to flip them for you into your business and grow it that way but if you think about oh I made money from my business with Drake Drake will be like what the hell are you doing putting my money into this nobody artist right or somebody artist it could be you know let's say the weekend like why are you taking my money investment over there it's not that way the manager himself is his own company he's making commission through each artist right or royalty have whatever y'all deal set up right but it's not the same company and I think a lot of artists or people who are trying to go work for people and obviously the agency's like like us right you had you go through the initial shock without understanding that these are all several entities and just because someone has a big artist doesn't mean any of that applies to the other artists yeah nice learned that lesson the hard way so many times I feel like I learned like once a year because that's how they get you bro they were like I want to work with such and such we're in a like yeah but I want you to work a little homie over here you're like man come on bro why you didn't leave with that man got me clickbaited you knew what you were doing that's exactly what it is it's social clickbait the conversational clickbait they killed me with that but back to Wiz doesn't run through a couple of these other businesses Gage Grove Corp and Wiz Khalifa's Khalifa Kush announced a partnership so the Khalifa Kush is doing quite well I didn't know that Wiz Khalifa had a restaurant it's probably out of one of those ghost kitchens all right but he has the hot box that's called okay I was gonna say it's called hot box this fall yep hot box and right now it's only in New York right but it's yet another business that's extension of his brand 99 point look to me I think it's interesting to hear people talk that talk oh yeah you gotta you know be a notch and renewer flip your money somehow and then it's nice to talk to talk that old passive income da da da da but it's more interesting to get it understanding of like all right what businesses are you running bro where are you investing your money and then do you have a strategy on how these things connect I don't need to know everything you know if you feel like there's some sauce or whatever I don't need no sauce but like what's your overall thinking oh I want to have things that are connected to my brand and make sense so it's an extension hot box right oh Khalifa Kush oh okay I get it so the MMA thing the MMA he started doing all the workouts and being okay it makes sense right versus someone else might be saying I'm trying to find things that have nothing to do with my brand and I'm going to just do real estate and go super hard on real estate like want to hear your strategy and I feel like that's something that we need to make happen yeah we need to have more conversations or like when we start interviewing people and get into that space that's something that we want to get into and dig into we should ask every single for you what are the businesses you got what are the businesses you got what you doing with it because sometimes I really do hear about some like really interesting stuff very interesting and you're like oh shit bro whatever like every artist at service level but you just think they're like I hate to say it but you just think they're like dumbasses you know what I'm saying or just whatever and then you learn about them on the back and they're like oh I do this and this and this and I run this you're like god damn bro why don't you talk about them more exactly so I don't think that you're a dumbass you know but I get it sometimes dumbassery is the game I have to look like a dumbass so people that is true you know I throw them off my set they don't know that I'm moving like I'm moving that is true that is that's true it is what it is like I got you aha got you got so I think that's a game within the game and you know a lot of times people do think oh this person is just moving and making all this money off of music and sometimes that person might be 20% music yeah but it goes back to like that three or five year thing we talked about well really like what I've kind of seen is like most of the bigger artists are like capping up in that three to five year window to have enough money to go start making money somewhere else so I need to collect all the chips by this shit is going my way and start redistributing them into some other shit before you know my stock starts to plummet because I mean with still streams like great you know what I'm saying I'm pretty sure these tickets are great crazy show price but it probably ain't shit liquid death alone but it probably ain't nothing close to that bro and then the weed shit because he was really early to the whole like weed business thing so I can't even imagine just like how that's grown and what connections he made in that world since you know so yeah that's how often you hear about Wiz Khalifa every maybe like every four or five business months business month down yeah maybe every four or five business months hey we making it and it's always good stuff it is always good stuff you don't really hear about crazy drama all the extra stuff and he looks in this good mood we opened up talking about him like that because that shit is doing well and I don't have to be here on tour crazy just to get along that's what he said that was the whole point of everything the lifestyle that I want to live is more time with my son that really matters to me there's certain levels of ability that is required I can't always be traveling but you can very well say I want to be on the road all the time most of those people haven't been on the road enough to know that you don't want to be on the road all the time just also but like I think that's the important part about it too is just when you especially when you start strategizing about where you want to go with things like what lifestyle that you want to live of course you can be rich but there's different types of rich like we've seen it and you can get your money in different types of ways pick your poison what problems you want to do cement niggas you say who niggas I'm cement niggas I ain't never gonna let that go bro that shit that shit's crazy yeah that was crazy that was crazy oh yeah because we were talking about the bricks yeah bro so I'm never letting that go I'm in the wrong business I need to be selling fucking bricks actual bricks for people listening yeah yeah yeah like cement bricks yeah we know you know a song can be used against you so a pot definitely might well what you mean oh okay yeah we don't want you to know why I said we go type situation it was like you said on podcast number 17 which I don't think I said by the way you know you made the bricks yeah you made the bricks statement you made the bricks statement which reminds me before we hit this last topic if y'all aren't aware we are doing consultations limited to December 31st if y'all want to talk with us one-on-one we'll put the link in the bio it's a holiday deal it's going to be 50% off only for these remaining days of 2022 check the link in the bio one-on-one with either me or Jacor or you don't get to choose it's going to be a little random thing but if you're interested in that so we can help you with your plan for next year build out your rollout with you when your team make that happen link in the bio but the last topic man why these artists who are thinking that they can just create a patreon and get rich create some type of subscription program and get rich they they think it's easy and there's a lot of faux pas that are occurring and I want to talk about that all right I want to say this there's a lot of industries that are selling y'all and don't understand this industry if I'm a tech company and I build this platform that I provide for other people I'm thinking oh yeah this person is a creator so I should convince them that they should offer exclusive creations on my platform and then build this fan club and sell this merch all these things right because it makes so much sense when I look at all these other verticals that have found success but they might not understand how music money comes in they might not understand how your fanbase spends money and that's the most important part in general how do fans in 2022 2023 2024 think about artists what is that entire relationship right because we've been trained to consume music for free and look at people differently so if they don't understand any of that stuff which none of them do right because they're like oh my gosh I can't believe the numbers look like that you get paid so little they don't understand this shit you probably don't want to just you probably want to take what they say with a massive grain of salt all right throw some pepper in there make it season salt because it tastes better you know what I mean that's what you want to do now what are these problems let's get into it the first thing that I see I'm going to start with product all right if you want to do this right you have to think what am I providing for people in terms of value and if you go back to the example I used where an artist throws a show people come to this show my whole goal is let me get as many people into this show as possible and when I have a hundred people in the crowd I'm like oh my gosh a hundred people in this are in this crowd and I'm satisfied I throw this show nobody's super complains so I think I'm good but now I'm wondering why it doesn't become easier and easier to get these same people out it's because my product wasn't great I was happy about getting people to see me I didn't think about providing value from them and making sure they had the dopest experience right that same applies to your subscription whatever they're subscribing to people think oh I'm just going to throw some songs that I didn't put out and put it in my subscription program all right are they the best songs in the world do people even think oh I consumed the best song in the world so I'm going to pay for it consistently and then also if you drop an amazing song that month that means you still have to pay for it again to justify the next month right so your experience for these people has to be specific to whatever they find value in so you got to know your fan base and is likely something that's going to take a lot more work than just not putting the full version like if we just say hey we're going to provide all the snippets of this podcast behind the paywall we probably have some people who would pay for it or we say we want to put the full episode behind the paywall we'll probably have some people to pay for it but that experience isn't going to scale for most people yeah all right you can't be specific enough now why is that important if you're just providing entertainment which is your music you're providing some behind the scenes videos because you think oh people will love to see behind the scenes you're just talking about entertainment who are you competing with Netflix Hulu YouTube YouTube Disney Plus Crunchyroll Crunchyroll Crunchyroll Crunchyroll what's that is the animated streaming platform oh I never heard of that one actually it's far just forward I used to watch animes on what was that shit Crackle back in the day but um godly he sounds so disgusting but but you're competing with all these platforms and you're competing with these platforms just think about it people are you're already trying to figure out how can I not have to pay for HBO Plus or not have to pay for Hulu Plus you think they're gonna pay five twelve dollars just for one single artist how much content are you gonna create to compete with that how entertainment entertaining are you gonna be unlikely it's just unlikely they might buy it at first because oh my gosh it feels good you got me hyping a moment because you might be good at selling but what keeps people using a product the product itself so you have to truly think about what that experience is because they're going to leave if you want to have they're going to leave once they realize I got to rearrange my life and cut some things out and we're going to get into the leaving segment I'm in the section but the biggest thing that understanding the product can get you to is thinking about what's the purpose that they're joining this thing in the first place because some people can get away with barely putting out enough if at least the context is that oh I'm just going to get some extra songs so you don't have to do all that much extra work because these might be some of your quote-unquote throwaways and they're completely happy with that you're probably not going to get all your fan base or all that many but if you have the right type of fan base with their audio files you know maybe they're cool with that if that's the expectation you set yeah but you likely are going to need a mission and a vision for them to buy into far bigger like what are they doing for you are they supporting you because you're about to go on tour right and this is a part of that are they helping you not have to sign to a record label who typically treat artists wrong and you doing this is going to help you invest in a tour that's going to help you invest in merch that's going to help you invest in starting your own label or signing other artists or creating some content series that you can sell off the vision has to be there because the stronger the vision now at least people are beginning to be justified and it's not even about oh I'm creating content I got some exclusive merch right it's oh I'm supporting something all right that's and now I'm supporting it and I'm paying for that vision to help him get there in a subscription set up versus just paying him $200 at one time yeah all right I'm paying him $200 over time and he's working on that so that's a different way to think are you selling them a vision that can help all right if you have something specific you're providing set expectations because the reality is when people leave which most people do subscription programs how are you going to replace them and if you're like oh man one point I'm going to get my shit to 10,000 subscribers well if 20 people are leaving a week that means you got to replace those 20 people and get another 100 people all right so now you realize you're only gaining 80 people a week and then how do you gain 80 people a week well you have to keep on keeping on like you got to keep post the content keep growing because if you stop then that 80 people become 60 people a week and the next thing you know you stop and now you're losing people people see the same shit happen when they're doing bots all right you're basically experiencing that within your own program all right you have to consistently grow and we're not talking about no fake stuff we're not talking about people who aren't like legit fans and you brought them in for some tricky reason the natural process of subscription programs is people to churn out over time people will leave everybody experiences that so you think oh I got 100 people and I'm good for now no that 100 is going to become 50 in a few months all right so if you always have to replace it now you're running uphill trying to post more while you're doing more in the community for somebody to pay you five dollars a month five dollars a month because this is what a lot of people are starting when I see artist programs five dollars a month at 60 dollars a year you know you could have just sold two pieces of merch it's a great way to look at it it doesn't make any sense and fans are happy to pay for that merch now you have to figure out instead though how do I convince them to be happy that they're paying me five dollars a month it's a completely different set of expectations I got to completely reframe everything give them a reason for them to feel justified to do this every month and I'm doing all this extra content when somebody who's a fan enough and truly messes with me they'd be happy to pay me for two thirty dollar shirts right and then the people who are on the higher end will pay more just do the numbers and get it in one bunch versus doing it over subscriptions because you're going to work harder and all that energy that you're putting for behind the scenes for growing artists this is more so for growing artists by the way like you're starting off and your fan base isn't super strong like you could be putting that into more content it already bad enough that you got to create social media content in the first place on top of your music and then do all these other things don't add extra workload to yourself behind the scenes and still try to keep up your clip to grow because if you don't grow you're only going to end up in a deficit in your subscription program because churn is natural it doesn't make sense and I think a lot of artists are being sold into that model without understanding the pros and cons of the model but also how to do it right because you can do it right subscriptions are a beautiful thing but you have to have the right expectations and again if I'm selling $5 a month it just doesn't make sense bro it just doesn't all right I get it to get the experience and maybe even see who rocks with me to do stuff like that but if you can sell 100 people on $5 a month trust me you can sell enough merch to take up for that period yeah yeah bro I always try to because I still personally haven't seen a subscription model doing right or well with an artist I can never think of wanting to talk about because I wanted a devil's advocate but I can't think of nobody here how how can you how can you devil's advocate bro nothing's kind of I'm trying so hard or nothing's coming to me maybe it's mind of comments or something but if y'all see somebody here y'all know somebody who's killing this subscription game for an artist yeah then let us know but there's so many ways to make revenue that fans are already happy to give to an artist right fans want to buy the merch right fans want to buy show tickets yeah all right fans want to buy vinyl right we've already been seeing is that that vinyl has been exploding it's doing better than mp3 tapes and all those other things right it's growing faster than streaming I believe if I remember correctly granted it's still smaller than streaming streaming it's easier to 5x right when you're smaller but vinyl is going crazy people love vinyl all right and we can have a whole another conversation about that we might get jocelyn on to talk to her about that because it's big on vinyl all right but there's so many ways that fans are already looking to exchange with you and instead of exchanging in the way that they want you're now trying to sell them on something completely different that they're not asking for yeah all right and that doesn't make sense until you understand at least how to take advantage of the things that are already in place that's the way I see it yeah now I think some like the distinction is important you might like so you have to always think about the end user experience and what what do they want because I do think there are a lot of examples of artists and creators putting out what they feel like the audience wants and a lot of the times the audience is directly telling you what they want like I had a homie once that like his audience just wanted him to drop merch they're just like bro please drop some merch like please hoodie t-shirt hat some socks niggas something please put some merch out and he talked about doing like some of some event for them like he wanted to put together an event and he's like I think it'd be cool we could do but I'm like bro they just asked for t-shirts bro like give them the t-shirts give them the t-shirts and the hat yeah because what's gonna happen is maybe the event does do well and you finally use it to sell merch that was a possibility at the time I didn't think about that now I can't wish I thought about that but I'm like but what is probably gonna happen is that you know you're gonna have the fans that can't get to it it's not as accessible to some yeah a lot of his fans are young so a lot of them parents probably won't even let them fucking go right and then you're gonna you're gonna see that this thing possibly didn't work out the way that you thought it would work out and all you're gonna be thinking about is like damn these niggas just wanted t-shirts I could just gave everybody t-shirts way less work way less work bro they're putting an event together and handling the still having to sell t-shirts like just to recoup and then you know for most people but events are like lost leaders lost leaders you know what I'm saying like it's it's about the look and the content hopefully the other shit makes this money back so but I always think about it because I see artists do that a lot they be like oh no like I'm gonna give them this and this and this and it's like bro like one this is your audience you can just talk to them and ask them what they want you know fans are very vocal especially ones that get asked questions from their artists because most artists aren't asking their fans questions so when they you ask them their opinion but they are gladly tell you what they want a cup would be cool cup all right you know 10 of y'all asked for cups all right I'm making cups you know something like that so it's like one you can just directly talk to the audience which I don't think enough artists do and I don't think a lot of them see it as valuable right we typically try to see artists like put really strong barriers between them and the fan base and maybe not have as many interactions but when it comes to selling them shit like you got to look at what they're saying you know it's like like us with our products and service and stuff but we read all the comments on like every social we're on right like there was a point where we were taking like every call for person people that was interested like we did a lot to like be able to like understand the people that were spending money with us I'm like what do you what do you want from me you know what I'm saying like like you keep telling me you want to spend some money over here like what do you want from me and eventually the offer comes together based on that right um based on that feedback so that's the one thing I kind of will also like a lot of artists are giving this is like bro just talk to your audience and let them kind of like guide you to what you want to make what you could make money on because that shit will save you a lot of time ahead of it like is there like then you you're not jumping through who to try shit just because you heard about it or you seen a video about that it might work it's like nobody asked them what they want from you and then make money on that and then maybe eventually start experimenting with the other shit you know yeah I mean look man I I think that a huge part of disconnect is have you ever wanted something but not enough to do the things that you had to do to get it yeah home time that's what the disconnect is it's like dang I just wanted that t-shirt but you said I gotta go to this site sign up put my name join put my name in the news letter verify the email yeah verify the email know what bro I'm just gonna go do something else yeah all right and that's what artists are doing a lot of times it's like I just asked for t-shirts you said I gotta go to this event or I gotta wait till after this event it's all this extra stuff and it's overload it's overload so keep it simple especially in the beginning you don't have to overthink these experiences you see some of these artists that actually do some really in-depth experiences on some Kanye type stuff but understand they have their artists audiences attention in a different way yeah all right where they can do that and people are gonna wait so back to the subscriptions specifically for most people especially when you're starting out the numbers just do not make sense all right you can make the same amount of money or more if you just sell all right and you'll put yourself in a better position to just focus on understanding how to bring in new people versus trying to capitalize on those couple that you already have because the first problem of having a subscription program is going to be well how do I grow this thing yeah how do I grow it because the moment you have five people you're going to realize those five people are going to become four people and it sucks when you see that shit going backwards and then you start feeling like these people don't even value this why am I putting work creating all this extra content when they don't even care all right and now you're upset that someone just got out for five dollars and your life is focused on five dollars remember when we had shit I was telling him but like man bro this person are you in about me over 20 dollars yeah like this is going to make a big difference in my life thinking that we scabbing and like you start to now be focused on moving the needle on a number so small and it makes sense when you got a tech platform that might be the scale and you also move on data it works without you after a period of time because it's software that's a completely different game but when you're selling yourself and I gotta create this content you're gonna find yourself having a headache and even devaluing your own efforts when you start getting demoralized by those numbers going down and this subscription program not moving fast enough that's just from what I see especially for the people who don't understand the things that we just talked about you got any other thoughts on that though nah man I'm not sure that was well said all right well in that case we up out of here so that was episode number 17 catches every Tuesday and Thursday pre shot HR for who are rocking what is this far if you know anybody who is interested in getting a job in the industry y'all need to send them this pod because this one was a shout out especially for them not just the regular artists but people who are trying to navigate make money once again this is no labels necessary I'm brand man Sean now I'm Corey and we out