If I'm the establishment, the best thing that I can do is to get them to feel pride with being a broke artist. I can make you feel pride for being in the hood, from the hood, and now you're always talking about where you're from as a point of pride, as if that makes you better than somebody else, even though a lot of that mentality might be keeping you back and becoming the ultimate threat to me. When you're younger, you have a lot of false dichotomies. So it's like art and commerce can coexist. Right. It's like, says who? Speak on that, exactly. Why can't I feed my family and make some money and drive a nice car and live in a safe neighborhood and make art? Who says it don't? It can't coexist. But there wasn't really a lot of people getting it on a lower middle class roots level with music. It just didn't seem like that was a possibility. It was either you were rich signed to a label or you were a struggle rapper. And so to carve out this lower middle class, I know I gotta make three grand a month to cover all my bills. All right, I could do that. And I'm not that technical of a rapper. So let me go build a tribe outside of the music and then bring them over to the music. And this also allows me to then do the sink deals. And like where all the real money is at is in the publishing and in the sinks. And no one's talking about that, right? It's like, that's where the real like independent money is at. As you could be making, you know, we were doing six figures off a music page. What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brandon Sean. And I'm Corey. And we are back with another episode of No Labels Necessary podcast. You can catch us every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you stream your podcast here at the intersection of creativity and currency. Yet another episode of No Labels Necessary is about to happen. As y'all know, we love to have people who are doing things differently, building their own path. And today I have a very special guest. We're in his facility, Bless God Studios. I don't know if you call it that, but I think that's the perfect name, obviously knowing your brand. Somebody I really admire in many ways. He's an artist. He's an entrepreneur. He's a, at this point, a talking head, a presence on YouTube. And there's so much to come. Like I see the path and the growth that's gonna happen in the future. We are here today with Ruslan. What's up, Ruslan? Appreciate you having me, brother. I'm excited to be talking to you guys. I watch your guys' podcast. I appreciate it, man.  This is dope. You guys and Curtis King is like my go-to for music. Oh, that's fine. That's a big compliment. Yeah, man. Love to be in that sentence with Curtis. Curtis is dope, man. So, I mean, there's so much that we can speak about, but I want to make it clear because you have such a unique journey, right? And what you're doing lately is really, when I say you're a great example for the podcast and what we like to talk about and doing things differently, it seems like you found this path where now your creativity and your artistry is a part of what you do. And you've created a level of success entrepreneurially and as a businessman, which I know you want to continue to build on, right?  But before we get into that, right, you were an artist in the Christian hip-hop space, right? What was that like for you?  Or did you say you wanted to be in the Christian hip-hop space specifically first? That's a good question. I think I just wanted to make music in general.  And then I would do stuff that was not Christian.  And then I was like, I guess you're kind of right. I can't do to shake your booty, songs, and all that kind of stuff, right? I actually had a record like that, like my sophomore year at high school, and folks were like, what are you doing?  Really? And I was like, I guess you're right, yeah. So no, it was more organic. Like it wasn't like a let me set out to be a Christian rapper. It was like, I was a Christian, I loved hip-hop. I was doing hip-hop before I was a Christian. And then it just kind of all culminated and turned into what it's turned into. It sounds like you hit a point where you had to figure out how can I align my real life values with this thing I want to keep doing. Exactly, exactly. And so I didn't want to be incongruent. I didn't want to be different identities. I'm a rapper over here, and then I'm a Christian over here. I just thought that was corny. And I would meet people like that, folks that come to the church and they'd have the chains and the persona and this whole thing. And then it'd be like at church. I'm like, yeah, corny, like what is this? This just seems mad fake. And so I just wanted to be the same person.  That's funny. That reminds me of an artist by the name of Kibo. He's the guy who is like the number one rapper on Fiverr. I don't know if you ever heard about him. I did, I saw your interview with him. I did do an interview with him, CNBC covered him. And I remember, I don't know if it was during our interview, it might have been just our personal talks or whatever. But he talked about, he was rapping, and he doesn't curse in his rap. And he makes that a plain thing on Fiverr that you hire him and he's not gonna curse, right? Which is interesting that people have problems with that. Like some of the other clients, like what you just, you want me to curse is almost weird to ask somebody to curse explicitly. That's funny. But he says the reason he doesn't do it is because when he was younger, he was performing and his brother came to the show that time.   And he was always set an example. And he didn't curse in real life. And he was doing all that, like make some MFN noise and da, da, da, all at his performance. And at that moment he realized he was being incongruent. It wasn't about even necessarily religion or anything. He was just like, I'm not this person in real life. Why am I doing this here? And it kind of like rained out bells in his entrance.  Yeah, I just, I've always had solid people around me that just tell me the truth. And even in high school, when I was freshman year, I won this contest at this park down the street called Brinkel Terrace Park. And then like sophomore year, we got second place in Battle of the Bands, which was a big controversy to happen. This is 2001, 2000. So this is before, so like we're doing Battle of the Bands. It's all rock bands and like hip hop group.  So I've always had people, artistic creative people around me and people that would tell me the truth.  It's actually so crazy that you said that because being from the South, black guy from the South, when you said Battle of the Bands, I had a completely different picture. I had no idea that rock bands did that. Oh yeah, yeah, that's big out here. Yeah, yeah, Battle of the Bands was big and they would get the sound system and the whole thing and these bands was nice. Like some of them went on to do some cool stuff. So being in that environment, going through that, so it's a similar question, but not the same. A lot of artists always are thinking about brand, right? And you kind of had those early cues that led towards a sense of brand. What did you think about your brand early on and how's that changed over the years? Cause now you're doing a lot of stuff and how do you contain that in one specific message? Oh, that's a great question. I didn't think of a brand, of branding anything back then, right? Like you don't really, you're just creating, right? Cause I think there's like two types of entrepreneurs. There's the artists who have to become entrepreneurs and then there's like the entrepreneurs that have the product and they need to go find artists to help them do the marketing. I was always just the artist and the creative and so I didn't really think about any of that stuff. That was like a decade later when it was like, it was the logo, it was the color scheme.  And thankfully it worked out. Now, had I had someone tell me this stuff 20 years ago, I wonder how it would have, I don't know if I would have listened to be honest, you know, but I feel like that stuff was so fragmented 20 years ago where like, to me the first guy to kind of bridged it all together was Gary V, like about 10 years ago when he blew up. I felt like you start thinking about branding and marketing from a creative standpoint and then it kind of all glued together. But back then I didn't really think about any of that stuff.  Yeah, but you brought up a good point though, like you might not have listened and we'll run to that issue with our audience sometimes where it's like, hey, this information isn't gonna work the same for you because you haven't went through enough or to put you in the mindset to where you can actually use it. And I think it's undervalued because most people start like that, right? Like we all have gotten advice before that, like we couldn't use even if we knew it was the best advice for us because of what we work mentally, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I feel like when you're younger, you have a lot of false dichotomies. So it's like art and commerce can't coexist. Right, yeah. It's like says who? Speak on that, exactly. You know it says who, why can't I feed my family and make some money and drive a nice car and live in a safe neighborhood and make art? Like who says it don't, it can't coexist. Like that's a very, so there's so many false dichotomies that I think I had when I first started just going into this thing.  Right, so those who chase fantasies will be broke, but those who work their land will have abundance. Well, we'll prosper. And so I had to, I got hit with the reality of like, is this a fantasy? Like am I just chasing the wind doing what everybody else wants to be? Or is this actually my land? And my land is going to produce sustenance for me and produce a harvest for me and produce prosperity for me. And once I got that, I got it listening. I'll end up to the Dave Ramsey show. We were getting out of debt and I was listening to Dave Ramsey show. It's a little about 13 years ago now. And I was like, okay, I gotta figure this out. And so the next year we did a song a week and then we did three mixtapes, two retail projects. And then going into 2020, we did like 30, 40 college shows and like a couple of events with La Cray. And that was like, boom, now this is a real part-time thing. Not like, oh, we're doing six figures, but like, okay, I think I took home I want to say like 30 bands, 2012 off of music. I was like, yo, this could be something. Like I'm making more money off this than I am off my job. This could be something. So what click though? Because you didn't just say, all right, I need to make some money. You actually went and made money. And you didn't say, oh, I signed a deal or I went and got a loan or anything like that. You literally just said, I did more music. I dropped more music. I did more shows. So did you have these things pretty much available to you all the time? And you just weren't pulling on them? Like, what was missing? I think a culmination. One, I think mindset, like I think you don't know what's possible until you're backed into a corner and you're like, all right, I gotta figure this out. So what, so, okay. So I was, we were doing a spoken word slam thing in San Diego. Like I was on a slam team and I heard about this thing called NACA. I think I told you about NACA, National Association for Campus Activities. They put on these regional conferences. So I knew that like, oh, they're like poets is getting booked to go perform at colleges and you ain't gotta sell no tickets, right? You ain't gotta deal with no promoters. You just getting, so I always knew that in the back of my head. And then I always knew that I could make a lot of music. And then this is around the time Kanye did Good Friday when he was releasing a song a week.  And so we did remix Wednesdays and it was, hey, whatever your favorite song is, send us, tell us what song is and we'll do our version of it, we'll remix it. And then we took those and packaged them in a mix. Say we threw a DJ on, he blended them together. He do it intro, outro. So it was a culmination of things. It was a culmination of things. But the foundation of it was really hearing that verse and then sending down my wife at the end of 2010. My birthday is on New Year's Eve. So it's the last day of the year. And I sat my wife down and I said, hey, I can't be in the same place with music next year than I am. This year, I need you to tell me to stop. Like in a year from now, like if I'm in this, I need you to tell me to stop. And that's the year 2011 was the year where we just, we just did everything we could. We just threw everything we had at it and going and then we did that NACA conference that same year. So we knew we weren't gonna get booked to churches. Like we just, we didn't make the cookie cutter like church music, Christian rap music. You know, it's Christian raps involved a lot. But back then it was like, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus which I got no problem with people when I want to make Jesus, Jesus music. And then there's like lifestyle music, kind of like what Lecrae does now, right? And so we were doing that back then. So we're like, yo, we're not gonna book these church shows. They're not bringing us out to play in front of the junior high kids in Kentucky. Like it's just not happening. But we can get these colleges because we can work in the spoken word. So we did the NACA conference and this is like a November, 2011. And so me and my wife have that conversation New Year's Eve 2011. So, and then we're going in, it's like 30 shows booked, each show is like $2,500 a pop. A couple of events with Lecrae and she's like, yeah, this is amazing. Like everything you said you were gonna do, you did. Let's keep going. And the only reason I didn't quit my job back then is because we couldn't get healthcare. Like healthcare would have been like a thousand bucks a month. And then like a couple of years later to past, cover California Obamacare which I feel like people sleep how much that helped entrepreneurs, because to just be able to go out and buy healthcare on a free market. And so 2015 is when I quit my job like a couple of years after that. How did that feel? Scary, horrifying, horrifying, you know as an independent Christian rapper in 2015. Horrifying, you know, it was terrible. It was scary, man. And I already, like I saw YouTube but then I kind of pivoted to like running a boutique label for my friends. And I was like, all right, well, I got this figured out. Let me just put some dudes on that are more talented than me and then we'll see how far this can go. But then in the process of that I suppressed my own YouTube things which then created resentment and then it just, it all hit the fan, you know, years later. Now, you actually said something before I get into that. But how did it feel specifically to say, I'm going to do this, babe, if I'm in the same place next year, tell me to stop. Which is a, you putting yourself against the wall, your dream against the wall, she didn't do that which is, it's a lot. But then to actually go out and execute on your word, all right, and achieve something just as an artist who was building as their own, what did it feel to accomplish that specific thing? It was cool, like, oh man, we did it. Like, we're doing, we're making money now. Like I watched Curtis King video and he was talking about how touring is a money pit. People tour and they lose money. And I never lost money on a tour. We was out here doing shows, did our first tour, 2014, did another one, 2015. We was coming back with seven, eight racks each. Okay, just hold us down for a month or two, you know.  So I, it was, it felt good, but it wasn't, it was like, we were taking home a little bit more than I was making at my job. So it wasn't like comfortable. And then the strain from being away from the family, it felt good to be like, yes. We said we were going to do this, we did this, we defied all the odds. There wasn't really anyone else doing it. You know, I think Chance the Rapper and Macklemore were the only like indie sensations back then that I knew and Merz and like tech nine. But there wasn't really a lot of people getting it on like a lower middle class roots level with music. Like it just didn't seem like that was a possibility. It was either like you were rich signed to a label or you were like a struggle rapper.  All right, I could do that, you know? And we just figured it out. So it felt good, but it was also horrifying. I get it, I get it, it's the journey. Let's take a quick second to talk about the elephant in the room. If you're an artist trying to grow, we already know what your goal is, a thousand true fans. Everybody talks about it, but how do you actually make that happen? How do you get those fans? It's not just about getting views. You got to push people further down the funnel. So let's talk about it. Number one, do you have these people's data, right? Do you have the ability to text and build highly engaging relationships with these people? Can you boost your Spotify plays to actually have engaged users, not those surface level play listing plays? Well, guess what? Fevver Fan is a platform that allows you to do all of those things in one. So it's not overwhelming. You don't have to switch and have all these different logins and switch all your link and bios. You have even a link and bio tool that you can do. So everything is done in one place. So not only do you grow your fans, you do it for less work. How about that? Check out foreverfanmusic.com because we know it's not about views for the day. It's about getting fans who will be there forever. Foreverfanmusic.com. Let's get back to this video. So you said something that I've heard you say before. You just said you signed a couple of guys or worked with a couple guys that were more talented. And I've heard you in a different conversation. I don't even know if we were talking or not, but you mentioned that you weren't the most talented, all right? I'd never hear artists say something like that. And I'm so curious. And that's the only reason I remembered you saying it.  I've never heard anything like that. What brings that level of awareness and how did that impact how you move building what you've built so far as an artist?  So first and foremost, I can know that this ain't my art. Like this isn't, you know what I mean? So I think one for that. And so then when you go, okay, what is the edge that someone else would have? Right? Cause I think talent is just a combination of skills that compound over time that appear magical. The talent is not, I don't think anybody's born with an ability to rap better. I think people might be born with predispositions to rhythm and little things like that. But I think like talent is a lot of times like the artist, one of the artists I signed grew up in church singing gospel songs and then got to rap when he was really young in church. So guess what, if you start that at three, four, five, my son is playing piano at that eight, he's nice. Like he could play chords, right?  So if you could hear the melodies in a gospel song and you could pick out the four part harmonies and where you're supposed to fit in at 10, 11, that's gonna transfer directly over if you're trying to sing your own hooks. If you could catch the cadences in the drums and catch the pattern or the bounce of the beats or hey, this is gonna be stagato. This is gonna be, you know what I mean? All that is transferable. So I feel like if you're coming from a black church background, you should be at an advantage musically if you were in the choir, if you play drums, right? And I didn't do none of that. Like I'm Armenian, you know what I mean? Like we don't, our music is hymns, it sounds super gothic, you know? And like we like track suits and baklava. Like that's the time we're on, you know what I mean? Like we ain't out here with the ill rhythms and the cadences, you know? And so it just, you could just hear it, you know? You could just hear the, I could hear the difference of like, okay, the tone, how much more natural the voice sounds, the melodies, the rhythm, the pockets. And I'm like, I would be fooling myself to thinking that like, I'm, you know what I mean? Like I'm not delusional and or what?  Scam, scamming with the man hamming, like the M&M route, like that's mad corny too. You know, I don't diss the M, like M's the legend, but like, so what am I gonna like, if I'm trying to make art, like actual art that speaks with not, not, not, not art from the culture, but art for the culture. Cause there's a lot of folks that come from hip hop and then like kind of like extract it and say, okay, now we're gonna go make music for the conservative crowd. Like no, no dis to any of those guys. That's not the same as like, we're making music from and for the culture, you know? And I just knew that I wasn't the guy for that. Like I wasn't the guy for that job, you know? Now, and that doesn't mean I shouldn't make music. I love making music, but I just knew there was a diss place. Yeah, I still make music. Yeah. That's funny. Black church is like music boot camp. Oh my gosh, man, it's pretty crazy. Gosh, I wish, I wish, there was a, so my faith journey is interesting cause there was a lady in my apartment complex and it was Cherie and I was the, with those two Armenian refugee families and all the rest of the complex was black, was black families and she was moving weight and she got caught, went to jail, got saved in jail, came out a year or so later and the whole apartment complex got converted. Like everyone was Christian, right? Except, except, except the Armenians, right? And I was like, man, had I just like not fought God back then? I could have went and gotten to the like church that they was going to and got, you know what I mean? Got some of the sauce and maybe I would be a better rapper now. That was like 10, 11 years old and I just fought, fought, fought, fought, fought and then I didn't get saved to like five years after that, but she was the one that planted those seeds. So my, my background is hearing Fred, hearing Kurt, hearing, you know what I mean? Hearing the music, but I wasn't, I didn't get it back then. And now it's like a hindsight. I'm like, man, what a, what an amazing journey of overcoming all the odds that the black churches had gone through in America. You know, and those are the folks that like really share the gospel with me first, you know? That makes sense now. That makes a lot of sense. So understanding or you sing at least as people are more talented to me, this isn't my specific path. I do love to make music and you have legitimate fans, by the way. Right? So that's, so that's important to note, but then start to carve out this different path where now you, you know, YouTuber for lack of better words, you have your community on discord. What do you call, you know, being a voice in the faith community, right? On the Christian community that goes, like you're doing what many of them actually don't do it as well. As far as the platforms you'll go on speaking, your truth, well, it wouldn't be your truth, but the truth, right? So now you're doing, you're going that path, but you still seem to, it doesn't feel like, hey, I just left music, right? I think you've done a good job at combining it all where it just feels like this is Ruslan and I have this unique brand. And the value of that to me is I'm not, I'm not pursuing that same dream that every artist has followed. Cause many in artists are looking at the label and then they say, no, I don't want to be a label artist. I want to be indie. Yet they're following the exact same dream with a handicap, right? You went away from that specific dream. You're still making music, seem to be happy and independent as music and building your own, a world of your own. So how does that inform like the way you look at talent, your talent and how you're using your talents now? How is that journey formed? Yeah, I think, so the YouTube thing just came organically. I remember you was on my channel years ago, right? Like, yeah, I was traveling around and doing stuff. I think you came to the studio, the last studio, but we also got together when I was four. When you were in Atlanta. In A3C. Did we do a pod that day or did we not? Me and Wendy. Back to back. That's right, that's right. So I was already doing the YouTube of just like, oh, I'm just like, right, man, so he's interesting. Let's interview him, Wendy Day. So I was already doing that back then. The transition was everything locked down. I can't do shows. No one's hit me up for features, you know? And like, shoot, I can't interview nobody. So let me just do this virtual thing. And it just kind of popped off from almost like a reaction, conversational interviewing people virtually and it kind of popped off. And so the YouTube is, it's an interesting thing. This is my view. If I can add value, and I know that sounds generic, right? But if I can simplify things for people, if I can impart wisdom to people that I've learned over my 20 years and help people, then the byproduct of that will be, well, they'll support me in some way, shape or form. They'll, it's recidivism, right? They want reciprocity. They'll then want to do something back, just naturally that's how we are. So having that, like we built out the Patreon to over 2,000 monthly Patreon now, right? We have the merchandise. I still put out, I just put out a song like two or three weeks ago, you know? We still put out music. All of these things, I just needed a wider net. Like I needed more people because Christian Hip-Hop is still mad small. Like even though Lecrae is big and there's a couple of people that is still a very small micro tribe. So I just needed a wider net of people. And then I'm like, eventually, I could kind of all transfer it over. You know, I could get the YouTube people to check for the music and I could get the music people to come over to YouTube. That's who it was initially. And so I just needed a wider net and I didn't really want to do the TikTok thing like that. You know, like I wasn't good at dancing. That was initially what TikTok was, but I saw that. And I'm like, all right, well, we'll go over here on YouTube. I think I could talk and simplify things that come off complicated that I don't think are complicated. And it just kind of compounded, you know, over time.  Like that's what it feels like now. And so it just depends on how much I want to put out. So what I'm doing now, I'm writing a book and I'm gonna put the album inside of the book as a QR code while I put out the singles on DSPs. So that way the people that really, really want an album, they can get an album and then I could just keep putting a song out every three weeks, every month and just kind of building up my Spotify followers. I'm at like 30,000 followers on Spotify, which is my smallest platform. You know, so if I could keep building that up, get that to 100,000, 200,000. Then the algorithm in there can kind of service it, you know, and that's what YouTube is doing. Instagram does the work for me. I just got to make the content. If I can get Spotify to do that for me, I just got to put the music on there and then it'll, you know.  Like he got, I think it's Spotify is over 200,000 followers, 250,000. He just knows if I drop a song, day one is gonna do 60,000, day two is gonna do 100, you know what I mean? Like, and it just becomes its own algorithm. So that's how I'm looking at it now. I'm looking at like longterm play. How could I build the followers up? How could I build the engagement up? And then it's just, you just, you're clicking into the ecosystem. So I love the fact that you talked about expanding basically your music base through something else instead of just how I left it. Have you seen that actually work? Like you said that, but then are you seeing the transferability from crowd to crowd? The defined work, like money-wise? We know this is working money-wise to some extent versus music, right? I'm just saying, like, are you seeing people truly go from, hey, I like watching his videos where he's preaching some of the word and now I'm listening to his music, hey, I'm listening to his music and now I'm watching him preach the word and I just bought some merch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes. It's always a pleasant surprise when people find out. And then it's like helping people find out. So we run an ad, like we'll have our own brand deal with the music inside of the videos, you know what I mean? And so it's like, yo, yeah, you may not know I make music. I got a new song coming out, pre-save it for me, da-da-da. And then, yeah, so I have songs now that have came out in the last six months that have outperformed any record I've ever put out in the last six years on Spotify, just because we push it. The issue for us becomes the discipline and the focus to push it, like having the margin to go and shoot the commercial to tell people to pre-save and drop that into a video every day for six weeks out and then making sure we keep promoting it on the backend. And when you're doing a media company, that's difficult because I'm like, oh man, Brandman Shaw is coming over, like I forgot to shoot the, you know what I mean? Like it's just, it's a lot of moving pieces. But yes, in terms of the actual streams on the last three songs I put out have outperformed the last 30 songs I've put out. You know what I mean?  For me, not big numbers in general, but for me. And so yeah, so I'm hoping that we just get better at the process, you know? But it's not the, but the flip side is like when that's not the money isn't necessary for music, then it becomes, you're driven different. You know, it could actually be art. Like I could actually make what I want instead of like, let me just try to get a flip. Let me just do this pre-order to get these albums sold, right? Like I could actually make what I want and take my time with it. So it just becomes the best of both worlds. But the issue becomes now focus. Like let me find time to focus on marketing it. Musically, do you like it better that way? Or artistically, the fact that I don't have to create something just to make money, I can create music. Yeah, I think artistically it's better. I think there's not as much push, you know? I'm not like making sure my babies are fed. You notice there's not the same external motivation, but artistically it's more fun that way for sure. It's just less pressure. So I can just make what I want. You know, I can make what I want and let it be fun. And if it hits, it hits. If it doesn't, I got another one. Yeah. It's interesting because I think when a lot of artists say that they want to be rich or famous, what they really mean is, hey, I would like to be able to create art without the pressures of my life falling apart. You know what I'm saying? If I don't figure it out. Which I personally feel like is a much more doable goal for a majority of artists. Like you said earlier, hey, I made 30K and I was happy with that. I was rich but it could cover my bills. And like that to me is like a very important first step for artists while I just see if you can even just cover basic stuff after the music and then start trying to be Drake or whatever you're saying. Yeah, cause here's the flip side. Like you may not want to be Drake. Yeah. That sounds cool until you get there. You get there or you get in this weird in-between spot where like if I'm like, I go out now and I'm recognized at least once a day and I'm not trying to like, you know what I mean? But there'll be times where like my niece fell and scraped her shin and she's crying and I'm trying to console her and someone's trying to come up and like take a picture. You know what I'm just like, read the room. Like this thing, you know what I mean? And it's such a silly first world problem but I'm like, I couldn't imagine not being able to move through without security or without, you know what I mean? Like I couldn't imagine that. So like people may not know that they may not even really want that.  And that's really it. That's really all you want. I don't want all the other stuff that comes with it, you know? Cause the other stuff can, that could weigh you down. And I don't think, by the way, I don't think Drake is that happy. Like I think at the end of the day, Drake's probably not as happy as we think he is. Doesn't seem to be. Yeah, I can agree with that. I used to make a point of me once when I was like, man, you ever think about why all these big artists get like these mega mentions? And I'm like, no, I never thought about it. And he was like, because they can't move around the same in the real world. So you don't really have space. So to use spaces, walking from room A in my mansion to room Z in my mansion, that's the most space you're going to get. And when they tell me that, I was like, damn, that's a good point. This is a great point, you know? Man, how many artists get to come back down to pipeline and tell you like, yo, this is what it really like to be a Drake, a Travis Scott, or a Beyonce or something, right? They don't, they're not going to talk about that publicly. But like you said, something like that. I can see it in Drake's eyes sometimes, man. He be looking, he be looking burnt out, man. Yeah, yeah. And I've just been around, I've never been around Drake, but I've been around a handful of people and they didn't seem happy. They didn't seem happy. Like they didn't really seem, they seemed pumped on what money can do for them, but not like content and like relax. I'm like, yeah, I don't know, that's everything. And then my friends that became more successful and all of a sudden had all these mental illness issues. I'm like, you was fine when you was broke. Now you talking about depressionness and anxiety, that and I'm like, what is going on? What do you think that comes from? Man, I think sometimes when you can remove your basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, you then can do one of two things. You can then discover other traumas that you were suppressing because you was just trying to get it. And now you have the time and the headspace to deal with it because you're not thinking about survival. You know, and or it could be you just creating first world problems for yourself.  And I don't know, we all got some degrees of trauma, but I've seen friends like really like, whoa, like you seem way happier before you were paid, you know? And I'm like, I'm glad you got a therapist and you're doing a deep work, but like all of our parents would love to wake up and be us right now. Like my parents would love to wake up and be me, you know what I mean? Like and have my life now. Like, what do we, what do we upset about?   Now I got to work. But I see a lot of folks doing, you know, that they get paid and all of a sudden they're thinking about these things. You can afford to find out what's wrong with you. Yeah, yeah. I definitely agree with that to an extent where when you solve all these other problems, now you have these other problems to face. Or when you can't blame other people or you can't, you aren't focused on paying the next bill and now you're left with yourself and there's a lot of people who aren't cool with themselves. Yeah, yeah. And the music thing is like, like media is not that complicated. You know what I mean? Like, like there's certain predispositions we have to be good at something or not be good at something. For me, I think I was on the, I think I was, I was on the right bus in the wrong seat. Like I knew I should have been doing media but I was trying to be in the artist's wrapper seat where I was really in a media thought leader seat, you know, and then I could kind of go and go back. I think once you figure out, first of all, are you on the right bus? Should you be doing media or should you be doing like social work? You know what I mean? Like, should you be doing activism work, right? One, are you on the right bus? Two, are you on the right bus and on the right seat? Cause I thought that like, I'm supposed to be the rapper and I'm like, I'm not really supposed to be the rapper. I could be a guy that does rap, but I'm the podcast host. I'm the thought leader. I'm these other things that does music. So once I figured out, all right, let me get on the right bus on the right seat, then it just became easier because then it's like, okay, now let's just reverse engineer what's missing in a specific marketplace. I have the values, the skills to add to this ecosystem. And if I do, then let me just do it over a long enough time horizon until it's impossible for me not to be successful. You know what I mean? And that's how I get everything, you know? Now we're, you know, we're building our products out, doing a book. It's all the same thing. So I think to your point, we have this false dichotomy of like art and commerce and all the, and it's like, it's not that complicated. It really isn't. At the end of the day, we are trying to entertain people. You're competing against Netflix. You're competing against Drake.  Is your music that remarkable? Is your story that good? Or can you emotionally connect? And if I'm being honest, I'm just like, I'm not on the emo boy stuff, you know? And I'm not that technical of a rapper. So let me go build a tribe outside of the music and then bring them over to the music. And this also allows me to then do the sink deals and like where all the real money is at is in the publishing and in the sinks. And no one's talking about that, right? It's like, that's where the real like independent money is at, as you could be making, you know, we were doing six figures off of music bed. And I was like, yo, why, you know, no one else is talking about everyone's trying to make it as the rapper.  And it was like a $5,000 bag, you know? Will Smith reacted, like did a thing with our song in the background, Google Adidas. Low-key, that's where a lot of the real money, if you own the publishing and you own the music and the composition, you're making your own beats. Especially with more content being created and never beats increased. Microsinks, that's what they call it, right? Microsinks, yeah. What did you call that site? You said music bed? Music bed, yeah, music bed is basically, they're just a website that oversees all that. They're like epidemic sounds, you know, like these like what music bed is like, where the cream of the crop, like where the nicest for how selective we are and how bougie we are with our taste. And so I just built the relationship with them 10 years ago and have consistently had our stuff on there.  And that's truly passive. That's true. And that's the part that I'm most excited about music is music can be truly passive once you get into the publishing sinking side. Meaning I can make a record and then someone else can go service it for me and get it synced. And that's powerful. I still gotta make up and do, wake up and do YouTube videos. I still gotta figure out the next merch drop, right? Like that's, I'm trading time for money right now. But if you can really tap into saying, let me make music that's being synced by major corporations and I'm just collecting, I'll just get a little PayPal deposit every month. That's nice. Yeah, so music bed, there's other ones but music bed is who I'm with and I've always loved music bed, you know? And they take their cut, it's a 50-50 split, you know? So they're worth every penny, you know? 1500 a month passive. I know Young Shine, hey. Yeah. And I was making then, that was a great check. 1500 a month passive. I know obviously your responsibilities exceed that at the moment, but it's great to see that you could do something and it'd be truly passive. And I think that's the difference, right?  Yeah, YouTube is not passive. It's not. You gotta get up and do the pod. You gotta get up and make the videos and make the thumbnail and make the, you know what I mean? That's not passive, but yeah. I mean, and I guess that's, it is passive in the sense that I make the song once and it can keep getting exploited and marketed, which is dope. You know, you said something that made me think about Oprah Winfrey because she started off as, like a news correspondent, something like that, right? Got fired because she really, in her mind, over cared about some of the people she was supposed to be reporting on would like try to go back and help people instead of just reporting the story, ends up getting fired and then obviously finds that position as a talk show host, which wasn't a coveted position when she was put in it, that particular position, but it was her space, right? That's what I thought about when you talked about being on the right bus, but in the wrong seat, right? What do you think is keeping many artists from your conversations, from having that real conversation with themselves? What is, what are my talents? And is there a way or a space that I could fit and do even better with these talents than just music? I think, I think ego is an interesting thing, right? Because ego isn't the same as necessarily confidence. I feel like ego is like an overinflation of confidence. So if you're truly solid, you understand that confidence comes as a byproduct of competence. I've done X, Y, and Z, I'm competent and therefore I'm competent. My wife is confident that I can lead our home, right? Why? Cause I've repeatedly shown that I can lead our home so she trusts me. But I think ego is that like overcompensation of something you're not really sure about.  It's like powerlifting in the gym.  You can't really handle that weight but because there's this guy here or the girl here you think you can't. And I think it's that, I think it's ego lifting. Like you're taking on more than you can handle and you don't really know your own strength ability and what you're actually capable of. And so your ego lifting, your form is sloppy and you're putting yourself at risk of injury. And I think it's the same exact thing where artists trying to do things that they're not competent in is your ego lifting. And you might be get away with it a couple of times and you might look cool and you might be like, yeah, I hit 225, I hit it eight times. You really hit it two times and the rest of the time you were sloppy, you know, you didn't really. But you can do that a little bit but eventually you're gonna hurt yourself.   So I think it's the same exact thing. I think it's like, yo, people overcompensate because they're insecure. And so trying to be an artist when you're not is harmful, it's you're hurting yourself. It's not helpful. And if you don't got it. Now, you can go and get it. You can go and spend two, three years and refine it and go hire a rap coach. Those exist now, by the way. Not sure if you guys know. Yeah, you can hire a rap coach. You can work on it. You can go take singing lessons. You can learn to produce. You could do all of it. The question is, is the opportunity cost too much? Meaning that three years you spent trying to get better could you have spent that doing something else? And I think that's where it comes from. And so I think anyone could get to a place where they're making good music, but then it's all the other intangibles. What about your look? What about the aesthetic? What about your relationships? What about who you are in the studio? Are you fun to be around, right? All these, are you good at social media? You could do all those things and just be terrible at TikTok. Or you could be great at TikTok and be mediocre at all those things. So it's like all of these different things you got away. And there's only so many hours and so many years and most of the music now is youth music. So you're gonna get it to pop by 25 or what? Now there's certain folks that are just phenomenal. They're just great. Right bus, right seat, crushing it, you know? Like I'm sure you guys are familiar with that kid Jake on TikTok. So I'm friends with his brother Zach. Super cool kids, Christian kids like the whole bit and like he's just a phenom on the piano, but he's also great at social media, you know? And so some kids just, that's a skill set. Those are two different skill sets you gotta learn, right? So I just go, man, I don't know if I got the skill set to try to like learn to sing with auto-tune, but it sound just natural enough, you know? Like I don't know if I got the capacity to do that right now, you know? And so I think that's where it comes from is just people are overcompensating. And we can get super deep on like, why do you even wanna be famous? Or do you wanna be famous? What are we even aspiring for at the end of the day, right? I think it could go so deep, but I think most people just aren't truly self-aware enough you know, where they're at, you know? Because if you're really good, you could get a laptop, a computer, a microphone, boom, now you're making your own music and then you just get on the phone and figure out how to hack TikTok and Instagram and you could be an overnight star, you know? But then that's a whole other dilemma. Can you handle that, you know? Can you handle that? So I think most people are just, they don't wanna be self-aware and they're overcompensating for something. Yeah, I feel like it's a very hard, I guess truth to come to terms with as an artist, but then the flip side of it I always think about is how much better would the music industry be if a lot of artists realize that, right? Like how many better managers would we have or marketers or publicists or, because I've met artists before who, like you said, maybe the music quality is not the part but they're great at marketing, I think like a great marketing.  Do what you are attempting to do. So I always think about it. How much of the music industry is being held back because the majority of the people that wanna be in it wanna be the artist, you know what I'm saying? Instead of figuring out how can I go help these people who may be more talented than me or can do social media better than me or like all those things you said pretty much. Like I think it's an epidemic, man. It's a true epidemic. Yeah, I think a lot of these kids are growing up knowing TikTok which is gonna be an advantage too.  You kind of just finesse your way to it, you know? Yeah, yeah. There's definitely a lot of natural advantages that come with the platforms today because they're not even trying. We saw that when TikTok started popping, a lot of those first stars, they became stars not by trying, they were just kids having fun. And that was a weird moment in time because you have kids who have this amazing fame that weren't seeking to be famous. I wasn't looking to be a big artist. I just made my first song because it sounded cool and I was just doing it because it was fun. Or now I'm Charlie D'Amelio because I was doing these dances and it happened so quickly. And then because of that, you saw a lot of struggle with kids. I started to see pushback because we work with a lot of influencers. You can see kind of like the change and like they had to kind of pull back for their mental health, right? They'll just tap out. You're like, man, you have all these followers.  You're gonna post to a song. Anyway, and then you realize, some of these kids are burned out. I was like, I didn't even want this. It was fun for a second, but I didn't want this. And you saw that entire story, that arc in a hyperbolic chamber, right? And I think some artists or people in general, they don't find their success fast enough to have that same experience, but the experience will be the same. I stopped reading my YouTube comments and I'm a 38 year old father and I stopped reading my YouTube comments because most of it is just not good, right? Because it's the person that has no outlet and this is their way to try to, you know? So I could imagine being 18, 19 years old on TikTok, which is like even darker than YouTube and how, oh man. Well, and then the other side, we saw where a lot of people that were opportunist managers and never managed anybody, just signing a bunch of influencers. Just so they can then have leverage to get a big deal with the company and take that cut with no individual plan for Ruslan. I don't even know what to do with Ruslan anyway, but I also am not trying to individually push your career along. I'm really saying, yeah, I'm gonna give you some money, but that's because I'm just saying, I got Ruslan, Jacory, Sharante, all in one. Hey, big corporation and I built my relationships. And it was a weird unfortunate thing to see because I knew what was happening, but influencer space hasn't had the education and timeline that the artist space has, right? Because it's newer. It's so much newer. It's so much newer. So I think we're gonna see a lot of interesting things bubble up in the next five years. What percentage do you guys think of TikTok as it is now, Instagram, Reels, YouTube, Shorts? What percentage of music exploding right now do you think is still synthetic? Meaning there's a label, there's an agency behind it. Someone is behind it pumping money into something and which percentage of it do you guys think is still organic? Like if an artist is starting today, I'm really curious. I'm like, what do y'all think is like 50, 50, half of this stuff is organic? And organic is a loaded term, right? But organic, I just mean, there's not a corporation, a label management behind it. It's still kids in their bedroom making the music they wanna make and it's taken off. Just to be even clearer. So not my mom is helping me, not even me. Am I an artist and I'm pushing my own music? You're just talking about peer, I'm a kid making stuff. I'm a kid making stuff with the hope to be seen. With the hope to be seen. With the hope to be seen. And maybe dad is like guiding you a little bit. Maybe mom's guiding you a little bit. No financial investment? No financial investment. You got a laptop and a mic and an iPhone. That become like actually make it or just doing it? You get a trending song on Spotify. I would say maybe like 10, 15%? 10, 10, 15% yeah. Cause to Sean's point, like there's a lot more artist education out there, right? Like Sean's been making content for like seven years. A lot of people have been making content for years. And so now what I'm seeing is that there are these kids who come into the space already having an idea of what they should be doing. And they've at least sought out the resource. Like I get deals from like, I'm sure you get deals from like 15 year olds, 16 year olds all the time. You're like, man, how'd you even know you need ads or something, right? So I think the education of it, education for arts makes that question a little hard to answer.  I want to run in three months. I was like, damn, like, you know, you're thinking about that. So I would say maybe like 10 to 15%. Would you agree? Yeah. 10, 15? Yeah, on a high end. Okay. Now what about the solopreneur, DIY or what percent? Like the guys that are messaging you and they're saving their money and they actually have a little understanding of it. Yeah, that's probably like 60, 70. I think that's 60, 60. Of the folks getting on the trend. Oh, we're actually making it? Okay, good point. I'm just using Spotify trending as like a benchmark of success. If you get a record on Spotify trending, that's on 30. Yeah, I was gonna say 20. People who are intentional with the level of education, investing in themselves, even cause I was still outside of money, content is so powerful at this time, you don't even have to think about money. Like content done right will do even more, like way more than the money will do for you. So like Nick D, right? The amount of money that will go into doing what he's done is ridiculous outside of investing in the equipment and all that stuff. But so I would say 30% of those people who are intentional in that space, money or not, right? That 10 to 15, the place that it gets blurry is these labels, these A&Rs, the tech, even TikTok itself, they're so early now. They're watching it. So even if the bubble happens, like the spark, I think if we just talk about pure spark, that's pure and organic, that could be as large as 60 to 70. Wow. That happens every day. Right? 60 to 70, this spark is organic. But then all of a sudden somebody comes along and then expands on it, right? So it happens so fast, it's hard to catch. That's still amazing though. Oh yeah, no, that's incredible. 60 to 70% of the space that spark is organic. That's huge. Because now the barrier to entry is a lot lower, right? So it's like, hey, if you work these things right, you can get in the game. Then where you stay in the game is a different conversation, right? Because what would make me say 20% instead of 30 is that I think another big component of it is time. Like there have been a lot of R's where, you know, we even had in one of our TikTok reports where we noticed that it took an R's on average like low end 10 months to like high end like 18 months to catch like their first viral moment, right? Or viral moment that the spark kind of like Sean said, right? To that point. And then you start thinking about like, okay, how many R's will keep making five TikToks a day for two years straight? Not a lot of them, you know what I'm saying? And that significantly lowers the percentage. It's great for the other 23% of the size to stick it out, right? Because the competition is falling off. But the time component of it, I think now more than ever is the biggest differentiator between who makes it and who doesn't make it. Because it's like, we all have access to the same knowledge. Everybody can go by the same courses. Everybody can watch the same YouTube videos. We all can create a Facebook ad account, right? We all can reach out to influence. We can all do it. So now like what's the difference between Sean, Artie Sean and Artie's Corey? Sean might be willing to do it for three years straight where I only got six months of me, you know? And then Sean ends up getting the success two and a half years later, and we as the audience sees it as overnight. But if you go back and look at like most artists who call like a real viral moment on TikTok, like if you really scroll through their page, most of them have been posting for like two, three years straight. And then they catch one random moment and then everything kind of changes from there. So yeah, it's interesting. There's a thing about that though, right? Because this is why it's so tough and music is so tough. You can go for those years, right? Have that viral moment, but then that's just when the game starts, right? Always say, you're driving to the race, right? Things happen, now you're at the race and it's time to run that race. So the game is, oh, I'm posting, I'm posting, I'm posting, or I'm trying to create something and I bought myself a minute. Now, how can I turn that minute into a moment? Now, how can I turn that moment and make it last a month? How do I turn that month into a year, that year into a career? That's good. Each stage of that is a completely different skill set where we've seen artists gain progress but then not know what to do in those other periods. Like you talked about blowing up and can you take it? I've known artists. It sounds so crazy. Who, and Jacory knows these people and have had these conversations, they'll take off on TikTok, go crazy, right? And then they completely step back. Like literally, some of them out of just naivety, they don't understand that it's more but there's been literally some people who say, man, I just stopped going in the app. The comments, it was crazy, it was a lot. And literally, I just stopped going in the app. When I heard that one time, it just made me realize like you said, it's just those levels and are you willing to maintain and sustain that? You know, it's crazy. I think you said 18 months. Yeah, like 10, 18 months. You know what's crazy about that is they say it takes the average person 18 months to get out of debt. Really? Like a focused locked in plan of 18 months, almost anybody can get out of debt. Me and my wife paid off, it was about 50K but it was really like 100K in 18 months. That's crazy. Yeah, we settled for one big thing that was like 60. We settled it for like a stack. And so the rest of it, it was about 45 to 50K in 18 months. While we're here on the subject, that's some value information and a lot of artists are having financial troubles. Give me a quick overall summary of that strategy, right? Like what is it? Like just work, work, work, save and then all of a sudden I pay it all. Am I paying it off over time? Like what's the strategy? We did the Snowball, the Dave Ramsey Snowballs.  And so it's- Is that a psychology or is that- It's a psychology, because you get the gratification of like, oh, like we paid off the $500 credit card. Now we paid off the $1,000 credit card. Now we paid off the $5,000 car. Now we paid off the $10,000 student loan. And you know what I mean? So we just, we did that and yeah, 18 months, we had knocked everything out. And then that, in that process is how I started thinking more entrepreneurially because I was like, okay, this gotta make sense on paper. And I think when it comes to artists, the area that most people then struggle with is after you get debt free, which a lot of people don't even get debt free, but after you get debt free is the lifestyle creep. Because that starts to impact you. You start wanting to eat at nicer restaurants. You start wanting to wear nicer clothes. You start wanting to have nicer cars, you know? And so like, even in my case, like I've been very, I could afford a Tesla right now. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, I'm awake. I'm awake. I'm awake as long as I can, you know? So we my wife got one car right now. You know what I mean? And it's just like, why? I could afford the $1,500 car note. I'm just not going to get a car note. I'm gonna wait until I can buy a cash or buy the majority of it cash or figure out what my accountant says and trying to like, oh, we could do the, you know, 6,000 car pound thing where if you got a car that's more than 6,000 pounds, it could become a business car. How could I make content in the car? Can I record some songs in the car? And you know what I mean? So I think that's all I'm thinking about with the lifestyle creep. I think once you get a little bit of money, it's the lifestyle creep.  But if you think about that, if the average person's walking around with debt and you just decrease your overhead, right? I went from having to make, I call it five grand a month to when I got debt free, I needed to make three grand a month to survive. And granted, this is 10 years ago, but that's a big jump. So if I could decrease my every monthly, all my monthly, if I could decrease it, then I can get closer to making that off of music. And if I could do it off of music, I could buy myself more time to focus on other revenue building ventures related to music. And that's all we did. It's like we just, we decreased our expenses way down. I think we would live between 2,500 and 3,000 a month. And this is with a family in Southern California. You know what I mean? So if you're in the middle of nowhere, you could do it for way less, but 2,500 to 3K a month, we knew we needed to do that. And that's with health insurance, with giving to the church, everything. And so I was like, I could do that. I could make 2,500, I could make that work, even if I got to go work for Uber. Thankfully, I never had to go work for Uber. I never had to do Uber each or like that. I could make that work. And so the decreasing of the overhead allows the flexibility in terms of the freedom of what you're gonna do for work, because now you don't gotta do the corporate job that you hate. You can do the creative job half-time and then do the music on the side, you know? Man, I love everything you just said. Just the entrepreneurial thinking. So, at the beginning of the podcast, we always say the intersection of creativity and currency, right? Because we want artists to understand that you can have that intersection without it being a conflict, right? I believe that artists are the ones who get the short end of the stick when we try to make it seem like currency and business can coexist. That's why business people with ill will have been able to take advantage of artists over the years. Because we think, oh, like, if I want to be this creative and this actually works against it, I should not even work actively to capture it, right? And there's been artists over the years who have tried to get the message out, Prince and many others have tried to make it very clear. You need to be able to capture the currency that's related to your creativity. And it looks like that's exactly what you're doing. Through many ways, many avenues, one thing that you've also been able to do, you mentioned your Patreon, right? You have a ton of followers. Subscribers, Patreons, you know, a couple thousand at least. Would you say that these are people who just subscribe to you or would you say that you are at a point where you feel like you're building a sense of community? I think we're building a sense of community now with Discord, with just being interactive. The coolest thing to me is when someone steps into your ecosystem and then they make friends in your ecosystem and then they go on to meet in real life. And you know what I mean? That to me is the flyest thing ever. So I think people are starting to connect with other people and building relationships.  And I'm like, what do you all talk? Oh, they just catching up, you know? And so I think the power of the community is incredible. And so yeah, we're slowly building that out. Discord is a great tool for that. The YouTube chats are cool to see like the moderators. We got like a team of moderators and they start becoming friendly with each other.  So the community aspect is powerful. You know, the community aspect is powerful. So yeah, I think, and by the way, I think that's happened in the last like two years or so is the community side. Like really cultivating that around an ethos and a set of values that people can get behind. How do you build that? I just started bringing people into the Zoom calls.  All right, we're gonna talk about today. What are we gonna talk about? Then trending, all right. Open up the calls to the Patreon. And then people would start calling it and they become the content. This is again, the Dave Ramsey model, right? Dave Ramsey model, it's a brilliant model because the people are the content. And so people call in, you have a big Zoom call.  So that's how I really started with the Zoom calls. It's about 2020 is when we started doing that and the Zoom calls.  But a lot of people do that inside of Discord where you can be live from Discord and then have like a voice chat going on in the background and people could be talking to you in the background. So I think, yeah, I think that sort of stuff is powerful. I think every rapper should have his own Discord, by the way. Everybody should have their own Discord communicating all the time. I agree, I agree. There has to be some sense of community. There are other platforms, but Discord is definitely like easily number one in many cases. Most cases, you said specifically that the Zoom calls helped, right? Why do you think bringing people on those calls was the start? Because you could have said a lot of different things. Yeah, I think two things. One, I think when people feel heard and feel seen, that's powerful for a person on the other end, right? So I think when people feel heard and feel seen, they go, wait a minute, Ruslan, remember my name? Ruslan, remember what I'm into? Ruslan remembers that I'm in the chat and I'm always talking about how he don't got enough women merch and how y'all need to do leggings for women. You know what I'm saying?  They go, bless God, logo on the booty, you know what I mean? Like, so we have these little back and forths, you know? So I think them feeling heard and seen is powerful. But I think the flip side is for the creator, especially when you start getting some steam to see that these are actual humans and not just numbers on the screen. Because if you just see in numbers and it's like, what is this? 400 people live today. Man, it's like, because yesterday we had 600 people live. Like, what's going on, YouTube? The algorithms, you know what I mean? But if I was in front of 400 people and they were sitting there just giving me their afternoon, listening to me, like that would be nuts. The people every day pull up and give me their afternoon. You know, and thousands more watch the replays and watch the clips and watch the videos. That's great. I don't think our brains could quantify that. So I think for the artist, it serves well to actually meet your people and know their names, you know? There's this pastor and he's a controversial pastor, but he said something when they sting on met him. He pastors a church out here. He did, called Saddleback Church. He wrote the second best-selling book at the time that sold better than the Bible. It's called Purpose Driven Life. His name is Rick Warren. Okay, so mega church, celebrity, pastor, the 20, 30,000 people. You say he sold better than the Bible? The book Purpose Driven Life outsold every other book except the Bible. Up until that point. It's one of the best-selling books of all time. And I was fortunate enough to be at a luncheon with him. And he said, I'll tell you guys how to build a big church. He said, I'll tell you guys how to build a big church, but that's not really what the talk's about.  He said, but I'll tell you how to build a big church anyway.  He said, up until my church was 1500 members, I remembered every single person's name. Every Sunday, I would meet every single person and I would remember their name and I would talk to them. And I did that and then at like over 2000, I just was incapable of doing it. And that's always stuck with me. Like what if we just really reduced it to the most central part, which at the end of the day, it's an exchange of time and value and ideas. And we just reduced it to these are people at the end of the day. These aren't just numbers. Oh, I got a million of you. That's a million people you touched, you know? And I think when you could quantify that even to a couple hundred, a couple thousand people that you remember, I think that's good for our soul as creatives to know that there's actual humans on the other side of this.  So that's been helpful for me. That's been helpful for me. Like I was in Houston, I spoke at a church, handful of people pulled up and some of them I knew, some of them I didn't know. And it was like really cool to be like, yo, you're Yolanda. I know you, like, how are you? How's your husband? Duh-duh-duh-duh, you know? And they're just ecstatic to meet you and you kind of know each other, you know? It's a trip.  Cause if I hop on your live stream and you call me in and then, I don't know, we have an interesting back and forth and that clip does well, it goes viral. Now I can say like, hey, I contributed to Ruslan's story or bigger narrative, right? And I think that's the part that's also slept on is the fans want to feel like they are a part of your success. Like I always say like every fan wants to feel like, hey, if I stop paying attention to you today, you will fall off, right? And then the dance is, okay, how do I make them feel that way? You know what I'm saying? How do I keep that going? So, yeah, cause I don't know, I've seen it with other artists where it's like, I think one for you guys is the creative, it takes the burden of performance off of you, which is great, right? I can still entertain without having to be the person being entertaining. And the flip side of it is this person walks away feeling like, hey, I helped Ruslan reach another pivotal moment in his career. And the added layer to that is when some of them then go on and become YouTubers. Yeah, somebody in general, somebody in general.  And they're like, nah, like you gotta start YouTube.  And they'll go do it. And some of them was, you know, 10,000, 20,000 subscribers, like just chipping away, you know? That is the coolest part. Yeah, man. In the last 20 years we've had people watching become successful artists or, I mean, even people like you actually watching that channel has been really cool, right? And obviously I watch your channel too. It's like, I don't, that part is hard, is less spoken about because you know how they say, don't try to network up, network vertically. I don't know where that falls in that analogy. Did I say not at work? I mean, horizontally. Are you right, horizontally? Yeah, horizontally. I did horizontally. You did the hand gestures. I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Network horizontally. That's some similar thing, but I don't know where it falls in that analogy, but I've seen it just time and time again, right? You meet someone who maybe aren't where you are in media. You're not necessarily better than them, but you have a bigger platform and then they might go three X, 10 X your platform in the next year or so, right? Or, and then now you have a relationship, right? And a connection that becomes a benefit. So it was like, especially being Indian, building these platforms in this way, build your own industry in a way. You build your own network over time just by staying consistent in the same way. People are fighting to get in certain rooms still to this day, right? With label execs or whoever they're trying to network with, just by building that small community, you can find yourself building a network that's more powerful than you ever could imagine because those people can get us in rooms. We've gotten in rooms that we could not get in ourselves through people that were following us first and grew. That is the power of a personal brand, right? Like Alex Hermosi kept talking about it. I'm sure you follow Alex Hermosi. He talks about like, he was doing well and I think he was doing like a million dollars a month. And then he said, but he discovered Kylie Jenner was worth a billion dollars. And he's like, I gotta get on his personal brand thing. I always thought it was cringe, but if that's what takes me to a B, a billion, then we build this thing out. That's that power of, especially if you already have products. See, the issue for us is we didn't really have no products. Like we just like merchant music, you know? Now we're trying to build products. I'm writing a book. I'm trying to think through products, live events. And so I think if you already have a course, if you already have coaching, if you already have implementation, then of course having a bigger brand is gonna help because you got a bigger net of people to tap in with. What does that look like for you? Obviously you mentioned some things, the books, merch, touring, whether that's your show or your other show, right? As an artist, which is cool. You now have that, where you can integrate them somehow. But have you thought of any other products that might not make sense? But just what has been that process of thinking about products? Yeah, I wanna do a prayer journal just cause I like right now my prayers and I've never found a journal that like has a little structure you can go through.  This is my prayers for the day. This is what I'm, this is who I'm praying for. This is what I'm praying for. Like I've always wanted to do that. So I think I'll probably do that soon. I've been very passionate about like the fitness space for a long time. And so that seems so oversaturated, but I wanna do something there. I'm not really sure yet. But I think right now it's just the book, The Merchandise, a prayer journal. And then the bottom of the funnel is the Patreon. Like if I can get people to partner monthly, that's where it's at, you know? I love the prayer journal specifically out of everything you said. Everything else you said are obviously things that are there, but the specificity of a prayer journal, right? Like a lot of people can write a book, you know? And you can even make it about a specific topic, but a prayer journal, right? That truly is a product that, you know, I don't know how many are out there. Not many. I was researching not many and not many good ones. And it speaks to something innately and the scalability, right? Those beyond Jerusalem, right? At its core. I feel like if people can find those things that are great and make sense to start where they are, but can scale past. And actually, so this is the business model, not look at what we do, everything that we do in the same way. And I think a lot of industries have done better at thinking about it this way. So we now have an asset pool. You think about just the ability to get feedback, this connection to audience, right? And people don't realize beyond, hey, I'm getting views and streams and making money directly from them. No, it's an asset just to be able to test and get feedback from these people, right? So you can introduce a product, you can improve a product that has scalability far beyond where you could initially go. But other people who might have the money even know how to create these products still have to figure out, well, how can I spend money just to get the feedback? Just to figure out if it's good. You can talk to your community, get on your Zoom call. Hey, is this prayer journal? Is it too short? Is it too long? Do I need to make the lines bigger? Whatever that looks like. And you can work through those tweaks before you scale. And I don't know what product that means for other artists, obviously. That's where the specificity really shines. But I wish more people saw their audience and something like that as well. Yeah, I think the products is where it's at. I think the moment you have something of your own and it's unique, like Mr. Beast has his candy bars. And obviously that takes more scalability than a prayer journal. But even doing a prayer journal, it's like, I think the more of those products, the better. And what we're looking at is diversifying the revenue streams. Because we're like, we're not gonna be just out here dependent on YouTube. And then the algorithm change. You know what I mean? Or they're like, yeah, we're really like Christians on YouTube. And then they just turn it down, you know? They can do that. We can do that. It's very clear that they can do that to anybody at any time. They can do that for anybody. So I'm like, let me go and diversify these revenue streams so that we're solid, you know? And so yeah, I think that's where it's at. If you have something at the bottom of the funnel, it's gonna be dope. And I feel like what we might see with music, I like to hear what you guys think about this, is that the music becomes the version of a daily live stream. That the music becomes the version of an Instagram post. That the music becomes a top of funnel. Let me get something clever. 90 second song, you know what I'm saying? And then that is really the top of the funnel to get people to click into. And at the bottom of it, there's some sort of cool product or something that they're selling people. Not like coaching or a course, but like something else. I can see it going that way and the music just being another piece of the puzzle. I think it's already there. All right, we've got. I think it's already there. Yeah, we've gotten flack before. It was one episode we did where I was like, your music is really just another piece of content. Like from a consumer perspective, to the artist for you guys, I get it, you know what I'm saying? But for consumers, it's no different than the YouTube video I just watched. It's no different than the movie I just watched. It's no different than the TikTok I just scrolled through from. From my mind, because you said it earlier, it's all entertainment to us. So now it becomes about, how do I take this brief entertaining moment this person just had with me? And as quickly as I can push them to something that will net me a bigger return. Like I think we're already there. Wow. I just don't think the artist community mentally has caught up to it because it's a hurtful thing for a lot of artists to hear like, to a consumer, your music is no different than TikTok. But if you were to go ask like, people in your life who have absolutely nothing to do with music, like about it, they view it that way, you know what I'm saying? He said, we're already there. But I love it. But here's something that clicked when you spoke. Cause yes, in many ways we were already there. You look at the industry as a whole for years. They've always looked at music as a loss leader. We're going to create this fan base, this marketing funnel through music. And then we're going to go tour. People mess up because they don't look at touring as a separate thing. That's just shows. Everybody does shows. How do we get people to come to this event? What's the music? Yeah. Right? And we happen to perform it. So it's always been there as a model. But I think something that I thought about when you said it, and it might be even more so what you're thinking about is the idea of, I have this product that's not necessarily in the typical artist's economy. And I'm looking at music as a viable way to sell it. Almost from a jump, right? Or as just another marketing avenue versus I'm being an artist and trying to build my way up out of this and build stability. It's like, no, I have artistic skills. I want to build this. And then I'm just going to do music from the jump specifically to some how to lead back to this community or to expand on this community or create another brand connection point. I think it will get there some point. The best version of that we've already had are jingles, right? Before a TV show. I meant for commercials and things like that. I do believe because of the level of connection that music creates, right? And brand affinity that music creates, you will find more people doing that. It's why Pepsi Coke, all these brands will do a festival that have nothing to do with music. Like, why are we doing this? Cause we're trying to tap into culture. And there's going to be more Alex Ramosy types that, oh man, this brand thing is a real thing. I get it now. Like, instead of just making transactional pricing, like trades, there's going to be that next level. Oh snap. This music thing, there's something to that. Let's figure out how to do that. Yeah, cause the replay value. The replay value. You watch your YouTube video once. You listen to a podcast maybe twice. If it's really good, you listen to your favorite song, hundreds, thousands of times. Some of my brand for fun. This is a really cool thing that I think about when I think about that. So I was watching Honey Eye, Shrunk the Kids, the second or third one with my daughter, cause she had never seen any of those. And I'm watching it. And they were eating breakfast. I can't remember what cereal. It might have been like Froot Loops on the table. And I just realized as a marker, how crazy is that? You paid for this ad like 30 years ago for this movie. But now, like 30 years later, my daughter's getting advertised too, right? I'm getting a remind, oh man, I haven't had Froot Loops in a while. Should I have some Froot Loops? Like that's a crazy thing to be able to have that type of placement and lasting value. So being able to do something like that in a song, right? And people are playing it and still have that connection in some way. Wow, that's crazy. That's good. That's good. Let me ask you guys a question. This might be off topic, but I'm really curious you guys, do you think that ideologies will get in the way of people viewing everything the way we just described it, right? The false dichotomy between art and commerce, all these things, if things are being pushed more and more to a socialistic Marxist paradigm where capitalism's bad, you know what I mean? This whole thing. But when business people sit down, like we all, everybody talks like this, we understand it, but if there's outside, whether it's like the world economic form, I'm not trying to get super conspiratorial, I'm not that guy, but like the world economic form, like you'll own nothing and you'll love it, you know what I mean?  And there's all this stuff. And so people then start viewing the world through a different lens. Do you think that's what may be impacting some artists approach in terms of the false dichotomies? Because if I'm approaching this and I got this like capitalism's bad, you know, there's a limited piece of the pie and in every, you know, the pie versus like, if you're looking at it from an abundance mindset, you're like, you know, the pie is infinite, everybody can win, right? Do you think that's what keeps certain artists from wanting to go all in and learn the business and learn what you're talking about and learn the products and learn all these things and view it in what it is, which is an exchange of value at the end of the day. You know? Do you think the ideologies are impacting how people operate? They have to. Yeah, I think so. They have to. I think the glorification of the struggling artists is one of the worst things that happen to the creative community. And even though it's been happening for a long time. But the glorification of it is made it cool. Like I've literally been at shows and events and things and you see artists congregating and relating over the fact that they aren't doing certain things. And I'm like, it's such a weird thing. They're like, man, I don't need to manage. I don't need to hire a smile for Mark. And it's crazy. And it's like, man, that's not something to brag about because one, you're willingly putting yourself behind in the race, right? Because for every non-artist that think that way, there's one that's like, man, forget that. I'm not gonna do what I gotta do. You know what I'm saying? And then they look down on those artists. Like the artist community as a whole, I think it holds artists back because they will actively look down on artists who are trying to break out of the struggling artists narrative.  And then on top of that, there's always going to be someone that is willing to learn the information that you're not willing to learn. And now you're hoping that, hey, this person figured it out. They can go in one direction and help me. They can go in another direction and finesse me. And now you're putting all that power and hoping that they take the right path. Well, a lot of people don't. Like there's been people finessing artists in the music industry for decades, you know? And so it's hard to know when you're being hunted when you don't understand what the bait looks like, right? Like it's hard to maneuver out of certain situations when you don't even understand some of the simple things about the situation. So I definitely think so. Like I've met lots of artists where I could be like, I can say like, hey man, the way you think about this is what's holding you back. Like you, let's just say actively not running ads because you're afraid that if another artist sees it, they're gonna think you're cheating. Like who cares? The other artist isn't buying your music and supporting you anyway. And I don't think enough, I think artists put too much merit into the words of the creative community and not enough merit in the words of the consumer community. Because the consumers have been telling us for years that we want to see you make TikToks. We love it when you go live. We like when you work on matters. I like when you sell me stuff. Like I like one of my favorite artists, attempt to sell me things. But then the artist would ignore it and be like, nah, that's not right. I'm not keeping it real. Yeah, I'm not keeping it real. But it's like who said that? The consumers didn't say that. Other artists said that. Wow. Other artists who are more than likely also not where you want to be. The subconscious mind is so powerful, right? If you believe that all rich people are evil, why would you want to be rich? And I think it's important that you try to figure out where your limiting beliefs come from, where all of your beliefs come from. And then trace it back and try to determine who benefits most from this, right? So what you've already talked about, the music industry finessing artists for all these years, because again, as we even alluded to earlier, right? If the business people value the money, the artist believes that the money actually devalues their work, it makes it easier for me to extract that value with less pushback. Give me my 85% artist. Exactly, exactly. So, me as a business entity, right? If I'm gonna get a mini conspiracy on it with it, right? If I'm the establishment, right? And I'm trying to maintain as much value and keep new people from coming up the ladder and being a threat to me, the best thing that I can do is to get them to feel pride in their current position, right? So, I can make you feel pride with being a broke artist. I can make you feel pride for being in the hood, from the hood, and now you're always talking about where you're from as a point of pride, as if that makes you better than somebody else, even though a lot of that mentality might be keeping you back and becoming the ultimate threat to me, right? So, a lot of artists get caught in that cycle, and the funny part about it is, is in complete incongruence with what artists say they believe. Money does not create value for art, right? That's what we say as creatives, right? The creativity is value, the art is value. So, if it has nothing to do with that equation, you making more or less should not impact that equation, right? The work and the value there is there. If somebody misunderstands that, that should be their issue, but that has nothing to do with you and the value of your work. Yeah, we know it's a trip, man, is that even at this level that I've been doing this for this long, I approach YouTube totally different to music that I even need some of this deprogramming, which is why I think what y'all do is so powerful, because I think it's like, even at this level, I'm still like, it's my baby, you know what I mean? The other day, me and Zach were sitting there and I was like, man, it's like it was like Thursday, and I was like, I think I was gonna release this song next Friday.  He's like, do it. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna do it.  And it's wow, that's so interesting, man. I was talking to a friend, I'll tell you who it is offline. And we were talking about an A&R that he's connected with that a very major artist is connected with. And we found out that this A&R was skimming off the budget, which I was like, yo, they can do that? And he's like, yes. I found out that they was, they was like letting us spend the money however we wanted to, but they was just skimming off the marketing budget. And I was like, that's crazy. And then another major artist was signed under the same A&R and was signed to three labels total. The artist was signed to three labels total. And I'll tell you who it is offline, because I don't wanna, you know what I mean?  And I was like, wait a minute, he was in a 500K, I thought he bought that for his family, but he's like, no, that was his home up until like recently. Cause he ended when he finally pulled away from the situation, he was able to level up, you know what I mean? But this A&R got let go. He became a vice president of one of the biggest labels. He got fired, he got let go. And this stuff happens where people will go into people's budget and take them. But if you're an artist and it's all about the art and it's all about the, you know what I mean? I guess I'm supposed to be broke. Yeah, I guess I'm supposed to be broke. I guess I'm supposed to just have a- It's supposed to be a struggle. Right, right. It's supposed to be a struggle, right? Like, what's, you know? And so that's the trick when you talk about that and it made me think of that story. And I was like, yo, that's crazy because if that's your mindset, someone else could easily take advantage of you and or just have you in a messy business situation. Man, it's always so great talking to you, man. Offline, online. It's always great talking to you. I appreciate you having this conversation with us today. I want to close it on this topic. How has, how has family impacted how you look at your business but even more so how you navigated your career as an artist?  I've shared that story with you. We was coming back from South by Southwest, driving across country. We stopped in New Mexico. I could sense that my job was kind of getting tired and me taking so much time off. I called my wife. I said, hey, babe, maybe we should pray about quitting and putting in our two week notice when I get back. She was like, there's nothing to pray about. You need to come home and put in your two week notice. You need to quit. So my wife is the one that pushed me towards going full, full fledged. So I think foundationally that, and this is her as a stay at home mom, what a six month old, you know, but like not working for what she was staying at home really believe when we were gonna get it, you know? And so I would say foundationally that, like my wife is oftentimes believes bigger for me than I do, you know? And then I think, I think, man, it's this paradigm that's hard to articulate. But when you don't have external motivators, you got all the time in the world. But when you have external motivators like children that are depending on you, your time is limited, right? So the biggest thing I try to articulate to people is the future version of you and your future wife and kids are depending on the current version of you to make great decisions.  If you need help, like, don't overeat, like get your life together, because the 35, 40 year old version of you is gonna deal with the decisions, good or bad. And so the family is the real tangible reality of that. Like my two year old and my eight year old, what was the line in belly?  You know what I mean? Eat affirmation from other struggling artists. Like that doesn't, that's not a commodity that don't put food on the table, you know? And so I was fortunate in that I had an amazing wife that believed in me more so than I believed in myself and was allowing me, like we were getting our crap together, but then she was also believing in me to take risk. And it was that balance, you know? And so I think family changed everything.  Like get your stuff together. And if you could figure it out, when you have the time without the external motivators, like hustle as if you have kids, hustle as if you have a wife, hustle as if people are depending on you. If you can figure that out in your early 20s or whenever before you have kids, then by the time you're there with a family, it's gonna be great. Oftentimes people that you don't click, it just you just don't understand. The tricky thing about the present moment is that it feels so permanent, right? Like your present reality feels so permanent. This is like, but it's not cement. This is not cement. What happened? So things could change in a year, you know? Things could change in a couple of years. I mean, you just had kids recently, right? Like a lot of things change very quickly, you know? And so it's like, if people could understand that that external, when that external motivator comes, it changes things, hustle as if that's already there, work as if that's already there, have a plan and work as if that's already there. Because when it's there, you have less time, you know? So now we're fortunate in that we do a four-day work week. We come in Monday through Thursday, we hit it hard Monday through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we're off, you know? That's a luxury that, because we grinded our faces off the last two years that we got to be able to be in this place. Like people don't think like that, you know? And so now that Zach just had a baby, he has a three-day weekend, you know? And it's dope, you know? And so like that's the, like people need to think about these things for the next season, you know? I break it down like this, and the Bible talks a lot about sowing to reap, right? And God created this like sowing and reaping universe cause and effect, right? And so the way I look at it is, you gotta work to eat. Second Thessalonians says, a man who not work, I'll not eat, right? You gotta work to eat, but then you also gotta sow to reap. When you work to eat, that's for the here and now.  But the sower reap is for the next season. I'm not sowing, you know, apple trees to get them tomorrow. I'm sowing for apple trees to get them in the next season, you know, or years, years removed. So it's living in this reality. Have I gotta work to eat now? But I also gotta sow to reap for the next season. And so I'm writing a book, I'm sowing to reap for the next season. I work on an album, that's the next season. That's not, I'm not paying my bills with the book this month, it's the next season. I'm paying my bills with the things I did six months ago, you know? And so yeah, work to eat, sow to reap. That's the little thing I got in my book. I love it, I love it. Well, this is yet another episode of No Labels Necessary Podcast. It's been a pleasure, a pleasure to have you on and for you to have us. Yeah, man. Thank you guys for coming. I'm Brandon Shawn. I'm Corey. And I'm Ruslan. And we out. Peace. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a podcast about the stories we're gonna tell you. And we're gonna try to create some good things about the things that are available for free at nolabelsnecessary.com and a cool part about it that's gonna really make you love it is we don't have to be all entertaining and add all this fluff just to get some views that we do on YouTube. We get straight to the information. There's play by play in courses that give you a breakdown of every step that you should do to get success. So check it out right now at nolabelsnecessary.com.