Hey there and welcome, happy Friday. It's another Friday, another Ask and Answer, and we're glad you're here for the nonprofit show conversation. Thank you also to our partner in these Friday, Ask and Answer dedicated episodes, which is Fundraising Academy at National University every single Friday. An amazing trainer from the team joins us. And today we have with us none other than the LaShonda Williams, thrilled to have you here. LaShonda is an MPA CFRE and trainer, of course at Fundraising Academy. She's joining me, Jared Ransom, non-profit nerd and CEO of the Raven Group in today's Ask and Answer conversations. So thrilled to have you here LaShonda, very briefly. Thomas, a little bit about your role as a trainer with Fundraising Academy. What does that mean? What is your position in that space for everyone that might be new to learning who you are and what you do? So working with the Fundraising Academy is definitely a plus on my list. I might actually have an opportunity to work very closely with the team in developing some of the curriculum. And we try to develop curriculum that is practical and actual and impactful based on the cost selling cycle we develop presentations, webinars. And also we're diving into conferences. This is our second year. We cover a variety of different topics that will help those that are in the non-profit sector increase their impact within their various organization and then most importantly equip them with essential tools to not only establish meaningful relationships but tools to sustain those relationships and be able to retain those donors. So each of us on the training team, we have different areas of expertise and we work as a collective to be able to provide comprehensive training and webinars for all of those viewers out there. Great, well, thank you so much for that quick rundown. We also wanna say thank you to our partners that allow us these conversations day in and day out. So shout out of gratitude to our friends over at Bloomerang and American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, again, Fundraising Academy at National University. We are LaShonda joins us from today. Also thank you to 180 Management Group, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, JMT Consulting, non-profit nerd and non-profit tech talk. These are the companies that are with us day in and day out to have such high level conversations. They've helped us to produce nearly 1,000 episodes. LaShonda, that is coming up. I hope you join us March the 5th will be our milestone moment. You can find all of our previous episodes including the ones that LaShonda has joined us on by downloading the app. Go ahead and just scan that QR code right now. I'm sure you're sitting on your phone. Hopefully not sitting but nearby. You can also find us on streaming broadcast, podcast platforms as well. So queue us up wherever you stream your entertainment. We hear quite a bit LaShonda that someone goes in to watch one episode and several hours later, they're still listening, still watching. So we love to hear those stories. If that's you, if that's your experience please share them with us. LaShonda, you know how this works. You are at this. So I'm going to read the statement, the questions allowed. Pass it to you first and if there's anything where I feel maybe I could add some expertise would love to join you in this dialogue. So Paul in the Bay Area, San Francisco, California. He writes in, I am taking the helm of a nonprofit and I am new to the community. However, I am not new to the nonprofit sector. I am thinking about asking the board members to set up three lunches during my first six months to introduce me to key community leaders. Do you think this is a savvy idea? LaShonda, do you think this is a savvy idea? Absolutely, Paul, you are on the right track. You want to be able to have the board members to make those introductions to those key members in the community because they need to know who you are. The only thing I would add to that is maybe accelerate that timeframe because six months is a little length of time and you really want to be able to kind of hit the ground running. It depends on where your organization is as far as meeting its goals and your metrics. And I would also add, consider hosting a salon event with some of those key community leaders inviting them out and hosting a meet and greet so that you can have an initial introduction and then that determine a prioritization list of those that you want to meet with one-on-one. So definitely, Paul, you're heading in the right direction. I'm gonna pass it over to you, Jared. What else would you like to add? I 100% agree. I love that you're recommending to truncate it from six months to a shorter timeframe. And I love the salon, right? Like a one-to-many conversation is often a great strategy. Paul, I love that you're leaning into the board members for this because that is going to set the tone, I believe, for how they work with you, advocate with you, how they play a role in cultivation and stewardship as well as connection. So 100% agree with LaShonda, you are on the right path. Absolutely love this. And would love to hear, Paul, how your board responded and how those meetings are going. So keep on it, you're on the right path for sure. Okay, Rachel, I know that you probably get this question asked a lot, but what is the average number in a development officer's typical donor portfolio? And LaShonda, I'm reading between the lines. I'm believing average number of donors, average number of constituents, right? Maybe not that dollar amount, but really how many files, records, should we be working as a development officer? So what is your thought here and your personal experience? So I will lean into the last time I was on the show, we got asked this very same question a couple of months ago. And I believe in quality over quantity. And I'm thinking that you probably want to max out between 80 and 100, which is typical. But you also want to be mindful of where those individuals are in the portfolio. How many of those individuals are pre-qualified? How many of those individuals have already given to the organization? How many of those individuals are at the stewardship stage if you are inheriting a portfolio? So you want to also be mindful of what your metrics is and the size of your office resources or everything. And again, the most important part for me is quality over quantity. Do you want to have a robust portfolio and not be able to get through the list of all of the donors and prospective donors? Or do you want to have a real meaningful conversation or meaningful opportunities to engage them so that you can continue to be successful in securing funding for your organization as well as maximizing the impact. So I would say balancing is very important looking at your metrics and as well as the number of individuals in your development staff that are managing portfolios. Yeah, I too echo that. Anytime I have more than 100, it seems too much. It seems as if I'm not able to give that personalization and to be present in those conversations and even communication exchanges with those donors in a portfolio once it gets over 100. Also what I'd like to advocate for is feel free to meet with the rest of your team, executive director, any other titles and members within the development team. See how you can shift and shape your portfolios to accommodate capacity, right, connections. I have very often within my teams, LaShawna and I'm curious if you do the same. You know, we will meet regularly, quarterly, so to speak. Here's where I'm at with my donors. So-and-so is not responding to me. I think they might be best worked, you know, worked by and with another representative. If I can take someone from your list, could you take someone from my list, that kind of thing. Do you work in that way as well, LaShawna? Cause I've done that and it's been successful for me. So when I work with Bower College of Business, that's the exact way we operated. The development professionals would come in and on a weekly basis go through the list of calls, the contacts, and then also talk about the linkage, ability and interest, which is most important and honing in on the most effective way to be able to cultivate donors and identifying, as you said, if the individual may have a stronger connection with another development member or if that person in fact may need to be cultivated by someone at a higher level because they may have a higher capacity. So spot on with what you said, but also making sure that you have that balanced approach and looking at that linkage is really important because that will help with ensuring that you're maximizing your time and that you're able to go through the portfolio in a very meaningful and strategic manner. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for adding that LaShawna, I appreciate it. All right, Rachel, good luck. Can't wait to hear how your portfolio management goes. This is nearby me, Flagstaff, which has been getting a lot of snow lately. So Flagstaff, Arizona, name withheld. They state, I am a board member and the CEO recently came to me at home to ask if I would serve as a reference. She is interviewing for another job. I'm super concerned about doing this when I don't want her to leave our non-profit. Can you offer some help? This is a cheesy LaShawna, take it away. This falls under the line of ethics. So the good news is you have a great relationship with your CEO. And if you didn't have a good relationship, he or she would not have asked you to serve as a reference. What I will say is to honor their confidentiality and perhaps ask, is there a particular reason why they feel like it's time to transition out? Many instances when individuals leave organizations, there's not a conversation to talk about what we can do to enhance their experience and to keep them. People are often just submitting resignation letters and they're accepted as opposed to having a conversation about what we can do to retain this talent for our organization. So I would say definitely talk to her. Yeah, absolutely. And clearly what I see here, there is a relationship beyond professional. It goes to personal. And I do think there's some kind of level of transparency that needs to be shared, as well as keep using the word advocacy today as a board member to advocate to that CEO that he, she or they share this transitional desire with the board. As you said LaShawna, let's see what's working, what's not working. Like what is the impetus for this change? Perhaps it is time for the CEO to move to another position. And what does that look like for the organization? I am a huge proponent for succession planning. So I would love, love, love for that succession planning conversation to happen regularly, not just because there's an impending transition on the horizon. And definitely having standard operational procedures in place is really important to help with a succession plan. 100%. So good luck to you. I know that that's a little tricky conversation. All right, we're going over to Maine where I guarantee you it is a very cold. So Carla, should all board members be under the same development officer's portfolio? There seems to be some confusion about this on our team. I think it should be on the board liaisons list since we have a give or get policy that she ultimately monitors. What would you share with Carla LaShawna? Just for continuity, it's important that you have that one person to maintain everyone because then they can provide updates on the entire board on a regular basis and also be able to track the progress of the board holistically. But most importantly, you want to make sure that the board is moving in the right direction and that they're hearing the same messaging. And in instances when you have divided out the board members into different development officers, depending on the officer and the relationship, the conversation can sometimes become a little disjointed. So for continuity purposes, I would say that all of the board members be under one particular development person and that would be the executive director or whomever is the highest ranking official in the organization. Yeah, I like that response a lot in the approach. Sometimes for me, in a little different perspective is I will have two champions for a donor, especially a high level donor. And the reason I do that, like there's a main person responsible for, I'm gonna say champion again, that relationship, there's a secondary person. So what that's doing, the strategy of that is to build, that was my southern accent coming out, Lashonda, build deeper relationships with the organization so that if and when that CEO, executive director, whomever moves to the next organization just as our previous conversation was, our previous question rather, building in that depth and breadth of that continuity. So again, I always see it as a team sport, fundraising is a team sport, and just because a donor is in someone's portfolio doesn't necessarily mean that someone else on the team cannot talk with them, but it is to Lashonda's point, very critical that you share information and that you have captured these conversational notes so that we're speaking in a way that is informative and we are informed of the conversations and that we're not confusing the donor by having similar conversations and it doesn't sound like we're on the same team, if that makes sense. So the other thing I just wanna call out is I personally have never worked with an organization that had a board liaison. So this is a different opportunity for you, Karla, and this may absolutely be where you want to lean in to the board liaison to support the person that is managing this donor within their portfolio. I love that you have a liaison. Definitely, and then you may discover when you're sharing out the progress of the board and what's happening is you're cultivating, engaging and stewarding, you may discover that there are some individuals on your team that may have really strong relationships with those particular board members that can enhance whatever efforts that you have in place. So definitely it's a team sport. It's a team sport. All right, let's move into, this is more of a comment we realized but we're gonna banter on this and riff on it regardless. Name withheld in Minneapolis, also very cold right now. Our nonprofit will soon be 75 years old. First of all, congratulations. I think we should do some milestone marketing but our CEO does not think it is necessary and that it would distract from our main message. In parentheses, he is totally wrong on this one, exclamation point. LaShonda, what have you seen? Again, not really posed a question here but what have you seen to be successful for milestone marketing initiatives especially when it comes to that timeframe? Milestone marketing initiatives are critical to an organization because it creates an opportunity for you to not only bring awareness to your organization to additional constituents and prospective donors but it's an opportunity to celebrate those individuals who've been supporting your organization for a long period of time. You may have some individuals that have been supporting the organization since its impetus. You may have some generational donors that you wanna celebrate. So the celebration can include a variety of different things but most importantly, it's an opportunity for individuals to have a awareness about your organization. You're making it more available, information more available to the broader community which can allow you to have significant donor acquisition because if we don't know about your organization we cannot support your organization and there are a variety of creative ways that you can facilitate milestone marketing. It doesn't have to be one that is very expensive because resources tend to be a challenge within nonprofit organizations. It could be something as simple as a digital campaign and perhaps creating some opportunities and some collateral that's all electronic on the website. And there are many instances where when partnering with various radio stations and television stations, you can get coverage because it's a milestone year which could be Gratis, which is Gratis marketing for your organization. So there's some very creative ways that you can do that without breaking the bank. I agree. I echo everything you just shared. I'm a fan of those milestone marketing and efforts and initiatives to LaShonda's point. It's a great time to highlight the success, the progress, the partners that have invested in this journey and really having that opportunity. I do wanna speak more to that resource side because perhaps your CEO is seeing, this isn't budgeted, this is something we don't have the dollars for. So I would come back and really devil's advocate, look at what could we make possible? LaShonda suggested some digital opportunities. Maybe you just add something to your email signature block or you create a landing page on your website of a timeline of the last 75 years. I think there's a lot of really great opportunities. I was recently at my local zoo the other day and there was a timeline of a particular building and it really spoke to what happened in our local community for the last 100 plus years. And I found myself mesmerized looking at this timeline and seeing, although clearly I wasn't born 100 plus years ago, but I was looking at it and I just found myself really engaged in learning more of that history. And I think this is a great time to go back to your origin story, your history points. I think all of that is good. So I would support it and also like, what is that happy medium so that you're not breaking the bank and you are still highlighting that milestone metric. Yeah. Definitely. Okay. All right LaShonda, we're gonna riff off the cuff here because I pulled out my phone. I have a question that someone has sent to me this week. Question for you, how did you decide what your budget was or is to meet with donors? Any insights on how to allocate those expenses based off of anything, perhaps operating size, fundraising goal, et cetera. Someone told me that their budget was $500 to meet with donors and looking for a better dollar amount. They don't feel supported with that 500. So curious LaShonda, how you would answer to this person. So I inherit budgets. That's the good news and not quite as modest as $500. Gosh, that's a very interesting budget. So that allows room for creativity. I definitely would think about all of the things that is encompassed in curating a donor through the development cycle and what those dollar amounts entail. And develop a case for support for a more substantial budget because depending on the number of people in your portfolio, $500 is very modest. And I'm not certain if that's even realistic, depending on those numbers. There are instances where prospective donors will offer to pay if you have lunch or to have coffee, but obviously because we're in the nonprofit sector and we wanna demonstrate our gratitude, we don't want them to feel as though they have to support the meeting that we're having with them to cultivate the relationship. The other part is considering the budget being so modest is thinking of creative ways to cultivate them by inviting prospective donors to the organization so that they can have experiences in real time with the organization. And $500, I would probably max that out with having an event, a salon event and inviting everybody, all the people all at once, like your top 10 or 15 donors so that you can have a really nice touch point with those that are pre-qualified, those that have the highest capacity, that have the highest linkage, the highest ability and interest. So you wanna look at those three areas and have a salon event is what I would do if the budget was $500 and there was no working around it. And then that's an opportunity to demonstrate or to put your organization on the top of their minds and then an opportunity for you to follow up and meet them at their place of business or as you're talking to them, bringing them to your organization so that they can see specific things that they're most interested in. Great insight and I agree. I mean, even when I take myself to coffee, it could sometimes be $10, right? And so if we're paying for a second, a third person, like there's 30 out of your 500 for your annual budget. Anyway, so it goes quickly. I love the salon.  Maybe you can use that as a qualifying factor to help determine what you would like to support in this budget for next year, right? Like clearly it's set this year, but what research can you do to support your request to increase that amount next year? How many donors to your point, LaShonda, are in your portfolio if we have that 80 to 100 that we referenced in a previous question today? If you say on average, I don't know, $30 per person, what would that be? A little more than 500, but figuring that out. Yeah, so I think going back to this question, and we get questions all the time, so I appreciate you riffing on this one, is really like what is your goal when it comes to fundraising and then how many individuals, what is that impact and a potential ROI? I would support your request for your next fiscal year budget line with some of this additional information. So again, a lot to consider and a great opportunity to get creative. Definitely developing your case for support. Absolutely. Well, LaShonda, this has been fantastic. Again, for those of you that have joined us today or you found your way to us through one of our recordings and our platforms where we store all of our episodes, LaShonda Williams has joined me today, NPA CFRE Trainer at Fundraising Academy. Please visit Fundraising Academy website. It's fundraising-academy.org. And LaShonda, we have a few minutes. I know we talked about Cultivate, the conference that's coming up May 2nd and 3rd with a little bit of our time that we have left. Would you please share with us a little bit more because this is the second annual conference coming up and registration is open. Yes, we're very excited to be hosting our second annual Cultivate conference in sunny San Diego. It'll be held on the campus of National University. It's a wonderful opportunity to experience the campus, creating a heightened awareness. Most importantly, it's an opportunity where we'll showcase some of the best and brightest talents as it relates to development professionals that will be speaking on a variety of different topics and we have a variety of different tracks. We have three tracks available. So depending on your level of interest, we have something for everyone, but most importantly, we want to make everyone aware that this conference is the conference you don't want to miss because you will be cultivating knowledge, you'll be cultivating relationships and cultivating impact. And we have the information available on the website. We also have a video that provides highlights from last year. And last year was phenomenal. We received some tremendously great feedback. And as a result, we are back again. And we did listen to some of the feedback. So we are definitely engaging some of those areas that people said they wanted to know more about. So this is the conference that is for everyone. It's for those that may be in the beginning of their career, for those that maybe are transitioning and they're not certain exactly where they want to go in the development space. And there's something also for those that are in leadership roles in creating opportunities in spaces for them to share authentically, talking about metrics, what's most successful, best practices. So all of the things that you need to have a whole encompassed and fully functional office. And I would say to consider, if you can, have multiple people from your office to come so that you've had someone from each of those tracks, you'll be able to get the big picture. This year, unlike last year, we will have some of the sessions available on demand, which is going to be great. So if you're not able to attend in real time, we will have those available on demand, which will add an opportunity to broaden our audience even further. So for those that aren't able to come, they can still experience Cultivate in the virtual space. Absolutely. And some of that feedback from last year has moved into a day and a half conference this year as opposed to a one full day. So lots of good information there. Again, you can find the registration and conference details at fundraising-academy.org. I will be there presenting about Rents, Repeat and Recycle, your content. LaShonda, you saw me present on that in Nashville. Yes, it was amazing. Thank you. So I'll be rinsing, repeating and repurposing that particular presentation into the Cultivate conference. So again, just really honored to continue to be of service to our community. Well, hey, I also wanna say thank you for these partners for continuing to be of service to our community and to these conversations. Thank you to Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Fundraising Academy at National University. Shout out to LaShonda today who's joined me for the ask and answer. Also thank you to 180 Management Group, your part-time controller, staffing boutique, JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd and Nonprofit Tech Talk. These are the companies that we just, you know, owe so much gratitude for because we are coming up March 5th on our 1,000th episode. And as we end every episode, Justice Today and LaShonda, this is for you my friend. We want to remind all of you to please stay well so you can do well. Thanks everyone, have a fantastic weekend.


One of the biggest announcements out of Ignite was Microsoft Loop. The question, I saw this instantly in feedback like Twitter, and the community chatter was, where does Microsoft Loop fit with Microsoft Teams? So I hate to be the one guy here to say this, but I didn't get to attend any of the Ignite content. So I am not familiar with Loop. Can you give us the 30,000 foot? I haven't seen anything, man. I've been totally heads down. Yeah. So if you go and look at the micro, for those that aren't familiar with it, either the Microsoft 365 blog has, it's a new full-fledged product. It's like a next-generation Microsoft Office. So it's a, what's the best way to, I like describing it as a new Microsoft Office Candice, that incorporates a bunch of different things. So it is a collaborative space that is using the Loop components, so the real-time collaborative components. So for example, we're working on a project together. I might then, as we have chat that's going on, we're co-editing on like a Word document type thing. But as we're talking about it, we might be moving the order around. We might be doing sidebar comments, asking questions, might then insert, hey, this is relevant to this data that's out in our CRM system or add a poll question, and people can respond to it right there in real-time. So it's the live components, so it allows you to jointly collaborate on something while pulling components from elsewhere, the CRM platform from a Microsoft list somewhere from SharePoint, OneDrive. Yeah. Components of what? How? Components and people. Okay. Correct. That the space, if there are other people that you think might be involved with this, you can actually loop them in, and in the process of looping them in, they get access to everything that you've been doing across all the various platforms you've been doing it on. Oh, nice. It sounds like it doesn't do anything revolutionary, but it streamlines common things that trip people up, like maybe access and getting documents and things. The demonstration I saw even included a virtual workroom which looked very much like Alt-Space ER, except it was all clean and nice, and prettier. That's interesting. I'm wondering whether they're going to loop that in or not. Alt-Space VR is something that I've gotten exceedingly fond of as a big night because I was involved in the six Alt-Space VR sessions that were held during the two-day event. That was basically you had a landing zone in teams and then you could head off to three different rooms on each one of the sessions where you got to talk to subject matter experts and the beauty of it was that you were in a room, literally in a room, and you could be off in one corner talking to some people. There'd be another conversation going off in another part of the room. You can hear the conversation and you can turn away from it or to it like you're in a real room. It was a thing of beauty to behold. Yeah, that's just like a whole other topic. You're between the three rooms and yeah, well, never the less. It meshes a whole different topic. It doesn't make the conversation get out of it. Yeah, yeah, but the loop specifically instantly made me think of the Gig Jam announcement a few years back, which is actually 2015. It has, we finally see it, it's live now with the loop components, part of the vision of that Gig Jam.  I said a comment. To me, the teams seems to be like the structure so it's around the groups. I always direct people to create their teams around the who needs to work together, the channels or what are they working on and the tabs across the top or how are they going to get that work done. But loop seems to be a little more fluid than that. So it's like we're working on a document so you can create a workspace. That's, to me, it looks like a workspace. Does anybody else feel that way? Like it? I think that's the thing. And Norm, sorry, not ignoring your hand, it's also up here. But there's, so back to Sean, who didn't pay attention. Three, there's three components, so there's components. So the loop components, there are loop pages and then there are the loop workspace, which is in a whole standalone app. I actually was thrown for a loop. The fact that there was a yet another full app, I knew that it was like the components. I thought it was just gonna be an integrated component. Like I could see that you have a loop page or workspace that you, once we have deeper integration with teams, there's loop components that are available now. I actually just noticed it on my work tenant today. In fact, so we're able to go and add those things into a chat and add live components in, which you'll be able to leverage it and use elsewhere. I just assumed that that's how we would consume, how we would see team or loop was through teams as a primary interface, not as a standalone application. I don't know when that's coming out, but that, again, threw me for a loop. But in Norm, you had a quite, sorry. I think it's gonna cause more confusion about where do I go now? Because that's what we're doing. So, sorry, go ahead. No, it's, loop is interesting. And it's not something that I initially paid attention to. But the more I watched the teaser videos, I was left with the impression that it's very much like one note where you have the ability to free form content into it. But with the additional power of the co-authoring experiences that you get in something like Excel. And so the demos are always great at an event like Ignite, but as you said, Christian, it is starting to light up in people's tenants in teams chats. And so in practice and real function, it is really almost as effective as you see in those demos. So it's quite easy to move content, to build dynamic lists. I think that it's going to be one of those things that people will create a loop list versus something like a SharePoint list. Like it's just going to be much easier for them to collaborate together. There won't be a dependency on anyone person, but it is quite interesting. And there's going to be a hierarchy of those different components, right? The ones we get inside of teams chat, the pages, and then eventually that workspace. So it's gonna be very similar to some of the hierarchies that we have in teams, right? With the team, the channel, the tabs, and stuff like that. So those are my observations of it. It looks pretty exciting. It talks a lot about extending the fluid framework and the fluid framework has been really interesting to me because it's all that office integration stuff. So basically what's happening is think about it this way. Instead of having to build a connector or an API to bring productivity information into something like teams, it's now kind of built in its own area where we can say, okay, I want to integrate directly with this thing. And I've got a component like Norm was saying to bring in to use. So this is a manifestation of fluid. Yes, yes, yes it is, yeah. Gotcha. I'm excited about it. So that aspect of it, I mean, we knew it was coming. This was not new, it's the packaging of it. And then like I said, the way that they broke it up into workspaces pages and components. And then thankfully, this is not one of those times where they announced something which sounds really exciting. And then there's nothing for us to touch. You know, look at kick tires around for months or years like it's available, it's out there. So it has to be enabled within your tenant, but you can play with loop components today. I have a lot of clients who are going to be really, really excited because there's a lot of features that we've worked on that I essentially, we haven't built custom yet, right? And I think this is gonna solve some of those needs to integrate some of that productivity stuff. This is your area Sherry, it's all the graph stuff. I mean, it's all the waffle stuff, right? Where's the waffle? Well, guess what? The waffle showed up this time. Yay. That's right, that's right. Neil, do you have anything to explain yourself, Mr. Microsoft? You know, any thoughts, your impressions on it? Well, for a lot of things, I'm a little bit like Sean in this respect. I'm too busy to attend Ignite these days. So I don't get to see very much. I'm in catch up mode, reviewing all of the recordings. So what I've seen looks interesting, but I'm not immersed in it and understand it really to the point where I could talk in any way authoritatively about what it's supposed to do and what it's all about. Just being honest. Yeah, no, that's fine. That's valid answer. But all right, there's a lot to look at and folks, again, I recommend that you go take a look at the Microsoft 365 blog, so the Microsoft blog and go and look specifically around the announcements around Microsoft Loop. So that's where you'll see links to the demos, kind of an explainer, what Microsoft is doing, kind of the future vision for this and timeframe for expecting additional aspects of Loop to become available.


So there's no requirement that you have a patent search done first, but the search is important. It tells you whether your idea is new and how likely it is to get a patent. Also, if you don't do a patent search, your idea may violate somebody else's rights. And instead of making money from the concept, you could end up being sued for damages.


How do I know when art resin is fully mixed and ready to use? Art resin comes in two parts, a resin and a hardener, and when those two parts are combined and you stir, you cause a chemical reaction to happen, which will turn that liquid product into a solid. So how do you know when you've stirred it enough? Well, generally we say three minutes is a good rule of thumb, making sure that you scrape the sides and scrape the bottom as you go to make sure the whole mixture is indeed fully mixed. So put on your favorite song, put on a timer, but just make sure you get to that three-minute mark.  Just a percussion.


Usually I wait for a show to finish its season before I give it a little bit of a review, a reaction, but we're at the halfway point of Peacemaker, and people won't shut up about it. They're like, Adam, tell us what you think about Peacemaker. Let me tell you something, commenters. I'm not a marionette doll. You can make dance whenever you want up on strings. When I get people demanding things, requesting, I look those comments straight in the eye, and I say, fine, I will! There will be neia spoiler here, because I understand not everybody even has access to this show yet in different parts of the world. I don't know why, but I've been told that in Europe, they don't even have the show out yet. What is happening? Why?  Drop this and let the hull wear a fillet. Director slash writer James Gunn. He's batting 1,000 with me. He doesn't miss. I love all of his movies. Slyther, Super, The Guardian's franchise, The Suicide Squad, and now Peacemaker. He just, he gets me. He knows how to make me tick, man. He gets my humor. He knows how to get those belly laughs. He knows how to tug at the heartstrings. He knows how to make me feel different emotions for characters I normally wouldn't even like in real life. And here we are again with Peacemaker. Now, I will say the only gripe I've had is the first 15 minutes isn't the best. It takes a little while for you to build into this show. Not a lot. There's plenty of shows where it can take like an entire season for it to start working like Parks and Rec. But here it goes much quicker. There are very select shows where I don't skip past the intro if possible. Peacemaker's one of them. The intro to this show is in the top five of all time. That would be a great list. Top 10 intros to TV series ever. Golden Girls obviously on there. Thank you for being a friend. Rest in peace, Betty White. Wow. Let's take a turn.  They're out there 100% committed. It's so good. And then eagerly flies out at the end.  He's trying to hold it there. Oh god. The animation is so brilliant. How is it so good now? I'm just thinking, man, we are getting scary clothes to realism here. Part of me loves it. Part of me fears for it. I could do a video on the top 10 moments from just that intro. And if you know anything about James Gunn, his music is always top tier. That's no exception here. And that rhymed. He's got a Spotify playlist. And he updates it each and every week as new episodes come out. Five or six tracks are added, baby. It's a nice time. I suggest you listen to it. I have been. I like code at my real job as a web developer. I like to listen. I like to explore. My favorite song out of the first four episodes has to be House of Pain used in episode four.  I was on the verge of man tears before it was done. I'm just like, why are you making me care about peacemaker James Gunn?  So this guy's the limit for this guy. The cast all-around is perfect. There's not a single character that bothers me. There's not a single character that doesn't have depth, layer, multi-tiered emotional elements behind the scenes. Not a single just stock individual amongst them.  He's giving us little character moments that organically play into the scenes.  It's insane how much he's transformed himself for this role. Quite incredible. I mean, I know this guy is like the T-1000, so to see that difference is pretty night and day. Freddie Strowma is Adrian Chase, who's like peacemaker's partner. Not necessarily a sidekick. That belongs to Eagley. Also a terrific character.  But as we get to even the fourth episode, you're starting to see a little bit underneath the surface. This guy is not just completely insane. Another newcomer to this series that wasn't in the Suicide Squad is Clemson Myrne. I dig this guy a lot. He's completely emotionless, which leads to some really fun dialogue exchanges around episode three and four. I'm not gonna get into the plot really at all. It is very interesting. I like the mystery behind it and how it's growing over these episodes. Amanda Waller has put together another ragtag crew under the radar, under the James Gunn, if you will, and they're using peacemaker, who they pulled out of prison to use as their own personal assassin. Over the course of just these four episodes, now I get it. I understand why James Gunn wanted to do this with John Cena. When it was first announced, I'm like, what? Peacemaker? He was fine. He was good in the movie, but how, why is he getting a show? But John Cena is so freaking good in this. He nails all the jokes, even if they're not that funny or a little too immature even for my liking. He's all in. He totally executes them. Action-wise, this movie's got a lot of it. It's all really well done. I didn't have any moments like I did with Hawkeye where I thought, man, this is really under-produced or this needs to end now. All of it looks really great. It all has a consistency to it. You can tell James Gunn's just there for the entire production. I'm watching three shows right now. This one, The Book of Boba Fett, which... I mean... I mean, I have it on the docket as well to talk about this week since we're, you know, we're four episodes in as well, but it's not gonna be as glowing as this one. If you want to hear my thoughts so far on that, let me know in the comments. And then the third show is The Great, which is pretty random. I know it's on Hulu. I think they just finished season two not that long ago. I honestly don't know. My wife was watching it. I started listening and thought it was pretty clever and funny, so I got into it. It's great. So to recap, Peacemaker so far, wonderful music, top-notch, top-notch stuff, action. He's doing it. He's hitting it out of the park. Drama, comedy, relationships, they're all there. They're all working. This is a great series so far. I hope it continues the momentum. There's even little bits of slither in there. James Gunn's recognizing that horror aspect of his career. He's bringing it in. This is such a... It's just a perfect marriage of everything I love about James Gunn's stuff. Let me know your thoughts on Peacemaker. Am I overselling this thing, over hyping it, or am I right on here? Maybe DCEU can send me a check in the mail, because clearly I'm a shill, even though I've been very harsh on the DCEU in general and think it's kind of a trainwreck. The last couple of films have really shown that they're able to steer this ship. Let these writers, directors, and actors just make good movies. Stand alone, and we can we can fit them together later. I don't have to do it now. Thanks again for watching the video. Like if you haven't, subscribe if you haven't, and I hope to see you around. Well, you know what, Sheila? I thought the Betty White tribute was very tastefully done, and if you don't like it, you'll get the hell out. Yeah, you could... Oh my gosh, you're still here. Hey, if you haven't, maybe think about joining me on Patreon at patreon.com slash adamdosmovies, and I can I can hire better interns! Who's a dollar tier? Just think about it.


First time on the show, Kip Winger. Yeah, wow, seven. Welcome. How are you guys doing? Thanks for having me. Great, great new album. Seven going to be released May the 5th on Frontiers Music SRL. Glad to have you, my friend. Thank you, man. Cool, well, I'm going to say it. And that's it. Thank you. Goodbye. That's the interview. OK, cool. I mean, I'm excited about this new record. This is the first record in nine years. I guess the obvious question is, and I'm aware of what you've done, get Jack and things like that in between. But the obvious question is, why nine years? Why not four years? Five years? This time got away from us, man. I'm just getting to it. Well, Reb was working heavily in Whitesnake all that time. And as you know, I've got a lot of other projects going, classical music and get Jack. And quite a few solo shows. A lot of, actually, I wrote a lot of solo music that has yet to be released. But super busy, and time just got away from us. We actually started this album in 2019, but then COVID hit and kind of wiped everybody out. So it might have been out a little earlier, but basically because we were both too busy to get it together. Right, right. Well, I'm loving the record. As I've done, you had about a week. I only had about a week. So just been kind of trying to digest it in as quickly as possible. It's, I mean, comparing it to the last one, this seems a little more progressive. I liken this a little bit more to the four album. Cool, I appreciate that. Not many people notice the four, a winger four. That's one of my favorites. That's my, that is my favorite winger album. Oh, there you go. Thank you very much. I mean, I always play that to people. I play that album when people say, oh, winger, that, they're like a hand metal. They're like poison, right? I'm like, hang on, hang on a minute. You got it all wrong. I go try this and put on winger four.  You're kidding me, right? Wow. And it starts this whole thing, I go, check out Paul and then all these other records, and they're like, they're fans. I appreciate that very much, man. We're very misunderstood band. And in the early 90s, stuff didn't help us at all. When all that kind of stuff went down with grunge and all that's beavis and blood head and all that stuff, it really was kind of a nail in the coffin for a lot of people to just keep an open mind about who we actually are, you know? Part of it's our fault because we, I was not savvy about marketing and stuff like that. So I was, when Reb and I were writing the first album, we're like watching MTV and there's Bon Jovi and White Snake and Poison and Def Leppard and so it's, what are we gonna wear? Well, let's just do that kind of thing. We didn't have a, we were so focused on the music and if the solo is cool and if the riff is cool, that we didn't, we kind of just, well, like, we didn't like go, well, wait a minute, let's not dress up that much. Cause we were, you know, it's funny, I talked to Steve Vai about this and he's like, cause Steve's a very literate classical composer, but he's also like, hey man, I'm a ham. I like to dress up weird and do all kinds of weird stuff. And so we were a bit of Hamish, you know? And that didn't help us too much, but people like yourself get it. So you can't imagine how much I appreciate that cause Winger 4 was a very important record for me personally. It was like, I was right in the midst of this huge composition explosion in my mind and I applied pretty much all of it on that album. Well, I thought this was a brilliant comeback. Hear the songs that I really dig because I find that they're more, when you take them apart, there's a lot more complexity in the vocal lines or just in the music itself. Of course, proud to Sprada, which was your first single, tears of blood, broken glass.  Like I find that especially it all comes back. You know, there's a little more of the complex vocal lines and I'm even sure what the time signature is on that song. I mean, if you could tell me what the time signature is, I like it. It's a four four, but I do whole thing. Tricky stuff, yeah, yeah. I mean, I do a lot of kind of things that might make it trick your mind, you know. Not to trick your mind intentionally, but just to, you know, do the unexpected. Yeah, yeah, well, it works, it works, you know. So what did you do different on this album? Then the last album, which was a while ago. You know what? It's funny from the very first album, Reb and I sat down with a drum machine and we write a riff and then we write a melody and we carve out the arrangement.  And I've been very loyal to the formula. If you kind of call it a formula, we start with that. And so every single record we go, okay. I like, Reb comes in, I'm like, show me a riff. What do you got? You know? And we'll just, you know, I don't try to finish a song right on the spot necessarily, but we'll, all right, cool, let's jam on that. Let's jam on this, let's jam on that. Okay, we got five riffs. Let's see what, maybe which one's the coolest? The cream rises to the top. Having said that on this album, this is the only album that every member of Winger played on every single song. So it's like the definitive, it's actually the definitive Winger album because Paul Taylor played on every song. And actually Paul has a solo on this album for the first time in our history. He played the solo on Broken Glass. And, you know, John usually has one song on there. He, John and I wrote One Light to Burn. Oh no, excuse me, one, what's it called? Yeah, One Light to Burn. And so to answer your question directly, I mean, the main difference is that it's all original guys are playing on every song. So it's really the ingredients of our whole history on every track on the album. And I tried to grab the inspiration from the first album and then combine it with the depth of the stuff that followed, you know, especially after Paul. Right, right. And you've gone back to, I don't know how many people sort of notice these things. I tend to. You've gone back to the classic Winger logo in the front cover. I just thought of that then because when you said it was a definitive Winger album, was that the reason? Yeah, totally.  And it is a bit of all comes back around. It was all this kind of, it's not really like concept album or anything like that. But I was thinking, okay, this is Rod's turn 70, like three days ago. Like I'm not, if we do eight more years, like will this be our last album?   Yeah, yeah. I mean, and then again, listening to this record, and trying to internalize all of the music here, because there's a lot to kind of digest in the short time I've had the record, as I said, but there's something here for absolutely every Winger fan.  But there's really all elements of Winger encompassing this. So when you said right then that this was the definitive Winger album, I tend to agree. Oh, thank you, thank you. One of those records that the more times you listen to it, I think the more rewarding it's gonna be as well. You're gonna, that's what I found with four. That's rewarding for me to hear you say that, man, because I really slaved over it, honestly. I just was really wanted every aspect of it to be right. And, you know, I worked extra hard on the singing and it's not a phoned in album. I mean, I insisted on everybody coming in and working with me on it. And you know, there's no like, let me email you my tracks or anything like that. We all, you know, everybody's in the room at some one time or another. And who will, because I feel like it's such a visceral thing.  Everybody that knows this is gonna be expecting a certain sound because that's the sound of the band, you know. I hate the word brand, you know, but if you wanna use the word brand, but I don't like that word when it comes to art because it's, I'm first and foremost an artist. I mean, you know all this other stuff that I do. So I can't, I'm not really big on repeating myself, but having said that, it's very narrow hole that you can go through. We have to sound like the band, but you have to sound like you're pushing forward and you gotta give it something new, but it's gotta sound a little bit like the old stuff. And because people want, you know, you'll see some comments in the threads of videos and stuff, it was like, man, I really want the old stuff. The first two albums and other people will say something different. So you're kind of trying, I'm not writing for the people, but I'm trying to say with this band, who are we, what have we done? Where have we been and where are we going? You know, that's kind of how the equation that I try to put in there. So I appreciate you saying that. Yeah. You know what always perplexed me was the whole Beavis and Butthead that you spoke about just quickly at the beginning. I'll never understand it because when you guys first came out, all my musician friends were always sort of like, they always found you guys interesting and you're always sort of like, you're a musician's musicians kind of bad back then. If I could put that in the right context. Yeah. And Steve Grimit, who's been on the show many times and sadly passed away, Beavis and Butthead actually helped him, right? The ridicule actually propelled them into the masses in a sense, right? Whereas Beavis and Butthead sort of like, I'm not sure why it kind of reversed the situation for you or maybe it just was the timing that it seemed like it did that. Can you speak to that? Well, for example, I mean, we'll take white zombie.  And then white zombie went triple platinum. I mean, just like overnight. You know, it was the biggest show in MTV history. So a lot of people benefited from Beavis and Butthead, but we were like on the shirt of the geeky guy who represented that. It sucked. So then. That was me, by the way. That was me too. I was like, so I could relate to that guy, you know what I mean? I was the guy with the wing, I was the guy with the winger shirt and the winger L piece. So I was like, I didn't get it. I didn't get it. That's what I'm trying to get at. Go ahead. It's is strange and there's a lot of other bands that might have been better suited for that role. I don't actually know. I did speak to Mike Judge at through email at one point and he was just kind of like it just happened to stick. But I would, there's two parts to this question. One is how did that happen? And what, you know, kind of what, how did it affect us? I think it, you know, it hurt a lot of the bands like us. And there's, you know, you have to also add in the aspect of Metallica throwing darts at my poster. So that came first, you know, and I think they inadvertently chose us because of that.    We certainly didn't dress up as much as Poison or somebody like that, but I mean, look, it is what it is, you know, it kind of, what happened for me, it all went so wrong that I was, and I tell this story a lot, a lot of people who know my story know this. I mean, I moved out to New Mexico, I mean, we lost our record deal, our publishing, everything was gone and then my first wife passed away in a car wreck and I was like, totally like in oblivion. And that's when I started, decided to write, to start studying classical music for real, you know, because I'd always wanted to write orchestral music and never felt like it was within my reach.  And I had the time because I couldn't get arrested. I mean, there was no gigs to be had, you know, for years, so the only gig that I did during that time on my first solo record was Porter's bookstore at 4 p.m. in the afternoon playing to 10 people. After a year before that, playing to, you know, headlining 75, 8,000, 10,000 people. How does the record company drop a band? Like, I hear a lot of different stories, sometimes it's just by management, other times it's a phone call.  They just say, you know, let's cut our losses on this, you know. And how was the original record deal that you signed? Was it, did you have an advantage? Was there leverage? Or it was just basically like all the other record deals we hear about in the 80s where there was no publishing. No, we basically got signed on a favor because Bow Hill was very, you know, had a lot of clouded Atlantic records. And Bow had helped me a lot trying to get me a record deal and stuff.  And then he was like, just listen to this. And he played him state of emergency. And, you know, this sounds pretty good.  And so, and we'll just prove ourselves, you know. And so we kind of took that approach. It was a terrible record deal, you know. But we sold a lot of records on the first gut time out. And the rest of the story will be in my autobiography. Hey, what's that coming out? I'm still, I got another 10 years to live before we figure that one out. It's exciting, it's exciting for me to hear that you're working on solar material. Because I love, you know, songs from the ocean floor and this conversation feels like a dream. Thank you for the song. I really like it. That's really nice of you, I appreciate that. I've got a whole vision for it. And quite a few songs done for it. But it's always, you know, my approach to a record, part of the reason it takes me a very long time to make records, also to answer the question a long time ago, your first question was that I'm like, I raise the bar so high on each record. I'm like, okay, what am I gonna like to do something that's as good or better, you know? I just really don't wanna put out anything that's mediocre, you know? I'm a really, really hard on myself in terms of what I would let myself publish, you know? And so I have to think about it for a long time, you know? I have to, and work with ideas and try to understand how this is gonna, the puzzle's gonna actually fit as a piece of art itself, and then also in my catalog of stuff, you know? And so my solo, the idea of the solo record that I've got is there's a lot of songs, but it's also, I wanna like inject a little more of, not classical stuff, but a lot of more orchestral combination.   Like, you know, live album with the orchestra, like I don't wanna pick any bands out of my head because I don't wanna diss anybody, but bands that have played with an orchestra, it always just sounds so, I just don't like it because you can't integrate those two things. It just sounds like that. Well, essentially the orchestra is just playing while the guitars are playing, they're not, it doesn't make it classical music. You got a great year, man. You got a great year. So the thing is, is there's one guy that can do that, and that's Steve Vai. Like if you listen to his story, Petra Paul, he writes for the orchestra in a way that the band is interwoven into the sound, and it's like, okay, that works, you know? It's a lot of work.  It's in, and so the music that I'm collecting for that all works with that. It's nothing that would go on a Winger album. Sometimes the stuff that I do solo bleeds into Winger because I'm the main guy.  It does. I mean, I would definitely, that was actually gonna be my next question because that's exactly what I was, you know, every Winger album post, you know, solo albums, I've heard elements of that. And one question, the song, Daniel, off this conversation feels like a dream. What does that song about? Well, people commented on that, and I've always wondered. That song is, you know, I was writing about a friend of mine who was a very well-known producer, and, you know, kind of, he was the archetype in my mind about it, but it kind of turned out that I realized that it was more autobiographical, you know. It was more about me than it was about him, where it was just kind of like, I went back into the hills of New Mexico, and when I lived in Santa Fe, it was the only time I've ever lived anywhere where I didn't miss anything, you know. And it was kind of, it turned out quite, like I said, kind of autobiographical about how you're chasing this thing, and finally, you just kind of check out altogether, you know. I'd like to know, in regards to your classical music that you were talking about, how does one make money in that world? I mean, we understand the rock music has changed, and it's not that easy to make money, you know, in hard rock, heavy metal, but in classical music, just quickly. I mean, how does somebody even make money? Is it just you're selling your pieces? Well, you get commissions, there's a fee for getting a commission, and then when they perform your music, there's a, I'm with BMI, BMI ASCAP CSEC, that one of these institutions will collect for the performance fee, and then interestingly with symphonic orchestras, they pay you to rent your score, so there's a score rental fee, and I've been very lucky. I've gotten quite a few commissions, and it's really rare for a person like myself, if I thought going into it, it was gonna be, you know, listen, I thought it was out of my reach, I mean, I just did it for the love of it, but those are the ways that you do that, so if you take a big composer of today, who's a living composer, like my composition teacher, Michael Curick or Richard Danielpore, you know, they're pieces, especially Richard, he gets a lot of pieces played, so if you, even though it's not so much money, if it's a lot of performances, it starts to add up. A guy like John Adams, you know, he's got performances probably every day of the, every day of every season with multiple orchestras, so you know, it's not huge money, I would make a couple hundred grand a year, maybe more, I don't know, but it's not rock star money. I've been, I was lucky to make enough money to not have to worry so much about money, I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but to be very clear, money fucks up art, and I do not, I even feel that taking a commission is too cumbersome for me to even write music because it's got like, okay, they're paying me to write this piece, it's like, oh my God. You can send this check, the check over here, though. Okay, yeah. It's all right, just. Yeah, I'm starting, I'm getting used to that. I know, I know exactly what you're saying. I know what you're saying. You know what I'm saying? Like in my mind, money fucks up art, period. But sometimes it creates art as well, right? The arguments, the dynamics, the hunger, I need money, so I gotta do this sometimes. Absolutely, absolutely. I'm just saying if artists that become really successful and then like, well, I'm not gonna do it if you don't pay me a certain amount of money. Or even albums like rock bands, like why should we make an album? No one buys them. What's the point? And I disagree with that philosophically entirely because I feel like writing music, well, I mean, it is the very fiber of my being to compose music. But I feel like what it is, it's an emotional connection to the people that have been on your journey. That's what it's all about. It's like, it's not about anything else. It's all about the fact that basically we're all the same. And so I just happen to have this gift that I feel like if I don't use it, it's kind of a sin. And the point is not to make money. The point is to connect with whoever connects to the particular gift that I have. That's totally where I live in my philosophy. I mean, I 100% agree. That is something that I find so strange when bands say, well, what's the point? No one buys them. Well, how do you know a hundred years from now there won't be a million people listening to it?  And I worked it back one person at a time. And I learned that if you just connect to one person, that's enough, you know? Because it kind of energetically, it exponentially goes out into the universe, you know? I mean, I know this all sounds kind of esoteric, but these are things that I really believe. Well, D Purple, I think it was Ian Gillin, he said, I went to a reporter asked him, well, why do you still make albums? Nobody buys it. Well, that's what we do. We make music. We make albums and I don't care if one person buys it or a thousand people are 10,000. That's what our essence is. That's what we do. Exactly. Yeah, so hats off to you on that. Yeah, thanks. The last real musician.   And I always say that to people, man, of like, if you can do something else and just do it, because the only reason to do art is if you can't not do it, you know? It's one of those things where, I mean, it even affects my psyche and my mood. I'm not great to be around unless I've worked on something that's, you know, working out a section of, like I'm writing a violin concerto right now and I'm like really stuck on something. And if I work for a day and like make a breakthrough, I'll be in a great mood. You know, it's all very cathartic and that's just the journey of an artist.  And, you know, I'm no different than any of them.   I don't, I don't. I feel like I would have liked to remix the second album. That's the only thing. But actually when I listened to it, it's pretty good. There's some stuff that I would change, you know, and I have the masters I would like to go back and remix them just for people to hear without like the 80s snare samples and stuff, just the raw tracks of the band, you know. I think it'd be very interesting for people to hear that. But I really don't have any regrets.  I mean, what could have been, I do have some remorse about that, but that was not in my control. That wasn't a decision that I made. Yeah, you can never control these things.  And it could go both ways. Like you didn't know the first album was gonna take off just as much as you didn't know, later on, things wouldn't work out, right? Totally. Thank you, Kip, for being on the show. Love to do this again in the near future. And everybody out there, May the 5th, 7, Winger's new album on Frontier's music. Thank you guys, appreciate it very much. Thank you very much, Kip. You take care.


Hello everyone, welcome to another video.  So the first video I think was a live stream, it's really hard to tell though whether this person was actually torturing the cats or whether they were like getting cat torture videos from online that already exists and uploading them just to troll people. So it's really hard to tell the account has been removed but what they were doing was they were you know putting up polls I should have do a live stream torturing this cat or um it also was threatening people saying oh we've got another live stream uh coming in 30 minutes with another cat and also saying like whoever reports me I've got 20 20 to 30 other accounts or whatever and then they were saying like look um you're only going to make this worse. So basically threatening people if they report the account that he's going to torture more cats him or her it's hard to tell if it's a girl or boy. But basically the videos are horrifying uh one of the videos he has a cat there he or she has a cat there stomping on the cat's neck till the cat you know basically dies um stabbing the cat and another video was a cat in like a vice and he was like burning the cat alive it was horrible to watch no one wants to watch any of that but what I thought was especially interesting were the comments section so I went through and screen capped a couple of comments now look don't get me wrong here I don't want to see anyone torture a cat if I seen someone torturing a cat it would be on like Donkey Kong don't you worry I'm on your side when it comes to the cat torture Joey doesn't like it at all I'm an animal rights activist I don't want to see that at all. But what interests me the most is that the people in the comments section were having normal human responses to seeing cats be tortured.


Wow, what's up everybody once again is Brandon man, Sean and we got to talk about a unique strategy that a lot of producers probably have not thought of when it comes to blowing up and having their complete business situation set up. But first I got to thank this video 100% to Henny, the business if you don't know who he is, he's a super producer, this is a strategy that he used to blow up or just a way of doing business that he used to blow up. Another day had a short conversation as always the guys just dropping gems left and right. So listen up people. So I know a lot of producers are out there just roughing it.  Great. I'm happy for you. And I know there's some other producers out there who have managers that works well to the managers might be getting 10% of managers might have multiple producers, however your situation is set up. But here's a third option that he, the business did and that is having a partner and I want to start off by saying everything that I say isn't necessarily his exact business set up. So don't really quote me on anything like that to say this is exactly what he did. However, I'll talk about the concept of the things he did. So when you talk about a manager versus a partner, because I know a lot of you guys are going to wonder, what's the difference? What one of the biggest things that you probably want to go ahead and think about is there's a bigger percentage that they're likely taking from the money made from your beats.  We always hear that number though and out there. Maybe it's more, but a partner is really somebody who's in it with you. That means yes, you might be a producer, but this partner is just a part of the company just as much as you are. And this might sound wild to a lot of you guys. And Henny said himself that a lot of people will be telling him that. But obviously it worked out for him in his situation. He blew up made these big, big hits with Chris Brown and GZ and all these other types of folks. And he doesn't seem to be too bitter about it either.  Just like a lot of artists say, they want to just make art all day. Well, he was going heavy, heavy, just making beats. And he had his homeboy, somebody who could get out there and figure out where do we get these beats placed or who can we get these beats in the hands of. And a lot of times that just takes hanging out being in the right place at the right time is not necessarily about grinding and being a great salesman. It's just about building relationships and staying at the club till five in the morning, depending on what city you're in. It might only be like one or two AM, but you got to be out in those environments. And if that's not your personality, it can be very beneficial for you to have somebody involved just as much as you are. So they can push and feel incentivized to sell for you. So now you have somebody who's full blown. Let's get this stuff placed. Let's get it sold and someone who's full blown. Hey, man, let's just create, create, create, create. Doesn't mean that you as a producer should never try to make the relationships or anything yourself, but it just means that you have someone working for you around the clock to get that done. Now, one of the cons of this situation is he said after they ended their partnership formally, when he did want to continue to do certain types of things, he had to learn, you know, how to build certain relationships himself. Just be out there. That wasn't his thing because he'd like to stay inside. So he had to work on that. However, he's put that work in if you come out and you meet him anywhere random, the dude has a good personality. He doesn't really seem like he's some introverted person. So that's something you can learn. Just understand that this might be a great route for you, especially if you're a producer who's not in a certain type of city. Maybe you might have a cousin or a homeboy that's in a good city that's better for moving beats and then you just keep working, working, working in whatever city or town that you're in. Maybe you're somewhere in Kansas and you make a lot of track beats and you got a homeboy in Atlanta. Just keep this strategy in mind. I'm not saying that everybody has to do it. It might not work out for everyone because you guys all have different incentives and way of working things. But it's something to be considered. It has worked in the past. And he said he knows other people in the industry that have found a lot of success in doing a similar thing. But for the last time, each situation is its own. So make sure you do it with somebody that has the skill set and also has your trust because a partner is a far bigger commitment, a manager in my mind, at least and last but not least. Once again, check out here in the business content on all platforms, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter. Like he really, really has some of the dopest content, especially for producers in the game to me, man. Like for real, for real, I'm a huge fan. And as I've been saying again and again lately for the rest of 2018, I will be answering people's questions every Sunday on Instagram. So follow that at brand man, Sean, that's me. Other than that, I would love to know what you guys think about this type of business structure, this plan for blowing up. Because think about it.  And as always, if you like this video, go ahead and like button. If you like it, you might as well share it. And if you're not subscribed, you know what to do. Hit that subscribe.