What's up? What's up? What's up? I'm Brand Man Sean and I'm Corey and this is episode number 41 of No Labels Necessary Podcasts. You can catch a stream in every Tuesday, every Thursday on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. Of course, chopping it up about music, money and the content economy as a whole. Now, the first thing we got to talk about today is five reasons no one is listening to your music, five specific reasons and that are relevant to many of y'all. Let's get into number one, which is not understanding data. Reason number one, we see it all the time. Not understanding data and the biggest reason that this goes into people not listening to people's music is two tiered. Number one, if you're not paying attention to feedback, maybe they just don't like this song. All right. Understanding how to interpret data. But then the next level, let's just pretend people are listening to it. Not literally not listening, but you're not getting anywhere near as many listeners as you should. A lot of times we see artists that will, they'll see some activity, but they don't know what to do with that activity. That's basically what it calls out to. I always say it's great to have all the information in the world, but if you want to interpret it, what you're going to really do with it? Yeah. Or even, well, I guess to that point too, even knowing how to read it to know what it's telling you exactly, because we've had situations where clients will be complaining about other marketers they work with, but he didn't do this, he didn't do this, this didn't work.  Maybe you didn't know what to look for and to see if it worked or not, but you're wrong in the situation. Exactly. I think their leg boils out to like, oh, I don't understand the things that these people are looking to understand. So I'm just going to assume because most artists, when they think of data, they think of streams and income. Those are probably the two biggest KPIs, artists care about the most, right? But as, you know, most marketers and back-end people know there's probably about like 20 different analytics you have to care about in between those things actually being like matter. Right. To get you to that point. Exactly. What are you watching for? Exactly. So it's like, you can only seek to understand the end data point without understanding all of the other data points. Like you said, make that even be possible because there are like so many things you got to care about before that really is the thing that you care about, right? Like optimizing things to stream and payoffs is probably going to be the very last thing you optimized for because four or five different steps before that even is a possibility.  When the data a lot of times doesn't even become useful until they have some momentum, right? Because there's nothing to look at. So you don't even know what you should be studying. And it's like, you got something to look at, but you still don't know what you should be looking at. You know what I'm saying? And then on top of that, I think we're slowly moving out of the phase of like artists kind of being anti-data. I think there's enough artists coming out and talking about like how much they look at it to where, you know, the artists that are paying attention and staying educated, they get it. I need to be studying this, but there was a weird point in time, bro. Artists were very anti-data, you know what I'm saying? It's like, I don't care about what the numbers say. I don't care about what XYZ says. I'm just going to do what I feel like is best. And it's like, you see numbers. So I can understand why you say that. But what I hear when I hear people already say that is like, hey, I'm going to go against user feedback. Yes. You know what I'm saying? With data, the data is just people telling you things and the only way to know how to listen is not listening. You know what I'm saying? That's the only way these people know how to communicate to you if they like something or not. And so this is you literally going to like, hey, this 10,000 people sat down and like it, I'm not going to do the work to understand why. I'm not going to look at, you know, why West American, I'm just going to like, hey, you're wrong. And I don't care about the data. It's like, well, this 10,000 people could represent a bigger faction of people who are going to feel the exact same way. And you're just wasting your time versus like you said, hey, this data could have told us this isn't even worth moving in the direction. And then maybe we save you $200,000, right? Right. And so long time is a great thing that you got to see that work opposite. Hey, this data telling us we should move in this direction. And then we spend your 5k in a way that gets you the results of a 20k marketing campaign or something like that. Right. So I think that's what people need to understand about reading data. It is tedious in the beginning, you know, especially like if you don't have enough moments to really understand how the different KPIs kind of like tie into each other. But most of these are things that you're going to be looking at for the rest of your career. So you have your whole career to like truly understand it, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And get a grasp on it. But there isn't, there can never be any real harm into, you know, learning how to interpret it. Well, you know, I don't think there's enough people who actually talk about what that looks like. Yeah. Right. And go behind the dashboard, explain that, you know, we have that as well ourselves and brandmannetwork.com. Y'all could check that out. We have some courses and videos that explain how to look at the dashboard, how we think about it and reading data. So that's one thing I think there's just not enough conversation about it. Because like you said, a lot of artists aren't even at a point where they have enough going on that it's worth talking about. It's not enough data to make the decision. And then once I get to that point, well, I don't understand it and it's too late. So how do I make the decision fast enough? But just kind of breaking it down from a practical standpoint on how you translate that into meaning something in the real world. All right, let's use a YouTube video. All right. This YouTube video, people are clicking on, but it's hard to just tell because it's by itself. So let's add five videos to make it even on better understanding. Oh snap. I see this video, people are clicking on higher than most of my music, my other videos on YouTube. Great. But if I look at the watch time, people are watching it less. So now I'm like, okay, that means my thumbnail was real on point. Maybe my title, whatever the topic that they saw before they got into the video was great. I need to figure out how to do more of that. But whenever they got into the video, that had an issue. So what does that mean? I need to figure out how to get my content better, whether that's a song, whether that's just a blog video that you did, whatever that might have been, because they did show interest, but for some reason that dropped off. Right? So I'm telling you over and over again, what they didn't like, then you break it down even further than that. It's like, oh, well, in the first 30 seconds, I lost 80% of the audience. So that means, oh, the hook, right? The stuff I did in the beginning, they didn't ride with. And you can watch the stream on platforms like YouTube at least, all right, of how many people dropped off over time. You're never going to get that number as high as you want to. It's always going to feel offensive looking at it. You were like, hey, bro, only 20% made it to the end. But then when you realize that's just natural, it doesn't hurt as much.  Even all your best videos that did crazy, are you like, hey, bro, only 20% made it to the end? Or it hurt when you realize the drop off point is when you come in. Oh, yeah. You're like, bro, you lost answers when it got to me. That's crazy. Right. Right. But that's something to gauge, right? And obviously you translate that to Spotify, got a lot of streams on this maybe because it was your first song on the track because you got more songs on the first song on your track. So when you realize more people are going to listen to the first song just naturally because they go to the first song on a project to start Gage in the second one. No one just like, well, let me close my eyes and pick one of these five and see how it goes. That's very rare unless you're like just in a mood, right? So they're going to start there. That means, oh, I need to start with my best foot forward period, whatever that looks like.  And then the top song is going to be the third song. Whatever way you might be going about it is like, nah, get rid of that. I need to come very, very strong from the jump. So then they'll like that so much that they want to listen to the other ones, right?  They got skips in terms of data on Spotify. Look at your skips, right? All that stuff is informative, but you just have to be open to it. So we can get deeper into data, but at least be more open to data. If you look at it often, you'll start to be able to interpret it a lot better just from the standpoint, oh, dang, this usually does this and this is doing something different, which is going to create some natural questions. Now, the second thing is pushing a song and feeding it content once a moment is created. Most artists, once a moment is created, they don't triple down, right? I've seen this again and again, and we're going to talk about why later on in the podcast, some things that some artists would be are dealing with that can be that are understandable and hurdles that you have to jump over mentally. But a lot of them just straight up. Here's the moment and not understand that don't understand that the moment means you got to 10 X effort, not fall off. That's another thing you got anything you want to add to that one before we go to the third one? Yeah, I mean, really, I think I think sometimes I think artists look at the moment as like the I made it moment. I have a bar video. This is what I've been posting five times a day just to get this moment is finally here and I can chill. I was like, no, this moment is actually the start. Now there's mass attention coming to you. People are paying a lot more attention. We're just talking about data. Everything is probably shooting up. This is the point where it's like you really should be treating the moment you get your moment as if you just started out because you in the way you did, right? Because your first your first iteration of your work was you speaking to probably nobody or not that many people. And now you're speaking to a large group of people. There's a different mentality comes with that right there. Like you said, there's a different way you got to kind of move and and in producing, you know, the simple way to say it really is to do more. You know what I'm saying? Like we have like when it hits however much it took you to do to get that moment. Once you get the moment, do at least like one point by other two times more. Even got to be a lot more like a little bit more and that is to go the long way. You know what I'm saying? One point by other two, just to build the habit, which you got to go the way. You go crazy. Yeah. Like 10 is 10 answers to our deals. Yeah. Think about it like this. There's a video game. And it's one of those video games where you can move around the world, right? The RPG RPG style, right? And there's this secret race that you're looking for. All right. Got to car. You already know what you're going to do. You got the whip that you want. Maybe you collected it, you know, gathered that, but you need to find a location of this race. And there's all this stuff that you got to go through in the game to find the location of the race. You might have to battle somebody. You might have to just, you know, wander somewhere and find the corner of the world. Right. And some kind of side quest. What you find with a race is, that's when you had that moment. The moment is, I found the race, but now you got to run the race. So a lot of times people think, yeah, they are in the race already. You're not in the race until the moment comes. And what you got to understand is the career is built from individual races being ran over and over again. So on number one, oh, that's a whole race for this. So on number two, that's a whole race for that. Right. I might have my personality pop off and like some Cardi B style, right? And her personality went with that's a whole race. How do we maximize this brand and then make people really know who she is personality wise, give her some sponsor deals, right? Like all of these are races. And you have to pay attention when the moment comes and know that when that moment comes, I have to move heavy in this window because this is when the world is opening up for me. Like the world don't always open up. Like there's something I can't think of. It's like, I think like movies, when this stuff happens, it'll be like a moving board or something like that. And then every once in a while, like everything opens up for you. And then you got to hop in and then it closes again. And otherwise you have to wait till the next time it comes to hop in. But once you hear you in, but you probably got to do the same thing again. You got to wait for that next level to open up, hop in, take advantage of that moment. And now I'm three rooms in, you're still in room number one, because you missed it. You're still waiting for the opportunity to come back around just to get back into the second room. Like that's the way this thing really works. Of course, there's moments where you can go from room number three to room number five because or room number three to room number 10, if the moment is really, really hot. But that's the even rare windows where you got five doors aligned. Right.  Everything's moving at a slightly different pace. So I could go one at a time, but it's that rare moment where all of them are aligned at once. Burst through that.  But that's really what's happening in this weird, my universe, the old principles type of thing happened. The world's opening up for you at this moment. You have to go in. Yeah, see that makes me think of a, that's not that beautiful. Let's issue the spinning wheel thing. Put it in perspective of me, but thinking of that analogy, I think was a lot of issues come sometimes like if the opening is the moment, right? And the spinning wheel is, let's just say all the moments that you either miss it and hit, you see the opening there. I think a lot of artists will look at it and go like, oh, it's spinning around. It's going to come back around eventually. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know, like, yeah, I missed it. But, you know, I've already seen it and seen what it feels like. And I kind of have an understanding of what I did to give it. It's going to come back to me. And I tell most artists, probably not, probably. And sometimes if it does, like we've had clients before that have had multiple viral moments, right? And some of our moments are more massive than others. Right? And so you might be like, yeah, maybe you got a moment that you missed out on that could have 20Xed you. You didn't take advantage of it. No more moments like that. Maybe you've probably never come. That's the reality for most artists. Like, never get that type of window before a small percentage moments might roll back around. And but that next moment might only be a two X multiply, right? Or it might be there 1.5. And so it's like, you got it, but it's not as big as one that you didn't take advantage of. And I think a lot of us, like the artist ego thinking like, oh, I'm fine.   But we talk a lot of times about how, yes, like music is strategic in a sense. And there are things that, you know, you can replicate it and systematize for yourself. But that's maybe 80% of the game. And like the reality is that other 20% is like, look, you know what I'm saying? And you, it's very hard to recreate a lucky moment. Yes. Because sometimes the lucky moment comes in things that like even the people working, you don't even understand, you know? But this is where it is, especially at ground zero, right? Or level one, level two. It gets easier when you get more attention, right? You're on another level. So as you grow and become more established, more lucky moments will happen. The, the doors will be wider, right? So you don't have to be as exact. Yeah. Kind of speaking of the spinning thing, you know, there's like this game at the arcade where you can like push a quarter now and it'll roll down the hill. And there's that spinning wheel. You got to slide in there and it's hard. But that window gets a lot bigger for a larger artist. Because there's more opportunities coming their way. That's what it's like when you have more humans involved. So missing that moment, like what you said to Corey, where people think y'all can make it happen again. Like I might have the talent, like future, like, okay. He knows he could probably make another hit, but that's at future's level. Making a hit in your own room where you don't have nobody to give it to. That looks different. It's like, yeah, this song maybe technically is a hit, but it didn't hit the world. So it ain't going through the hit machine. It's not going through the hit machine, exactly. So the way I look at it and why things are more complex, but simple at the same time is so you have these wheels spinning, you hop in the room or you could have a lucky moment where multiple of them are aligned and you hit those. But the idea and mentality of, hey, I could do this thing again. Because I got the talent is what you is something that doesn't acknowledge that. All right, that door comes, and you know the doors will come back around. But when that door came the first time, you know what that should look like? That should look like creating viral covers on YouTube.  It's a different thing. You know what I mean? So it's not going to be the exact same way to go through door number one every single time, door number two, number three. So it's like, yeah, you might still have the juice as in the talent there, right, the raw materials there, but the way that you take advantage of that same level looks completely different. Right? Now we talk about TikTok, neck back in the 90s, it was get signed just to get into door number one, different things. You know what I'm saying? So it might require a skill set that you aren't as strong at on by the time that thing comes back around. Or if you're basing it on your song specifically, that song might not hit as hard culturally, right? Or you could have to reverse if you're lucky, right? The song could be better for the culture at that time later on. But just know that there's a reason why people take advantage of moments and have this opportunistic perspective. Because if you look at the stars, superstars especially, you don't see Kevin Hart out there like you used to, Kevin Hart was going hard for a while. You don't see Cardi B going super hard and out there like you used to hold somebody else that I can name. You don't see Drake out there like he used to be out there, right? But when they were fresh outside and taking momentum, they were everywhere all the time. Why? Because if that window closed, Drake wouldn't be Drake like this. Cardi B wouldn't be Cardi B on the level. You don't even see Meg.  You don't see Doja Cat on that level. Doja Cat was an artist for years popping. She had her little, you know, her internet level of fame and niche that she was doing well in. But then the bitch on the count moment happened. We crazy kept going crazy. It is usually going to be going crazy for about three years when we talk about them on that level. And then you can start pulling back because you have a new foundation to pull back from. But if you stop too early, it's going to be harder because you can't just create momentum. Like you can you can do everything you can to encourage momentum. And but there's different levels of momentum. You got the controlled momentum where all right, I'm creating YouTube videos every day or I'm creating music every day and I optimize my whole system around my life. That I have more momentum. I create videos faster. I create music faster. So it's getting churned out faster. And in that pressure just slowly but surely gives me more and more attention. That's one level of momentum that you have control over. But that momentum where the universe opens up and gives you that extra, that's the part that you don't. All you can do is hope that I build my own personal momentum. I know how to execute fast. I got skill set. And then when that merges, then we go back to the doors, right? Those two things come together. That's when I can go crazy. So yeah, man, not taking advantage of moments is huge. And again, we're gonna touch on this in a different way. Later on, I'm in this pod and some of the mentality behind it. But like the data in the moments actually go hand in hand. Yeah. Because of the reasons they happen oftentimes are artists one don't know that the moment is as big as it is. And it's hard. Like if you have not been there, you don't know how big the moment is. I always say this all the time just from it came from pain. That was an insight that came from pain. Artists would be happy with their two million streams.  Because we had done that again and again with other type of artists, right? It was just like, yo, you don't understand what you're not taking advantage of. And then they never even hit close to that again. But it's like, man, if you hit that 50, then it'll be it have been easier to flip them to the rest of your music. All right, and build a name. So one of it is one of them. The things is they don't understand. Like they hadn't been there before, which is kind of hard. Like it's hard to completely fault, right? That's why you kind of just have to work as hard as you can. And I just take whatever comes, right? But the other side is like so when they hadn't been there, so they don't understand the context of how big the moment is. And other is they literally just don't understand that the moment's happening at all. Because some people don't know it. This is actually most art situations. A lot of artists get on. I don't want to just say lucky, but they have these viral moments, right? Where it's obvious that, oh, this is where I should be doing some level of focus. This thing is working. Unless you have enough data, which is where somebody like contract agency RT, I maybe your manager, if they're more experienced, label heads, somebody who has some experience, it has a lot of data and insight. They're the ones who can see something on a very small level of traction and realize, oh, this is where we should go. It's hard to do that as an artist. I get it, right? Unless you pay at least a whole lot of attention to your own shit, all right? But that might have been in the free course, not the free course. In the course that we got with JR, I don't know if y'all know about that, if y'all are watching, but we did an interview with JR McKee last week. But he has a course where he really broke everything down in terms of how he broke money long from zero, right? We have that course. We'll put a link in the description to that course. And the moment that he recognized that this song is gonna go crazy, it was only, it only did 900 streams a day. Somebody else, it might have taken him to get to 100,000. So think about how far in advance he started taking the right actions versus somebody who might have completely missed it.  Because they just now started, oh, snap, I need to get my stuff together. He's like, oh, this thing is at like, collectively probably was like 2700 streams at the time. All right? He did like 600 and 900 and 1200. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't that many streams yet. But it's like, oh, this little bit, I could tell where this is going to go from a couple of different things. You know, if you really are interested in how to break it and get into the context of, of course, check out brandmannetwork.com slash something. It'll be in the IEL. I want to say shared information, but it's not going to be that one. We'll put a link and I'll make it big letters. So y'all could be clear which one as the course we did with J.R. Armour Key. But that actually makes me get to the last thing, or maybe it's the fourth thing, which is not having a strategy, but better said, not having a plan. So it's a little different. Exactly, exactly. The thing which goes back to that, that course, the 90 day blueprint, which we've used ourselves, J.R. obviously used to break money long and then many other artists, having a plan will then dictate the value of everything else. All right, a lot of people are like, oh, let me just read some ads and then try to make the ads perform the best they can. Let me just do an influencer campaign and then try to see what I can make shake around this. The value of having a plan makes you understand, well, is it worth doing an influencer campaign? If it works doing ads, is it worth doing content? It's always going to be worth doing content. Just, you know, but like, then how much am I gauging? Better said, is it worth doing this much for this song versus that song, right? So the best example or the clearest example I'll always go back to is our client that was like, hey, I want to do a tour preferably across three cities in eight months. All right, versus, hey, run some ads and get the streams up, right? Which I mean, technically, if you have enough understanding, you could turn it into some type of strategy too. But saying, hey, I want to do a tour in three specific cities means it doesn't matter if the ads are cheaper, if it's not targeting a place that's specific enough that I can then tour. And it doesn't matter even if I'm building a decent amount of fans in a certain market, which technically I could have a show in, it's not going to be a place that I can actually physically get to based on the way my life is set up, right? So everything starts to fall in line based on the plan slash strategy. And yeah, man, if you would just be out here winging it. Yeah, well, that's funny because it makes me think of this campaign I did.  And I was like, I'm happy about it.  He's all this cool, but like, bro, I got warrants. I can't leave the country.  Oh, guys, we should be building you here again. So like in the U.S., you know what I'm saying? Like, can you move around at all? You know what I'm saying? I don't want to know too much, but like, what? You're right. Realize to him, but it shouldn't matter because like the bigger plan, I can't even take advantage of because of my situation and like, you know, that's an extreme situation, but we do see moments like that. And I think we talked about in another episode too, but even the plan is really just meant to be like a God, you know, because there are no absolutes. There are, you know, there's no guarantees when it comes to any of this, but the plan helps you identify one, you know, am I moving or this direction I'm choosing to move in, is it the right direction? The plan will help you, you know, be clear on that. And then two, you know, going back to the data and you know, learn how to identify moments, like going through the plan over and over will make it easier for you to identify those things, right? Like I said, let's use that client's example, break into these specific cities. If I know I want to break into these three cities, I have this strategy to do it. And I run it for song one, two, and three, and then I get to song four and I see something different than what was happening one, two, and three. I now know that, hey, one, this plan makes sense, right? Like there's something here. And then two, like something that's clearly up with this song to where I should put a lot more emphasis into it. So like the plan would give you set parameters to be able to gauge these things subjectively, you know what I'm saying, or objectively. You know what I'm saying, like, okay, this is why, this isn't why.  If Google tells me that the quickest way to get from my house to Sean's house is this way, I'm following that path.  Go this way, right? And to me, I see that as like the random moments that come up while you're working on the plan, right? Hey, I know that the way to Sean's house is this way, right? The way to me doing what I want to do is me following this path. But if something comes up that rewrots my destination and possibly gets me there faster, I'm gonna do it and move on. It was like, that's your car, that you can get to Sean's house five minutes faster by taking this exit, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I want that five minutes. So to me, like that's all the plan is, is like just a set direction to stick to until you see something that tells you something different or you're getting enough feedback and then it's just like, hey, this plan isn't it. And I think a great recent case study that we have is Adrian's campaign, Adrian Melonio's campaign, you know, because Adrian's a client of ours that like two months ago started gonna viral on like Thailand and the Philippines and things like that, right? The charting weather, the viral 50 on Spotify and things like that. But this whole like Philippine, you know what I'm saying?  Now I remember the conversation when he told me, hey, I want to really focus on these certain Asian markets because of, you know, this is what I'm kind of seeing. This is what I'm kind of seeing people like about me and who I appeal to. And I just want to focus on this area. And it took three years for that plan to reward him with what he was looking for, but it worked. Imagine if there's someone in the plan, we was like, oh no, they're saying moving fast enough.  Like we're not gonna have a real strategy about we're just gonna go to whoever likes you. Who knows if you would have had the same impact, you know what I'm saying? Like if that would have hit, but it took him three years of working on the plan to get that return that you wanted. And so, you know, so that's how I look at it, man. It's like the plan is meant to just be like a God. You know, we're not ever saying like, you got the 100% stick to it, but it's like stick to it long enough to learn if you should stick to it. That's why I like, and by the way, the URL is gonna be brandmannetwork.com slash shared information home, shared information home. I'm gonna put that link in the description again because that's the longest hell. Sorry about that, you know. But the beauty of it and why we built out of the plan was with all those elements in mind, right? So we have our 90 day blueprint, but within that there are spaces and places to make those adjustments, so it still moves you in the right direction. Because a lot of times people have these opportunities. Like, oh shoot, there was a traffic accident that happened, but now here at Google said there's this other way to go on GPS, but they'll just go that other way and they won't be going towards the same direction, right? Like, obviously your GPS, that's what this is, right? Here's a different direction to the same goal. That's the beauty of GPS.  And I think that's part of not only not having a plan, but also not understanding the implications of each steps and understanding after years of not only get to the point where we realized the need for a plan, but then started to realize other people's views for a plan was a huge inspiration of why us and JR linked together to actually provide this for us. This is kind of something that's usually just behind the cuff, soft. Even the conversations we'd be having with motherfuckers at dinner, we'd be like, can we talk about this a lot? This one was a lot of, can we talk about this? This is a lot of, like, dang, I cannot believe we're putting this in here because we ain't never done that like this before. But, you know, so y'all grab that while it's still up. You know what I mean? Y'all look at Sean as a nice guy, because I was trying to talk to him. So I'm like, nah, man, we got to make a team very, very well, you know what I'm saying? No. But, hey, man, you know, he taxed the labels enough for it. So we'll give the sauce to these folks, but for you for a little bit, we'll see how long that go. So y'all move before jacquory wins over. Now, with that being said, the last thing actually I did, there was one more thing. We can speak on it shortly because I want to get to the next thing is not understanding your target audience. That's a big one, man. Right. That's a huge one. Right. Most of it's funny, man. It's a really interesting thing to realize with ours when like most of them don't, to see that they don't understand it because if you ask that, the artist has the same question about another artist. Like they could clearly define that. Yeah, but then you go into them and... You said this, right? About Adrian. Yeah. Adrian understood and look where it got him. Yeah, facts, yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, but I think, I don't know, Marilyn, I think it comes from ours not wanting to compare themselves to people because we know one of the best ways to figure out a target market is to look at other people who are doing what you're doing. But in order to do that, you have to admit that there are other people doing what you're doing. Which I feel like is a part that most artists don't want to do. Well, I actually literally just had a conversation with a... If it wasn't a music artist, he was a tattoo artist like last night and I was talking to him. And he was like, I don't even know what to describe my genre of art.  And he's like, I'm about to look there. That's fine, I'm about to look it up and see if it exists. And then he looked, he's like, I mean, that's already a hashtag for it. And I was like, bro, that's a good song. I was like, he's like, well, man, I'm like, there's another hashtag for it already. That means that there's a market for it. If there isn't that, that means you will have to create that market, bring interest to that market and then build it from ground zero, which is not what you want to be the first one to do. You maybe want to be the 10th person to do that. That's just the hardest thing to do in business investors. They don't like having to be the ones who educate and create the market. Right? Why?  Well, it takes a long time. And you don't know how big the market's going to become. And you don't know if people are just going to mess with it at all. So let's find out when the market's been educated. They care about the thing already. And now that I see, now I can cap. I could come in and just do stuff right. I don't have to be the pioneer getting the arrows in my back.  But it's not the first. It's the first to do it right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Well, that's the harsh reality of it. You know what I'm saying? Of everything. Think about the motherfuckers that made the first cell phone. You know what I'm saying? They're probably looking at Apple today like, damn, man. I wish we could have had like that. You know what I'm saying? Like back then. But hey, we needed you, the pioneers of Apple, could be Apple today. You know what I'm saying? This is the nature of the game. So I think that's the big one is like, artists have a weird thing about comparing themselves to other artists and doing their work to look. So what I've told clients before, I know things like that. That was a beautiful method that's worked for me so many times. But I always tell them to do is like, a mad, close your eyes and imagine that you are opening for a bigger artist. An artist bigger than you, right? Who do you see yourself opening for? That their fans wouldn't believe. So for example, if Kodak Black opened for Taylor Swift, they booing them up. Taylor Swift opened for Kodak Black. They definitely booing her. You know what I'm saying? So that boo was going to be stronger. Yeah, that boo. Taylor was getting super booing.  But it's like, that seems to get them to get it because in that moment, it's like, oh, I'm not comparing myself as artists artistically. I'm more so saying, like, hey, this person has a group of people that would like me. Right, which is the same shit, but whatever makes you get to the end. You're looking for fame. Yeah, yeah. That's all you are. So I think like, but that's usually the first starting point of understanding your target is are you either need to find other people with the audience you want and then use all the data they've built in the community, their ability to like start studying these people and learning how they tick and move and what they hang out and things like that, or, or, which most do, and it's not bad, but most do, you guess and then you target those people and then you learn from the feedback.  I'm going to add to those keywords. So these ads are doing $12 and 50 cent of cost per click. Guess I was wrong. You know what I'm saying? Like maybe I should be targeting myself too. This demographic. So, you know, there aren't necessarily super cons of each.  But yeah, man, I think to me like understanding the demographic goes back to artists does not want to take the time out to understand consumers, their consumers and how they behave, right? And so we know that the fans of different genres of people that move differently. They think differently. They jump on certain things a lot faster than others. Right? Like we talk about how like, for example, country music artists, fans are way more likely to buy like physical stuff because country artists typically aren't that big on the digital way. You know what I'm saying? They're not they're not usually the hosts like content, credit, heavy artists. You know what I'm saying? The country industry in general, like very traditional. So a lot of those traditional things that worked in music 20 years ago still work for country today versus rap fan base. A lot of this is archaic. You know what I'm saying?  Great, beautiful. Right? You go to a rap music fan, but hey, buy a CD. Oh, bro, CD. You know what I'm saying? Like, what's the Spotify? Right? What's the what's the what's the Twitch? Shit like that, right? So but knowing that that's how these group of people things, you know what I'm saying? Before hand, we'll produce different results. It would have made the country ours more money because they would know to go get some CDs pressed up. They would have saved the rappers some money because they would know not to go get some CDs pressed up in the first place. You know what I'm saying?  And it's such an easy like first step. Like very, very easy. It's probably the easiest first step of marketing in general. Once you figure that part out, everything else gets different. I don't always say different. Everything else gets very much so like trial and error, but like demographic man, you know, you can start by just looking at the people around you that like your music and then learning more about them as a person.  Hey, Sean, what else are you into? Okay, Sean, like football, Sean likes this, Sean does this on the weekend. Maybe I should start targeting and talking to people who do these things because Sean is such a big fan of my music. Hopefully I can find more motherfuckers like him out there. So it can really be as easy as that, right? I'm really big on whenever we get clients. If I can think of somebody in real life that I think would like their music, I literally would hit that person and just start like, I'll hit them, start talking to them about it. I'll go look at who they're following and what they keep up with and then bring that back to the marketing team.  This is what they look like from a profile. This is what we should be targeting. You know what I'm saying?  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's all. Facts, well, on the other tip, there's five things that artists do to self-stabotage themselves. Five more, five. We're going to stay on the floor. We're going to stay on the floor. We're probably going to go overboard. We're going to over-deliver. Every one of those part six topics. You know what I'm saying? We're going to over-deliver. Right. However, there are five things that artists do to self-stabotage themselves. And let's talk about them, all right? Now, the first thing which we already touched on is artists experiencing anxiety when they blow up. Such anxious creation. Right. That's the result. That's the underlying thing about it. The anxiety is like the answer, what they're dealing with. So we talked about not leaning in because of the data. You don't realize it's a moment, right? Or you don't even realize the data is saying that this should happen. But the other thing is literally, all right, I remember talking to an artist and was like, yo, man, I was blowing up. I was going super viral on TikTok. And man, it was just so many comments and things. I couldn't deal with it. Man, I just stopped going on TikTok for that period of time until everything died down. Hey, it's a different way of thinking. Bro, we've had clients delete their accounts, bro. Like, just wake up when they be like, ads will stop like, man, what an ad stop. I mean, their profile is going to be like, good, you had, nah, I deleted it. Like, what? Because we did our job. That's how good we are. Clients deleted their accounts because we were too successful at their job. Now, with that being said, you just mentioned somebody, I don't know. You talk about it like they had some success and they started deleting comments. It wasn't an artist. I'm all in the roof. We don't try not to put that out there. I can't put it down. I mean, bro, we have so many examples of this. It's not funny. Literally, like, bro, I could think of at least three examples of this from every year. Like the most, but every year it happens, right, something. We had a guy on our TikTok account. I don't want to say his name. Okay. You probably know what I'm talking about. He had the massive, he had a massive viral moment in TikTok in 2019. Crazy, probably one of the most viral songs of that year. And I remember when he joined the boot camp, we were talking.  Like, why is your TikTok so slow now?  And like, what happened? He was like, oh, no, I feel like you're gonna have a break from TikTok. I'm just now, the boot camp made me get back into it. And I was like, why? He's like, I just, he was like, it was so much. I'm getting millions of views a day. All these like views and I couldn't deal with it. So I'll delete it. I took a break from TikTok. I deleted my Discord. I had like 8,000 people in it. And me coming back to y'all now is me trying to get back to that. I'm like, trying to get back. You'll be lucky if we can get you. We can point you in the right direction of that path again, bro. You'll be lucky if we can get you there for a lot of views. It's real. So it's a real thing, man. I never knocked. Like, I do on one hand understand it. Because I remember when I first started making YouTube videos, I was the same way, bro. Like the comments and the others would stress me out. You know, like, it's difficult going from a position where nobody cares about you to all of a sudden a lot of people care about you. But it's a very like, it's not for the weak, you know what I'm saying? It's a very hard thing to like get through. But then once you get through it, you know what I'm saying? It's pretty easy. Yeah, they're playing now.  Really? Okay, yeah. I can't imagine overnight having Justin Bieber attention. Yeah, fast. I probably. I probably. Going through that phase all over again. Like, oh, dang, this is crazy. So like, we get it. And I think more important, because we don't want to just talk about the issues and not doing something right. Yeah. It's understanding how to work through it. And in the moment when something happens, you've watched this episode at this point, you understand the value of momentum and how hard it is to recreate and go through those doors. So when you have this window open up for you, just put your head down. You can ignore comments. Honestly, in moments that there's crazy momentum, I know people talk about like respond all the comments, listen to the fans, it's the momentum is happening for you. It's proven. Yeah. All right. It's there. And this is if this isn't the most ideal scenario, but if you are going through it and you're having that type of, you know, energy where it's like, I don't know if I could do this. It's hard for me. Then put your head down. You know, I'm supposed to be creating content, create the content, put it on there, and then keep pushing. You know what I mean? Create the content, put it on there, keep pushing. You know, maybe look at how the content performed overall to say, okay, do I need to lean into that a little bit or go through like a time it? Let me do a three-minute scroll through these comments and just so I can learn enough and then keep pushing. For your ads, if you have ads going on, look, that's beautiful because you don't have to get on the platform at all. I have to read the comments and see how to ask. People respond to all influencers because those are often times when you have these moments anyway, that's when you start to expand into multiple types of marketing instead of just pushing that one anyway. So a lot of them, especially when we're not talking about content, don't even require you to be heavily involved on all the platforms and see and consume everything. So the content being the hardest thing, just put your head down. Don't necessarily even read the comments. If you read the comments, make it short for time so you kind of stay disciplined and not get lost in the sauce. You might still end up taking some things on the chin, but from my understanding, it's not just about whether a comment is negative or not because that's the crazy part about it. It's, hey, I'm getting a lot of positive comments and it's still overwhelming. Yeah, the energy to respond back is a bit a lot. The energy to respond back, all that stuff. You can kind of let that fall by the wayside a little bit, but you've got to lean into the things that continue to create more attention. Yeah, and I think that's the big one because I talked to an artist who was pretty big on TikTok now and he was telling me that there was a point where he wanted to take a long break from TikTok and where he did was he shot enough content that he could just upload it to one of those auto-uploaders and then he just had it run on autopilot for like two weeks while he took a break. He was like, you know, if you were paying attention to the fact, actually, even to give the whole thing away, he had that happening and then he hired an intern to respond to comments and deal with them. So that was a two-week period where he was taking a break and his audience didn't even know, you know what I'm saying? He's in the background getting his mental together, figuring himself out, and the audience has no idea, right? Because things are still running as usual.   But I do get it, you know, like I said, I think, you know, we have a unique perspective of having gone through it ourselves to something for you while I definitely understand it, you know, because I was like, like I said, when I first started making videos, I didn't have to tell you, but there was a time when I didn't read the comments on YouTube, I didn't start reading the comments on the videos until probably like 2021. Like, I went to the whole first two, three years on the channel and never read the comment. First time I ever came up, a little sister text me when they were like, yo, they love you and all of the videos are loaded for real. So yeah, I'm reading the comments. You never read the comments?  She's like, you should go look at the comments and see what they're saying about you. I was like so nervous about it, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So I get that. And, you know, one thing that I've learned to do at least when it comes to the comment thing is like strategic comment, right? So if I give, let's say, a comment on the video and it's 10 flame emojis, not going through a response to all 10 flame emojis. I'm liking nine of them. I'm responding to one with a message that's really speaking to everybody. I'm panning that comment and letting everybody else that triggered me to see that. Right. So now it's not like how to ignore y'all. I just chose a better billboard to reciprocate my love back. Instead of me individually replying, then DMs might be different. DMs might let DMs stack up and then respond and then when I have time. Like I personally have a schedule where I usually respond to my DMs maybe like every two or three days. So let them stack up and then get back and more focused, pick a time out of the day where I got some time with them and then I respond back. Versus like feeling like I have to respond as soon as the DM comes in. Because I think that's the other side of it too is that you're so excited because this hasn't happened to you before that you feel like you have to handle all these things in the moment. Not realizing that, you know, there are some elements of it that yeah, you should be like that. Like we talked about like content and things that keep the operation going. But a lot of it, you don't have to be like that. You know what I'm saying? Some of you can just let it stack and use the momentum and the energy to build a process for yourself because this is new. You never had the chance to practice for this really. You know what I'm saying? There's no like, there's no viral DM simulator that you know what I'm saying? You can push people to go through the learning. So it's like, this is a real life learning moment. Like you are not going to be able to 100% get down anyway until it happens. You know, there are things you can do to practice. That's why I'm a big advocate for artists going live and doing live streams and things. I'm like, you can build that muscle of talking to strangers and maintaining your energy. And you know, the muscle that it takes to be entertaining to 10 people is the same muscle that takes to be entertaining to 10,000 people. You know what I'm saying? From a basic perspective, it's a little stronger, right? But it's the same muscle from the ground up. And so, yeah, I just feel like, if you were planning on being successful, which I'm assuming most of the people listening to this are, that means it's a problem you are not going to be able to avoid. You know what I'm saying? It's inevitable. You know what I'm saying? Like, this might as well start thinking about what you're going to do with it when it gets there then. But that would just be my advice for those people. It's just like, hey, man, you know, like you said, at least figure out a way to keep the business operation going while you work on helping yourself, even if that looks like outsourcing people or getting interns or shit, paying people. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes it's the beauty of paying people, bro. Like, I'm so stressed out. I don't want to think about this. All right, Sean, I'll pay you to think about this.  You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't want to do it. So, but the beauty of it happening in that moment is that you have so much attention that people would gladly help. You know what I'm saying?  You know what I'm saying? So, it's like, you can even leverage this. Like, you can thug it out long enough to use the attention to leverage building a team to help you with it. Like, you will be good. But like I said, from watching some of our clients who have done it, they don't allow themselves to get to that point.  Brother, just leave my account. All right. You know what I'm saying? Oh, this is overwhelming.  You know, we got to climb from like 2020. I'm still nervous about it. I'm waiting for him to hit the email. This is like, we tagged that on a little bit late. But we haven't heard from him. He's never responded by the emails. He deleted his Instagram account. He deleted his Spotify.  You know what I'm saying?  It's probably like, I think we did a two-month campaign. The first month didn't go that great.  And that's when he started saying, bro, like he's, you know, me is looking tired, looking to strut. You know what I'm saying? And then he just ghosted us one day, bro. Like, we ain't heard from him saying. So, that was like two. That was like three years ago at this point. It was like 32, three years ago.  Yeah, I forgot about that. So, all being said, touch on anxiety one more time before we move on. You talked about people feeling need to like respond or just do all the activities immediately, whether it's DMs, liking everything, creating more content, all that. It's also that human element, right? Because it is still social. And people feel a need to respond to every DM. Every DM doesn't deserve your response. Trucks. And I think you would get this idea, because it is another person on the other end. And it's a discomfort. Like, well, what if they don't like me?  You know what I mean? Like people develop this story of how the other person is now receiving them because I didn't respond. They're all responding in a timely manner. And it's something that you have to just realize. So maybe if someone does feel a certain way, they're just going to feel that way. But one, there's just going to be people who feel a certain way about you anyway, ground or not. Once you have a certain amount of people looking at you, that's just the game. And then secondly, a lot of people understand. There are actually a lot of people who understand. You have an audience or your life just might have other things going on. So some people you don't respond to quickly. But when you get to them, it's like, you're great. Best believe as an artist, especially the timeliness around what you all respond to is not as important and important as the timeliness of stuff we have to respond to. And people are still OK. Because sometimes people are like, hey, this is happening right now. What should I do? Y'all will probably be showing love or talking about something that's more evergreen of a topic versus something like, hey, this is going on right now. Or I just got reached out to by a manager and how do I negotiate it? And it's like, dang, this is a month later. I hope that negotiation went right, bruh. Like, crucially, I'd be wrong. I'm like, I'm so sorry. I hope it turned out well. That's exactly how it feels. I just now seeing this. I'm sorry, but it all went well. Or how did it go? And you go from there. So a lot of cases, you know, y'all won't fortunately have to do with those types of things. And I mean, I know there's probably some scenarios that they will in a way, but I don't want to get into those. But yeah, so that's another thing. Now, the third thing, well, actually, that was a certain man. All right, we'll move faster on these other ones. The second thing is paying attention to other artists. Man, that was crazy. Yeah, facts. Well, okay, are we saying, like, what's two flips of it? Let's just us going into the kind of level. Like, we said it was going to be some bonus. Here it is, we found one. Let's say paying attention to other artists first, from my perspective, because I already know both of them. The first perspective, and we can be quicker with this one, is watching somebody else do what they do and thinking, I should be on that level, looking at their results. Let's focus on that one first. Okay, okay, yeah. So, y'all need the second one though. The second one is funny, because we already taking a touch on the second one. The grass isn't always greener on the other side, mainly because their lawn is not your lawn. You might not be using the same quality of mulch. You might not have the same blaze on your lawnmower. The lawn guy might not come around as many times a week. You know what I'm saying? So, I can't look at my neighbor who got a 2K a month lawn care budget and be like, damn, my wife's lawn is so much more beautiful than mine. Personally, I only have time to cut the grass twice a month. Yeah. And, what's the saying? Comparison is the people joy or something like that? No. A lot of times we're like, artists would psych themselves out of smart moves because they are comparing themselves to bigger artists. Great example. How many times have we gotten comments or something?  And they'll be like, we can't even do that. Drake didn't do that. Chase, he didn't do that. He's like fucking, I don't know, DMX didn't do that. He's like me. Different people in different times, and you can't compare their come-out to your come-out because Jay-Z didn't have Instagram where he was coming up. Jay-Z had Instagram back then.  We can't, we can't control that. And so, you know, I think a lot of times what artists are trying to do is they're trying to use bigger artists to justify why they don't want to do certain things. Not realizing, like you said earlier, a lot of times those artists did do exactly the things that they didn't want to do for their era until they got to the point where they were big enough. I remember when Jay Cole was coming up, Jay Cole used to go crazy on YouTube, right? Go look at Jay Cole on YouTube today.  Before that he hadn't posted in like a year or something, right? Because he worked himself to that position. Frank Ocean, great example, right? People love throwing Frank Ocean, actually Frank Ocean and The Weeknd. People love using them as an example, which if people remember, there was a time where Frank Ocean used to go crazy on Tumblr. Frank Ocean used to be like posting on Tumblr like four or five times a day. The Weeknd used to have a blog, or no, he actually was on the OVO blog. Actually he might have had a Tumblr too. It was either he had his own blog site or he had maybe a Weeknd Tumblr.  So these artists use the platforms of their time to get themselves into a position where now they don't have to do this anymore, right? So that's the style of it where I would say if you want to compare yourself to artists that are bigger than you, you have to go back to the point, to the point in their career where they were where you are. You can't, so if you are at a two and you're looking at an artist that is an eight, you can't use their eight tactics, right? You have to go and try to figure out what were they doing when they were a two. I can follow that. That's maybe more realistic for me, but I can't expect to even get access to all the eight level things that could go for me. Or, you know, not even access, I can't even expect it to work, right?   Just in a different space in life. But it's like having a four year old and then looking at somebody else with a 20 year old and be like, and her sign, take care of the bills. Like mom, I'll be four in front of it. I can't even read. So it's just different. Now the other side of paying attention to the artist. You want to speak on that? Yeah, I do. Go. So, you know, flip side of it is that bigger artists a lot of times can be a great wealth of information for which you should be doing to at least look like you're at a hard level, right? So great example. A lot of times when I tell a new artist, because a lot of times new artists, the trouble that with their marketing campaigns is that their branding and like foundational stuff doesn't look nice, right?  They just present themselves in a way where they don't look serious. And what I tell them to do is like, hey, go find three or five artists in your genre. Look at the way they got their Spotify set up. Look at the way they got their YouTube set up. Look at the way they got their Apple set up, their audio. Look at the way they got everything set up.  Because you're doing all the things that I as a music consumer, I'm used to seeing my favorite artists do, which for most music consumers, their favorite artists tend to be bigger artists.  So I think that bigger artists can be great wealth of information when it comes to presentation and branding. And, you know, if you learn how to pay attention to them, you can find like marketing avenues for yourself.  Oh, great. Here go five repost pages I didn't even know about. You know what I'm saying? Let's tag Lil Baby this week. Our clients sound like Lil Baby. Get them on these same five pages or something, right? So they can be great, great tools for like, yeah, just research in general and figuring out the direction you want to move in. Hey, outside of that, actually might be it. And then I kind of said a lot. That's something that I can think of. And then I said a lot. Just really, just research really is the only good side of it. Yeah. I mean, so there is that. Actually, there's three ways paying attention to artists. It can become so sabotaged. One, thinking the grass is greener and doing the wrong levels comparison. Two, you spoke on the side that you should be doing versus the self-stabotage angle of, hey, I don't want to be like them or copy them on. That's really what that is, right? But you should be. So you gave the solution. In some cases, you should understand what to mimic and understand how I can use them to find my fan base, which is a part you referenced from earlier. But third is paying attention to artists. Are we on third? No, it's number four now. Well, now you said it's three ways. Look at that. Yeah, so it's three at third. But it's technically the number four of way that artists self-stabotage, but the third way that paying attention to artists can mess you up, which is paying attention to artists who are not yet in the place of success and they're spreading negativity or misinformation that keeps you from also being successful. All right. And we see this in comments a lot. We see this in many environments. But let's just stick with the comments where I remember seeing an artist say, man, all you got to do is like, you know, complicate stuff. All you got to do is get an LLC and buy a little capital and next thing, you'll be Jay-Z. That's basically what came down to it. It's like, people think starting an LLC is like magic.  No, no one cares that you started an LLC. So that type of mentality or making it seem like everything's evil in the industry. I'm big on programming. I just recruited a short on this. But when I say programming, I mean like your own mental program and what you take into your spirit, what you take into your mind, whatever, like we are humans and we only work off of inputs. Once we have our inputs, then we create our outputs, right? So if you take in this message of the industry is evil at all times, everybody's trying to screw you over, et cetera, et cetera. At some point subconsciously, your mind's not going to want to make that dream happen anymore. Because that dream became a nightmare. Everything that you imagine is being clouded with, well, if I get there, oh man, it's going to be scary. I'm going to watch my back.  Why am I not energized by what am I doing when I'm doing? So you take in all these messages from the people on and other artists that are doing this type of stuff. And also the people on YouTube who really don't know much about the industry, but they like spreading that message because it gets a lot of clicks and you're always going to have a lot of clicks of views on those type of videos. And that level of programming in your mind, again, is only going to become subconsciously a barrier to history from getting where you say you want to go, right? So those are a couple ways. Like, but I want to stop just for you to add all like some things that you see artists doing to other artists that are stopping other artists. I mean, really that, man, you're out of touch on it because what I've come to realize is that artists very rarely tell the whole story good or bad, right?  Last marketing agency I worked with didn't do a great job. And then, you know, say it went terrible.  A lot of artists, a lot of artists love to leave that part out that people didn't like the music. That we didn't say or maybe their content was bad. Maybe they weren't listening to the things that their market was telling them to do. Maybe they went against somebody's better decision and picked the marketer with a strategy that didn't make sense, right? And so they don't, they very rarely tell the other side. Same thing with the good stuff, right? Hard to tell you like, hey, I blew up doing X, Y, Z method. This is all you need to do. But then they might not even tell you like the, the, the, the nuances that went into the strategy, right? Or they might, they might have forgot to mention like, oh yeah, when I got to around step three, you know what I'm saying? My uncle introduced me to this A&R and that really helped me, you know what I'm saying? Get to step four much like that. They don't leave out a lot of pieces of the story for the good and the bad. Right, because everybody wants to seem like they did everything themselves. Yeah. And like it's going to kill their brand to find out that they got help, which goes into the industry plant conversation. Yeah. Which is symbolic of something that's distracting and self-sabotaging for artists. But there's many other ways this thing manifests, but let's stick on that.  You're watching this other man or this other woman and what she's achieving in her career and what he's achieving in his career and then trying to deduce why they're successful to whatever you think their circumstances are. One, in your mind, you're tricking yourself to think I have to have all these resources that you have no access to to become successful.   What they care about, you'll have some fans who are like super into the music culture and things like that. And they'll pay attention to that stuff and make you think that real fans and most fans care about that stuff. Most fans don't care about that stuff. Most of that stuff, when you're accusing this artist of being that, your actual fans never even hear of it. Like literally it's just, it doesn't exist in a real life. It'll also shock you. So Cory knows I do this all the time. I was like, oh yeah, I got radio stations and things I'll listen to to keep myself in the world of what regular people think.  Right, talking with other marketers, talking with other execs, talking with other artists.  They're not saying, oh, you do this and you did that and that's why I like it. No, they don't think it like that, right? So don't get distracted with these conversations, especially the negative ones that other artists are pushing when it's ultimately about something that your actual fans don't care about. Focus on the people who should be your fans and pay attention to the things that make them tick, period. I mean, last thing I'll just add to that too is like, always remember that artists are talking from their perspective. So it's never truly like a good or bad thing, but sometimes like artists get caught up in a very positive bubble that doesn't make sense. So like great example, we got a client we talked about that did a lot through TikTok. Great success through TikTok. And I remember having a conversation with him about like certain things and was going like, hey, this will help and this will help. And he's like, oh, I don't think that matters because all I need to do is X, Y, Z and that should hit. He's like, yeah, that works for you. You know what I'm saying? But that doesn't mean that the other people don't necessarily need to do these things. And I will still argue that if you were to add all these things into it, it would be a much bigger situation. We're going to call that number five. I call that a different point. It's for reasons out of these five, you should be paying attention to other artists. Not that you can't, but yes, listening to them from a standpoint of success. And hey, all the power to them. Why should I, you're not listening to someone who's done something successfully. Listen to them, but you can't take what they say is gospel because some of them don't have the awareness to realize that, all right, yeah, that worked for you. But that doesn't mean it's going to work for everybody, just like you said. And they'll, because they'll start downing other paths of success and saying, they don't work. Oh my gosh, TikTok doesn't work because I just went over here and the TikTok artists would be like, YouTube doesn't work.  No TikTok involved, right? So yeah, definitely don't allow someone to use their success to preach that their version of success is the only thing that works. And that's why, you know, I mean, I appreciate the new artist economy of them giving information and gain, but I still personally think some of the best people to give career advice is people behind the artist because they usually have like multiple perspectives on the same thing. Like when we talk about marketing, I'll tell people like, hey, there are some artists out there who only know a good marketing campaign. And some people are like, what's wrong with that? I'm like, because the moment they have a bad one, they're not going to know how to handle it. Versus someone like us, you seem to get in the bad. So when we see the bad happening, we know how to handle it, we know how to fix it. When we see the good happening, we know how to take advantage of it and move. Someone has only ever had good things happen to them.  And so like there are some artists out there who like have just been like winning consistently to a point to where you can't really ask them like, what should you do in a situation when you're losing? You know what I'm saying? They're not the right people to answer that question for you because it's been so long since they have the, you know, it'd be like asking like Jay-Z the day, like what would you do as a rider? I don't know, but you've been successful for like 30 years, you know what I'm saying?  Versus like in the artist today who's coming up, maybe you could give me a little bit more. Like an artist who just started popping this year could probably give you a better answer than the artist has been popping for the last 10 years. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, that's how I look at the main line. Everybody is speaking through their own lens, especially artists because artists, you know, as much as it sucks, most of y'all don't care about other artists and what's going on there. So y'all, a lot of times, some look at only see what's going on in your world, which can be a good thing most of the times, but it can also be a bad thing. A lot of the times, you know what I'm saying? So I just look at like, be holistic of what you're gonna get from it. Listen to the artists that are successful because like I said, they have points, they have validity, they've done it, but then also, you know, seek perspective from people that have multiple perspectives on the same thing. They have been in situations where they had to look outside of themselves in order for this thing to work or not work or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you said a mouthful right there, Brett. Be honest, those people behind the scenes, what I think people miss is oftentimes the people behind the scenes are taking care of things that the artist doesn't have to think about. Yes, yeah. So you're missing a lot of things because the artist might just think it happened when it didn't just happen. And then you have the artist who's more evolved. Still, they take their own unique qualities for granted. So that's not even a diss.  Or like, shawty, you don't want to realize that you know, looks are swaying to this person a little bit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, so I can't do that as a male artist who doesn't, you know what I mean?  You know what I'm saying? It's just different things that apply to different people. And sometimes the artists don't give themselves credit for the unique qualities they have and why it worked for them and wouldn't work for another person. Where you have, let's say a music executive who's been in the game for like somebody years or a label executive or even a markers like us who are working across multiple artists. We were like, oh, yeah, this will work for him, but this won't work for them. So we need this stable of strategies for this person because this set of strategies, and they might be able to use one or two, but they're not gonna shake like that for that person, which is cool, right? But yeah, success is a great thing to watch, but you also have to take the success, the advice of that successful person when they're being so specific about what works and what doesn't with a grain of salt. Now, when they speak on principles, usually the principles would be like similar, right? Or like an overall strategy, but the specifics were speaking on things outside of what did work for them. That's where you want to be a little bit more cautious. And I feel like we say we'll just be talking about paying attention to artists for like 20 more points, but let's get into a completely different point because we talked about not listening to artists. You should be listening to your fans, but point number six, there's a balance between listening to your fans. Don't listen too much to your fans, because sometimes your fans, they ask for stuff that they won't even necessarily care about when it really releases.  They don't always know exactly what they want. You go back to them, if I asked them what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse instead of a car, right? Because they can't even think about cars. So sometimes artistically, you know your vision and you know where you want to take things, and there's no way for them to think of that for you because they haven't seen it from you. And they're only thinking of incremental improvements based off of where you are, where you might have a moon leap of improvement. You know, you might be Kaya who just created college drop route all the way to graduation and say, oh, I want to do 808s and heartbreaks. You think anybody saw 808s and heartbreaks for Kaya? I'm not doing that because of college drop route. You're not thinking, right? So you might have something you want to provide and you have to. And that's why it's important to have your own POV and your own vision to drive you. And then when you have that foundation, there's some things that you can start to listen to fans and take some of their feedback. And then still having your, which also goes back to just having a plan and a strategy, that's part of the mission, right? It's a sense of plan that'll help you decipher which of the feedback is useful, which of it is completely meaningless. And then there's some nuances from there, but at least from a general perspective, that'll help out a lot. Yeah. And like what I've noticed too, is like there are usually, usually artists have like two types of fans. There's like one of the like actual fans. Well, so I guess I should say, but there'll be the fans who say they're fans but aren't really fans.  Yeah. And then when you get into like actual fans, there is the selfish fan, the fan that only wants to keep you to him or herself, right? And the other ones that get upset that you're doing things that continue going and go, oh man, I want you to stay a secret forever. I remember when I was only listening to you. And then there are the fans that want you to blow and understand why you might be doing things you're doing even if they don't understand, right? And you really want more of those types of fans, right? The selfish fans are cool. They still have fans that still have no support or whatever, but they ain't pushing the ball down the field. You know what I'm saying? Versus the other fans are gonna be like, oh, I understand why you're doing this. And so I just had this conversation with a artist on me a couple of days ago because he called me and he was like, yo man, like, you think I'm being corny with my Instagram Reels post? I was like, no, I don't think so. He's like, man, because a lot of fans are commenting and saying like, they feel like I'm posting too much and I'm doing whatever he's like, but I just got like 400,000 views on Reels the last week. Like I gained like, you know what I'm saying? Like a couple of thousand followers. I was like, exactly.   Another example, we had a artist that, he wasn't a client, we're just cool with him. And he had a song that was going viral on TikTok. And I remember he called me, he was like, yo, this song is going viral. Like what should I do?  Like keep posting about it. And he started doing it and I'd be reading his comments and people were like, damn man, it's like the fifth time this weekend I'm promoting this song. This is what I'm saying. All he's doing is talking about this song, right?  But the streams are still going up. You know what I'm saying? Like the streams are still moving. His followers are still growing. So it's like, you know, well, I've come to realize with the, I guess the way you kind of treat ideas with fans is that they're going to give you their, their opinion from the perspective of someone that's been following you for a while. So of course it's annoying to them, right?  That is why I am particularly annoyed. But they don't think about, they think you're doing it for them, which a lot of times you might be. They're not thinking about the fact that you're doing it to attract more of them, right? That's the part they like block out something.  But you're like, but this ain't even for you. You know what I'm saying? This is for the, like my friend, right? The $300,000 people that I'd never seen him before until they came across the room. You know what I'm saying? Like that's, that's what he was doing it for. You know, just as much as he might have been doing it for the current fans. So that's what I think about when it comes to taking advice from fans. There are some things about, I think it makes sense, right? What do they want to buy? Great, great, great time to get fan perspective, right? Market research, right? Who are you listening to? What do you like to do? Things like that. That was a great time to listen to artists. You know, and so there are going to be moments where I was like, yeah, like bringing the fans into the fold and get that perspective.  It was that. And you either can sit here and enjoy the ride or you can leave and come back when you feel comfortable, bruh. Instagram, bruh. And follow me and come back in two weeks when the rollout done.  Part of having your own principle, your own perspective and some of that for them to respect. Yeah. All right? Versus people pleasing your fans. You can't people please your fans. That's all they're going to knock you off at some point.  Fans are like sarks, bruh. They sense blood, bruh. Like, hey, so. Yeah. And, you know, that's how you get the bricks. Yeah. Like, that's just how you, when you allow people to build you up, bust you down, all of that starts with doing too much listening to them. So, yeah, it's definitely a balance with listening to fans or just to close it off. You said something when you talked about like sayings, right? See you post something more and more and more times, right? Yeah. And it made me think about principles of growth. Something that people ignore pretty often. And that's the fact that if I want to grow, then I can't stay the same, right? I have to get more like economically. I have to add fans at all times to continue to grow. Because if I don't do anything and I have 100 fans, I'm going to lose fans. Nobody's going to stay a fan forever. Now, what I mean by fan, I mean an active fan, right? We all have lives. I'm sitting here and I got, right now, I have kids. I have a wife. I have my businesses. Who knows what more responsibility I'll take on.  It's just me. I'm just chilling. You know, I got more time to give. Right? I have less to give in terms of fan behaviors. You know what I'm saying? I have to be more selective with choices. Somebody else, you could be single, right? But they have to work harder because they got a new job and I'm heads down. I'm being more selective with my content. So you're not going to have that active, super active fan base. And you need as many people to algorithmically perform well and get things seen. So you have to always be adding people on, always be growing. Again, because if you do not continue to grow, get more visibility, you're only going to lose fans.  Even if they're not leaving because you're posting, they were going to leave because something else occurred in their life where they didn't want to pay attention to you. Right? So you have to always grow and always remind yourself that I got to figure out how I could keep adding more fire to this flame. That just is what it is. Yeah. Fox. Fox. Now, with that being said, we got some more topics, but we're going to hold them for another episode. This is yet another episode of No Labels. That's the story. Quetions every Tuesday, every Thursday. I'm Brandon Shaw. And I'm Colby. We out. Peace.


Would you rather pay $650 or $66 for a smartphone? Simple.  Better service, bigger savings. That's today's Appalachian Wireless. The Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program has established a new internship program this year which looks to connect eligible applicants with employers in need of new workers all throughout our region. We caught up with Michael Cornette, Deputy Director for Employment Engagement and Program Operations for EKCEP for more information. Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program this year started a new internship program that we've called 1UP and the goal of 1UP is to create meaningful experiences for students who are either in post-secondary training or education programs at all of our institutions in the region or local students in places like UK, Eastern, or Moorhead who are out of region create meaningful opportunities for those students and also graduates of either certification training programs or other things at colleges who are no further out than 12 months from graduation to plug them into experiences that are in alignment with a couple of things. One is what employers in our region have a need to seek and find in trained individuals and also to plug those students into opportunities that are in alignment with their programs of study. Cornette says that their main focus is on helping both employers and students who may be looking for work feel the jobs that are considered to be the most in demand locally. With this, EKCEP hopes to help bolster local economies throughout our area which will help to keep our workforce here and fully employed. As we work with potential internship hosts for interns under the 1UP program at EKCEP that we're doing now, we really want to emphasize our workforce board sectors of emphasis within our region. So it's not that we wouldn't consider each and every potential host opportunity but we do want to hone in on several specific sectors and that's healthcare, manufacturing skilled trades, IT, business services, and energy production and transmission. So that is our workforce boards list of priority sectors that mirrors the Kentucky Workforce Innovation Board's sectors of emphasis too. That's really important in our workforce services programming and the things that we do at EKCEP. And I think for the purposes of 1UP it's very important because it helps us focus on targeting employers to be potential hosts who are in those sectors but it's going to create a meaningful experience and one that is in alignment with the priorities of our workforce board and what we'd like to see happen in the region to move the needle forward when new opportunities come about. All sectors are needed right now especially I mean even you know retail everything else but in terms of moving the needle with major efforts mass employment things to that effect. I mean we've got to take care of the employers that we have who have needs right now and pretty much all of them do. For more information on how you can register for either the internship program or to be considered as a host company, Cornet encourages viewers to visit them online at www.ekcep.org forward slash one o-n-e-up-up. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joshua Sloan.