I'm Will Lucas and this is black Tach, Green Money. Ryan Leslie is a Grammy nominated musician and producer, having produced hits for artists like New Addition and Cassie, which he found in nurtured as an artist, and wrote and produced her hit single Me and You. He's also founder as Superphone, which helps creatives and businesses increase engagement, drive revenue,
and build better relationships with SMS, m ands marketing. I've been a fan of Ryan since I heard about his work in the early two thousands, So this is what is the phone for me. We're seeing so many of our great artists selling their catalogs and the rights to their music for sums that are very large and others that are at least we as the public don't feel
are large enough. I asked Ryan to explain what's happening in the music business that's brought on this trend of sell off with so many others are preaching ownership.
Yeah.
Well, I would say for me, when you look at money in hands versus money in the future, there's a lot more that can be done with money in hand, and that's what's so important. And so when you have the ability to navigate financial markets, navigate investments, decide whether you want to make investments in a number of different categories.
The way financial markets work is it takes money to make money, and so to actually decide to say, Okay, maybe I have two hundred million dollars at some point in the future versus the ability to actually put that money to work right now, in my opinion, becomes a no brainer when you have that much future value that can be unlocked immediately.
So what kind of artists does it make sense for If you're on the other side, you're a financier and you're seeing, Okay, here's this artist X and they've had some pop hits. They've had some hits that you know, some would argue are not like, you know, classic, but they maybe hits. What at what point does it make sense for them to have conversations with artists where you know, though that long term value is.
There right Well, what I would say is this is very, very detailed and data driven.
So they just look at the streams.
They look at what they would call steady state, meaning hey, no matter how long it's been since this record came out, this is how much money is being generated on a consistent basis, and so they make an extrapolation on the catalog to decide what they believe the future value of that catalog will be. And that's how they that's how they do these deals. These deals are very, very specific. It had nothing to do with the subjective. Do I like the songs?
I like the catalog? They literally just look at.
How many streams are these records making, and how many streams are these records generating, and what is the actual what will actually be a great return on investment for them in terms of ownership, and then obviously the partnership and when we look at some of the big players that are doing this, the partnerships are able to potentially even rejuvenate the music.
Right.
So when you have investors who also have their hands in film, television, sports, other arenas of entertainment, then they're able to acquire these catalogs and then give a song of brand new life because now it is the soundbed for a hit series somewhere, right, So they understand what they need to do to actually take this to the
next level. And it's you know, when you talk about the accounting and the mathematics that's done in order to come to the valuations of these catalogs is very it's very data driven.
At the risk of making this even a little bit more technical, you know, we hear this argument from artists talking about, you know, they may get point zero zero zero zero five to seven cents on these streams. But then you have these you know, financers who obviously see the math and you know, they believe that they can get their their investment back. What is it that they're taking advantage of that that artist can't take advantage of to be able to make that math math.
Well, they're taking advantage of money up front. Okay, So that's you just have to think about this, all right. So if and just for simple math, let's just do it. Let's think about it in terms of simple math, all right. So let's just say you got a penny per stream, all right, instead of breaking it down to the fractional it means a million streams you would get you would get ten thousand dollars, all right.
So when you have a record that just you know, goes.
Crazy, right, ten million streams, one hundred thousand, right, a
billion streams, right, ten million dollars. Right. So when you really think about this, the ability for these records to actually generate this and if the artist wants to wait until the revenue is paid out, then obviously they can wait the difference though, And you know, this is kind of what I've definitely worked with a number of artists that have come to me that are looking for mentorship in terms of how to get their finances right.
Is.
Look, when you have the ability to navigate the financial markets in the right way, you can take one hundred k today and turn it into two hundred thousand by June of this year. You know. So you know, we've got folks, I got our artist managers, etc.
That I work with.
They'll come to me the beginning of the year and say, look, you know, I just got this advance and I'm looking to actually go ahead and make it stretch. You know, I know that the label is going to take care of all of the expenses, but this advance, I need this to stretch. And so really it's about giving people the edgection that has been missing from the our middle school to high school to college education system.
How do you navigate financial markets?
And this is these are these are concepts that are really you know, very very We talk about middle school math to understand they have just been sort of shrouded in secrecy up to this point. And so the difference is not that an independent artist or an artist would not be able to realize that, uh those returns. It's just do they actually have the ability to sit around and wait for that to actually be accrued to them. The difference is when someone has money, their money is
losing money if it's just sitting there. So when you're an artist and you don't have the money and you're waiting for the money to come to you, well, then that's great because at some point that is some some some value that will be accrue to you in the future when you are financia or you actually are even an artist that has money that's just sitting there. When that money is not deployed, then it's actually losing money.
And so that's why I went especially over the last couple of years, where we saw the rife that was you know what was the we found financial markets that were reeling from over extension due to all the money that had been you know, sort of pumped into the economy. That is when you started to see smart folks looking
for alternative places to put the money to work. Because the usual places where they would put money to work, Google, Apple, Amazon, the Nasdaq, the S and P five hundred, those places were over extended, and that money, while it was deployed in those places, those far reaches of the financial markets, was actually moving in the opposite direction that was desired.
And so when you can find and alternative ways to put the money to work where those returns are let's say, uncorrelated to the stock market, then that really becomes a prudent investment.
You've seen like as many of us have these you know, fake drake AI, you know, recreations of artists and their sound. And I wonder with us, with us giving up these rights, do you foresee any potential regret that may come because we don't know what, you know, these things may be valuable, what the value of these things may be. Because AI blockchain the center is happening so fast.
Yeah, I think to look at it that way is really looking at it from a scarcity mindset.
Right.
It's almost like when I first got into the music business, there was a record I had that I thought was gonna be my singles called hot Tonight. The single ended up being a single for New Edition, and I just knew at that juncture.
Being a creative when you look at just.
Life in general, as a creator, you want to be able to create. And so, yeah, maybe you have the song that got away, maybe you have the you know, the show idea that got away nine time out of ten. Okay, when you decide to put that piece of intellectual property into the hands of a different custodian, the hopefully that custodian has an incentive to actually make that a very increase the value of whatever you have have delivered to them.
And so in a case of new edition, in the case of writing and producing me and you for Cassie, for example, instead of thinking of this from a scarcity mindset and saying, oh, you know, if I give this catalog away, you know, you know what did I leave on the table? I am always thinking in terms of my gift is the fact that for what they just bought, I can actually create one hundred two hundred one thousand more and they wouldn't even have to pay me to do it.
It's something I want to do anyway.
So whether they paid me upfront now to do this or they didn't, I would still be in the studio the next day.
Deciding that I wanted to create.
And so when we look at our lives from that through that lens, when we look at our lives through that lens, we are able to really kind of strip away all of those kind of distractions around what really matters. And money really is just currency. It just kind of flows through accounts if it comes to your account. The only difference is and the reason why you want it to flow through your account is because you can exercise
control on where it is distributed. And so really, the shrewd musician, the shrewd businessman, the shrewd person in general is looking to understand the science because it really is a science of how to get currency to flow through your accounts, because when it flows through your accounts, you can direct the flow.
I want to talk to you about your brand a little bit. I've been following you for a long time. I meet YouTube videos where you would jump off the keys onto the drums, jump off the drums onto the guitar, and it will be these You were a pioneer in that way, you showing that one person could be in the studio doing all these things. I mean, you had artists who could do that, but they didn't have the gift of YouTube to be able to show the world.
And what we've learned about brand is that if you can build a successful brand, people will follow you wherever. They'll go, buy your thing, they'll come to your show, et cetera. Congrats on your successful crowdfunding raise. What have you learned about storytelling and branding that allows you to deploy your brand in any direction you wish?
Yeah, I think really stories are what connect humans and even just what we're doing right now, we're telling stories and that's why people are going to tune in. And stories are the way that we convey and communicate.
Our value to one another.
And so whatever it is that you do, your ability to tell a story, a story of success, a story of challenge, a story of obstacle, a story where people can relate and see themselves in that story, that will give you sort of a universal appeal on a human level. And when you strip away, hey is this music, is this technology?
Is this finance? And you get down to the human level and you realize, hey, what is it that people really want? Well, they want to live their best lives.
They want to be able to spend time with those that they love, they want to be able to not have to trade their time to be employed in some kind of work that they you know, that they that
they wish they could do something else. So when you can help people to improve their lives in that way, whether it's just hey, you know, a record that they can play over and over and over again when they're at the job that they probably wish they were doing something else, or when when they are able to learn how to to finance whatever it is, maybe it's a new business or a vacation that they might have, or or some medical procedure that will you know, or to
hire a trainer or get to the gym, whatever it is, to eat better. You start realizing that as you can empower people to live their best life, the brand therefore becomes universal.
Aside from Prince, you probably want them at least my earliest memories on people talking about, you know, ownership and taking your own path in the music business, and again back to those early YouTube days. What was obvious to you about because you had labels coming to you saying here here's the contract, and you decided to take your own path, what was obvious to you was obviously not obvious. No point intended to so many other talented mes issues.
Yeah, I think really.
Music is one piece and the business is another. And what we understand now, which became very very apparent to me early on, is that those businesses who had a direct relationship with their customers were going to be the businesses that would have exponential success.
What does that mean?
That means that when I am a massing of following on any platform, that platform, because it's free, I am the product, meaning that Instagram is selling me to acquire data and users.
Right.
And though it may seem that I am a massing of following, when I look at the engagement, when I look at the clickthroughs, when I look at the conversions, I'm saying, wow, I really don't own these people.
And it was very very i would say, very very clear.
When we had built this quarter million person following on MySpace with Cassie and then all of a sudden that was no longer the platform DuJour, and so once everyone migrated away, we realized, oh man, we got to go do this all over again, and what a what a shame and a waste of time, energy and resources to
go and do it all over again. So really, for me, it's always just been about understanding that the companies in which I invested when I got my advanced checks, the Amazon, the Google, the Apple, the Facebook, now Meta, those companies were really very clearly paving the way for businesses that had a direct relationship with their customers and not just the ability to contact them, but the ability to build a profile, to personalize the products and services that were offered.
Those were the business that would be able to thrive, and in their.
Ingenuity and their ability to create an infrastructure to do this for themselves, they were able to build platforms on
which other businesses could also be built. The number of people who have built multimillion dollar businesses on Amazon's platform, the number of people who utilize Facebook's advertising network to build multimillion dollar or multimillion dollar businesses, the number of folks who rely on Google's cloud services, the same cloud services that they use to deliver their products and services
to their users. You find that the ability to have that kind of close relationship with those who support you allows you to refine your products and services so that you can even price them in a premium fashion, and so that also reduces the number of people, the number of customers, the number of supporters that you need to hit a threshold financially.
To live and thrive in business. The way that you were, that you that you aspire and in the way that you aspire.
So I became aware of you in early two thousands, late ninety late nineteen nineties, I was writing for Brian Michael Cox. I was a songwriter and him and a guy named a Donna Shropshire, you might know a Donna's we're having a conversation about you. And we were at Doppler in Atlanta. Oh, we had stink Onnia in Atlanta, actually, and the reason your name came up was because they
were talking about ownership and studios like you were. You were the only guy back then when everybody else was written our studio time, you were building your own and buying your own equipment, your own keyboards and your own drums and stuff. And that's how I became aware of Ryan Leslie or Less. And we have these conversations about, well, if we got you know, the Lebron James of the world to go to Africa and build the NBA there, like they could own it and they don't have to
be tied to this organization. And if the jay Z's of the world built over or wherever else they could start their own. Why do those things not connect to reality in the way that we don't have the people who have this amount of wealth and power decide to seceed away from institutional organizations and build their own in
different ways. I mean, you have ice Q doing it like with the Big Three, but you don't have it's not like a proliferation of people taking it away from the institution and doing it on their own like you did.
Yeah, well, I would say that first and foremost, though, there is an infrastructure in a history with those institutions that allows them to continue to grow, acquire, consolidate to the point where like the government has to get involved and say, hey, antitrust.
Right, So that's number one.
Number two, we also need to think about the fact that, you know, we are probably just one generation away from the kind of wealth that we control as a people. To do that, when we think of the institutions, those institutions were built on our backs, and to build on the backs of those to amass that kind of wealth and influence, you had to actually you had to do that in such a way that completely separated them from the math and mechanics around how.
To actually generate that kind of wealth.
And so we are starting to see this now. But how many players in the NBA did it take? How many success stories and failures did it take for us to have a billionaire athlete in a short amount of time as it took for Lebron to get there. How many artists did it take, mega, massive, ultra multi extra platinum artists did it take to have the ability for a jay Z to then shorten the time for Rihanna
to get to that billionaire status. And at the end of the day, when we think about this, we need many, many, many many of those folks, and then we also need sort of care, concern, consideration, and collaboration to actually happen
amongst them. And what we've seen so often, especially in our community, is that besides, almost in contrast to care, consideration, concern, and collaboration, we have competition, right, And so when we have that, it starts to sort of pit us against one another as opposed to having the kind of fabric that can actually collectively when the money's pooled, when the influence is pooled, to actually build the way that we want to build, and so I think we're probably just one generation a way.
One of the business lessons I learned later than I wish I would have, but I did learn it was about reinvesting the profits. So yeah, because you you know, put in nine hundred, you got a thousand, don't go spend that hundred. Put the one hundred in to grow.
You know the.
Origination. So obviously you learned that lesson and you were one, you were the one buying your own equipment in et cetera. How did you learn that lesson? And how do you communicate it to other entrepreneurs or creatives who would be entrepreneurs to take the revenue that they generate put it back in. Because I heard you say before and the end of the interview which we were talking about you were completely fan funded in so many ways.
Yes, yes, And I would say that that reinvestment is on so many different levels. It's not just finances, it's time, energy, and resources. And those resources are not just finances, it's time and energy as well. So what I would say is Number one, I had great mentor. I had a great mentor and other great mentors, and I showed up the way I needed to when I had the ability to actually learn, and I invested in my relationship with
those mentors because I wanted to. Just as we saw Rihanna's ability pathway to one billion dollars was roughly half, if not shorter than Jay Z's pathway to a billion dollars. And that really is a direct correlation to the kind of mentorship but also the ability for the mentee to show up and be coachable. And so as I you know, it kind of touched on the beginning of this interview, I personally because I am only where I am today because a great mentor took an interest in actually, you know,
investing time with me. Obviously I compensated that mentor, but
took an interest and gave me a shot. I have made a commitment that any and I'm talking about any artist, manager, attorney, software engineer, mail carrier, doordas driver, anyone who has an interest in understanding the mindset, the mentality, the math and the mechanics when it comes to money in the markets, as long as they can come to me with the spirit of a student and a respect for my time and the energy and the expertise that I will share with them, I make it a point to actually take
them under my wing one on one, and I have literally a program that has been running to help folks. You know, whatever they're starting with, let's get you to a pathway to not just six figures, not seven, you know, let's get you to eight or nine figures. And the beauty of compounding is that when you have the patience, you can actually get there. And I've literally shown folks
how to start with a if your investments only. I was literally talking to one of my mentees today, I said, look, if your investments grow by thirty eight dollars this year, I can show you a pathway that you'll leave ninety
million dollars to your family when you pass on. Now, that obviously means that he's starting at age thirty three and he's looking to leave whatever he's leaving at ninety five or one hundred, but all of those years, with the right kinds of decisions, the right kinds of techniques and strategies, you can do what so many others have done.
And you know, and then maybe they don't.
They're not the same shade that we are, right, but so many others have done because they learned it early. And it's never too late. You know, they say the best time to start investing was twenty years ago. The next best time is right now. And so for those where they're right now.
Is right now.
That's the way in which I lend myself and make myself available to anyone that wants to learn. And so it's very easy to get in touch with me. You go to your browser, you type in text Ryan dot com is going to ask you for your phone number. And I have built a system. I built a technology that allows me to actually find the people that are really serious about making that kind of difference. And so.
It's been super rewarding.
And so also, you know, I was just looking at a documentary around Warren Buffett and he said, look, you know, at one hundred billion dollars, you know a guy that's worth one hundred billion, He said, look at one percent of that, it still will be so much more than I would ever need to live. And I'm at a place now in my life and career that one percent of what I've been able to mass and earn will allow me to be very very comfortable for the rest
of my life. So the rest of it I want to actually and in terms of time as well the rest of it. I want to be able to pour into folks that actually want to reduce the time that it takes for them to realize some of that same success.
So that's the way that I that I pay it forward.
I've been a fan of yours obviously follows your story, you know, about twenty years now, and one thing I'm have been I've always always thought it was remarkable is how you built an international presence. And I wonder, because you were talking about going to Switzerland and Belgium before I saw our stars, you know, on stage in these countries. How did you grow that or was it something about the music that just spoke to that those audiences over there.
I believe it was really a combination.
And also I believe that, you know, very early on, I was using technology to identify and pinpoint where the audiences were, and so when I realized that my listeners were in a specific locale, I wanted to make sure that I was providing even higher level of service by saying, hey, I see that there is an appreciation and enjoyment of the music, let's step it up to the live experience.
And then I would go and do sort of that research there and say, okay, what is it that you love when an artist comes from another country to come and perform. Well, they said, well, we don't know exactly what we love. Also, we love the music, but we
can tell you what we don't love. I said, okay, well tell me and they said, well, you know they'll come on, they'll just you know, have a track playing, and then you know they'll do thirty minutes and act like you know, it was such a pleasure and privilege for them to come over and be on stage. And I said, okay, I'm gonna do you one better. We ain't gonna just do the track with the DJ if I have to pay for it, I'll bring the band out and we're going to do two and a half hour sessions.
Why because it's music.
Music is so beautiful that you know, you can the record might only be three minutes, but when you do it on stage, you could do it for ten minutes and people love it and they're rocking with you, and so you know, I really just look to, in any area of my life, deliver the highest level of service. So if as a music producer, look what is it that folks need? If folks need x number of tracks per day they need too, I try to give them nine.
If people say, well, you know what, it's not enough to just do the tracks, I need a top line too, where we'll record a top line four year as well. Well, you know, somebody will come to you and say, well, you know, I also want to think about a rollout strategy as well. We helped to devise that four you
as well. And then when it came down to being of service to my fans, my community, the ability for them to come have a great experience, have it curated for them, have them be able to you know, write in the set list and choose all of those kinds
of different elements of the show. I think really all of that lent itself to the relationship that I have to this day, where you know, my last record per se may have been years ago, and we'll still fly across on July to eighth, and we'll fill out a three thousand person venue in Cologne, Germany of all places. So I believe that, you know, technology nowadays gives you the ability to actually pinpoint the audience, the supporters, where the listeners.
Are coming from, where the supporters coming.
From, and then it's up to the entrepreneur or the business mind of your operation to actually know what to do with that data. And you know, I think we're talking obviously about it all being self contained, and yes, that's great. The other piece of this puzzle is it's also important to just understand when your special gift is the creativity and someone else's special gift may be the
business acumen. And when those two minds, those two worlds combined, you really have a scenario where one plus one may equally leave it.
Yeah, yeah, I told you. I want to talk about superphone just for one second. Many companies have recognized that email just doesn't do what it used to do. They're trying to get the phone numbers. Now, how does this work? How the superphone particularly work to work. I may not know. I can't put a call to action in every message, you know, I may need to, you know, just actually provide value. And it's easier to do. And so in the top of mind via email, maybe a little harder
or maybe not. I'm gonna let you say that. In SMS.
Yeah, I really look at SMS as a more inbound versus outbound.
You know.
I find it a number of folks to say oh yeah, I want to build a big list, and then I want to, you know, broadcast. I think email lends itself to that kind of exchange.
I believe that the.
Communication channel of SMS is personal, it's intimate, it's the most important real estate in everyone's phone, and it works extremely well on the inbound side. So if I say, and really this is how I launched Superphone. I said, look, if you want my album, send me a text. So that means the intent has already been captured. From the time they send a text, I already know where this is leading they're looking for the album. So at that point I can say, okay, great, I want to provide
you the highest level of service. What's you're at, what's your email address? And where can I ship it? If I'm going to give you something, if I'm going to deliver you something that's physical, and so in that exchange, the intent has already been captured and the ability to actually have that communication. And also the beauty of a phone is that it can vary very quickly sort of
upgrade to an actual real conversation. The beauty of thinking about intimacy when you're thinking about your supporters, friends, family, followers whoever.
It may be.
The beauty of thinking about intimacy and a pyramid is that when you start with social media you can think about the expected response time or expected response rate. So when you post something on social media, people are I guess the response is optional?
Right.
Then when you get to email and it's a broadcast, once again response optional. And even in personal relationship, you might spend an email and it's very easy to be oh I and get that or within the spam e s. Once you move up to text, the text is a much more intimate and much more important real estate in someone's mobile device. And then the beauty of text is that it can actually upgrade to that in person real time conversation.
So if you send someone.
An email and they don't respond for a couple of days, you might actually say, ah, it's all right. You send someone a text, they don't respond for a couple of hours, you start getting worried.
You on the phone, and it's a live conversation.
Someone doesn't respond within moments, you might have to say, hey, you all right? Right, So you see that there's sort of a pyramid in terms of expected response time. And so with superphone we really want to unlock that SMSs to voice because of how powerful that communication channel actually is.
I was reading an interview and you talked about this is a quote from you. I'm fan funded. The people that come to my concerts and pay double and triple the prices of an album to watch the music being performed live is the way that future albums, videos, and
tours are going to be funded. Talk about what you see when you recognize startups and projects taking on a lot of investment without that product market fit, you know, and we've seen a lot of companies burn out because they took a bunch of money and didn't have the revenue coming in. But just valuations are magical numbers, but they thereby they give up so much because they don't have the leverage.
Yeah, you know, I think that every sort of business, and I believe that every sort of business has a.
Has a unique path.
And in the same way that so many businesses have been successful, the ability to just apply a template and say this is going to work for someone else, I believe sort of undermines the unique value proposition in each product or service that a business innovates. And so I believe that it's just important to be almost machine level in your ability to analyze the data and allow the data to tell the story and drive your decision making in business.
And so you know, in some.
Cases, growth may be more important than revenue because to a mass a large audience is when you can then monetize the audience with advertising, et cetera. So I believe that every business, every artist, every entrepreneur, really it really makes sense to find an expert, find someone with some great experience, whether that may be a mentor a coach,
or even whoever comes in as an investor. They need to be truly invested in not just a return from whatever the business may may yield, but also they must be committed to the growth not only of just the business, but the humans that run the business. You know, we can name off name brands across the board, and it is those name brands that have leaders business minds that we relate to on a human level that we sometimes
may remember more. And so in my businesses in you know, some of the great businesses that I've invested in, these CEOs and founders have become synonymous with their businesses. Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, you know, uh and Elon musk right a jay z all right with rock Nation and many of the other businesses. So at the end of the day, I believe that when we realize that, you know, product market fit and just looking at data in and of itself can help to drive our decisions at the end
of the day. And I think the the theme of this interview even is just that we are looking to derive and provide value. That is what gives us purpose as humans. And so when we understand how to quantify that in a real way, we can really find we could really find some extraordinary success.
All right, Less, it's an honor for me to talk to you, man, be if I'll even twenty five years So this is.
A pleasure, Yes, sir, Yes, sir Man. Well look text Ryan dot com man drop the number man. And literally I say this all the time. I say it on every podcast. I'm really interested in building real relationships, and you know, folks have to show up for those relationships. So for folks that I had people that sent me text messages before, and we've gone on to you know, co investing businesses together, we've gone on to you know,
take trips together. We've gone on to you know, build businesses together, and so I'm very very committed to that being My driving purpose in life is to be a living example of everything I talk about, and really that's about connecting on a human level.
Black Tech Green Money is the production of Blavity Afro Tech on the Black Effect podcast Networking Night Heart Media, and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas, with additional production support by Sayah Ergan.
And Rose McLucas.
Special thank you to Michael Davis, Vanessa Surruno, and Maya Moldrew. Learn more about my guests and other tech This rupt is an innovators at afrotech dot com. Join Black Tech Green Money, Share this with somebody, Go get your money, piece and love