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Mike drop, Bad Drop drop. As far as you get in the game, how did how did your career path takes as a producer first and even figuring out as far as like points on an album, man, negotiating royalties and things of that nature.
Yeah, I mean, I think now more than ever it's
important to know your math on that. I think really when I when I was getting started the the going, I think actually, in a lot of ways, when people start getting into music, they just say, look, I just want to have the biggest hits possible, and you know, it's inevitable if I have a really big hit that I'm I'm gonna get paid, you know, And uh, there's a lot of there are a great number of revenue streams, and there are a great number of revenue streams that
are potentially overlooked. And so you know, for me coming up in a game, I was very fortunate to have really great mentors and folks that were working with me had signed me management all of that, and so they really helped me to sit down and understand not only just my paperwork and my contrast, but what all the actual revenue streams are. So with music, I mean, first of all, I would say, look, information is so readily
available online. It's just about knowing what to search and then also knowing what's reliable and so listen, you know, for me even still today, there's your performance rights organizations, which is like your askhap your being mine, and then you have your actual publishing, so whoever's actually administering your publishing. So I know there's a ton of folks that are putting music up on Spotify and you know, distributing their music through an aggregator like a CD baby, distro kid
whatever it is. Yeah, and they completely overlook the actual other side of the publishing and so you still need an administrator on that publishing side. And that's and so you know, I just had a great meeting with Downtown Music Holdings and they've got probably one of the leading from a technology standpoint platforms for that publishing administration. It's called song Trust. And so you know, I think nowadays everything is basically self service, and software really has been
that equalizer, I would say. And for me, I just like to be in control of my revenue stream. So I like to be able to look at be able to just log into my accounts and see them all, even if that means that you know, they may be delayed. I just want to be one on top of them. So I mean, I'm not sure if I'm even answering
your question per se. When I first got started, I would just say, look, I was very much concerned with in advance, and I think a lot of folks when they first get started, you've been living in the basement, you've been you know, living out the trap wherever you living. You want that advance because that advance is that first way that you're going to pay for all those years of starvation, if you will.
So the advance is the money that the record label's given to you, saying like, here's the money that you get to do the project.
Yeah, and I mean it's actually an advance against your royalties. Right. So on the artist's side, depends on the type of deal you make. And I mean, listen, business is really just business, and whatever you sign is whatever you sign. I know, there's definitely always been a lot to talk about, like, hey, you know, people are you know, they got they got into slave deals and you know, you hit these kinds
of overtones. At the end of the day, I think, you know, as long as you've got good legal counsel and you're sitting down and you're looking at your contracts, you're definitely the final arbiter of what deal you get into. And so it's important for you just to just know and be informed. So for me, my Bible level primer for the music industry, and this is an age old primer. It's a Donald Passman book all you need to know
about the music business. It's updated all the time, and you know, I always recommend look, somebody really wants to know. They could start there and it's updated and it was written by an attorney who definitely just understands just the nuances of the business. And then you know, no matter what's actually written in the books, it's different when you're actually sitting across the negotiation table and you're going to negotiate whatever deal is best for you at that time.
And so, you know, I find that there are a lot of folks that when they're sitting at there at that negotiation table and they've never seen five thousan ten th twenty thousand, one hundred thousand at one time in their bank account, much less five hundred thousand or a million dollars, and those situations, they say, oh yeah, definitely sign me up for that, without actually looking at what the actual what the contractual obligations are that are associated
with those deals. The end of the day, though, you know, life just goes on. And I was just having a conversation today. Life is really like water. It is fluid, and basically the time that you have takes on the shape of whatever container that you put around your life.
And so if you put a container around your life where you get that upfront advance, and it's a big upfront advance and you're able to do in a smart way what you should do with that, and you're keeping track of your accounting and when that advance is recouped, etc. Then that may be the right pathway for you as opposed to delaying the gratification and waiting eighteen months to actually let the publishing or the royalties trickle in.
So let me ask you this because a lot of times, especially with producers, there's been a lot of record lab won't name any recor labels, but there's a lot of record labels where producers say that they don't get paid. Right,
It's like a it happens all the time. So why is it such an epidemic with producers, specifically producers making beats and getting delayed on their payments or not getting paid because you hear about that all the time, and even like big name producers and they go on social media and they make a big deal about it.
And so it's like, yo, I have a relationship with you, and you'll give me on the back end, and it never happens.
That happens all Tom, Yeah, I mean listen, like I said, all of all of those situations are directly correlated to what you negotiate upfront, and would I would just say that, in many cases one of the most uncomfortable conversations to have, and unless you have an advocate or you have the wherewithal to have that conversation right there in the session, that uncomfortable conversation is Hey, what part of this record do I own? When do we get paid? How is
it all going to be broken down? And where's the paperwork for it? It almost seems that antithetical to the creative process, right, because the creative process you want to be open, you want to be open is people want to be sharing back and forth and the last element of that process is to be sitting back and saying, Okay,
what percentage of the sung line? It's it's but it's I just believe you you get what you negotiate, and you may not even get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate, right, And so for me, I think that you know, we just have to get more comfortable with the discomfort and it that just needs to be a requisite of doing business. And once you're at that level and you understand and folks that work with you understand that a requisite of doing business is to just
have that upfront, transparent conversation. Then once both sides agreed, then you allowed to run down on people for the money that's owed because there is no confusion in terms of having some sort of like you know, fugazy conversation as opposed to have whatever you need to have in writing, and so you get what you negotiate.
Yeah, so I'm imagine you know when you walk into these tables, obviously you come from a highly educated background. I think you said your dad wanted you to study law. Is that true?
Law, medicine, you know, whatever was guaranteed pathway that somebody was going to get.
Did you feel when you sit at these tables, Obviously you have a distinct advantage knowing that you know what they're not talking to somebody who's under educated in this game.
Listen, I would say that baby and Slim sitting at these tables, they also had an advantage because they were moving one hundred thousand mixtapes a week. So the education is, the education comes in whatever format that you achieve or accumulate the education, right, So it's really up to you to educate yourself. You know, you don't. I mean, I didn't go to Harvard for music business. I read it myself.
And so I think probably some of the most astute business people in the music business they learn from being observant, They learned from having great relationships, They learned from deciding that they wanted to be mentored by the best attorneys, the best managers, and they you know, they had the
transparency into the deals. And so I think that you know, nowadays, like I said, with the with the amount of information that's readily accessible, there's really no excuse for someone to enter into a deal blindly unless they intentionally just want to be ignorant about the deal. And so I think that you know, we live in an age of media where you could find anybody, You can connect with anyone. They may or may not respond, but you can at
least reach out. You can ask for an introduction, you can ask for a referral, you can ask for a recommendation, and you can go get the knowledge. And so you want to be great, just be around the greatest UH
and UH and absorbed as much knowledge as possible. And before you sit down at the table, make sure that you you've done your homework and your research, so that even in the absence of knowing what you need to discuss, you can ask the right questions so that people understand that you you know, you know slotch when you come to the new when you come to the negotiation table.
So what is the you said the royalty administrative company song Trust? Can you explain that I've never heard that before.
Yeah, So basically, you know, you're you're getting whatever the streaming services are paying you. And at the same time, you're also indited to a royalty as a publisher of the music and a writer of the music, and so those publishing and writing royalties have to be collected and administrated by UH. For for me, the beauty of song Trust is that those royalties are actually collected and administered traded on your behalf in all of the countries and
territories around the world. So that includes like, okay, you know what happens you know you yeah, you get paper, your Spotify streams, what happens when your record makes it onto the radio in some obscure country, or what happens when your record is actually being used in a video game.
What happens when your record is actually being played in the nightclubs in you know, some overseas country, all of that is actually being tracked, and there's a there are a massive number of artists who completely overlook that as
a revenue stream. And so I think one of the greatest takeaways from my meeting recently, like I said with Downtown Music Holdings, was that you know, there are a number of creators who once they put their music through distro kid or tune Corps, they they get those checks and they think that's it, when really there's an entire other world of publishing royalties that can be connected. Just
needs to hire an agency to do it. You give them a commission for doing it, and that becomes an additional income stream for you.
So when you're talking about I kind of think, like when streaming, I can get how they track the data when it's played on the radio, honestly, on how to contract the data? How does that happen in a nightclub? Like I'm not you just turn.
It like really for me, every time I every time I perform overseas, they they are keeping track of the set list. So I even get paid to perform my own music.
So like a DJ has to give the set list to the venue.
They give the set list and you know in Europe, I think it's called Geema Gema, and yeah, they track it the best that they can. You know, bottom line is it's just an additional revenue stream, and I think with the advancements in technology that may or inevitably that will improve. It's just going to get better.
So like you can literally get booked for a nightclub, get paid to go to the nightclub, and then if the DJ starts, oh, Ryan Leslie's in the house and starts playing your record, you get pay that too.
Absolutely. Now obviously it's pennies on the dollar. Once you do that, once you do that at scale, it starts to begin to become material and significant.
So as far as the new age that we're in with, because we're gonna talk about that the next segment with the director consuming all of that, but for new new musicians, artists, producers specifically where they're not going to traditional route of going to a record label, because now I've seen it from both sides where a lot of producers are mad at producers that's like selling beats for one hundred dollars, like, but they're getting their music out and then you know,
it's it's an easier route. So what is what's your take on that for art for producers specifically, that might be I guess maybe devaluing there.
We happened with the Old Town Road, right, like the do sold the beat and he gave it to him for like two thousand dollars.
Or even what's the kid Bobby's Murder? That was Lloyd Banks beat? Right? Originally who is that beats?
Right? Thing?
But that record, like that biggest record of the year, right, those ten twelve million times platinum.
Trust me those producers as long as they retain their copyright ownership of those beats. And you know, I also know ab over at Beat Stars, those beasts are actually being licensed and at least to my knowledge, they being licensed. And yeah, you give the license for some low barrier to entry costs so that you know, some artists that doesn't have a lot of money, but it's very creative and could create the next Panda, the next Old Town Road,
the next you know, Bobby Schmurder smash. You license those beats, you retain the ownership though of the copyright, and that's that's where that song trust relationship comes into play, because you're definitely going to get paid based on your ownership of that intellectual property.
I mean.
And so that's why, like I said, you just got to be astute about it. And for or anyone that has you know that has time to be hating on how someone else is getting to their bag, I always recommend like, look, that means you got too much time on your hand. You should really just find another stream of income that you could go chase, because you know, everyone needs to make money the way they feel is
best for them. And the impact overall that that creates in the industry is is just creating more and more opportunity for folks that want to make a living doing what they love. They have the right and they have the latitude to price that intellectual property however they want from a licensing perspective. And you know, when I was in when I was in undergrad at Harvard, I had a business school professor and I used to say, oh, man, you know I don't want any you don't want to
hold on to all my music? He said, look, Ryan, just hold on to your copyrights because the best thing that can ever happen to you is one of those songs. Just go whether someone paid you up front for it or not. As long as you own the copyright, you're getting paid, and you're gonna get paid handsomely as long as as you've done what you're supposed to do in terms of owning that copyright.
So well, that was a lot with the music. So now the next segment, we're going to go into what you got going on now, all right, So now we're gonna go into the deep dive on the tech side. And this is something that we talked about a few different times. So Derek Ferguson former bad Boy see oh all right.
Yep, CFO.
CFO shout out to Derek good guest, and he was the first one to actually bring this up. And then I got Jabari from R and B only talked about the data. And we had Danish Chanel and Prince Donelle and they both spoke about the same thing. So it's been a kind of recurrent theme on Ernalsia.
But but.
You have an actual platform in place. And so twenty thirteen I was watching a breakfast club interview. So twenty thirteen, you said you took your music off of streaming services, right right, How did you do that?
Well, I needed to create an incentive for people to really want to connect with me directly. So I mean, now you can go listen to my records on streaming services. At that time, though, I felt that that the the most important I always say, most important factor or most important attractor or incentive for someone to connect with me directly would be through a conversation about music and new music.
And so in order to build the audience that I wanted to build, and in order to attract the audience that I wanted to attract, and in order to accumulate the kind of data I wanted to accumulate, I needed to make sure that that audience was communicating with me directly. Because the convenience of iTunes, the convenience of Amazon, the convenience of Spotify made it such that they really were just like, oh, okay, well I can just go listen
to Runds music. Why I got to give him, Why I got to give them my cell phone number to listen to it, and so to take all the music off the streaming services. It gave me a way to differentiate between those that were passive interactions with me and
active interactions with me. And I knew that I could convert the active interactions into into a relationship of support, and that support, you know, came to the tune of you know, a two million dollar independent album cycle at that time, with no label, no management, no music videos,
just a short documentary around the project. And so it was important to make sure that there was one exclusive hub where they could get the product, and that the gateway to that hub was for them to just simply earnest what's up.
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Introduce themselves so that for the first time, instead of having an anonymous following, I could actually have a following where every single interaction had a name and email, a phone number, a city, a birthday associated with that.
Yeah, because a lot of times you hear people say we have hardcore fans, right, but they just go to show and like maybe there's fifteen thousand people in a city. You leave that city, you have no idea you don't know any of them unless they pay for a package and they met you backstage or something like that. That doesn't happen even if you've sold records, like there was no way to track, Like hey Tuanisa from Pennsylvania, Like
she bought my album when I you know what I'm saying. So, like your mindset going in was like, let me find the core, core base, and then and make advantage of that off of that.
Yeah, I mean, that's that's the foundation of any great business. That's the foundation of any great audiences. Who is your core, your core? Not only are they going to be your
greatest supporters, they will also be your greatest evangelists. And so when you have a relationship with both your greatest supporters and greatest evangelists, then that therefore creates the kind of the kind of foundation for growth and scale that I think every single business, whether you're a personal business, whether you're in financial services, whether you're selling insurance, whether you're doing business development for a startup, when you have
that core and that core is pleased with your product or service, and that core is also evangelizing for you, they're going to bring you referrals, and then you scale that exact flywheel, and anyone that's studied Amazon understands sort of that flywheel concept, that flywheel starts to starts to start to work, and that's where you get the kind of Amazon scale. And I believe that that should be
applicable to anyone that's starting a business. And I would say the ability to manage that is even more possible when the scale is small. So when you're first starting, you should really just be enjoying the opportunity and the luxury, if you will, of having that kind of relationship with just your first twenty customers, your first two hundred customers, your first five thousand customers, at the scale of Jeff Bezos.
Let's be real, he actually knows what all of us are doing on Amazon, and at the same time, he only knows that when he's able to log in and actually pull up that record. Same for let's call it Delta Airlines, same for you know, yeah, they can definitely see your activity. The reason why I like the Delta Airlines example is because Delta's data about you is really I would say, it's very specific to their business relationship
with you. Right, Amazon and Facebook, I would say, you know the reason why they've ended up in Congress and ended up with a lot of questions. Is because you know, are they collecting more data than they need to have
that business relationship with you. The reason why I love Delta is that Delta just knows, Okay, my relationship, my business relationship with Ryan Leslie is is based on him flying, whether it's flying on you know, Chartered Aircraft, Delta, Private Jets, sky Access or you know, Diamond Medallion member or million mile or whatever it is. And they keep their data really focused on the business relationship with me and how
to serve me better. Now, in the in the in defense of Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, they also believe that they need to collect more data to better serve their audiences. So they need to know, Hey, Ryan doesn't like this, so I'm not going to serve him ads that look like they're the same with Google, or yeah, yeah, Ryan doesn't like this, so I'm not gonna recommend this to him on Amazon. The tricky part is when you know is your Echo device listening to you, is your you know Apple devices.
One thousand, there's gotta be a mic and the phone. I'm telling you, like, there'll be conversations and it won't even be me talking about it. I could be in the room with somebody. Let's are they're talking about getting a new oven, like I'm telling you, like I go to my phone in the first ad will be like a best buy now.
But the great thing is like they're creating not to go off topic, but really not off topic. The crazy thing that happened to me when I really started to get scared about technology is that I was on the phone. I think I might have been on the phone with you, Troy, and I was talking about something like, let's say, like a vacation in Jamaica or something like that, right, but on my phone. So after the conversation I'm verbally talking about this, I go on my laptop, which is a
complete not an Apple device at all. It's like a Toshiba, and I go on Google and it's like a vacation for Jamaica thing that pops up. So I'm like, how did that transfer from my iPhone to a Tshiba laptop in five minutes? Like it's crazy, how did that happen?
Yeah? So I mean, listen, the fact that the largest technology companies are doing this at scale, and when we talk about the scale Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram managing hundreds of millions of people. That for me, is just an indicator that a the technology exists for relationship management at scale, So technology already exists, and B for someone that has any level of ingenuity, that technology can be leveraged on a personal and business level, no matter the scale of
your business. So what that means is as long as Google, as long as WhatsApp, as long as Instagram, as long as Dropbox can have six seven hundred million, maybe a billion users and it's all managed. And when you log into your Gmail account, it's not mixed in with somebody else's email, it's all your it's all very well organized. When you long into your Google Drive, it's all well organized. The fact that the technology infrastructure exists, the fact that
the technology infrastructure is now being productized. So a lot of your favorite businesses are running on Amazon Web services. So whatever Amazon is using to run their back end, you can also just subscribe to that service and run your back end that way. So my excitement for this, especially for our community, is as long as you have the ingenuity, like I said, and you have the vision, and you have the blueprint, because the blueprint has already
been laid. Here's how you actually can manage six hundred million people. Then there really once again, the only limitation is really you. The only limitation is how great of a team can you put together? The only limitation is how big is your vision? The only limitation is how great are the relationships you could put around you to believe in your vision. And so, you know, we watched Steve Stout go out to Silicon Valley and raise seventy
million to make the record company of the future. We've watched you know, two kids from Brazil who built the PayPal of Brazil come and build a credit card company called brex turn it into a one point one billion business in two years, right, And so yeah, you know teenagers, right. And so that's what I'm saying is for us as a community, it's important to a understand that the knowledge exists and the information is just readily available and it's abundant.
Number two, though, is the limitation that you place on yourself is going to be directly correlated to the kind of impact and change that you actually can make in the world. And so I believe that it is time for us. You know, people say hey, you should dream big.
I'm saying dream bigger. I'm saying that as long as Amazon can be what it has become, then whoever is coming next because of the speed of technology, they're going to be able to build the Amazon or the Facebook or the Google or the Instagram of the future in half the time or a quarter of the time. They just need to a have a vision that's big enough, and b be very intentional around the relations and ships that they build around the actual vision, and those people
have to buy into that vision. And that could be you know, your vision for yourself as a music artist, your vision for yourself as an entrepreneur, your vision for yourself as a software developer, as a medical doctor, as an astronaut, whatever your vision is, You've got to put great people around you, the best people around you, because the best people actually attract one another because they're all united in this concept that they want to impact the world in the same way that you do, which is
on the greatest scale.
I think that's one of the things that you kind of preach and I love it. It's like there's a bunch of people over here that have the ideas. They just need to find the people with the capital to help them get out those ideas and relationships is something that you're big on, right, And that's what I mean pretty much super Phone is based off of that, right,
And I know you have this dispyramid of relationships. Yeah, I'm interested because in the pyramid you start with obviously at the bottom of the social media.
Well, I would say that social media is almost like a virtual representation of walking around the streets of New York. Right, So anyone that you see on the streets of New York, or riding the trains or however you're walking around New York, you actually do have the option of speaking to them, right. So you could be in Times Square and you know it's ten twenty thousand people in Times Square. As long as they're standing there and walking the same street with you,
you have the option of speaking with them. Whether they're going to speak to you is up to them. You have the option same on the internet, right, social media, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever social platform you're on. As long as they're there and they're sharing, you also have the option of reaching out and speaking to them, whether it's through a direct message, whether it's in a comment, whether it's in a retweet or reply, whatever it is. They obviously have the option
of whether they would like to respond. The connectivity is there, so I would say the expected response. And that's why you just said, oh in New York, because there's already the building, but it's already built in the expected response time. So once you start on social media and you're basically and that's basically a virtual representation of what's happening in the world. If you're just walking around, the expected response time or the expectation for a response is very low.
Once you can move up and you actually can get an email address, that expectation for a response goes up.
Yeah, so you went social media. I think you said MS.
Email, right, so you get from DMS to email. The beauty of email as well is the fact that nine times out of ten when you get someone's email, you've been introduced by someone. So you say, like, just how I say, Hey, put me in touch with your guy from the R and B and he's doing texting. I'm going to get a warm introduction, so it's not just me reaching out randomly. Yeah, I'm getting a warm introduction
on email, right, That can also happen on text. What I like about text though, is the fact that text allows you to turn up from texting to a phone conversation very quickly. And when you have that kind of rapport, you're really going to see who wants to work with you. Yeah, when you can take stock of who actually answers your phone call, especially in twenty twenty, who's actually going to answer the phone call?
Right?
And then that continues up the pyramid. Okay, yo, we had a phone call. Hey, look, why don't you pull up at this time? You got that in person, and then you continue moving up the pyramid from this.
So yeah, I want to talk about superform, But before that, I wanted to go back to that. You said you made two million dollars after off that album when you took it off, So can you detail, like how did you do that? Was it through e merged? Was it through live shows? A combination of everything live lit? I've made up the majority live shows. Yeah.
So when I put my number on Twitter and say hey, everybody shoot me a text, there were thirty five thousand people that texted in the first response that everyone got. And whether you're texting, you know you texted me for the first time, or you see any of these other celebs. I mean they're now six seven years later, everybody finally caught on.
You know what I'm saying.
The first response is it needs to be automated right for you to be able to manage the scale, And that first response is always thanks for texting. I would love to know who you are, so please, you know, put your information in my phone right because I'm not gonna type everybody's information. So here's a form you can you can actually put your information in my phone so
I know who's even texting me at that point. The difference I would say between my twenty thirteen campaign and the campaigns that I'm seeing now is that there was a very specific intent captured at the initiation of the conversation. So I didn't just say, hey, here's my number, shoot me a text.
What's up.
I said, look, shoot me a text to get my new album. So they shot me a text. I already know the reason they're texting is to give new product. What's your information? Once I have the information, here's the link to get the album. Once that intent is captured, then you have an incredibly high conversion rate, so one out of every two about seventeen thousand people actually bought that record. They bought it for ten dollars. That's one
hundred and seventy thousand, right. The difference though, is that I now have a rolodex, a record, a ledger of every single person that's willing to actually spend money with me directly. So now not only do you I have names, not only do you have emails, not only to have telephone numbers, I have city and state and country information. So now I'm going on tour.
Got the real goal?
You going on tour. People go to concerts because it is a social experience. So yeah, you might go to the concert. If none of your friends want to go, you still figure out a where you go by yourself. But you're still in a room with a bunch of people. You guys are connected by the fact that you appreciate the artist that's on stage. For me, in that situation, even though only seventeen thousand people in my phone actually bought my record, they all brought a friend or two
or three or five to the concerts. When I announced them, we sold forty thousand tickets sixty euros a ticket.
You could do the math. That's like five albums right there.
You know, and so it's really just and like I said, you know, there's obviously ancillary income that happens from that. There's publishing revenue and merchandise, et cetera. For me, you know, I really prefer digital goods because you know, there's a cost of goods. You know, when you have merchandise, and there's a cost of inventory, there's a cost of shipping.
So digital goods for me have always been my preference just because they have unlimited scale and as long as you're delivering value, hopefully your content is gonna be ever green. And so that's why I always I always remind an artist that even though you may feel like your music is outdated to you, it's actually brand new for the
person who's hearing it for the first time. And the reality is that even if you went platinum, there is still a large number of people around the world who have yet to have even heard your record one time. So you have the ability in music, which is always why I say, look, just create the best music you possibly can, because great music is ever green, you know.
And so you know, I'm doing some real estate development and investments in and so you know, sometimes you'll walk into some of the whether it's the mom and pop stores or just the bodegas or wherever, and they'll be playing some great, you know, old school music. I've never heard the record before. I'm putting my shazama up because for me, it's still that experience of discovering that music for the first time. It's thirty forty years old.
You know.
I love what you said as far as like, how many people don't know you? Because that happened, I realized that, like now with the podcast has become very popular, especially in our community, and we went to an event curl Fest. I don't know if you've heard of it, but yeah, one of our guests on the podcast, a friend of all,
she does it. So we had curl Fest this year and it's like twenty thousand women and not a lot of men, and like at least probably like twenty twenty people came up to us like, yeah, we love your podcast. So at first, like this is dope, Like we feel like, you know, we made it. But then I'm thinking twenty people recognized us, which is dope, But there's twenty thousand people here, Like how many people? We still got so much more to penetrate.
Day I tell them every day, Like my life is so much duality. Like I go to work, most of my co workers don't even know I do a podcast. When I walk down the street, most people don't even know I'm a teacher. But like there are rare cads, like we're in Houston and somebody will say, oh, you know, I love your podcast. It's like, this is cool, but now we got so much concenetration.
You cannot get thinking that you like made it because yeah, there's always a bunch of people that don't have no clue.
Yeah, and also just to be just to keep it one hundred, you still can be ridiculously wealthy just from a niche audience. You know, I would say that you know, they're they're there exist a number of gen zers that may not even know who Oprah is.
Right, that's the fact.
The audience though that she's created, that's her niche audience, and that's a that's a loyal audience. And that audience is not just limited to the viewers, it's also limited to the television executives that love her content and want
to syndicate it. Right, And so I think that you know, the I would say the conundrum of scale, or the dilemma, if you will, of scale is unless you really have the technological infrastructure to have a direct relationship with each one of your listeners at scale, you're better off having a manageable, manageable audience in terms of size, so that you can actually have a depth of a relationship with
those folks. I have folks, you know. You look at my socials, my socials compared to the biggest stars or influencers on Instagram. I'm sitting at three hundred and sixty thousand followers.
I know that.
In my core though, I have folks that have spent four or five, six, seven, ten thousand dollars with me, and I know every dollar they spent, I know the products they like, et cetera. And so you know that depth of relationship on it. And that's sort of in any than any vertical. In any circumstance, the depth of relationship is always going to yield I would say, just a greater reward in general.
Sometimes less is more.
My graduates from my school being forced bad drop drop drop bad drop b drop.
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