The New “Management” Model that Built Brent Faiyaz’s 8-Figure Business ft. Ty Baisden

The difference of an operator and a manager is that an operator can run your business when you're not looking. If you're a music artist who's had a manager that you felt like wasn't doing to earn 20% of your money, this episode might make you a little uncomfortable. And an operator can be a manager, but a lot of the times a manager can't be an operator. Today we sit down with Ty Baisden, who is the manager to global superstar Brent Faiyaz, but more importantly, his business partner. And he breaks down how they built Brent's operation into an eight-figure business. When Brent wasn't looking, I was setting up credit facilities, payroll operations, I was setting up insurance. Managers don't do that. Artists love saying, all I need is a manager. But the truth is, if you don't have anything to manage, a traditional manager isn't gonna wave some magical manager wand and create a thriving business for you. If I walked into a fully built-out business, already hitting their KPIs, worth $50 million, then that's different. I'm not employee number one at that point.

I'm probably employee number 1300. What most artists are actually looking for is an operator, a business partner, a co-founder type who can build the machine while they focus on the art. There's a lot of managers that don't understand the business one-on-one. They get an artist and then they start delegating. Boom, sign into the production company. Boom, I'm gonna get you a lawyer. Boom, I'm gonna get you a business manager. You've delegated your way out of being the manager. You're very disposable at that point. The problem is that type of person isn't attracted to the typical 20% model. They're interested in ownership. Like equity. A reason to care about every part of the company like it's theirs. Because it is. Management is a job. Equity is a stakeholder. If you got an operator, you give operators some equity. So unless you're an artist who's also an incredibly savvy business person, this modern model is something we think you should absolutely consider. So grab a notebook and take notes on what Ty shares with us because him and Brent are one of the cleanest examples of how this artist operator duo can work wonders. By 2030, we want to have hit 100 million dollars in revenue.

You know, Henry, everyone's been saying, like, God, every episode, you guys are just leveling up, leveling up. The quality of the guests is just getting insane. Bro, this is no different. We got Ty Baisden on the podcast, Henry. Holy shit. I'm speechless. Literally, I am too. I mean, this one has been a long time coming. We've had some scheduling things. You're a very busy man. We appreciate you so much for coming on on the show in person. Um, and I'm excited for this one, man, because I I don't know if you guys were the first, but you're sure as hell the pioneers of the whole like artist business, you know, executive, kind of artist manager equity partnership model. Right, right. Um, so you know, as opposed to kind of the traditional commission based model, you guys kind of rewrote the rules um and you've gone down a different path. So I just want to start. And it's worked, but yeah, and it's and it's worked. Yeah, exactly. Later on in the conversation, we're gonna talk about a hundred million dollar revenue target that you set out two years ago. Right.

I don't know if you remember setting that out because we're gonna we're gonna hold you accountable for that. We definitely, we definitely working towards that for sure. Okay, great, great. So we'll dive into that for sure. But I go, I I just I just want to like set the stage for how you and Brent have operated, you know, over the years, right? So, what what issues did you and I guess Brent have with the traditional commission-based model? Well, the I don't know if it was something that Brent had a problem with. Okay. Fair enough. As artists, you know, 20% is fine. Yeah, the artists, they're like, you know, they're just trying to get their art out, right? And so, you know, from a from a spiritual perspective, moving around growing up in Atlanta, like you're you're constantly trying to figure out what does Jesus want me to do? You know, like this, this, you know, I can be doing this, I can be doing that. And when I would look at all of the different examples in Atlanta, it was like Chaka, Jason Jeter, Coach K, they always always felt like they was partners with their clients and their and the and their and the artists, right? So, but I'll also be privy to just reading about artists would get fired.

So I'm like, well, if this is a business, and I am part of one part of the business, and the artist plays a role in another part of the business, why don't we just treat it like business? So if if if this was Facebook, you know, and I was employee number three, I would have equity in the business, right? So in our like dynamic with Brent, technically I was employee number two. That's true. So he is like Lost Kids is his brainchild. It's tattooed on his is like from a conceptual aspect of it. I just was the business operations of it, right? From uh, oh, you know, we should incorporate this. Oh, we're gonna get a bank account. Oh, but the music, the the taste of like what Lost Kids, the tone, like I don't sing, you know what I'm saying? I don't write music, right?

The the the closest thing to me writing music was Brent just being around me, talking to people and using those conversations for songs. That was it. I don't write music, I don't publish the music. Are you getting publishing for that though? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Damn. I wish I would get publishing just for introducing people for the conversations. But the thought process of it was I'm employee number two. So employee number two in any other world, especially in startup business where you like the music business is pretty risky, just like startup business is pretty risky. 97% fail rate. So if if not higher. I was like, woah. So I'm just like, yeah, I'm not finna be a manager and then I'd be employee number two. Now, if I walked into a fully built-out business that is already hitting their KPIs, that's worth $50 million, and I get hired to be a manager, and I get a salary, and then I get a commission based off what I bring to the table as a, then that's different. I'm not employee number one at that point.

I'm probably employee number like 1300. You know? So the the the the baseline of it was what I talk about consistently in the book and just in real life, is like I just wanted to build a business. So how much resistance did you, you know, were you met with from Brent? Because that wasn't, I mean, I know you know you mentioned Coach K, Jason, et cetera, that they did have some like equity stake and and you know, working with their clients or whatever, but it was it's it's still not the traditional way of doing it. So, like, was he adverse to it? So Brent was the third artist that signed that type of deal from the standpoint of the artist we was trying to work with, right? Um, the two of the artists, I was in another partnership, right? Brent was the first one that signed the type of deal where it was just me, my company, and him, right? And and then honestly, in Brent's defense, he was like, okay, I'm gonna sign this, but first let me go take it to my parents. They're gonna get me a lawyer.

So I said, Yeah, cool, get a lawyer, it's all good. And I think Brent as a creator, they was taking too long, and he was just like, man, F this, I'm just signing it. Shit. Right. And so, and mind you, it's a it's a it's a very unique operational agreement, you know. Uh, and then it was once you have the operational agreement that you got 50% of the company, now you're just signing a recording agreement to the company that you own 50% of, right? So now you're like, I am the executive, but I'm the artist. Here's my artist contract, and then this is my executive contract, my shareholder contract. This is what it says to be a shareholder. These are the rights I have. This is the because Brent have full creative control over the art. So if we can't come to a certain agreement, he gets the tiebreaker. It don't really matter.

So I've always operated like that. Like, if it was like, hey, it's a creative thing, man. I can't just do whatever I want to do, you know, just because a lot of the times when you run the business, you think that, oh, because the money's structured a certain way, or how I do this, that I can just tell you what to do creatively. And I never really operated like that with Brent. So it was uh a two-fold thing. It was like, this is you as an executive, and this is you as an artist. And it's two different contracts that you had to like execute. Yeah, and do you recommend? Because I feel like I've heard that, you know, on other podcasts or you know, past guests of ours. Do you recommend that even if you don't have a business partner, should artists be signing themselves to their okay? Absolutely. Well, how does that work? So, like, what is the you know, because we've heard that before and it sounds asinine in some ways, but like break down why that's important. So think about it like this, right? Think about probate. Like when somebody dies, there has to be documentation that shows what they own.

Yeah. Right. Now, in the United States of America, if you create a copyright, as you know as a producer, you automatically own it until further notice. Until there's documentation that's sharing it, sharing it or that's saying otherwise. Yeah. So from a just structural perspective, you want to be able to say, I am a 95% shareholder of this company. The other 5% is my brother or my mom or somebody that I trust. Yeah. Or my business partner, whatever. And then I'm gonna go and sign an agreement with myself to formalize business, right? It's no different than getting health insurance. How often do you use health insurance? It's no different than getting car insurance. How often you just are you actually in an accident, right? What ends up happening with creative people is that they just get lazy in the paperwork part of things. Like, oh man, I don't gotta do this, right?

But what ends up happening is when you do it, let's say a record label comes to the table and they say an epic or a republic, and they're like, oh my God, I love this. I want to I want to do some business, right? Now you have a company that's protecting you from the label, right? Because the company is like, yeah, this is the company you got to deal with to get the rights. No artists have to have that. Well, a lot of artists don't have that. So when a label comes, there is not a like a structure. Uh this is the United States of America in all caps. So that means that it's a corporate documentation. Corporate writing is in all caps, right? That's that's when you see if you get sued, if you look at contracts, Ty-based, this is literally all caps. Big ass letters. So you got to know that that documentation is a structure that protects your IP. So you just want to get documentation to protect your IP. Because guess what?

Let's say you do, let's say you're an artist and you got 10 albums out, and those 10 albums generate you a hundred thousand dollars a year. And let's say you want to go and do your will and testament, or you want to do your balance sheet. Like, how much are you worth? Like, well, you know, I got this IP that that that does about a hundred thousand dollars a year. Okay, cool. Now I want to go and get a loan from a bank. I want to go do this. They're like, well, can you prove your employment? Like, what are you how do you can you prove your income? Right? When you have paperwork that says, I own this company, this company signed over my rights. So as an artist, I signed my rights over to the company I own. So me as an artist, technically I don't own nothing. My company owns it, right? Yeah, so as the artist, you're just uh a branded, a face, uh, a name, right? But the real IP is with your company, so it's a layered of like protection from people that's chasing the artists.

But now when you start talking about growing your business, if you want to go and get a loan against your catalog, the bank is gonna ask you, where's the paperwork that says that you own this? They're not gonna say, you know what? You made it. You own it. You can't be like, I got the files on my computer. I swear. Got the stems. You want me to pull up my Pro Tools file? Do you need me to sing you something a cappella? I can sing it for you right now. Right now. So what ends up happening is it's called due diligence. Yeah. If you wanna get a loan, you gotta get it valued. When you get your asset valued, they're gonna ask you for your revenue, they're gonna ask you for all these different things to value it, right? You don't need to show no paperwork to value it because they're gonna ask for all the revenue that comes in. So when the revenue comes in, they're gonna ask you for like the copyrights, like what are the copyrights that we're valuing, right? So we can match it up with your royalty statements. Once you get that, they're gonna say, okay, you make 100,000 a year on average for the last four, five years.

We're gonna say that we'll value this at 11x. 11x means that somebody wanna buy it, 11x, so that's 1.1 million dollars. Yeah, boom. That's the valuation. If you do that with the right valuation company, that valuation stands up with multiple banks. Now you can put that on your balance sheet to say that I have a catalog that's worth 1.1 million dollars. Now, when you say that you want to go and take a loan out against that catalog, you gotta go sit with the bank. And the bank, like a bank of a Bank of America does it, uh, at a certain threshold, the bank is gonna say, Well, show me the valuation. Like this place, there they if you want to get an appraisal, they're gonna say the bank is saying, Hey, can you show me an appraisal of what your is valued at? So you're getting your catalog appraised and it just needs certain paperwork. So the bank is gonna ask you for where's the documentation that says who owns these trademarks, who owns these copyrights. It doesn't matter if you made it or not, they're gonna want to see documentation that says who owns it, who owns the copyright.

Are you signed to this company? Are you do you have the authority to even do these things? It's so many different reasons on why you should be signed to yourself. Damn. Yeah. That was so helpful. I mean, I think it's just, you know, if you're taking this seriously, too. It's just a sign that you're like actually, some people just show one foot in, one foot out, I feel like. And I'm gonna say this. Yeah, go ahead. I'm gonna say this. What a camera that I can look at. Look at this. Look at this one right there. If you're doing business, and you email me, your email says, littletrigger936 at gmail.com. I'm gonna assume that you're not serious about your business. Because of what? So Henry hears this professionalism. No, but what part of that is wrong? Not the little trigger part, right? Oh, gmail.com. Thank you, bro. How much time did I set spend setting up our professional email? He fought me, bro. Listen, let me tell you something. He thought Gmails were fine. Gmail, it's legit.

I get it. The Gmail you you you white label your email by using Gmail system. So it's still the same thing for you when you're checking on the back end. Yeah, but when people and this is what happens. Getting an Outlook, bro. Yeah, yeah. So listen, I know. The Outlook is crazy. But listen, so that's where thank you. And I'm gonna walk you, Ty. I'm gonna walk you through. I'm gonna walk you. That's crazy. Especially the GoDaddy, the GoDaddy domain. Oh my gosh. Use Google. Dude, stop outing us right now, Ty. Our own fucking show. So listen, very important. As independent businesses, right? Your validation is going to be in your email response. That's how they validate if you are legitimate with that company. Yeah. Right? So if you are an artist, it's nothing wrong with having info or like help me at yourartistname.com. Yeah. Because it's so much that nobody knows what's real. Right?

I have had multiple people that work with our companies, rather they're contractors or or they are full-time employees. They say, hey, we're doing outreach for the company. Can we get an email address so that people would know that we are actually legitimately speaking on your behalf? That's it. It's not that you're like, oh, you don't know business or oh, you know, no, it is $15 a year to get a domain from Squarespace. Yeah. And it's another $15 to get your Google Workspace. Yep. Just so that people will take you serious. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It's it's like showing up dressed dressed dressed appropriately, yes, digitally. I look at this thing and I'd be like, bruh. No way. Because at this point, it's a scam. I can't, I can't click on it. It's a scam. And you're not doing the deal with Little Trigger. little trigger. Little trigger is crazy. I will open up help at littletrigger.com. Okay.

All right, definitely my interest is piqued if it's at littletrigger.com. If you guys at littletrigger.com can be so many things. Guys, we're only 15 minutes into this episode, and Ty's already dropping bangers. If you gotta go ahead and like the video, leave a comment and subscribe to the channel for the value that we're bringing you every week. Let's go. From people like Ty Baisden. Yeah. So is the is the equity partnership right for every artist manager? No. Okay. No. When when does it make sense? And then when does it not make sense? If you are, there are a lot of artists, right? Like a LaRussell or, you know, like a Bash for the World or a 2 Chainz, right? Like there are artists who pretty much do a lot of stuff themselves. Yeah. Like managers are really just managing. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. If you're just managing, it's hard to justify an equity partner at a certain point, right? If you start and you say, hey, listen, man, I'm managing this.

Can I get 5%, 10% or whatever the case might be, then you're like, the artist is in a position to say, you know what? Uh how about I I can do this, but we can invest it over time to see if you last. Yeah. Right? Because I've already built so much. If any, that's any business though. Like, if if you all own 10 properties and it's under one holding company but 10 different LLCs. Oh, screw me. 10 different LLCs, and I come to you and I say, I can manage these properties for you. We have some of the best management skills out here for real estate. But I want to own about 33% of each LLC. But that like, that doesn't make sense. These are already functional rental properties that's generating hundreds of thousands of dollars. It doesn't make sense, right? But if I come to you and I say, What's the valuation of these properties? And you say, Oh, well, you know, we got 10. Last time we got them appraised, uh, probably about 10 million dollars.

So each one is appraised at about a million dollars. You know, we bought them around 200,000 apiece, but they're they got equity in it at about 800,000. So I say, okay, cool. Would you be open to me giving you 50% of the value cash for me to come in as an equity partner, right? Now you're probably gonna think about that. You know, $5 million right now, you know, this then they come in and they save us money because now we don't have to pay property managers anymore. Now they're the partners on that aspect that we got a back end, we can see all these different things. It's like, you know what? Let's entertain this. We don't know if we're gonna close the deal, but it's worth entertaining. But a lot of artists are not in that place, right? And a lot of managers have to learn a lot more before they can actually be operators. If you got an operator, you give operators some equity. Managers are not always operators. Okay, speak on the difference. The difference of an operator and a manager is that an operator can run your business when you're not looking.

Management is sometimes a lot of managers don't even have the skill set developed yet to run a business when somebody's not looking. So that means that when Brent wasn't looking, I was setting up credit facilities. I was setting up payroll operations, I was setting up insurance for our staff that was coming on. I was setting up the LLCs in different states. I was setting up templates for for work for hires. I was billing out what the the proceeds, the processes and procedures are for paying people, right? I was setting up what the strategy is going to be for year one, two, three. I was building out a lot of the relationships that we needed from a from a conventional loan perspective to fund the company. You know what I'm saying? Managers don't do that. You know what I'm saying?

So if so, if I'm asking for equity, I'm I'm an operator. You know what I'm saying? And I got and I got money. So that's an investor, an operator, and a manager are three different aspects of things. All of them have value, right? But the person with the money can just put the money in if they got a good operator. And an operator can be a manager, but a lot of the times a manager can't be an operator. You know what I'm saying? You have to all you have to learn management skill sets, and then you have to grow out of the management skill sets to be able to be a more of a executive level leader from an operator perspective. You got to understand business. There's a lot of managers. Mind you now, I used to be like this. So I'm not just on this thing being like, are you dumb managers? No. There's a lot of managers that don't know business, that don't understand the business one on one. So what they do is they get an artist and then they start delegating.

Boom, sign you to the production company, which is a label. Boom, I'm gonna sign you to, I'm gonna get you a lawyer, boom, I'm gonna get you a business manager, boom, Boom. I'm gonna get you a uh booking agent, boom, I'm gonna get you a publisher. Then you over time you age yourself out because now the artist is like, I don't need you to manage this. Right. You pretty much gave everybody the job that you could have had long term. Yeah, you could have been the manager and started to go to school to transition yourself into the business manager. Because now you have certain certifications, right? You could have been the manager that went and got your uh your talent representation license that each state requires, but California is really, really heavy on it, so that you can become the booking agent, right? But when you just sit and be lazy and and and complacent, but you're hiring all of these other high-level professionals around you at some point, unless the artist is like super super diehard loyal to you, you you you've you've you've delegated, you've delegated your way out of being the manager. You're very disposable at that point.

1000%. Yeah, because you don't really have no, you did nothing but hire people. Yeah. You're basically a staffing company. Yeah. And staffing companies, you usually gotta some high turnover. Yeah, it's the runway. You know what I'm saying? So then, like, do you recommend because I think I wrap my head around what you're saying around like, all right, if an artist company is already generating X amount in revenue and they're kind of like already operating successfully, then it is a much harder conversation, unless you're gonna come in and like buy yourself into equity, right? It's a tougher conversation to like ask for equity in a business that's already running, right? Right. But a lot of our community is maybe like, you know, earlier on in their career, right? They're kind of ramping up. Um, so if they find someone that wants to be a part of their team, right, and wants to act as a manager, or in this case, maybe wants to act as a as an operator, right? Is it safe to say that you recommend that everyone kind of go down this route if they're both starting from like ground zero together, or is there still a distinction between, yeah, just because we're starting together and we're both putting in a lot of work, that still doesn't mean everyone's entitled to equity. Let me take a moment to interrupt this episode and tell you about our friends over at DistroKid.

DistroKid is easily the best DIY distributor on the marketplace. Let me tell you why. It's only $23 a year. That's less than two bucks a month for you to upload unlimited music to all of your favorite streaming platforms on the planet. It's so easy that it takes me like five minutes per upload, and that's when I'm multitasking, dealing with my two-year-old son. Hands down, my favorite part about DistroKid is how easy it is to add credits to an upload. I don't know what distributor you're using, but with DistroKid, it's super easy. You can put the artist, the producer, the songwriter. I'm pretty sure you can put like the junior associate engineer of a song. And me, I I want to know who's on the record. And if you sign up using this link, you're gonna get 30% off an already insanely low price. And you can finally start adding your collaborators because they are checking. They will notice when their name's there and they will thank you for doing it. Let's get back to the episode. What do you think? Okay. I think everybody should have a vesting period. Okay.

And explain, explain what that means because a vesting period means that you earn your keep over time, right? So if an artist is like, okay, you can be my manager, we can start a company together. But we have I have to position it so that you can earn over time the equity that you're asking for. So what that does is that give both parties the opportunity to see how each other work. Yeah. Right. One of my strategies I would do with artists, and I kind of still do it to this day, is let's just work for 12 months. Let's see how it goes. If it if it works well, then we can figure out what our next steps might be, right? Um But so during that 12 months, what's the how is it structured? Is it the just handshake traditional? Just handshake. But how are you getting paid? Handshake. You do you trust like if you can't pay me when we don't got no paperwork, you definitely ain't gonna pay me when we got paperwork. Paperwork don't mean that you're gonna pay me.

Integrity mean you're gonna pay me. Is it 50-50 or whatever you might end up doing? Whatever, whatever you whatever you agree on. Okay. So like if I agree on managing you, you know, and just go to the 20% commission. Go to the 20% commission. 12 months. 12 months, you like it. Then you like say, okay, cool. Like, so that's how what I this is our management side of things, right? Yeah. You've already seen my work. Am I to put money into anything? Right? If I'm to put money into anything, then we need to like think about these differently. Because what equity I have in a company, is not determining what my management percentage is, right? And what I mean by that is management is a job. Equity is a stakeholder. So I can own 30% of a company, but only get 7% management that comes in. Because my shareholder, that's just me. If something goes wrong or somebody want to buy the company, that's how much you gotta pay me. That's how much of the company or the control I have. Yeah.

But my job is a manager. Sure. But so do you double dip? Meaning, like, and I and you know, if you can share, but it's like if I'm an equity stakeholder in the artist's company, right? And then I'm also acting as a manager, do I then get my commission as well? Well, if you're if you're building out a business, yeah, it's hard for you to double dip because shareholders doesn't mean you get paid every year. Yeah. Shareholders means that you control an equity part of this business. Yeah. The people that are active get paid, right? So my active role with Brent historically was I was getting paid 20%. Well, at times I would get paid less than that, and Brent would get paid less than that. Yeah. As we were trying to build a business. Yeah. Right. Um, but I wasn't making 20% of everything that came in. Yeah. Because then we wouldn't have made up, we wouldn't have been able to make a business. And Brent wasn't making 80% of everything that came in. Right.

So as we started building the scale in the business, it got to the point where we started making the money that we felt good about while still being able to run the business. But it was never a double dip thing because equity and your job title actively is not the same thing. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, the money you're getting paid as a manager's, you know, coming from the company, which is partly owned by you anyway. So it's a balance. Yeah. Interesting. And a lot of people don't realize that a lot, a lot of artists, they get like their lawyers of scare them or whatever, but like you can give your manager 5% of your company because you think they earned and they help you build it, and they still be getting 10, 15%, 20% commissions on everything they bring in. Because your company can go and start a camera company that has nothing to do with you as an artist. And now that manager just turned into a product manager, and they're the one that brought that camera company to you in that partnership, you all merged, and now this new business has been birthed that y'all have 45% of. That was all because of your manager.

It had nothing to do with music. Yeah. So kind of perfect segue. So in like 2024, you went on record saying that you had a hundred million dollar revenue target by 2030. All right. We're in 2026 right now. What made up that 100 million dollars? So I'm assuming it wasn't just music. No, so the goal was we'll doing when we first started our holding company, right? So culture on the music management, label services, independent distributor side, that was started March 2018. Okay. Right. Then I realized like, wow, I'm building this plane while I'm flying. So I reverse engineered things and I started a holding company. Okay. The holding company started in March 2020. Okay. So by the end of 2020, we put together a decade plan for the holding company, which is culture holdings. So that decade plan consists of this milestone that by 2030, we want to have hit combined 100 million dollars in revenue. Right?

And that and that's just for your holding company. That's just my holding company. It's not even. This is not even Brent. No, this is a completely different business that we was going to, that we're scaling. Yeah. That deals with our sports representation, that deals with our media media things that deals with the book, deals with the podcast, deals with the talent management, label services, all the things that we that we add value because culture holdings is a talent management and an IP management firm across music, sports, and media. Okay. Right. So those are the three industries. And then we focus on the talent management and then the IP management. Sometimes the IP is the talent's IP. Sometimes it's IP that we've created internally that we manage internally. Yeah. And so what percentage of that is music related of that hundred million? Well, it's all broken down into third. So the goal is to have a 33% that comes from music, 33% that comes from sports, 33% that comes from media. Okay, perfect.

Wow. Okay. So for I'm wondering for our independent artists out there, do you recommend that they be looking at like other revenue streams as well? Yeah, I think that now once again, we're doing, we're talking about business, right? It's important for independent artists to realize that being an artist is only one vertical of your LLC, right? So if you are a artist and you like headphones, and you say, you know what? I think that I probably could sell headphones to my fans, right? You're selling those headphones as another business. It might be, it might start off as your merch business, but it might grow into something else, right? So it's important for them to kind of like have a holding company style approach. So that one vertical is artist LLC, the next vertical is publishing LLC, the next vertical is touring LLC, and that artist LLC is just the music. Revenue that come from the music, syncs, sales, vinyl sales, all of those different things.

Your touring is when you actually go out on the road. You want to have that separate because you can have more liability insurance issues and stuff like that from a touring side of the business, right? So to answer your question, every artist should look at it like I'm building a holding company that houses my artist NIL, name, image, and likeness, and my revenue as an artist. And then I have to start breaking out that revenue because they're two different type of business. My master rights is separate from my publishing rights. I can sell my master side of my business and keep the publisher side of my business. Or I can sell the publisher side of my business and keep the master side of my business. So when you're thinking about scaling, you're like, how do I want to sell this? If I ever sell it, I don't want to sell it. I want to be able to sell one thing and keep the other, right? So when you build out a holding company, your holding company might have five different businesses that you would ideally want to sell in the future. They're not all under one thing.

You want to kind of like separate them so that you can kind of like scale your business, you know? And you can really be able to like bring in a manager and say, I'll bring you in and you can have a percentage of my touring LLC. Because that's what you specialize in. I've seen you work, I've seen your your like you do well at that. I'll vest it. I'll give you vested equity over a three-year period, up to 10% of my touring business. I'm finna go do two, I'm gonna do about two more tours over the next three years, and then at the end of that three year period, we'll re-evaluate like how do you feel about it? It will close out your your vested equity side of it. So now there's a value, a person know that they can get bought out and kind of see a cash windfall, you know, from that perspective. Yeah, I love the verticals, man. I just think that's so important to be thinking about this when you guys are building your businesses. There's so much more to than just three-tenths of a penny from a Spotify stream. 1,000%. You want it. That's the only reason why we was able to grow.

I we focused on screaming only as a foundation of our business. Because I had already did research in 2009 that screaming was gonna outpace traditional and digital revenue streams. Y'all were ahead of the curve. Yeah. So I studied this just because of a tech company that I was um doing uh research analysis for to help them around screaming. So when I did the research and all of the formulas and everything we did, no matter what we matched it with, over time, screaming out earned every single revenue stream from physical sales, digital sales, radio set, everything. Screaming out matched it over time. Interesting. So when did you and Brent first start working together? Uh uh unofficially, 2014. Okay.

Officially 2015. Okay, so let's say officially, right? Um, let's talk about like your first 100K in revenue with Brent's business. Where did that come from? All streaming at that point? All streaming. All streaming. Well, I'll tell you that back. Revenue in general, yeah. From the publishing deal we cut. Okay. The revenue and profit, all streaming. Okay. And so if an artist is starting out today, where do you think it's where should they be trying to get their first 100K from? Um, direct consumer. Okay. Direct consumer. So it's just it's a totally new ballgame. It is. It's a totally new ballgame. Yeah. You you you use screaming as your discovery. So what what people did not know about streaming is that streaming was designed to be a supplementary income stream for the music business. Yeah. It wasn't designed to be primary. But that's how everyone flipped it. Or everyone started treating it that way. Because that is just the that is the power of it.

Like think about this. 2000, I think that's when the piracy and the music industry. started crashing. Yeah, Napster's going crazy. Napster's going crazy. So from 2000, and probably, I think it was like more like 98, but like let's just use 2000. We'll do the Round numbers. 2000 to 2017. It was just For seven years, the music industry was on like this decline. Yeah. Screaming picked up in 2015. The screaming exploded 2016. When they got the first quarter reports back from fourth quarter. So in 2017, the first quarter, they got all the reports back from 2016. The music business for the first time in over a decade saw gains. Yeah. Not from digital, not from vinyls, not from physicals, not from your traditional things from the birth of screaming. Yeah.

Then from there, it just kept doing this, right? And then what really solidified it is COVID. Only people that was making money during COVID was music right owners, the NBA, UFC, uh food food places, like entertainment, like Netflix, and you know, and of course, like Zoom and stuff like that. But it showed the power of the rights of music during an entire pandemic globally, right? And our business exploded during that time. Yeah. So it's just crazy that you mentioned kind of direct to consumer. I just saw the CEO and founder of Even Mag, who, you know, who who we've had on the podcast, he shared a snippet from UMG's uh, I guess, earnings presentation, and super fan ecosystem was a slide and even was like listed on it, you know, because they have like a partnership now with UMG, and that just shows the the biggest of the bigs now, they're just hip too, like that's the way this is all going. Yep, it's changed.

It's changed. The artist development is gonna become more valuable. Screaming is just gonna be distribution of content, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Spotify. It's not gonna be the place where you get discovered at anymore. Well, TikTok still is a heavy, heavy discovery tool. Yeah, so you can kind of X TikTok out. You can kind of X out like YouTube, because gaming and screamers are really people are discovering things. Yes. But in terms of like Instagram, Spotify, Amazon, SoundCloud, you know, people probably still discover stuff on SoundCloud, but Apple Music, it is literally just marketing now. It used to be Discovery, but it's just marketing. You can get every single playlist that you want. And if you are a artist that have any type of fan base, it's only gonna make a max 10% of your audience that are screaming. Because they're they're saving it and they're adding to their own playlist and they're listening to it how they want to listen to it. So you have to use those platforms to find your super fans to get to them directly.

Yeah. So what did the super fan ecosystem look like as Brent's you know, rise to fame was happening? Was that really even a big part of how y'all were, you know what I mean? Like, how did you think about superfans back then versus how do you guys, you know, think about it today? Well, the super fans from us, we didn't know that they were super fans. We just thought it was fans. So we was using Spotify data to kind of like go and figure out where we was, you know, which is very limited, right? Yeah, yeah. When Spotify is very limited. When Apple launched theirs, Apple was way more like grandiose. Like it was like depth in their analysis. Yeah. So we started combining those together. We didn't realize that we was targeting the superfans. Because that terminology in 2017 wasn't a terminology that was widely used. Yeah.

So when we had people signing up for the like pre-sale tickets or signing up to go merch or signing up to come to our events, we just like, these are our fans. We did not think about passive or active. Like, you know, we didn't think about we we wasn't, that wasn't the thing, but those were our super fans. Yeah. But we didn't know that. We just said these are our fans. Yeah. Right? And then we would do everything. So before something would go live, we would text it to all of our fans that was giving us access to like their phone number, their emails, or we would be, you know, we would we would try all type of things. I mean, we we was we tried the YouTube premiere first. We was premiering when YouTube had the first premiere feature, and Brent would be in the chat talking to people. You know, we we did uh uh Discord, super lost kid Discord, and he would be in the chat talking.

So we was just in the midst of fans, but we had them mislabeled as fans. Interesting. But they was really super fans. So you guys got it clear now. It's the clear, it's very clear now. Yeah, you know, you can tell by like Brent's new album just just dropped, like, you know, but we never bought bought screams, right? So like when you see people getting stripped down from their screaming, you know, a lot of times the artists don't even really know that that's happening. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? And so, you know, with us, we've always just prided ourselves. And mind you, the new album that that Brent put out, you know, our team did not work on that album, you know. Brent, internal team, his new distribution partner, United Masters, and like they all worked on that album. And so, but he still carries the same philosophies. Yeah. Hey, we don't buy screams, we don't buy bots. Like, whatever, wherever we fall, that's pure cocaine.

It's not stepped on. it's the purest that it comes. So if that purity lands you at number six, then you know that when you go and sell tickets to go to a show, if a brand wants you to partner with them to sell gloves or skincare, you know what is about to happen. Yeah, I didn't think it too much about like the risks and downside, other than like accounts getting shut down or whatever, to like buying, diluting your analytics. Yeah, it's just it's all bullshit. So you can't even make sense of it. So one of the things that I did super early as an operator, I was learning digital marketing on my own because I started to realize, and I learned this through SoundCloud. And I started to realize I was like, man, are these things real? Like, are they buying this stuff? Like, what how is this happening? Right. But the reason why I I was more aware of it, because I used to do it. You know what I'm saying?

Way before Spotify happened, I had a homie that had this thing called Boost Your Socials. And I would wholesale those items as like a young hustler, and I would go to like street artists and be like, hey, I can help you get more subscribers, I can help you get more views, right? And at that time, it had so much value that it would cause them to start getting booked for shows and all those different things, but it wasn't real. Yeah. Right? Oh man. So moving forward to, you know, the 2026, 20, 2016, 2017, we were dropping all these different brand projects. We're independent. So I was so hesitant on hiring outside companies because their KPIs just seem so unrealistic. Yeah. Oh, you pay me $100, we can get you 100,000 screens. I'm like, $100 for 100,000 screens? I don't know about this, man. So we just started to just do all of our marketing internally. So we never was a victim of hiring an outside marketing company and them just fluffing up the numbers to say they did the job.

Yeah, interesting. So I probably should have asked this earlier, but when it comes to the definition of independent artist, I feel like everyone has kind of like their own different, you know, flavor of the month when it comes to that. How do you define independent artist? An Independent artist is an artist who not only owns their music or owns their products, they own their processes. They create the machine that can help them scale their business, right? They know their business, right? If you own your masters, but you don't know how many people that you're paying, it's hard for me to respect you as an independent company because it's a boutique service, right? So when you go into a mom and pop's restaurant, right? The person that comes and cleans the table and greets you and give you your menus might very well be the same person that's paying the rent.

Yeah. Literally the person that's clicking pay the rent this month. You know what I'm saying? Um, and they know their business. So when you start talking to artists that say I'm independent, if you talk to them long enough, you'll just realize, no, you're just unsigned. You know what I'm saying? That's what you are. You're just an unsigned artist. Because I don't know if y'all remember before this independent crave, you used to just be like unsigned during the blog era and all of the you can get signed. Yeah, unsigned hype or whatever. You were an unsigned artist and you were signed to an independent label. This is before anybody could be independent. Yeah. And then there was a major label, independent label, unsigned went away. Yeah. I don't know if y'all noticed for the last past 20 years, unsigned went away. It's gone. You haven't heard of that. Yeah. But there's a lot of unsigned artists that are just acting like they're independent. Yeah. Wow. I'm so glad you framed it that way. Because I was like, I know he's gonna have something to say on this, but yeah, so you know, it's a lot of unsigned artists.

Drop a comment. Let us know if you're independent or unsigned. Like the video and subscribe to the channel. If you haven't already, please. And if you are unsigned, playbook distribution is open for business. There you go. Playbook distribution. Okay. Is that is that a newer culture holdings uh company? So I have a bet that against AI, okay, not against AI, but because of what AI is gonna produce. Okay, okay, okay. Right? It's a hedge. It's a hedge. I'm hedging other things around, I'm creating a moat, right? Okay, okay, okay, okay. That technology is getting so sophisticated that if you are a manager in five years and you don't have your own distribution infrastructure internally, that you're gonna get priced out. You're gonna get priced out. So we in what way? Well, you you know, all the ways. You know what I'm saying? You're not gonna be able to justify 20%. You're probably not even gonna be able to justify 10%. Um, you're not gonna be able to justify helping the artist because they can use AI to do some of the tools.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Okay, so you're gonna get priced out because you don't have tech. Okay. You know what I'm saying? Okay, okay, okay. Now now I understand. Like having tech at your in your toolkit directly is gonna be like in your mind a requirement to get any work. Yes. Okay. Like, so what we're doing at culture, we we built so I started building playbook distribution in October 2024. Okay. Because I was like, I don't like the music business. Why am I doing it? What what what brought me here? How did I get to this point? And it it is, it was discovery and development. So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna start by doing that. I'm gonna start by discovering and developing artists, and it's gonna be called playbook distribution, because we're gonna teach you how to run your own plays. Oh, okay. Hell yeah. So what don't you like about the music business? Yeah, that caught my ear. Yeah, I was like, you just kind of skated past that, having you know built a long career in music. Obviously, I know you're in a lot of other industries, but the integrity part of it. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Um I feel like a lot of times managers that are young, they get taken advantage of, and there's nobody that is above them to say, hey, listen, hey, artists, I don't think you should get rid of this manager. Let I'll take the job only if you let me take the manager with them and let me help them grow. So that in five years, 10 years when I don't really got time for you, the person that started with you have grown. Yeah, they've learned, right? That's an integral thing. That's not just like uh throw you away. But that's what the music business does to artists. That's what the music business does to young managers. That's what the music business does to women, right? And if for whatever reason, no offense, guys, but they don't do it to white men. You know, we're not gonna sit here and defend uh the white males here on this podcast. I got nothing. You know what I'm saying? We're very aware of uh so it came to a point that I realized, I'm like, man, I really don't like doing this, man. Why am I doing it?

And I and then it gave me so much more life when I realized I'm like, I'm going back to discovery. So I started diving in SoundCloud, I started diving on TikTok, YouTube, just finding new artists that had 10,000 monthly listeners. You know what I'm saying? That played three instruments. I'm like, oh, this is fire. And then I I started using Playbook Distro on top of Venice. I'm like, I'm gonna just use Venice technology and I'm gonna do playbook distro. Then as I was seeing how AI was going, I'm like, man, this AI thing is moving fast. I'm like, man, I might could just have my own technology now, because it don't take millions and millions of dollars to have your own distribution. Yeah. And I started having these conversations with different companies, and I was able to strike a partnership to help me build the infrastructure internally. So we launched our first our first release with Cali Sway. And now we have our own back office, all our data.

We can see it, we can build a brand. And I just learned from watching STEM build their brand, Venice build their brand, human resource build their brand, United Masters to build their brand. And they're not owning IP. They're licensing it, they're building genuine relationships with the artists. So what sets us apart from all of those companies is that we're a management company with the distribution technology. Yeah, no, that's cool. I just want to like real quick, just in case in case you guys didn't hear that, like Ty Baisden is listening for new artists. Leave a comment. Where we can find your music, maybe we can convince them to check out some of y'all's music. You know what I'm saying? There you go. Yeah, definitely. Discovery, baby. You know, something that I think you said that I want to just, you know, touch on a bit more is like a lot of artists blame managers for their lack of success or for when things go wrong. I mean, I've seen it time and time again. Artists that I know, they fire their management, and it's always the manager's fault. Right.

Um what what is happening there? Well, why why is that? Because I just I just hear it too much. There's got to be some maybe it's their fault. I don't know. I mean, I just want to, yeah, like I have I have encountered a good amount of terrible managers. Okay. They exist. I've encountered more terrible managers than I've encountered good managers. Um artists uh have to take the responsibility on the teams that they entrust to like manage their brands. Um but they also gotta take the responsibility on when something is not working. And the responsibility can be I had the wrong person running my ship. That is my I messed that up. Now I had to make a change. Yeah. Right? Um the truth of the matter is when you start looking at the whole workforce as a whole, there's not that many great workers. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of mediocre. Yeah, there's a lot of great systems.

Yeah. That mediocre people can thrive in. That doesn't work in the music business. Because a lot of systems are not great, right? Now the major labels have mastered that. The major labels have mastered systems. Yeah. So that's why a manager that don't really know nothing can sign an artist to a major label, utilize the systems, and they look like a superstar. I was about to say, and look like they're just doing a grand old job. You look like a superstar. But the moment that manager don't realize that I don't really know nothing. This is just a really great system that any mediocre talent can go in and thrive, they go out in the real world and try to do it, and then they realize, yeah. Pie in your face. Yes. So has Brent stayed independent his whole career? Yeah. Okay. And so again, like just kind of early days. I mean, was that his vision as well? Or did he, I mean, he's had offers. So, so like, uh, was he anti signing, or like, you know, was he pro independent always?

Or like, did you like have some brainwashing that went into effect? Like, me and Brent Um debated about the independent stuff year over year. Okay. I always like, man, we gotta be independent. This, this, that, and the third, right? And and Brent was like, didn't really care for a while. He just was doing art. Yeah. Right. And it got to a point where he was like, this was like 2019. We was getting ready to drop um F the World. Okay. It's 2019. And the AR came to me and he's like, Ty, I don't know if you're gonna be able to convince him this time, man. He really want to go sign with a major label. And I was like, by this time, I had been, I felt like I fought the good fight. We got enough records independently. I get it. Yeah. Cause it's hard. Yeah. Independent. So we clear. Like, it's not like it's just a breeze in the park. It's hard. You got to keep investing your money, all those different things. And so the end of 2019 happened.

I said, we're gonna get F the World super hot. I'm gonna go take all these meetings and we're gonna get the best deal. So I started having all these meetings. We met with like Columbia, Epic, we would meet with like a lot of different people to try to figure out what it would look like. COVID hit. Oh. Yeah. When COVID hit, and Brent started seeing all the artists doing all these weird things online. He was like, why are they doing all this weird stuff online? I said, because they don't got no money, Brent. He was like, What you mean? I said, Well, we own everything. So when when the when that was a sweet spot that happened for us, specifically with TikTok. So I started Brent's TikTok page because Brent was like, I'm not no, I'm not trying to be dancing. I'm like, it's not about dancing. I said, don't worry about it, I'll do it. So I would just take what he posts on stories on IG. Yeah. And I was just posting on paper. Oh, post it on TikTok.

Yeah. Because the TikTok team was like, well, we can't verify him if he's not active. I said, don't worry, we're gonna be active. And so I think I got about 10 posts in before Brent got frustrated. Was like, stop doing that, I'll do it. But I wasn't doing it, but reposted what he was reposting. It was a full-blown fan page, acting as him, right? So he started taking over. But in January, like end of like February 2020, trust started going viral on TikTok. And I couldn't figure out why. Yeah. I was like, this is crazy. I had just dropped this album, this this F the World. And then Trust started going viral when the numbers come in, like for the billboard numbers, because I think we charted like number 2020. Yeah. That ver that first week. But if trust would have been on that new project, we would have been in like top five. Yeah. Right? Because trust was a catalog record. Yeah, it came out two years ago.

Yeah, okay. So that record exploded. I'm like, whoa, this is crazy. And then F the World sold like 27,000 units the first week. And then a month later, COVID happened. And it just so happened that the project was called F the World. That was how people was feeling. People was listening to it. This TikTok thing was happening. And the business just started exploding. So Brent was like, during COVID, was the first time that he was like, I get it. I get it. It's like, because the money started coming in. Before, we was just boot scrapping. Yeah. COVID happened, everything shut down. We had a tour that had sold out. We had to cancel the tour. And all of this money started coming in. So I'm like, yo, Brent, I just wired you like 150,000. He said, What? From where? I'm like, bro, all this money's just coming in. I don't, I don't know, I don't know how to explain this. This is weird. He was like, what? He's like, he go check his bank out. He was like, and this is my money.

I said, yeah, this is that's yours. Like, I got still money in the label that we gotta pay for like operations and stuff. But this is crazy. But we couldn't say nothing. Because it's COVID. People are losing jobs. People are dying. So we're, but we're still marketing the project because it just came out in February. Yeah. Right. So we're on interviews, like, uh, yeah, man, um, yeah, COVID is, yeah, we just man, we just promoting this album, man. It's like, we're so thankful for all the support. But then we'll get off the interview, We was like, man, this is terrible. We can't say nothing that's actually happening. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And so that was the first time that he was like, I get it. I get it. Yeah. It's it's tough for people to understand like what you really have with the ownership side of things. And I mean, you know, you know, before we hopped on, you were talking about this being like delayed gratification. Yep. And in a lot of times, ownership and equity is. No, then a lot of times.

It's that is it. That's it. Delayed gratification is business ownership. Yeah. That is entrepreneurship. If you think you're finna get in this to hit the lottery, even hitting the lottery is delayed gratification. There is like I used to gamble a lot. I stopped because gambling was the only time that I felt instant gratification. When I'm playing cards and I'm playing back a rat and I put it on red and I got $500 on red and it go black, I instantly get the result. Yeah. It's a lot of things. Yeah, industry. It ain't no delay, nothing. Yeah. Vegas don't delay nothing. Yes. You know what I'm saying? But that's that was that's what the that's what entrepreneurship is, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So talk a little bit about the book and like what people can expect. Because I mean, we were kind of getting into it off camera. Um, and I thought what was interesting is you cross out music, like you know, music business, like wealth and guide or whatever.

Right. So, like, yeah, what can people expect to get out of the book, and how can it apply to not only their music business, but business as a whole. First of all, for everybody that's following this like journey, yeah. From the beginning, I always wanted to tell the journey as it was happening. Yeah, I'm a little behind, but as you can see. Yeah. Um, because I didn't want people to like see me as like this uberly successful person and feel like it's like not obtainable. Yeah. So the culture volume one, two, three, and four is these timelines, right? Of business that we've been developing and like the different approaches that we took. Yeah. So volume two is a it focuses on the timeline um February, March 2018. Yeah, up into February 2020. So kind of what we were just talking about. Right before COVID happened in March.

Yeah. Right. So we're like starting to turn the corner. Like money is starting to come in. Not a way that it was coming in with COVID, but it was coming in to a point where we was like, okay, I kind of start feeling this. We can we can we we couldn't diversify a lot, but we was able to like really like get, get really solid. Music videos, travel, move around with a team, things of that nature. But the book, the reason why I always cross out music, because building a music business is one of the hardest businesses to build. You know, and the reason why, because institutional money don't fund it, right? If I wanted to go go build a restaurant, uh a bank understands that. If I wanted to go get real estate, a bank understands that, right? If I wanted to, you know, go and you know, raise capital in the venture world, they will give me two, three million dollars just because of an idea. You know what I'm saying?

It's like music is a hard business to turn a profit in? So can't go in the bank and be like, I got this mixtape. It's fire, it's the most fire. Trust me, bro. It ain't happening. So the reason I scratch out music is because I want people to understand that if you are building a music business, you can build indie business. That's how hard it is. Yeah, right. And that should give people hope. Yeah, if you're doing it at any level, it's like you're doing great. Yeah, this is why you have people like Chamillionaire who leaves music and now he's thriving in venture capital. Yeah, so cool to see. Like, like it's a real thing. Yeah, right. And so the book is gonna always speak towards that, right? We're always gonna start off with discipline. We're always gonna start off with work ethic because that's what you need to be successful in life, and that's what you need to be successful in business, right? And then we're gonna just get into the gems that I learned along the way.

It's almost like sometimes feel like you're a flying the wall on some of the conversations that you'll read about, things that I picked up on, things that people have told me that you know I've synthesized to kind of condense into like a hundred pages. Although I wanted to be like 200 pages, because that's just me as an aspiring author. Yeah, I wrote 200 pages. But truth of the matter is short, you know, short and sweet still get a job done. Yeah. Um, and and it and it puts people on this timeline of like what we actually was doing from the source. It wasn't that you're gonna hear like, oh no, no, no, no, no, this is what we was doing, this is what was happening, and this is how these are the people that was involved in it. These are the pros, the cons, the ups, the downs. And it it's meant to give people like this concept that like I cannot tell you that you're gonna do exactly what we did and gonna get the same results. But what I can tell you is that if you have discipline, work ethic, a strategy, these are some of the tidbits. And if the stars align, it'll probably align way differently for you than it align for us.

How much of it is the stars aligning? I think a lot of it is stars aligning. But I don't think that you should not work hard, you know what I'm saying? Just because of that. Just because of that. Yeah, like like so so so we clear, you know, we're we're all living in the 1% globally, right? When you start, I guarantee you that if if if your day-to-day, your annual salary, when you combine your podcast revenue, your regular job, whatever, and if that's more than $75,000 a year, you're the 25 percentile in the United States of America. Yeah. Right? That's in the United States of America. Probably $75,000 globally, you're probably more than the five percentile. Yeah. Right? So when we start thinking about the music business and a lot of those different aspects of things, I let my team know all the time. Everybody that works at our company, if you're full-time, for the most part, you're the 25 percentile of what people make in the United States of America, right?

And when we start talking about the uniqueness of our business, he's like, so what a coach holder does. Oh, we manage talent and IP. He's like, oh, really? What does that even mean? You know what I'm saying? It's like, so I have to explain it because it's so far-fetched. If I say, what is Culture Holdings? Oh, we manage storage units. Oh, that's how many storage units you got to manage? Oh, we manage like 15 of them. Oh, wow, that's a lot of storage units, right? But if you say, oh, what do you manage? You manage, you manage artists. Oh, okay. You know, what kind of genre? Oh, we do RB. Oh, how many artists do you manage? Like 15? Next thing they're gonna say, have I heard of any of them? Yeah. It's probably not. Yeah. Because they're not that profitable. You know what I'm saying? Because it's like, and I don't manage 15, by the way. Yeah. We distribute music, but I manage very rare things nowadays. Yeah. Um, but truthfully speaking, you know, a lot of this from a book perspective, I try to always like level set with people. It's like this stars do have to align.

You have to have some level of your identity in Christ and Jesus. You have to know that I'm doing this for a way to shed light from a from a kingdom perspective. In order to be able to survive this type of stuff. Yeah. That's why people struggle with depression, mental health, because they are struggling because they're trying every single day to break through in something that they need like a spiritual guidance and uh the like you you need Jesus to be successful in business. Fair enough. Um so so something I you know you you briefly touched on that I want to dive deeper into is this concept of like reinvesting back into the business because something LaRussell talked about on the pod. Um when you're independent, LaRussell. Yeah, shout out LaRussell. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Um so when you're independent, I mean it's your fucking money. Yes.

It's literally your money. So this is the thing, and I and I told Brent this uh in in in like after the fact. So I said on wax so that I can always say, I did say that. You can't say I did. I did not want to do the deal with United Master. Okay, I wanted to keep being independent. I'm like, yo, F all of this, let's just keep building. And Brent said, I'm tired of spending my own money. I would have spent somebody else's money. And fair. He wanted to spend Steve Stout's money. Yeah, yeah, he definitely is spending Steve Stout's money, by the way. Sorry, Steve. and I am too. Shout out to United Masters. I still love to have you on the pod. I was gonna say, Steve, we we'd love to spend your money too if you got the extra line around. around. Hey, So but I would so I want to make sure I give credit to Brent that I am a pure independent. I would, I will figure it out. Yeah. And bro was like, yeah, so I'm gonna start ISO supremacy. And I don't want to spend my money.

I want lost kids' money to come to my pocket, and I can do whatever I want to do with it. And I want somebody else to pay for this. I don't want to do this anymore. And once we closed the deal, you know, and you know, I got paid, and I was like, it was the first time that I was able to buy something for myself. And so I hit him. I was like, yo, man, you you was right. That was that was a smart business decision. You know what I'm saying? Because I would've just I don't know. I'd have been I'd have been bootstrapper. But but why? Like, I I think it's because I don't know no other way. Okay, it's just like wired. It's just wired. Okay, because like it was rumored to be $50 million deal for those that aren't familiar. Again, I don't know you can maybe tell us afterwards how much it actually was. But it was rumored online to be 50 million. So it's a large sum of money. Um to be like, I'm gonna stay independent. It's like people need to understand like what for. It it I for me, it is a um, I feel more comfortable being able to give opportunities, to keep my word, to like really like lead from a from a philanthropy perspective, from a mentor perspective, you know, so shout out to Empower You.

We we doing five grants, 10,000 business owners, women business owners. Yeah. We had 2,000 submissions as of yesterday. Damn. So we gotta go through and pick the top five. Have fun with that. Yeah, I do that every year. Sounds like a lot of work. It's year six. We love the women. Yeah. But um I just I it took an artist that I had been working with for over since 2014, and we did the deal with United Masters in 2023. Yeah. It took an artist that that I had been working with for that long to teach me something new, you know what I'm saying? That has been under this independent, you know, system. You know, he was halfway in, halfway out. I'm like, I'm baptized in it. It's just like, It's like I don't know, I can't even see clearly, right? And so when it happened, and I was just like, man, like he was right. You know what I'm saying? He was right, you know, the when it came to the logic. It's like, man, because it's hard.

You do got to spend your money, like LaRussell said, you gotta spend your money. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? We will spend a lot of money on marketing. We'll get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I want to dive into like how did you view reinvesting, right? Like how much were you reinvesting early on? How did that change over time, right? Like any specifics you can share. Because a lot of people struggle with, like, all right, yeah, they might be making a little money from streaming, whatever, but they gotta fund this shit, right? And there's there's things you have to spend on to just like keep the business alive. And then there are elective like expenses, like how much to spend on paid ads, how much to spend on influencer marketing, whatever, right? So how did y'all do it? Until until the money started, and pretty much until COVID. Yeah, me and Brent would sit down every year and come to an agreement on what he would be paid as an artist. Yeah. From a salary perspective. Okay. Because again, he was signed to the company. He was signed to the company and he basically executive of the company and he would get a salary that was like a baseline. Yeah.

This is a salary. Yeah. Then when we would see upside, then it would be additional bonuses and stuff that would come in. Sure. And we did that while we were trying to, you know, reinvest. And I I never really had a salary. I just would work off 10% instead of 20%. Okay. So I would, he would get paid a salary. We'll make sure that the staff members get paid. Yeah. And then I would just get in where I fit in. You know what I'm saying? Because I would keep a low overhead. I didn't have any kids. You know, I didn't have a wife or nothing. So I could I could afford to wait last, you know what I'm saying, to get whatever I was gonna get. Man. And so that was uh that we did that for a very long time. And then when COVID happened, I was like, man, this is kind of crazy. Like now we are just we was just operating off of net profit. So when the money came in, it was enough money where 50% of the money just would go to Brent. And then the other 50% couldn't pay me, run the business, do everything that we need to do. So it started to be more of a like 50, a 50-50. 50 would go to the artist, 50 would stay with the label.

Then I would utilize it to run the business and things of that nature until it was time to do something really big on the marketing side. Well, we might need to like pull a loan out against the catalog or whatever the case might be. How how many loans over the years did you take? Was that a constant thing that you would do? So we utilized like Sound royalty and STEM, and we would do advances. I mean, we probably did to date, maybe like eight different advances that was paid off over the time frame from 2017 up until this day. What was the biggest loan and what was it for? Um, well, the biggest loan was probably like for two and a half million. And um, it was really the funny thing about it is when Brent was like we was negotiating with United Masters, it was a um, I didn't really like like the law, how the lawyer was going about it. Because I'm like, man, I didn't do this deal with lawyer, man. I taught the style. That's who I was doing this deal with. And the lawyer would say stuff that would seem so belittling.

Yeah. So we was already in the process of putting pulling money out of and just refinancing debt. And so I said to Brent, I'm like, yo, we're pulling this money out. I know you're launching your thing and you've already like built your team. And I don't want you to not keep your word with your team that you're starting up in January, right? January 2020, I think it was January 2024. Right. And I said, so um we re restructure the things. No, no, no, no, no. It was January 2023. Yeah. So January of 2023 because the deal with United Master closed in 2023. So we were we were restructuring a bunch of debt anyway with Sound Royalty and with STEM. And so two and a half million, like I said, Brent hit go a million because I'm finna stall this negotiation because I don't like how they talk and it don't make sense. And I don't want you not to be able to still go out and build your new business. So that was like the purpose of that particular loan.

You know what I'm saying? So how do those advances work from just like a financing perspective? Because I've heard of companies obviously like Beatbread, et cetera. I'm assuming Sound Royalty and STEM are like that. They're all different. They all have different structures where they take up, they charge you a flat rate or they charge you an annual interest, and then they just earn the money back from the catalog. But they so they basically are doing like in the traditional sense, they are just loaning money with an interest rate. It's just an advance with a uh they call it a fee because technically they're not banks. Okay, right. So they they do the uh advance against the revenue that that you're gonna make anyway. Yeah. And then they just charge you a fee to get it in advance. Okay, interesting. So, you know, something that I feel like Brent did successfully um was kind of this scarcity marketing idea, right? He's he's been kind of like, you know, a little bit more elusive, right? Um, he's not in your face all year, all day, every day.

We debate whether or not that can still work in today's, you know, uh climate. Do you think it can? Or was that just again perfect timing for you know where the music industry was at, how Brent operated as an artist? Like it's it's a specialty. It's a specialty, right? It's almost like some people know how to fight, but some people know Jinzu, Jin Jitsu, whatever that, like karate, like it's a specialty approach. Okay. Um the reason why it works for Brent or has worked for Brent is um I built the company around his personality. And his personality has never been, if you follow, like Brent has always been terrible with responding to no text messages. He's always been bad with phones and like communicating in that way. It's not like because he's famous and he don't like he's that's always been him. Yeah. And then he's always had this very like genuine. This is kind of weird.

Fame, you know, it's like they just want to look at me saying words. Like when you he didn't he didn't like, I remember the first time that he realized that he was at a Chick-fil-A. Because it's cool when the women are like fanning, like, yeah, all women. He was at a Chick-fil-A and the dude started fanning out on him super early. He was like, yo, that's the first, that's weird. This is all weird. And so he quits immediately. Yeah, right. So a lot of artists go through this where they want something, and then it happened, they're like, whoa, I didn't know what this it would feel like this. So he experienced that. So I took a very mental health approach to like how I was doing digital marketing for him. So he would, we would drop something, and he would promote it once or twice. And I would build a machine behind it that would drive it outside of his socials. Cause I knew that from a mental perspective, that wasn't gonna be something that was gonna age well. Like he wasn't gonna be able to sustain that, right? Because just how he sees the world and fame. It's like it's like, yo, this is weird, man.

Like I'm grateful and thankful that I can make a living off of my art, but like I don't know, man. He's not out here trying to be an influencer. No, no, no. He, that's that, that He'll clock out. Yeah. He will clock all the way out. But can that work now? It's a specialty. It's a specialty. Yeah, but so it still can in your mind. All I'm saying is that the truth of the matter is tastefully, it can be done, right? But there has to be a strategy. See, people talk about the that it was a strategy. Brent just wasn't not posting and not like it was a strategy built around who he was as a human. Yeah. That's the problem that we see is just artists using it as an excuse to not, you know, they like y'all need discovery. You need people to find you and listen to your music. You need to promote your music. So like the thing about um the the like the Brent of the world, we use it because even with a new album, right? He put out, he, he cleared his Instagram, which he always does when it's time to roll out something new, yeah, which triggers the fans.

Oh, yeah, something's about to happen. Uh-huh. Right. Then the first thing comes up is some video, some encrypted stuff that you gotta go to the website and open up a folder, right? But think about psychologically, right? How many times do a fan gotta press something to get something? It takes them down this Easter head rabbit hole. So it's just a different strategy of posting every day. Yeah. Because just the fan is still getting engaged because they're like, I remember telling a booking agent this one time, I said, do you wanna make $3 million doing three shows? Do you wanna make $3 million doing 20 shows? I said, so stop asking me if Brent's gonna go and do festivals. We're gonna make $3 million doing three shows when we go do it. It's probably gonna take us seven years to get those three shows to pay us that $3 million versus doing 20 shows over seven years. It's the same amount of money.

It's just scaled out in different ways. Now, with the strategy that Brent used specifically, he don't just don't do anything. Yeah. When you look at these things, right, he'll be like, I can drop it September 19th. Oh my God, Icon is coming. They come, no album. Oh my God, you told us it's gonna be an album. Then he'll post a new song. Then it'll be a video. Now people are just mad. So now they're just complaining that they haven't gotten an album. That is a strategy. That is talking. That is keeping your fans engaged. So now, post a flyer, post a pic, cool pic. I'm in, I'm in Paris. What the album at? Comments. Oh my God, now he's the influencer. Where's the album? Right. Then you roll up, you might see him on, you may see him walk by. He's like fine, he's like finding Waldo.

You might see him walk by Tommy Richmond video. Where's Brent? Right? That is a strategy, but it's a specialty. It's a specialty. And the only reason he can do it because there had been a foundation. He, He's wired that way at this point. Yeah. Even though there's still always work that can be done with that strategy, it takes more work with that strategy. See, that's what I wanted to make sure everyone fucking understands. It takes way more. Yeah, not even the same. Yeah. More. Way more, he said. Way more. It's easier to just post on your phone every single day. That's easier. Because your strategy is I'm just posting. Yeah. It's the difference between getting jeans at Walmart. Yeah. Versus getting jeans at Louis Vuitton. Yeah. Those deep, those jeans do feel different. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It takes more time to create a Rolex watch than a Casio watch. It's just, it's, but it's still gonna get sold to probably different people, right?

So it's uh it is a higher appreciation strategy. Yeah. That, you know, and Brent knows this because you know, the the way he cleans that strategy up is tour more. Yeah. But the touring thing is uh it's another thing. It's like, ah man, this is weird, man. Like this touring, let me can I just put out music? Yeah, I'll just put out music, right? But that strategy, because think about this. Uh, Rod Wade. Rod Wade don't do interviews, yeah. He don't really talk on the internet like that. He probably started doing it recently, yeah. But historically, no. Rod Wade would put out music and he would tour every November, December. probably the last five or six years. Really? You you don't see many, like, as of recently, you probably seen more of him, but go through his come up, he would put out music, and then he would go on tour. That was it. Yeah. So you mentioned kind of that like there was this machine though, and like processes and like systems happening in the background to like promote the music and market the music.

Are you specifically referring to like paid ads running? Like what what were you what were you kind of handling while Brent was, you know, again, like doing the scarcity kind of elusive, you know, where's Waldo type shit? Like what's happening behind the scenes? Come to culture, you know, we'll show you the strategy. Okay. Play with distro, learn how to run your own place. Let's go. He's he's withholding. He's withholding, Henry. So what I will say is that I've always seen digital and marketing and as a layered strategy, right? So when I would look and talk to digital people, I'll be like, so all you're gonna do is run ads. That's it. It ain't no, so also all you're gonna do is just you know, seed on on like the the cool generation now pages. And that's that's that's that's what you want me to pay. Okay, cool. And so what I always recognized is that there's always layered digital marketing. Digital marketing is not like how like traditional marketing is kind of like you see something on the billboard, you see it on a bench, you see it on a bus, right?

But it's the same creative, just different moving places. You see it on the subway. Yeah. Digital marketing can live in so many different things, so I can take that billboard and I can splatter it around digitally. Yeah, and digital can kind of have these layers. So it can be us talking about it. Yep. Right. Or it can be a screamer playing the music in the background. Yeah. It can be a makeup influencer playing the music in the background. It can be a TV edit channel that's playing the music on these, these, these TV classical logical TV edits. It can be the artists actually rapping and singing the song live. It can be the Instagram, I call them the PR pages on Instagram. That's like that you're seeding these out. These are all layered strategies. And then you're talking about buying ads. Yeah. That's when you kick in the TikTok and the Meta and like all the boosted posts. So I have always been like find a blend of organic and paid ads.

And build a story outside of the artists. So you're building like this moat. So although Brent will only post once or twice to promote what he's doing, all of these other things are happening around fan pages, you know, um digital spins. We're doing traditional marketing, we're doing activations, and we're capturing content around all of those different things, and we're just feeding the content to the different fan pages or whatever the case might be. Yeah. So it was always like this digital moat that I've always like sought out and built. And it changes up every it changes up so much. So now I'm in the middle of another change. That's why I can't really. If I tell you something today, that's something that we did 2017, 2018. It's 2026. Yeah. I'm I'm I'm looking at it now, I'm like, oh, we got we got New York, LA. $1 million worth of game. She she signed her deal with um Epic. Um, and we're building this strategy around her that is not just completely driven by influencers.

Yeah. Right? There's a approach, like I'm I'm in 1990 thinking about this now because of the way AI has like destroyed digital integrity. Yeah. Like I don't know, they're not gonna know if this when it goes live, they're not gonna know if this can't trust anything. You can't trust this. You need humans to be able to touch stuff and see it, right? So now we're thinking about oh, okay, AI, like, what is these different aspects of things? So the strategy I have today is different than it was in 2020, yeah, 2021. You know, and it's still we're still testing it. You know, I know the Brent strategy worked, but it's a specific type of way you gotta go about doing that. You can't, I used to tell LaRussell this all the time. I said, Russ, to Russ, like your strategy, you built your foundation off of that strategy. Yeah, the next person can't come and do it if they didn't build a strategy because the Russell be like, man, Brent can do this. If he does, I said, but yeah, but is Brent fans gonna pay the same amount your fans gonna pay?

I don't know if I want to take that risk. Yeah, because it's already working for what he's doing. Yeah, but you built yours like that. Yeah, you built yours off Proud to Pay. You built yours off of you know, backyard, you know, pay what you want. Like you built it that way. It's the difference. Yeah. Because that's your foundation. That wasn't our foundation. Our foundation was screaming. Pure cocaine, don't step on the dope, streaming. Oh, all and collected across all platforms. Then we're gonna hold out and then we're gonna drop some vinyls. And we're gonna have a really great price on the vinyls, low margins. We're gonna make that money. Then we're gonna hold out even longer, then we're gonna go on tour. Three shows, 3 million. Boom. Same amount of money made in the time of the frame, but it's a patience, it's a patience game around. For sure. Well, Ty, we've entered a final segment of the podcast. Holy shit. Man.

I learned so much. I learned a lot, seriously. I know I've asked a couple more times, but seriously, this is one of them ones, guys. Please like, comment, subscribe to the channel so you can get more interviews like this. Ty, this is the rapid fire rampage. Oh shit. I'm gonna break it into three. Yeah, you can say shit. You can say shit. I'm starting to change a curse. That'll be interesting for one of these upcoming questions. Um three three sections, starting off with some short answer questions. Let's just start, right? Let's get into it. Let's go, bro. Ty, how would you rate Ben as an interviewer on a scale from one to 10? I'd give you a solid seven and a half. Oh God, I got so much work to do, Henry. Honest. I knew I knew Ty would keep it a buck. I knew he would too. Ty, what's the most expensive lesson that you've learned? The most expensive lesson that I have learned. Man, so I don't think money is real. I know what you mean by that. And it's been like that for a long time. Okay. So the most expensive lesson, I would just have to say going to college.

That's a great one. You know what I'm saying? I had to pay for my own master's out of my pocket. Oh, six-year lesson. I took, I took loan, I took loans, which was I I was on scholarship taking loans, and I ended up having to pay like $41,000 back in loans. But yeah, I would say going to college. Literally. What is the last business call you made? And what was it about? It wasn't a, I didn't have a my last business call was an in-person. Okay. We'll take that. And it was about um, I was doing data research and, you know, I guess you would call it research and design. Uh, because we're launching our independent film studio this year through culture media, and I was meeting with a company that has an independent studio, and they've been doing it for five years, and I was trying to study their thesis, and I was like tracking what they what their their thesis is and kind of put me on track of like knowing like, okay, we're on the right, we're on the right road track. Consultation-esque? Yeah, that was in L

that was in LA yesterday. Okay, okay. What are three ways to do the 50-50 artist manager equity split incorrectly? Um not having no paperwork after after a certain amount of time. Big one. Um not doing a test period. I think that before you hire somebody, you should consult with, they should be your consultant to see if they can really do what they say they can do. Um and I would say the third, the third thing is not spending time investing into financial literacy. Huge. What would you say are the most underrated and the most overrated growth tactics in music right now? The most underrated is playlist. The most uh oh no no, no, no, the most overrated is playlist. I was about to say, I was like, this is the complete opposite of what I would say.

I have to learn. Make sure you edit that right. Yeah, yeah. Overrated is the playlist. Yeah. Underrated is um human touch. Mm. Really, really like getting to the point where I'm gonna get a fan. I'm only gonna get a fan if I touch a fan in real life. I think that's underrated. Okay. What is your businesses? and let's say the business with Brent specifically, biggest bottleneck currently? Um what are you solving for? Uh the biggest bottleneck that we're solving for just really scaling from an independent perspective and and and understanding when to take outside um investments, because we've always been self-invested, probably funded. So trying to figure out when and why to put a trigger on outside investors. Cause because we have interest, but I just always be like, eh, you know, we'll see. We'll see.

You've just been appointed supreme leader of the music industry with the power to do absolutely anything that you feel. What is your first order of business? Um, I probably would find out how to employ as many women as possible in the leadership role. And then I will create a um, I will create a union where the artists are represented by the union, and the managers have to go and get certified to be managers to represent the artists. Ooh. Yo, a manager certification process is like should be top of the list. That's great. Like you said, there's a lot of No more just like best friend, the guy you know from high school. You at least gotta get the diploma, bro. I know it. You can still be the best friend, but like you gotta be qualified, bro. This point, you don't tank your fucking homie's career. Yeah, right. Last one with a short answer. What is your favorite curse word? We will take like maybe the letter that it starts with. Okay.

Well, you know. That's funny. And and and I I like to say I like this, I like shit. Yes. The S word? That's mine. Okay. He likes the S word. Me and Ty Get it. It's versatile. Yeah. It's just so much. It doesn't feel like it don't isn't it don't feel um degrading or like I'm like being derogatory. Yeah. No. The F word is just like, it just sounds like if I say shit, I can hit my foot. You know what I'm saying? Like something could be shit and it's bad. Something could be the shit, now it's good. It's just so much like. Anyway, uh moving on to the this or that. I'm gonna give you two choices. You just gotta pick one of them. Starting with lyrics or flow, lyrics, hooks or verses, hooks, singles or projects? Projects. Profit or growth? Growth. 10 a.m. studio session or 10 p.m. studio. session? 10 a.m. I didn't even have to hear. I love it, love it. Spreadsheet or whiteboard?

Spreadsheet. Go viral for the wrong reason or never go viral. Go viral for the wrong reason. Ooh. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hotel or Airbnb? Hotel. Meditate or skydive? Meditate. Half of Brent's album leaks, or half of Brent's album gets completely lost. Leak. Leak it. Let it out. Books or podcasts. Books. Culture playbook 2. Culture Playbook Volume 2. Out now. I did, I guess. Yeah, put he's got the book. We got the podcast. So it's kind of like what did I expect? It was him versus us. Yeah, yeah, fair. Lose all your business contacts or lose your hair. I like my hair. Oh, man. Start from scratch, really? Start from scratch. Holy shit. That's not where I thought that was going. Wow. And finally become a full-time RB singer or leave the music industry forever. Oh, yeah, leave the music industry forever. Really?

You kind of got you could be a I'm Brent. If I was an RB, I'd be like, well, this is weird. Yeah. You already got a fire fee. He's got to do features with you. You're going to do a whole collab album. Anyway. True. Last part of the rampage. This is the word association tie. I'm gonna say one word. Just give me the first word that you think of off the top of your head. Okay. Starting with music. Imaginary. Let's not even unpack it. Atlanta. Home. Superfan. Money. Hater. Goodbye. Popcorn. Movies. Masterpiece. Master P. That was fire. W. Win. L. Lost. Yeah, I guess that's fair. Studio. Lights. Hired. Growth. Fired. Growth.

Bitcoin. Cash. TikTok. Discovery. Caffeine. AI. The future. Stress. Never. Family. Forever. Worldwide. Right now. This has been Ty Baisden. Worldwide. Culture Playbook Volume 2. Out now. It's out now. We'll link that in the description. I rap on the side. It's my first album. Okay. There you go. Yeah, second album. Yeah. This is a sophomore album and it's a fucking masterpiece. Love it. Appreciate you coming on the podcast, man. Seriously, this has been one of them ones. So Thank you. like, comment, subscribe to the channel. We're here each and every week. Until next time. Bye-bye. Peace, y'all.