Rick Barker: And so often people are wasting time trying to save money, when if they just invested a little bit of money, they would get a lot more time back. But the bottom line is this, it's a business. And in order to be in business, you have to invest in your business.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's already getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month, without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry. And this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker: All right, so I'm here with my friend Rick Barker. He is the CEO of Music Industry Blueprint, former manager of Taylor Swift, social media ninja, also called the Gary Vee of music industry. I've interviewed him a few times by now. So it's really bringing him back on. Every single time we talk there's another gold nugget of wisdom that falls in. We're really excited to bring him back on right now in particular, because right now is a difficult time for musicians due to the global pandemic. And more people than ever are starting to turn to, some of the tools that have been available for a while, but have been underutilized with social media and using the internet to reach your fan base.

Michael Walker: Rick Barker has a huge amount of experience and credibility when it comes to social media in particular. I'm excited to talk with him today and just share some of the things that he sees working best right now, starting 2021. Rick, thanks again for taking the time to be here for another interview.

Rick Barker: No, I appreciate you being here. Recently had a chance to finally meet you in person it feels like... our relationship has been a couple of years now. I think from the very first summit that you've done, and we've just watched each other's businesses grow, and we bounce ideas off of each other. And it was fun sitting down that night and meeting you and Greg for the first time. And I've been able to send some work to your producer, by the way who I met that night because it's all about networking. We did our social distancing networking at Peg Leg Porker. And an interesting story is as we're at this is the cooler barbecue spot here in Nashville. I didn't realize Michael was as tall as he is. He had to sit at the end of the table because of his big ass legs. And this dude walks up, and he doesn't approach any of us. But he seems to just hone right in on Michael, and goes in and asks Michael to...

Rick Barker: At first, I couldn't tell what the guy was asking. He was mumbling a little bit. The first lesson in life, if you know what you want, ask clearly. Then once Michael got him to speak clearly, the guy was hungry so Michael offered to give him the rest of his food. And Michael had a good little plate of ribs there. That was some really good dry rubbed really good ribs. And the kid leaned over and he's like, "You know not to be rude or anything, but with COVID I don't know that I should..." And Michael hadn't touched this rib so the guy ends up talking Michael into buying him a full plate of dinner. Michael went in bought this guy, a full plate of dinner. And the guy came out and was very gracious and very thankful and like things that. And we sat there and we used that one, as it was great that Michael did that. Two, we thought how great it was that the guy came to one of the higher end nicer places to ask for meals so he was a smart businessman.

Rick Barker: And once he got his clarity and his confidence up, he was able to get the result that he wanted, which was a meal from Michael and he took it to go, he didn't even ask to join us. He got it in his bag, and he left. It's lessons that, that we see that happen in real life, that I always try to go back and dissect, what worked, what didn't work, what could have been done differently. And that's how I feel with social media and the internet right now is, what used to work isn't working anymore. What was a trend a year ago isn't a trend now, what was the cool thing to do and all the kids were doing it has now oversaturated the market so we shouldn't be doing it. That's what I was looking at, at the end of 2020. Is what was I going to change in my own business first?

Rick Barker: One of the things that I hope you realize when listening to podcasts like this is that Michael and I are not just teachers, we're also practitioners. These are things that we also apply in our own business. When I teach you a strategy, I usually teach it after I've failed at it a couple times before I bring it to you and say, "Okay, this is what I did wrong. This is what I did, right. And now I want to share that." That's the same thing with Michael and his business. And those are the ideas that we bounce off of each other. And I want to highly encourage all of you to get your own little ecosystem of other artists, that you could say, "Hey, what's working for you? What's not working for you? What can we try?" I brought my Facebook Ads Manager to Michael, because he's like, "Hey, I'm seeing you pop up everywhere. Dude, meet this guy, because they're killing it for me."

Rick Barker: When we share with you these things, this isn't just us pulling stuff out of the air and say, "Oh, we read an article about this, you should try this." These are all things that we're trying, have tried or are currently doing in our business.

Michael Walker: Yeah, I use this analogy a lot of what we're doing right now in a lot of ways, catching the current trends is like being surfers catching a wave. And a lot of people are trying to catch a wave that's already passed. Even a year ago, at this point, it's growing so quickly. That's like, if you try to spend all this energy trying to catch up to a wave that someone else was able to catch, then you don't necessarily... It doesn't mean that it's still a good opportunity.

Michael Walker: But if you really look at what's trending right now, or what are the upcoming waves, and you swim along with them, and you do catch on you get a lot of momentum doing it. So I think that that's so important, is to have the perspective to see around you what's happening right now, what are the current waves that are cresting? And I think that's one of the major benefits that everyone that's listening right now is going to have learning from you and why it's really important to be on the cutting edge of what's happening right now.

Rick Barker: One of the things that I think that's going to be super important at least for me this year, and I watched it. I, by the way, had my best year ever, in 2020. Because I had already been online, I had already established myself online. I had already been known as the guy who has this online. It wasn't that I tried to catch a wave that, "Holy crud, everybody's at home right now. And they're in front of their computer." We've been teaching people on computers and doing this for the last three years. Somebody said to me, they're like, "What is it that you do?" I said, "Well, now I know it has a word for it, it's called social distancing." I've been teaching people on Zoom for a long time, and now the whole world is doing this.

Rick Barker: What I'm going to encourage the artists that I work with everyone that I meet, you all the guys in our inner circle is, this year I'm going to be spending more time on the relationships that I've already invested in getting into my ecosystem. And I'm going to have automation bringing people into my ecosystem. What I mean by that is that because I already had a list, because I already had a group of people that I had a relationship with, it was much easier for me to present an offer this year than it was if I had to spend the whole year trying to indoctrinate the next new person that I came in. I think sometimes as artists, when we chase the newest thing and Michael and I are both creatives and he's also an artist because he is a musician as well.

Rick Barker: Last year I chased YouTube, I'll give you a real good example. I met someone at a conference. They're like, "Dude, you'd kill it on YouTube." I had 4000 subscribers at the time. I put up a video once every three months. And they're like, "No, you need to buy this course." So I spent $6,000 got the coaching course, from Sunny Lenarduzzi, who I absolutely love. I did everything the way Sunny said to do it. But guess what, there were other people doing it the exact same way as well. I was bringing zero value to YouTube. But I was spending four hours a week getting everything together from my assistant driving to my house, we shoot the videos, we edit the videos, we end up on YouTube, I throw it up on YouTube. And I couldn't use the content anywhere else in its form because it was hit the notification button. I did everything that I was coached to do to make that thing successful that went from 4,000 to 11,000 subscribers.

Rick Barker: My best video had over 100,000 views. Unfortunately, it was because I was telling some Taylor Swift stories after an article came out. Those aren't my clients, but they love the stories about Taylor. And if I got them every now and then I have to share them. At the end of the time when we sat down and we looked at it, we're like, how much new business or how many new relationships did I actually make from the four hours that we put into this? And what I noticed was it was the people that were already on my list that already listened to my podcast that already... that were just supporting me by going over to YouTube. I thought to myself for a second. Do I continue to drop those four hours that we can never get back? Time is the one commodity that is not refillable? Or do I take my part of that four hours which was about an hour and a half, and do I go love on people that are already in my world and strengthen that relationship with voice messages into their Instagram or liking and commenting on some of those pictures.

Rick Barker: So that's the choice that I made this year was to abandon YouTube. And that way, I will still put up content, but it's not a prime focus for me, because I didn't see it move the needle. Ask yourself, where did you spend a lot of time last year that you didn't see the results? Was it chasing playlist? It wasn't touring. We definitely know it wasn't touring. What can you get rid of that maybe you were chasing, that you can just look at and say, "Where could I devote this time? To make my business better?"

Michael Walker: That's so good. It seems like a common struggle across all musicians or really just it's people in general is just figuring out how to best prioritize our time, right? That's a never ending thing that comes into productivity, and being able to figure out what are the most valuable tasks that I can take. Counterintuitively, a lot of times, we fall into a trap of just doing as much as possible or being super busy, but just doing things that don't really move the needle. I love that, that sounds like that's really what you're encouraging people who are listening right now is really to reflect and be, "Okay, what's really moving the needle? What are my goals?" One question for you, obviously right now it's amazing that you have developed your service over the past three years, even before the Coronavirus. You were able to provide a huge amount of value to people, as there's a big cresting wave of musicians who need to transition, they need to figure out how to reach the people online.

Michael Walker: What are some of the biggest challenges that you see musicians struggling with? Who are in that place right now who might be listening to this and getting started online. What are the biggest roadblocks issues that I'm running into at first?

Rick Barker: I think the biggest roadblocks is the frustration that everything they post doesn't get seen. There was a time, I'll hear things all the time and I coach my students every Monday, it's like, "Rick, I put up this post on Facebook and I got no activity, so I'm just going to stop." And I said, "Well, first off, we haven't been getting any activity on organic posts for the last three years also. What happens is that I find myself doing a lot of education. To answer your question, and then I'll teach on it is, don't get frustrated if you don't get a million people to watch your first video, or even five people to comment on it or two people to share.

Rick Barker: Social media was designed for friends to stay in communication with friends. And I think what's happened over the last couple years is Facebook especially, has slowly but surely gone back to making sure that whatever shows... Because all Facebook cares about are the personal Facebook pages of the consumers, the businesses, that's a bonus, they've given us some real estate, they've given us the opportunity for free to get in front of a couple people which we should be grateful for. When I go to bed at night, I'm like, "Lord, thank you for keeping me sober. Thank you for my family. Please bless those that are suffering. Do not let Facebook, Instagram and Spotify go anywhere because we need them to be thankful. Amen."

Rick Barker: I need those properties which I do not own, have given me free real estate to be able to get my message out into the world. One, don't be discouraged if you don't hit those numbers. What they're trying to do is to make sure that when I go into my personal Facebook page, that I'm seeing things that I've engaged with in the past or I'm seeing my friends, they know I'm only going to spend so much time when I do this it's... I'm just scrolling. When people see this on the video and they're like, "Rick's always rubbing the palm of his hand." I'm just showing you how... this is how we live life is on our phones scrolling.

Rick Barker: When I scroll through the feed, occasionally I'll see a sponsored ad. They're going to work really hard to make sure that that's something that's not going to make me leave the platform. I use social media, and what I teach people, it's for the discovery. When people find you, they will choose their weapon of choice, whether it be Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, YouTube, they're going to type in your name, and what's going to come up is what you can control and what you should be focused on right now.

Rick Barker: Do they see your best stuff? Do they see that you show up every day, because they might come to your Facebook page. Don't be as discouraged about the amount of people that aren't seeing it. Make sure that when people do discover it and find it that it's on point, because ultimately we're going to need, as they say now, about seven touch points before we can even get to the relationship. Well, I'm eliminating that and making those seven touch points come across a lot quicker in 2021 with one of the strategies that I teach inside of my new course. And I told people too, I did this course, I call it a course, it's a training. No one wants to buy another course, they're coursed out. They want the results. What I did after looking at the numbers last year is I decided that I would do things a little bit different. Instead of just doing the course and here's the PowerPoints and here's the slides and here's the check box and the checklist and... you've got this cool little course with a membership. I did a full on workshop, I taught my best practices in front of a live audience on Zoom.

Rick Barker: I gave my current clients a chance to pre-order the course and we went in. Just the Instagram section alone is over an hour, where we're on the computer, I'm answering questions and things like that. And one of the things that I've decided this year, for me, my business and for what I'm teaching is I'm all in on Instagram right now. That's where I'm going to spend the majority of my time. I will schedule things on Facebook, I will schedule things on Twitter. I am doing, matter of fact, if you guys want to follow me on Tik Tok at Rick Barker Music, I have committed to 365 days of Tik Tok. What I did, I met this guy, he's brilliant. He was one of the first marketers on Tik Tok. And he was offering a two hour consultation for 400 bucks, so I went on his calendar and booked the time and he showed up and I said, "Look, all I want to do is be able to serve." I said the last thing Tik Tok needs is another overweight white dude doing dances.

Rick Barker: I can't provide value because my dancing skills aren't that great. And I can't throw up the clothes and they come on. But all this stuff that you see on Tik Tok. I said, but if I can teach and I can provide value, I will commit to showing up every day. He gave me this cool strategy of taking topics and breaking them up into one minutes, and then to say, "Hey, and if you want to see the whole conversation, head over to my IGTV." And like, "Oh, brilliant." I've got, part one of five, or you can go watch the whole five minutes. He said, that's how you can then help grow your Instagram. I told him, I said, "Dude, that was worth the whole 400 bucks right there." And that happened within the first 10 minutes of that conversation.

Rick Barker: Once again, the power of buying time of people who are smarter than you, that can help you get to where you want to go. I'll be doing the 365 days on Tik Tok, they should by the time this is going. I don't know if it will have happened yet. But they say they're about to go to a three minute long video version. Once I get to 1,000 followers, I'm able to go live now I can provide even more value. That's how I'm always looking at things, where can I provide value? So that's what you as the artist to say, "Do I need to be in these nine places?" I say no. I say find the one that first off that your audience is at, the majority of your audience is at that you enjoy doing.

Rick Barker: Don't just go there because I tell you to go there. Don't choose Instagram, because I chose Instagram. It might be Tik Tok for you, it might be YouTube for you. Heck, if you're an older artist, it might be Facebook for you. But find the place that has your audience that you are willing to show up every day and love on it.

Michael Walker: What's up guys, quick intermission from the podcasts, I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public, they're normally reserved for our $5,000 clients that we work personally. This is a presentation called six steps to explode your fan base and make a profit with your music online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel, it's going to allow you to grow your fan base online, and the system is designed to get to your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers and really see what's working best right now for musicians. And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you.

Michael Walker: If that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that. And the other thing I wanted to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast is if people click subscribe, and it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear, and so that'll help us reach a lot more people. If you're getting value from this, and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right, let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker: I definitely can understand why you'd be referred to as the Gary Vee of music industry. That commitment 365 days, Tik Tok every single day. Yeah, it's really interesting, some of the points that you brought up in terms of how to think about Facebook, or how does Facebook look at how they provide value for their consumers. From their standpoint, they have the consumers of the platform which are the users, people are using Facebook with their friends, then also the advertisers, that's essentially their main business model is selling attention to the advertisers. It definitely makes sense that, in order to be successful on the platforms that essentially that's their business model, you have to figure out how can you provide as much value as possible to those people so that they want to stay on the platforms?

Michael Walker: One thing that you brought up was, there's a billion different platforms, there's new ones coming up every day, and you don't necessarily have to be on every single one. But if you can just find out, where do your people hang out? And then commit to connecting with them and start focusing on that platform, and that's a good way to start. How could someone get started with figuring out where do my people hang out?

Rick Barker: The easiest thing to understand that if you want to get 1,000 engaged fans, you have to go personally engage 1,000 people. Goes back to why Taylor Swift picked me as her manager in the first place. She said, "Rick, I want a gold record." I said, "Okay, that's 500,000 people." I said, "Great, Taylor, let's go meet 500,000 people." We are back to the very first conversation I had with Taylor Swift. If you want 1,000 engaged fans, you're going to probably have to go engage about 5,000 of those fans, and hope that 1000 of them stick. The first thing that I would say to you is this, quality is expected different is the new better. Okay, so quality is expected different is the new better. If your music is not up to par, don't try building engaged fans until you get the music right first. That is step number one, quality music. It's non negotiable. If it's not there yet, focus on that.

Rick Barker: First, Taylor wrote songs for four years, before she ever went out and tried singing songs to people, she got her craft, right. I'm giving you the same advice, get your craft right first, then you need to go find the right audience. Think about this, if you had a chance to put your own music festival together, and you are going to be the headliner of this festival, who are the other artists that you would put on that festival that you think would make for a cool festival? So who would you want to open for? Who do you feel has the fans that you would want their fans to show up to your event? That's the same question you ask yourself, when trying to identify your audience. Then what I want you to do is I want you, and I'm going to suggest Instagram, and I'll tell you why. I want you to go follow that artist. And then I want you to go look into see in their feed, which of the posts are getting the most engagement.

Rick Barker: And then think about how could I do that in my own style, in my own words? That's what we all do in our business. We'll look at each other's ads and go, "Okay, that one's working, how can we put our own spin on it?" We're in a business of plagiarism. There's only the same few chords and the same few words, we all just mix them up and put them in different orders to make things. Go take a look at what someone else is doing. Once you have that figured out, then I want you to go in and see the people that are commenting. When you see the people that are commenting, and you see a comment you like, you go dude, I would like that person to be at my show, I would love that person. Follow them and then that's it, just follow him.

Rick Barker: But make sure that when they follow you back and they get to your Instagram bio, that it says who you are, what kind of music you play, and there's a link for them to hear your music. I don't care if you love puppies. I don't care if you long walks on the beach that tells me nothing about your music and whether I should follow you or not. Make sure that you identify the style of music, what you're about. You can show some personalities after you've done that, but I've just seen some artists, I'll follow, and they'll just say, lover of butterflies. No link to the music, no nothing. That gave me no reason to want to follow them back. Because one thing you need to remember is Instagram is the platform that limits the amount of people that you can follow. Are you followable? Are you followable? Are you worth me spending one of my $7,500 credits?

Rick Barker: If I have 7,500 credits, are you worth one of my credits? If it says what it should say, and it's got the music, you've already followed them, there's a good chance when they show up, there's a big blue follow button, they'll follow you. Then they get to hear your music. Then after they follow you back, I then want you to go direct message them hit the microphone button and in your words, I want you to say thank you so much for the follow. Just curious I noticed you're a fan of the Mike Walker band, what's your favorite Mike Walker band song? And then you shut up, you're not saying, "Here's my YouTube video. Come like my page, come follow on Spotify." You're asking them a question. Now we're at phase two in the date, almost three. You followed them, they followed you back, you left them a message. Now, if they first off, they're going to hear your voice.

Rick Barker: How personal is that? Do you have better relationships with the people that you write letters to all the time, or the people that you talk to all the time? Obviously, the people that you talk to all the time. Now they hear your voice, now they come back, says, "Oh, my God, my favorite song is, the execution song." Behind me if you guys aren't watching this, I have a poster that says execution, it's a noun. And it just says, "Stop talking and put in the work." But, "Oh, the execution song, that song inspired my band to write this song, would you ever be interested in hearing music from our band?" After you've talked to them a couple times, do you think they're going to go, "No, dude, I would never want to hear music from your band." No, they're going to say, "Sure, of course," because they have this artist that they've seen on Instagram, looks professional, has a website, has Spotify. Because you got to remember to the fans, when you're on Spotify, they're like, "Ooh, this guy must be something, they're on Spotify."

Rick Barker: Once they've given you permission, that's called permission marketing to send them, you're one step closer to an email address, and you didn't have to spend any money doing it, you spent a little bit of time. But when you think about it, it takes you about five seconds to say the sentences that I just told you to say on Instagram. That's the strategy that I'm imploring with my own business, that's where I'm going to take that hour and a half every week that I was putting on YouTube videos. It's just going to be me loving on people that come into my world, getting them one step closer to say, "You know what, I that guy, I'm going to definitely go check out his free training." And then in the free training, I now have the opportunity, and I have to work to make them an offer.

Rick Barker: It's no different when they finally give you their email address, and you get them to someplace now you have the opportunity at some point, to present an offer, whether it be a community you've started, a T-shirt, a hat, an online show, ticket, whatever the case may be, is like, "I'm doing things this year that aren't scalable," that means that I can't automate it, but I would rather be profitable than scalable.

Michael Walker: Yeah, so good. And so many of the things that you're describing to are 100% in line with what we seeing working best right now. And not just right now, but just in the history of mankind and business and marketing. Is just about find the people who are most likely to get value from what you offer, and connecting with them, building a relationship and then making an offer.

Rick Barker: Stop chasing everyone, get focused.

Michael Walker: So good. Can I quickly recap, it sounds like if someone's listening to this right now. Really the steps are one... I love that way of describing it too of, you're putting together a festival and putting together a festival and you want to invite... you're the headliner, you want to invite 10 other artists, is such a great starting point. And then finding out where are those people active on social media? Googling, where are they're active on social media, or starting with Instagram, because Instagram seems like one of the best platforms right now for organic connection.

Rick Barker: Well, it's the only one that will allow you direct contact with your consumer because it used to be Facebook. Two years ago, the only place I'll be is Facebook. Why? Because when people my like page or engage with an ad, I can pop them up, I can invite them to like my page, that option got taken away. Now I don't even have that option. I'm not even sending people... I'm not even doing like campaigns anymore for my Facebook page. I don't care if they it. I care when they show up. If I can get him to someplace I can talk to him and love on him. That's why I choose Instagram, because it's the only platform today, as we are talking and that could change, that lets me go direct to consumer without any roadblocks.

Michael Walker: Yeah, yeah, that's so good. Basically, next step is to follow those artists on their social media platforms. Instagram specifically is a great platform to be able to directly connect with your fans. And then really see what kinds of things they're posting, use as a reference, so you can figure out what things get the most engagement. I think that I've heard this "viral formula" that they found scientifically that works best for viral content is that, it has some aspect of familiar to it, and has some aspect of unique to it. The familiar part, that locks in with the grooves of the way that our brains think already, but then it diverts off this unique path, and it does something unexpected. It's like, "Oh, cool." It [inaudible 00:29:34] things in an interesting way. It sounds like what you're saying is that, doing that practice of following those artists the thing that they engaged most helps you lock in the familiar part of it, or the part that really resonates with a lot of people.

Michael Walker: But then the unique part of it is ultimately what you are, who you are, expressing yourself and doing something unique, doing something that's different. That's a good way to model your own content. And from there, you're just following those artists and seeing who's engaging with the post, seeing the people who have the best comments is a great way to find those people that you want to have come out to your shows. So you follow them, and when they follow you back, then you have an opportunity to actually reach out and connect with them personally, so you actually record.

Rick Barker: Too often we're asking them to do things for complete strangers. I'm just trying to use the path of least resistance to get that familiarity. What you said was a great point. If they've already seen your name in the threads leaving your own comments before you even follow him too, could be smart. What you want to become this year is a detective. You go to Spotify, you pop up an artist, and then you see all the other familiar artists, start identifying. Go follow them, see what their bios look like. Go follow them on their socials. Just become a detective and it's no different. Inside the marketing world, we have what's called our dream 100. So our dream 100 is who already has our clients? Michael and I are on each other's dream 100 list because my audience, I've made Michael familiar with my audience, he's made me familiar with his audience. Our clients, buy trainings, and they hire coaches and things like that. So we share the same audience, but we teach from two different perspectives.

Rick Barker: There's a reason why every month we're sending money to each other because our audiences are on the same mission, they have the same interest, they're just learning from a different phase. The same way that one music band just doesn't have one artist on their player, they have a bunch of different artists, because those artists all give them a certain type of emotion. Your dream 100 would be, list 100 artists that you think have both major artists, independent artists, and then you start doing your detective work to go engage with those 5,000 people to ultimately get 1,000 people that you put into a private Facebook community that you've gone and loved on that every month, you do a 40 for 40, we just did that. I had clients, we were selling 40 tickets for $40 and we were using Zoom, which was free, where you can get up to 100 people for 45 minutes for free. So they were doing the 40 for 40.

Rick Barker: So $40, 40 tickets for a 40 minute show. We created a small little merge bundle. And because they had this community of people that they loved on, they sold out real fast. Then you can do the 50 for 50 and the 60... or whatever little gimmick that you want to come up with. But the point is, is we took them from the ocean and then we put them onto a yacht and then from the yacht, we took them down to a dinghy. It's like, here's the ocean, we put all the people that want to be saved on this one boat, they all have the same thing in common, then the boat, we took it to a smaller boat, and then we took it to a smaller boat. And the one thing you should understand is, the smaller the boat gets, the higher the engagement and the more you can charge. Just know that from an artist when there's scarcity, and there's not a lot of it. And you can go in and love on people, you get to charge more money at that point.

Rick Barker: Okay, it's the same thing. There's only a limited number of Ferraris that are made every year. And there's a waiting list for those Ferraris. But you can buy a Volkswagen all day. Not knocking a Volkswagen just an analogy that I'm using right now. As you get smaller, and there's less, don't be afraid as an artist to charge more. As your groups get smaller, don't be afraid to spend more time. The problem that I kept seeing was, is they build these groups, but they would just pop in there occasionally, but they would spend all their time trying to get these new people.

Rick Barker: Instead of saying wait a minute, I'll spend five minutes to 10 minutes over here playing a couple songs, telling people, "Hey, if you like my music, and you want more of it, I've got this private Facebook community over here that I would love to send you an invite, just DM me your best email so I can make sure you get the invitation from me." Now you just build your email list and you just let them know, wow, there's this cool place over here where I spend more time. So the smaller the group is where the more time that you should be spending, if that makes sense. That's my plan for this year.

Michael Walker: Yeah, I think that's brilliant. That just goes in with, I don't know, what you would call this law, a universal law? But it's a pretty common principle that a lot of people talk about, it's like the 80/20 rule, and was it Pareto principle, that's technically what it's called? The idea is that, 20% of the course usually is responsible for 80% of the results. For example, if you have 100 fans, 20% of them are probably going to provide 80% of the revenue that you earn from music.

Rick Barker: Correct.

Michael Walker: And then it keeps going. It's like of the 20%, 20% of those people are for 80% of that. I think that what you're saying about having... that's how funnel works. The further down the funnel you go, it gets smaller and smaller. But there's also you're providing more and more value the further they go. Definitely makes a lot of sense to, to leverage that principle for-

Rick Barker: I thought of it like, if I got arrested and needed to get out of jail, will I tried to call 1,000 people to raise $1,000, or would I call two people that I got a really good relationship with, or even one person that I got a great relationship with? I would go to that smaller group to get my butt out of jail the fastest. I wouldn't try to just call every random person. I come up with weird ass analogies. I apologize for that. But I just thought, if I'm in jail, and I get one call, two calls at the most, I can't call 1,000 people, I'm going to call the person that I have the best relationship with. And that's probably the person I've spent the most time with.

Rick Barker: That's probably the person that knows the most about me, that's probably the person that feels that I know the most about them. I'm like, "Why do we not take those same principles and apply them to our business?" And why am I not teaching those principles and having those... as we always call them, those common sense moments to go, "Duh." We are chasing strangers asking for money, when we should be introducing ourselves to those strangers, continuing to build the relationship. And today, it doesn't take as much time as you think. And for those that have a hard time asking for emails, or asking for the money or things like that, it will get easier.

Rick Barker: The more you don't have money, the easier it's going to become to start asking for money, trust me. But one of the things that we've been saying a lot is, it's all how you frame things. It's all how you make the offer. Everything is about the offer, whether you wanted to get your kids to do something, especially when they're teenagers, your wife to do something, your boss, your fans, it's no different. What I did is I started bringing light to what everyone already knew. And what I was saying was, I said a lot of you are pissed off because I did a Facebook Live the other day and Facebook didn't notify you. But you know what, quite honestly, it's not Facebook's responsibility to do that, if you would to be notified, what I would love to do is I send out a reminder every time I go live, and I always send out some other cool goodies.

Rick Barker: If you would to make sure that you get notified, just DM me the best email to send you that notification, I promise not to spam you or beat you up with your email. But you had said you wanted to be notified. I always send out a notification, I always announce new stuff, I'm always sharing. Now, they just said, "Well, crap, I'll give you my email for that." Instead of, subscribe to my list, subscribe to my newsletter, join my newsletter and know that all I'm going to do is talk about me, that's what it says by the way, when you guys say join my newsletter. They're like, "You're not a news reporter, all you're going to do is talk about yourself." But just like, become a part of this community and I will make sure that you see everything that you're supposed to see, I won't bombard you with things you're not supposed to see. The ability for you to grow your email list will happen a lot.

Rick Barker: One of my clients Reba, Reba had gone in and she only had 800 Instagram followers, but she did the exact same strategy that I shared with you. She sends me a question. You'll love his Michael, she sent me a question she said, "Rick, at what point when you've talked to them a couple times, and they've stopped talking to you, do you just give up on that?" I said, "Well, Reba what kind of results are you having right now?" She said, "Well, right now, for every 10 people that I start a conversation with, I'm only getting five to seven emails." And I'm like, "I'm going to get you to do my marketing for me then." She thought she had to get 10 out of 10 in order to be successful, I'm like, you get between 50 to 70%. I said, "That's massive right now." I had another couple out of the dust. They're fantastic Christian couple great message. And what we did with them was, we ran an Instagram ad.

Rick Barker: Now by the way, guys, and girls and whatever pronoun you want to be called, I don't want to leave anyone out. If you want to grow, you're going to ultimately at some point have to spend money, okay? You're going to ultimately have to spend money. We ran an ad for traffic engagement, where people would go to their Instagram page. And the reason that we did it was they have a 10 minute long video telling their story. When they're telling their story, we only share 30 seconds of it but the hook was amazing. How could God save this marriage? He was an atheist, drug dealer, lived a secret life, she was the... And we just left the dot, dot, dot where they're like, "Oh." They watch this video, we sent them to Instagram.

Rick Barker: As soon as they got to Instagram, the big blue follow came up. What we noticed was we were increasing their followers on Instagram, because we were only sending them to Instagram, not to YouTube because we can't get direct to the consumer on YouTube, direct to the fan, not to Spotify. We send them straight to Instagram, then they went in the little heart on your Instagram profile tells you, you have new followers, they went... did the same exact strategy that I just taught you. And it worked out super well for them. They were getting emails, they were getting new followers, and things that. Don't be afraid to just take a little time spend a couple dollars. They were spending a couple 100 bucks on ads, but they were generating, 50 to 70 new likes a day, and they were picking up 10 to 15 emails a day. And that's ultimately everyone says, the money's in the list, the money is actually in the relationship with the list. I know people, a lot of people with big lists that have no relationship with that list. It's there.

Rick Barker: And also two, speaking of gender and binary and stuff like that. Don't be afraid. And if you've already come out like this anyway... don't be afraid to say that in your profile because you will attract the right person. I have quite a few clients that are in that position right now and they're like, "Rick, what do I do? I was this and now in this?" I'm like, "You just be honest." Because you want to attract your people. Don't be afraid to say who you are, because then you're going to attract people. It's, no, be okay with that. One of my favorite people in the world, went through this massive surgery and she was great. All of a sudden, she took her fans in when she had her breasts removed. It was nuts how this happened. But she brought them along on her journey, and just shared the story of what was going on. And the audience loved it. Because it was the right audience.

Rick Barker: It was the people that she would want at her festival. She was able to go get other bands. And then she was able to bring people in. And we have some people that their pronoun is they, we have gay. She knew who her people were and she told her story and it worked out amazingly well. If you are suffering from ADHD, if you have PTSD, if you have something different is the new better. Okay? Find what makes you different. I could be another person teaching in the music space, or I could be a manager that's teaching in the music space. There's people that have production, I've went the social media route and the fan building and engagement and things like that. Mike's got the funnel thing and the coaching and really helping you guys set up a business side of things. Leah's got the marketing and who knows what Chris Manafest has this week. He's the one that... he'll give you whatever you need. There's so many different ways, but different is the new better. What makes you different is what's important.

Rick Barker: If I need to ask someone, "Hey, what would you do to help sell tickets to your tour?" I'm going to first go to Michael, because Michael sold tickets to tours. Say, "Hey, when you guys go out and try to sell tickets, what is it that you do?" That's what makes him different. If I want to know how to do something else, I'm going to go to somebody that that's what they do. Don't be afraid in your bio to be... you may not want to lead with that relationship. Everybody who knows me knows that, I'm 28 years sober. Those that know me better know that I went from living homeless on the streets, strung out addicted to crack cocaine to ultimately launching Taylor Swift. I don't lead with that, but it's part of my story. So when the time is right, it's, people that know me know that I'm a believer, doesn't mean I can't help people that don't believe the same thing that I believe. But we're not having those types of conversations.

Rick Barker: I'm serving them the way they need to be served. They're getting for me what they need to get for me, but we have those conversations. Don't be afraid to share part of who you are. That's what makes you different.

Michael Walker: It's like a mic drop. Mic drop moment there. It's so good. And that's one thing I've really come to appreciate more and more as we've grown, and as I've seen artists growing and people... Seeing the people who have become the most successful in terms of building a community and serving as many people as possible, it seems that's a core that drives through it is that, they do have an authenticity to them because they're willing to share the who they are. And ultimately, there's going to be people who don't resonate with that and they're going to be repelled by it. And then there's going to be people that they definitely resonate with it. And there's just different ways of communication. And you being who you are and expressing yourself authentically is going to attract the right people. I 100% agree with everything you just said. And there's a couple of points that you brought up that I wanted to dig into, because out there [inaudible 00:45:07] just awesome.

Michael Walker: One of them was when you're talking about this... You mentioned that at some point if you want to be able to scale and reach more people, then you're going to have to be willing to spend money in order to grow, to be able to invest into it. And what that reminded me of was this idea that, really, we have two currencies that we can spend in order to get results. We have our time and we have money, right. And at the beginning, if you have a lot of time, great, there's things that you can do. If you hustle and use the strategy... Literally you guys just got, a gold plate full of delicious food delivered to your doorstep, with the strategy that you talked about, of finding the people on Instagram, reach out to them directly. And specifically, asking them questions, ask them good questions, building a relationship, not just being what, me, me, me, me, me, but actually building a relationship. But that's going to require a short amount of time, right.

Michael Walker: You can either trade your time, or you can trade your money. And it definitely seems like one thing that you mentioned it earlier is that, the value of time versus the value of money. As you grow, you'll realize more and more how much more valuable your time is, than money. That's something that... the more that you can leverage your time and be able to get results by investing, then the more you're going to be able to scale, the more you're going to be able to grow. And that is... I don't know. There's a tricky balance to that. At the beginning, it's [inaudible 00:46:46] no matter the way you cut it, you sometimes you have to trade your time in order to get to a point where you have money [crosstalk 00:46:51].

Rick Barker: You always do. You always do and I did a whole whiteboard presentation recently. I did it as an ad and I wrote... I drew a picture of the clock equals and the dollar sign. I said, "How many people realize that?" And they're like, "We all agree with that." I said, "Well, it's wrong." And I took down the equal sign and I put greater. Time is greater than money, because you can always get more money, but you can't get more time. And so often, people are wasting time trying to save money, when if they just invested a little bit of money, they would get a lot more time back. When you make an investment, when I make an investment, what I'm investing in is someone's already spent 10 years doing what I don't want to take the time to spend 10 years trying to figure out.

Rick Barker: If I can go and say, "Hey, you've been doing this for 10 years, you're having the success that I want to have, the people around you are having the success that I want to have, how much for me to get an hour or two of your time? Or do you have a training where I can learn all the mistakes and all the benefits and all the great things that you've done in the last 10 years? Because I don't want to spend 10 years learning it." Yes. $5,000, congratulations. "Here's my check for 5,000, how do I get started." What I just bought was, if it takes me a year, to not have to spend 10 years, I just bought back nine years of my life, that I can now be with my family, that I can now put someplace else.

Rick Barker: It took me a long time to figure that out. I was the guy, I spent 14 hours building out my first WordPress website. Now I charge $300 an hour for my time. I could have had that WordPress website built for 500 bucks, but I was a cheapskate. I realized now, it's like, here, Greg. Greg will not build it. Tell me what I owe you. This is your world, this is what you do. I spent so much time going, "Dude, I'm a smart guy, I'll figure out how to write my own emails, I'll figure out how to run my own ads, I'll figure out how to do this." And once I realized that I'm not getting that time back, and that's time that I could be spending building relationships instead of me... I'm spending time wasting money instead of spending money to get that time to build those relationships to be able to even make more money.

Rick Barker: We could have a whole nother podcast episode just on that factor alone. But the bottom line is this, it's a business. And in order to be in business, you have to invest in your business. Too often artists are just investing in equipment, and they're not invested in marketing, they're not investing in education, they're not investing and understanding how to register their music properly. They're not investing in, if you get somebody into your world, what do you do with them next? What do you do with them next? How do you make them an offer? How does that offer get delivered? How do you keep up your end of the bargain because somebody just gave you money? This stuff just doesn't magically appear. There's systems that need to be put in place. And it takes time and money to be able to learn those systems or you can just hire someone to do it for you. And that's why a lot of people will do that. It's like I have a, done with you system, with my Facebook guys.

Rick Barker: They tell me what content they need for me, I give them the content, they put everything together. And I give them a certain amount of money for that. But if I had to spend all the time doing what they know how to do, I would never be able to build the business, the way that I want to be able to build it, I would not be able to, coach the clients, I want to coach because I'd be out building funnels, and writing damn emails. I's like, you guys should be happy that Michael and I invest in our businesses the way that we do, because it allows us to be able to do podcasts. It allows us to be able to do the things that we do to share the information with you that we share. We have to invest in ourselves.

Rick Barker: I did a presentation the other day, I call it the town hall. And I showed my tax returns from the last two years. And I said, "This is what I made, but this is what I kept. And this is how much it costs me to run my business. And this is how much I invested in my own education this year." And then I showed them the next years, and I said, "Look, I only made 50,000 more, I only kept though 10,000 more than the year before. But I spent an additional 50 Grand, I did almost $90,000 in education this year." So then when they see this year's tax forms, they're going to see major growth, major keep, major investment. They'll see this year that I spent more than what I kept last year just in Facebook ads.

Rick Barker: They'll see that I spent over $100,000 in Facebook ads, but when they get to see what that was able to generate for the business and what I was able to do and the reason that I'm very open and share this stuff with my clients is because I want them to see how business really works. It's not what you make, it's what you keep. And that the education that you get to write off on your taxes is knowledge that you get to keep forever. If an investment that you make to learn how to do something once is... you get to keep that and every year, it gets to help your business get bigger and bigger and bigger. So all that coaching that I was spending on every year, my revenue was going up. And at some point, the expenses are going to pretty much stay the same outside of marketing, but to run the business, the normal, the rent, the employees, that usually all stays the same.

Rick Barker: Now, the thing that made all the difference last year was the amount of money I spent on Facebook ads, and what it was able to generate for the business, which meant I could get my message in front of more people, which meant that I could serve more people, which meant that because I had the system set up that I paid someone to teach me how to do or to do for me myself. And that's what we're saying to you. At some point you want to have automation in place where people see you, get to your website, hear your music, get invited to be in your community, get some automation sequences that come across, get made an offer, pay for the money while you're sleeping, it notifies the shipping department, the shipping department sends it out. And you're getting DM-ed with someone wearing your shirt saying hallelujah.

Rick Barker: That's the system we ultimately want to run people through. But one it takes the right person to understand the commitment that's involved with learning, spending and things that. But yeah, that's something we could talk about all day. And I love talking about. I geek out on the marketing stuff. That's what my management sessions... every week I love when I get to build out ads and things like that with people. That's what I get excited about the most.

Michael Walker: Me too, man. Yes, definitely. It's one of the biggest opportunities I feel is being able to build systems, automations. But also marrying it with the real personal connection that really drives everything as well. Yeah. I agree, I think this is the kind of thing that we could literally just talk for five hours about. But one last note on that is, I've used this analogy a lot and I think it's a pretty common analogy. Is that, when you invest in mentorship, or guidance or education, it's like investing in a map to get towards the destination. If you don't have a map, if you're persistent enough and you're willing to take a lot of wrong turns and spend a lot of extra time and money, then you can take a lot of wrong turns. And eventually if you process that, usually you can get your way to the destination but it's a lot easier, it's a lot better to have a map or even better to have a GPS that's keeping you on track. I love the, done with you, style of teaching.

Michael Walker: Speaking of maps and speaking of guidance, and things that are super valuable, Rick, I know that you have social media for 2021 course that you developed. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Rick Barker: Yeah. What I'll do is I'll invite you guys to a free training, and you will have the ability, there'll be a link in the show notes here. And it'll be socialmediaformusic.com/whatever you guys make it. So you'll be able to figure out whatever the sidebar is. And the reason for that just so you guys know is that I want to know where you came from. I want to know who brought you into my world. We like to see how many of you are listening to the podcast and doing things. Whenever you hear us forward slash something... Here's what we'll do for this one. It will be, go to rickbarker.com/ modern. We'll make it super simple, modern. Just modern, and you're in my world. Okay, so rickbarker.com/modern. What you're going to do is I'm going to share with you some strategies that I'm implementing, and I'll show you how to implement those strategies and to how to utilize social media.

Rick Barker: What I love to do is teach people how to grow, nurture, and monetize a fanbase. That's the primary focus of what that does. I'm going to share with you behind the scenes. I went in and taught this live. And it's hours of me teaching you what it is that you need to do with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. I brought in some people to help me with Twitch, because Twitch turned out really well for DJs this year, and some live music stuff. I went out and got the experts in Twitch and Tik Tok because I don't personally... I'm not an expert there. I wanted to bring in the experts, I think that's super important that you guys know. I don't want to be the expert in everything, I want to get access to the experts in everything. And then I give you a bunch of resources and things... podcasts that you should be listening to like the one you're listening to right now.

Rick Barker: Books that you should be reading, podcasts that I listened to, different resources for publishing and music and all that stuff. Just come watch the training, if the training makes sense, I'm going to give you a chance to pick up my course. What's neat about it is it's the same exact price that it was when I launched my first, social media for music course, seven years ago. I still only charge 97 bucks. If you feel knowing everything that I know up to this time is worth the 97 bucks, great. If you're not in a position financially to take advantage of that, go watch the strategies, it'll take you some time to figure out the tactics because here's how life works. We share the strategies, we have to sell you the tactics, because this is how we provide for our families. This is how we put food on the table for our families and run a business to be able to give this stuff to you.

Rick Barker: I have zero problems telling you guys what the price is upfront. I'm really one of the only people that I know that will do that. But hey, if you want to learn from someone who's spending way more than you ever will, to figure this stuff out, it's a good investment for you to spend the 97 bucks. If not go where you are right now. And if you feel you're not in a position to get what's good, but you want to know what we taught last year, I'll give you one more website, go to Rickbarker.com/pickprice, and you can pay what you want for the 2020 course. Michael, that's a strategy at another time, I'm going to share with you very well. And I'm teaching it to my clients right now that have extra CDs, and T-shirts and merchandise from past tours. And they're killing it financially right now. And I got the idea, I was sitting outside, having a cigar, answering emails, and a television commercial came in.

Rick Barker: And it was this lady at a car lot, she says, "Come to the lot, no reasonable offer will be refused. We've got to clear out the 2020s to make room for the 2121s. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I have this course called social media for music 2020. I had thousands of people show up to the training that for whatever reason were never able to do." I shot a video and I said, "Look, guys, here's the deal. I had somebody help me when I was struggling at one point in my life and I will never forget it. And I've always tried to pay it forward the best way I can. This year [inaudible 00:58:41] a lot of things happened so here's what I'd like to do. You can, five bucks, 10 bucks, 20 bucks, whatever you want, you pick what works best for you. I have emails of people wanting to name kids after me, thanking me because they were just... they got hit hard, all this stuff.

Rick Barker: But what I did was all of a sudden, I brought over 400 new people into my ecosystem by allowing them to start building a relationship with me through that [inaudible 00:59:10]. The only thing I asked him at the end of that video is I said, "But the only thing is when you get in a position to help someone else, you pay it forward as well." I went in and I taught that strategy to my clients. And now we're using it with their music business and their merch business. For a lot of you that are like, "Dude, this guy's full transparent." I am so transparent because everything that I do to get you to come into my world and give me money, I teach you how I did that, and how to go do that and with the other one. And it usually always starts with a relationship.

Rick Barker: It usually starts with you hearing my music, which is my presentation or them hearing your music, it's all the same thing. Once again, go to Rick barker.com/modern, and you can see the latest training. And if you want to pick up the course I'd love to have you in my world.

Michael Walker: Oh man, that is awesome. I love the way that you just shared that. And, yeah, as you're sharing that, I feel like the conversation we just had was worth $97 in and of itself. So I think that-

Rick Barker: Great, you can PayPal that to me.

Michael Walker: I probably will, probably in [inaudible 01:00:18]. But honestly, this conversation alone was so valuable. And I know that really, that's part of why you've been able to be successful. Most successful people that I know is because they really focus on providing a service and providing real value. I think that if you thought that this conversation was valuable, you got that nugget, that one strategy of the Instagram, personalized DM-ing, asking questions, that alone is just so valuable. I feel very confident that this training that you're offering is going to be probably about 10 times more valuable because you'll be able to really dive deeper. I highly encourage anyone who's listening to this right now go check it out, it's going to be awesome. And invest in yourself, invest in your education. $97 to me just feels a no brainer or something like that. If you can't do it, then he literally just has a name your price for the 2020 version. It's awesome.

Rick Barker: Or at least go to Tik Tok and follow me so I can get to 1,000 followers, so I can go live and I'll go get it someplace else. But yeah, I would love to stay in touch with you guys, just hit me up. It's funny as we're recording this I'm sending a link to a person that I had my appointment with and said, "Hey, I'm running five minutes late, I'm hanging out with Michael." They're like, "No problem." And they know who he is. Yeah, just go change the world with your music, if there's something we did to help you tell people where you learned it from. Even if you don't spend a dime with us, if you learn something of value and you were able to go do something, share on our socials, "Hey, Rick, I tried this strategy, and it was fantastic." Because we can use that to go out and create income for ourselves. You know what I mean? That's the cool part about what we do is we don't need every single person just like you don't need every single person to like your music to be successful.

Rick Barker: We don't need every single person that we talked to, to physically be the one that does the commerce exchange, your word of mouth to tell someone else who might be in a position that says, "Man, I really love what's going on with the look of your socials. Well, I heard this guy speak and he told me to do this and I did." "Oh, what's his name?" "Rick Barker. Go watch, it's free training, go to social media for music." And they're like, "Oh my gosh." That's judge me as much as you... spending money with me as well. So if you get any value from us DM us, share with it on our socials. We love seeing it, trust me, it lets us know we're doing the right thing. I'm going to go ahead and just blow his cover real quick. We give a lot away of information that we know can help people. But you've got to do the actions with it.

Rick Barker: Too often people are just listening to podcasts and watching videos. Get into action too. Because with just the free content that we give, you guys can put yourself in a position at some point to be able to afford to run ads, and to be able to afford to invest in yourself. Even just the free stuff if you do the work will change the game for you.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Awesome. Well, hey, Rick, thanks so much again, for taking the time to come on here and to share. I feel like every single time we talk, I'm like, "How can we learn? How could there be something more at this point?" But every single time I come away and I'm like, "Oh, man, that's a really good idea."

Rick Barker: Well, thank you and I appreciate you.

Michael Walker: Now I need to PayPal Rick the $97.

Rick Barker: That's it, yeah. Paypal.me/rickbarkermusic. You know that there's a... Now I use Anchor for my podcast, people can pay you. Because everyone goes, "Dude, I get so much out of your podcast." I'm like, "Great. Go here. You can subscribe for 99 cents a month."

Michael Walker: Wow. That's cool.

Rick Barker: [crosstalk 01:03:54].

Michael Walker: ... another new thing. Again, thanks so much.

Rick Barker: Welcome.

Michael Walker: I know you're a little bit late for your next meeting, so I'll let you go. But appreciate what you're doing.

Rick Barker: [crosstalk 01:04:00].

Michael Walker: Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends on your social media and tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.