Episode 134: The Art of Connection: Harnessing the Potential of Fan Email Lists for Independent Artists, with Billy Big Shot Beats





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Billy Big Shot Beats is an award-winning music producer from Toronto, Canada. He is a coach in a private community of nearly 3,000 musicians and co-authored the Beats Traffic Blueprint book with Kato Producer, Legion Gabe, Anno Domini, and others. Billy has collaborated with renowned artists such as Jadakiss, Waka Flocka, and Gun Play. His music has been featured on major sports leagues like NBA, NHL, MLB, PGA, as well as top TV networks. He also hosts the Golden Voice Podcast and the Indie Artist Summit.

Billy shares his expertise on the importance of building an email list for independent artists. 

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

  • The crucial role of an email list in connecting and nurturing fans for independent artists.

  • How to effectively monetize your email list by making strategic offers to your audience.

  • The benefits of having an email list as a more reliable and controllable platform compared to social media sites.

Michael Walker:
Hey, what's going on, everyone? So I want to take a quick second before the podcast starts to let you know that registration is officially open for Modern Musician's sixth annual Success With Music virtual conference. The theme this year is Merging Technology with Humanity, and we talk a lot about AI, hand selected 15 speakers who are the best in the world at what they teach, all around building a sustainable career with your music. We'll be speaking with music mentors who've coached multi-platinum songwriters, people who've helped artists hit over 1.2 billion streams, and from people who've taught artists how to generate over seven figures of sync placements.
We're on track to make this our biggest event to date, so I want to make sure that you have a chance to register so you don't miss it. And all the details are included in the link in the description, so don't wait. Pause the episode now. Go claim your free ticket. The event's going to be incredible. I can't wait to see you there. It's totally free. So go ahead and sign up. And now let's get into the episode.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
You have to lead your people in a way that they're going to look you up because you took that initial step, and this is where courage comes from. So have the courage to take the decision to start. You don't need to be the absolute best, but because you took that one step, then that's where it starts and you just have to commit and keep moving forward.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry, with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. But I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician, and it's only 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 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.
All right, I'm excited to be here today with Billy Big Shot Beats. So Billy Big Shot Beats is an award-winning music producer from Toronto, Canada. His music's been played on the NBA, NHL, MLB, PGA, and on TV networks like HGTV, Showtime, the Cartoon Network, many more. You've probably heard of a lot, if not all, of those networks. And he also is a coach in a private community for thousands of musicians, and he hosts awesome summits. A bunch of our team members at Modern Musicians showed up. It was awesome.
And I'm really excited to have him here today to be able to talk about one of my favorite things to talk about, which is about building an audience, building a fan base, specifically using tools like an email list and an SMS text list to be able to more deeply connect with your fans. So Billy, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Hey, thank you, brother. Man, it's an honor to be on here and to be on your podcast, sharing some value to you, to your audience, and everybody that's listening. So awesome to be here.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Maybe we can kick things off, you can share a little bit about yourself and how you found your way onto the NBA, NHL, MLB, all those networks, and became a coach of other musicians.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Okay, awesome. For me, I'm based out of Toronto, Canada. Once again, this is Bill here from Big Shot Beats, CEO and founder of Big Shot Beats, which is a music production company that serves music artists online. And that started about 10 years ago online, but I've also been a music producer for about 20 years. So I started my journey chasing the majors, chasing the major artists, major labels, and trying to get a deal, so to speak. But even though I got in the studio with guys like Jadakiss, Waka Flocka, Gunplay, just to name a few, nothing was officially released.
And then I decided to turn to using the power of the internet. And back then MySpace was pretty popular, so I decided to spread my wings and become more active online. And this is why I decided that I wanted to serve the artist community in a way that would allow me to work with upcoming artists like myself so that we can bring something new to the music industry's table, and that when we have something that hits the charts and that run up some numbers now, we can attract the majors and now the power of saying yes or no when an opportunity arises. Becoming independently successful with your music is where it's at for me.
In the process of me building my music production business online, there's certain avenues and certain ways of monetizing my music that I gravitated to. And one of them was sync licensing, getting my music on TV and film and stuff like that. And then it took me a long little while to figure it out, but with leading with value, getting coaching, accountability, and guidance, I was able to crack into the door and I got a deal, like a hip hop beat album deal with a music licensing company, and they got a deal, exclusive deal with me. And then that started to go like wildfire. I got an unusual check from my PRO, and I was like, uh-oh, something's going on here. And then I went to check, and then I discovered that I had music on the Olympics and all the golf channels, sports channels, and so on and so forth. And it is just now I think I might have over 700 and going.
But where my real passion is to help music artists make, mix, and market better music online with not only the quality of my music production, but with also the marketing knowledge that I've acquired over the years as I'm moving forward. And I thank God every day for this because when I started my journey online, I discovered about the basic fundamentals and principles of email marketing, which we'll cover a little bit about on here, so that I can build my music business up.
And it being a really important, I think it's one of the most important assets that we have to build if we are building a music business online or any business online, and it's an email list that can eventually put money into our pocket. So it's an asset, meaning something that we can monetize as we are nurturing ethically and that we serve. So this is where it's at for me in a very compressed way. And yeah, that's my story of my rollercoaster journey until today.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Thanks for sharing. And yeah, it's interesting, with an email list, I think probably the people who are here right now are either in the vein of they've never heard of the email list before, or they might think email, why email? Isn't social media where it's at?
Or maybe they're on the flip side. They've been hanging around our crowd for long enough where they're like, yeah, I've heard so much about email, I know it's really important, but I don't quite understand it. Or maybe they just don't quite understand why is email so important? So maybe you could share a little bit about email versus social media and why you think email is a really important platform to build.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
So for me, it's always three reasons why musicians should build an email list. So number one being that we don't own social media platforms. If tomorrow it shuts down, Instagram shuts down, TikTok shuts down, you lose all your followers and you are basically starting from scratch because the followers on their platforms, there's no way for you to keep that or to retain that.
But if you are building an email list through the tool of social media, if something happens tomorrow, and it actually did happen to me about almost two years ago, Instagram decided to disable my account that was at about almost 17,000 followers. And for whatever reason, they disabled it. I appealed it, they reinstated my account after 24 hours, and then I thought I was good, everything was great. And then 24 hours later, again, they disabled my account. And then till this day, the second appeal didn't go through and I was like, okay, I'm going to start over again.
But I was a little bit frustrated the first day, but then the second day I was like, okay, it's all good. I started again and because I had an email list, I was able to tell my people, so this is my new social media channel, and basically my email list, this is something that I own and nobody can take it away from me. You know what I mean? So if social media shuts down tomorrow, you would be able to still have your email list versus losing all your followers.
And now the second thing of why a musician should build an email list is because marketing to your email becomes instant traffic that you own for your promotions, releases, and important events. So if you have something going on, it's immediate traffic, so put the word out. This is why for those that really understand this, that people push out pre-saves for their release and stuff like that, and then they get a whole bunch of pre saves, or they really run up their numbers for something that's so new, that's because they have an email list and they're able to send that to their people and get immediate traffic, and it's traffic that you own for anything that you have going on.
This is basically your tribe, your people, and it's something that's yours. This is why it's so effective. Versus on social media, you have to fight for the algorithm and a percentage of the people is going to see your posts and your stories and all that good stuff, versus email, even though there's a percentage that won't see it, it's still instant traffic that you own that you can control, and that makes it all effective.
And then the third reason why is that an email list helps you build a community. If you can build something around your music, it helps you build your fan base, but most importantly, it helps you identify and find your true diehard fans in the process of nurturing your list and making offers and selling them stuff that's going to [inaudible 00:09:31] them, voting with their credit card, it's going to show you that they actually, they stand for what you stand for, your brand, you and your music.
So these are the three reasons why I think that it's very important for any musician to build an email list, and basically what you do off of the tools that you use, like social media for example, you invite people to come onto your email list by sharing something of value in exchange for their information, which is the email. And something easy could be something like, join my private community and where do you want me to send you the link? What's your email?
Or if we're talking about SMS, I can text you the link of my private community. And this is how you get their information in exchange. And then now those people start to become and be on your list, and that's how it works. You know what I mean? So these are the three reasons why any musician, in my opinion, should build an email list.

Michael Walker:
Boom, yes.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Boom.

Michael Walker:
Three mic drops there simultaneously. Kapow. Awesome. Yeah, that's so good. And you were talking about MySpace a little bit ago. And just such a prime example of why it's so important to have a platform that you own and something that if it dies, if the ship goes down, then you don't lose tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of fans, but you actually have the ability to stay connected with them.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about with email, one thing that is so cool is how you can create a personalized message and you can speak directly to one person and you can do it in a way where you can automate it. Whereas if someone comes across you on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, then there's not really a way to automate their experience or to give them a personalized experience. If they show up, there's a big web of all of the stuff that you've posted and they see your most recent post. Whereas with an automated email sequence, you could deliberately have a welcome sequence where every single person gets your best possible thing first.
And yeah, maybe you could share a little bit about other things that if you're talking about email versus social media, or maybe even potentially versus Spotify too, since a lot of times people want to drive traffic to Spotify versus an email list for example.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Exactly. The email list is going to keep the conversation going, so to speak. So on social media, somebody can come across you and if they are not, because you have to make sure, musicians have to make sure that a follower is not necessarily a fan. So if somebody doesn't follow you on social media, they may have came across your content the first time and there's no way other than them following you for them to see your content again kind of thing, versus email.
If they're on your email list, it's a way for you to communicate with them, to let them know what's going on in your world and to keep that conversation going, build that relationship, and anything that you have that's happening, they can know about it and you can personalize it in a way where if they put in their name and email address, the messages that you can put in your emails can even call out their name. And all that can be done automatically through the snippets, little pieces or snippets that you can put in your message that were pre-written, pre-made in advance, and then once you set it, it's like a set it and forget it kind of thing where you can put something in the system and it just follows the flow, follows the way.
But you can tell somebody, hey, are you on YouTube? Oh, hey, are you on TikTok? Check out my new content. You can set up something that's evergreen that's going to be going out, even if you're sleeping, they're going to be getting those emails, but you can also do things on the fly where you're sending an email out with something that's happening today so that they can know about it and it can be personalized. In marketing, they say that if you're trying to target everybody, you're targeting nobody, but in your emails, you can do it in a way where if people are on your email list, that's because they showed more interest than just seeing your content on social media, for example.
And it can be specialized, personalized in a way where the message that you send to them, it feels personal. When you write emails, you don't want to write it in a way that's too broad, but if you make it personal, people are going to really tap into them and they're going to read them. And that's how it can really feel like it's a conversation versus just social media and you're putting something that's a little bit more spread out, so to speak. So email can have the conversation going. It's a way for you to nurture and to keep people at the top of what's going on in your world with the music.

Michael Walker:
Super smart. Yeah, as you're describing that difference between personalized messages that are directly connecting, having a conversation with someone, versus holding up a megaphone and being like, yo, everyone, hey. And just the difference in the perceived quality and the level of connection.
I'm not sure who came up with this analogy, but I think it's a really good one to describe email communication versus social media, is that if social media is like a dinner, it's like a social gathering. You all show up there, there's certain rules of etiquette, and it would be a little bit weird if you showed up at a dinner party and you were making offers to everyone at the dinner party, like you're selling things. It's just not quite the right etiquette to connect with people. It's great for socializing, it's great for connecting and catching up and what's going on in your life right now, but not necessarily a platform for doing business necessarily on the platform.
Whereas email, inviting someone back to your office and having a discussion personally with them, which it could make sense to gear it towards more of an intimate conversation around making an offer. And that always stuck with me around thinking about the types of communication and the social gathering aspect of it, the rules of etiquette of email and personalization versus the megaphone effect of speaking to everyone at the same time.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Yeah, because like you said, social media, we have to be social on there. It seems like a lot of people seem to forget that part, but then at some point you may be in a conversation with someone, right, because they saw something in you. Maybe it's your clothes, maybe it's your shoes that piqued their interest, and then now you're having a closer conversation with them, which we can illustrate as you're in the DMs talking to them.
And then it's, yeah, I have a private community. If you want, I can bring you over. What's your email so I can shoot you the link kind of thing. And then boom, they're in your email list and then you can keep that conversation going like that, versus you show up at a party and you're like throwing business cards on everybody's table and stuff like that. People are going to look at you weird. And it's the same thing on social media, it's just a little bit more digital. So we have to see it that way and in that sense for sure.

Michael Walker:
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That's beautiful. Even taking that approach, what you just said about rather than just throwing your business cards around everywhere in a social gathering, really the best way to build relationships is to try to have conversations, and generally you having conversations and trying to connect with a thousand people at the same time who don't know who you are might be more challenging than, and certainly not as a great way to connect, as having conversation back and forth with one person at a time.
It's interesting too, you have this effect in this, being a host of a summit and being able to present on stage. There is something really powerful about the stage effect, and anyone who's here who's a musician, when you get up on stage and you perform, then people look at you differently, they see you differently. And if you have the opportunity to speak on stage in front of a thousand people or a hundred people, then that can be a really powerful way to make an impression. But it does seem like the conversations that happen when you get off stage and you're back behind your merch table and you're going back and forth, that's when the sales are made, when people actually support you. It's interesting.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Yeah, definitely. And when you position yourself in that way, people perceive that as they're looking at a leader, somebody that leads them. So that opens a conversation and it positions you as a leader. And I think that people look up to that, right? It's the courage that you have to stand in your truth and to share your message, share some of the things that you deem that as important for people to know, and then that opens the conversation, keep it going. And then that also builds trust.
So if somebody stays in the back room, they're a little bit shy, they don't want to get on the stage, versus somebody that stands up, put their head up, they actually go on stage and they rock it out, people look up to that and that's what opens the conversation and builds trust as well for sure.

Michael Walker:
That's powerful. What would you recommend for someone who, I know a lot of musicians, I certainly was this way for a long time, and in some ways I still am this way, that I'm not necessarily a natural social butterfly and I'm the kind of person who's like, yeah, I'm going to jump up on stage, I'm just going to rock it, by nature, especially earlier when I was in high school. I was a very shy, introverted kid, and putting my message out there, sharing my voice was something that was really challenging.
And again, this kind of comes back to what you're doing as well with the summits and being a host and being a guide and a coach. It takes courage. And for anyone who's here right now, part of what we're trying to help you do is become a leader, become a leader of your community and serve your fans, serve your community, build relationships, bring people together.
And I know for a lot of people, probably one of the biggest hurdles is a sense of fear or of, what's the words, imposter syndrome or feeling like do I really deserve this? Who am I to ... Maybe being afraid of being judged or being looked down on. So how would you recommend that someone who is maybe a bit earlier on in their career and they really want to get started building an email list, building an audience, and they're feeling a bit shy, how do you recommend that they approach starting to build their fan base and doing it in a way that comes across in the way that they want to?

Billy Big Shot Beats:
So it really starts with, it really starts with you. You have to make a decision that, okay, I'm going to leading my people and there's a message that they need to get from me. It all starts with a decision from yourself because if you're going to be a musician, you're going to have to be in front of some people. At some point your music is going to be heard by a few people and then a few hundred people, and then a few thousand people, and eventually a few hundred thousand people and so on and so forth. So it's meant to become something where that will be, you're going to have to lead your people.
So thinking about it this way, if you think that you're going to be making music and you're going to hide in your basement or behind a computer screen and that nobody's going to see you, then your music is not really going to go ways. You're going to have to get your music heard because otherwise it's going to be useless. I often say you could be making the best music in the world in your basement of your house or wherever you make music, but if nobody hears it, it's useless. So I don't think that you're making music for it to be useless.
So it all comes down to a decision and then you take the first step, and because you took that first step, people are going to look up to that. And if you were one step ahead, your people are going to start following you, and that's all you need. You don't need to be 10 step or a hundred steps ahead to show somebody that okay, I have a method that I want to share that can help you with this. Or I have a message that helps this cause, or whatever your messages that you stand in or whatever your brand is about, you have to lead your people in a way that they're going to look you up because you took that initial step.
And this is where courage comes from. So have the courage to take the decision to start. You don't need to be the absolute best, but because you took that one step, then that's where it starts and you just have to commit and keep moving forward.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. Yeah, there's some really good stuff in there, in terms of mindset stuff and in terms of leadership and being able to share your voice and raise your voice. Awesome. So how about in terms of bringing things back towards emails? And we talked through how important it is to build your own community, that you own a platform that doesn't have the potential to die. You can nurture and you can build a real relationship, have conversations with your fans. We talked about some ways to invite people to join your private community, to join your email list.
Maybe we can talk a little bit about what do you do once you have an email list. I know sometimes people feel a little like, how often should I be emailing my list? Should it be once a day or once a week or once a month? How do I make sure that this asset that I've built, what kinds of things should I use it for? How regularly should I reach out to the list? And maybe we could take a dive through that.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
So what's really important is to even begin with when somebody gets in onto your email list or onto your list, because we talk about email list, but this also applies to if you're building an SMS list to where if you have a keyword set up, I'm pretty sure that some of you listening or watching this have seen that before or heard that before, where say the keyword join to this type of phone number, and then once you type in the keyword and you text the phone number, then you receive a message back.
So it's the same thing for email. When somebody gets on your list, they need to get a welcome email that immediately welcomes them because they hopped on to get the information that they submitted their information for or the details that they inquired. So they're going to have to get an email and usually, typically if you want to systemize that, you're going to have to have a sequence of five to seven emails that shares your story.
After they've got the welcome email, it shares your story. And then you can also expend into them making sure that they can find you on specific social media platforms that you're on and that you're active on. And it's a process of getting them to know you in a systematic way. And then once the sequence is done, you can easily stay at the top of the mind of the people that are on there for the more often that you're going to be sending out emails. So you initially have a welcome email that they get right away, and then you have a series of email that they systematically can receive as they are on your email list.
And we can start by saying that we can have five to seven emails in the sequence that allows nurture and build that relationship, but it can go as long as an email for a year. I know marketers that use that, and then they have an email a day that they've typed in for a little while and then just keep adding to the sequence kind of thing. But initially, if you want to get started, I would say it would be good to have five to seven emails broken down in that amount that can break down your story, what you're about, what you stand for, the type of music that you make. Maybe you want to share some previous songs or projects that you did in the past and so on and so forth.
And then after that sequence is done, it's just a matter of sharing what's going on today, what's happening in your world right now. And the more frequent that you are, you become a top of mind for the people and that's how you keep building a relationship and get that conversation going.

Michael Walker:
So good. Yeah, I totally agree. I think probably the highest leverage thing you can focus on when it comes to building a relationship with new fans who join your email list is that welcome sequence. And it's almost, if you imagine the Harry Potter books, there's a narrative and there's a story and there's a path or there's a sequence. The book wouldn't make as much sense if you opened up book four three quarters of the way through and you started reading there and then you bounced back, like this is interesting. I'm just going to open it up to three quarters of the way through book four, and then I'm going to read backwards. I'm going to start reading backwards one page at a time. I don't even really understand what's happening here. What's the point? Or maybe you get a sense of it. But really what you need in order to fully appreciate that moment of the story is you need to read the books that led up to that moment.
And it seems like a similar thing with social media, it's like jumping into book four, page 372, and it sounds like what you're recommending with your email list is that you give them, hey, here's a summary of book one, book two, book three, book four. Now you're up to date. Oh, by the way, if you want the full books, then you can dive in and you can get them here. But here's an overview of where we're at right now. And what a great way to be able to catch people up and connect with them and really introduce yourself in a way that isn't possible if you're sending them directly into book four, page 372.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Exactly. It's like a pre-frame, right? If you're able to get it up to speed to where it's at in your world, what you do, what you stand for, the message you put out there, your why, why you're making music and why they should even listen, I think that's better than just they got in your email list, yes, you share something of value in exchange for their information, but then they don't know anything. I think that's better than just doing that.
You pre-frame them, you share your why, you share part of your story of how you even got started with the music and everything so that they can really understand where it's at with you. And then it gets them to go deeper into your world with what you're doing with your music for sure.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So maybe we could touch on a little bit, one of the elephants in the room. I think for a lot of musicians, it would be great if we didn't have to focus on this at all, if we could just go live in a cave somewhere and just make music and not worry about it, but making money and making sustainable income to continue investing more time and energy into your music is so important.
And obviously email is a huge aspect of that. For most artists who have a successful online business, understand the importance of how email is vital to that. So maybe we could talk a little bit about email as it relates to building and monetizing the music business online.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Definitely. What email can do for you as you're moving forward, like I was sharing on the three reasons why musicians should build an email list, is that it helps you build a community around you, your product, which is the music and everything that you're doing, and it helps you also build a fan base, but most importantly, it helps you find your true diehard fans. So true fans are people that are going to buy anything and everything that you put out.
So a quick number to share, if you want to do some quick math, and this is something that you also teach, is that say that you have a thousand true fans that are buying a hundred dollars worth of whatever you're selling that is around your music in a year. You're at a hundred grand, you're at a hundred grand, you have six figures as a musician. And an email is going to help you build that because you're going to make offers. You're going to share some things that you have for sale to your email list, and a percentage of people are going to take you up on this offer.
So in the front end, you can lead with something that sell a bundle of, it could be something like a digital download, and then you have a t-shirt that has the main lyric of the song that you're promoting on the t-shirt. So in the front end, you can share something like this, but then in the back end, you can be like, hey, I have a bigger bundle that's attached to this where you get a CD, you get a full package that has a little bit more item that's a little bit more expensive than the initial package and stuff like that. And this is something that you can do in the back end via your email or SMS list.
So this is where it becomes powerful because it helps you identify your true fans. And then if you can have this process systematically going to where you have repeated music buyers, repeated customers that keeps buying the stuff that you are putting out, this is where it really helps you find your true diehard fans, people that are going to follow you for you, your product, your music, and anything that you're doing around it. So I think that's something that can have that communication ongoing so that you can build and monetize your music business online.

Michael Walker:
So good. Yeah, that idea of building relationships and finding the quote unquote true fans, a thousand true fan theory, a hundred dollars a year, a thousand fans, you don't need millions of fans, hundreds of thousands. You don't need tens of thousands of fans. If you have a thousand true fans, hundred thousand dollars a year income.
And to iterate on your point as well, just I think one thing that sometimes musicians don't fully appreciate is just how important it is to make offers, and having the right mindset around making offers. It really is just like a numbers game. If you have the numbers where it's like in your email sequence, one out of 20 people on average that go through your welcome sequence get one of your merch bundles, then you have a cost. If you're running paid traffic, you're paying a cost per click and you have an earnings per click, and there really is a numbers component to it. And gosh, I could geek out and go way down a rabbit hole with that stuff-

Billy Big Shot Beats:
You and I both.

Michael Walker:
But the bottom line ... A hundred percent. But yeah, the bottom line is that, yeah, there's always going to be a percentage of people, and maybe that percentage looks different if you're just starting out and you're still dialing in your email sequences, but there's always a percentage of people, even if it's 0.5%, so it's one in 200 people or one in 500 people, or if it's one in 10 people, there's always a percentage of people who are true fans. And having an actual system to be able to see what that percentage is for you and how you can increase that percentage is, yeah, I think really important.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Definitely. And in marketing, we have to be okay as musician marketers that it's not everybody that's going to love our music, it's not everybody that's going to take action on something specific that we want the audience to take action on. So that percentage is where we have to acknowledge it and really take care of it.
And then also in marketing, they say that if you, like I was saying a little bit earlier, is if you market to everybody, you're marketing to nobody. You're going to have specific offers. And also, people can't take you up on the offer that you don't make. You have to make offers and see what people are gravitating to. So you're going to have lower ticket offer, you have mid ticket offer, you have higher ticket offers, and each of those in the audience that you're building, in your fan base, in your list, there will be a pocket and [inaudible 00:34:03] of those people, and that email is going to help you identify and find them. So I think this is why it's also important to build this in a really systematic way.

Michael Walker:
Super well put. Yeah, and that if you don't make any of the offers, then your percentage is zero.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
Your percentage is absolutely zero. There's no way for it to happen. But it's just stepping up to the free throw line and shooting it. The best way to learn how to make it in the hoop is by stepping up and shooting it and seeing where it lands, and shooting it multiple times throughout the day, as opposed to once a month. Like, all right, it's my monthly free throw shot. We'll see if I make it. Oh, I missed it this month. Dang it. I'll come back next month and I'll do it.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
And keep going. Yeah, exactly.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Awesome. Hey, Billy, love this conversation. This stuff, I think it's so important. So I appreciate you coming on here and sharing some of your lessons and insights that you've learned. For anyone who's watching this right now, what would be the best place for them to go to connect deeper?

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Boom. Okay, so I'm actually the most active on Instagram, so you can easily go on Instagram at @BigshotBeats_. I think the underscore because my previous one didn't have one and Instagram disabled it, but it's okay. BigshotBeats_, you can find me on Instagram and on most platforms as well, Twitter, TikTok, and stuff like that.
Also for music artists, that can go to bigshotbeats.net to listen to some of my work to see if there's something that catches their ear that can possibly work on something as well. And then we'll also leave something in here as a resource that can be of help for everything that we shared on this interview over here for the people that are listening to it. Yeah, this is where I'm at online for the most.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Yeah, I definitely encourage everyone to go follow, go follow, go check out Billy. He's sharing some really awesome stuff. And yeah, we talked a little bit backstage before we hopped on here. It sounds like Billy actually put together a really sweet bonus for you, which is related to one, if you're here right now and you haven't heard about Street Team, then maybe you're just tuning on here, maybe you're sleeping or something. But we talk a lot about Street Team, but Billy created something really cool as a bonus for if you get a free trial for Street Team. So maybe you could share a little bit about the bonus.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Yes. I'm also the host of the Golden Voice Podcast, for those of you that may not know, but I also host the Indie Artist Summit, which is an event that I put together to bring the top music industry experts in this space to help you get on the right path to be independently successful with your music. So for those of you that are tuning into this right now, if you get a free trial for Street Team, I'm going to allow you to get VIP or All Access pass to one of the next upcoming Indie Artist Summits.
So you're not going to want to miss out on that because it's really insightful, where you can come in and really leverage our relationships and to get some perspective, knowledge, and expertise from some of the top music industry experts in the world in different areas of the music industry. If you get your free trial today or hit the link that you see in the show notes or in the description of the video, wherever it's at, maybe it's on this page, get your free trial for Street Team and you'll get a VIP or All Access pass to the next Indie Artist Summit that I'll host. So let's get it.

Michael Walker:
Yay. Dude, thank you for doing that. Obviously hosting SWM, I've seen firsthand how valuable it is to attend summits like this. I also attended basically every, I would say 98% of my personal growth and what we've accomplished has been a result of learning and surrounding myself by people who are a bit further ahead of where I'm at in whatever area it is I'm looking to learn. So hugely appreciate what you're doing with your summit and bringing people together. I think it's really valuable.
And if you've attended SWM, our summit, and you found it valuable, then I think you're going to find Billy's summit super, super valuable. Awesome bonus, awesome gift. Thank you for doing that. And like you mentioned, we've got the links and everything available here. Wherever you're watching it, you should be able to find it below the video. And Billy, thank you so much again for coming on here and having a conversation today.

Billy Big Shot Beats:
Hey, you're welcome, man. And it's an honor to come on here. We've met in person, and it's an awesome relationship that I get to grow over here. I don't take it lightly. So thank you so much for inviting me and to allow me to come on here, serve some value to your audience, man. So let's do it again.

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 the guests 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, 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'll look forward to seeing you on our next episode.