Michael: All right, so I'm excited to be here today with my good friend, Brandman Sean also known as Sean Taylor. Sean is a music branding and marketing expert. He's got a book called Master Music Branding. It's considered the expert guide to an artist image and his network "Brandman Sean" our brandman network, has a team of coaches who help mentor artists to be able to level up their images and their branding.

And specifically today one thing that Sean has a lot of expertise around is social media and branding, it's literally in his name Brandman, Sean. But specifically we wanna talk about community and about how you can create a cohesive content in a way that allows you to build a deeper relationship with your community and be able to connect with your community.

So Sean, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Sean: What's up? What's up? Thanks for having me, Michael. Always glad to be able to talk to you guys, and your audience is always awesome as well.

Michael: Sean, maybe for anyone who this is their first time connecting with you could you maybe share a little bit about yourself and how you got started with the Brandman network?

Sean: All right I'll start with currently then go back. Currently I have an agency called Contrabrand Agency. We serve independent artists that's working from ground zero, also major labels all the way to legacy acts, right? So we serve the full gamut with full service, whether it's advertising influencers what's in between.

What am I missing? So much stuff in social media, PR we literally do the full planning and execution for those people on that side of things, however, that knowledge has given us the ability to educate people who can't afford us, right? Who, or who maybe just want to build themselves, right? Because our agency services aren't on the lowest end of prices, right?

This isn't, Hey, I'm pay me $15 and I'm gonna get 3000 streams, right? You'll never see one of those type of ads from us, but we, from our well of experience with the independent artists and helping many of them grow from zero to millions of streams, millions of followers. Or helping and major artists get their next moment in time.

We've been able to codify many things, see a lot of different sides of the game, and build out some education that's been very helpful for artists who are trying to build in their own right. That's my what I'm currently doing. Contrabrand agency is the agency side, and then currently Brandman network that there'll be some interesting news around that pretty soon.

But currently Brandman Network is where we house our education to and build our community for people who are trying to grow and build themselves. Now, how did I get into this? Long story short, I was helping a few friends who were artists themselves, and I was just helping them because I loved hanging around out with them.

I loved the creativity of trying to, attract fans and create these events and these experiences. So I was all on the community experiential side. I wasn't thinking of it that way, but that's how I see it now. It wasn't digital marketing. It was more so using digital and to some extent, but all driving events.

Everything was event for the first two, three years of me being in this industry. And then that went from doing events for them to me creating a festival. I created a festival that did very well. It went from 500, the first event to, closer to 2000 by the time the last event came through.

And then I decided, yo, this festival stuff is a lot of work, right? And it's, it is very intense for a short period of time and very stressful. And I saw other ways to scale my expertise and I was in that moment also realizing that, hey, I'm starting to be in this music industry thing. I never saw it as a career.

But as I found myself helping people and doing things successfully, a lot of people turned their heads like, yo, how are you doing this? And as I advised them, it slowly but surely became where I am today.

Michael: Very cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing. And what I love about you and about that story is just how this focus on walking the walk and leading by example allows you to develop the expertise to be able to pass it forward and be able to share things.

And so yeah, I think it's really a powerful principle or practice. So one thing that I think is in interesting too about your story is about the folks are on live events and there, there's something special about an event. And, it seems events are really at the core of a lot of marketing movements , like the community is coming together around events. Yeah. I'm curious to hear your perspective on, for the, all the artists who are here right now who are looking to build a community and build a, an engaged audience and people they can connect with, what are some of the insights, some of the lessons that you learned?

Sean: I'll start the first tip with how I got so good at events. And that's work 10 times harder than you think you need to in terms of marketing side of it. Like however many people that you wanted to show up. You need to work 10 times harder to get that many more people because you get that many more people.

You're probably just about getting the people that you wanted to show up. And I think it's really important, that type of 10 x thing sounds fluffy, but when you look at it in practice, It's important to think of it that way for someone who doesn't have the experience. And this is how I got so good at events because it came from massive failure.

So yeah, I had to build a team from scratch and I had to start doing events with no help and I had all these great creative ideas. I created this entrepreneurship week and it was too many events at once. Like just there was not enough focus. So there was a lot of hit or miss. And the primary one that all my experiences drawn against, the one I think of multiple times a year was I got these three CEOs to come out of some startup companies.

A hindsight. Some of 'em might not have been that big. Maybe it was four, I think it might have been four CEOs, but the companies might not have been that big. But I had these CEOs come out, take time outta their day, and in the middle of the day, they come to this room and we're waiting for people to show up.

And there's only four people at the event. Three of these people. We're on my team and one person happened to show up and flounder their way into the room and we just start, right? So it was really embarrassing. It really sucked. Going through that you, it is a very vulnerable position to throw an event, right?

Ask people to come somewhere and then wait to see if they'll actually show up, right? And people didn't really show up to that one like that, right? So a couple things I got from that was, yo, you can have a free event, but when it's free, there's very low incentive for people to show up, right? Those numbers probably aren't the numbers that you're, you should expect.

And when we have a draw, cuz it might be a name that has a demand around it free, okay? Might look a little different, right? And there's all this type of incentive, but you're talking about you have multiple people that no one really knows much about. And it's in the middle of the day, the time logistics, there's all these factors that attribute towards the failure.

But on the other end, we made it work with what we had. We had a small round table with these three CEOs and the people that were there said, Hey man, there's no reason for you to sit out over there in this row of 50 chairs just come all, we're gonna all sit around this table. And the conversation was really fruitful.

So I also drew from that. The benefit of intimate experiences as well, like more one-on-one and round table and mastermind type experiences. So there's the failure and the silver linings of it all. And that helped me break through that initial mode where people have this am I posting it too much or are they seeing it?

Am I spamming them, et cetera. I didn't have that because, I, I did the other way. That doesn't work. I need people to know. I need them to not forget. You need to have a point of view. So this is when we get to my festival. My festival was so successful because I had a point of view in the same way that artists right at their peak and at the greatest fandom for them, it's them having a point of view. It doesn't matter if somebody else talked about this subject. I wanna hear what you have to say about this subject, because I value your point of view that is a different expression. Even if it's on the same topic. I had a point of view about the event as well.

So a culture can build around a point of view because people have to opt in or opt out, decide if it's for them, or decide if it's not for them. If it's too generic, you try to bring in everybody else, what are you really saying? What's the experience really gonna be like, "oh, we just all got together," or, "we got together and we got something specific out of it."

Giving them something to take away from the event. For me, that was also drawn out of, I would do a lot of things out of hate, a lot of successes, out of hate back then. But it wasn't like really bitter. It was just like I hated going to clubs. That was something I did in college, and then I was like, all right, I don't really like this, I just keep going because that's where my friends are going. So then I start going to these other events, these alternative events, these artsy events, and they didn't have one thing that I hate about clubs, which was like moving through these tight spaces and having sweaty people all over me but they still had the impersonal aspect of it.

There was art on the wall and people were dressed a little, more cool or hip or artsy, however you want to call it but there was still in per, it was impersonal, it wasn't interactive. So I didn't like that aspect either. And it always felt like the people wanted people to show up for them.

Once you got the promoter gets the people there, I can say, I had a successful event. Look at all these people who are at my event. Let me capture pictures and I'll just use that to market my future events. And their friends are the ones that are really the ones having the most fun versus the entire environment.

So my point of view going into my event was one. I wanted to make sure that people who attended were entertained, they were stimulated, right? How can I immerse them into a world where they feel like they're having an out of body experience almost right? Or something abnormal to what they usually get outside of those doors.

And once I do that, it's easier to connect community. This came from a different insight that I had. I took this study abroad, trip to Brazil, in my senior year of college, it was two weeks and I remember this guy from Seattle like running into us at, it was like a beer garden or something. It was like the coolest thing in the world. The best thing in the world that we're meeting some other guy from Seattle, oh man, you're from Seattle, cuz we're all American.

If I met this guy any other place, I wouldn't care that he's from Seattle, right? Like him being in Seattle and meeting him while I'm in Georgia does not make me feel a deeper connection to him. But we were in a different place. We were having out an outside experience in a foreign place. And that was something that tied us together.

We were American. Understanding that I went into my event saying, how can I make this experience so different? Going to another world, going to a foreign place that people there are collectively now drawn together because they're experiencing something new together. And that was how we got so good at at running the events because we had that perspective of we want to stimulate you, we wanna make sure you have fun, but we also wanna make sure you interact. And it literally became just that result where it didn't, I only wanted to do this event one time. People begged me to do it again and kept begging me and kept begging me, and I did it again.

And I was like, all right, now I'm done. Then people kept begging and people, someone even found like our old location shut down. Someone found a new location and hit me up like texting me like, yo, you gotta check this spot out your event should be here. That was the type of thing that was going on because the community appreciated it so much and we were in down to the details of one, we have to entertain these people, stimulate them, so for our idea, there were so many different spaces to experience within. It was immersive inside school, every single room. Completely different in terms of the vibe and energy. So if you're tired of being really upbeat, then here's a place that you can chill. If you're tired of being chill, here's a place that you can, be more middle, you can eat in this room.

And like it, it was really immersive. I can get into the aesthetic if it's necessary, but there's that, and then there's the community down to, for us, we were so detailed. Me and my homie Josh, we were like, Hey, let's use church pews. I think those are the names of it. The long chairs from churches.

We were doing, using things like that church pews, cuz we found some random antiguans that were like nearby and then benches over chairs because it forced people to sit closer. And the way we angled spaces, we wanted to encourage the entire design of the event. To lead people to be together and be next to each other and have to communicate in some form or fashion. Even I wanted people to remember the event, so I had, and we're pretty broke, so I came up with: how could I have a band that's memorable, something that's cool. And it really came down to just getting yarn and like tying the yarn around their arm. It was a specific color. It was like a blue. And tying it in a way where they couldn't take it off immediately.

Thinking Hey, now you wake up in the morning after a crazy night and it's still gonna be in your arm, and many people aren't gonna take it off immediately. So now you're thinking about the event days after. All right, it's really a detailed experience in terms of how far you can go in terms of what you do for your audience when you bring them into a world.

Really think about bringing 'em to a world. And when I started to work with artists more heavily I realized similar to the clubs and these other promoter events on the artsy side of things, many artists would be happy to just get people to show up and I'm performing, look at me.

Especially in an age where so many people don't perform and put as much into it as they used to, but the old performers knew that it was about entertaining the crowd, right? I think there's been this dissidence that's happened over time or this gap that's been created. We're thinking like art , it's all about you as the artist and just your expression, forgetting the connection aspect. Forgetting that music is in the music industry. The music industry is in the entertainment industry. And entertainment is a value exchange. Something that comedians can't avoid, right? Because if that feed back loop doesn't come, they don't get a laugh.

They know instantly all this joke is not validated. Versus an artist, I could just say they don't get it right. So I would come across many artists that were more entitled in that way and less concerned about the audience and more just the optics of having a lot of people show up.

But then now the next event is difficult because you got people to show up one time many times off of favors and bringing their friends but I didn't have experience that was worth talking about, right? Or worth attending again. But every artist in fact, can do that, right? Especially in today's age where you can rent out cool spaces.

You don't have to rent out a regular venue, right? You can rent out a space that I know some people, like with a bookstore, the bookstore is cheaper in production value, right? Because it is an aesthetic, you know what I mean? There's all these other worldly experiences that you can give your audience.

And outside of just trying to figure out cool and creative ways to do something amazing, cuz you, you want your point, again, it is your point of view. So protect your artistic expression, but never forget the connection aspect about that. And how can you put people in that world. So that's a summation of, tips and perspective I gained.

Michael: Very cool. Yeah thank you for sharing. There's so much good stuff in there that we could pull from. One of the big ideas that, I think is, being powerful to iterate on is the idea of creating an experience that makes people feel like it's like a new world or it's something like they kinda went from an old world to like this new world where, maybe these pieces of themselves that aren't fully self-expressed in this old world. Like they come to this new world and now they're surrounded by, a similar culture or people who like that's a part of the thread of the community is that expression.

Talk a little bit about this with Ill Gates around, being able to speak truth to places where people aren't really expressing that and how in a lot of cases, like music, when it's able to present a unique point of view or a unique thing that people are feeling, but they're not, vocalizing, then it becomes something they can identify with and along those lines. Yeah, I think that's such a brilliant kind of philosophy too, or like perspective that you described around thinking about how can we make this space feel like a new world or something that they come into. And you know, I'm curious for anyone who's here right now who's listening to this and trying to figure out how can I apply this in my own music and how can I create that community or create that space?

What is it? Maybe they're still trying to figure out , what is it really about me or about my brand or about my music that really makes me unique and what can be that point of focus that kind of brings people together? Do you have any tips for people who are going through that?

Sean: Yeah talk to your fans. Have honest conversations about what they love about you. What void are you filling? Because similar to what you just said, you are completing thoughts for people, right? That's what's really attracting us to you. Like of course, there's people who are just really sonic and melody based, and that might be why they love you, but oftentimes you're completing thoughts or you're doing something cathartic for people, right?

So it, it might be connecting in an emotional way, or it might be a logic that's being codified for 'em. Figure out what that looks like for them. And you'll hear that it'll be a consistent thing. If you have a few fans, it doesn't take that many. You could talk to 10 people and it'll start to be like, okay, I think this is what they love about me.

And if it's there, it means you're doing it naturally. Now just amplify it. So I think that's just the start of it in terms of figuring it out. It's a constant process of putting yourself out there and then letting your fans tell you where you belong in a way. I had a conversation with Rick Barker and he had he worked with Taylor Swift early on and he said that they were on, I asked him specifically how did Taylor Swift crossed over and, cause I was always, I'm always interested in that.

I know you hit a niche and then we always wanna expand beyond that niche. She's someone who's done it and I never got a chance to ask someone specifically who was around. Fortunately, it was cool, but unfortunately at the same time, he was like it wasn't intentional. They were on country radio, but a lot of her fans kept demanding that asking the pop stations to play her music. Cuz you know the fans, especially that age, they don't know exactly like the rules and genres. They're not thinking about all that stuff. So they're just like, Hey, can you play her? Hey, can you play? Or hey, can you play her? And eventually the pop stations go like to the country stations and say, Hey, you know about this girl, check her out.

And then, oh this could work. And then, Eventually, she's on pop radio. And then if they start to say, oh let's tweak it, let's take the, I think you said the banjos out or something. And I don't yeah, I don't know. I'm not really specific in the musicality of things in that way, but they tweaked it a little bit more.

Just to cater because that's what people were telling them. And I think we have that in many ways. We run campaigns in, in with, in that same way oftentimes, especially with content and culture, the cultural aspect has to be a feedback loop. When we run influencer campaigns and we're going heavy on TikTok and blowing songs up there was this masterminding that took place of I wanna do this and this will be a great trend that I want them to copy but then there's the reality of the trend not connecting sometimes, but when you put that little bit out there, other people will hear it and they'll do something and you go, that's what we should be doing.

Because other people are already copying that, or other people are already gravitating to it and that video's going viral so it's this constant exchange. So when you talk about the culture building the culture, which is the community and culture go hand in hand around yourself, if you're getting stuck, you have to engage or at least observe what your community is saying about you, what are they doing together or what are the similarities between them?

Michael: Yeah, so it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the best ways to really uncover what is that unique angle or what is that thing that's resonating, is to have conversations with the people who are resonating with it and hearing from their point of view, how are they describing the value of your music and what are they getting from your music?

And yeah I couldn't agree more, that's such a powerful practice that both like personally with our band, when we started meeting people face to face when we were tour hacking. Also, when I started Modern Musician, and it wasn't until I really started having conversations with people that, we call it like the Intune process, where, you know, by having conversations you can hear where they're resonating and then you can, yeah, you can play along with it as opposed to it might sound like when you're first coming up with ideas it's yeah, this sounds pretty good.

This is good. But if they're actually like playing a different frequency or a different chord, then it might sound good. But if you put it next to it, it's doesn't sound, that's exactly it. That's exactly it. So it sounds like you're saying like, you'd listen and see like what are they playing and play something that harmonizes with that.

And it's an interesting conversation or I'd love to hear your perspective on, because on the flip side, some people might hear an idea like that and they might feel concerned or afraid of losing their artistic integrity, or or maybe like on the flip side you, maybe you could go too far to the extreme of trying to please other people or trying to be something that you're not because you want to basically mold who you are to be be something that resonates with other people and yeah. I'd love to hear your perspective. Where do you find that balance?

Do you totally say, you know what, this isn't about me at all. I'm just gonna, I'm here to serve. And I'm like, I'm gonna do whatever people whatever brings in the most value, regardless of like where I'm at, starting out. Or is there a middle ground where it's like you figure out where you are resonating and try to find those people who resonate at the same frequency.

Sean: All right, I'll start here. The interesting thing. About this feedback process and why you're connecting with fans is you can be very successful and have no idea why you're successful when it comes to this art stuff, right? That's the interesting thing. However you find out why and you understand that it's only going to allow you to expand and connect even deeper.

We could just be happening to play the right note every so often, right? So we keep connecting here. The rest we care less about, but we love these notes so much, eh? We just take it. All right? So there's that leading into my answer. So imagine if you still say, Hey, I understand and I'm still gonna play this entire thing.

However, it's good to know that this is what I do when I want to speak to you and I want to connect to you, right? I know what your phone number is. I know how to call you when I need you, right? And know, and you'll answer that number. But if I call the wrong phone number and I'm having an expectation, oh boy.

So it's nice to know regardless, even if it doesn't change what you're doing. Now, because that's where what you're gonna implement, especially for the marketing side of it, it might not alter the work itself, but it might alter the way you go about marketing your work. Now, beyond that, we just look conceptually at this idea of losing yourself, right?

So we have self here on the left side, and then on the far we have completely selling out to people, pleasing and having no perspective at all. That key, that middle ground goes back to again, perspective what I said. The P.O.V., just like I said, what you have at an event, because one, even what you think is you had to come from somewhere.

You got your information right, you got your creative inputs from somewhere, right? That's how we are creative. We tweak and reimagine things that we've already experienced, seen and fantasized, right? So if I go learn from you that I don't know, you love when I talk about, or you would love me to talk about a certain topic.

The difference is what is my perspective on that topic, right? That still has to be true to you. And as long as I filter for my perspective, then you should be in safe grounds. But if I say, now I'm gonna just say this because they want me to say this. Now we're getting in a dangerous space because you're not even speaking for yourself or from a place you believe, but if you're coming from where you believe in your experience at the time, then you know you are still in the space of you.

That could grow over time too don't be afraid of evolving but I think that's really the centerpiece that I would hang my hat on. Beyond that, I think if a person or a fan base, desires something from you or gives you certain feedback outside of your perspective of talking about that thing a certain way.

You do have the ability to not talk about it as well, right? And then say, this is something that I don't, I'm not gonna do, but I hear you. This is something that I am gonna do. So you still have the ability to select, nobody should be taking everything that someone requests just because they requested it.

Michael: Sounds like what you're saying is that first of all, just like having the conversations with people and hearing, where are they resonating?

Whether you decide to play along with in a similar note or not. It's valuable to have, so you know the language, so you know how to communicate, the phone number, what number to call, as opposed to just calling a wrong number and expecting to get ahold of them.

But what I really liked about you, what you said, one of the aspects was that in a lot of cases what you're gonna find is that, especially if you're having conversations with people who do resonate with your music, and they probably wouldn't, be agreeing to have a conversation with you if they didn't love your music.

If you're there, and maybe we can talk a little bit about this, even the process of like, how do you schedule all of these calls? What do you , say to people , but they probably wouldn't be doing that if they didn't really resonate with your music already and there's something

about what you're sharing that they really enjoy. So it sounds like what you're saying is that a big piece of it is not necessarily changing the notes you're playing, just getting better feedback of understanding what is it about the notes that you're playing that people are resonating with, and knowing that you can lean more into those aspects

of yourself without changing or, being untrue to yourself, but rather just leaning into the parts of yourself that are landing, that are resonating with people.

Sean: Yeah. Exactly. Sometimes I say creating a caricature almost of one side of yourself, right? Or amplifying one specific side of yourself. Knowing that you'll have the ability to show the other sides over time.

Michael: Totally makes sense. Yeah, coming back to this piano analogy, all of us are like every single key on the piano, but like you play all the keys at once, it's just muddy and it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't sound good. And by being selective about what notes of yourself, what notes of your character are you gonna play? It's huh?

These all sound good together. When I share just these three notes when I don't, share everything, but it's like I can focus you can create that harmony. One thing I'd love to pick your brain on is around, because I think like this is so at the root of what I found to be true as well in terms of having conversations with people and getting to know them and being genuinely curious about their point of view and understanding them has just been so important.

How does someone who's here right now who maybe is earlier on and. Maybe they don't have an audience yet, or they don't have a fan base or they're just getting started. How do they actually connect with their fans? Especially if they're just using Spotify and they don't like, see their names or they don't have the ability to connect with them.

How do you recommend that someone who's just starting out maybe start doing some of this research and start to connect and figure out to get that feedback early on?

Sean: Let's say you're in that situation, you only have Spotify data, which. Is a black box. And really you now just have to go figure out some people to go find get an audit, to get feedback from.

You have the real world idea of going out and hitting people up and saying, Hey, how do you like this? Do you know how you can go out into public and do the same thing? I don't like that. What I don't like about it is people are, despite what the internet and today's state of the country might make it seem, people default to kindness and they won't be as brash in person most of the times.

But I do have a hack for that and then in person that I'll speak about after I give one example I think is good for people to try online. So you can run ads, doesn't take that much money. If your music is solid enough and the content is solid enough within, five, 10, $20, you should have somebody clicking.

Now, you can do a dm style campaign where they're DMing you to get feedback to get the full song or there's different types of DM campaigns that we've ran before around this similar area, but run a dM campaign or a follow driven Instagram page campaign or maybe you're another platform, whatever that looks like on there.

So now you actually know who these people are, these people are following you around, they came from this specifically, they DMed you about this song whatever the prompt was within the call to action, they chose you, they experienced the music and I already made a decision and now you can ask them why they're there.

That type of thing really helps. And I would do something like that with a voice note. But also a prompt for the voice note. Hey, I really appreciate you. I have a quick question for you. Would love to know X, Y, and Z by the way, you don't have to send a voice note back, it is just easier for me and I want you to know that this is real and not a bot or something like that. And then, get that feedback from them. And I know some people are like, I don't wanna do this for all people,

I gotta send a real message and all that cuz you say their name and all that stuff. Yes, this is an unscalable part of the process, but this process has to be unscalable, right? Because you're getting real feedback. You're in that, that mud and it's that valuable that you want it to be as real as possible.

You want to be as close to it as possible. You know the difference between being on a sales call with somebody. Early on in the process or talking to somebody and versus just sending a survey, which they can be cool too, but actually having that interaction and as close as you can get to it, to being real, the insight is different.

And when you're that early and you wanna build a system to scale, you need to build it off of as accurate of information as possible, right? It's like getting the location before you fly the plane. We know that you can tweak the head of a plane to be an inch off, but if you travel enough miles, that could be miles off of the endpoint, right?

So it's that type of thing and why it's so important to be unscalable, and I just wanted to get ahead of that for anybody who might be thinking that. Now, tweak this person. You are the type of person who performs in real life, because I know you got had guys, y'all have a lot of real life performance goals and shows.

It's a very similar process. Not, Hey, I'm in the street asking you to come. Hey, check this out, can you please? That's cool if you wanna sell some CDs or something like that cuz the biggest exchange you're looking for in that moment is the money. But, If you're at a show or something like that, people really enjoying you somebody even walks up to you or whatever, or you're playing at a park, and people actually stop to listen to you and show appreciation. They've been pulled into your world, and then you can engage in a similar process. So the point is, let it be inbound. You have to attract and then get feedback because they've already opted in and showed appreciation versus that outbound hardcore, like getting feedback or pushing something on somebody. Cuz even though it seems like, oh, they're nice and all I did was ask them, people feel that pressure, right? And it can be, it oftentimes less authentic, even if they do like it, it might be a little bit more, than the reality.

And by the way, as a last point, If you do get somebody to buy, you can still ask them the same thing if you are so brave, cuz they might tell you, Hey man, I don't know man. You're just a really good salesman and that's a compliment until you realize they didn't buy for your music, and that's still something to think about.

Michael: If you can create an inbound system where people are reaching out to you, then that's almost always gonna be preferable to you going out and trying to just even in a kind way to force it outbound and by focusing on having a genuine interaction, where the point of it is that you're looking for feedback and you're looking to ask questions and you want to connect with them, then people could feel the difference.

Versus if the main intention is that you're looking to sell something.

Sean: That's, you made me think about something, insight that I had recently that, partly we could say is theory, but I think it's very close to being spot on. So it was a conversation about selling merch and I realized I was telling people, I was like, there's been plenty of shows that I've bought merch because I'm supporting the artist, or I'm supporting the comedian or supporting the act that I just experienced.

I'm not going shopping, it is a different paradigm. It's like I'm literally just appreciating and I appreciate what I just saw, and I say, let me go support them and I'll find something cool over there, hopefully as I try to support them, right? I think that's a small paradigm shift that one of course once makes you serve people better, cuz you realize that a lot of these people at these shows, yeah, like people don't need new clothes, they don't need another hoodie or whatever you're providing necessarily.

Most people are buying because they appreciate and they're just trying to support, right? And then that led to another small thought in, in theory. I think this kind of speaks to why there's these certain set of merch pieces that are so common. Just like we know that black sell commonly and why does not only because it might it's something that isn't super specific, right?

Teal a lot of people might not like teal but I, my wife loves teal right? Not only because it's not specific, but when you have someone who's there just to support and they don't necessarily need something the psychology is almost like let me get something that at least I'll use, but this other thing or this other obscure color, I know I'm never gonna wear it.

So even though I'm not here shopping, looking for something I like, or the best outfit of the world, at least allow me to feel like I'm going to get some usefulness out of it too, make it easier, reduce the friction.

Michael: A hundred percent. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's a great insight too, just understanding that a large reason that people might buy merchandise or might, get something from you isn't necessarily because they want the thing so much as, they wanna support you and they got value from your music that they'd like to support you.

Very smart. One thing, one final thing I'd be remiss if I didn't share this since it applies directly. That's what we were just talking about with the conversations and connecting with people, but in street team, I know there's gonna be a lot of people here right now who are like trialing the software and are using it.

So there's a conversations tab here on the top left and when you launch a campaign, whether it's you know Facebook Messenger or Instagram dms, or you can also do SMS campaigns as well, then you're going to get all these conversations happening here on the left side. This gives you like such a beautiful channel through which you can do what Sean just recommended and you can ask questions and you can for this person here specifically I'd probably follow up and be like, Hey Donna, I'm so glad you enjoyed the music - by the way, would you mind if I ask you a couple of quick questions? I'm looking to get some feedback and then continue the conversation from there and if you really wanted to, you could... this is a new feature that they're working on, I wouldn't recommend doing this at the beginning because the feedback is so valuable and you wanna be able to connect directly with people and like Sean mentioned especially at the beginning.

I think having those 20 conversations personal conversations are gonna help you really get in tune with your audience. But eventually, you know when you are getting hundreds or even thousands of messages per day and you can't just personally keep up with all the different messages, then you can actually use artist ai.

And you can automate, you can have these conversations, and then from there, here's one way to think about it, cuz I know sometimes people are worried about losing the personal connection, the personal touch, especially after you start having these conversations. Cuz it's I like connect with my fans, that's why I do what I do, and like I don't wanna lose that. I don't want people to be upset at me because they're talking to a bot and they're not talking to me. Rather than thinking of creating automation and creating campaigns or sequences as a way to disconnect from your fans, what it really can do is it can kinda just give you a better filtering system to be able to really figure out who are the people who care most and the people who are most engaged and the people who get the most value. And then maybe you still personally connect with those people. You still have conversations with them, you still connect with them in person or perform for them. But it's just as your audience grows, it seems like you kinda have that filter where, because there's only one of you, you can only personally connect with so many people. But it means that the people you're connecting with, maybe they're in your inner circle and they're paying $10 a month, or they're paying $50 a month or whatever for that access, because in Street Team, it's really cool that you can basically have these conversations back and forth.

I would highly encourage everyone who hasn't yet to try launching one of these campaigns, we have training for you included that walks you through how to launch a Messenger campaign and then apply what Sean just talked about in terms of having conversations with people, getting in tune with them, getting that feedback, and they'll tell you what they enjoy about your music. They'll tell you what they want.

Cool. Hey Sean, this has been awesome.

Sean: Thanks for having me, Michael. Always glad to be able totalk to you guys, and your audience is always awesome as well.