Sabrina: Most people are going to think that they're not good enough. You just have to push through those emotions, right? I was posting production tips when I was producing for six months and people like Phineas, Grammy award winning producers were commenting on my videos. You just lead with confidence, and people are attracted to confident people. 

Michael: 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. 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 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.

Yeah, we're here. All right. So I'm excited to be here today with Sabrina Seidman, also known as Seids. Sabrina is a singer, songwriter, producer, and educator who has effectively turned adversity into success after she stopped performing live in 2020. I can't imagine why, like what happened in 2020 that, that stopped you from performing live she started to go online.

And she now has amassed a global community of over 300, 000 followers and has established successful virtual classes. So now she has been able to collaborate with renowned music brands and she has a passion for fostering a vibrant music community. And she continues to keep inspiring others to chase their dream.

Sabrina, I feel like I can relate to you a lot in terms of your personal journey and, music and being able to share that gift with other people. Thank you so much for coming on, taking the time to come on here and share some of the lessons that you've learned.

And we're looking forward to connecting and hearing a little bit about your strategy and how you were able to grow to 300, 000 followers. Thank you for being here. 

Sabrina: Thank you so much for having me. 

Michael: Absolutely. So to kick things off, I'd love to hear just a little bit, I know I just gave you a little bit of an introduction there, but maybe you could share a little bit about your story and your journey about how you started out and how you were able to grow to the point that you're at now.

Sabrina: Yeah, so basically before I was just singing and then COVID happened and obviously I was just stuck at home, so then one day I was just scrolling on Facebook and said learn how to produce in 30 days So I clicked on the ad and I was like, this is so dumb I went to Berkeley and I didn't learn how to produce like why would I learn how to produce now?

And then the ad had a sale so I took the class and became obsessed and started learning how to produce and then I ended up moving to a new city. I was before I was living in New York City, but I ended up moving to Las Vegas and I didn't know anyone and I said, I'm going to start posting on TikTok, just my journey, like every single day, like what I'm learning, what I'm doing, and it just took off really quickly.

And then I'm like, Okay, I'm just gonna keep doing this. And then I really decided that pretty quickly on, I decided I want to basically work as a music content creator. I want to create content for music tech companies and work for music tech companies. And that's what I do. That is how I make the majority of my income, is creating content and music for music tech companies, specifically.

And then, teaching is just my page, just to make music production more accessible to more people, is what my mission statement is, and to make music creation. and building your music business more accessible to more people. So that's what I do. That's like the, that's my goal that keeps me going.

But the way that I make money is working with music tech companies. And a lot of people think, Oh, you just make money like selling classes. But no, I really don't make very much money selling class. I make. Some money selling classes, but not very much as you, as people that know me know my classes are either free or very affordable.

Michael: How dare you make any money with your music classes? 

Sabrina: Yeah, it's the courses thing like came and went, right? Like people really liked it for a while and now like people really don't like it and I can see Both sides, probably. It was really annoying seeing all the courses I can teach you how to become a full time music creator, just take my course for 1, 000.

And it was very like, I'm like, are you making money as a music creator? Or are you just making money selling courses? So I do I do get that where it's like ironic. But, I just try to keep my courses very, literally very cheap under a hundred dollars, and then usually they're like on sale, and then I also have been really trying to do a bunch of free classes, so because I work with music tech companies, I try to get the music tech company to sponsor the class, so then the class can be like entirely free for the community. Because I do believe in free education, or extremely affordable education.

And then, of course, all of my content has a lot of tutorials and stuff like that. So yeah, that's how I got into it and that's what I've been doing now. 

Michael: Awesome. Congratulations on, I feel like we all experienced the COVID pandemic when it happened and, there's a lot of stress and, a lot of different ways that different strategies that people had for coping with it and handling it.

I think whenever there's adversity or there's stress or something something like that happens. It really shows your character, how you respond to it. And it sounds like you're able to take that as an opportunity and actually use it as a chance to serve more people and provide more value, which is awesome.

To start with, yeah, I'd love to hear, from your perspective now, you've not only are you a music creator yourself and you've learned how to produce your own music, but you also taught quite a few other artists now. So I'm curious, what are some of the biggest challenges or mistakes that you see artists making when they first come to you?

Oh, okay.

Sabrina: You need three things to be successful in this industry. And I am convinced if you're good at all three, you don't even have to be great at all three things. If you're really good at all three things, then you will be successful in this industry. 100%. So number one is your craft, right? You have to be really good at whatever it is you're doing, whether that's singing, mixing, producing, songwriting. Obviously, the more of those, the merrier. Definitely the merrier, the easier it gets. And most musicians stop there, right? They stop there, they get really good at their craft, and then they just expect to be successful. But, unfortunately, that's step one. That's the bare minimum of what you need, right?

Step two is you need to be able to market yourself, right? And there's lots of ways to market yourself. There's lots of different capacities to do this. A few of those ways is networking in person, right? If you know the right people, you'll get it somewhere, right? Number two is outreach or spamming, right?

Spamming does work. It is tedious and it is grueling. You get a lot of rejection, but if you do it correctly, it does work. Another way is, searching for job applications and stuff like that. Again, another grueling thing that a lot of those job applications aren't even active. You're applying to things that don't even exist.

Another grueling way you can do ads, you can invest money, or hire somebody else to do your marketing for you. So if you have the money, you can invest money. But my favorite way, which has been the most successful for me, is social media marketing, because all you have to invest is your time, and if you get really good at it, then it will reward you.

It's obviously very hard. I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do, but if you get good at that that helps. And a lot of musicians stop there, right? They stop there, right? So they're really good at their craft. They actually are pretty good at one of those areas, right? They're really good with social media, or they have followers, and now they can't figure out how to make money, right?

So then the third thing that you really have to be good at is sales, and this is where, this is the last key to the equation. You have to not just be good at selling people and negotiating, but thinking about new products create your own opportunities, create your own paths, get creative with this.

Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean you can't be the first, I was the one that started pitching to brands, Hey, why don't you pay for this class, and then I can do a free class, and now all these people are now gonna be interested in your product, and be grateful for your product.

I created that whole model, no one had ever done that before, as far as I know, maybe they have, but I wasn't introduced to it, I just came up with it. So we are creatives, get creative, like maybe you have intimate house shows or maybe you're selling intimate things that like, as an artist, obviously, as an artist, there's lots of different avenues of ways to make money.

And so you just have to, you just have to think outside of the box of that. So again, if you're good at all three of those things, pretty good at all three of those things, your craft, marketing and sales. You will be successful. 

Michael: So good. Yeah, you nailed it. Those are definitely like the three principles.

It was interesting too, it's those are the three principles for every business. It's like owning your product, like you have to have something valuable to give, and then you need a way to market it, you need to get it in front of the right people, and then you need a way to sell it. You need to be able to communicate the value in a way that the right people will say, yeah, I want that.

So it also our, in our masterclass, I'm sure a lot of people here have been to our masterclass before. It's like the exact same thing that you just said. It's the artist's identity. It's about honing your craft. Step two is what we call the fan base fire. It's about growing your fan base.

And step three is about the rain catcher and the funnel, which is about creating a revenue stream. What have you found has been -out of those three, which one do you think is the biggest opportunity for most artists? Or the thing that they struggle with the most? 

Sabrina: I think they equally struggle with all three.

It's weird because, the craft you would think would be like the easiest, but so many of us have like imposter syndrome, or we'll always think we're not good enough, right? I really do think that It, you need to be good at all three and yeah, I don't know if there's one there. I think a lot of artists are hesitant about, especially the last two because they're like, I'm an artist.

I don't have to do this, but any successful artists. Since the beginning of time had to know those things and they think that oh, Lynyrd Skynyrd or this band or this amazing band didn't have to do that. And I'm like, yes, they did. They did have to do that. And maybe they weren't personally doing that, but they had other people doing that for them.

So if you've heard a song, it had an extreme marketing budget behind it. If you've heard that song.

Michael: Great point. So maybe let's go through those one at a time then, and just dig a little bit deeper into as it relates to, let's say, step number one around like honing your craft. You mentioned that one of the biggest challenges around it is just this feeling of maybe imposter syndrome or like the fear of putting yourself out there and potentially being rejected or not be feeling like it's not good enough.

I'm curious to hear your perspective on that first step around honing your craft and where do you see people really struggling with that and where's the biggest opportunity for them to dial that in? 

Sabrina: You always have to lead with confidence. Fake it till you make it kind of thing.

No, no matter where you're at or who anyone's at in their career, most people are always going to think that they're not good enough, or they could be better. So you just have to push through those emotions, right? And you have to just, especially instrumentalists and performers you always just have to fake it.

Push past it, and then all of a sudden one day you'll be like, wow, I'm actually pretty good at this. I was posting production tips when I was producing. for And people like Phineas, Grammy award winning producers were commenting on my videos. So if I had started the video off Here's a tip I just learned and it's really cool and I don't know if I'm good.

If I was with, I don't think people would have watched it, but I was like, here's a cool logic tip. And you just lead with confidence, and that people are attracted to confident people. That's pretty much, my only tip for that, so just fake it. 

Michael: It sounds like what you're saying is that, at the beginning, it doesn't really matter what you do. Like you're going to have to fake it. It's the first time you ride a skateboard you're probably going to fall off at some point, like it's like you have to learn how to do it.

And so the best thing to do is just. Do it, and, fake it until you make it, and at a certain point you'll start to get a hang of it. Any other tips in terms of I, I know music production is such like a core, part of your expertise do you have any tips around I don't know content, publishing, and just like maybe consistency of like, how often are you creating new music and how often should you release it?

And just like overall content release strategy. 

Sabrina: Yeah. So with content, if you want to grow consistently, you need to post consistently. So whatever you can do to like stay consistent, it's definitely going to be the best. That might not mean that you have to post every single day. I do.

I post every day, but if you can't make it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or make it Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, or whatever you can do to make it consistent. But, yes, I do have that is one of the classes I do sell on social media because I do have a long winded strategy on what to do.

To break it up shortly, you have to decide like what's the goal for your page or your platform two who are the fans and clients that support that goal or clients, fans or clients that support that goal. Usually that's when people make mistakes is they post for more than one kind of person. And then three is what kind of content would they like to see?

That is how I've been really successful with my social media because my social media was really, like I mentioned in the beginning to work with music tech companies. So the only people I really cared about seeing my videos was music tech companies and people that would be interested in music tech companies.

So that's the kind of content I post. Now, if I were to release a song, which I do really songs just for fun, I can't expect a lot of streams because the people that follow me are following me for my production tips, they're not following me for like my indie pop songs And if I were to have built up an indie pop fan base I can't expect them to enjoy my logic pro tips or my EQ tips or compression tips, they don't even know what that is.

So that is like where that's at. So you have to really focus on a strategy and let social media work for you, not against you. And I think that's where a lot of people also make the mistake, because they think, Oh, I just want likes, comments, follows, views. But actually, those aren't going to help you at all, if you're not posting for your strategy.

Michael: Super smart. Awesome. Let's move on to step number two then. So let's imagine that everyone here has committed to, a social media strategy. They're creating content every day. They're paying attention to what's resonating with people and they're starting to find their voice.

But they're at a point where it's okay, I'm posting all this stuff, but I still don't know how do I get people to follow me or how do I actually grow my audience or how do I start to build a network? What do you recommend for them at that point? 

Sabrina: First of all, if they're posting every single day, hopefully they're posting for their ideal audience, and then hopefully they're leading, if they follow all the principles of creating good content, they are doing the hook.

They are doing the meat. They are doing a call to action. You should be focusing on one true fan a day. So if you're focusing on that and You're working on your skill of creating good content. It should be translating and then if it's not you have to maybe go back to, okay, am I making the content for the right people? Is my content good enough? Does it have a good hook? Is you know, am I could just copying somebody else verbatim? Am I not creating my own formats? Hopefully that's translating and it's a slow process people want it to happen like overnight It's just not gonna happen overnight.

It's a slow process, going viral is not the answer or the solution. I've gone viral a few times and honestly, it's the worst, it's not the worst thing to happen. Obviously it feels really good when it happens, but it's never my goal. And I've really conditioned myself to treat every single content, like if I've got a video that got a million views, or I have a video that has no views, it affects me the same because I'm posting every day content that I'm proud of for my target audience for my strategy. I'm getting new clients every week. Come to my email, email I don't have to do any outreach. So that is what's working. So I think that's the whole combination of it is just it's. It's a formula, it's a strategy, if you do it correctly it should be working and if it's not working then you're not doing it correctly or something is wrong or you haven't dug deeper yet or you're on some wrong path and I think that's the part that people can't really accept because they want to blame other things like, ah, it's not happening for me and da and all these excuses but it's really have you actually put in the work for long enough time.

And, people, some people will see me and be like, wow, it happened so fast for you. But it really didn't happen so fast for me. Like I graduated 10 years ago and I had to try so many different things before this one thing clicked. And yes, this side production, like this bit did happen fast only because I had all the other previous building blocks of all my other failed attempts that I was able to bring to this.

So yeah. 

Michael: Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I think that's a great lesson that sometimes it feels like we just want it to just happen now or instantly and it seems like to like when it does, blow up or there's someone that we see get successful really quickly or get a lot of followers. It feels like it's overnight, but really there's that underneath the surface kind of amount of work and energy and experience until it clicked and then it started to shoot up.

Awesome. So one follow up question as it relates to building an audience and social media posting. You mentioned it briefly there around, you're signing people up to your email list through your social media and yeah, I'm sure that a big piece of of your success and what you teach is also around it's not just about social media, but it's about how you build your community and your list and your email subscribers. So I'm curious what you'd recommend for everyone as it relates to, let's say they started to gain some traction. They're starting to post consistently. How did they get people off of social media and onto their own platform?

Sabrina: It's just leading with value. So for me, like another genius thing about those free classes is I get. A lot of people signing up to my email list because that's how I can send them the zoom link, right? So there's that, you can I mean giving out free stuff, you know It was a great way to send people to that or to get collect emails, you know giving out sample packs or giving out your song for your true fans a hard copy of their song so there's just lots of great ways to get people off if you give away stuff with value that they would like So that's how I built my list.

Yeah, but I'm also very careful. I really like to think about myself in the other shoe . You have to always stay authentic to your own goals. You should take my advice.

You should take, your advice, even like lots of different people's advice. And then you put that together and then you put in your own advice to it and you have to create that because when people become your true fan, they all of a sudden trust you.

And I want, I built my mailing list that every single person on that mailing list is my true fan in one way, right? They really are my true fan. So I'm very careful about what I email them, how often I email them. And that's because of my personal. Point to it, whereas some people, a business manager might be like, Sabrina, you're not emailing them enough.

You're not doing this. You're not doing this enough. You should be doing this. You should be doing more. But I've stayed authentic to myself. And that's why when I send an email, I have a 40 percent open rate. So that's a really big open rate for emails. 

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Yeah, that's a great piece of advice.

And I feel like that's something I've heard it described before. That, you want to emulate before you innovate. You start by seeing what's working or by modeling what's working, but it really does seem like you're not going to achieve anything truly remarkable unless you take that next step where it's like you innovate or you do it in your own way or you're authentic or else it's like you're just doing exactly what everyone else is doing it.

You is not in it. Awesome. And then it also sounds to recap what you just said. It sounds like what's worked best for you and what you'd recommend for artists to build their email list is just think about how can I provide more value and what can I give out, for free that people are interested in that they'd be interested in, joining my community for that I can send them through email.

Great piece of feedback. 

Sabrina: You can also try doing really low costing things to sell if you're in that route. Here's a template for a dollar or something. That's another great way to gain. Some numbers, but it's also, I thought I was like, all right, if I sell something for really cheap, it's going to do really well.

And it actually doesn't surprisingly doesn't do that. I was like, everyone's going to want this for just 1, but actually. The people that are going to already spend money, it doesn't really matter to them if it's a dollar or like twenty dollars. It's just, it doesn't matter, the difference isn't enough, like still twenty dollars is cheap. So it's just interesting to try, you just have to try a lot of different things, too. 

Michael: Yeah, that's such an interesting point. And I found the same thing too. I've done, courses for free. We've done house concerts when I used to tour full time.

We did those for free. And we've done them for 5, 000. And there's a huge difference in the level of value that they get out of it, and the level of commitment, how much they care. Where it does seem it's important, especially as like artists, there's this underlying tone of it's like somehow immoral or it's wrong to make money but, if you're able to you know, provide more value than, in a lot of cases, for artists as well, like anyone listening to this right now, one thing that we've found artists have a lot of success with is the higher ticket offers, and offering house concerts, and offering custom songs, and retreats and different experiences.

So I definitely want to encourage everyone to, cause I feel like as musicians, we probably lean too much in the opposite direction where we undervalue ourselves and we think, like what, who am I to charge anything for my music? I'm just going to give it all out for free. So I appreciate you making that point around it's worth trying, but also what you found with the 1 versus the 20 that it's worth testing.

Sabrina: Yeah. It's worth testing. And It is, okay, what we do have to be somewhat, I always pronounce this word wrong, altruistic, do it from like a good place, like it has to come from a good place. If you're going to come off like salesy or greedy, like people can read that really fast and then they won't trust you.

And that's where those like scammy courses came from, but if you're coming from a good place and people are true fans of you, they will want to support you and they do want to see you succeed and they do want to see you live comfortably and just, it just all depends on like your business model too.

So yeah, all those things to think about, you try it out. Like for me, I really, my whole mission statement is to be accessible. So, it wouldn't make sense for me in my business to sell an 1,000 course because I would rather sell, I can't do the math right, but like I'd rather sell more like 20 courses to more people , cause that's just with my business, but maybe for your business, it would make sense where you only have to sell three courses for, 1, 000 each, then have to do all the little ticket ones.

So it just all depends on your goals and like what makes sense for you and for your mission statement and for your audience. 

Michael: Yep, that totally makes sense. And, I think that there could be a middle ground, too, for I know a lot of companies that they have a higher ticket back end product.

And the higher ticket back end is the thing that actually generates the most revenue. But, by generating that revenue, it gives them the ability to reach a lot more people and provide a lot more value, either for free or for a lower ticket course as well. So I think that you can blend both those models together at the same time.

Speaking of making money and sales and the third really important part of having a sustainable career sales, making money asking people to give you money in exchange for something that you're giving them what have you found is the biggest challenge that artists struggle with as it relates to that part of it and making offers?

Sabrina: I think there's so many challenges. I see a lot that people. Especially like client based stuff, like mixing and mastering and all that and producing people of, and I myself have this problem is a hard time saying no, right? We just take whatever we can get. And we, we're too scared that we're not going to get work coming to us or we're getting too greedy or whatever.

And the truth is that no is the one of the most powerful words in the industry. And I turn down work all the time if they don't meet me at my rate, and you just have to have the confidence to know that somebody will come and meet you at your rate.

Now, obviously this takes some time to get to this point. You need to have some experience under your belt. But now that I do have enough experience under my belt specifically for, music tech companies and they're like, okay, how much is it for a video? I tell them my rate and they're like we only have.

And then I'm like that's not my rate and I don't do any negotiating anymore. So I'm like, take it or leave it. And a lot of times, a lot of times I'll leave it, but a lot of times they'll leave it and then they'll come back and be like, actually, we do want it. So you just have to have that confidence to walk away.

You can also try if you do want to negotiate. You have to learn how to negotiate, the skill of negotiating, so because I'm at a point where I don't negotiate it's obviously a lot easier when I could just be like, see ya. But if you are gonna negotiate, the way you do that is you have to find the pain point, right?

I understand my rates might seem more expensive to you, but other people, but this is because in the long run, you're only gonna need one video from me instead of, 10 videos from all these people or whatever or you're only gonna need one mix revision in this amount of time instead of having somebody you're gonna get a cheaper rate for someone and they're gonna have to mix it over and over again and you're not even gonna be happy with it and then you're gonna pay for someone else to mix it for you or you can say something like you know I'm a mix engineer, I charge this much and it's funny a lot of times people will say No, you're too expensive, they'll go to someone else and then they'll actually come to me afterwards because they didn't like the way the other person mixed it and now they pay twice. Now you pay more. So you can that's part of sales is to tap into people's psychology.

People who don't have any money at all are still wearing like designer shoes, they're still buying iPhones, they're still spending money. Why? Why are they, why are people spending five dollars on a Starbucks coffee if they can get a dollar coffee at Dunkin Donuts? Why do they do it? Because they see the value in it and they want to do it.

So if people, if you get people to want what you are offering them, they will buy. So that's the tricky part with sales. I'm actually really good at sales. Like I could have, I've done, I sold the Equinox memberships as like one of my part time, was actually a full time job, but I was singing gigs on the weekends still.

That was just a way to make ends meet. And I learned so much from that job. It was awful job, but I learned, I basically made Equinox like a, I hit my double bonus every month. And I probably made that company millions of dollars and I just made 60 grand or whatever. And I was also like working so much because they're like a mess.

A lot of sales companies are like this. They, you end up making like less than minimum wage really because of the hours you put in the way it works that you just end up putting in so many hours. So yeah, it was just interesting, but it was, it's been so helpful for me for my career like going forward and learning different models, look into different businesses and how their models work, like for instance, Equinox is, I don't know how they do it now, but they are a very expensive gym and they charge like a hundred and who knows how much it is now, but it was like a hundred and fifty dollars a month, something like that, and they don't do any negotiating. Whereas other gyms, you can it's like a car dealer you can like negotiate, and it was like, no, this is our rate, and this is why this is our rate, and this is it, and then you just have to rebuttal that, and I've learned that with my own business too, and of course sometimes I do I, I have in the past negotiated or if there's a company I really wanted to work with or someone that doesn't have any money and I really wanted to work with, I'll, do it for free or basically nothing. It all comes down to you going back to your goals, who you're working for, but learning the skill of sales and negotiating is literally going to make you a full time musician or not. 

Michael: Yep. So good. Yeah, it's interesting how many stories I hear from, successful entrepreneurs in like different industries and how many of them have a root at some point. In direct sales where like they like are going door to door or they're getting rejected over and over again I don't know if you know this about me but how our band started was we would follow other tours around the country and walk up to fans waiting in lines for shows and share our music, if they liked it I had a backpack full of CDs and so I was a super shy, awkward kid, but doing that really helped me overcome the fear of rejection. And I got rejected a lot, but we got really good at doing it. We sold 24, 000 CDs in about six months between the six of us in the band. And looking back, what you're describing right now around just the experience of learning how to sell and how to ask and how to be rejected, how to make offers without being attached to the outcome.

It's such a valuable skill. And I've heard that too with, like Christine Morrell is another partner that we've had on the podcast a few times and she went door to door with her music. She literally went to people's houses and sold her music. So I'm curious around how do you recommend artists who are listening to this right now might be able to get in those reps? Do you recommend that they hop on Zoom calls with their fans and make offers or what do they offer or how does that? 

Sabrina: they just need to try different things, like really get creative with what you're offering. And yeah, it's so hard to say because like I can just try to give you like my own example, for me, I really like social media because I like putting out the right kind of bait like fishing. You put out the right kind of bait and the fishes bite.

So take my music, my social media class. When I made that social media class, As far as I know, it was the only social media growth class for musicians I had seen on the market. Like I hadn't seen any, I've seen a lot of like social media classes in general, but I hadn't seen any social media class for musicians at that time.

It was a gap in the industry. So I'm like, alright, I paid attention, I listened for the gap, I listened for what people wanted. And I started the social media class and I started it live first because I noticed that there was not a lot of live classes. There was a lot of recorded classes, no live classes.

So I started it first and my, it was like six people at the first one and then 12 people at the second one. And then one weekend I made a video on TikTok and on Instagram and it popped off and I filled up. Six classes of 30 people in three days, and I was like, whoa and so I realized like so many musicians were struggling with social media and nobody was offering a very clear step by step guide for social media. So that really worked. Now interestingly enough if I did that same exact thing now, it wouldn't work because things change and things change so quickly, but basically at that time two years ago when I first did it I think it was yeah, exactly almost exactly two years ago So that really worked and I've been able to, I think I've had like 3000 sales in that one class and it's all organic.

I didn't do any ads and I didn't do any outreach. I just let it all come to me. I just post my videos and they come to me. So that's the way that I like to get sales and I like to deal with that. And so now when hot leads are coming to me, like music tech companies and they're saying, Hey, I want this, I want that.

And I said, this is my rate. And they say, no, they already want me. They already want me. So it's take it or leave it, and it gets a lot easier when you have people that already want you than just going door to door. I really recommend, I know social media isn't for everyone, but I really recommend that as the best way.

Probably when you were going around door to door, to the tour lines, 

Michael: Line to line. 

Sabrina: Yeah, you can literally just do it on the internet if you learn the skill of creating good content for the right audience. 

Michael: So good. Yeah, it's our main strategy that we teach now is what we call virtual tour hacking. So that strategy we call tour hacking. It was like in person, walking up the lines for shows and exactly what you're saying.

Like it's so much easier to have conversations and connect with people online versus doing it like door to door sales. It sounds like what you're saying is that, if you can publish content in a way that, that provides value and that attracts people to you then now, it's almost like you can lean back because they want you and you don't necessarily have to do the reaching out and reach out to them, which kind of puts you in a more powerful position. 

Sabrina: Yeah. That's why. I did all the other things too. I remember my old days, like, when I was trying to get into bands as a singer, I would email every single band, and I would say, Hey here's my reel put me in your band, whatever.

And then, I started emailing every single singer, and I was like, if you ever get sick, I can sub for you. And I would send thousands and thousands of emails, and there's so much rejection, and then so many auditions, and I was like, I didn't even know why I was auditioning. I could do the job So it's just, it was so stressful and I was like, I don't want to do that anymore.

I just want everything to come to me. And so that's why I really believe in the strategy of social media marketing. And yeah. I do think that's, if you can master that one, everything else will just happen. This meeting, this podcast came to me like I taught at Berkeley. They asked me, I remember I really wanted to work with Apple.

It came to me, so you just, If you do it correctly, it will, all of your fans, all of your clients can come to you. 

Michael: Yeah, and it reminds me of, there's, I've heard a few people talk about this idea of like opportunity flow and how at the beginning you don't really have a lot of opportunities coming to you because that's just the way it is when you're starting out.

You have no proof, you have no social proof, you have, you don't have traffic coming to you. And so you have to like say yes to every opportunity and you have to be really aggressive about trying to find opportunities but there comes this point where it flips and now Opportunity flow is coming to you and like you're describing about learning how to say no It's like instead of saying yes to every opportunity now, it's like you have to get really good at saying no. 

Sabrina: Yeah, and also It's funny you say that because I used to be like that too like I used to say yes as yes to everything and then I was still not successful, by the way.

I was I was doing okay. But then, okay, so for this business, I really didn't want to be motivated by money to start. So brands were reaching out to me to post for them in my early days and they were offering me like 50 or 100 and I said no to all of those because I know that I needed to wait.

I needed to wait to monetize like as long as I could and that's when you get those like really successful things. So sometimes it's almost better to wait to my I would have rather just done it for free than to take a 50 or to take 100. Cause once you start setting the bar so low, whatever your bar is, you get to decide what your bar is - then I really do believe in like the power of the universe and like what the universe will give you and if you're accepting the low bar, that's all you'll get and I was like, I'm not saying, I'm not agreeing to any videos until this amount and I had an amount in my head and that was where it is that's where I'm staying, or at least more maybe depending. I don't know, but so it is tricky. I do see a lot of, cause now I work with a lot of tech companies and I see a lot of, people doing the thing that I, not that I don't recommend, but it's not my favorite way, which is spamming the outreach.

Hey, like I'd love to work with you. I want to do a video for you. This is my rate. It's a hundred bucks and blah, blah, blah. And they have 10, 000 followers. And I'm just like, if you just focus more on like creating better content, they will come to you and they will give you a better rate.

And yeah, it's just it's hard to watch a little bit. 

Michael: Yep. That, that totally makes sense. Yeah. And thank you for sharing that. So it sounds like. What you want to make sure that you're careful of is that, that you set a high enough standard for yourself because essentially you can set your standard or whatever you want.

So one of the risks of, agreeing to a lower rate too quickly might be getting comfortable, might be starting to set yourself at that standard as opposed to setting your standard higher. I can definitely understand that perspective. I can't say it. Oh yeah, go ahead. 

Sabrina: It really also depends on what you're doing too.

With social media, the longer you can wait to monetize the better because you want your audience to trust you and every single time you do an ad or post for someone else It's a little bit hurts your trust a little bit. And that's why even now my next goal now is to be like my own music tech company.

It's all tricky because it's you're going to do better if you're the company, if you're the company, you're going to do better than selling for somebody else always. So it's just, it's so hard. And you have to keep in mind of your audience and the trust you have with your audience. There's a producer that's super successful on social media and they were doing really good. And now I just see a video. I'm not going to say names. I just see a video of a Capital One endorsement or Oh, wing like a, like Food endorsements, or if I get too specific, I don't want anyone to get called out. But they do, and I've gotten them too, like, where people email me like, Hey, can you post about, my contacts, or my brain pills, or my tequila and you always have, it can't just be a cash grab, right?

Even if they were gonna pay me like 20, 000 for a video, I wouldn't take it. I really wouldn't, and I haven't, because, Yes, it's a good money grab right now, but now I see their views are down, their engagement is down. You've lost trust. You've lost trust. And people will call it maybe selling out, but now you have to restart again.

It really is that way. And not to say you've done it before so you can do it again. So you can do it again. You can rebuild from zero, but it's like I, I don't want to do that. It's all stuff that's like very tricky. So you have to, especially in social media, No is very important. 

Michael: Yeah, that, that's all that makes sense.

So it sounds like what you're saying is that you have to be especially careful when it comes to aligning with brands or companies that don't align with who you are and your values. Because if you are endorsing someone else that you actually don't you don't appreciate the value of their brand or you don't think that they're doing good things that are not going to, create a positive impact on your community, then 

Sabrina: Not only that, it's if you're endorsing things that your community doesn't care about, right?

If they're, if you're endorsing things that is not important to your original goal and your original thing, that's where you're going to lose it. And there are some ways that you can sneak them in and get creative with it, but it always has to be Like, going back to your original thing, which was step number one what's the goal of your page?

That, that's the hard part. 

Michael: Yeah that totally makes sense, and yeah, I think one through line that I feel like I've heard you bring up a few times, it's like one of the most valuable lessons I think we can all... Learn as humans is the ability to ask ourselves repeatedly, how can I serve better?

How can I provide more value? How can I contribute? And by doing that, you start to make better decisions around if you're going to align with a brand that actually isn't providing value or serving, or it's not aligned with your community, then that's not a service, like you're not providing value to those people.

Sabrina: For example, I work with a lot of AI companies and that's super controversial in the music industry. But my mission statement for my page, my goal is to make music more accessible to more people. It's not to make music more. Not, I don't want to say that you were an elitist, but I'm not one of those, if I was like a guitar teacher or like someone very technical and I was trying to push that, maybe I wouldn't want to work with the AI companies.

But in my opinion, AI makes music more accessible to more people. Not everybody following me wants to be a pro or is a pro. My idea is instead of going home and watching Netflix, you can go home and make a beat. You don't even have to be into music, right? So that's what my whole page and my whole philosophy is about, and that's why I work with so many AI companies.

But, other people might not, you have to think about that stuff. 

Michael: Yep. Absolutely. I love that mission, by the way, to making music more accessible for everyone because I think you're right especially the trend and the movement right now is with AI and with technology is to like, everyone can be a creator.

Everyone has an amazing brain that can imagine things. And so being able to channel that is one of the biggest blessings I think we have, while we're here on, on earth. 

Sabrina: Yeah, I agree. And then whenever I post that, I'll get, Oh, wow. Lots of hate. This is the reason why this is the reason why music is terrible.

You're ruining music. We're not going to, you're taking away our jobs. And it's And I'll post AI of all types. And it's funny because people pick and choose which AI to get more upset. No one has any problem with the mixing ai, right? We can, we all want a mixing AI who caress about the mix engineer.

But if you post about a singing ai, all hell breaks loose. And I'm like, but what do you mean? So you guys can all get your mix templates and mix AI and they can't, you can use the ozone and all that and the mix engineers can't have a singing AI, that's not fair. And then the same with you know, drumming AI, guitar AI and all these different AI, right?

Sampling, oh my god. It's so crazy. And it's not everybody here is trying to make money doing music. Relax. 

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Super true. Yeah. It's gosh. If we weren't about a time to wrap up the podcast, I feel like there's some awesome discussion we could have around AI and just like the, the future of music.

Sabrina: That's a hot topic. 

Michael: Yeah. Maybe we'll circle back around to it. We'll have another conversation. We'll be able to dive deeper. I don't think AI is going anywhere so 

we'll come back to it. 

Sabrina: It's been here. It's been here. 

Yep. 

Michael: Awesome. Hey, thank you again so much for coming on here and sharing some of the lessons that you've learned.

I think it's an amazing mission that you have to make music more accessible for people. And I appreciate you sharing the three core fundamentals that, I think are definitely true for every artist. So for everyone that's here right now if they're interested in connecting more or learning a bit more about your social media course, or just connecting with your social media, where do you recommend that they go to dive deeper?

Sabrina: So my Instagram, or TikTok, or YouTube, and it's just Seids underscore, S E I D S underscore. People don't know, because my last name is Sideman, so it's an abbreviation of my last name. S E I D S underscore, and then they're all linked there, all the stuff I do is linked there. 

Michael: Alright, beautiful. Like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes, and Seids, thank you again so much for being here today.

Sabrina: Thank you so much for having me. 

Michael: Yeah! 

Yay. Alright you know what? Man, this is like classic flub from me on, since this is the second time I've ever done this, but I definitely should've left a little bit more time to do some Q& A with people in the audience right now. I just, we were, the conversation was so good that I just couldn't pull away.

So hey everyone! What's up? I see you guys still there. Jared Grant, Stig, Peter, Lane, Ralphie, everyone. Steven, what's up Steven? Hey, we're building our own AI and we don't get hate for it. Yeah, I've heard some, I've heard people, that definitely is an undertone, there's a lot of fear around AI and how what's, what the impact is going to be on it, but yeah, how about we, I think we have time for one really good question.

If you guys have one epic question to come on here live and ask to Seids, then feel free to raise your hand in Discord and we'll we'll try bringing you on stage so that you can actually ask the question here live. Also, feel free to, if you just want to, if you're feeling a little shy, if you just want to like comment on it, that's totally cool too.

Stephen asked sites, what AI companies do you work with? 

Sabrina: Oh, so there's only one company that I work with, like most regularly. That's A. I. And they're called Spader. And they're like stemming. So you can like stem song there. They're so if you make remixes and stuff like that.

But I've worked with so many like music creating A. I. 's before. So many. 

Yeah. 

Michael: Is there. Have you seen, I feel like this idea is ripe for the taking, and I'm sure there's a lot of, DAW companies that are working on this. I know I've seen something from Splice, that was pretty cool, they're using like their, the generate, the sample, like song immediately.

But I feel like the big opportunity that I haven't seen yet is... A similar kind of generative AI that we have with something like mid journey or that we have with chat GPT, but for music, where basically you have the start of a DAW project and you type in, I want to create X type of song and maybe you have a toggle where you can say, I want these kinds of instruments.

You click generate and it generates the entire project, including 

Sabrina: yeah, there's like song starter on band lab that does something like that. You can type in like a word and then it'll give you like a mood. The thing with AI, and everyone it's it's such a long winded conversation because everyone's Oh, it doesn't sound good.

It doesn't sound like that good. And then they're like, Oh, it's going to replace us. So it's just which one is it? It's a starting point, but yeah, it's just there's like song starter on like band lab and stuff like that, that you can use. 

Michael: Is there one that like you can do that with, and then when it generates is actually like the instrument track with a MIDI file so that you could actually like, 

Sabrina: Yeah, that's what the one on band lab does.

It's like a MIDI project and it's like a song starter and then you can go through and change. 

Michael: That's amazing. Oh, thank you for sharing that. I'm definitely going to go play around with that. I've been wanting that for a while as a way to generate a song or a 30 second hook really quickly.

Sabrina: Yeah. 

Michael: So I'm definitely going to go play around with that. Yeah, for sure. It's a good one. Cool. All right. Other questions. Oh, so I see some people are sharing the link to follow Seids. Yes. Everyone go do it. I see a friend said, I think AI is fine for inspiration, but hopefully no one confuses it for the art or music.

Yeah, I can understand where we're coming from. You have any any response to that? That fear, the fear that AI is going to replace our art, or that it's going to replace the creativity. 

Sabrina: If you have true fans, AI is not going to replace you. If you don't have true fans... Will AI replace you? Replacing what? Exactly, right? That's the thing. Some people are like, oh, they're going to take away our jobs. And I'm just like, are you even working right now? Because it's I don't think they would. If someone's working with me regularly as a vocalist, they're not just going to get a different, an AI vocalist to replace me.

I think a lot of people, and I don't mean to, offend the person that asked this question, but I think a lot of people that are leading with these kind of reactions aren't really thinking about it rationally and this is by the way, no matter what new technology that comes out It's always this way in music right people are always resilient to new technology like when the piano first came out Violinists thought their job was going to be taken away because now one person can play every note.

So now all these individual instruments didn't think they could have a job anymore. And as you can see that hasn't happened. So maybe in some cases it has, right? That you just hire one piano player instead of a full orchestra to play the tune. I don't know. So just different things that you have to think about, right?

When music was finally able to be recorded everyone said no one's going to come out to see live shows anymore We're going to get replaced because they're just going to listen to music at home It really created also so many jobs of recording studios and recording engineers and they created a whole industry, right?

So new technology is always going to take some jobs away and also create some new jobs So now you can get hired to train AI like they can use my voice to train a bunch of AIs now I'm getting paid as a singer to create an AI it's so difficult and, you have to accept what's coming, you have to learn about what's coming, and you have to, instead of getting worried about it or trying to stop it, you just have to use it to your advantage.

That's just how I see it. 

Michael: Yeah, I think that's a really good way to put it. And I think that there is, to French's, to what you're sharing French, I think is also like valid in terms of you, there's a, It's not just about just like plugging something into AI and just being like, all right, cool.

Like it does all the work, but it's about using it as a tool to amplify who you are and your creativity. And yes, so I think you're right. That, AI without without it having, you like a, like the, a person, or at least like a universal movement towards expression or like I don't, maybe AI will become sentient at some point. And then it's we'll have to recircle around this conversation. But for now, it definitely seems like it's the best way to, to approach it. It's like what you're saying, Seids, is as a tool. And it's a way that you can be able to amplify, to be able to produce.

Much faster, much better content to be able to serve better. And it's not something that we necessarily need to hesitate from, but if we can dive all the way into it, we can start using it. And I think most people who've actually used the AI a lot, I think have that fear gets quashed pretty quickly because they're like, Oh, like this is amazing.

And I can do so much more with this. If I'm a lot, if I'm using it as like a collaborator, then if I'm just doing this on my own yeah. Exactly. Cool. Hey Seids let's go ahead and let's wrap up the podcast for today. Thank you again for being a part of it. This has been awesome. And let's give a virtual round of applause for Seids for coming on here live.

I wish you could be in the community to see people who are here right now clapping lots of love. And yeah, maybe at some point, if I really hope discord adds a way to like natively record it in discord, because then it would be even cooler, but if you haven't yet, definitely go check out Seids social media profiles, follow her there, check out the social media course.

Obviously it's you guys know how important social media is to, to be able to build an audience. Thank you for what you do and looking forward to connecting again soon. Thank you! Bye!