Michael Walker: Where I try to focus my energy is on both being grateful for where I'm at right now, and being present, while also setting a goal that's a stretch, that's exciting, that's scary, that is going to force me to become someone I'm not, and force me to become a bigger version of myself. I've done that a few times in my life, and usually when I do it, it requires a lot of faith or belief or programming yourself programming your mind to become the person that you're going to be and to become that person now, today.

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.

 

Ari Welkom: Here we are today with Mr. Michael Walker, who started his career off as the keyboardist of pop punk band paradise fears. Their story is amazing. They went from living out of their cars with really grassroots indie strategies, selling 24, 000 albums over six months, reaching number two on iTunes, alternative charts, and went on to work with Grammy winning producers, touring the world internationally for hundreds of thousands of fans, really cool story.

And then he pivoted to becoming a mentor for independent artists, teaching them how to build their careers up and launching Modern Musician, which is why we're all here today. And Modern Musician is a platform, it's a mentorship company, it's a marketing company, but really it's a revolutionary movement for independent musicians today.

 And also Michael happens to be the host of this podcast, although he's in the hot seat today and I get the privilege of interviewing you, Michael so yeah, welcome to the Modern Musician Podcast. 

Michael Walker: Thanks for having me, man. Yeah, it's definitely, it's like a this isn't the right analogy.

But it's sort of like a black mirror episode, but like flip flopped or it's like now I'm being interviewed, but instead of it being a dark, like horrible thing, it's probably, we're probably going to be talking a lot about the future and tech kind of stuff with a happy outlook and it's going to be optimistic.

Ari Welkom: Yeah, hopefully. Definitely. Yeah. And that's where I would love to, to start, but I would also love to hear. About you and yeah for anyone that's here that doesn't know, or, anything that you'd like to share about how you got here today? 

Michael Walker: Sure. Yeah. So I'll just give the cliff notes version, but like Ari mentioned I toured full time for about 10 years learned the hard way that it's not enough to just book the shows, but you actually have to, get people to come out to the shows and I remember the first tour that we did playing to mostly empty rooms.

At the time we were sleeping in Walmart parking lots. We were living in our van, eating peanut butter tortillas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And the big idea that kind of helped us go from that point to being able to hit number two on iTunes and being able to tour worldwide was this idea called tour hacking.

And, in a nutshell, we learned that we were, basically we were trying to figure out how do we find people who would be interested in coming to our shows that aren't just our friends and family. And we had an aha moment where we realized that those types of fans who would come out to our shows, where are they most likely to congregate?

Probably at other shows of similar artists that they're big fans of. And so, we noticed that before the shows there would be these huge lines of, hundreds or thousands of people waiting on the sidewalk to get into a venue. And so, I thought, what if we just walk up to those people and introduce ourselves, and share some clips of our songs, and if they like it, maybe they'd be interested in coming out to our shows.

And, like it's, sounds like kind of a simple idea, but in practice. It's absolutely terrifying to, to go do that and actually walk up to strangers in lines. And I remember I was a super shy, awkward kid, so it didn't come naturally to me at all. But when I was first started walking up to people, I was like shaking and stuttering.

And there's something physically in your body that, turns on. And it's, well, it just wants to keep you safe. But literally your body is telling you, do not walk up to these people and talk to them. If you do this, you will die. So do not do this. You're going to die if you talk to this person.

And, yeah, we did it anyways, and what we found was that strategy worked incredibly well. It helped us connect with our first fans, that weren't just our, friends and family, and really start to build relationships and get to know people personally, and the types of fans that actually go out to shows.

Doing that we sold 24, 000 CDs in about six months following multiple different tours around the country. And because of that one of the bands that we were tour hacking on was called All Time Low. And they were like our idols growing up. They had millions of fans. And I'm pretty sure the first song we ever covered was Dear Maria by All Time Low.

And they heard about what we were doing and they gave us the opportunity to open for them on their next tour. And, that was an amazing opportunity to connect with some of our idols and to be able to start playing shows for thousands of people. Yeah so, we toured for about 10 years full time, we were always independent. So we never signed to a major record label and we accomplished things that I dreamed of doing for a long time that it felt really validating to be able to play shows for sold out crowds of people singing the words to the songs. And it felt good for my ego, especially because we worked so hard to make it happen at the beginning. And, there's early on people not everyone was supportive. Some people called us Paradise Queers instead of Paradise Fears because, that used to be an insult back then.

But, reaching that point, I remember playing like a homecoming show where all those people who call us Paradise Queers, now they wanted to, be our best friends. And, it's kind of funny how that works. But, for about 10 years full time we toured and all any of us cared about was the band.

And we invested all of our time, all of our energy, all of our money back into the band. And about six years ago I met the love of my life, and I was at a point where I was gone most of the year traveling, and I was looking for I was just at a different place in my life. I was looking to not travel as much.

I was looking to stay home and support a family. And back then, we didn't understand all of the cool stuff that you guys have access to now, and that, really what we teach mostly with Modern Musician, with the digital marketing and, creating funnels and having the software. Modern Musician didn't exist back then when we got started and, gosh, our life would have been so much easier if it had.

My life would have been so much easier when I found out I was going to be a dad. And at the time, I really relied on touring and live shows and I didn't know how I was going to provide for my family. And it was like my probably one of my rock bottom moments or one of the most challenging moments that I went through.

It was just that year of transition. And I remember feeling like a failure of a husband and a father because I didn't know how I was going to provide for my family. And when I found out it was going to be a dad, it was really yeah, it was a big urgent, urgency call for me.

I was like, I need to figure this out. And, I invested a lot of money into mentorship and wanting to learn, how do I build an online business? And specifically, I mean, I'm kind of jumping up forward a few steps here. I actually, I got an invite to a live event called product launch formula.

This guy named Jeff Walker and we have the same last name, but we're not related. And I actually just got back from a Jeff Walker events like a few days ago. So the timing is really good, but he was someone who in some ways it's probably gonna be similar to, I think in every good story there's a mentor that, that comes along.

There's like a mentor. That's why in Harry Potter, you have Dumbledore and that's why in Star Wars you have Yoda. And pretty much every, big movie there's this mentor role. And I think the reason that resonates, it's called the hero's journey. And it's because that's what our own path tends to follow.

It's we go through these challenges and someone comes along, a mentor that helps us to, accomplish our goals. For me, and I hope that Modern Musician and our team and I can be that for you and help be, a presence in your life that helps guide you towards becoming the best version of yourself that you can be for you and your fans and your friends for me at that point, it was this guy named Jeff Walker, who has he basically teaches people how to share their expertise or share their knowledge and coach and help other people. And so at the time I had never gone to college. I had never, quote unquote, got a real job out of high school. So I was really wondering, should I go back to school or, is there something, is there a way that I could provide value with what I've learned?

And... Had a lot of people who saw what we had done with Paradise Fierce and were aspiring up and coming artists who would ask me questions about, how to build an audience and how to make an income with their music. And so, one of the first things that Jeff, my mentor, asked was, out of everything you guys did, what made the biggest impact and what might help other artists who are just getting started?

So when I reflected on it, there's a few things that, that we did that worked. There's a lot more things that we did that didn't work. But one of the few things that we did that, yeah, I think made the biggest impact was this idea of tour hacking. It literally took us from living in our van, eating peanut butter tortillas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to 24, 000 CDs sold in a few months.

And I wasn't really sure, is this something that still works nowadays? Do people still buy CDs? Even back when we were doing it people didn't really listen to CDs anymore. They listened on iTunes, so it was kind of strange to think that they actually would buy CDs and lines for shows. So I wasn't sure if it would still work, but...

I started coaching and doing some one on one consulting with other artists, and I remember one of the first bands I started coaching, there's two guys in the band, and they went tour hacking, and they made 11, 000 in a single month. And that was like a, yeah, it was a, yeah! I was so excited, because I think for me, a big thing that I was struggling with as well, is just sort of this feeling of, imposter syndrome is probably the right way to describe it. But for me it was really like, I wanted to know that what I was doing was valuable and that I was actually serving musicians and to know that it was making an impact. And if I was going to do this kind of coaching, and people were investing money, and investing their dreams in me, then and this is still my biggest thing today is focusing on that in particular. And that's my biggest fear, is is not being able to do that for you. It's what drives a lot of my life is wanting to contribute and wanting to, help this community grow.

So all that to say, when I first started having some of those success stories, it was a huge relief and like a moment of celebration. I was like, Yes! This is awesome. This still works. Everyone should go tour hacking. And I created a free workshop. I called it the Tour Hacking Workshop. It was a three day workshop that basically taught how do you choose the right tours.

What do you say when you walk up to people? And how do you sell your CDs? And what happened was, that workshop It went great. We had over 30, 000 musicians who registered for the workshop and attended it and started sharing testimonials and success stories. And basically, it was a completely free workshop, and I invited people, if they got value from it, to schedule a free coaching call with me.

And then if we were a good fit, then they would become a consulting client and so quickly I booked up my entire calendar. I didn't have enough time to work with as many artists as I would have liked to. And so from a business standpoint it was great and the workshop was working. But from a standpoint of when I actually crunched the numbers and I looked at 30, 000 musicians who register for the tour hacking workshop and how many of those people actually were applying what they were learning and actually went tourhacking, reading results from it. Very few people who attended the tour hacking workshop were actually going tour hacking and therefore, getting the results. And when I saw that I basically, I wanted to figure out what's going on and what's, what's getting in the way.

How can, it's, I want to make sure it's as valuable as possible. And the overwhelming feedback that I heard over and over again when I talked to people was that, Oh, I love the tour hacking workshop. The strategy totally makes sense. That's a big aha moment. I've got a day job or I've got a family at home.

I don't know if walking up to strangers in lines for shows is something that's really going to work for me and like my type of music. Is there any way that I could, I don't know, use the internet or use social media to, to grow my audience instead? And that was really sort of the seed that got planted that, led to a quest over the past six years of trying to figure out, is there a way to do what we did with tour hacking and do it online?

What we discovered was what we call virtual tour hacking now.

And virtual tour hacking is built on the same premise as tour hacking, which is really about, connecting with real fans and building an authentic relationship, having a conversation with them back and forth. And so there's a specific kind of campaign that we found that works really well for new artists especially called virtual tour hacking.

And it's about having conversations with your fans online. And when we first got started, I was the weird kid in high school that liked math. So, setting up systems and tools and launching campaigns was something that I really enjoyed. And we actually, built this system that had seven or eight different softwares, like ClickFunnels and ActiveCampaign and JanusAI and ManyChat and Dialogflow and Segment just to name a few of them.

But we, combined all of these into this marketing funnel for musicians that works great. It's a great, it's like a powerhouse of a system to build relationships with new fans and to make an income, with music online. And it was about maybe two years ago that I connected with one of the smartest people I know.

His name is Ben Gothier and he's a tech entrepreneur, he's built and sold several software as a service companies, most recently to a half a billion dollar company. And we connected on tour actually, when I was touring full time, a loose contact, stayed in touch, and a couple years ago reconnected with him and shared some of what we were working on with Modern Musician and he was really excited. He was like blown away by what we were building. We started talking about this opportunity to, you're right, at the time we had seven, eight different software services that we were building on top of, and they were powerful, but they could be pretty expensive when you're running eight different softwares, to run your whole online music business and also, It's having eight different languages in a room and trying to communicate with all of them with each other. It's possible if you have a translator, like Zapier or Make. com, but it is a lot of extra work to kind of integrate them with each other. Some of the software costs a lot of money for a new artist who's just getting started, like segment cost us 27, 000 a year to, to use for ourselves.

So it was a great software, but it didn't make sense for a new artist who was just getting started to use it. But we knew how important it was to have that kind of functionality, in the system. So, we thought, what if we actually built our own software? Our own platform, that instead of having eight different languages, we actually have one ecosystem.

And, sort of like what Apple has done with the Apple ecosystem, having all these devices that are integrated into one system, and simplifying it so that, and doing it in a way that's specifically designed for musicians. Because none of these tools were really designed with artists in mind. And that's what led to us creating the Street Team.

Which I'm going to just open up the loop there and maybe we can come back around to it. I know we're going to be talking more about Street Team and about the artist launch process that's going up here soon, but I'm going to come up for air for a bit, Ari, so I can hear your beautiful voice.

Ari Welkom: Yeah. Get some air. No, I think it's important to hear you can't just dive into Star Wars part three until you get one and two, like you backstory. So, and I think also like when I hear your story, which I love it so much because I hear a few things, but I hear this like series of leaps that you took in your life where it's you knew what you wanted and then there's that fear of what it takes to get there. Like just walking up to someone in line. It's a stranger. But you do it anyways, and that's so powerful. And that's how, similarly to when you started Modern Musician and you started from scratch from nothing, and you just started this thing to support your family but also, what I see in you is this amazing calling. To help people. And so, and then the other thing I hear is about the modern part of Modern Musician where, you went and did it the old school way, but you had this idea of like, how can I take this same concept and use all the new tools that are out there and so now we as musicians get to benefit from that. And then the conception of Street Team, which that's the next thing I would love to ask you about is really about and you talked a little bit about the, how it was conceived, where it came from and also where it's, where it's heading.

Michael Walker: Yeah, absolutely. So, Street Team I would say probably nine out of ten work hours as of late, are just me thinking about Street Team and how can we, build the service and support, our musicians. And I'm really passionate and really excited about software development, which is something the past two and a half years that I've been doing a deep dive into, with a big helping hand from ChatGPT and AI.

But Street Team, when we created it the goal with Street Team was to create a modern day, version of The Street Team has been around for, since the dawn of the music industry. And so the idea of a Street Team is that you have a group of fans who resonate with an artist so much, love the songs, and resonate with the music so much that they're willing to go hit the streets and literally promote your music to other fans. It's basically doing what we did with tour hacking, but there's like other people who are doing that for you. And usually the Street Team members would have a leader and they would form organically and they would do all this, promotional work for free to support the band, usually in exchange for some sort of status or connection or relationship with the artists because, let's be real, it's cool to be friends with musicians, right? You're cool. It's probably one of the reasons that you're drawn to music is because, how big of an impact your favorite artist made on you. And if you just think about spending a day in a room with your favorite artist, it's cool.

It's cool to have access with an artist, it's cool just to get to know them and build a relationship with them. And so these Street Teams basically would help promote the artist for free and do it in exchange for connection with the artist usually because... They love the music so much because they care so much what they get in exchange is VIP tickets to shows and they might get some other like access to the artist, right?

And so a Street Team, what we wanted to do is we wanted to, build a platform that could allow artists to directly connect with their top fans and be able to identify. and honor and reward their top fans for being fans of their music. And really that was the genesis of Street Team was, creating a platform that could gamify the experience of being a fan, while also giving an artist ability to directly communicate and connect with their fan.

So one thing that we learned with Modern Musician early on, and, if you're at all in the world of online... Marketing or, digital products, then you've probably heard people talk before about, Email marketing and automated email campaigns and text message marketing. And there's a reason that these apps are so valuable.

And the reason that the majority of revenue that's generated online is coming through emails and through these CRMs is because it's just the best way to connect with other people online. If you compare the numbers between Emails and social media, if you have 10, 000 fans on Instagram and on average if you have an engaged audience, like three, 3 percent of people engage with the post, that's 300 people.

If you have 10, 000 fans in your Street Team or you have an email list of 10, 000 fans and you send out a message or send out a text message to 10, 000 fans, 98 percent of people. Open a text message, that means reaching 9, 800 people versus 300 people with a single message. And, so the the math of the equation is just insanely powerful.

To have your own platform, your own community that you can send out emails and text messages directly to your fans. And just in general, having a... Having a community, or having a list of fans, and being able to see where people are from. If you have a list of fans that live in New York City, then probably when you're about to play a show in New York City, Those people are the ones who are most likely to actually come out to the show and to get value from it.

And so you might not want to, email your whole list if you're just playing a New York City show. Maybe just send it to people that live close to New York City. So those are just a few big common use cases of a CRM platform like Street Team. But there's also a lot more that we're working on with it as well.

And maybe we'll have a chance to dig into some of that as well throughout the conversation. 

Ari Welkom: Oh, we will indeed. Yeah. I love those numbers and the differentiation between reach with social media, like Instagram and an email list. It's funny. I had a friend just yesterday who was telling me they had a virtual concert that they did and he has 50, 000 Instagram followers.

And he was really disappointed because he had five people show up for it. And I was like, Oh, how did you promote it? And he's well, I posted about it on Instagram. I was like, Oh man, so, yeah, I would love to hear about, Street Team and how is it different than the other tools that are out there, other CRMs or things that musicians could use.

Michael Walker: That's a great question. Yeah. So, I mean, nowadays, because it's such a important tool. There are a lot of different tools you could use. Some common ones are tools like MailChimp, bandzoogle is a website builder. ClickFunnels is a big one. ActiveCampaign is a big c r m, and a lot of these are tools that we used to use extensively and so these are tools that I think are insanely valuable. And if for some reason like you decide that you hate me and you hate Modern Musician and Street Team and you're like, I never want to see that guy again. I hate his. Yeah, Cam, I'm out of here. Then I would still want you to have a CRM platform.

Like it's that important. I'm like, if it's not, if it's not us, you have to do this. You have to get this handled somewhere. But there are a lot of options, right? And so I think the thing that separates Street Team from the other options is every other tool that we've used required that we have a bunch of different tools.

Everything did one thing, but not another. For example, like ActiveCampaign was great at email marketing, but the text message marketing, not great through ActiveCampaign. And you couldn't really do websites very well through ActiveCampaign, at least at the time when we transitioned a couple years ago.

I mean, that was actually a year ago that we transitioned. And so, that's one thing. ClickFunnels as well, it was a great platform that did websites in funnels, but didn't really do the email marketing and the text message marketing. And so having an all in one suite where you don't have to have ten different tools, to do it is one of the biggest things that I think is a benefit of having Street Team.

And another thing too, we used to have a tool called Segment. com. I love Segment. They help you create lookalike audiences, which basically means if you have a group of fans, you can say, I want to find people who are similar to these fans. So if you have a group of your super fans, who've all invested over $100, you can basically say, hey, these are my super fans.

I want to find a group of similar people to these fans. And that's really powerful when it comes to digital marketing, is creating these lookalike audiences. And Segment helped us do it, but it costs $27, 000 a year to use the software. And, obviously we couldn't recommend that a total, a new artist starting from scratch invest 27, 000 immediately in one new software.

And so, we were able to... For ourselves, replace what we were using Segment to do with the lookalike audiences and build it directly into Street Team. And now we can share that with our artists as well. So basically that's just one, one thing that removes the $27, 000, cost that's built into it.

So that's one of the differentiators. The bottom line is, if you consider, like a lot of these different tools, if you're just using one of them, then you might be able to find something that's cheaper. But if you look at the scope of the entire system, then we're saving so much money by doing it within Street Team versus using all these different tools.

That's one of the benefits is just the simplicity and, being able to save money by doing it. And honestly, one of the biggest things is the time savings. 

So, I mean, this is, this might have been the biggest blessing was that when we had all these different tools, part of the reason that Modern Musician had a coaching program, or still has a coaching program is because it would take about three months to get an artist fully set up with all these different software tools.

And we would build their funnel system, we would build their automated workflows and the email sequences, and we would launch their ad campaigns, and we would set up the whole funnel accelerator system, and it's awesome, but on average, it would take three months to get fully set up and to get an artist completely launched.

And part of the reason was because, we have to go through and set up all these different softwares, and we have to set up, your email campaigns, you set up your funnels and your websites. And now, because of Street Team, we have these templates that we use for our clients and we can just build into Street Team.

So now people who you know aren't necessarily at a place where they can afford to get the kind of one on one coaching that we offer with Modern Musician now have an option where, if you have a lot of extra time and you're willing to set things up yourself then what used to take three months for us to set up for artists with the one on one coaching.

In a single click, we can clone these templates into your account and all of your funnels are set up, and your automated workflows are set up, and all you need to do is just, make it feel like it's your own, and make your, add your own branding, your own voice to it, but, it literally saves hundreds of hours, maybe thousands of hours of setting these up, and that was one of the biggest mind blowing benefits that came out when we first started focusing on, building Street Team as a software. So that now we have all these templates that, and not only are they just any templates too these are templates that we've tested out with our clients, with our artists, and we spent hundreds of thousands of dollars testing different traffic sources and seeing what's working best, and split testing, and figuring out what works.

And so, I think there's a lot of wisdom in the idea of, first you emulate, and then you innovate. And the idea is you find people who've spent 10, 000 hours focusing on mastering their craft, and you learn from them, and you model them, and you, because they've had to make a lot of mistakes, they had to learn a lot in order to get to the point that they're at, and so you get a huge shortcut by just first, by starting by emulating, by modeling it, but if that's all you do, then it's not gonna work because, it's just sort of like a cookie cutter, copy and paste, and it's not unique, it's not you, it doesn't have your unique unique voice.

But, if you can get the best of both worlds, if you can clone an existing template that's already, set up, based on all these different tests, hundreds of thousands of dollars that you don't have to spend to start out with, the best possible version. And then you just tweak it and you make it your own, you add your own unique voice to it.

Whew! That is an awesome recipe for success. So, yeah, that's probably one of the biggest benefits of Street Team versus some other CRMs is that you can use these other ones but it takes a lot of time to set up and to integrate all of them with each other and you don't necessarily have the templates and the resources to get launched.

Ari Welkom: Yeah. Wow. I'm one of those guys who when I met you it was pre Street Team. So Street Team did not exist. And I went through the whole coaching program and it completely changed everything for me and had mind blowingly amazing experience but there was as like an independent artist who, had, was not previously very savvy with marketing or tech.

It was daunting to have all these different pieces of software to manage and both the cost and the time and all of that. And so having it all in one place I mean, that's almost as huge of a breakthrough is like going from hand to hand tour hacking on the street, the virtual tour hacking, like it's, total game changer.

Michael Walker: Absolutely. It was funny. I just had a conversation earlier today with. Brett from Roots of Creation, and he's we had a great conversation. He's like a platinum level artist in our community. And he... went through our original program, before we had the Street Team. And I was just like screen sharing and showing him some of the new, like the systems and things that we have now.

And his mind was just absolutely blown. And yeah, we scheduled a call to, to reconnect and, to help him get launched with the new version of the software and to, come back into the Modern Musician, coaching community, but it was a good reminder of how big of a difference there was between just getting, when we first got started, which was amazing, and Brett just, he's a shining example of a successful artist and a raving, client, but seeing the difference between Where things were at a few years ago and what they're at now with the Street Team platform is pretty remarkable as well.

Ari Welkom: Yeah, totally. And that's actually a really good segue because I know a lot of people here are interested in what's coming up, what's coming down the line with Street Team. So yeah, what do you got for us? What's happening. 

Michael Walker: I don't know if we really have anything else new that we're, excited about or plan on releasing. I don't know, we've gotten to this point that we're probably just gonna leave it as is. Done deal. Just kidding. Ha. 

Ari Welkom: You totally had me. 

Michael Walker: So, so, I mean, there's a few different directions that we could go. I could talk about, we can probably touch on both.

So I'll talk about what's coming up right around the corner. And also, the long term vision with Street Team, what we're building towards. So right around the corner, we're getting ready to do an artist launch challenge. And this is an opportunity for us to basically roll out and do a public release of what we're calling Street Team 3. 0. Street Team 3. 0 is probably the biggest release that we've had since we started building Street Team, since we had the CRM and we've replaced all these different tools. And basically the breakthrough came from realizing that, We're at this point where we have the system that's working great and we have some artists who are just like, getting crazy results, like they're extraordinary making six figures a year, even seven figures per year with their music.

And... Most of this model, for any of you who've, been in one of our coaching programs or, seen our masterclass our model really relied on four different types of offers, and a couple of them are physical merchandise offers, and then we have, a couple that are more in the VIP membership digital realm.

But for our artists who are making, six figures or seven figures per year, some of those physical merch bundles that they were fulfilling, It started to get really challenging to fulfill. And so one example of this is we call them starter packs. And it's an initial, $7 to $10 bundle that includes some physical items to send out to fans.

And we had artists who are sending out thousands of these starter packs. And usually to get physical merchandise you have to, buy $800, like $1, 000 of inventory that's sitting at your house. And then you start making these sales and you start sending them out. And at first it's awesome!

Cool! There's these fans who are getting these things that's so cool that I'm sending out, and I'm getting all these responses from them too that, for the first time it feels like my music's really resonating, connecting with people that that I don't know. So it's awesome at first, and then you reach this point where, man, now I'm sending out dozens of these starter packs and in some cases, hundreds or thousands of these starter packs and some of our top clients literally are one that comes to mind who made seven figures in a single year. He was telling me about his operation and he had to enlist his neighborhood kids to help ship out his starter packs for him.

And I was just imagining one, that's both awesome and also, is that breaking any laws? Like child labor laws? What's going on? But it also is a good reminder just, that's on one end of the spectrum. But then for a lot of artists who are just getting started. It's one of the obstacles that you have to overcome is getting inventory shipped out and spending hundreds of dollars to ship out these physical items.

And so we really wanted to find a way to make it faster and easier and simpler to get you launched and to get you to your first sale on Street Team as quickly as possible. And, if you're shipping out physical merchandise that you have to order and wait to get shipped out to you, it's going to take a while to turn that around, or to have a turnaround to actually start making these sales.

So, one example of the new release that is coming out for the Artist Launch Challenge is what we're calling Relic Cards. Let me go grab one of these and come back right back so I can actually share it on the video because it's pretty cool. Yeah, let me, I'll be back in just one second. 

Ari Welkom: Okay, cool.

Michael Walker: Oh, and when I say one second, I literally mean one second. I thought I was going to go to the other room, but I have one second. That was less than one Mississippi. So this is an example of a relic card and basically how it works is when a fan purchases one of these from you, then for the first time ever, Modern Musician is actually fulfilling these cards for artists and we're using dropshipping for it.

So basically if you've heard of things like Printful before, or Print on Demand what's amazing about it is it doesn't require any upfront, cost for you to actually ship these out. And for us our goal with these is just to, get you launched as quickly as possible. And so, generally what that looks like is when a fan gets one of these they unlock access to exclusive digital content.

And you can create this in Street Team. When someone holds this card next to their phone, it goes bloop! And it unlocks exclusive content. On your on your Artist Launch Challenge funnel that we have the template created we've added in the Relic Cards. And basically how it works is we recommend charging $7 for a Relic Card, and it costs $2 to fulfill for us. And so basically you retain $5 profit per card. You don't pay for anything up front. But you can start making sales immediately when you launch your Street Team account. And, we've been testing this out internally with some of our clients. And on average, we're getting about 1. 7x increase in return on ad spend from these cards.

Which is some geeky ways of saying not only are these cards way easier to fulfill and ship out, but they're working better. So that's one of the things that that we're rolling out is actually having access to a marketplace where you can create and ship these out to your fans. And, one extra benefit of these as well, is after you send them out, you have the ability to dynamically change the link that it redirects to.

So, for example, let's imagine that you shipped out a thousand of these cards to your fans. Then, let's say you have a new release that's coming out in a week. You could send out a message to all your fans and say, Hey you might want to check out the card that I sent out earlier because there's a little secret on there for you.

And now they can, everyone that has a card could hold it up next to their phone, scan it, and it would redirect to the new release or the new piece of content. And yeah! So that's one one tidbit, that's one thing that we're really excited about that we're rolling out in the Artist Launch Challenge.

But really the goal of the challenge is to get you launched and to get you your first stream, your first fan, and your first sale in Street Team. Wow.

Ari Welkom: First stream, first fan, first sale. Boom. And when does it start and how can people participate? 

Michael Walker: So, it officially launches next Friday. So we're recording this a week out, so it's gonna be on October 20th, that the Artist Launch Challenge goes live. And so the point of this challenge for us is just to get as many artists launched as possible. Like it's called the artist launch challenge because we want to help build momentum and it's really true what the quote that, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

And so, one thing that we're rolling out as a part of this release is what we call Artist Milestones. And basically, I mean, I know we're doing this for the podcast, so I'm not sure how much this is going to translate to audio. But for the folks who are here live I think it would be cool to share a snippet of one of the features that we're releasing that we're calling Artist Milestones.

Can you guys see my screen right now? 

Ari Welkom: Yeah. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. Basically, what we wanted to do was you know, create a pathway for you so that in Street Team you know what the next milestone is and that for us to be able to unlock, bonus goodies and access and rewards when you hit these different milestones.

We're specifically focusing on these three different core pillars of your music industry because, in order to get your first fan, you need someone to actually hear your music first. That's what Streams is all about. It's about getting your first listener, getting your first stream.

Getting your first fan is about getting your first fan to actually subscribe to your Street team. Your email list and the phone number list. And it's also about getting your first sale. And so, this is about actually offering something valuable to your fans that they're excited about in collecting a payment in Street Team.

Because we know if you get your first payment, then you can get your first hundred payments and hopefully we can bring you on stage one day and, and give you an award for the gold artist award or the platinum artist award for hitting these serious milestones in your career. And so this is one of the things I'm most excited about is having these three different milestone tracks that help us to better support you with Modern Musician and be able to really...

I think that one of the biggest lessons that I've learned in the past six years has been about community and about the value of surrounding yourself with people who are encouraging you, who are supporting you to grow to the next level, or surrounding yourself with people who are at the next level. And, that's one thing that, with Modern Musician, I'm really excited to take a deeper step towards is, and if you're here right now, then you're here because we're starting to do this it's doing live. Podcast interviews and bring our community together and in our discord community, we have these, we have these community channels that are starting to form and I think there's a heck of a lot more we can do as well with with helping facilitate these connections between you and other artists who are in the community.

And one of the things that would be cool to do is have badges for each of you in the community. So you can basically see when you're hitting these different milestones. It's going to help you as well to connect with other artists that, are in similar places as you to be able to collaborate with.

Because if you both have, 10, 000 fans in your community and you make music that you both enjoy and resonate with, it would make a lot of sense for you to come together and co write a song together and do a cross promotion, sort of like a virtual show. And bring your fans together. And now instead of having 10, 000 fans each, now you have 20, 000 fans.

Or if there's some overlap, 15, 000 fans. Yeah I'm rambling a little bit, but it's just cause I'm excited about this. And I'm really excited to to roll this out for you. I think it's going to provide a lot of value. And so this is one of the things that we're going to be rolling out on the Artist Launch Challenge.

Ari Welkom: Wow. That is mind blowingly awesome. It's great to have the visual a few people have said how great it is to see that. And yeah, I mean. To me, it sounds like it all kind of stems back from your like the reason that you started Modern Musician about building community for musicians and helping them build their fan bases and communities in a really organized way that leverages the most cutting edge technology.

That's the thing that when I found Modern Musician, it just blew me away that I'd never experienced anything like it. I'd been around musicians and, high level musicians. And then I also had friends that were entrepreneurs, but I didn't have a place that kind of combined those two things into one place, and that's what I found at Modern Musician.

And it sounds like this Artist Launch Challenge, you're really streamlining everything for artists and for the fans' path and journey. 

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Yeah that's really one of the main mantras that we've been coming back to lately is just trying to make things as simple as possible but not simpler.

Alright, like Albert Einstein. And so, a big cornerstone of the challenge is focusing on these three different pillars, and giving you visibility to be able to see where you're at on your journey. Giving you a milestone to aim towards. Another feature for those of you who are previous Street Team users or coaching clients of ours that came from basically us listening to what are the benefits that we have with coaching and working directly with artists is that we get to hear directly what do you find most valuable and, what are your biggest challenges, your biggest obstacles?

One of the things that's both incredibly powerful but also a big challenge was we had something called your Funnel Accelerator, which is a really cool spreadsheet system for keeping track of all of your stats. And one of the things that we're rolling out as well on the Artist Launch Challenge is a fully automated Funnel Accelerator that's built into your Street Team.

So, you never have to go to seven different platforms and copy and paste your numbers and try to keep track of everything. But instead, it's all just built for you within Street Team. And again, this is some pretty geeky stuff, but it's really powerful. Having access to, your funnel accelerator like that built in means we can do things like look at your campaigns and see specifically which audiences are resonating most with your music which ad creative is working best, which campaigns are working best and to be able to help you to grow audiences that that you're promoting to that are getting the most value from your music. So, yeah, it's pretty, pretty geeky, pretty fun stuff. 

Ari Welkom: Geeky awesome. Yeah, it sounds like the automated funnel accelerator is a path to really great transparency and visibility with like how all of these things are actually operating so you can keep making them work better.

Michael Walker: Hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, basically what it's going to allow you to do is be able to see on different time frames, how many... streams, how many fans, how many sales have you gotten in the past week, the past 14 days, 30 days, 90 days and it's going to allow you to be able to set goals and targets. When Ben, the tech entrepreneur that I met came into Modern Musician, one of the biggest the big ideas that we talked about, and the goal that we set, was to build a platform that became the next Spotify.

Like a platform that, what iTunes did for the music industry, when it moved things from, physical to digital downloads, and what Spotify did when it moved to, online streaming we want to create a platform that is as big of a shift, as big of a revolution as the shift to streaming.

But to do it in a way that actually brings you closer with your fans and helps you build a deeper relationship and, actually helps you make a sustainable income with it because streaming for most people isn't something that's really paying the bills and not making enough for it to be sustainable.

We have some artists who have, hundreds of millions of streams, so of course, if you're one of the very, very few, that can happen, but for most artists, the streams are just a cherry on top, and it's not enough to be fully sustainable, whereas, with Music Relics there's an opportunity to actually make a sustainable income from your artwork without necessarily having to rely on live shows or gigging or touring in order to make an income.

So, that's one thing that we'll go deeper into on the Artist Launch Challenge. But to close up the Funnel Accelerator conversation, basically what this lets you do is it lets you set... targets and goals and see what the bottom line would be if you hit those targets. So let's say that you know that it's costing you about 25 cents per stream.

And this is something we'll walk through as well in the Artist Launch Challenge as it relates to getting your music heard. But having a system like this is it's like turning on the lights in a pitch black room. If you're looking for If you lost your keys in an amphitheater and it's completely dark, then it could take you a long time to find your keys, right?

You might be stumbling around, walking into chairs, and just looking for your keys, and it could take a really long time to find them. But, if someone just turned on the light, then immediately you could look down and see, Oh. There's the keys. You can just walk over, set the keys, and grab them.

Right? And the same thing applies to your music career. And it applies to your promotion strategies. If you're running a promotion strategy, but you don't know, what impact is this actually making in terms of real fans, and in terms of actual sales and revenue, what's my return on my investment? That's sort of like you're looking for your keys in a pitch black room and it makes it really hard to find them and to know if it's working.

Whereas with this system, you actually have a direct mathematically based system that allows you to look and see, get clarity, to turn on the lights and see, Oh, my 19%. Can I split test? Can I get that up to 25 percent and I'd actually have a system to do it. So again, this is some pretty geeky stuff, but it's what we found has been, one of the biggest opportunities for artists to be able to take their passion and turn it into a sustainable business and something that gives you the freedom to wake up every day excited because you get to spend your precious life energy and time doing the thing that brings you to life, and to do your calling and so it's pretty Freaking awesome Opportunity that we all have that didn't exist, ten years ago. So Thank you to Software and AI and the internet and so, you know the world for helping to turn this into a reality. 

Ari Welkom: Yeah. And thank you to Michael Walker for inventing this thing and fusing it all together into this one stop fan base monetization machine for artists to really live their passion. You alluded to the future and I'm curious about that and kind of the longterm goals of yourself and Modern Musician and Street Team down the line. 

Michael Walker: Sure, yeah, we can go there. So I mean, I just got back from a Mastermind retreat with my mentor. And, this is basically putting myself in a room with people who have achieved 10 times more than I have or further along who have 100 million dollar businesses and are making a huge positive impact on the world.

And it's really inspiring to be surrounded by people like that. And one of the biggest things that we talked about was the future of humanity and AI and, the singularity and Neuralink and brain interfaces. So, let me zoom back a little bit before I go there, because that's really the thing that excites me most about everything is about where we're headed towards with, humanity.

But with Modern Musician the goal is to create the next biggest revolution for the music industry since iTunes, since Spotify and to create that with the Music Relic Marketplace. And The goal is, in five years, to build that to a billion dollar marketplace. And and then to build a thirty billion dollar company that IPOs afterwards and to do it in a way that revolutionizes the music industry and helps change the narrative around what it means to be a musician. For a long time there's this idea of being a starving artist. And it's just, like, when someone thinks about becoming a musician, the gut, the initial gut response is, Oh, that's, that's dangerous, or that's risky, or that's a dream. Or, get a real job. Like, when are you going to get a real job? And, that's something that I can relate with, because I've had, moments in my life where people have told me maybe it's time to get a real job.

And I think that where we're headed as humans is with tools like artificial intelligence and Neuralink. I think there's going to be a blossoming of creative freedom and the ability to, in a world where human labor is basically very cheap because AI and robots can replace any of the jobs that we don't want.

I think there's gonna be a big question mark, which is who are we and what are we here for and what are we gonna do? What does it mean to be human and what's our purpose? And, I think art is one of those things that is about self expression. And it's about discovering who you are.

 And I think like the root that's driving Modern Musician and all of the music industry and the art industry is maybe life on earth, like humanity is about the expression of who we are and ourselves. Especially as we're entering this era of AI and, coming to terms with what's our purpose as humans?

I think that we're going to have a lot more freedom to be able to create. There's going to be a lot more co creation. I think that we're going to have neuralinks installed that allow us to communicate with each other through our thoughts in a way that would just be described as miraculous, or almost like Harry Potter world.

The same way that people would look at phones today, a few hundred years ago, and think What? You can actually talk to people around the world? And you can actually hear them and see them? What? I think that it's gonna be as common as that in the future, that we have these devices that can directly interface with each other.

So, the long term goal with Modern Musician is to first, build Modern Musician to the world's biggest music industry platform that empowers creators, empowers artists to be able to express themselves and build a fan base, build an audience and build a sustainable career.

And to use that as a platform to be able to connect with entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and people at the level of Elon Musk and I'd say Elon Musk knowing that there's, a decent amount of controversy around Elon Musk right now, but in my opinion, I think a lot of it is he's the first to admit that he's stuck his foot in his mouth a few times when it comes to politics and saying things that he would take back.

But in terms of people who've, impacted humanity and are changing the world. He's helping humanity become interplanetary and, he's the number one driver of electric vehicles and, changing our climate crisis. And I think, again, controversial, but his Twitter acquisition and X I think is really fundamentally about, leveraging a platform and helping to facilitate a smooth transition to an AI dominated world.

And so his goals with having an open platform with free speech where we can communicate ideas freely is something that's really important in a AI and with, deceptive deep fakes and things that could come up. So my long term goal is to work on things like Neuralink and to work on things that I think are going to change humanity and to lead to what Ray Kurzweil has called the singularity, which is this moment in time that it's like an exponential curve so it's hard to predict what happens.

But I think that it's going to be a merging of consciousness. I think that we're going to merge with digital intelligence and with each other. And I don't know what happens at that point. But I think it's the black hole that we're leading towards, and I'd like to facilitate a smooth transition and, create it in a way that is filled with love and connection, as opposed to fear and war and destruction, which is another possible outcome, is like literally we all die, and we all go extinct.

So I, when I look at the world as it is today, and in movements to be a part of, this is one where I'm like, we're either gonna die, or we're going to, achieve sort of an enlightened state where we have access to immediate creative potential. So, yeah that's what I'm most excited to talk about.

And maybe you can tell, I'm just talking to your ear off, but 

Ari Welkom: yeah, that was my head exploding. If you didn't hear it or see it, like 

Michael Walker: I need a sound effect for the head. There's probably something. Oh yeah. You need an, 

Ari Welkom: Yeah, I mean, Michael, you're like one of the absolute smartest human beings I've ever met. But you also have this amazing heart, and that's so rare to have the two things combined. And that's such a symbol of Modern Musician and with everything that you're talking about, AI there's this, I think me knowing lots of musicians and talking to them day to day and just seeing what's happening.

There's this huge combination of emotions about what's coming down the road. What I'm hearing from you is like leaning into, and I think is just your general way is like growth mindset. Especially if something's happening, let's be on the cresting wave and then use the good parts.

And I, like to hear a little bit about your mindset around that, also knowing with Modern Musician that it is always about delivering value how does that fit with. What you see happening with AI. 

Michael Walker: That's a great question. And at first of all, I just want, I want to acknowledge you Ari for being, I mean, there's a bunch of people in the chat as well, or like Ari's awesome.

And yeah, Ari is, and you're one of the best humans that I know. And I'm so grateful that we have the opportunity to connect as much as we do both now in person, we've had a chance to meet each other, but even before we did that, because of the internet, because of zoom, I've, I've had the opportunity to get to know you.

So I'm very grateful to have you as part of Modern Musician and to be able to connect with so many high level entrepreneurs and musicians and just good humans. And to answer your question around mindset and evolution and transformation. 

 I feel like this relates a lot with the conversation we just had around Neuralink and, the singularity is around purpose and sort of, what is the purpose of suffering? Obviously with the world that we live in, it's not all perfect. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of stuff people are going through.

Especially, right now, at the time of recording this, there's war there's things that are happening, there's people murdering each other, and so, that's on an extreme, and then there's also just the internal battles that we have, and the challenges and struggles that we have, and, I think that, I think every goal that we set sort of creates some kind of disconnect in the sense that when you set a goal, you create a gap between where you are and where you want to get to. And that can be both a blessing and a curse. Right? Like you set a goal, this is where I'm at, this is where I want to get to. And, the gap, where it can be a curse, is when you're not grateful for where you're at, or you're disconnected from who you are in the present moment because you're wanting to be somewhere else.

You're wanting to be somewhere else than where you are right now. And, yeah, I'm a big fan of some philosophers like Eckhart Tolle, who has a book called The Power of Now. And the whole premise is that the more we identify with our egos and an image or an idea of ourself, like talk about social media nowadays, right, it's like an ego machine.

The more we identify with an image of who we are, the more disconnected that we actually are with ourselves and the present moment. And so it's interesting because I don't have, I don't have the answer. I think we're all going to be learning this together long term in terms of finding that balance between, both living in the moment, being grateful, fully appreciating where you're at while also setting goals and becoming a bigger version of yourself, transforming.

What I can say is I think that for me, where I try to focus my energy is on both being grateful for where I'm at right now, and being present, while also setting a goal that's a stretch, that's exciting, that's scary, that is going to force me to become someone I'm not, and force me to become a bigger version of myself, and I've done that a few times in my life, and usually when I do it, it requires a lot of faith or belief or programming yourself programming your mind to become the person that you're going to be and to become that person now, today.

You set a goal to be a better version of yourself, but it doesn't come at some point in the future. You actually need to be that person now, and start acting as that person now. And, so I think that there's sort of this balance that happens and it's, I think it's probably connected to our purpose for being here and the purpose of life itself is to blossom and to grow and become something greater, to become an ideal version of yourself constantly.

We're always constantly growing and, nothing is fixed. Nothing is permanent. Everything is changing every moment. Literally look a different direction and you know everything changes. And certainly with AI technology things are changing faster now more than ever.

So I think the root of what drives our behavior is around identity. And how you view your self image. And there's sort of a sweet spot around creating an identity that is going to force you to evolve and become a greater version of yourself, while also not fully identifying with that identity, and not losing yourself in the idea of who you are, the idea of who you're becoming, but allowing yourself to be present, and to fully embrace the one moment that there is, which is now.

And it's always now. And, yeah, I'm not perfect at this. There's plenty of times that I'll lose myself temporarily and I'll be in a reactive mind state and usually it's when I'm meditating or when I sort of have a wake up call, I just notice what's happening and I kind of come back to it.

And I think that we're all, I think there's sort of a global shift that's happening right now and we're sort of waking up. And I think it's connected to what we're talking about with the singularity. And I think that intelligence is waking up right now. I could probably talk for another several hours about this idea of are we in some sort of is, what's the nature of reality is this like a simulation and at its root?

Are we in quote unquote base reality versus is this, or is this like some sort of fractal thing that's happening? And yeah, I don't know. But I think we're gonna get the answers to a lot of questions, and I think intelligence is evolving incredibly quickly, and... That right now is 

serendipitous time to be alive when we could potentially experience the shift between being a limited or apparently separate identity to having the ability to immediately snap our fingers and have or be or anything we want is just immediately, there, created. It's kind of hard to imagine what happens next if we have something like that? So, I don't know, but that's, I think that's where we're headed. So we'll take, we'll be on that journey together. 

Ari Welkom: I think there are lots of heads exploding in the chat.

I could just listen to you talk about this stuff for hours. So someone actually said you'd be a great meditation leader also, which I agree, but all that stuff that you hit on about goal setting and I think as a musician, but also as someone that's very like goal oriented, finding that balance of Oh, I want this thing.

And this is how you get there. Like you need a dark board to be able to do anything. You need to be shooting for something. But at the same time, if you're shooting at something that's away from you or in front, I'm telling myself I'm not there yet. And I talk to musicians all the time.

It's always, we're always trying to push for that goal. But at the same time, be happy right now. And again, that's one of the reasons that I love to be around you is, I feel like you walk that really well and that's like what we help, this community is really about because music ultimately, I think, in its purest form, it's just delivering that, that pure emotion right here, right now with the people and creating this little bubble of love. And man, so happy to be on this journey with you. I thought of one question that I want to ask you to kind of sum this up, but also reverse time. If you had the opportunity to as Yoda, or Obi Wan Kenobi, or Dumbledore, or whoever, kind of go back to the Michael that was just starting out with Paradise Fears, who didn't know anything about what you've learned.

What would you tell him? What would you give to him?

Michael Walker: I love this question. And I love asking the question too it's nice, it's interesting to sort of reflect and think about it myself. I think if I had to give myself one piece of advice when you're just getting started, is the idea that whether you think you can or you can't, you're right.

And if you're willing to make a decision and go all in and just say I'm going to make this happen, then there's a switch that kind of flips. I think that, honestly, that decision is part of what helped us to grow and do what we did. But, I went through a lot of, unnecessary, maybe it was necessary, I don't know. I think now it's, knowing what I know now, it's unnecessary pain and suffering, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. I guess, here's another thing that comes to mind too. I think if I could give myself some piece, some advice now, and I was talking to myself with Paradise Fears probably the advice I would give is to be more, more willing to take risks, I would say. I mean, we took a big risk through touring full time, living in our vans.

But I think that what we didn't do starting out, that could have saved us a lot of time, is if we had if we had surrounded ourselves with people who were already doing what we were doing sooner. I think we kind of felt like we had to do everything on our own. I think that's the big thing.

We felt like we had to do everything on our own. We never had a manager. We never got signed to a major record label. We slummed it, we lived in our van. We eat peanut butter tortillas. And honestly, like a lot of those 10 years were spent sleeping in super eight motels and really slumming it. And if I could go back, I think that. I'd be more open minded and more humble. I think I'd be more humble thinking that we don't have to do everything on our own.

Like I, that we can find help. That we can get guidance and learn more from other people rather than kind of learning it ourselves and doing it the hard way. And I've had the other experience now with when I started Modern Musician is kind of like the opposite. I invested a bunch of money in mentorship and coaching to start out with.

And the first year it was really challenging because, I was about to be a dad and it took about a year to start even gaining a little bit of traction. I was about $36, 000 in debt. After the first year of starting the business in hindsight, I can see that. We wouldn't be here right now, and Modern Musician, wouldn't be where it's at, we wouldn't have 34 team members and, making the impact that we're making, if it wasn't for making that investment up front and I think it saved a lot of time if you took 10, it might take 10 years to do it on my own but, I think finding help and being open minded and humble, having a learner's mindset is something that I would try to instill in myself if I could go back, but you know, I was 18, 19 years old, so that was probably kind of in that phase where I had to learn the hard way that what it's like to try to do everything on your own.

Ari Welkom: Yeah. It's funny cause like you have the most like when I think of someone with a, an open minded learners mindset you're right there. So, it's funny to hear that's what you would give yourself, but you have it now, clearly, and you're giving it away, and before we go, I'd love to hear again, artist launch challenge, the where, what, how to get involved.

Michael Walker: Yeah, absolutely. So thanks again for having me, Ari. This is fun. It's rare that I get to geek out and go this deep on this stuff. So, thank you and thank everyone in the live audience right now, it's been really cool too. I did just have a week long of just geeking out about Neuralink and going and talking about AI and stuff.

So that's a rare conversation that I get to have. So thank you for holding space and asking such great questions, being a great interviewer. And for Artist Launch Challenge. Yeah, we are going live next Friday, and so all those new exciting releases that we talked about are going to be available in your Street Team account next Friday.

We're going to be doing some really cool live launches around it. We're going to have, I'm going to be personally going live all throughout the following week to connect with you more and to help you get launched. So stay tuned for the invite email that's going to be going out. And it's going to be coming out, getting fully released and live next Friday.

Ari Welkom: Yeah, awesome. You want to give one of your cool little sound thingies?

Michael Walker: Yeah.

Ari Welkom: The worst one I could 

Michael Walker: have chosen. This is a pretty good one.

And then this is a good one too. This is the children cheering.

Ari Welkom: Yay! Michael, thanks so much. Thanks for your generosity, your wisdom. And yeah, it sounds like you got a dinner to go get to with 

Michael Walker: I do, and probably some Pokemon facilitation as well. So that's, I mean, it's gonna be my new bio, my mini bios Pokemon facilitator. 

Ari Welkom: That works. It's CEO of Modern Musician and Pokemon facilitator.

Michael Walker: Oh man. Awesome. Well, Hey, thank you again, Ari. You're awesome. Thank you everyone who is here for the, in the chat. I saw all of your comments. You guys are great. I appreciate you being a part of the movements and the community. And yeah, honestly, right now is just such a amazing opportunity.

Like I wish that we had Modern Musician and this community and you guys and the tools and the software when we were just getting started and not only you know, do we have the internet now, but also with what we're about to roll out with Street Team 3.0 I truly think there's never been a better time to be you - to be an independent musician and to take your passion and turn it into a full time career.

So really looking forward to connecting next Friday.

Ari Welkom: Yeah, it's going to be awesome and yeah, big props to everyone who came out and engaged in the chat, all the good energy and the Modern Musician community. We tend to grab those people that are really ready to move, but are also really, heart people.

So yeah. This is, this has been great, Michael. Thanks so much. 

Michael Walker: Yep. Thanks, man. 

Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure and check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today.

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