Michael Walker: So, if you’re listening to this then you likely already know that being an independent musician is a lonely road. And maybe your friends and your family just don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money towards achieving your music goals. And especially early on, it can be hard to find people who really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make it happen. So, that’s where ModernMusician comes in!

My name’s Michael Walker and I can understand and relate to that feeling. I’ve been there myself, and so has our team of independent artists. The truth is that basically everything good in my life has been a result of music. It’s the reason I met my wife, it’s why I have my 3 kids, it’s how I met my best friends. And now with Modern Musician, we have seen so many talented artists who started out with a dream, with a passion, but without really a fanbase or a business. And if they take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, thousands or even millions of fans with your music. We’ve had thousands of messages from artists who told us we’ve helped change their lives forever. It just gets even more exciting and fulfilling when you’re surrounded by a community of other people who get it, and who have shared their success and their knowledge with each other openly. So, if you are feeling called into making your music a full-time career and to be able to reach more people with your music, then I want to invite you to join our community so that we can help support your growth and we can help lift you up as you pursue your musical dreams. You’ll be able to interact in a community with other high-level artists, coaches, and industry professionals, as well as be able to participate in our daily live podcast, meet these amazing guests, and get access to completely free training. If you’d like to join our family of artists who truly care about your success, then click on the link in the show notes and sign-up now.

Sean Taylor: Like, there's so much to choose. Why am I here? And if I don't have any real reason other than someone just wanted to push me into this space because they want to capitalize off of this idea of having a community, it's probably not going to last. And if your end result is: I just want people who really love me and people who are going to buy my merch and things like that, guess what? You don't have to have an online discord. There's plenty of artists who are killing it and getting every one of those… checking every one of those boxes without having that. Right. But it can be a value for the right artist, right personality, et cetera. I'm all for it, but I think it's important as these conversations happen more and more, that we have a correct order of operations.

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology, and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. 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. All right. So I'm excited to be here back today with the one and only Brandman, Sean. So, Sean is a music branding marketing expert. He has a network called Brandman Network, has a team of coaches that help mentor artists specifically on improving their image and the branding. He also has a very successful YouTube channel. Maybe you can remind me of exactly where it's at now, but I think it's somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of subscribers

Sean Taylor: Yeah, about 150 something, thousand, somewhere in that range.

Michael: Yeah, that's pretty cool. 150,000 people. It's a lot of people. It's a pretty decent sized city. The biggest city near me when I was growing up was Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And there's like a hundred thousand people that live there. And I thought that was huge. So basically like Sioux Falls and a half. Very cool. So, I'm really excited to have Sean on today to be able to share some lessons and insights around specifically TikTok and building community which is something that clearly if you are in the music industry now, you've probably seen and heard stories about artists who've gone viral on TikTok and they've had huge breakout success because of because of TikTok. So we're looking forward to connecting more and thanks for being a part of the podcast today. 

Sean: For sure. Always glad to be here. Looking forward to bringing value in this conversation.

Michael: Thanks, man. I remember, was it, I think it was Austin, Texas that we were sitting in a room not that long ago and we were geeking out about AI. I think I was right when ChatGPT was really starting to come up. I remember just like having you in the room, having discussions and I was like: man, like this is someone who is thinking at a very high level. So it's always great to have conversations with people like yourself. So, it may be real quick… for anyone who this is their first time connecting with you, maybe you can share just a little bit about yourself and how you started Brandman Network.

Sean: Okay. So in short, I got into the music industry through running a festival. Wasn't planning to be in music. I love music, and I love helping people, but I never necessarily thought of those things colliding at all, especially in a professional way. But I did a music festival, just helping my friends out. I really wanted to build a platform to put them on. And it became a really good dope festival with regular artists, visual artists, all these different creatives in Atlanta and through that success, people start to wonder who is the person behind this? What's happening here? Because it started to grow really quickly. It was really cool branding and everything. And artists were legitimately getting a platform through it, right? It was becoming a good look for them to be on it. Right? It was a high-end demand event. So once that started to happen and people said: who's behind it? They would ask my friends at first cause I was super behind the scenes, I didn't really necessarily look for any publicity for it. But when people started to ask me questions and I had these conversations, I realized: well, maybe I could just put this stuff on a YouTube channel because that'll be a lot easier for me having to explain the same conversation over and over again. I really felt like I was having that same conversation or very close to it. So I created videos. I had a set of 10 in mind to be my first 10. And once I got through that, I had no idea what I would do. Just maybe sending them people and leave it there. Once I did that, though, people really liked it, right? And they kept saying, do more, do more! A guy was saying: yo, I'm going to send all this on on all my Reddit threads. And he kept telling me the feedback people were getting. So I went on Reddit and saw the conversations that were happening around. And he was like, my first super fan I guess you could call it. I kept serving him basically until it became multiple of them and then decided: let me try to take this thing seriously. I took it seriously. I added an agency because I wanted to make sure I understood the people who are watching the channel in a true fashion and continued the education and wasn't just giving them BS. The agency became pretty successful. We've blown up multiple artists from zero to hundreds of millions of streams. Getting signed, indie, whatever route you can imagine at this point, we've helped artists… legacy acts, drop a new moment in time and re-engage your audience. Pretty much have done everything. Our customers come to us at this point and we are very selective on that side of things. But with the agency side being what it is, and you can only work with so many, we have continued to do as much free education as possible, a free community, we have courses every once in a while where we feel like there's something that it's worth creating a course around to help people get to the point that it makes sense to work with somebody like us on the agency side, or that they never need anybody and they can maybe build their own team; whatever their custom path is. So that's kind of how I think about the evolution of the career thus far.

Michael: Super cool. Yeah. I think it's a great model. It's very similar to the same takeaways that we've had too, in terms of like, we can only really work with so many people hands on, but then you can share those lessons with more people. And I'm super grateful for people like you to be able to fill in the gaps. There's a lot of things that I'm not an expert on at all. I mean, just one of them in particular is TikTok in that whole world, which is such a key part of a lot of artists' strategy right now. So with that, maybe we can talk a little bit about: there's two different directions I think we could go that I would be interested in hearing more from you: One is those events that you were running. You clearly like you ran them in a way that you had built up demand and made them a pretty exclusive event. It created a lot of success. That's definitely interesting. I think we can go that direction. The other direction is TikTok. TikTok is such a big platform right now for a lot of artists and breaking artists. Which of those two do you feel more called to speak out right now?

Sean: Let's start with the events.

Michael: Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So for the events, what were some of the lessons that you learned from starting from scratch and building very successful events. What were some of the key differentiators that allowed you to do that?

Sean: Yeah, I got probably 80% of what I applied when I moved into music marketing specifically from what I learned in the event space. And it all revolved around 1) creating interest, and then when you have people that actually show you interest, how do I translate that into a community? Right? And those are two very relevant concepts today. Artists are constantly figuring out: how can I create a community? How can I create a community? And the biggest thing that I think artists struggle with is: it takes a slight paradigm shift because so many artists are thinking about: how can I get seen? How can I get seen? And how can I get people to consume my music? This vision of: fans loving me and listening to me; where community is the reverse where you're a lot more of service, right? And that's one of the huge parts because/l how do I attract like-minded people, give them service, right? Whatever that looks like for that community, right? It's vastly different for different communities, but the principles are the same. Like what is that entrance? How can I stimulate them where they feel value beyond myself, but I'd be at the center of it so I gain brand equity at the same time?

Michael: Super smart. Yeah. So, it sounds like what you're saying is one of the key shifts that they realized is that for a lot of us, I mean, in particular, probably in the music industry, attention feels good and we want it. But, do you want to be about us? And sometimes it feels like it's about us, but it sounds like what you're saying is like really the value comes in, you can really build a community when it's less about you, but really more about the community itself and more about them and you being someone that really helps them identify with: it's not necessarily just about you alone, but it's really about the community as a whole and what it, what the impact it makes for them.

Sean Right. And you get your end result as a result, right? Like you still get seen. You still get loved. You get all that cool stuff. Now, I had the advantage just because I didn't have anything that I wanted people to see, right? I wasn't putting out art myself in that capacity. So it was almost like a deficit that became an advantage because I was like: oh man, like, how am I going to entertain these people? Right. So since it wasn't me getting on stage or doing anything, it's: well, how do I create an environment that all of these people will love and thinking about the smallest of details that they would find value as they moved on. You know, the perfect example that I like to give because I think it translates a lot easier for some artists is the difference between I can have a show and I get on stage and you love me. Right? But there's another level where the experience is so great, even if people don't remember the details, they remember: I had an amazing time at this artist show. All right? And the best shows you've been that. It's not just: oh, the artists performed their butt off. It's: I had this experience; this out of body experience where even the person in the row ahead of me that I don't even know became a friend in that moment in time. How do you create those? And I don't think people realize how you can't guarantee it, but you can intentionally make it a higher probability of occurring. And that's kind of where, when I do things outside of the online realm, that's kind of one of my sweet spots that I don't talk too much about on these platforms. The value and the impact it's been for artists when we go through those processes? I mean, it's hard to equate it. You end up with a real community and I don't want to forget this idea. The idea of building a community is so popular today, right? People are thinking more about communities before they even have fanbases. And that does not happen in that order, right? Get some fans first that'll listen to you, and then they've already shown an equal value or interest in you. And now you can push them in. But it's a reverse when you try to do it the other way around. And also I want people to understand that you do not need to have an online discord, or group or something like that to actually have a community. All right? Artists were having communities for years before these things popped up. And the reason I think it's important to understand that is: These tools enable, they help, they aid, but they don't solve the problem in and of itself. If I pushed a bunch of you, everybody who's watching this into a discord that doesn't make us a community. You know what I'm saying? And what inevitably happens is without that, it deteriorates. There might be a couple of people who are active or whatever, but it's another thing that people have to choose between: All the subscriptions we're a part of, all the different apps that we're a part of, social media, now text groups where some people are on…. well, me actually now, I've never really done too much of this until this year… I have a lot of iPhone groups now because of different clients and people that I'm working with. Like, there's so much to choose…. Why am I here? And if I don't have any real reason other than someone just wanted to push me into this space because they want to capitalize off of this idea of having a community, it's probably not going to last. And if your end result is: I just want people who really love me and people who are going to buy my merch and things like that… guess what? You don't have to have an online discord. There's plenty of artists who are killing it and checking every one of those boxes without having that. Right. But it can be a value for the right artist, right personality, et cetera. I'm all for it, but I think it's important as these conversations happen more and more that we have a correct order of operations.

Michael: Make sense. Yeah. So, it sounds like really the point that you want to make here is that it's not as much about the tools… I mean, like the tools are, can be really valuable if they're using the right way and whether it's discord or an online community, or even before all this this stuff, communities existed and live shows existed, but really the main thing is more about the root of: what is a community and what forms the community. And that's the thing that you want to focus on without geeking out too much about all the other details first.

Sean: Yeah. Like if you go to church… you might go to church and never be in a church discord or church Facebook group or something like that. But the community’s there.

Michael: [laughing] I’m just imagining a church discord right now, I'm not sure they exist.

Sean: They probably do, but you know, it's a real thing. We know this stuff innately, but we get just sucked in by buzzwords or just trying to solve a problem in a way that feels easy. The secret is having fans. If you have real fans, they will go almost anywhere. That's the biggest secret there is. Now, there are tools that we build over time that help make it easy, more from how we handle it and engage in and enable for sure so I don't say that for someone who's in a position and already has a certain level of fans, but it's more so for the people who don't even really have fans like that. Right? Get fans first. Period. Period. Period. The reason I'm so passionate about this, cause I've mentioned this like multiple times over the last few weeks: a couple of weeks ago I had a call with a guy and he was like: yo, man, Sean, I'm finally about to release my very first song and I just got on the “X” distribution platform. I'm not going to say the name of the distribution platform. And I also signed up for “X” platform that was supposed to help him sell his music. And I'm like: you haven't even released your music yet and you're already thinking about selling it in that way? You see that it's becoming a solution and almost a box of check, but they're forgetting about the basics. It's just the fundamentals never leave. So that's why I'm super passionate about it because I just see how it works and how some artists are getting about it. More than anybody, monetizing your fan base is a very real thing and it's very possible digitally. And there's a lot of methods that help, but if the music isn't up to a certain point or the people don't love you for whatever other reason they might love you, so some level of fan, then what are we really talking about here? 

Michael: 100%. Yeah. I mean, that's it. You know, that's like at the root of… you can't monetize a fan base without you having built a real connection and a real relationship provided value to them. And then the question is like how do you provide value to those people? And your music is probably the primary way that most people who are going to follow you get value from what you do. But it's not the only way. It is the community and probably the community is way more valuable long-term. The music is just an excuse to bring people together; to connect with other people in the community. I would love to hear you talk a little bit about that. Clearly you're a master at community building, and when you talk about your live events, you intentionally focus on points that are going to drive connection; that are going to give people a place; give them space to connect. Could you talk a little bit about that idea, and how can an artist right now intentionally set up their community in a way that it fosters those relationships and those connections that happen?

Sean: So it does take, again, knowing your audience. I'll try to give a couple of examples to be clear why. But for one event, we were really, really intentional. Well, for the main one. When I first started with the festival for instance, we were very, very intentional of understanding that our audience was very creative and they were into doing, or at least appreciative of multiple facets of creativity, right? It wasn't just: Hey, I'm a musician. Hey, I'm a visual artist. Hey, I'm into fashion. All right? So how do we get these multiple creatives into the same space? Right? So that's like understanding the adjacent entrance in general, but still in the wheelhouse that makes sense. So you stimulate in multiple ways because sometimes if you have people who are all the exact same, for some audiences, they don't want to be around that. Cause now it's like, that's me. I don't want to be around, about a bunch of “me’s” copied and pasted. But there's some audiences that kinda do desire something like that. So understanding that. And then doing something intentionally: we did stuff like we would have like church pew style seating where people had to sit next to each other. There were some options where you could go outside of that, but the primary seating, we wanted people to sit closer together, right? Anything that created closeness and more enclosed spaces that literally from a physical environment encouraged togetherness. What did that look like? How do you herd people, so to speak. But then there's certain audiences that need a little bit more warming up to being physically close. So there's been things that we'd have to think about like: are your audiences a little bit more rough around the edges, hyper-masculine like things like that? So what is required for them to 1) Calm down the tension that naturally comes with that sometimes. And then get them to just let loose and have a good time. And then you become the space that they actually feel safe because normally they have on this facade, right? There's an array of different elements in 1 particular case… I don't want to necessarily talk about this call, but that's the intentionality when I talk about understanding your audience and what fate makes one artist of audience feel comfortable or what helps them just have a great time or connect with each other. It can vary based on who they are, but if you understand: hat are the core interests, why is everybody here, and then what are the things in that vicinity that aren't too far off base and random, that stimulates them from more than just one point, you almost become a discovery mechanism. Almost like I go on my Spotify, and: hey, there's music; there's different genres. So I came here maybe for the first album that I wanted to hear on here, or I downloaded HBO or something for a specific movie, but then an algorithm is delivering things similar. Not the exact project, but other projects. It’s basically doing the exact same thing in a real world way. 

Michael: Hmm. Super interesting. Yeah. There’s some really health helpful lessons here so far. I really think everything you've been talking about right now is at the core of even just our purpose for being here, like our purpose for being alive is about connection. It's about community. And so I think that intentionally thinking about this and setting up your music in a way that fosters that community is one of the most important things that you could do. So I really appreciate this conversation. I'd love to hear if anyone has any questions. If you'd like to raise your hand, come on here live, or share it in the chat, then we can answer those for you. So I see Daniel Cartier said: great point about community. The question it forces me to ask myself is: what kind of people need a community specifically for someone like me? The community that I offer should never be a mindless carbon copy of someone else's community simply because they're community’s successful. My community might not be as large, but if it's authentic to who I am then it's going to hold value to someone. That was the point that I wanted to make that you brought up was: what I really appreciate about what you just shared is that it's not a one-size-fits-all cookie cutter approach. A community, it's going to depend a lot on the actual people and the community and the culture. I do want to open it up here to the audience, but one thing in particular, that that question that brought up for me was recommendations around like, how do you cut to the roots or how do you get to the core of your community, especially if you're just starting out. Maybe you don't have a lot of fans or a lot of community yet, and they're trying to figure out: what's the root of the community and how, how do I kind of cater this community to that? Is that something you recommend intentionally like imagining even before you start building the community, you get clear on what you want the community to be about?

Sean: Yeah, I think you don't answer to this man. It's the combination, right? You of course need to imagine to increase the accuracy before you take action, but you're probably not going to be right on point. So you just increase the accuracy. The real thing is: I got to talk to these people, right? And they're going to tell you. Especially if you attract them with something, in this case this should be the music to start because we're just talking about artists/musicians, right? You have that. And then if you start reaching out to people and or you create maybe a small event, right? This is one of my favorite things to do: like legitimately create a small event more around the music and what they understand, but you add a few extra elements to it just to start to communicate your brain and your energy, right? Beyond just: Hey, come see me in a show; yeah, come see my show but it's in an environment that you're able to curate versus the environments where it's just like a basic stage and you don't have any control over anything, but the stage. I try to have an Airbnb or something. Well Airbnb don't allow it, legally, but you know, that type of thing here, safes are one of those sites where you have more control over the environment and however you can get in contact with one of those. When you have that and you were able to control the room with your elements, whether that's the certain lighting; I want it to be darker; lighter; I want to change it at certain periods of time; Maybe I'm offering some kind of food or maybe there's a comedian. I don't know whatever that is, right? Just elements that you feel like makes sense. But you do a small event, right? It could be 50 people. Great place to start. And then you legitimately talk to those people who showed up for that expression of yourself. Those who are interested, they have some similar interest and they're going to tell you: we should do this again. Or I love if you do this next time. Or I pay you. If you do that right, a lot of times we find people telling us what to do next. When I did my festival, I was doing that as a one-off to help friends and to kind of check the box cause they said it was my turn to do something. And then people say: oh man, can you do this again? I was like I don't know. He was like, yeah, you should do it again next month. And I was like, I don't think you know how much effort that took, you know? But eventually it became a yearly thing, right? Cause it took that kind of effort. It was after so many people kept asking me to ask me and so many people said: Oh man, I have so many friends and people I work with now that I met at that event, right? And then I can think of a couple of artists when they went through this process: Oh man, we should all go take a trip together. We should do whatever those suggestions are. I've never gotten the trip suggestion and things I did, but that was for that particular audience, right? Or we should have some coaches because they were into some athletic stuff or start a soccer team. It was something that an artist did recently, well, their fans recommended to them because they're all into soccer. Apparently. All right, those things come from the group, right? It's my point. I just wanted to provide a couple of anecdotes to help drive the point through. I know I know it seems weird and it's one of those like advice-not-advices. You could do a general survey and they help, but for some reason, the general surveys are never as good as just having a natural conversation. Whether you're on a call with them or in the real world. But if you create a reason to have to talk to a few of them, a good 50 of them, 20 of them, at least, then that's enough to let you know where you should go from there. 

Michael: So good. Yeah. Super smart. So, one of the best ways to discover what that is to connect with people and to talk to them. Yeah. So literally ask them questions, ask what they're interested in. And then from there on, you basically have your source; you have your… it's almost like a radar detector telling you, like it's like a hotspot. You start to see those patterns of the hotspot. You're like, okay, cool. Like this is the thing that's most valuable. Super smart!

Sean: The coolest part about that too, is once that line of communication happens, you have that open forever. Right? And then you stop thinking about ideas in a silo and you just start asking people all the time. Like: what do you think about this? What do you think about this? And it takes so much weight off.

Michael: Awesome. Well Daniel Cartier, it looks like he's got his hand up. So let's bring Daniel on stage. Hopefully the audio will cooperate with us. Hey, Daniel, how are you doing today? Daniel Cartier: Good. Can you hear me?

Michael: Yes. We got you.

Daniel Cartier: Awesome. This is really such a timely…. I'm so glad I decided to come to this. This is such a timely topic for me to be talking about right now or listening to. You know, it's really making me think. Because as we talked about down in Orlando: this is about connecting with people and the whole thing of community and it's not just like: Oh, I have a music career. There's millions of people who have music careers, but creating that sense of community and not forcing it like not being like something where it's like: Oh, I'm going to try to have this community because like this other guy has a community and his community is working great for him so I'm going to do exactly what he's doing. Well, I might not be that guy. I'm not that guy. What it's really forcing me to like… who out there needs a community? As you know, Michael, I've shared that I'm a gay liberal atheist living in the Bible belt. I play music that's for everybody. But you know, I know that there's people who may not have all the same views I have, they may be gay, but they may be Christian, or they may be Christian and straight, or whatever they are. It doesn't matter, but you know, they may appreciate the fact…. they may still like to be part of a community that is open to all sorts of ideas. But there may be somebody who specifically has a lot of the same views as me and they may feel like there's nobody they can identify with. And so they're grateful that somebody like me is willing to not have views that are popular. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't feel like my views are like… I mean, it's not like I'm the only person who is a gay liberal atheist living in the Bible belt, but I mean, it's like, that is who I am. I can't pretend that I'm somebody. I mean, I could pretend. I could pretend I'm a Christian artist or something because so and so is, and they're making a ton of money. It's like, but that would be so fake. I mean, that's an extreme example. So it's forcing me to like, really think like for this annual vision call: What type of community I want? And can I have that type of community but still make other people who don't have all my views feel welcome because I want everybody to feel welcome in it. So finding a way to be authentic to who I am, but also not be disrespectful of other people. I'm also very respectful of the fact that: My best friend is a born again Christian and I love the guy to death. And we talk about spirituality every single… that's what I do. We were talking this morning about spirituality. So it's like trying to find a way for me to bring my music into that, and my art and all that good stuff into that type of community. I know I just vomited a bunch of thoughts into the dialogue and I apologize for that, but you guys inspired me and this is obviously stuff I need to think about. It's very important, especially if I want what I'm doing with Modern Musician to be successful. It has to come from the heart; has to be authentic. So that's all. I'll shut up.

Michael: [laughing] Thank you, Daniel. No, I appreciate sharing that. I'd love to hear Brandman Sean's perspective on that just in terms of ways to… when you're creating community, naturally it seems like you're going to attract people who resonate with those that view the world in a similar way in some cases, but also, you want to be able to be open and have a diverse community as well. You don't want to be siloed. And so I would be curious to hear your thoughts on that too, because also like on the flip side, one way to build a really strong community is by going to war with like other “outside” communities. It kind of fosters the ego of the community. And so it built a community, but it's negative vibes; a negative type of energy. So I’m curious as to your thoughts on when you're building your community approach, having people that maybe they agree with the way you look at things. And in some cases, maybe they don't, and maybe that's a good thing. 

Sean: Yeah, you make a good point that you can do it both ways and it's usually a good sign when you don't want to go the hard line, ego-driven, rage against others just to build my group, because that's what cult leaders do. [both laughing] It’s like: let's go to the extreme. So you have to be an extreme acceptance. Right. And then anybody who's not super hot on me, then let them go there. They're cold. They're medium. We don't want any of those people because we need people who can then go to war. Right.

Michael: Us vs them.

Sean: Yeah. Right. That's usually the route that happens there. I'm not saying everybody who does that… cause some people are just naturally combative or find themselves in moments like that. The thing is though, if you're not going that route, and you want to not be exclusive, you have to realize at some point you are excluding. Period. Everybody's not for everybody. Everybody's not for everybody all the time, but some of the time, right? You have these levels and what you have to decide and what's most sustainable is figuring out the parts that you want to project of yourself that will attract the people that you would actually want to be around. Because it's nothing worse than building a community that you hate to be around, right? Once you do that, that's the most important part. And because we're talking about music as the primary way to market into the world, you'll have people who are on a spectrum, in how much they agree with you or disagree with you or how much they're attracted to you. They might say: I love the music and I don't judge you or hate you or anything for the things that you just said: gay, liberal, atheists. And they might even appreciate that about you, but it's not necessarily something that they want to dive into as a separate group. And go to the mountains with you. But you'll have some people on this spectrum that are closer to that. And they want to be involved in that point. And I think we have to get comfortable with there being those levels to our communities: There'll be the ones that will go to specific events and there'll be certain things that are for them and certain things that aren't. Where there's a live event that I do that's a concert and that's where most of my community come out. I might do some small retreat and there's people who are into that side of the brand, right? Then the music probably has the farthest reach of everything. And that's the way I would think about it. It's very helpful when you have those very specific things, though. I'm not going to lie. The people that I've worked with who had those really specific things that could be considered alternative or non-traditional, the advantage you have is today, you can find so many of those people right via online, but they still in the real world don't have a community of like-mindedness typically.

Michael: Yeah. Sothat's super smart. I mean, what would that be? It brings to mind the purple cow effect of when you have something that's different or unique or less people are used to it, it kind of has that effect where it stands out. It's a purple cow. It's easier to pay attention to. But then also, if you have something that bonds you together with your community members, that's a shared, repressed, unexpressed, unfully expressed emotion or aspect of themselves that they haven't been able to communicate or express, but it's there all the same, like it's as part of them. They just like, haven't been able to fully be themselves or express that, and then you give them a space where they can express that and be themselves? Man. It seems like that is like a really powerful motivator.

Sean: And they'll pay more, [both laughing]

Michael: [sarcastically] Which is what it's all about. Let's go.

Sean: Wow. It's great. I think a way to put that into a clear example… so all musicians here or music involved. If you think about a marketing class. What is the value of that to you? Right. Cool. Whatever that value is in your head. Then you hear a marketing class for music in general. Okay. I'll probably spend a little bit more money. And then you hear marketing class for a certain genre of musicians, possibly. Or you go the other way: marketing class that results in monetization, right? You add this specificity and the value that you see in it when it's you, the right ideal customer, it grows. So you're willing to do more to attain that information or be in proximity to those people, whether that's money or I'll drive further, I'll actually show up at the conference or whatever that looks like. So specificity at the end of the day increases value in ways that artists have trouble figuring out how I create my value, right? If I'm offering like toothpaste or a food; it's very clear. But in this creative space, we always struggle. How do I increase the value that people see in it? And most artists have trouble doing that so they'll just charge less money in hopes that that increases value. That doesn't increase value. The perceived value, it's usually from touching on these other elements that just speaks and connects with them more deeply.

Michael: 100%. Well, man, I mean, this is one of my favorite conversations I've had in a while. I think just the roots of what we're talking about with community is so important. And so, Sean, thank you, again, for taking the time to come on here and for just doing what you do in general and leading by example of someone who's building community and also helping artists, like everyone here, foster communities. So, for anyone that's here right now that is interested in learning a little bit more about what you do with your agency and the different resources that you offer, where's the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

Sean: If they just go to “no labels necessary”, type that in, watch the YouTube videos and in the description we have agency content and things like that.

Michael: Awesome. Well, like always, we'll put the links on the show notes for easy access. And let's give a virtual round of applause for Brandman Sean. YYEEAAHHH

Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow.

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