ill. Gates:
I have found that the most efficacious attitude to adopt is the belief that the solution, the perfect solution to your problem, already exists. That it is up to you to stretch your mind until you can grasp it.

Michael Walker:
It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. But I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate 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.

Michael Walker:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back, we're here with the one and only Dylan, also known as ill. Gates, is what he goes by mostly. But Dylan-

ill. Gates:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
He's got his yeah cam as well, but it's upside down. So we actually just connected really over the last week. He's going to be one of our first access artists for our NFT marketplace, that we'll be talking a little bit more about that on our final presentation on day four. But out of everything that we're doing with Modern Musician, it's probably my number one thing right up there with the software that I'm most jazzed about. It's been a huge pleasure, and super, super awesome to video connect with ill. Gates to be able to help create these NFTs. Let me do a proper intro for you and then we'll officially kick off the presentation for today.

ill. Gates:
Okay, cool.

Michael Walker:
So, ill. Gates is a San Francisco based composer, performer, and educator. Over the past 16 years, he's established a global fan base and reputation as one of the most dynamic electronic music artists around. The CEO and founder of the Producer Dojo, who teach producers how to collaborate and build a successful music career. One thing I really appreciated about ill. Gates is that he's built a Dojo of all of these very technological proficient musicians. I don't know if it started that way, Dylan, or if you helped them become that way.

ill. Gates:
People of all skill levels. But there's definitely a lot of people who've come from scratch and are totally killing it right now. Slowform and Lucy and Francis, two of our top artists on the label, both came in having never written music before and are just destroying it. There's also lots of, like Seal is in the dojo. So there's lots of pretty seasoned artists.

Michael Walker:
Was he actually kissed by a rose or is that just a story?

ill. Gates:
I haven't asked him about it, but he is a pretty jovial fellow I might say. I think it's a reference to something else.

Michael Walker:
Dude, that's amazing. I remember jamming out to that song when we were on tour full time. That was one of our favorite songs, all the harmonies and... awesome.

ill. Gates:
He's a really fun guy, big machine user.

Michael Walker:
Okay, wow. Wouldn't have known that. What's great is that people are coming in from all skill levels where they necessarily come in technologically proficient, but even if they hadn't written a song, and they're being able to learn these skills, that let's be honest, we live in a world right now where technology has been increasing exponentially. Our ability to adapt and learn, whether we consider ourself tech savvy or not, our ability to at least interface with it has become more and more important, especially when it comes to your ability to produce yourself. What you've built is really cool, super valuable for the indie artist community, especially as a whole. One thing that is huge need, I think for all of us independent artists and our topic for our conversation today is going to be around as an independent musician, how can you actually start making an income? Relatively what are some quick ways to actually start generating actual cash, actual revenue? Because it's something most of us, we didn't become a musician because we thought, "Yeah, I'm looking for the easiest best way to make as much money as possible."

ill. Gates:
Yeah. You sell dick pills if you want to get rich quick.

Michael Walker:
And everyone, we've all done that already. Sell dick pills if you want to get rich.

ill. Gates:
Your internet marketing. That's the thing.

Michael Walker:
That is hilarious. You're looking at the Google charts, the trending charts. After today, they're like, "Huh? People, why is there 30 new dick pill businesses that just came out?"

ill. Gates:
You could use the same internet marketing skill set you learned at Modern Musician if you wanted to use it for evil. It's not evil. It's not evil.

Michael Walker:
This is a potential career change for me.

ill. Gates:
Yeah. I know. I'm just... but yeah, I have a bunch of really practical ways that you can start making money right away as a musician. And that's what I was hoping to talk about today because those bills don't stop coming. Do they? And when you are trying to launch your career, you don't want to be working a day job that takes lots of time and energy. And I'm here to tell you that there are ways. If you are undeniably good at making music, there are many ways that you can start monetizing your abilities and you don't have to be famous either. I have a bunch of stuff that I want to get into about that. I don't know. Are we ready? Should I start?

Michael Walker:
Yeah, man. Let's officially dive in.

ill. Gates:
Okay, cool.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. And one quick thing just for anyone, I know there's going to be some people here who've connected with you before and they've maybe [inaudible 00:05:28].

ill. Gates:
Yeah. I recognize a lot of dojo cats in the house.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. So shout out to all the dojo cats. And for everyone else who maybe this is their first time connecting with you, maybe real quick, before we dive in, you can share a little bit about yourself how you got started with Producer Dojo.

ill. Gates:
Okay. Sure. All right. So I've been making music since I was seven years old. My folks got me a little battery operated keyboard that had lights that would teach you Jingle Bells, but it also had a little sampler in it. And when I realized I could sample my farts and play them at my friends, I was like, "You know what? Samplers are pretty cool. I'm into this." And then I'd got MPC when I was in high school and stuff. And I was DJing a bunch of different parties. I had a graffiti break dance crew and basically all the different underground events wanted our crew to bring graffiti murals and do break dancing and stuff. So I was able to get on the decks, even though I played music that was considered very weird back then. So the weird music that I like is fusion of pop and dub music with experimental electronics.

ill. Gates:
I grew up in the '90s listening to Aphex Twin, and Altucher and Nine Inch Nails and Ministry on one hand and then Wu-Tang Clan, De La Soul, etc on the other. And I always loved battle DJing, especially coming from break dance crew. So I was like, "Man, I really want to use my hands to make music. I wanted to involve sampling. I think sampling is an amazing art form and I love the way in you can sample from any genre, no matter how far away and it can become hip hop or it can become electronic music. And there's something just so postmodern about that I found fascinating. And I played at every party I could all through high school until I moved to the big city, in my case, Toronto. And I went out there and was trying to meet people.

ill. Gates:
And all the other artists were really competitive and really actively trying to hold me back. And I was like, "This is not the mindset. I do not like this. This is upsetting." And then my second or third tracks that I ever made on a PC... I got a PC when I went out to university. The second or third tracks I ever made got signed on this record label. And I remember going to this meeting with all these other established artists and I just felt like such an imposter, cutting up samples on my computer, no sound card, no monitors, nothing. And everyone else in that meeting, they're like, "Oh yeah, I got an SSL desk. And I'm using logic and all this stuff." And I was just like, "Oh my God, this is so overwhelming." And so they signed me up for an album deal.

ill. Gates:
And I went home and I was like, "Okay, now I got to take this activity that was fun and recreational and a hobby that I did just for myself and for my friends. It was a real joy and suddenly fit it into industrial capitalism and worry about what everybody's thinking and image and doing things properly and all this stuff." And for about a year and a half, I had lost. I was just working on the same song, just beating my head against the wall. I wouldn't go to birthday parties. I wouldn't do anything else, wouldn't see my friends, had no social life until I was like, "I have to finish. This is my top priority above everything else." And I was just spinning my wheels, burning myself out, getting really depressed until I started collaborating with some of the other artists at that meeting.

ill. Gates:
And these established producers showed me the ropes. And there were so many things that I didn't need to worry about doing correctly or whatever. And there were so many learning that the history of electronic music is a history of people not reading the manual and scratching. You're not supposed to move the record back and forth. You'll break it. The 808 is a drum machine. It doesn't make bass. The 303 is for making baselines, not squelchy acid noises, etc. And realizing that doing it wrong is actually doing it right. And once I had this knowledge of just how to break the rules, have fun, cut loose, let the music happen instead of making it happen, I wanted to scream it from the mountaintops. My mom's a teacher, my dad's a full-time guitarist. So I was always really open to sharing my abilities. And before I was playing every single weekend before I had a work visa, before I was going on tour etc, I was always on the forums talking to other musicians and people got to know me as that guy who are you to ask, because he geeks out hard on things.

ill. Gates:
And I remember I was on the Ableton forum and someone posted this template and they were like, "This is the ultimate DJ template." And I was like, "Oh cool. I'll check that out." And I downloaded it and it was like... it was okay. But I was like, "If you're going to call this the ultimate DJ template, it better be pretty cool." And then the original poster was like, "What's your template got?" And I explained it to them and they were like, "Can I buy that?" And I was like, "You know what? You can." And then I created the first ever commercial Ableton DJ templates and that turned into a thriving business. So I'll just play... actually, if you could just enable screen sharing, I'll show you way back before I was ill. Gates, back when I was the fact conductor, yeah if you could just knight me co-host, please Michael, then I promise not to go mad with power. Okay here. And we'll share sound. And-

Michael Walker:
I think one of my favorite things right now Dylan is as you share all this one... your story is awesome. And then I love the fact that I can see everyone's face here. So I see it, David Wilson here just eating popcorn and fist pumping as you're sharing some of the best points. It's so good. David will appreciate you.

ill. Gates:
Okay. So this is back in 2006. And you can see that this was as big as YouTube videos got back then. This was maximum resolution. So here I am with a white plastic entry level MacBook, not a MacBook Pro, just the most basic MacBook ever with no fans or anything. And I made this dorky video that went on to earn a ton of money for me. So check it out. I'll just play you a little bit of it.

ill. Gates:
Hi, I'm the fact conductor. I'm a audio video artist from Toronto, Canada, and I also teach music and design templates for Ableton Live, which are available through my website, the factconductor.com.

ill. Gates:
I'm here today to demonstrate here, which is useful for sharing clips and a bunch of other things.

ill. Gates:
There's not even screenshots. It's objectively pretty terrible video. But after I posted this video, I just had a PayPal link in the description and slowly but surely because it worked because it was good, it made the rounds. And I ended up... it would be 50 bucks here, 50 bucks there. And before you know it, I was making 3, 400 bucks a week from people just buying this template because even though I wasn't famous, and even though I wasn't playing shows every week again, because of the quality of my work and because I had the audacity to make a YouTube video and ask for money, I started building my mailing list, I started building my fans, etc. So education has always been part of what I'd done and coming from Canada, when I was touring, as my touring ended up, I ended up on the road a lot more.

ill. Gates:
A lot of the time on your first tour, you just want to say yes to everything. There's going to be festivals that are going to be like, "Hey, we can give you 100 bucks for gas and come play." And the answer is, "Yes. I want to just suck it up and play because..." Okay. So there's two types of gigs. There's soft ticket gigs and there's hard ticket gigs or when it's like the venue is booking you and there's not really a promoter or anything. It's like a big concert hall. They book you and your tour. And they know that you're basically in charge of the promo and your name and your mailing list is going to fill that place so they don't need a promoter. Hard ticket, that's what's up. But to get there first, you need to play soft ticket gigs. Soft ticket gigs are festivals that have a built in audience that sell out every year, a weekly night where people trust the promoter, etc etc.

ill. Gates:
So people don't necessarily come to see you. It's not necessarily your name selling the tickets or opening for someone on a hard ticket tour is like a... it's their hard ticket tour, but it's a soft ticket for you. So these soft ticket gigs, they build you up. So you want to say yes to everything, especially soft ticket gigs because ultimately I see a lot of musicians and they're like, "Oh, it's not fair. This musician's better than that musician. Why are they on first?" It is fair. You're just measuring it by the wrong thing. The thing that they're measuring it by is how many tickets is that artist worth? Okay? Podcasts are selling out concert venues. It's not about being the best musician. It's about selling tickets. And when they're deciding who gets what time slot, they're going to look at your tour history, how you did in that town the last time you were there, etc etc etc. And whoever sells the most tickets gets the best time slot.

ill. Gates:
It is totally fair. Okay. Now there's definitely there's things that go into that, but it's just it's not a contest of musical ability. It's a contest of ticket selling ability. Anyway, while I was doing these soft ticket gigs saying yes to everything, playing for airfare, staying on people's couches etc, I would be in a situation where I'd have flown from Toronto to Atlanta or Los Angeles. And my gig would be on Saturday and maybe my next gig was in Arizona or Denver the next Thursday. What do I do for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday? Do I fly home and lose all of the money that I would've possibly made or do I figure out another way to make money while I'm on the road? I started doing group workshops or a quick little hand up that I typed out the night before. And I went out and did workshops. And over about a year of doing the same workshop again and again in different cities, I went and put this workshop on film and this workshop here, this is 2011 now.

ill. Gates:
You got a full house tonight. Thank you guys all for coming. I'm really excited to...

ill. Gates:
There's me being my goofy 2011 self. And if you scroll down, people are losing their mind. The comments are insane on this workshop. And at the end, this was the first 45 minutes of the workshop. But the other three hours you had to pay and to date, I've sold almost a quarter million dollars worth of this workshop. Okay. And it's because it's good advice that helps everybody, that it's useful and people forwarded it and forwarded it and it made the rounds. And then that eventually grew into a music community. I started on Patreon at one point, because once it got to the point where I was playing... once it got to the point, I've since moved off of Patreon, but here let's see. Let's go to my Patreon page or patreon.com/illgates. Yeah, here we go.

ill. Gates:
Yeah, so I was on here. I'm not really using it that much anymore, but if you hear, if you go to project files etc, there are all these project files and different classes and stuff that I did. But in about 2016, everything that I posted would suddenly make its way onto a Russian pirate blog. So that was really annoying. I don't know who the leaker was, but someone who was in my Patreon was leaking it. So I needed to get a way to keep all of my content better organized because I had too much content for Patreon. And then also to keep it protected. And that was when Producer Dojo was born. But for a while there, Patreon was like... it was a big part of my income. I had 12 students that each gave me 100 bucks a month for one hour of training.

ill. Gates:
And this was a side business for my normal music business. And that meant that I would get 1200 bucks every month reliably. So what I did was I went and subletted my expensive San Francisco apartment and me and my wife took the money we would've spent on San Francisco rent and we went and traveled the world. And we went to Australia, we went to Singapore, to Bali, to Hawaii, to New Zealand, to Laos, to Thailand, Israel, just all over the world writing a three album series that are called The Airport Series. It was originally just intended to be one album. Oh yeah, Cuba, Jamaica. I spent a long time writing in Cuba and Jamaica. And if you go here to my albums here on Spotify, let's go to albums. Yeah. So terminally ill departures and the arrival as The Airport Series.

ill. Gates:
And a lot of that music was either started or written during that very productive period, just traveling and being a free spirit, producing on a Bluetooth speaker with my native instruments machine as my sound card. And I brought my Neumann TLM-103 and that was it. I just had my sound card, a Bluetooth speaker, whatever. And by minimizing my expenses and relying on Patreon, I could make money anywhere there was internet. And then that grew into the Producer Dojo, which grew into a record label, which grew into this thriving community. And now there's, I think 15 people that work for me full time at Producer Dojo. We're putting out awesome records all the time. The press are all over it, etc. And it rocks. But all of these types of things, really, whether it's putting up a Patreon or selling templates or workshops or whatever, these are all available to you at any level of fame. You just have to have the audacity to make a YouTube video and ask for what you want.

ill. Gates:
And as you grow with the Modern Musician system of getting fans, which is the best system I've encountered, because my promotion has always been organic. I played a million parties. I did almost... it was 15 years of three shows a week, eight flights a week for 15 years. It was insane. So that was how I groomed my career, but I never really took marketing seriously until the pandemic. And then I was like, "Okay, I need a way to make new fans during the pandemic." And I threw all kinds of money down the drain on ads by Mark Zuckerberg, another yacht that he didn't need. And I was super, super frustrated with it. The landscape was changing and the iOS 14 and I had a whole bunch of different marketing companies that were working for me that I was paying more money on marketing than I was on rent, paying people thousands of dollars just to manage the money being spent.

ill. Gates:
And none of their strategies worked as well as the strategies that I have learned from Michael. When I met Michael, we were just on a... I was just a guest on his podcast. Jared, who works at Modern Musician is a old school ill. Gates fan. And he suggested having me on as podcast guest and we got along great. And when I learned about the Modern Musician program and he explained how it works, I was like, "You know what? This makes sense. This really makes sense, especially with the messenger ads." And just from my experience, I've probably spent a quarter million dollars on Facebook ads over the last five years. And from my experience of just seeing what they charge for, how they penalize you for leaving the site, how they penalize you for asking for conversions and stuff, and I just loathe Mark Zuckerberg as a human being.

ill. Gates:
So I wanted to give him the least possible amount of money and get the greatest return, not just from a business perspective, but he's just awful. He's an awful person. But the Modern Musician system where you're optimizing for messages and you set up the auto responders to give the fans what they want, it really works. And I tried to put some twists on it. For example, I was like, "Oh, we need to tell people, okay, this is an autoresponder, blah, blah, blah, blah." And it's really weird. We experimented with that. And then we experimented with not telling them and have it parse the language. So you can see when they reply to the track, did they use the word dope? Did they use the word fab? Did they use the word whatever? But when the robot was pretending to be human, they didn't like it as much.

ill. Gates:
When you told them it was a robot, they didn't like it as much. But when you presented them where they choose your own adventure, where there's buttons and you can select either option A or option B, no human being communicates like that. So that makes it obvious. But it also allows the fan to have their kind of suspension of disbelief that they want to have because when you address it directly, they didn't like it. But yeah, so his system's really well thought out. But anytime I try and deviate from it, I can see why he's arrived at that system. So we've been enjoying becoming friends and stuff and it's been really rad, but you're all in the right hands. And I just want to, once again, encourage you, if you are making music that is undeniably dope, show people that music and ask for what you want.

ill. Gates:
There's a lot of people out there that want to support the arts and that was one thing that Patreon taught me. Over time, I ended up with Patreons who would just not really want anything in return. A lot of them would just want to give you money and just know that they gave you money. And I'm a Patreon of a few different artists where I'm not... it's not a transactional relationship there. And if you give fans a chance to support you, because it's weird to be like, "Yo, just give me a donation." It feels weird. It's like, a lot of the time too, your friend will be in trouble and you'll be like, "Oh, can I just give you a few 100 bucks so you can make your bills?" And a lot of time they're like, "No, no, I don't want to do that."

ill. Gates:
But if you're like, "Hey, I want to buy one of your art pieces or buy the deluxe edition of your album or buy an NFT or buy some other thing," then it no longer is a kind of charity donor type relationship. And it becomes a patron of the arts relationship. So it is transactional, but it's also not. And you should be open to those sorts of things because even if you only have a few fans that are die hard, if you give those people a chance, they'll happily support you. But there are other people who are musicians, because it's easy to look at the music landscape and be like, "Hey, this is a crowded landscape. Everybody and their dog is a musician. There's too many musicians." And sure, there might be a ton of musicians, but there's always a shortage of good musicians.

ill. Gates:
If you are good, there's always room. There's always room if you're good. But the thing is a lot of people who are good, they only dedicate themselves to their craft and they never actually ask for anything and they never actually give people a chance to support them. But if you are good, know this, there are thousands of musicians, millions even who would love to be good. They don't need you to be famous. They just need to look at your music and be like, "Wow, I could learn something from this person." And then maybe you're making and selling video workshops, maybe you're making and selling sample packs, maybe you are in Spotify, there's that sound better website that they run, which is a marketplace for top liners or session musicians. You can make a profile on there and start directing people to that to get hired to do a session work on different artists' music. There's Splice, where you can sell samples.

ill. Gates:
A lot of people I know sell presets and things through GitHub. I run another website called producerdj.com where people can make profiles and sell music and sample packs and stuff. It's currently invite only. Eventually that will be ready for the end open to the general public. But there is always a way. And I've found whether I am making music or whether I'm trying to solve a problem, I have found that the most efficacious attitude to adopt is the belief that the solution, the perfect solution to your problem already exists. And that it is up to you to stretch your mind until you can grasp it. And when you approach songwriting this way, when you approach the economics of making a living as a musician this way, I find it really helps. And maybe you need to go camping, maybe you need to go do mushrooms or something, maybe you just need to talk to the right person, but that solution is already there.

ill. Gates:
And you just need to stretch your mind until you can grasp it. Okay? But there are a number of ways. And I remember speaking of mushrooms, at one point when I was in high school, I was out camping with my friends and we were playing Darwin out in the woods, looking at all these different creatures and thinking about their survival strategies. And I remember looking at a family of raccoons and I was thinking about panda bears are going extinct because panda bears can only eat one thing. Bamboo. And that bamboo does not provide them enough nutrition to make fatty milk for their panda babies. Their superpower is basically being so cute that we don't want them to go extinct. That's what's going to keep the panda bear around if anything. They're not very well adapted to their environment.

ill. Gates:
But then you look at the raccoon, AKA, the trash panda. Raccoons are everywhere. They'll be left with Henry Kissinger and cockroaches after the nuclear war, it'll be just the raccoons because trash pandas can eat everything. They can eat garbage, they can eat meat, they can eat rotting stuff, they can eat vegetables, they can drink terrible water, they can do whatever. They can eat everything. So the trash panda will survive. But the panda who could only eat bamboo will go extinct. And when you put all of your eggs in one economic basket as a musician, you are adopting the panda strategy. The strategy you want to adopt is the scrappy trash panda strategy where you have some of your income is coming from perhaps educational services, some of your income's coming from session work, some of your income's coming from licensing, some of your income is coming from making music for television or commercials.

ill. Gates:
I do a lot of music like that. I did some, The Star Wars, Disney Land and the Bar. I've made singing terroids. So if they ever make a Star Wars musical with singing terroids, that would be my fault. And I apologize in advance. But yeah, you could do commercial work. There's sound packs, video games and stuff need interface noises all the time. I've sold a bunch of interface noises before. And one of my best breakthrough gigs came as a result of Burning Man at the festival, nobody gets paid to play. Everybody is an attendee there. You can get paid to set up a giant art structure, but you're not getting paid to play. But I know Burning Man is a great, soft ticket way to get people while they're at their most impressionable because your job as a musician... you should check out Seth Godin's Ted talk about the purple cow and then his book, The Purple Cow.

ill. Gates:
But basically your job is to create a conversation. Your job is to create a conversation. So let's say driving down the street, you see a cow. So what? You've seen one cow. You've seen them all. You don't have a cow related problem. You don't even remember that you drove by a field of cows and you keep driving. But then the next day you're driving by the field of cows. And there's a purple cow. You stop the car. You get out, you go over to the purple cow. You can't believe it. You take a selfie. You post on the internet. That selfie view of the purple cow goes viral. Suddenly you're a meme. Everybody's checking out the purple cow. Did that purple cow spend any money on marketing?

ill. Gates:
No. It was a purple cow. It creates a conversation. So your job is to create a conversation. And creating a conversation, if you're going to create a conversation around your music, you want to play the craziest, weirdest, most noteworthy, story worthy live shows you can. I used to specialize in playing squat parties, break in parties, underground illegal raves, where the cops would show up halfway through the night and we'd all have to run. And I also love playing weird music festivals and Burning Man was pretty much... there are people... Burning Man's basically like band camp. When you know people who go to Burning Man, they're vegans or people who do CrossFit. You're just like, "Tell me again about that one time at Burning Man. I think I forgot some details the eighth time you told me that story, please give me a refresher."

ill. Gates:
So you want to be part of that story. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go to Burning Man even if they don't pay me, even if nobody gets paid, even if I got to take out..." The only time in my life I've ever gone into debt was to take out a line of credit to get a camcorder and go to Burning Man. And I went there and everybody from Silicon valley goes to Burning Man. And my name is ill. Gates, which is a play on Bill Gates because he's pretty... I found it amusing. And the idea of Bill Gates being in any way involved in hip hop is hilarious. And like Bill Gates, I'm an enterprising nerd as well. Although I am not down with Epstein. I'm just putting that out there right now. Not down with that. I was really bummed. I was like, "Bill, I'll never forgive you for that part. That's my name too, buddy."

ill. Gates:
Anyway, so I go to Burning Man and people from Silicon valley also love to go to Burning Man. And of course there are some people from Microsoft there. And I get a call. I'm still a starving artist in Canada, eating toothpaste sandwiches, trying to figure it out. And I get this call and this woman from Microsoft, she's, "Hey." Okay. Yeah. She's like, "Hi, this is Danielle from Microsoft. We want to book you for a private Microsoft party at Sundance Film Festival. Can I talk to you about this?" And I'm like, "This is a prank call. There's no way anyone from Microsoft is calling me unless it's to sue me. This is a crank call." So I make small talk and I'm trying to feel her out to see if this is for real or not. And she's like, "Okay. Do you want to do this party? How much do you want?"

ill. Gates:
I'm like, "$5,000." She's like, "Okay. And what do you want to do?" I'm like, "Do I get to meet Bill Gates?" And she's, "Yeah, yeah. He'll be there. I guess that could be arranged. Sure. Is that one of your conditions?" I'm like, "Yes, this is totally one of my conditions." I'm like, "This is a crank call. This has got to be a crank call." And so I hang up and then the next thing, plane tickets, deposits. I'm going to Sundance Film Festival. And I got to get drunk with Bill Gates one night, which was really amazing. We have a pretty epic selfie that we took. Even during the night, I was like, "This is probably the story for me. I don't know if there's going to be a story cooler than this one." But anyway, then Danielle's sister worked at the Windows phone, the now defunct Windows phone and they needed a bunch of ring tones. And she was like, "Hey, do you want to do ring tones?"

ill. Gates:
So I was like, "Yeah, sure. I'll do your ring tones." They needed all these ring tone packs. So first I cut up my own songs and I made them into ring tones. And then they were like, "Yo, can you make a hip hop pack?" I was like, "Sure, I'll get a bunch of rap beats, cut them up, make ring tones." And they were like, "Can you do a world music pack?" I was like, "Sure, hire some session musicians. What the hell? Let's do it." So we did a world music pack. And they were like, "Can you make a comedy pack?"

ill. Gates:
And I was like, "Yes." And then I'm like, "Okay. So what sounds are funny in two seconds or less?" And then I remembered how it all began, sampling farts on my Casio Concertmate 800. And I knew what I had to do. I got a can of baked beans and I put on Eye of the Tiger and I got the most expensive mic I could rent. And I sold Bill Gates my farts and got a work visa. And that's how I got a work visa and came to the US. So that's why you should never give up on your dreams.

Michael Walker:
All right, let's take a quick break from the podcast so I can tell you about a free, special offer they're doing right now, exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you. So right now we're offering a free two week trial to our MusicMentor coaching program. And if you sign up in the show notes below, you're getting access to our entire MusicMentor content vault for free. The vault's organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and last but not least, the business. When you sign up, you unlock our best in-depth master classes from a network of world class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business.

Michael Walker:
On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds, where our highest level of Modern Musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month, we're going to have our MusicMentor spotlight series. And that's where we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now. And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top level music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are there live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly. On top of all that, you'll get access to our private MusicMentor community.

Michael Walker:
And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of MusicMentor and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up and collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now and sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast, supporting the show. So don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now and let's get back to our interview.

Michael Walker:
Oh my gosh, dude. That story is so good. Oh man. Selling your farts to Bill Gates. I bet when you first gave birth to ill. Gates, that was probably not something that you had-

ill. Gates:
That's why I had the dot. I thought I was going to get asked, I thought I was going to cease and desist. You remember that band Bush and they had to have the X at the end of their name? I was like, "Oh, I'll just add a dot. It'll be like an email address." And then yeah, I never thought... but yeah, he gave me his official blessing. He was like, "Yeah, sure." So he was like, "So you're like me only unhealthy? I don't understand." It was really fun, I had to explain to him what... ill was in the context of rap music and stuff. But then he went on to make this Bill Gates DJ video that's actually pretty, pretty amusing where he's rocking a party and stuff. So it's fun.

Michael Walker:
That is so funny. There's so much good stuff there. First of all, the story is just incredible. But I feel like what's so... hopefully everyone who's here right now is being able to digest all of the nuggets of wisdom as you're sharing that story as well that they can apply to their own life, their own careers. It seems like one aspect of what you're talking about is really this ability because a lot of times people or musicians, they might not realize that they have this asset or this tool that it already exists. That was such a poignant point that you made, that the thing already exists. You just have to stretch yourself and stretch your mind in order to realize it. It already exists right now.

Michael Walker:
That was a mic drop, bang. And it seems like there's this idea of alchemy, this idea of alchemy where it's... some of the most successful people, they have this ability to almost alchemize reality or alchemize the world where it's like the thing already exists. Maybe it needs to be transformed from its current state into this different state. But it exists already. And already everything you need is inside of you. Who you want to be, already exists right now. It's just a matter of this process of alchemy.

ill. Gates:
And a lot of the time too, I know a lot of people who do commercial work behind the scenes, whether it's finishing treat people's tracks for them, which if you can finish people's songs and they'll bring you in as a finisher, you can make money doing that or doing mass mixing and mastering work. A lot of the time, those people don't even advertise or have a website. They just... one person leads to another. And if you're coming at this with a tagged mailing list, "Oh, I need to contact every promoter I know in the Pacific Northwest. Or I need to contact every blogger on my list. Or I need to contact everyone who is a super fan to give them the drop on a thing." Once you get those contacts in and you start tagging those contacts, and when you meet someone, tag their contact in their phone, first name, last name, company would be their artist name or whatever.

ill. Gates:
And the after company, I just put search tags because you can scrape your phone and put it into your spreadsheet with the rest of your contacts and stuff too. But when you get these SMSs and emails from using the Modern Musician system, you want to keep those organized. And if you're coming at this with an organized list that you can segment and be like, "Hey, I'm working on a record for the next little bit. I'm not doing any shows. So I'm open to taking new mixing and mastering work or I'm open, if you have a track that you need to have finished, hit me up," and then you can hit everyone who has the musician tag on your list. Or if anyone's who's a producer, be like, "Hey, make a short little YouTube video of a demo of some of your session musician playing and then keep it as an unlisted YouTube video."

ill. Gates:
And then just hit the people on that list and be like, "Hey, I'm really happy with this guitar sound that I got the last couple days. I got a new pedal. Here's me shredding over a couple tracks. If you want me to throw down on one of your beats, hit me up. We'll work it out." And you can blast your list with that. And just having these offers, learning how to make an offer, whether it's a product or a service or what, just having a YouTube video, it can be private. You might not want to show the whole world. You might want your public facing YouTube's page to be just about your artwork. But you can make these private videos and send them to the exact same list that you're doing the value [inaudible 00:40:39] or merch thing with and that you're doing your show promo etc with.

ill. Gates:
And I think that's one of the big mistakes that I see a lot of musicians making is they're always waiting until they've got this perfect record to put out in the world. And then and only then are they going to make money and it's only going to be from streams and shows. And there's so much that you can do, like behind the scenes videos, you can do... make an offer to your whole list and be like, "Hey, if you want me to come write you a custom song or play a private party, hit me up." Or it could be any of these other services that you can offer to other musicians or Cameo. I've made a whole bunch of money on Cameo. Cameo's a site where you can make an account and people can pay you 25 bucks to make a five minute birthday shout out for their friend or whatever.

ill. Gates:
And you can do fine on Cameo. You can offer, especially if you are a singer songwriter and you have the ability to just sit down with a guitar and freestyle, being able to write custom songs, that's huge. You don't have to be famous for that to be worth something to someone. So make little YouTube videos whether they're private or public and just start trying these different services on your list and see, because I did all that I did without maintaining a mailing list. I only learned to maintain a mailing list in the last five years. Everything that I did was just organic and word of mouth. And from those YouTube videos, where the YouTube videos went viral and people forwarded it to their friends. But if you pay it forwards and you help people first, and then they'll tell their friends. If you can just make yourself helpful, make yourself useful, make people like you, that's the skill. Making people like you, making yourself useful.

ill. Gates:
If you can do that, you can make money. Now selling music to fans, selling concert tickets is a different thing, but you can make money right away as long as you can offer something to people and make a video that explains it because nobody likes reading. Reading feels like homework. And then just start using your list and these videos to offer different products and services. And if you have lists that is maintained and you've got new leads coming in with Michael's system, you're going to be able to take this way further than I did by just doing word of mouth and organic kind of viral stuff. With a mobile maintained list, the trash panda strategy will take you to the mountain.

Michael Walker:
The trash panda. I love that idea. Yeah. So one thing, ill. Gates really blew our minds in quite a few ways. Kudos to Jared and our team for making the connection because yeah, it's just meeting you, building relationship with you, you sharing one of your contacts when it came to the software has totally revolutionized our StreetTeam software. So with Modern Musician, some of the stuff you're talking about with the ninja, tagging based system, that's something that you can do in your CRM. So if you use active campaign or now if you use something like StreetTeam, you can essentially tag your entire contact list and do what Dylan's saying with what if you have a list of people who for... one example, let's say that 2000 of your people live within 30 miles of New York and you're about to go on tour.

Michael Walker:
Then maybe you just send out a text message to all of your fans that live in New York because you don't need to send out a message to your entire community if you're just playing this one show in New York. Or if you know that they're tagged based on a producer, then you send out an email and say, "Hey, I'm looking for a producer." And that happened because of that connection that you made. So I'm super grateful to you. And also, yeah, there's some really cool stuff coming out soon with NFTs and the way that we're collaborating with that.

ill. Gates:
Yeah. I'm so excited for that. The NFT integration in the StreetTeam app is pretty awesome. It was a really painless process going through the creation of those NFTs. I'm really happy with them. And I think that they're the fans that I have that want that chance to not only support me, but to be like... because if you buy the series one artist NFT from ill. Gates, you're pretty much officially ill. Gates fan number one. It's pretty much official that point. But there are a lot of people out there who love collecting, they love supporting the arts and to have a chance to officially recognize certain digital pieces is a revolutionary technology.

ill. Gates:
And now that there is the flow blockchain and carbon blockchain and others like it that are not completely destroying the earth like Bitcoin and Ethereum, then I think there's every reason to do it. And really these NFT authentication tokens, you can use them for anything. I think I'm going to do a bunch of NFTs that are redeemable for musical collabs because chances are people aren't going to redeem them all at once. And probably some procrastinators are going to sit on them and be like, "Yeah, but it's going to increase in value if I sit on it. So I'll probably only have to do half of the collabs."

Michael Walker:
That's a really cool idea. Yeah, also linking it with utility like that.

ill. Gates:
Yeah. You could redeem it for collabs. You could redeem it for any number of things. The only limit is your imagination. The NFT technology is just a system of authentication. People are using it now for JPEGs of apes and stuff. And a lot of people roll their eyes at it. And Bitcoin, Ethereum are very ecologically destructive. So there are people who are like, "You're destroying the world for stupid pictures of apes." And that is a fair criticism. But on the flow blockchain like the Modern Musician NFTs will be, and if you use them for actually cool stuff, then it's just like any other technology, like a spreadsheet or an email or whatever.

ill. Gates:
If you're not destroying anything by doing it and it provides an uncrackable authentication system, there's so much you can do with that as an artist. And if you have a big enough mailing list, if you have a hundred thousand emails, you could be like, "I have a two day old dead fish in my backyard. I would like someone to buy this dead fish for $500." If you have a big enough email list, someone will buy a dead fish for $500. Okay.

Michael Walker:
For sure.

ill. Gates:
If your email list is big enough, it will. There are people on your list that want to buy any number of things, but just make sure to always treat them fairly and to always treat them with respect because the world gets real small when you're a dick to people. It gets real small and that will come back. People will believe anything about you if it's negative. So it's really important to keep an eye on that and to make sure that no matter what, how you use your technology, how you use your email list, there are human beings on the other end. And there might be things that they... you might be a better musician than them, but they might be some genius scientist or they might be the most rockstar third grade teacher you've ever met, or they might be a paramedic saving lives every day or doing something else cool.

ill. Gates:
And it's yeah, in terms of the dynamic, you're the musician and they're the fan and it's lopsided in that way, but they might actually be way cooler than you. So it's really important to keep that in mind and to always treat people with respect, treat people like human beings, treat people fair and then you'll do fine with the list and with the NFTs and everything. But just keep in mind that when you are not ethical, the world becomes real small and the pitch forks are... they're ready to come out. People are sick of people abusing their power. So when you have your power, promise me, you won't abuse it. Okay? You have a responsibility to these fans to uplift them.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that. And it's funny how that's... it's so simple, but it's so true. And yeah, a lot of times the most important things are actually... they're not necessarily super complicated. Obviously there's plenty of stuff that's super complicated that's really cool. But really the stuff that's really the most powerful that's going to make the biggest positive impact is usually a thing that's so simple that you could overlook at. And yeah, I think that thing is what you just shared is being kind and genuinely caring about other people and thinking about how can I provide value?

ill. Gates:
You never know what's going to lead to what too. The Burning Man camp that I played at that led to the Bill Gates thing was the tiniest little camp. And there was not very many people there. And then I remember I played a gig in Boston and there was a Wednesday night, there was maybe 90 people there, way back. But one of the guys who was there really dug my music and hooked me up with this dude, Ionize, who became one of my students and he went on to work with Gucci Mane. I got to do an official Gucci Mane remix. I got 42 Dugg on my last or on my two albums ago and then Gucci Mane on this album. He went on tour with Ghost Face Killah.

ill. Gates:
He has tunes, it was like all these huge rappers, but that came out of this tiny little gig in Boston. And he went on to become one of the biggest stars in the Dojo. He doesn't release on the Dojo record label, but he's let me rerelease those collabs. And I mean that my Gucci Mane remix for him has 3 million plays on YouTube. And that came out of this tiny little nothing gig. So you never know and you got to always be on story control. How can I make an interesting story and how can I make sure that story is the story that I want people to tell?

Michael Walker:
Okay. Awesome. Hey, Dylan, I see some round of applause just happening already, which is awesome. Let's do a quick round of applause for ill. Gates. Yeah. This has been awesome. One thing I really appreciate about you is you're just authentic. You just are like, when you came on you're talking about dick pills. That crack me up. It's so interesting to watch your-

ill. Gates:
it down, but people don't listen as much without the flaring and personal jokes. They just zone out. They're like, "Okay. I feel like I'm at school right now." So I've learned to kind of make sure people are still paying attention while I'm talking.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That's one of the things that I got too, just from... I really appreciate you sharing your journey too, because that's something that it's so easy to look at what you've accomplished now and look at someone who's super successful and compare ourselves to them. It's so easy to do that and it's less easy or less obvious to point out, that's not always how it was. At the beginning, they were actually just like you. And when you were sharing the videos of yourself at the beginning, it was interesting. And it was really humbling just kind of watching it. And almost it feels like at least from what I saw in the videos too, it seems like you've grown into yourself where it's like at the beginning maybe you felt like you had to be a little bit more postured. But then it's the journey that we're all going through is at the beginning, especially we're figuring out who we are and then you can learn to express that more and more.

ill. Gates:
My wife had some really good words for me when I was facing adversity. She said, "First you're the one no one wants to win. Then you win." So remember that.

Michael Walker:
First you're the one that no one wants to win and then-

ill. Gates:
You're always the one that no one wants to win at the start. That's how we all start.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. No, it's true. Yeah. There's definitely something about... we talked about this earlier today when we were talking about, "Don't believe me. Don't believe me. Just watch," and how it's just the more... and it can be frustrating. We have goals and we want to be validated. We want people to believe in us. If we feel like we need their approval, or we need them to validate us, then it creates this sense of frustration or not enoughness. And it's only because we think that we need their validation for some reason. And probably the reason that we feel like we need the validation is because maybe internally there's a little bit of that self doubt or that feeling in ourselves that kind of resonates with that we all have. So am I good enough? Or can I really do this? And if you didn't have that, then it wouldn't matter what everyone else, if someone else like family or friends say, "Yeah. I."

ill. Gates:
It's a funny balance as a musician too, because when you're too happy and self-sufficient all the time, that can erode your ambition too. You want to not be too satisfied, but not too thirsty either. And it's a little bit of a balance. And if you find the pendulum swinging back and forth from one extreme to the other, welcome to the club. It's called being a human being. We all are different on different days. And no one's expecting you to be this perfectly consistent zen person. There's going to be times when you're thirsty. There's going to be times when you're satisfied. And that's okay. Just try not to let it overwhelm you and try to make sure you still enjoy it because music, they don't call it playing music because it sucks. It's fun. You got to make sure to have fun. And fans, they're not listening for your shredding.

ill. Gates:
They don't care about you flexing. They're listening for the vibe and the feeling of the music. And that's why often music, just the least technical, or objectively bad from a production standpoint, can be amazingly successful is because they're not listening to your music for you. They're listening for them. How does it serve their need for self-expression? Not yours. Right. And if your music can become the mascot of the self-expression of your fans, if your music is a vehicle for them to express their identity, that's what they gravitate to. And that might... sometimes when people are overly technical and flexing all the time, it's, "Damn, what are you so insecure about? Why are you trying to impress me all day?" It's like Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones. They were like, "We were so drunk when they recorded that. Do not release it."

ill. Gates:
And it's their number one song because it's not always about technique. It's about style, vibe, attitude, energy. That's what people resonate with. And that's when they can see themselves in your music. They don't want to see you up there like, what the people think. They want to just see you up there and just be like, "Yo, whatever. Make fun of me if you want. I don't give a fuck." And that's the vibe. They're like, "Yeah, that's me. That's me." So remember that. It's vibe, style, attitude, energy, far more important than technique.

Michael Walker:
100%. That's so good. One side note. I think I've probably seen probably 20 different comments for like, "This guy is awesome. I would love to buy you a drink sometime." If you have a PO box or something, then you'd probably be set for the next three months or so based on all the people that are going to buy you drinks.

ill. Gates:
Here. I'll put on the chat. I think it's this. I got to double check guys. Yeah. I don't really...

Michael Walker:
That is awesome.

ill. Gates:
Is that the right one? Yes, that was the right one. Okay, there we go. So it's paypal.me/illgates if you want to buy me a drink. And if you want to learn more, there's lots of ways you could learn more. I teach a class every Wednesday called The Weekly Download where you get a sound pack or a lesson on mixing or PR promotion or how to do sound design, how to write melodies, how to do chord progressions, how to analyze music you like etc. It's an archive of almost 290 downloads. And it's five bucks a week because I want it to be really affordable for musicians.

ill. Gates:
So that's at the weeklydownload.com and then I'm currently selling the Ill.Methodology complete collection, which is everything I've ever done with free updates for life. I'll link that, I think someone posted in the chat. I think maybe Ari posted in the chat. But that one I got a link for you guys that is in the chat. But yeah, it's every workshop I've ever done, every template, everything. And so it's 2300 bucks worth of stuff for 500 bucks. But it's only for the next four days. Yeah. Here, I'll see if I can get the link.

Michael Walker:
Cool. Yeah. Let's definitely have our scene-

ill. Gates:
You guys have a link. You guys have the special Modern Musician link. So I don't want to just put the normal link. There we go. Yeah. There's the link.

Michael Walker:
There we go. We got it in there. Awesome.

ill. Gates:
Thank you Eli. Thank you Eli and others too.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. I want to just reiterate the couple things that you just shared. So one, The Weekly Download. That is awesome. You brought me on as a guest on it. I've shared probably like-

ill. Gates:
There's an episode with Michael. He breaks it down.

Michael Walker:
And I shared probably the most valuable thing that we do at Modern Musician. I basically came in and shared this. And this is the thing that we have our flagship offer is a $5,000 coaching program.

ill. Gates:
I bought it. I paid full price, bought it. I bought it.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. It hits-

ill. Gates:
I'm in the program and I've learned so much, way more than I learned from professional ad manager people who I spent tons of money on for years. So I'm-

Michael Walker:
We hear that all the time too. It's easy to pay tens of thousand dollars for these things and a retainer fee for 1500 a month. And they're essentially, yeah... you're paying them to spend your money for you. It's so awesome having you as part of it. And now we got the NFTs, that's a whole thing.

ill. Gates:
We set your money on fire. Here's the spreadsheet of where it burned. So it's probably PR. Yeah, you got rejected more times and faster and in a spreadsheet. So that'll be $6,000.

Michael Walker:
Oh, that's so funny. But so the point is I personally went in there and basically shared the most valuable thing that we have from our program. And then it's not just me too, but how many did you say there are now? There's a download-

ill. Gates:
280 something. I don't know. I'll see. I'll go log in.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. So you think that might be valuable having 200 of that scale from all-

ill. Gates:
You can just look up any. But it's more about production whereas Michael is doing promotion and making money and stuff. And that is an area that I don't cover as much. What I have experts come in and they'll do a weekly download about running PR for release or how to run a record label or whatever. I focus on the music making part. So that's why it's such a good synchronicity between us is they are complimentary, but different.

Michael Walker:
100%. Yeah. 100%. It's peanut butter and jelly. But yeah, The Weekly Download's awesome. We have the link for all the resources in the chat. And then also, yeah, that's your life collection of work that's available that someone can get. The way I look at mentorship and education is one, all of my mentors and all the most successful people that I know, they didn't just magically become that way. There's a reason that in every story there's always a Yoda type of character or Dumbledore. It's because as humans, we resonate with this necessity of having a mentor who can help guide us and we need to learn at the same time. It's not like the mentor does everything for us, but we need a guide. And I think that if you can find someone who you can learn from, that can save you a month or a year or five years of your life learning something on your own, it's just such an amazing return. So I hugely appreciate-

ill. Gates:
Modern Musician, you guys would've saved me so many years. We had a whole team of people making the wrong ads with the wrong strategy for years. So bad.

Michael Walker:
And vice versa. It goes with everyone that's going to be presenting here. And especially with you with production, everything that you've learned, you guys being able to access this and just being here live right now, it's one of the most valuable investments of your time. So I just want to honor everyone that's here right now, that's investing your time into educating yourself and learning from these mentors. You guys are awesome. You're definitely in the top 1% of musicians right now that have really the best odds of being successful because you're investing in yourself and your own education. If you resonated with Dylan and everything that you learned throughout this presentation, I would highly recommend checking out what he offers when it comes to production and his weekly downloads, super valuable. And now I would love to take a few minutes to be able to go through some Q and As. So we have some great questions that are coming in.

ill. Gates:
Okay. So there was one person here, asked do you offer mentoring services. I do on a very limited basis. But it's predominantly through producerdojo.com, but we're not accepting new members currently. But basically I've made a video or download of some kind to address every single need that people have. And if you sign up for The Weekly Download and then DM support and say, "Hey, these are the things I want to learn about. Or check out this tune and tell me what to do next," that's honestly, probably way better. And then if you're on the mailing list, you'll find out when we open it up again. But yeah, we're not currently accepting new members. But the Dojo is basically built on that.

Michael Walker:
There's one resource. This is a random thing. But I think that this could be interesting, is there's a resource called searchy. It's a software. But basically you could plug in all of your weekly downloads into searchy and it creates a Google like search index.

ill. Gates:
Yeah. Just saw that you guys have that on the Modern Musician. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
It's just a thought-

ill. Gates:
I'd like to add that for sure.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. With all of your downloads, imagine-

ill. Gates:
Michael's little tighter at Kajabi than we are. It's pretty much like each subject, there's a video, there's a download. And then you can just search the titles.

Michael Walker:
And with Searchy too, it's its own embedable thing. It's a separate software that you could embed. I don't know. There's just one extra tool that yeah, you introduced us to the CRM software [inaudible 01:01:50] so if we could repay the favor a little bit.

ill. Gates:
Wait, why don't you meet my air table guy? He's going to blow your mind.

Michael Walker:
I'm stoked for that. I'll also, not to build up too much hype here, but ill. Gates and I have officially decided to collaborate on a song, on a new music project.

ill. Gates:
Going to be a hit record, baby.

Michael Walker:
It's called Radioactive Robots. If anyone is here in our programs, then you probably heard Radioactive Robots. You're like, "Wait, what?" But radioactive, it's this inside joke that we have in the... whatever, all of the automations and systems with-

ill. Gates:
I just saw a million times, it was like, "You got to actually make this song. I'll help you. Let's do it."

Michael Walker:
I remember, dude. I'll take a screenshot of it. When Radioactive Robots becomes a number one worldwide sensation, well I'll take a screenshot of that moment that you texted me and you're like-

ill. Gates:
I'm the one with a bullet baby.

Michael Walker:
You text me. You were like, "Dude, you realize I make robot music. Right?" I was like, "There's something there. Radioactive Robots coming your way." All right.

ill. Gates:
Yeah. Let's do some questions.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Yeah. K Sexton, which I think that might be Kyle if I remember right. He had a question. He said, "What about older template... are the old templates available? I have the 2019 and 2011." I'm not sure what that means exactly. But my first thought was-

ill. Gates:
The studio templates. Yeah. If you bought them and you're not in the new Producer Dojo system, just send proof of purchase to support@producerdojo.com and we'll get you in the new system because once we moved over to Kajabi, we moved everything over. But you can also go to illgates.producerdj.com if you want to buy any individual templates or whatever. That's the new marketplace that we're building. So a lot of my products are up as individual products there, but I do updates for life on everything because I always hate when you buy something and then a software change will force you to need an update. And then you're like, "Oh I got to pay for an update because the M1 on my computer? I hate this. I have to buy my software again?" I do not want to be that guy. So I don't do that.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So this is a really good question. Yeah. I know that one of the things that I noticed just from having done The Weekly Download and from connecting with your community, just how tight knit your group of artists is and how much collaboration is happening between them. So this question was from... we don't have a name here for it, but the question was, what's the best method to be able to find great collaborators and singers and how do I approach them when I have a really great EDM pop production?

ill. Gates:
Okay. You should check out this guy, Jiang, J-I-A-N-G. And he has a really good Ted talk about the 100 days of rejection challenge. And basically he had a startup and he'd come over from, I think Korea. And he had a startup that he was running and he faced some rejection at the beginning and was about to give up and go home. And then he was like, "Wait a minute. What does rejection actually cost you?" We all have this fear of rejection that... but what damage does it really do to be rejected? And then he realized, "Oh yeah, this is some biological programming from when we were living in the cave. And if you upset everybody, you'd have to go into the wilderness and get eaten by a saber tooth tiger or whatever." But modern life is just... there's not really a cost to that.

ill. Gates:
And especially when you are engaging in any kind of enterprise or creative activity, you're going to get rejected all day. And I get rejected for things hundreds of times a week. I'm always sending out press releases to... I'll send press releases to 500 bloggers. And five of them will say yes. And that's normal. That's 100% normal. And when you're approaching people, I often have these musicians and they're students or friends and they'll be like, "Oh, I love this vocalist. I'd love to work with them. I emailed their manager." And they'd never heard back. I guess they're too cool for school or they're elitist or whatever. And they'll just start projecting all of these intentions that are totally not there.

ill. Gates:
And then you meet those people later and they're like, "Yeah. Motherfucker I get 500 emails a day. Some of them just get missed." And they can't listen to every demo. But if you are persistent and you recognize that rejection costs you literally nothing and you're persistent, there are... our air table guy here introduced me to this plugin called GMass where you can send mass emails from your Google account and you can program follow up actions that if this person has not opened this email in two days, reply to the email and say, "Hey, just want to make sure you got this." If they haven't opened it in 10 days, reply saying this. If they haven't opened it in 12 days, say, "Okay, blah, blah, blah. Should I take you off my mailing list?" Etc. And that persistence, you got to be persistent, you got to be relentless and you got to realize rejection costs you nothing. It costs you nothing.

ill. Gates:
And if you are relentless and persistent, you will eventually find amazing artists to work with. But all these artists are approached by a million people who are like, "Either pay me," or just walking around with their dick in their hand all day. It sucks. Especially if you're good, you're just like, "Oh, put that away. I don't want to see that. Get to know me first." And it's just all day, they get that. So you got to recognize that's their life. It's just like dick blizzard. So you need to be persistent and you need to reverse engineer, who is managing that person. If you take a cover, our album cover and you drag it into Google images, so the JPEG for the album cover, not typing the artist's name, get the JPEG for the album cover, drag it into Google images, it will do what's known as a reverse Google image search and it will show you where that image appears on the internet.

ill. Gates:
And then you can find out what bloggers are covering relevant artists to you. You can find out who manages them, etc etc etc. And you can use that to reverse engineer other artists' social networks and success. And you can get in there. And if you want to get with some management company that maybe manages a bunch of artists that you like or whatever, don't rock up and be like, "Hey, what can you do for me? I'm talented. I'm cool. What can you do for me?" Because they don't want to hear that. But I can tell you every single management company is overloaded and has way too much stuff to do and they need help. And if you come up and you say, "Hey, you guys are working with a lot of really cool artists that I like. I respect what you do. I like the way you did X, Y, and Z," and show that you are actually knowledgeable about who that person is and what they do. And then be like, "I would love to help you out and see what I can learn along the way."

ill. Gates:
They'll be like, "Sick. Awesome. Here's my phone number. Let's talk." And then yeah, you might have to fill out some spreadsheets for them or will send a bunch of mass emails to some blogs or whatever, but those are skills you need for your this career anyway. So you're learning the most valuable possible thing from the exact people who are doing it with the artists that you love. And then after a month or two, they're going to be like, "So you make music too." And then they're going to listen to your shit.

Michael Walker:
Boom. That's so good.

ill. Gates:
Pay forward, make yourself useful.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that's always a reoccurring theme that comes throughout this because everyone that's on the conference, all the presenters like you, you've learned in some cases the hard way, or it's taken a lot of time. But you've learned that really the key to-

ill. Gates:
I like to refer to it as the scenic route.

Michael Walker:
As the scenic route. It all comes down to that core premise of how can I be useful? How can I provide value? In terms of economics in our whole system, it's not perfect. Because it's usually not perfect just because money is a concept and it's when money becomes just a concept and we lose the actual meaning of the value that has attached to that, that's when it becomes an issue. The system exists because it's literally the best thing that we have that sort of objectifies the idea of value. So how do you get more value or how do you get more income? You provide value in exchange for it. The more you can provide value, the more that's going to come back. That's just how the system is set up. And also I think the reason that it works so well in premise, again if it doesn't then it's usually because there's deception, there's some sort of deception happening. But when there's authenticity and there's transparency, which is way easier than just seeing-

ill. Gates:
So much less to keep track of, oh my God.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. It takes so much more energy to try to scam. Sometimes you hear the stories about people with the elaborate scams or schemes and stuff. If you just took that energy and applied it towards doing something and to provide service, that could be so much easier.

ill. Gates:
Or the people who spend so much time trying to cheat at music theory that they buy all these plugins and put hours and hours into learning these plugins to cheat at music theory. And I'm like, "If you just played the piano for an hour a day, you'd know this stuff. You wouldn't need all these plugins."

Michael Walker:
Totally. Yeah. This stuff is awesome. So dude, I super appreciate you coming on here. It's been great connecting with you. Radioactive Robots coming to a theater near you.

ill. Gates:
Oh yeah.

Michael Walker:
I'm already hearing the next year. One last time for everyone who's resonated with everything that you've been talking about, for them to be able to connect more with Producer Dojo, could you walk through the next steps one more time in terms of what's the best place for someone to go to?

ill. Gates:
Oh yeah. The Producer Dojo YouTube has a ton of free videos. So you can check that out. That workshop that I did that blew everybody's mind and changed my life back in 2011 is called the Ill.Methodology. And then if you want to get access to everything at 75% off, we have a promotion that we're running at Producer Dojo that's for the next four days. I just did a big workshop yesterday for it. I admittedly could have timed it better. But we have a... yeah, if you check out that link there, we made the Modern Musician version of that link then you can get all of my workshops, all of my templates, all of my sample packs, all of everything I've ever done and updates for life. So anytime I have a new course, it's going in the complete collection. You get the new course for free. It's pretty sick.

Michael Walker:
It's super. The timing's actually perfect for it.

ill. Gates:
Yeah. It's just that I couldn't go as hard for the SWM because we had our own thing we were promoting, could have probably sent more emails for you. I feel bad with that.

Michael Walker:
Dude. I appreciate you being... I don't know if you saw the Zoom chat or not, but the whole time there's been so many nuggets of wisdom and just, yeah, the way that you share experience is a very authentic way. You're just telling it as it is. On behalf of all of us who are here right now, thank you so much for coming on here. We got the links in the chats. So you can check it out. If you guys resonated with this and you are interested in getting the coaching that Dylan offers, then right now it is 75% off and you get the whole life works. So might be worth looking into. But with that being said-

ill. Gates:
I also just did a new album. I did two albums in six months. One of them is called Bent, one of them is called The Arrival. And Bent is the ill. Gates album. All my fans are like, "This is way better than anything you've ever done." So I posted the link to Bent you can stream it from.

Michael Walker:
I can verify that. The album is fire. Jen and the three kids about four or five nights ago, when you sent me the link to it, we were putting them down, doing our bath time nighttime ritual, giving them a bath-

ill. Gates:
Oh it's not nighttime music. That'll get your kids hypey.

Michael Walker:
It was great though. It was like, we were getting them ready and we were playing it in the background and it's some pretty like, "Dad." We were just rocking out and it was great. So it's good for families. Good for all occasions. Cool. All right. Hey Dylan, you're awesome. Appreciate you coming on here.

ill. Gates:
Lots of love everybody.

Michael Walker:
Got the links in the chat. Maybe we can do one final round of applause for ill. Gates and we can do one final...

ill. Gates:
Oh yeah.

Michael Walker:
Cool.

ill. Gates:
I got to do my odd yeah. Yeah, Mike.

Michael Walker:
Beautiful.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value at 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. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media and tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. It's time to be in Modern Musician's now. And I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.