Rick Barker: Social media. All that is, is a tool that allows you to build reciprocity and build relationships. That's why I love 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. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's slowly 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. All right. I'm here with Rick Barker today. Rick is a good friend of mine. He's the CEO of Music Industry Blueprint, former manager of a really tiny little artist named Taylor Swift. And-

Rick Barker: Girl just canceled all her shows, too. What's up with that?

Michael Walker: Yeah, it was so weird. Why would anyone cancel shows right now? It's definitely not like we just went through some sort crisis where everyone had to stay at home and social distance or anything. Rick is a social media ninja. He has been doing social media for a really long time, did it for American Idol. Just in general, Rick is a really good guy. I remember when I first started my business and he really didn't need to help me out at all, I didn't really have much to offer, but he lent out a hand and supported me when I was just starting out.

Michael Walker: He's been compared to Gary Vee on the music industry. He's a very straightforward voice, and I think that's what a lot of people appreciate about him, is the honest, upfront nature of what he teaches. Rick, really appreciate you being here today. Specifically, today, we just mentioned briefly, it's a crazy environment right now in terms of the world and live shows and planning gigs, because of what happened with the Coronavirus. Everyone, with social distancing, being home. We were just talking about this before we started the interview, is that for ... These tools have been there for a while and Rick has been teaching them for a while, and they're incredible tools. The internet has allowed us to connect in such a profound way, but it seems like now, by necessity, a lot of people are discovering these online tools for the first time.

Michael Walker: Now, Rick is really in a great place, where he's an expert at leveraging these tools. There's a lot of things that are changing too. I think today we're looking to focus on, how can you leverage those tools like social media and building an online presence, especially if you're at a point where you're not able to tour, and able to support yourself with live gigs? I know that was a really big long intro, but Rick, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Rick Barker: I appreciate it. For any of you that are into the Enneagram, I'm an eight with a seven-wing, so you'll understand what that is. For those of you that don't, one of my strengths is building out things, but some of my weaknesses are I'm very blunt. My wife will tell you exactly. She's also a two in the Enneagram, but one of the things that I pride myself in is being a solutions-based person. What's interesting right now is that ... The best analogy that I have is that, it's like when you go to the doctor, and I'll just talk as a guy, for example, the doctor says, "You are real close to having diabetes. You need to get yourself on a diet plan and get your health in order."

Rick Barker: Well, the health has always been something that's been in the back of my mind, I just never did anything with it, and now all of a sudden it takes a doctor coming to me saying that I'm going to die if I don't get my weight in check, and he's going to give me access to things that were already out there in the world, working for a lot of people that were already doing diet, exercise, proper nutrition. That's kind of what's just happened with the music industry, is that we've been given this diagnosis, "You cannot tour. You cannot come within six feet of certain people," and you're like, "Oh my gosh, what do I do?"

Rick Barker: But wait, here's this resource that's been over here all along, called the internet. Here's these cool little resources that have been there all along called Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and Twitch and Messenger, and now you're going to start using them. You haven't been given the death sentence yet, you haven't been diagnosed with the actual disease, but here's what you can do to make sure that that doesn't happen. Right now, what the coronavirus did, was it exposed something in all of us. If you look around, everyone's situation's different. It exposed to me that I wasn't spending enough time with my family. It exposed to me that I had way too many trips planned. It exposed to me that, "Wow, my daughter likes playing Yahtzee? We're really good at Pictionary?"

Rick Barker: I think for my exposure was, "Dude, slow down. You can get a lot of this stuff done in a certain number of hours a day. Don't be so excited to go off and do all this other stuff. Take a look at what's going on with your family, especially if you want to keep it." For some of you, everyone's situation is really different like that. But right now, the relationship building process that's been able to happen, this is going to strengthen when the touring comes back, because now people are going to want to see you. They're going to like, "Oh my gosh, I haven't seen him forever. Oh my gosh, let me hang out with you after the show at the merch table, and really get caught up on what's been going on." I see this as something ... I don't want to call it a good thing, because whenever people are dying and there's a lot of tragedy that happened, I don't think that's a good thing, but it's been a very eyeopening thing, if that makes any sense.

Michael Walker: Yeah. That's a really good way to put it. In different studies, they've shown that in periods of like recession or challenging times, those are the times that really raise us to a higher level. They help us to grow as people. You being a solution-focused person, I think, is why you're able to look at this kind of situation, and rather than dwelling in, "Oh, poor me. Everything is so bad right now," it's like, "Hey, this is an opportunity. Let's look at, how can we move forward in this?"

Rick Barker: You know what else I've noticed too, Michael?

Michael Walker: Yeah.

Rick Barker: I don't know if it's the same with you, is how much wasted spending I was doing. I'm looking right now going, "Wow, I really didn't need to go buy all that stuff. Right now, I have people coming to me, and I tell artists this all the time, is it's like they're afraid to ask for help. You know me, I push the tip jars, I push asking for help if you're at that relationship. A lot of people have that extra one or two bucks that they're willing to chip in because they're not at Starbucks. They're not buying that extra thing they see at the store. For me, they're not stopping at the cigar shop every three days. They're using what they have. That's one of the things that I ...

Rick Barker: I know a lot of people are in a financial bind right now, but this has given me a real good chance to start budgeting, to sit there and go, "Wow, what is the stuff that I really don't need that I could take that and invest it over here, where it would serve me better?" A lot of it was just quick little meals and eating out and things like that. I'm like, "There's some really good things that are coming from this too."

Michael Walker: Totally. Absolutely. I feel like, generally, we're probably spending a lot more on Uber Eats and DoorDash than we spent before. I love the way that you described it, like a doctor prescribing good, healthy habits to people. A lot of times it takes that little push, or it takes that need, or it takes like, "Hey," or your back is up against the wall, now it's like, "Well, got to get scrapped. You got to figure this out." I'm sure a lot of people have experienced this boom, and they've started to see this wave of online virtual live streaming, and some big artists who are doing things alive. Now maybe they're feeling a little bit saturated and they're like, "How do I even stand out in that kind of market?" What are some of the biggest challenges that you see with the artists that you're working with when it comes to getting started and getting familiar with this online world and transitioning from the live stuff?

Rick Barker: It's the same thing with most creatives, they get in their own way. It's fear. Who cares if there's only 40 people watching you? Most of you have never played in front of 40 people ever. You're not going to all be Travis Scott with 12 million people inside of a Fortnite game, it's just not going to happen, which by the way was very cool. My son and I watched that. He's a Fortnite kid. What a creative opportunity that they did. Imagine this, 12 million active watchers of your music. It was crazy.

Michael Walker: Wow. Was he-

Rick Barker: It was crazy.

Michael Walker: He's playing Fortnite? Was he playing drums while he was playing Fortnite, or how did that work?

Rick Barker: No, no. They put a concert inside a Fortnite. They cartooned it. Oh, no, got to YouTube.

Michael Walker: Oh. What?

Rick Barker: Yeah, all of you, go to YouTube and type in Travis Scott Fortnite, you're going to see it. It was the most amazing. They featured like three or four songs. They scheduled it. They had the concert live, so as all those 12 million people that are on Fortnite, all of a sudden, it breaks into the programming, and here's this Travis Scott concert, and he's the character and he comes walking in with big old Jordans on, and he's singing his song as the character. Some of the things ... I don't know Fortnite very well, so please don't laugh at me, people, but you could switch weapons. People were holding up microphone stands with a microphone, and the characters were ... You could have the characters doing the dancing? Oh, no, dude, you got to go watch it.

Rick Barker: But what was neat is that, before that, they had done one with Marshmello, and it had like 10 million people. That's always what I've taught. Go where the people are. If they're on Instagram, you need to be on Instagram. If they're on Facebook, you need to be on Facebook. If you're a DJ, go to Twitch. Twitch has been doing really well for streaming shows right now, because they're a little bit more lenient on the copyright infraction. There's all kinds of people jumping all over the internet, and that just gets me excited. I always tell the people, I want to say this the right way, if you're scared to do anything, just quit. This isn't for you. It isn't.

Rick Barker: For those of you that just go in and do it partially, get out of the way. You're just causing noise, that somebody who's really serious about this could be doing. If you want to wake up everyday and get your music heard by the world, the opportunities are there. If you want to sit around and make excuses, those opportunities are there too. But I'm just sitting here going, "You know what? I've got an opportunity every single day." I do this for myself. I go do an Instagram Live and then I'm done. It says, "Oh, 300 people viewed this." I'm like, "I would have had to get on a plane, fly to a location, get in a room, miss time with my family, to get in front of 300 people, or I could pick up Instagram and go live on my patio while having a cigar, answering questions, and do the same thing."

Rick Barker: Then guess what? People then want to go find out more about you guys. That's the thing. It's that reciprocity afterwards. I do a DM. A couple reasons, one, I have fat thumbs. I'm always mistyping stuff. Well, now, I'm like, "Dude, I'll just hold down the microphone button to talk to someone." I love to talk, if you guys can't tell. Well, that's so more personal than just typing something and everybody'll be like, "Holy cow." Or if you want go all out, click and send them a video and say hello and thank you, then that's going to get them one step closer to wanting to buy your t-shirt, wanting to get a ticket to the show, wanting to become a Patreon, or whatever it is that you're wanting them to do. Most artists want it to ... Just people to discover you and go, "Crap. I'm going to buy your CD, I'm going to buy your t-shirt, I'm going to subscribe to your monthly program." No, it takes a little work. Social media, all that is, is a tool that allows you to build reciprocity and build relationships. That's why I love it.

Michael Walker: I love that. Yeah. Biggest challenge that you see with most things is just fear that manifests in a variety of different excuses, but specifically, around maybe the fear of being ... Of embarrassing themselves,

Rick Barker: Well, here's the thing too. If you've got the right people around you and they're letting you know that your music's not up to par, get your music right first, people. Too often, I think, we put it out too early, and then we get some repercussions, because anyone can come and talk smack on the internet. That may be causing the fear. The fear may be, you've tried it before and it didn't work. Most of the time, that's because you were a little too early to the party. I like to do a lot of things offline, then bring them online. Too often, artists are trying to practice online. When you practice online, you're still trying to compete with the best in the world, and a lot of you aren't ready yet. I think that's one of the reasons.

Rick Barker: The other one is that artists just always talk themselves out of things. Everything has to be perfect. I always say, perfect artists are broke artists, because it's never going to be right. Nothing is. A lot of times, as long as the audio quality is ... People won't forgive poor audio, they'll forgive poor video. Heck, everything we do has a filter on it. We're doing everything we can to mess up the picture, but the audio has to be right, and you want to make sure that you're distributing things on the right platform. If you're trying to do a four-minute movie in an Instagram story, it's not going to work. If you've got a four-minute video, put it on IGTV and then share it across to your Instagram. A lot of times, we're not getting the right results from a platform because we're treating that platform wrong. They all speak different languages. They're all better for certain things.

Rick Barker: "Well, I posted my YouTube video in my Facebook page and my YouTube channel is not growing well." Well, Facebook, no one goes to Facebook to watch YouTube videos. If you want your Facebook channel to grow, uploaded it into Facebook, if you want to send people to your YouTube channel, use Twitter. Twitter doesn't mind if you use links. A lot of times, you won't ... I say this too, I need a shirt that says "A lot of times" because I say that a lot of times. Okay. A lot of times, you are basing future work off of your past results, but you did it wrong the first time, so you just stop and you quit. That's why it's great to have coaches. That's why it's great to have mentors. That's why it's great to have these courses that we create, so you could go back and watch the checklist and say, "Okay, if this isn't working, I wonder if I'm doing it right.

Rick Barker: "Michael told me if I keep calling these clubs to try to book gigs and I'm not getting the right responses, maybe I need to go back and see how he told me I should write the email, or what the subject line should read, or what the initial response should be," and things like that. Sometimes we just need to go backwards in order to go forwards, and too often, artists are afraid to go backwards because backwards is painful to them, and backwards was not a very happy place. But sometimes, we have to do that in order to go forwards. I do it a lot in my personal life. I do it a lot in my business life. I do it a lot with the artists that I manage and that I coach. I'm like, "Okay, let's go back and see what might be broken."

Rick Barker: It's just retracing our steps. Just like with anything. With a doctor, they're going to ask you past history. An officer, when he pulls you over, "Where were you tonight?" Everything's about the past. Sometimes we have to go back to the past in order to get to the future. If that makes any sense at all.

Michael Walker: Yeah, that's a really important plan if you-

Rick Barker: Why do I always go deep when I'm with you? I think it's because of those twinkly lights that you have in the back, always make me feel-

Michael Walker: Yeah, there's some magical energy in those ...

Rick Barker: Feels like I'm at a therapy session. We go deep. Our conversations are deeper than any other conversation I have.

Michael Walker: Yeah, yeah. I always enjoy our conversations. I love what you just said, because I feel like personally, that's been a huge important thing that I've done with my business, with our bands, and with our clients, is that act of reflection, the act of having perspective, of taking a step back for a second and just looking at the lay of the land and looking at, what have I done far? What's going on? What are the results that we've gotten far? Then using that perspective to be like, "Oh, there was a big old wall right in front of me. I guess that's why I wasn't getting results, because I just kept hitting the wall. I guess maybe I should go around the wall." Or another way of looking at it is like having a map, having a destination you know you want to go to, but if you don't know where you're at on the map or haven't ... But you don't have a map in the first place, then you're just going to be stumbling around and be like ... How are you possibly going to get to where you want to go?

Rick Barker: One of my mentors says, "The best time to have the map is before you go in the forest, not once you're already in the forest." A lot of times, you're entering these locations with no sense of direction. That can be frustrating too. One of my clients, her name's Susan Shan, she is overcoming her fear right now, where she put it out there, "I'm going live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5:30." She shared with me a cute email the other day, she goes, "Rick, still a part of me is really excited when I see only three people are there." And she seems confident. She says, "Everyone looks at me as I'm so confident." Nobody's really seeing what you're seeing. You're doing just fine, a lot of times. It's what's emotionally going on inside that's causing you to want to get medicated.

Rick Barker: But on the outside, people just like folks who show up. People just like folks that are there, Also too, is I tell people, "As long as you control the narrative." Last night, I'm on my management session with my clients and I'm doing smile direct. I'm not doing it right now because I felt that you were better than the lisp that I would be talking with if I had these aligners in my mouth. I went to them and I said, "Hey guys, if I start spitting all over the place so you can't understand me," and I put my teeth up, I go, "look how good these look." Well, now, no one's going to sit there and judge me. "Wow. That Rick Barker sure doesn't talk very well. Wow. He's got a lisp." No, I just told them why. When you get in front of them and say, "You know what? I'm super excited to be here. I'm shaking like a leaf, I'm so nervous," someone's going to type in, "Don't be nervous." All of a sudden, you're like that little peacock, your little feathers start to stick up.

Rick Barker: The more you disarm people from being able to hurt you ... They can't hurt you if you've already spoke the truth. If they come and talk smack later, your other fans are going to dog them out, and they're going to give them crap. Don't be afraid to let them ... Show your true colors. What was that, a Cyndi Lauper song or something? Yeah, true colors. Don't be afraid to tell them what's going on with you, so that way, if they start talking, you've already said it. It's when you try to pretend that nothing's going on, or you try to pretend that it's not awkward. Have you ever watched that person on stage that they were so awkward it made you feel real bad inside and it made you feel real awkward? That's how it comes across sometimes. When you could say, "Here's what's going on, here's what's happening. We're going to get through it though. I wanted to be able to play you some music," Boom, you jumped right into it. You're okay at that point. Just don't pretend, don't try to fake it. Not a big fan of that.

Michael Walker: That is such good advice, because it really is, when you are honest and authentic and you bring that up and you don't pretend to be something that you're not, then people don't ... I think this was a quote from Jeff Walker, actually. One of my mentors, Jeff Walker, said ... I think it was in the past. He doesn't even say this most of the time, it's just randomly. He just had this little golden nugget of wisdom, was, "If you don't pretend to be perfect, then you don't have to be."

Rick Barker: Ooh, I like that.

Michael Walker: Yeah. That was really good. "If you don't pretend to be perfect, then you don't have to be." There's such a sense of relief, I feel, that comes from that, because like you're saying, I think all of us, to a certain extent, probably feel this ... It holds us back, this sense of perfection, of wanting to be perfect, of feeling, what if it's not good enough? When you realize like, "Look, it doesn't have to be perfect and I don't have to pretend to be perfect. If I let people know that I'm a flawed person, and I'm not perfect, and I'm going to make mistakes," then when you make mistakes, like everyone does, then it's not, all of a sudden, people are calling you out on it and being like, "Hey, no, look, see, he's not perfect." No. Because you are a human, and you don't try to hide the fact that you're a flawed human.

Rick Barker: One of the things that really helped me both mentally, physically, spiritually, financially, was when I stopped trying to be everything to everyone. Because, like a lot of you, I want to help people, but I also realized early on, I can't help everyone. The people that you're trying to help, that are the wrong people, drain you and it brings you down. I spend as much time today repelling the wrong person as I do attracting the right person. You want the fans that are going to love you no matter what. I had a call last night when we do our management sessions, and they were like, "I'm getting overwhelmed with DMs." Great problem to have. She started to get 100+ DMs every time she goes live. She said, "I was trying to answer everyone back, and now people are hating on me because they're seeing me answer other people's questions, but I'm not answering their comments."

Rick Barker: I said, "First, anyone that's quick to go to hate was never a true fan in the first place. Delete them." It's not about the amount of followers you have, folks, it's about the right followers and the engagement. I said, "Second, what you need to do is, the next time you do your Instagram Live, start by saying, 'Oh my gosh, I'm so humbled that all of you are DM-ing me right now ... '" She's a younger artist, I said, "Blame it on your parents. 'But my parents make me shut off social media at a certain time, so I may not be able to get back to you, but don't think I don't appreciate you. At some point I will, but don't panic.'" "Oh, no problem, girl." Blame it on something, blame it on your wife, blame it on your husband, blame it on someone. Humbly be honored that they're leaving you this information, but you let them know, "By the way, I'm not able to get to every comment, I try my best."

Rick Barker: But the workaround on that too, is find those people that are doing a lot of cool things for you and send them a message privately. Don't do it in front of anyone else. You send those private messages to 20, 30 people, guess who are going to be the first 20 to 30 people that buy the next thing that you have to sell, or the next offer that you have to make? It's going to be those people that you said something cool to, but you did it privately. Now private is that new "Let them go brag about you at that point". But a lot of times we would say things because we wanted, "Whoa, thank you for liking me," or we would thumbs up.

Rick Barker: No, the stuff that's going on behind closed doors, and the digital marketing space, and in the internet world, we call it the things that you can't scale are the things that are going to pay off in the long run for you right now. What I mean by that is, we could scale email automation. Somebody sends an email, it shoots it out, someone does this, but it's those things that we do with our personal time that we can't duplicate over and over and over again and put on automation, those are the non-scalables. A lot of the big folks out there in the music industry and digital marketing industry are saying, it's the non-scalable things that are going to have the most impact in your world right now.

Michael Walker: It sounds like what you're saying is that, really, social media allow ... The whole point of it is being able to connect with people and to build real relationships, and one of the best ways to do that is, you have your public-facing things and you're interacting with people, you're doing live streams, but then, really, the super fans, the people who are there for you, who really resonate and really connect with your songs and are your best supporters, they're really going to appreciate it when they get a little bit of that personal touch, that personal interaction, send a private DM, then that's what will light those people up.

Rick Barker: You and I were talking about this earlier, too, is there are some new features that ... There's some really smart people out there. Whether you like Facebook or not, Facebook sees things that are going on in there. "Okay, how can we get in on this?" Couple of years ago, you were allowed to bring someone on with you when doing a Facebook Live. It was a really cool way to interact, and they took that away. Well, they're now bringing that back, but what they've done, that's even more special, that I got excited about, was inside Messenger. You could go into your Messenger and you could look and say, "Oh, Mike Walker," boom, Mike pops up. Then I could go add Greg [Woolnough 00:25:53], then I could go add Luke. All of a sudden, you could have this private conversation with all of you on video, right there on your phone.

Rick Barker: Think about having your super fans. Think about putting a link. You can send a message or link to them, and they could all come in on the same time to just sit down and have a chat with you. How special. Then when you get them like that, trust me, everything you do after that point, because they were invited in on this thing, game on at that point. WhatsApp, they're about to do it, so now you could have people from all over the world that may not be on Messenger. Facebook, at the recording of this, is about to open up the ability for you to charge for your live events. You can charge tickets. We've been helping people make money on Facebook for the last couple years, now Facebook's finally caught up to what we've been teaching. It's of those things where all these tools, if you look at them as, "Oh my gosh, this is a great opportunity to build a more solid relationship with a person," than, "Oh crap, here's another platform I got to be on."

Rick Barker: If you look at it like that, good for you, because I'm teaching other people not to look at it that, and you'll be out of their way. But there's some really cool resources and tools that are there right now. These one-on-one conversations, these live streams, are going to increase that reciprocity and that relationship so that when you get back to touring, which we will, and you get back to having the ability to open up a merch table, which you will, the people that are coming, they're going to be a lot more in tune with who you are as a person. Because think about this, if you don't go on socials and they only see you on stage, they don't know you, there's really no connection. They're connected to your music. Well, guess what? They can get your music for free. They can go on Spotify and Apple. They can listen to your music all day long.

Rick Barker: It's the relationship that they build with you is where the money is going to be made. Ultimately, when they want to buy something, they're buying into the relationship, they're not buying into the music. The music's there, they already know the music. They want to get to know you.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Really good point. Social media, again, it's a way to connect with people and to build the relationship and free to be real, compared to ... They get to see you on stage, they get to see you in your glory, and they get to see this shining example of you at your most polished, but that's almost the opposite. I don't want to say the opposite of connection, because you do connect with someone in that point, but when you're on stage, literally, there's the separate celebrity image that happens, as opposed to when you're behind the scenes, and you're sharing who you really are and the more raw version of you, actually build a real connection and you can build a relationship with someone, and that's ultimately what's going to benefit you and your community that you're building more than just playing live.

Rick Barker: We don't want you to, all of a sudden, just be putting every picture of you doing beer bongs on your Instagram posts. You have to have a presence. Your banners, your ... I always say your feed on Instagram should be as much about music and professionalism as possible, your personality is and the stories, the personality is in your lives and things like that. Don't get too out of control, but you definitely have to have this level of ... I think what Mike's saying, and I like this, is when people see you on stage, they still put you up here a little bit, that's why the stage is risen. Have you guys ever wondered that? Why is the stage risen? It's like they put you up here a little bit.

Rick Barker: Social media let's to get them know, "Hey guys. Yeah, I'm this, but I'm also here with you too." Because before, that's the only place we ever got to see the artists, was that onstage, on the radio, on the GRAMMYs. They were out of reach. Now that they're in reach, now you're seeing a lot of not-so-talented artists killing it and making more money than those people that kept themselves up here. They never changed their thought process to say, "Wow, now there's this relationship." It's the same way. Why hadn't John Legend and Katy Perry and everyone else ever done a Facebook Live up until the Coronavirus? The tools were there. Why was it not important to reach people at home and on their phones before? That's a question I have. I'm like, "Oh, okay. Now it's, all of a sudden, cool because you can't get to them this way. Well, then the artists that were already doing that, they just kept making money. They just started making more money."

Rick Barker: Right now, some people are averaging between 400 to $1,200 a night in tips on Facebook Live. That's always been there, but they had never been taught that. They had always been taught, "People have to pay $200 to come see you play. You don't play for free. You don't give them nothing. You charge them $50 for a t-shirt, and $80 for a sweatshirt, and $9 for a beer, and $20 for parking. You're the star. You're the superstar. They have to pay." Well, guess what, folks? When they're not putting butts in the seats anymore, because there's no places open to do this, all of a sudden, I don't want to say they came down to our level, but they realized, "Uh-oh, if I don't do something right now, when my shows do go back on sale, I'm screwed. Because no one's coming." Now, all of a sudden, you're like, "Ooh, why wasn't I doing this before? Why wasn't it important to build that relationship before this happened?"

Rick Barker: Thank you, COVID. COVID just allowed you to have a better relationship with the person that you've always wanted to get to know secretly. Now, because of this, you're able to do that, and now, because of it, we got to know things about ourselves, we got to know things about our friends, a lot of ugly came out, a lot of beautiful came out. A lot of different things were exposed because of this virus. It was business as usual, for me. It just means that I had more attention. Why? Because the distractions that kept them from getting to know you, like concerts, sporting events, eating out with your friends, going to the movies, with that eliminated, they were looking for relief. And if you were the artist that brought them that relief, when you're looking at your bank statement at the end of the year, you may see a couple extra zeros that wouldn't have been there, had this situation not happened, in my opinion.

Michael Walker: Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point. How do they get started? Would you recommend hashing out a content calendar or a plan, or how frequently would you recommend that they go live?

Rick Barker: Well, the thing is, the only reason that I tell people, and Mike'll give you a link, you can go watch a free training on social media, and it tells you what to do and all that stuff, is the reason that I have people post every day is for one specific reason, it's as you're discovered, what do people see? If someone's an older ... If they have an older audience, they're probably going to find you on Facebook. Whether you want to be on Facebook every day or not, it's completely up to you. I schedule something out on Facebook. Unless I'm live, I'm not in my Facebook feed. Everything is scheduled. I spend a lot of my time on Instagram. What you want to be able to do is figure out where your people are at. You want to be able to post every day.

Rick Barker: Instagram, for example, you could only have 7,500 followers ... Or you could only go follow 7,500 people. Well, that's also true for the fan. If they show up at your Instagram, they discovered you, and they see you haven't been there for a month, you're not giving them any reason to want to follow you. It's like, "Rick, I can't get my followers up." "Well, you haven't been there in a week, why should I follow you? Why should I waste one of my 7,500 on you?" That's why we want to be on Instagram. Twitter, the same way. If we get discovered, we want to be able to drive them over to where it is that they want to become. What I would start with is Instagram Live or Facebook, depending on where your audience is. I wouldn't try both at the same time, especially not at the same time, you'd have to have two pieces of equipment, but I would start with two or three songs just to get comfortable with it. Let people come on.

Rick Barker: We talk a lot about this in that video that Mike will give you access to. Bring them on, have these conversations with them. But that's where I would start. Don't think, "Oh my gosh, I don't have an hour worth of ... " We don't want to hear you for an hour right now. Let us just hear two or three songs. Let's get the ball rolling. Let's get your comfort level rolling. If you record it and it's under 10 minutes ... One of the new things now for Instagram Stories and Instagram Lives, is you can now share them into your IGTV so that they will last longer than 24 hours. Then I like to do what's called recycling your winners, where you bring them back and you repost them and reshare them. That's there.

Rick Barker: Over on Facebook, you can actually take your lives, then you could create audiences with them. You did three or four of your original material, then you could go ahead and run ads to them, to an audience that you think might like your stuff. These live performances could also be working for you after the lives are over. That's one of the things I want to really stress, especially with Facebook, is most of your views are going to come on the replay. Think about this, I was explaining to my daughter this morning, I said, "I went and recorded that presentation, Social Media for Music. I only had to record that presentation one time." I wrote this song. That's my song, Social Media for Music. Well, I can either cross my fingers and hope that people find Social Media for Music, or I could take a couple bucks and I could drive the right attention for people to go watch that video. When that happens, then they have a chance to pay money.

Rick Barker: Well, that's the same thing that happens with your music. You put the video out there, you put it in front of the right audience, you start getting them to come into your world to go to your Spotify page, they listen to your song for 31 seconds, you get paid money. We all have the ability to do that. Once you create it, too often, you never go back to it. You're like, "Okay, I've tweeted about it, I put it out there." Well, not everybody in the world saw it. There's 8 billion people, there's 3 billion just on social. We call it recycling your winners, keep driving people back to your great content every single day. There's a strategy that I teach you on that video, how to take your Spotify and turn your Instagram Stories into your own radio station.

Rick Barker: And also, let you play other people's music on your Instagram Stories, which then builds that credibility. It's like, here's Drake then here's you, here's Ariana Grande then here's you. You're able to really build up your appearance, because, hey, you're on Spotify just like they're on Spotify. It's all your fans need to know. "Hey man, he's on Spotify." Yeah, that's all they need to know right now. Then you start building it up. Other thing is, make sure that you've got yourself dialed in when you start getting all this exposure, to be able to take full advantage of it.

Michael Walker: Awesome. It sounds like it depends on where your audience hangs out, but that's step number one, is figuring out, where do my people hang out? Is it Instagram? Is it Facebook? Then you're getting started, just ... It doesn't have to be an hour long, it doesn't have to be a huge set, just like three, four, original songs-

Rick Barker: Even one song.

Michael Walker: Be performing, going live. Even one song.

Rick Barker: Yeah.

Michael Walker: I love the point that you brought up too, in terms of, I see this all the time, is artists who have an album or have a release or a single or something that they put out a few months ago, and they just posted about it once and didn't really get a whole lot of response. They hadn't previously really built up any sort of audience, and I think they were just expecting that they'd put it out and all of a sudden it would just erupt into flames. This is an analogy I use a lot, is that it's like building a fire in the sense that, your music are like the logs of a fire, and if you throw some logs in a fire pit and then just sit there and hope something's going to happen, nothing happens. You need to drive traffic.

Rick Barker: It goes out. It goes out.

Michael Walker: It goes out. It goes out. You need to drive traffic. You need flames. You need to somehow stoke the fire. Once you get it going and you have these flames, then it keeps itself going a little bit more, but it's still good to always drive traffic. It sounds like what you're saying is, rather than just putting the logs in the fire pit and just sitting there, hoping something's going to happen once, send people to it, send people back to it, and recycle that content and build the flames.

Michael Walker: After this interview, what we'll do is, we'll put a link to a button below that people can go get the more advanced training, where you dive deeper into some of these tools. But when it comes to driving traffic, like new people, let's say someone on Instagram, they want to start doing live streams regularly, and they want to start performing some of their original songs. How do they get started, in terms of attracting new fans who have never heard of them before, to come to their Instagram profile and listen?

Rick Barker: Well, the best way, what I've done, is I like to bring on the people who are watching and have conversations with them in between songs, because then their fans are notified that they're live. Then you can say, "Oh, hey, if you're a friend of Michael, my name's Rick. Michael's been to a couple of my concerts, actually. I would love it if you'd check out my music in your link. This is why we're here." That's the easiest way to do it for free. I sold 200 books in 48 hours by bringing people on, answering their questions, and on the third day, said, "Hey, I got a box of books," and it worked out really well. Those three hours that I spent with people made about nine grand. I didn't pay for ads, I didn't pay for everything. If you're on a budget, bring people on live, ask people to share, thank them for sharing your stuff. That's the only way new people are going to find you, is if other people are sharing you. That's number one.

Rick Barker: Number two, is you're a business and you need to invest in your business. You need to do some marketing in your business. If you do not, your business will die. You could spend a couple bucks driving people, fans of other artists, let them see your video. Once they watch your video, then we show them another video with more stuff, and then we give them an opportunity to come hang out with you and buy them to a live show, and buy them to something exclusive, something where they would want to give you their email address to get that secret information that you want to get for them. But you have to go out. They're either going to find you because they ...

Rick Barker: It's the same way with anything. If somebody recommends a movie to me that they saw, that they liked, that's how I heard about the movie, that's how that movie got my new eyeballs. Or I saw the advertisement on television. Music's really no different, and I think sometimes we think it is, but it's really not. It's a business. How do you get people into the door? Well, it's great to get them into the door, how do you keep them into the door? Quality food, quality product, quality service. So let's make sure that you have quality food, quality product, quality service, if that makes sense.

Michael Walker: Totally makes sense. There's two different elements of it. This is business 101. Traffic and conversion, that's what all of it is about. It sounds like the analogy just uses, one, providing the service, providing the value, providing the connection, so that when they show up there's something there, and they're connecting with you and it's valuable. But then if that's all you have, then that's not enough. The fire isn't going to start, it's just going to be the logs. It's also driving traffic, and the way you can drive traffic is the way that you drive traffic for any sort of business, which is, one, through word of mouth, through referrals, through incentivizing. That's a really cool strategy. I haven't heard that before, that bringing people onto your live stream on Instagram actually notifies all of their followers that they're going live.

Rick Barker: The only platform that does that. That's great. Well, now Facebook will, again, now that you've been able to do that, but that's ... I call it building lookalike audiences in real time.

Michael Walker: I love it. That's awesome. You actually can benefit by having your fans come on live. You talk about creating a special experience for them. Some of the coolest things you can do with live is bring someone on stage, and they're going to remember that for the rest of their life. Giving people that opportunity during your live streams, not only is it great for them building that connection, but all of their followers get notified as well.

Rick Barker: Well, I have an interesting story for you. One of my young artists, [Jordanna 00:42:43], she came and I said, "Start letting them take screenshot selfies with you." They would play and everybody was coming and going, "Can I come on and take a selfie? Can I come on and take a selfie?" At the end of every one of our lives, there were like a hundred other people sharing this. She went from a thousand to almost 14,000 new followers on her Instagram page in like 45 days from the selfie cam. People are wanting to screenshot. Once one person did it, everyone wanted to do it. I said, "You don't even have to answer questions. You just bring people on to let them take pictures." Then their friends say, "I want to take her picture. I want to share and show off to all my friends that I got to take ... "

Rick Barker: Let's feed their egos, people. Let's feed their egos and let them run with it. But man, we watched that thing go up. Seth Mosley, dear friend of mine, hit songwriter, Grammy Award winning producer. He's the one who would introduce Jordanna to me. He's like, "Dude, her socials have blown up. What did you tell her to do?" I said, "I've just got her taking ... Letting people do screenshot selfies with her and they're just sharing it like crazy." Now, on occasion, when I do something, if I'm going live and something's fun, I'll do a screenshot selfie and then I'll share it, and then it gets shared, and then someone will, randomly, down the road, come to me, say, "Hey, I saw you on my buddies page. I understand you teach in the music space." I'm like, "Why, yes I do." All I did was something that was free, but it's the thing.

Rick Barker: Here's the thing, guys, knowing what to do with the tools is what's more important than having the tools. II know a lot of people that have a whole toolbox of tools that they don't know how to use. What's worse is when people assume they know how to use these tools, then you go look at their stuff and you're like, "Really? Come on." Take the time to educate yourself, take the time to find the right tools. Not every tool is right for whatever job that it is that you're doing. I do not have all the tools in my toolbox, I only have the tools that work for what it is that I want to get done. I don't need a bunch of distractions. I am not the guy that does well with distractions, let me just be point blank. Less is more for me. I'm that guy.

Rick Barker: I'm always trying to teach people how to do more with less. Because the more you can do with less, the more you have to spend on what's working. Some of you spend chasing, I like to spend on what's working. People are like, "I can't believe you spend almost a thousand dollars a day in Facebook ads." It's working. I like to be able to focus my attention on what's working, and if we find something that's working for you, let us continue to feed you the tools, and get the things to give you the things that you need to get done, to continue building towards your dreams. Because when you go to my website, and you can go there, it's rickbarker.com, you'll see my goal is to affect millions of people with songs I didn't write by teaching creatives how to get their message out into the world. That's my mantra. That's what I live by. And in order for a guy who didn't finish high school to be able to do that, I've got to keep it simple.

Michael Walker: I love it. Yeah. Probably one of the top three lessons I've ever learned is the 80/20 rule, and doing less, but getting more results. By doing less, the 20% that causes 80% of the results. It just frees up your time, it makes everything so much easier. You do less but you get way better results, compared to doing everything and being so overwhelmed and stressed out, and hardly getting any results because of it. Quickly, I want to zero back to something you just talked about because I feel like it's so valuable. I feel like it was just like a $5,000 gold nugget that you just dropped in there, and I want to reiterate it because it's just awesome idea, is the selfie screenshot when you're doing a live, bringing them on, so you can ... So that all the followers are notified and ...

Michael Walker: It's just the nature of how it normally works at a live show. One of the best things you can do as a band, and you know this if you play live, is take pictures after the show with your fans. They love that. Then they share it on there with all their friends, and they get much value out of it. It's super valuable. Sometimes, people pay $60 for a VIP ticket or hundreds of dollars for a VIP ticket, depending on the person, just to hang out with them for a second, get a picture with them. Being able to do that quick shot on Instagram, growing from a thousand to 11,000 Instagram followers in like a month, that's like a $5,000 little gold nugget that you just dropped there. Talking about the 80/20 and the value of education and mentorship. That's awesome. I wanted to reiterate that point.

Rick Barker: We just got to feed their egos. When Taylor won the CMT Award, and it was the fan-voted award show, I said, "If you win this thing, let people know we're going to take that trophy out on the road. Since we're doing three-and-a-half-hour meet-and-greets, let's just walk down the line and let them all hold that trophy and take a picture with it." All of a sudden, everyone's profile picture became that trophy and that picture, and we got so much, I'm like, "No one will ever be able to hold one of these, and you're physically telling them, 'You won this for me? I'm giving it to you.'" The next thing you know, it's on the front page of Billboard and we're walking ... And that was just an idea that we had. I said, "Hey, let's let everybody ... Right now, people don't want 15 minutes of fame, they want five seconds of fame. Let's give it to them. Let's let them hold the trophy. Let's let them take a picture." And we did, and that thing killed it [inaudible 00:48:20].

Michael Walker: Oh, what's up guys. Quick intermission from the podcast, so I could tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public, they're normally reserved for our $5,000 clients that we work with professionally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode your Fan Base and Make a Profit With your Music Online. Specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel that's going to allow you to grow your fan base online. The system's designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, and really see what's working best right now for musicians. I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. If that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that.

Michael Walker: The other thing I wanted to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast, is if people click Subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy, and that people actually want to hear. That'll help us reach a lot more people. If you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the Subscribe button. All right. Let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah. Great example of that idea. Yeah, we just need to go win a Grammy Award, all of us, and then we can go

Rick Barker: Make your own damn award. Yeah, make your own award, it'll work good. Yeah, make your own award.

Michael Walker: Yeah. It seems like a common pattern that you notice in successful musicians, successful people, is that they really ... There's this outward flow of appreciation and acknowledgement and raising up the people around them. Appreciating them. It feels good for you as a fan to be appreciated. We all crave that feeling of appreciation.

Rick Barker: When you're taking selfies with them as well, that's like having the award. You just gave them recognition on your platform. You're right. Not everyone's going to have an award, but the thought process was, this picture is going to end up everywhere. That's the thought process I want you to take away from it. Not that you need to go win an award, but if you do something unique and different and give them the ammunition to brag to their friends, boom. You got them with that one.

Michael Walker: Exactly. Another point too, because I see these rapping artists up a lot is, especially at the beginning, before they've built up a big social media presence, before they have like 10,000 followers or so, and they're kind of feeling shy because they're like, "I don't want ... " When they go live, there's only three people or 10 people, then they feel a little bit weird, is acknowledging ... It's almost like we talked about earlier, with not pretending to be perfect, pretending to be someone you're not, what we found has been really powerful as a way to reframe that type of situation, is rather than trying to pretend you're the biggest artist in the world and you have more than three people on your live stream, just being honest and being like, "Hey, you know what? I'm actually just starting out, and you're one of my first few fans ever.

Michael Walker: "I really appreciate you being one of the originals. My goal is that I'm going to be at this level and I want to tour with this artist, and this is what I plan on doing. Trust me, when I get to that point a year from now, two years from now, I'm not going to forget you. I'm going to appreciate you much for that." That lights people up, in a way, where it's like, "Oh, I want to help them get to that level." The value of the photograph with you. Imagine if you had a photograph of John Lennon before The Beatles blew up. It's really cool to be able to know people early on, to build that kind of relationship. That's a really valuable thing you can offer to your early fans.

Rick Barker: The thing, too, is you have to remember, is most of your views are going to come on the replay, so I wouldn't do that all the time because then you might be telling people that you have no fans. What's able to happen is, I always tell people, just start by playing a song, because Facebook's going to take a little bit of time to go let some people know that you're live. It's going to take them a second to get there. Then after that first song, if you see a couple of people that are, "Hey, Michael. Hey, Luke, what's going on?" then go right into the second song.

Rick Barker: Then when you see people, "Hey, don't forget. Tell me where you're from." Any kind of little engagement's going to give Facebook a little bit more information. Then as you grab those people there like Michael say, say, "Listen, you guys, this means the world to me that you're here. One day I plan on being on big stages." Don't say, "I love all three of you." Don't say that, okay?

Michael Walker: Right.

Rick Barker: But what you're doing is you're saying, "I love the fact that you're here right now. One day we're going to look back when I'm on a major stage opening up for so-and-so, that we all started together on my Facebook page. I appreciate you being here." Play and speak like there's a hundred people there, every single time. In the beginning, one of the things that happened, which cracked me up, is two of my artists, they're sisters, and they would sit there and said ... Facebook will go get someone, there would be that little no one button up in the left. They would just start doing their lips, they would start doing their makeup, they were doing all this stuff, thinking that it was a mirror, not realizing that on the replay, that's the first thing that people are going to see. They were wondering why they were getting all these guys going, "Hey girl, sexy lips. Love you." I've said, "Because you've just given these perverts-"

Michael Walker: Oh, man.

Rick Barker: "You were like a mirror to them." There were a lot of things we learned at the beginning with this as well. Now, start like there's a hundred people there. Don't start by talking, because you're only going to get six seconds of people's attention. Go ahead and have the music going, so when they see it on the replay ... Acknowledge a couple people, ask them where they're from, generate that instant algorithmic stuff, and then play another song, then maybe a story behind the song. Talk to some people, now that you're going to be given the chance to bring somebody on live. Use that as a pause, especially if you don't have a lot of music, use your fans, but don't have like eight fans in a row talking. Maybe have a couple come on, ask a question. The way you start the selfie thing, by the way, is that you initiate the first one. "Hey, real quick. Can we take a selfie?"

Rick Barker: Because people don't know what they don't know. Then that triggers everybody else wanting to come on and going, "Hey, can I take a selfie? Can I take a selfie?" You go ahead and instigate it, show them how to do it. You just sit there and go, "I'm going to do the screenshot real quick. Boom. All right. Later, I'm going to share that on my Instagram. If you don't follow me there," now it's a chance for you to tell people what your Instagram page is. "Hey, I'm going to post that on all my socials. If you go to my website, you could follow me on all my social channels." Well, we just sent them to the website. Guess what happened? If you've set your business up properly, we now have a pixel. We can now go send an ad to them later going, "Hey, noticed you stop by the website. Did you get a chance to pick up my free music? Oh, you did. Great. Tell me where to send it. I've got this, this, this, this and this." Now, you just basically really politely said, "Give me your damn email address."

Rick Barker: There's all these strategies, and that's what Michael and I geek out and nerd out on. That's why the people that come into my world, I tell people, "If you're looking to be famous, I'm the wrong dude for you. Go to one of those little artist development camps that charge you 40 grand a year, and let them take your money. I'm not that. If you want to have fun, roll up your sleeves, do the work, create a business ... " I have an automatic response that says, "Look, my only job is to teach you how to build a business, monetize a business and build an audience. I'm not pitching songs, I'm not walking people into record labels." Hey, if you're ready and that could happen, yeah, I'll put you on my back and I'll walk you in there.

Rick Barker: But that is not my business model. My business model is helping you make cash. My business model is, if you could make 50 to 60 grand a year doing what you love, you're making more than people doing what they hate. If you need more money, because you have an active lifestyle, then go get more fans. The more fans you have, the more opportunities to buy. There's only three ways to grow a business: raise your prices, increase the number of things that you sell to people, and sell to them more often, add more catalog in there. Michael and I could sit here and talk all day about this stuff. We just absolutely love it, but we've seen it change artist's lives.

Rick Barker: As great as it is for him and I to get up here and talk, and tell you what I've done, and what he's done, and his band did this, and I worked with that person, I think the thing we're most proud of right now, are our students, that are absolutely starting to replace some of that income from a job that they hate, and are able to work less hours to now be able to devote more time towards music. That's what I get excited ... Yeah, it's great with Taylor, and it was great working for American Idol and the record companies and things like that, but when I get a "thank you" text from a client the night on Easter that says, "Dude, just want to let you know, I made $4,300 last night with that online concert. I'm not saying this to brag, but you were the one who told me to even start doing it." This guy came to me with 400,000 YouTube subscribers and he had a really good audience, he just wasn't monetizing them.

Rick Barker: I said, "Because you're not asking them for money." He's like, "What do you mean?" And all I did was open his eyes to something that was new to him. I think that's what we really try to focus on, is opening your eyes to the possibilities. Now, it's up to you to do the work. If Michael and I could magically fairy dust all of you, we would be charging tens of thousands of dollars for what it is that we do, and not hundreds of dollars for what it is that we do. There is no magic fairy dust, but when you realize that there are these tools that can help you have an impact, that's what's going to be the game changer for all of you. You just need to believe in yourself, get the music right, get your business set up properly, put the logs on the fire, and then go start dousing that fire.

Rick Barker: That was the greatest analogy that you used, but it's up to you to put the logs in the pit. It's not up to us to put your logs in the pit. That's on you. We're going to help you wave the flames. We're going to fan the flames. We're going to help you continue to douse it. As it starts to go out, we're going to show up with the most latest accelerant that's available, whether it be a new social platform or a new strategy or a new something, as long as we can continue to keep those logs burning. You put the right logs on the fire, and then you partner with somebody who could help you keep that thing burning, trees turn into money, and how money is made is from trees. We just went and do a whole tree story here. Yeah, that's how we-

Michael Walker: It all comes back to trees and the logs, or the gasoline poured on the logs. Yeah, that was beautiful. Very well articulated. I want to reiterate what you just said too, because this is something that I wouldn't have necessarily expected early on, when I started my business. It was mostly around, I'm about to be a dad and I needed to support my family, and I was thinking that was ... In that it was incredibly important. In terms of the business, though, what has really fueled me, like Rick mentioned, has been seeing actual ... Seeing the results and seeing the messages and seeing people being grateful. The same thing applies to you guys. I think early on, there's probably going to be a part of you that thinks that you want to be successful, and you want to have a hundred thousand followers, and you want to have this fame.

Michael Walker: Ultimately, that's not going to drive you. The thing that's going to drive you is when you get messages from fans that tell you how your song helped them, and how it saved their life, or how it impacted them in some way, their mom just passed away. It's really the people that you connect with and the contribution, and that's what's going to drive you. To wrap it up, I know we're going a little bit over, because every time we have a conversation, it just-

Rick Barker: How it always-

Michael Walker: I want to remind people too, of the opportunity right now that you have with virtual, with doing live streams, having a virtual tip jar, Rick and I have a mutual client who just reached out to me, and I know she's talked to you too. She's just fully replaced her existing income from her and her partner, from touring and just doing virtual live streams, and having a virtual tip jar and making an income from it. Can you talk a little bit about Lisa and Bob?

Rick Barker: Yeah. The thing right now is that you have the ability, based on how you phrase it, to be able to encourage people to want to support you. We use Venmo, PayPal.Me account, and the virtual tip jar is something like this. A lot of you've asked how you could support us, and we so appreciate the fact that you've wanted to do that. Up in the description box, there's a way, if you want to throw in a couple bucks. It's greatly appreciated. Here's our next song. Boom. You just slightly mention it. Then, all of a sudden, you have your phone set up to be notified whenever PayPal goes off, and after you've played a song, you go on and you go, "Hey Michael, thank you, man. I appreciate that. Yes. Every little bit helps."

Rick Barker: Now, all of a sudden, people, that FOMO, that fear of missing out, that fear of getting a little acceptance and admiration from your favorite artists, now, all of a sudden, because people can put a buck in there, five bucks, 10 bucks, whatever it is, now, all of a sudden, people are really killing it with this. I mean, four or five, $600 a night. Marty sold an online ticket. Let me jump here too. You could do that on Instagram. You could pin your first post, "Hey, and the post that's pinned, or in the links, or just go to PayPal.Me/RickBarkerMusic." You can say whatever it is that you want to get them to do that, but what else you should be doing right now, as well, is, especially if you're not touring, and you had dates that got canceled, is hold up a piece of merch and say, "You know what? A lot of you were excited to come to the show because you wanted to get a t-shirt.

Rick Barker: "You love our t-shirt. Normally, these are going to be $30 at the show, but right now, because you're watching this, just tell me where to send a link. We'll give them for 15 bucks." Now you've just said, "DM me your email address." Now you've just built your email address, you sold a t-shirt. You're able to accomplish all these different things, but you're making it their idea. "Many of you have asked how you can support me," not, "Holy shit. I lost all my shows. I need your money." It's all in the way that you word it. Then after you've done a few of these shows and you see that people are generally throwing in a buck here, two bucks there, three bucks there, the next thing that I would suggest you to do is to go to a hard ticket, is to ticket a show, but make it exclusive.

Rick Barker: "I've got 100 tickets. They're $3 each. And once they're gone, they're gone." Now, all of a sudden, boom, you just made $300. Why? Nobody wants to miss out, and it's only three bucks. Who cares if they show? You've got the three bucks, you send them a replay. Then after a few of those happened with Marty, we were selling a hundred tickets for 75 bucks, but he had that audience. We had a t-shirt that went along with it. We gave them the video and stripped the audio. There's so many different creative things that you can do, but that's how they've been able to do it, is you just keep adding. You're not going to make it from tips alone, you need to start adding in merchandise, experiences.

Rick Barker: One of my friends, Dawn [Beyer 01:04:19], she took that whole process and turned it into a monthly Facebook group, where now, people pay $40 a month to be in this Facebook group. Once a week, they get a concert, they get access to things, she comes in and talks to them. She was able to get 2, 300 people right away to sign up for that $40 a month group. That's residual income, folks. That's what you want. The tips, start getting them in the process of buying the hard tickets. Take them to that next level, as we call it, up the value ladder, then we start selling merchandise and things from them that way. Yes, I got the piano.

Michael Walker: Well, hey, Rick, thank you so much for taking the time to be on here again. I really enjoy our conversations every time we talk. Yeah, maybe it's the lights. Maybe it's the lights.

Rick Barker: It is the lights.

Michael Walker: But there's something magic. There's something magic happening here. Can you tell us a little bit more about this training? I know you have an advanced training, we'll put it in a button below this.

Rick Barker: Yeah. Well, what we're going to do is, I'm going to send you to the free Social Media for Music ... Basically, it's how to monetize your music as a 21st century musician, is what I call it. It's a fancy, cool name. In there, what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you all the strategies that I'm currently using with my current clients, when it comes to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. I'm going to teach you how to go find the most engaged fans of other artists. I'm going to teach you the career killers, the what-not-to-dos. As much as I'm going to show you what to do, I'm also going to show you what not to do. Then I'm going to teach you, what are the strategies that we've been utilizing to take your Spotify channel, and turn your Instagram Stories, and everything into your own radio station, where you get paid every day?

Rick Barker: Then at the end, if you want to go dive deeper into the tactics and learn the what's, we're going to tell you the whys and the whats, then you want to learn the how, then we'll give you that opportunity. It's about an hour's worth of some really cool stuff that I'm using with myself and with my current set of clients. That's on you, and if you want to come into my world after that, that's on you as well. No hard pitch, no hard sell. It's just, if you want to get your music heard by more people, learn how to use the tools, I'm going to show you how to do that.

Michael Walker: Beautiful. Yeah. The way that I would put it too, is that little golden nugget that we had, the $5,000 idea with the Instagram and the selfies, it's like a full hour worth of those.

Rick Barker: Yes.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Rick, dude, you're awesome. Really appreciate you taking the time to be here.

Rick Barker: Yeah.

Michael Walker: 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. 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, 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. The time to be a modern musician is now. I'll look forward to seeing you on our next episode.