Relationships Matter :: 20/20 Vision

Hi guys, thank you so much for tuning in for the last episode of 2020 Vision. I put makeup on today, I'm so excited. I hate that it's the last one, it's very bittersweet, I'm very sad, but on a happy note, I'm getting my life back because you know how time-consuming this was to not only shoot these, plan them out, and then shoot them, and then, um, to answer all of the comments on Instagram and the emails and the texts and everything that I got. Um, I know a lot of DMs went unanswered. If you guys reached out to me in my DMs, you know that you didn't really get a response, but my email is linked to my Instagram. So if you didn't figure that out, um, you now know. So I want to talk about— I saved this for the last episode because it's, it's, it's so important. Um, drum roll, and we're going to talk about relationships because relationships are the most important thing in the music industry. And I'm talking with my hands, I'm so animated. You just can't see it because they're over here, right? But you can see the shadows of me talking with my hands. Um, relationships matter. And I want to be really careful how I say this because so many of you think that you need to have like a plug, you need to have somebody to put you on And this is not an industry where somebody puts you on. This is an industry where you build a buzz and you build a movement and you put yourself on. And it's that movement that attracts people that are above you in the food chain in the music industry. And in a perfect world, you do not want one of them to scoop you because they're going to either insert themselves into the middle or they're going to take all the money, which is the problem with the music industry. You want to build relationships with people that are in the inner circle that can help you get to the next level without having to sign to them, without having to give up your publishing or your masters. In a perfect world, a lot of you are going to say fuck that, you're going to keep going forward. Somebody's going to offer you, you know, $2,500 in clothes, they're going to buy you a Gucci belt, an iPhone, and you're going to sign to them. Or you're going to get, um, excited by the fact that the person trying to sign you is a star. You're going to want to come up under them because you know that you're as good as they are. You want to hang out with them. The reality is you're kind of a star fucker as opposed to being somebody that's taking this seriously and building your own career. So you're going to sign to the bigger star so that you can come up under them. You're going to see it as the easy way to get on. It's not the easy way to get on. The easy way to get on is basically what this series has taught you. And there's many ways to get on. So the way that I've been telling you is not necessarily the only way. There's many, many, many ways to be successful, but you need to learn all of those ways and do what's best for you. And I'm just sharing with you the way that has worked for me and my clients for over 28 years. And a lot of the guys that I've helped build are still making money in music today. And that's what you want to do. You want a sustaining career. You don't want to be like a designer where you put out Panda and then you're never heard from again. You don't want to be one and done. You want to build a career and be Jay-Z in this shit, you know what I'm saying? You want to be Stevie Wonder or Aretha Franklin. You want a very long career and you just happen to be doing it in rap because you love rap. And most of you, I know there's a lot of you watching this that are singers or songwriters or country or rock or pop. Um, I realize that, that this is expanding beyond just rap, and I'm so thankful for that. But the reason that I focus on rap is because I got into this as a rap fan. I still listen to rap. I love rap. Um, rap is my life, so I am hip-hop to the core. I know you're kind of laughing at that because I'm a middle-aged white lady But I was listening to rap before you were born, so there. All that to say, relationships. So let me come back to the importance of relationships. A relationship isn't you just reaching out to somebody that can benefit you. A relationship is you creating a back and forth, an engagement with somebody that can benefit you. So those of you who just reach out to me and say, Wendy, can you mentor me? Wendy, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? That's not building a relationship. The guys that have built a relationship with me through this process are those of you that, um, took screenshots of my videos and explained what I was talking about and posted it every day talking about what my topic is so that I could just re- um, post that, and it made my life so much easier. And it was such a simple thing, and I'm so thankful for that. And I'm trying to do this without, um, bringing attention to him because I don't want to embarrass him. I don't know him very well yet, so I don't know if by me calling him out if he would appreciate that or if he wouldn't. But you guys can go into my Instagram feed and you can see exactly who I'm talking about. Um, and I'm so thankful that he did that because it gave me an additional way to promote my 2020 series without having to— without it having to be me talking about my 2020 series. It came from a third party and from a rapper. How cool is that? So, um, that's how you build a relationship. You do something that you think could really help somebody without them having to ask for it. And I do that in my career all the time. You know, when I first met Fly from Think It's a Game I was so excited that he was an independent rap record label in Atlanta that I took him to meet with a label in Nashville, a rap record label in Nashville. I took him to meet with Travis at Strange Music so that he could see how they did it. I wanted him to have every, um, every asset at his disposal that I had in order so that he would have a circle of people to call for help when he needed help, because I loved that he wasn't playing the advance game with a major label and giving up his masters or his publishing. I thought that was amazing, you know, and I did that out of love for him. And I now have an amazing relationship with Fly from Think It's a Game, and I love him dearly. I would fight for him. He's just a really good person, and he's a friend. He's a close friend, and I love him dearly. So that is a relationship. When I was doing deals, um, in the late '90s and early 2000s with the major labels, and, and And I know that you guys know that I don't hate major labels. I just love independents more. But when I was doing deals with the major labels, I was building relationships with the presidents of the companies, like the check writers, and I was able to go directly to them. I could bypass the A&R guys. And, you know, that was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because I was dealing directly with the check writers and I was getting deals done that were amazing leverage deals, but The downside was I wasn't having relationships with the A&R guys inside the building, so there wasn't really somebody there to champion the artist to the rest of the staff. They were being assigned by the president, and while that absolutely had value, because if your boss tells you this is a priority to me, you're not going to screw it up, but the downside is there wasn't somebody in the trenches at the label that was 1,000% behind the artists that I was getting deals for. But to this day, I still have relationships with the heads of labels, you know. And here we are, shit, it's like 20 years later, 15 years later, and I'm still able to pick up the phone and call these guys. You know, when Donald was playing so heavily on the radio, every single person that I had a relationship with at a label aside from the A&Rs were calling me saying, yo, we want to sign him, this is awesome. You know, it was a feeding frenzy, and that's a great thing. I have the ability to reach out to people that I've built relationships with and say, hey, who do you use for your TikTok promotions? Who's your lawyer? You know, I need a business manager. Who's your business manager? Can you introduce me? These are the things that make my life easier. You know, I've got a great relationship with Stem, the distributor, for my clients. Most of the people that run STEM come from a touring background. So when Donald needed a booking agent, all I had to do was call the head of STEM and my rep at STEM and say, hey, can you introduce me to some booking agents? Within 3 days, I was on the phone with 6 different booking agents that I would never be able to get to without having that introduction. So that's what relationships bring you. They're not one-sided. They don't come overnight. It's a little more difficult today to build build a relationship even though we're all more accessible because you can find us on Instagram or Facebook or, um, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a really great place to find executives in the music business, but it's a little harder to build relationships because you've got to find out what's important to them and be able to bring to them things that have value to them. For me, it's research and stats. You know, there's a mother of a rapper in the DC area who, um, started sending me, um, research that she came across on the internet, and we built a relationship. And because I, I love her so much, after, you know, it didn't really take that long to build a relationship, but she's my friend now, you know, and her son just happens to be a rapper. So relationships are everything out here. It's not an industry where you can just pick up the phone and call an independent radio promoter and say, hey, you know, I, I want to hire you. You've got to come through somebody. They want to be introduced to you through somebody that they know and they trust. You know, you can't just really come into this industry blindly and say, okay, I'm going to start a record label tomorrow. You know, who are your relationships? Who are your connections? My relationships enable me to save my clients probably a quarter million dollars when I'm working their projects, if not more, because I can call people and ask for an introduction, or I can ask for help. Or if I see somebody doing something successfully, I can call them and say, hey, how are you doing that? And they're actually going to be honest and tell me, this is how we're doing it, this is what we've done, these are the results we're getting, this is what we tried before that didn't work. Like, do you know how much money that saves when you can get that kind of information from somebody? And you need that. Like, information is what allows you to be successful in any industry, but especially in the music industry. You know, there's a really tight-knit inner circle, and then there's everybody else around that circle. And if you're not part of that inner circle, it's just really hard to get information. And I'm really fortunate that I'm part of that inner circle. And you guys have heard me, like, um, sort of, uh, talk about my weaknesses. I'm really bad at staying in touch with people, and that's a really difficult thing when you're building relationships. You need to just reach out to people and say, hey, how are you doing? What's new? How's it going? And I really suck at that, and I wish that I didn't, but I do. And it's something that I work really hard at overcoming. And because I'm so busy, I don't always get to follow up with people, but I really do try. And I'd like to think that the people I have relationships with know that I'm really trying. You know, another example is, um, one of my clients wants to perform at South by Southwest, and we don't want to pay to get on stages. So I reached out to everybody that I know that is putting on showcases and said, hey, I need a favor. This is what I'm doing. We don't have a budget to pay, but if you've got a slot for me, that would be awesome. Within 3 days, I had 5 slots, and one of those slots is huge. It's a huge slot. It's a, it's a headlining slot. And again, that comes from relationships because we, A, we're not going to pay to perform, and B, we don't really have the budget to perform. I'd rather put that money into Facebook ads and Google ads and a geofence on Snapchat on the, you know, the few days before the show and the day of the show to drive fans there than I would paying somebody to get on a showcase. It just doesn't make sense. So relationships really matter. If you take nothing else away from the past 60 days of me yakking in your face about 20/20 vision, the best vision you can have— I put on makeup for this so that you'd really pay attention, right? Relationships matter. Can't say it any clearer than that.