Navigating Brand Identity and Ownership

And we're back with another episode of FYM with Ty and Yo. That's my man. This is the FYM Show. And we got a great episode for you guys today. First and foremost though, if you got that Culture Playbook Volume 2, let me know in the comments your favorite chapter. Let me know something about the book that has inspired you in your journey. And yes indeed, give me one of your favorite Ty gems. There's plenty of them in the book. I know you got one in the back of your mind. Leave it in the comments. Um, Ty, today's episode of the FYM Show, we're talking about brands. Building a brand and recognizing really brand value. You know, we were having a conversation before the start of this episode just about like, how do you recognize the value of your brand and what that means when you start talking about making money, right? Um, Ty, I gave you an example of an engineer who was thinking about their brand and trying to distinguish what their brand is. And especially in the music business where You're trying to find your place between, are you someone seeking ownership or are you someone seeking work just to be, you know, work for hire? Now, distinguishing the two is interesting when you're thinking about your brand, right? Because your brand is something that this doesn't just inherently make money. You have to make a choice, right? So tell me a little bit about your brand. What is your brand?

My brand is control my time. Um, and, and that's the, you know, that's like an underlayer of like my mission, personal, my personal mission. Um, but my brand is I'm an entrepreneur, you know, that I believe in independence. I believe in ownership. And so my brand is built around being an independent business owner that, uh, is working for ownership and that's building companies that is, um, supportive of ownership. So that's a lot of things I would walk away from and not do if it doesn't align with, you know, my brand and what my personal mission statement is.

And that also comes down to money as well. Like, you'll walk away from money if it doesn't align with your brand and who you are as a person.

Absolutely.

But were you always like that when you first got started? Did you know what your brand was, or did your brand sort of come to you?

Well, I knew that I didn't want to— I knew I just couldn't do anything just for money, you know. I didn't know how— I didn't know what that was, the articulation of that. I didn't know what that translated to be when it comes to business, but I knew that when it, when it was said and done, I couldn't just do something just because I'm gonna make money off of it. That didn't really, that didn't really— I learned that probably before I was like 22 years old, you know.

But you're also working within an industry where everyone does not have the same brand, so people are going to make money doing things that you wouldn't do. I mean, how do you navigate that if you're talking to someone that wants to be a manager but also want to be a an owner in their companies? Like, how do you let them know? They're like, hey, you're not gonna make the same amount of money as someone who doesn't have that same type of ethics and morals.

Um, if there's a manager who has a strong attachment to being an owner, I'm always going to tell them, like, you should learn business. I'm gonna encourage them to research to learn how to read contracts, to, you know, learn a lot of the base level things that can help enhance your opportunity to be an owner. You know, marketing, business, um, one-on-one, and sales. You know, sales and marketing can kind of be— can kind of work hand in hand, but you should learn sales, marketing, and you should learn just the overall business one-on-one, some of the base level things. To kind of set yourself up for that level of success. But you also got to know, you know, what your product is and who your partners are. Because as a manager or as an engineer, or I mean, I know engineers that partner with producers and they started a company, right? I know managers that partner with producers and they started a company. I know engineers, I mean, um, managers that partner with the artists and started a company. I know lawyers that partner with managers and started a company, right? So you got to understand, you know, what your weaknesses are and and where you can actually add value from that perspective. And then having enough patience to know that, you know, you have to learn a lot of these things. One of the things that set me up for success, it wasn't something that I did on purpose, you know, I just was wearing so many hats and I was just obsessed with learning all of these different roles to try to get something done. So every time I learned something, I would apply it. Right then and there. No matter if I had $100, if I had $1,000, I'm trying to apply it so that I can kind of get more, you know, credit, credit hours, you know, because I feel like I was always in college of entrepreneurship every time I try to do something new or to try a new marketing, you know, uh, um, tactic, whatever the case might be. So for me And when I'm speaking with young managers who are like, man, I want to have ownership, I don't want to just be, you know, thrown out, you got to know that there is a certain level of, um, experiences and things you're gonna have to overcome in making decisions. On one of the big decisions that I made that I knew what the result was going to be is that once I decided that I wanted to like build culture more than just be a manager. I knew that the more that I wasn't with Brent every single day, the distance was going to happen. And with artists, when distance happens from like their managers, somebody else is always going to feel that void, right? And so I knew that if I wasn't with the artist all the time, there was going to be a new person that would have their ear, they would have their attention, that's with them every single day. And if that person is not aligned with the way that I think, then you're going to end up losing the client. Um, and, and, and it happens all the time when you want to go out and you want to build something that's just not focused overall on the artist. And so it doesn't matter what the artists tell you, the artists or the clients are always going to want to feel like they are a level of priority. And it doesn't matter that you say to them Hey, I don't want to depend solely on you, so I'm going to build things around what I'm doing so that when you want to take time off, you want to get married, you want to go have a family, I'm not going to be, you know, out of, out of, out of luck because you're not active, you know, 2, 3 years in a row. Um, so I just took that approach and it didn't lose me all of my business, but a lot of the future business that I could have captured. I didn't, I didn't get an opportunity for that because I started to slowly start to focus on different things. I went back to school, you know, I started going and doing these different cohorts with like Harvard, and you know, I started to go get certifications on the NFL and the NBA side. I made that choice and I started to work towards that, and I still was like doing my job and, and doing a lot of different things, but I wasn't just at somebody's beck and call, um, which I was, you know, I never anticipated on that being my life anyway, um, which is why I have a level of ownership. So when you build something from the ground up and it happens to work, you can actually leverage it and really, really, um, continue to build a life that you can control your time and then be able to, you know, work and help people and things of that nature. So for me, I knew what the— I knew what was at stake when I made that decision to go build. And there's, there's been a multitude of other managers that the artists are just like, nah, like, I don't— nah, if you're not with me every day, you're not traveling with me, like, that ain't— this ain't gonna work. And, and it forced them to kind of be with that artist, and they never was able to build, um, something for themselves. And so, you know, That's something that I personally made a decision on, um, to know and knew— didn't know how it would turn out, but you know, that's a— that was just a part of my brand, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's really interesting that you start the conversation saying about controlling your time, but then you mentioned having an artist that things really work out for you. You're almost on someone else's second call, right? Right? Like, your time becomes sacrificed to make sure someone else's time is on time or is on point and things of that nature. But Ty, when I was growing up, when I would see success, I would always imagine people would want to be in that circle forever. Like, whatever the thing that was successful— like, if Michael Jordan's successful in basketball, I couldn't imagine why would you retire? Like, why would you leave? You're the number one ball player, you're making the most money. What would make you want to leave the game that you're succeeding in. And I guess talking to you right now, I hear like people have callings, they have other things that they're called to do. And it doesn't matter about if you're removing yourself from something that's more successful. You got to kind of follow the spirit that's calling you where it's headed.

Yeah. I mean, some people have terrible experiences going through that process and some people have freeing experiences going through that process. But, but it's a process. It's gonna, it's gonna happen in one shape or one, you know, way. It's a very rare occasion where you meet somebody when they're 18, 19 years old, and rather you're successful or not successful, um, you— it's just rare that you're going to be, um, with that person for 20, 30 years. And the reason why I say that is because when you meet people, if you don't meet people that you're like in the same age bracket with, it makes it difficult to grow with that, with that person, right? So when you meet somebody and they're 19 and you're, you're 28, you know, that is a, that is a, that's a large gap of like connectivity once everything becomes equal. And what I mean by that is when you meet somebody and you're further along in life, it's really not equal. You might have a better identity of who you are, you might be making more money than them, you might have better relationships. But as things get equal over time, not age, just equal resources, now most people, they're going to want to work with people that are around their age, you know what I'm saying? That they can hang out with them more, that don't have the same level of responsibility. Who hasn't clocked into the whole, man, I'm trying to build something that I can own myself. Like, not everybody is thinking like that, right? And so nothing is wrong with thinking like it, and nothing is wrong with not thinking like it. But I think the base level of it all turns into this concept where it's like, oh wow, um, I, I— you're not gonna grow with everybody for no 20, 30 years, especially if you already got a 10-year, 12-year head start on them from an age perspective.

Fair. But do you feel like even if you got a head start age-wise, do you have to have the same brand to collaborate?

Um, I think no. I think that your brand can change over time. I think that you gotta still have the same goal. You have the same goals, right? You know, if your goal is to be successful, one person might want to be successful through this system Another person might want to be successful going through this system, and then they have to find that middle ground that makes sense for them, or, or the business ain't gonna work anyway, you know what I'm saying? No matter what.

No, not to cut you off, it's just I think it's interesting thing about success as an owner and success just financially, right? Because you can be financially successful without having ownership.

1000%. Yeah.

Do you feel like that distinguishment is important.

Yeah, I think that you should know if you want to take on the responsibility of being an owner. Um, you know, you can make a lot of money being number 2, number 3, number 4, number 5, number 6. You don't, you know, you don't have to be number 1 and take on all of that risk and, and, and, and suffering and pain, you know what I'm saying? You don't have to take all of them if you don't, if you don't want to be that, you know.

I just never thought about being number 5. In being rich, you know? Like, to me, number one is rich.

If you didn't— if you're the fifth employee with Uber, you're rich.

Yeah, right. But I guess I never thought about it like that. I always thought that we look at who is holding the trophy at the end of the day. You're looking at who was signing the checks at the end of the day. That is the person that people want to be. Most people don't talk about the fifth employee at Uber. I don't know who the fifth employee at Apple was. I know Steve Jobs, right?

Right.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, that person, they, they're, they're, they're getting the same benefits as number 1, right? When it's all said and done, when that company goes public and that company is like, you know, making a buku amount of money and like you was, you started and you're the 5th employee that got hired, you know, you might cash out your stocks when it go public and you might be worth you know, $35 million. Well, you know, Steve Jobs is probably going to be worth $4 billion. Okay, but it's like, wow, at the end of the day, you're $35 million without taking no risk.

Yeah.

And you can go and retire before you're 35 years old. I mean, that's a win.

That is a win. Yeah, that is a win.

I like— I, I, before I got into music and just on the journey, I, I, I didn't really think about the concept of like being with— in business with people that you meet in your later part of your life for a long period of time, especially if they was way younger than you, you know what I'm saying? This business, this business is so interesting because it creates— it brings out people that you didn't even know that was inside. And, and that's not even the person you're working with directly. It can be like their family members, it can be their girlfriend, their boyfriend, whatever the case might be. So I always just worked to protect myself because, you know, if I didn't think— if I thought that we was going to be together for forever, it would— I wouldn't be so, so protective on making sure that paperwork is in place, all of these different things. You know what I'm saying? But when you are just like, hey man, this business, the nature of this business, no matter what your brand is, no matter what your goal is, it does turn around and be a thing where you're not, you're not working with the same people for forever because art evolves. Humans evolve. Like it's just a part of it, you know? Not in politics.

Yeah, pop, man, they stay in them seats for a long time. And politics. But I looked, I looked at like a J. Cole and Jay-Z. It never occurred to me how much younger Cole was than Hov when he signed to Roc Nation, right? Cole's coming out of college, Jay's 20-year tenure as a rapper already. He has ownership in this brand new company called Roc Nation. He signs his kid from Fayetteville, North Carolina. In my mind, he's gonna treat Cole like Kanye. Right, but Cole ain't Kanye, not in the sense that when Jay did Rockefeller, Kanye's on Blueprint, which is Jay's 6th album. So he's already tenured in that way, but it's a little different because Kanye is coming up now. So Kanye has his career and him and Jay stay like this, but Cole is still younger than Ye, you know what I'm saying? So it's interesting to watch how now Cole is at the end of his time as a rapper, and he's in his 40s. And look at Jay, is in his 60s now, well, moving into his 60s. So I said that all to say, I never— it never occurred to me that they weren't going to be like in lock and step for all of Cole's albums for his entire career. But I never— it never occurred to me how big of a gap their time was. I just see they're working in the same field because I don't think rap gets old. Like, you can rap forever. Well, because you can rap forever don't mean you're gonna be working with the same people forever.

I mean, think about this, bro. Like, you meet these kids, they meet you. You already got your friends you grew up with, they're currently with their friends they're growing up with. The truth of the matter is people do really want to just work with their friends if they can, you know what I'm saying? And, and that, and that, and they might meet new friends along the way that might be younger than them, you know what I'm saying? Some might be the same age, but the truth of the matter is they want to work, they want to work with friends. That's one of the things that I've seen to be very, very, you know, consistent, um, with the music business. Like, if, if I have a friend— I'm 40 years old, I'm 42— and my friend 40, and all of a sudden they got a hit record online, they're not gonna try to go work with nobody. They're gonna want to work with their friends. Like, yo bro, we got one, we got one right now, what we doing?

Yeah, yeah, right, yeah.

But when you got somebody that is 19 years old and they got a record going viral, they're talking to their friends. It might be their brother, their sibling, somebody that's in their ecosystem that kind of know them, know of them. And it's like that in music, you know, it's like that with sports. Like, you might get an opportunity to work with them until they get to a certain point, but man, people gonna bring it back to their core base of people that kind of grew up with them, watched them grow up. People that they can influence, that that's younger than them, that they can look up, that look up to them. It's just, it's one of those things where it rarely does not happen like that, you know what I'm saying?

But is that for the best though?

Um, I don't really know what's good or bad about it, you know what I'm saying? I think for me, I'm just really neutral on it because I've had people like, right now, if I think about opportunities that I wanna, that come to me, I'm trying to find first, I'm trying to find my most qualified friend. Like, I'm trying to find my friend that works somewhere that they probably don't like it, that I consider this person my friend. That's who I'm gonna try to get an opportunity to first, right? Then once that go, I'm like, okay, who's the most qualified stranger? I'm gonna go to my most qualified family member, then my most qualified friend, then the most qualified stranger. You know what I'm saying? But I'm— but I might not even get to the most qualified stranger because my family member might say, you know, I got, I got a person that I know. And a person that my family knows is not necessarily a stranger to me, you know what I'm saying? Um, you know, they might not— I might not know them as well, but I might have— right, them— I might have seen them in passing hanging out with my cousin or my brother, whatever. So when you're talking about these different things, the, the, the, the The, the age difference makes a big difference, and especially as you get older, because as you get older, your brand identity as a business person or as a W-2 or as a manager or whatever you're gonna be, it does change and evolves. Some of it for the good, some of it for the bad, but it does evolve. And when your brand evolves, you can have two people that's different age brackets. Who are on the same alignment because they know exactly what they want and what they need. They have their, their demographic of this person, then they have the older people that they rock with, they giving them that wisdom or whatever the case might be.

I was talking to your brother at your birthday dinner, he was telling me how he came in to help you do some things, I think in 2024.

Yeah, yeah.

2024, right?

Yep.

What made you go to your brother?

Um, one, because I trust my brother and I know that he's gonna work hard and be honest and be honorable. And then on top of it, you know, I got tired of not being able to hang out with my brother around our birthdays because he'll have to work a job, you know what I'm saying? I'm just like— and I didn't think the job was a safe job because he used to drive trucks. It's like, man, you know, you know, driving trucks ain't that really safe. That ain't really something that age— that's like, you know, you can make great money there, but it's a very hard job. You know, you got to always be aware, you got to always be on your ones and twos. You're moving around tons and tons of weight of equipment or freight or whatever the case might be. And I just didn't feel like it was safe. So I was like, man, yo, you could come work with me and we can figure out what that looks like, you know what I mean?

But did you feel kind of proud that you had built a business that allows you to even bring your brother into the fold and kind of remove him from something that wasn't necessarily safe?

Definitely felt blessed. Um, proud, but I definitely felt blessed for sure.

Well, I think, I think about that when it comes to like ownership in terms of being able to own something where you can bring people into the fold, like to me, that's, to your point, a blessing. Like, that blessing of ownership is, is really impressive. But again, you have to be thinking like an owner, that you wanted to be an owner to even build the business to have the blessing.

Yeah, you can help people by having influence at the job that you work at, or you have the influence because you are one of the owners, or you have the influence because you are the majority owner, or you have the influence because you are the only owner. There ain't no other owner, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so I fall into the majority owner aspect of it because I do have, uh, partners across all of the businesses that I do. Um, and so for me, I just felt like, oh, you know, I can spend this money to either go buy a fancy car every year, or I can spend this money to, um, Hire my brother. For me, I mean, it's a no-brainer.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, man, I think it's just really dope to even think about it in that context, because I guess when you're growing up and you're looking at these companies, you're looking at a Nike, you're not really even thinking about a Phil Knight, right? Like, there's a person that created this idea, that they're able to have the type of infrastructure. You just see shoes, you know what I'm saying? You don't have no understanding of how that shoe get made, Same thing with music. You don't have no understanding of these things. So I always feel like when your brand is the owner, you are able to build a Nike, you're able to build a Rockefeller, you're able to build the type of companies that you saw growing up versus just, you know, working for it. Like, it's cool. Like, it's cool to be an upper management at Nike, but like, do you want to have your own Nike? That's an option too, right?

The interesting thing about it is I've always um, sat back and helped other people build their brands and work on behalf of their brand all the way into 2018, right? Before then, you know, I had a company that, you know, that I would use as a business entity, but it wasn't outward-facing. Like, I didn't have a website, I didn't have social media around it. It just was my company that I could use for contractual purposes, right, and tax purposes. But like I would just be like, oh, you got that tattoo on your fingers, let's just start— let's just name the company that. Oh, this is something you believe in, let's just name it. And I would just help them build their brand identity. And once I was like, yo, I want to be— I want to have something that I can just work on and build for the rest of my life, you know what I'm saying? I want to work— I want to find my Def Jam, you know? And through finding my Def Jam, there was a bunch of sacrifices that end up happening which, you know, I don't regret none of them because I know what this company is going to turn into. Um, well, I have, I have a feeling that, that I know what this company is going to turn into. And it's been very helpful to a lot of people thus far. The infrastructure, you know, helping people change their lives, the thought processes of it, you know, the education that it gives, all of those different things, all of the things that I really stand by. So for me, you know, I'm gonna be doing culture for the rest of my life, and culture has made it so that I'm unhireable for other people, you know what I'm saying? Like, you just— I'm not gonna be a— you cannot gonna be able to come just hire me in that aspect of it. It's gonna be some level of partnership. It's always gonna have my, you know, my company involved with it, and, you know, the different branches of the company is involved with it. But I'm like not the one that's gonna be able to just get poached, you know, poached from, uh, my own company, and— or doing a partnership where they're making it so that, oh, if you sell this, you got to work here for 3 years. I'm not doing none of that. Like, if I sell something, huh, that's what you want? If you don't want to buy it, cool, but I'm not signing up to go work nowhere. Uh, everything's going to be through any type of partnership, anything I do, um, through culture. I'm not— I'm not doing nothing outside of that if it don't make sense for me.

And you talk about how you came up with the name in The Culture Playbook Volume 2. You reveal kind of like the— because I don't think we even ever talked about how you came up with the name Culture. I was very surprised to find out that the Migos Culture campaign was a part of the inspiration, and like the Code 45 was a part of the inspiration. I just, you know, these are things I had no idea. Um, but when you, when you knew what the name meant, when you knew what the acronym meant, the you— it felt definitive, like this is forever, like I have my forever, my forever company.

Yeah, it felt, um, like you have these moments where you're like, I can sustain this, you know what I'm saying? I can sustain what this means. I can, I can sustain this. It doesn't, it doesn't, um, jeopardize my spiritual status, my spiritual stance, my my honorable stance, me being righteous. It don't violate any of those things. And I would never age out of it. You know, I would never age out of what this company means from that acronym. And I think a lot of other people will come in and come here, thrive, leave, go do something else. But this will be something that It's, it's, uh, hard. It's going to be hard for me to age out of, um, the overall company positioning, moving, rehiring, reimagining different roles, repositioning people.

But yeah, why the red dot?

Oh, that's the, that's the, um, that's the, uh, blood of Jesus. Yeah, the red dot, blood of Jesus.

Oh, I thought that was interesting that the, that the O is this red dot. I know that every time we do the books, we print the books, Ty's like, it got to be red, it got to be. Every time we go to the printer, it has to be red. That dot got to be red. So the blood of Jesus. Yes, sir.

Yes, brother.

Well, Ty, you know, that's, that's everything I wanted to talk about as far as like building a brand and understanding, recognizing what your brand is and what your brand stands for. Um, So just if you had to advise someone that right now they know that they want to work in entertainment, but they don't know what their brand is, how do you think they should go about discovering that for themselves?

I think they should try a lot of things. I think they should try a lot of things. Um, it's like this buffet of life that you kind of like moving towards. Like, you know, I've seen people make ridiculous transitions. Out of music, you know what I'm saying? Like, that was managers, and this thing— no, now they're leading a defense fund. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, literally the most outrageous spin-offs out of entertainment business. And I think entertainment gives you so much things that you can kind of like think about, dive into, things of that nature. Um, you know, one of the things that I'll leave you with is like when you're building like Rap Portraits with your partner, like, what are you thinking about in terms of the brand of you transitioning and wanting to tell stories in a different way through moving media and things of that nature? So how have you— how has your brand kind of evolved from when you first was like, oh, I want to write about music to like what these stories that you're trying to tell right now?

Ty, it was like transformative for one, because it was accidental. Like it wasn't something we were really actively trying to do. I had met Holland through rapper Fonte from Lil Brother. He introduced us because he was like, you need to know this guy. For whatever reason, he was like, you need to know this guy. And we jumped on the phone because Holland had a web series and I interviewed him for DJ Booth where I was working at the time. And we did a story about the series he had, right? After that, bro, we just kept talking about doing documentaries because we both was like, man, I really like documentaries. We had the opportunity to shoot a documentary and we shot the doc. COVID happens, right? So it's like, what do we do with this footage that we have? Do we hold on to it? Because we had already decided, man, we wanted to shoot like 3, 4 of them. We want to do like a whole series, drop it on YouTube as a collection. But COVID happened, so no one's touring and no one's doing this, no one's doing that. And we decided that we wanted to release it. And that's when we started talking about names and we were just like, what is this? What is this doc, right? What is this video that we recorded? And we fell in name Rap Portraits. And when it came to us, bro, we had kind of like searched online. No one had ever called anything a rap portrait. So that just felt divine. It comes out. It does really well. Then we start talking about doing more of them. And at that point, I had never tried to leverage the goodwill I had through as a writer to try to do something else. And it was very natural, the conversations we were having, the opportunities that came our way and the progress that we had, bro. We were able to kind of like build some real momentum in like 2 years just off of goodwill alone. Like, that was just like the biggest thing for us. Now, I will say what What's interesting is after our first documentary, our big first feature-length documentary, it was like, what do we want to do next? And we were trying to go to HBO, right? We had an opportunity to sign a first-look deal, and everything was just happening, everything was just happening, everything was aligning. Boom, writer's strike happens, kills our deal, kills everything, everything that we had built up by that time, it had killed. And we didn't really know what was going to happen next. And another documentary came our way. And I will say this, for me, that's why I feel like Rap Portraits has always been a blessing, is that whenever a door closed, a door opened, right? And that's something that I just did not imagine happening. Like, I just, you know, you get to a point where you don't know what's gonna be next, and the thing you built continues to create opportunities for itself. So now we're moving into, you know, a new phase with Rap Portraits that I'm really excited about, that I think people will be seeing this year, but it has— the way doors have opened for us, bro, has been nothing but a blessing.

What is the, um, what have you found to be like the baseline cost on average to really execute a documentary?

It depends, because, because we keep a very small team. I can have a shooter go shoot with you for a flight and a hotel. And my man can do audio, he can do visuals, and he can edit, right? So a lot of in-house costs we're able to kind of like just kind of muscle our way through. Now, the bigger the doc, the bigger the cost, right? We have to be there for multiple days, and we have to stay with you for the whole year, you know what I'm saying? That's more expensive. Now, I think the thing is scaling to create a bigger team has been something that I've always been super iffy on because your overhead increases. So like, to keep our overhead slim, we keep the team slim. But that's why for us the goal was to get a partnership where if I can get— let's say if Culture had a TV network, right, and I go to Ty, I'm like, hey Ty, I can get you 7 rap portraits, we can do it at this type of fee, and we can build together. That's what the idea was for like an HBO. We were like, hey, you guys have the capital, to invest in 7 documentaries, I can do it for the low. But I know that the opportunity to do it for like an HBO will pit us over into a brand new audience. I think that's the thing I was chasing. I wanted a new audience. I knew I could make documentaries. I knew I could do it for a cost that wouldn't break nobody's bank. Like, we're doing this for the low ski, bro. But the viewership that we're able to gain, I think the Little Brother documentary right now, bro, we got 445,000 views on YouTube. So I was like, I can take that to a network.

That should have monetized the account alone.

Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, and then because they didn't have nothing that big, and bro, this is an hour and 45 documentary on YouTube where everyone's telling you that short-form content is what people are watching. But bro, I can show you something that's almost 2 hours that we up 400K, that, you know what I'm saying? This is— and Lil Brother's not the biggest rap group. So you give me a bigger rap group, I'll watch what we do, because like, bro, we have a style, we have a format, we have a— we have taste. Like, our taste shows the rap portrait. So, you know, man, I think it's still trying to get— as I moved outside of the music journalism space where I did have a little bit of cushion, moving into the TV and film space where people didn't know me, it did become a little bit harder to convince people that like, hey man, fuck with your boy. But you know what I'm saying, I think we finding our way.

Yeah, makes sense, makes sense. Yeah, you know, that's brand building 101, baby. Ups and downs, ups and downs.

I could tell you about them, my man. But I will say, I think the biggest shocker was like feeling like you had a situation— I guess it's kind of very similar where you would, you know, Brent was doing well enough where you guys could have took a record deal. But you knew very clearly that like, man, you can't offer me this, I ain't going. We ain't really have it like that, right? We didn't have like, oh, you don't offer us this, we're not agreeing. We just wanted to pitch, right? Even see what the conversations were. And unfortunately, Hollywood was going through what they were going through where I couldn't even create the presentation to decide if I wanted to say yes or no to somebody. So I'm still deciding what are my— what is my non-negotiable in terms of like keeping my, my deal points the way I want them, or keeping my ownership the way I want them. But I think this year we're getting closer and closer to having the kind of conversations where that will be a requirement for how Rap Portrait grows, in terms of like, this is what we're not doing, or this is what makes sense for us.

Makes sense, makes sense.

Yes, sir.

That's, that's, that's great insight, man. That's all I have, man. I just wanted to end it off with you talking about what's your brand and what the value is on it, so people can kind of get a good sense that You're trying, you're in the midst of brand reevaluation and transitioning to a space that do not operate like the music business, does not operate like journalism, you know what I'm saying?

At all, at all, bro. It's like, it's a new frontier for me and I've learned a lot and I think it's been very fruitful. So I appreciate you asking me the question. I appreciate that.

Cool, man. Well, until next time, ladies and gents.

All right, y'all, that was the FYM Show with Ty. Yo, please, if you've been in the brand, tell us about your brand in the comments. Let us know what you have decided your brand to be, how you decided what your brand identity is. And if you do need help with that, ask Ty. Ask Ty in the comments. I'm pretty sure he got some great insight for you. Until next time.

Yeah. And also, if you are a W-2 employee, you have a brand as well. There are certain things that you're not going for at your job, talk about that as well. This is not something that you like— if you're not an owner, you can't have a brand. No, you have a brand no matter where you step in, in your day-to-day life. When you wake up and you go into that office and you're a secretary, your brand is that you are going to be early. Your brand is that you're going to be effective, you're going to communicate. Those things are a part of a brand that you're building from your personal output that you're putting into the world from a professional aspect of it. So this is not solely an ownership conversation. Building a brand is a human conversation. It is an activity conversation. It's something that you are— it's a commerce conversation. And if you're getting paid as an owner, you're getting paid as an employee or a staff member, both are as equally important to the ecosystem of professionalism and just as a profession, as professionals.

Amen. So, mic drop right there, Ty. All right, y'all, until next time, peace.