S3 E302: Top 4 Best Practices For Success in Business | FYM
Worldwide Ty breaks down four practices for building a sustainable music career: investing in infrastructure like STEM, managing overhead, controlling your presentation, and defining success on your own terms. The focus is on protecting your time and values as an independent artist or manager.
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People think that you have to look like you got money to build a business in the music business. It's the only business in the world where people think you gotta look like you're making money to actually make money.
Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back to another episode of you Money with Ty. Yo, that's my man Ty.
What's happening?
And we are a podcast about wellness and business. Yeah. And what are we talking about today, Ty, man?
We are talking about the top four things that you should be thinking about if you're going to be successful in the music business. Pre success and after success.
Okay, Ty, what is number four?
Number four is invest into infrastructure.
Now, please break down why that's so.
Important when you see success as a independent company or as a business, as a business owner. One of the things why big companies are successful because they invest into project management tools. They invest into, you know, program software, storage, staffing. All of these things is infrastructure. Right.
Which your business will stand upon.
Which your business will stand upon outside of whoever you're in partnership with.
Okay, but why in the music do you feel like that does not happen often, especially with new people getting in the business?
Well, because independence has been, has taken over and people historically have been used to sitting on a major labels infrastructure. So now when you go out and you're seeing success as a, as an indie, if you invest into infrastructure, you'll feel less the need to go and do business with a major label. Not because they're bad at anything, just because you won't feel a lack because you've been investing into your infrastructure. And it ain't overnight as well. They got to be something that you're consciously thinking about and planning for before you make $1.
Now, before we move on to number three, give me a ballpark of how long it took you to build infrastructure for your business.
It was in phases, right? The 2016, I, I figured out a tool called STEM that created an opportunity so that I could pay everybody directly. That alone saved me 5% on business management fees. And it's probably saved me a whole bunch of other money that I didn't even really think about at the time. Definitely saved me getting sued because people like, yo, this song blew up and we ain't been paid. So it created a thing where everybody was on a equal playing field. And what infrastructure really does is that it creates normality. And normality basically means that everybody know when they get paid, everybody know they splits are. Everything is transparent. You can log into a portal to be able to see what is happening with the different things. So. Yeah.
And that consistency helps you build your business a way that made you feel not just that you were in good company with stem, but you can continue to build more infrastructure for your artists and for yourself.
Absolutely, Absolutely.
Because it starts with stem, but then after that you kind of understood, well.
It didn't start with stem. STEM was just the solution. I was thinking about it before.
Okay.
So that's why it's important that why I would say before your success and even after your success. I was thinking about infrastructure before STEM just came along. I was like, ooh, that's what. But if you don't know what OOH is or what that it is because you haven't been thinking about it, and you're just constantly doing the thing that we're gonna talk about, which is number three.
What's number three?
Not managing your overhead properly. This is your personal overhead. If you get a big publishing deal and you take your commission off of, you know, a million dol as a manager and you say, yo, I'm gonna take my $200,000, I'm gonna give me a bus down, I'm gonna go get me a BMW truck. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I'm gonna get me a highrise that is $4,000 a month in downtown LA. And then you're gonna be up and broke in nine months.
Not nine months.
Yeah, money go fast. Because if you making them type of spending habits, as soon as you get the money, one, you're not investing into infrastructure.
Right.
You know what I'm saying?
Right.
And two, you're not thinking about managing your overhead. Right. And so.
Cause you done bloom.
Cause you already in your brain, you balling out you like, you know, Birdman, you know, bling bling. You know what I'm saying?
Why do you feel like that's such a common thing you see in music? Is it because the check is so big that people just naturally feel like, let me go spend. I didn't work for this. Or is it just the lifestyle?
It's the lifestyle. It's. People think that you have to look like you got money to build a business in the music business. It's the only business in the world where people think you gotta look like you're making money to actually make money.
Make money? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I read that money begets money. That people are more likely to invest in someone that looks like they have it than someone who doesn't.
Looking like you have money doesn't mean that you're gonna Be going to debt.
Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? You can talk like you're making money being educated to a certain degree. People can assume that you must have had money to get educated.
Absolutely.
You know what I'm saying? You can't tell if a person know how to code. I automatically assume like, yo, this. How did they learn how to code? They must come from a affluent neighborhood or like, they had these different programs.
They've been educated somewhere.
So I don't. So that's why.
But you don't feel that way about money. Money doesn't tell you about education.
No, no, because you can take money and pay $200,000 for a, you know, ridiculous watch, or you can take $100,000 and go pay for tuition for four years for undergrad degree.
Right.
This all depends on where you hold your values.
Okay. Who taught you about overhead for yourself? Who instilled that in you?
I think I learned about overhead through research and watching other people crash and burn. You know what I'm saying? So, like, it's like that. That number three things you need to know before you get into the music business and even after your success in the music business is so important.
Before we get to number three. Ty, what does it mean to be successful in the music business?
Well, I mean, success in the music business is definitely like this. Like, the concept of, like, beauty is in the beholder, Right. So, like, you gotta almost kind of envision what your ideology of success looks like in general, right?
Yeah. A holistic view of success.
Yeah. And before we even get into, like, this holistic view of success, we got two more topics that's going to really take you to the next level when you do have this. Because we're going to speak it into existence.
Yes.
If you come into the show, you tuning in, you're going to be successful in music. But these same, like, points and tips apply even when you trying to just build a real estate business or whatever the type of business it is. But we'll come to that final two points more towards the end of the show. So you got to stay tuned in as we walk through all these different points. So when we start talking about what does success look like to me, it's like almost asking me, do I like Hyundai or do I like a Maybach? Right?
Yeah.
So if you ask me that question, I'm like, you know, I like a Maybach, but I'm probably gonna put my money in in something that's more similar to a Hyundai or a Honda, because what success look like, to me, is controlling my time. So if I can make money in the music business and I can be able to control my time, I'm successful because if I can control my time, I can control my boundaries, I can control what I intake mentally, all those different things. But I do think none of this.
Has to do what car you're driving.
No, man. I got the most worst advice that I didn't take. Back in 2013, a woman who was very, very, very successful in the music space, when I told her that I was gonna move to la, she was like, if you move to la, you need to get you a nice watch and you need to get a nice car, like a Lexus, nothing too crazy. And I just thought it was the stupidest shit I ever heard. And obviously I didn't take that advice.
You did not.
Yeah, not till later. You know what I'm saying? Not till later.
But, you know, someone once told me the most outcasted person in Los Angeles is a black man without a haircut. Truly, if you black, you ain't got a haircut in la.
They will treat you like you're dirty. Oh, shit.
And this is someone that told me that they tried multiple times to move to la, build their business. That was the thing he took away. He was like, bro, get a haircut, right? Which is not buying, Alexis. But sometimes people do. Your presentation does get some type of, like, who you are.
So this is what's so funny about this, right? People always pick on me about this. People that know me, I be dusty on purpose, okay? Like, I stayed dusty on purpose for so long. Because I don't be wanting nobody to.
