16 Apr 2025 · 33 min
Ty and Yo break down intentional aggression: the difference between calculated confidence and reckless arrogance. They use sports stories, Kirk Cousins' comeback, and music business examples to show how aggressive moves in artist partnerships and personal growth actually work.
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But another thing about me saying that I am a, you know what I am as a manager, I also understand that I do more things than what managers do. I don't just be managing career as I'm investing, you know, I'm looking at legal.
Right?
Right. You know, creating new strategies in terms of where business is coming to. I'm investing tech and we're building out real estate and you know, being a unique partner in like 5050 partnership with an artist in that way, building out their business is unique. So I know that when I'm like, I'm best at what I'm doing, I'm not just talking about being a manager.
Right.
I'm talking about building a music business independently outside of the major label system.
And we're back with another episode of FYM with Ty and yo. Yeah, that's my man, Ty, what's happening? I'm yo, if you're a first time viewer, this is ignorant conversation about wellness. Ty was thinking about sometimes, even with the way YouTube sets itself up where we're not supposed to use certain strong language. But I've always appreciated the F at FYM being such a kind of like four letter word, I would say, because sometimes it's like I just gotta say fuck. I just gotta say fuck. I just gotta say, hey man, I am trying to remove myself from something that does not serve me. And there's not a lot of words when you get serious about how am I gonna get out of where I'm at right now.
Right?
And sometimes it's gonna feel impossible. Right? If you work in any industry or if you're just trying to change your life. Ty once said in the episode that it's like going to war if you're trying to change your life. And when we had the episode, it was always in the back of my mind like, what is, what is war? That's not, like, actual war. Like.
Right, right, right.
I saw it. I saw. I saw. I saw it. I saw it. I saw it in Philadelphia.
It came to me, you know, it came to me.
You know, Philly's supposed to be the city of brotherly love, right?
Not when you're in Philly.
Definitely.
Eagles game, yo, unless you beat their ass, it's a lot of love.
So I'm in Philly. They're playing their first home game, and they're against Falcons. And I knew we were going into something because our hotel. In the elevator, we walk in, my pops got on a. He got a Falcon jersey on. I got a sweatshirt on, and there's a lady in the elevator, and she looked at us and said, y' all brave. She just said it and didn't say nothing else. We come down the elevator from the first floor until we got to our seats. We got hazed by Eagles fans, and the hazing got increasingly worse the closer we got to our seats. It just. I've never experienced, and I've been to a Saints game in New Orleans, and it wasn't as bad as being in Philly.
Only thing worse than Philly is the Raiders.
Okay, I'm not going to find out. But by the time I got in my seat, being surrounded by Eagles fans, I didn't know how I was going to get out of there. Right? Like, you walking in somewhere, you're being intensely hazed, so you're thinking, like, the only way we can get out is we got to win, right? Fourth quarter, we're down. It's a minute and 35 seconds left. The score is 15 to 21. I have lost hope, okay? I have lost hope. I'm sitting in my seat trying to figure out how bad it's about to be to walk out of here. Because we walked in.
It was.
It was. The gate didn't even start yet. It was like, yo, losers. Just losers, man. Y' all about to hold this. L. I mean, they called us outside their names. A guy tried to take my hat off my head. Head, like, just. It started getting intense. So now I'm thinking, bro, we lose this game, it's going to be rough.
Yeah.
Kurt Cousins. Kirk Cousins. I owe you one. He got me out of Philly, cuz Kirk Cousins performed at such a high level. He scored, I think, within like, 30 to 35 seconds. And I've never saw in person an offense so aggressive and so well done, Right? But when we scored, Drake London celebrated. He celebrated so soon that we got a penalty and they pushed us back. So it's a tie game. Now we gotta kick a field goal that had to be longer than it should have been if we would have just scored and kicked. And in that moment, I'm like, if we lose this game, it's because of celebration. It's because we celebrated too soon when it was impossible to win. You won when it was impossible, or you scored when it was impossible, and then you celebrated too soon.
Right.
We made the field goal.
Bing.
When I say the silence in that stadium was deafening. I've never heard of place with 60,000 people so quiet.
How much time left on the clock?
Well, I think it was like 45 seconds, right? They end up. So they had a chance, but through an interception, and then we ended up taking the knee. We won the game, 22 to 21. But it was impossible. It was 0.7% chance of winning. And as we were walking out. Good game, man. Congratulations. Y' all deserved it. Like, just. I've never seen the switch up, but in the spirit of fym, in the spirit of fuck you, money, I saw from Kirk Cousins how you have to perform when you're in a space where you're dealing with the impossible hostile environment. Hostile environment. Don't get no more hostile than Philly affiliate home game, bro. They had a prison at the Priority Stadium. I didn't know that in Philadelphia they had, like, a prison for unruly fans.
Yeah.
So that experience for me was such a. Like, you money. You got you a money player on a Monday Night Football game to perform like that. And I think about that. It's October, we in fourth quarter, and I think about, like, sometimes you're going to be in a space where there's no chance of victory, and I think you gotta perform an aggressive offense is the only way to get out of a hostile environment.
1000%. Fun fact. My first professional NFL game was in Philadelphia.
Really? How was that?
2010. Michael Vick was playing for the Eagles at that time, and I went by myself. That's when I first initially started my sports business as a manager. And I was down for team Philly anyway, so I didn't really, you know, I wanted to catch it, but I. I think I still got footage on Facebook of me, like, recording myself early influencer days, like, fucking young wallow of, like, being at the game. And, you know, I was by myself, so I'm just filming my phone. But Philadelphia has a very interesting place. Just overall through my journey in life. But to your point, when you are in a hostile Environment, you know, being timid can kind of fuck with your confidence. You gotta meet aggressiveness with aggressiveness in those type of gaming situations. Right. To be able to calm down, the. The pace, to be able to get the momentum. And that's, to me, that's how I see, like, life working when you are. I have this concept that whenever I lose, I find ways to give. Really. Right. So if I'm in. Let's say, if I'm in an aggressive situation or, you know, I lose a client or I lose money, whatever it is that I lose, a strategy for me is to, like, find a way to give. Because especially if I lost something that I felt like was stolen from me, like, if I felt wronged, it makes me want to give more. And so that's a form of, like, balancing out by being overly aggressive in something when something else is happening to you. Right. So if you aggressively get taken advantage of, my response is to aggressively give to someone else or to some cause so that. That it can kind of balance out.
Kind of offset it.
Yeah. Huh.
How long have you been practicing that. That kind of mental. I've never heard someone kind of explain it like that.
I'll probably say. Consciously, right. Before COVID Consciously. But when I started thinking back about it, I'm like, man, you know, these things was happening, but it wasn't intentional and it wasn't conscious, but consciously. Since COVID since before COVID Did you.
Ever see someone practice it before you, though? No.
No. This is something that just came up to me, really. Just was a selfish act for me to feel better.
Okay.
Like, if somebody stole something from me, I felt better by saying, all right, that person stole from me, but I'm gonna go and give to somebody else. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be that. Hurt people. Hurt. Hurt people.
Yeah.
I'm not, you know what I'm saying?
Still go rob someone else.
Right, Right. So it of, like, balancing out the scale. Cause I really do believe in, like, balance in the universe, you know, karma. So it was just a way for me to aggressively activate my karma by, you know, that aspect of things. But it's all connected to the same thought process of it. When you're talking about a player like, you know, Kirk Cousins for the Falcons, you know, being aggressive with the offense, trying to win a game, you know, Jalen Hurst had to come out and think the same exact way.
Yep.
Which leads to aggressive, which leads to an interception.
Yeah.
Because he's been aggressive, trying to force things, trying to, like, make take risks.
He played an impeccable game.
Yeah, he's an incredible player, but that's.
Why the clock is running, the score has changed, and now you're in this position. And I really appreciate that game because one. Cousins is a veteran. He's been in the league. Hurts is coming in. He's a newcomer, and his first three quarters were just. I'm here to prove that I'm a player. Right. But I also think Cousins, as a veteran, had been in that position before.
Oh, yeah.
Where it's like, okay, the intensity is high required to play a certain kind of game. And I have that confidence. I think that was an excellent point you made about being timid. There's very little confidence in having a timid mentality.
Right.
Versus an aggression. Obviously, you gotta. You don't wanna be overly aggressive because then Cousins could easily threw the ball away trying to get down the field. But it's the precision, I think, that really caught my eye was just, like, how confident he was throwing it. It was just like. It was just finding the gloves. It was like he kept finding receivers in a way that in the quarters prior, he didn't. It didn't. It did not look that easy.
Right, right, right, right, right.
So the progress they were able to make was one. Because of his confidence. And I also just think, you know, the longer you've been in something, like, you have practices that I'm pretty sure it's based on how long you've been in business, how long you've been practicing. Just even the way you talked about, like, yo, if I. If I. If I take a loss, I give. That's something that you practice.
Right, Right, right, right.
So, you know, now it's like second nature, I would say 1000%.
It's definitely second nature. Definitely second nature. And it. What it does is it keeps you aware about a lot of this shit ain't real. You know, when you steal from somebody, you steal from a human, right? When you give to somebody, you give to a human. It doesn't matter what the cause you think it is, but there's a human on the other side of that, the recipient of those things. Even when you, like, find a pet, find an animal, and you take it to the shelter, you just gave that to a human. At some point, is a human gonna come and be able to utilize that and achieve the full benefits from that act of kindness? Cause you could have easily just, you know, left the dog or the cat or whatever it is, where it's at and kept it moving. The same with being A foster parent or being a foster kid. Like, you know, it's sad that a parent would give up their child, but that child is going to land to a human that probably can't have kids. Right. Things of that nature. So the act of giving for me, and when I'm thinking about the hardship of it, it's just an aggressive way to, like, set the scale, balance the scale in that way.
Now, tell me, how do you not get overly aggressive, though, when it comes to thinking about things offensively?
So the overly aggressive part happens for me. Once you've achieved what your baseline is. Right. If a person, like, let's say if I'm talking with a client, I'm talking with one of my business partners, and we get into a debate, and at some point in the debate, I can identify that I'm winning the debate. Right. I don't need to now be extra aggressive about how I won. I don't need to, like, show off in that way. Right. It's a. You have to have a certain, like, concept in your mind of when enough is enough. Right. You could be aggressively competitive until it feels like you're. You don't have good. Oh, sportsmanlike.
Unsportsmanlike. Unsportsmanlike. Yeah.
Right. So, like, if you are beating somebody by 50 points, you won, once you start, like, doing things that signifies you want to run up the score, then you're being overly aggressive. Right. And I feel like it's gonna happen. I feel like that I wouldn't have seen Georgia play University of Alabama. And University of Alabama was up by, I think, like, 21 or 28 in, like, the second quarter.
Yep.
And there was a. There was an opportunity. When they was up by 21, they was inside the 30. They had the field goal. They could have kicked it. And he went for it. He went for it twice in that type of situation. When it was up by 21 and when I was up by 28. And I said, I was like, that's probably gonna come back and bite him in the ass. And it almost did. And that type of arrogance led to, in my opinion, getting beat by Vanderbilt the following week. Because you now, it's not about strategic coaching. It's about ego and overly aggressive and trying to prove a point. And I try my best to not get into the practice of trying to prove a point. I want to be aggressive to get what I want in business, be aggressive to speak up for myself in relationships, personal or business. But then once I see that I'm getting the respect or I'm getting What I want, I don't just double down on it and make the person feel like they regret losing or like they feel bad from, like, not being that. That whatever that feeling is that you have. You're like, man, I wish I would have never gave that person. It's like the saying, like, you give them an inch to take them out.
Take them out. Yeah.
That's how I feel about being overly aggressive in certain things. I think you can be aggressive to get your goals achieved, but then you can be overly aggressive, which can put you from a. You can be regressed. You can regress yourself from, you know, the. The actual goals that you achieve. Right. So you might drive, you know, your goals is to, you know, beat your competitors by, you know, X amount of points to the point where you feel bad because you overdid it. Now it's a. It's a. It's a negative feeling from that there's.
A penalty, they're going to come with that. And then also it starts to build.
A bad habit, right?
Cause then as a bad habit, you might not. You might. Again, you play a different team and those habits come back and you look. Cause they beat Georgia. Alabama beat Georgia in that game, right? But it was way closer than probably what it should have been.
Like, literally one catch away from being a loss for them.
And you can pinpoint where you just felt like, yo, they not thinking about this strategically. They've allowed themselves to.
I play the game, so I'm looking at it, and I can coach the game if I wanted to. I just don't want to be a coach.
Right.
It's funny because I end up being a manager, which is crazy.
It's not different.
But I was watching and I was like, man, that's a very arrogant call. And I said it twice. I'm like, man, that's some very arrogant coaching. And I feel like the coach being a new coach at Alabama, having to follow behind Nick Saban playing Georgia Bulldogs that then I lost consecutively over the last couple years that the coach felt like he had to prove a point. So it started to feel like they were trying to run the score up. And I was like, wow, this is such a great coaching staff. On the opposite side, you gotta respect them. Even if you got them down by 28 points in the first half. Wow.
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I feel like that's what I felt when I left Philly was like, they had to respect us, you know, they didn't respect us when we walked in. We didn't. We didn't get no respect. We didn't get no respect at all.
Peon.
I think I got called a peon. I'm pretty sure I did. I'm pretty sure I did, bro. They said any word in the book to, like, kind of disrespect your opponent, but at the end of the game, I respected them because of the way.
1,000%. 1,000.
You know what I'm saying? I didn't have no ill feelings toward them. I actually had more respect for the game they played and then the sportsmanship. When we were leaving, there was no, like, ill feelings. And I was like, oh, wow, that's.
So they wasn't. They was aggressive in a competitive way, but it wasn't overly aggressive by being like, y' all still sorry, right? Right.
Cause they had us outnumbered.
Cause we were still outnumbered.
Like, when we walked in, we was outnumbered. When we left, we were outnumbered. But the respect level when we walked out was different. And that's when I was like, that's competition. That's war. But that's what it's not, like, not real war. No one got hurt.
No one got harmed.
But the intensity there. This is the intensity. I think Ty was talking about what you gotta do, what you gotta go through to change your life. It might not be an environment that's hugs and kisses. Yeah. Like, you not gonna.
I mean, I always like to think about the Kendrick Lamar control verse, Right? And me as a manager, I'm always aggressively. And I'll tell people, like, yo, I'm one of the best at what I do. If you have another manager that get into the environment on what I do, they better be really, really great at it, because I'm One of the best. When it's all said. When this shit is all said and done and we start. They start talking about the impact generationally from not only just the music, but just how the different creators was impacted their business, their family. It's just like. So I'm like, yeah, you niggas is managing, but y' all not building businesses. It's a difference. But there is no. There is no me not still being like, yo, like, Tunde love Renaissance, that dope at what he do. Or Barry, since the 80s, Barry's Fire. Like, look at what he doing. There's still me being like EB, you know, from, you know, the 11th and cold. Like, what she's doing with Ghana, or like, you know, Brit with fucking Emotional Oranges or Xtina with Duckworth, or even my peers that work with me within culture. PK and Jay on their management duties. That doesn't mean that I'm belittling. Belittling them as managers and what they're accomplished. It's just that you have your Steph Curry's, you have your LeBron James, you have your KD's, you have your Michael Jordan, you have your Kobe Bryant, you have your Kendra Lamars, you have your Drake, you have your. And it's just like mutual respect. But you're supposed to be aggressive on your stance on what you're able to achieve as a manager, but not overly aggressive where you belittle other people's success just because you have seen a certain level of success. It's a difference.
100%. Not so. It's a confidence.
Yeah.
You want to believe in a confident person. I want you to say, you're the best at what you do, 1000%. Especially, like, stats are amazing, being able to show that. But your stats should not allow you to belittle someone else.
No, no, no, no.
Because then, you know, it turns into something else. Yeah, it turns into something else. Everyone's trying to change their lives and change their family lives and help their clients. You know, it's respect. Yeah. But also it can't, you know, competition drives, great experiences, great moments. If it wasn't the closest game, I would have been bored.
Right, Right.
You know what I'm saying? Like, if the game wasn't close, I would have been like, I left the.
Georgia game 10, eight minutes into the third quarter. It was 30 to 7. I left. I said, this is a wash. Yeah. Because I had to drive back. I'm there recruiting. I met the parents that I met there to meet at halftime from driving Back and we go to this place called Bucky.
Bucky.
I never been there before. Cersei was just so gung ho about going to Bucky.
Yeah.
And I'm like, I'm walking in Bucky. I'm like, this shit crazy. And on the ride to Bucky, we looking at the game, next thing you know, it's 30 to 14, and then it's 33 to 14, and then it's 25 to 33. And then it's 20, 28 or 33. I'm like, whoa, what the fuck is going on? Then they missed an extra point at some point. A two bucket version at some point. Next they know they scored a touchdown. It's 34 to 33 as we're leaving Buc EE's at this point.
Oh, man.
And we was like, damn, we left too early. But we still had to drive. So that drive was like three hours. So we wanted to get out ahead of that. But you said a good game. It ended up turning into a good game because I can't stand standing blowouts. Blowouts just make me want to leave because I'm like, oh, my God, I got to get out of here. You see that competitive. I can't really be excited. I'm gonna be daydreaming on my phone.
Right. I'm not in it.
Yeah. But another thing about me saying that I am a, you know, what I am as a manager, I also understand that I do more things than what managers do. I don't just be managing career as I'm investing, you know, I'm looking at legal.
Right?
Right. You know, creating new strategies in terms of where business is coming to. I'm investing tech and we're building out real estate. And, you know, being a unique partner in like 5050 partnership with an artist in that way, building out their business is unique. So I know that when I'm like, I'm the. I'm best at what I'm doing. I'm not just talking about being a manager.
Right.
I'm talking about building a music business independently, outside of the major label system, 100%.
I feel like when we first talked, you didn't call yourself a manager. Our very first interview, you didn't call yourself a manager. And I had spoke to several managers after that and heard them describ themselves as managers.
Right.
So in my mind, I'm, well, like, Ty has clients. But I start to notice that just in the way people spoke about what they did.
Right.
The way you spoke was different. And I had to stop Saying, oh, Ty manager, so and so. Because that's not what you did, that's not what you do. And it was an inaccurate description of your job.
Right, right, right.
And I think that sometimes when you're doing something new, people might not read it as new until later. Like retrosp. It gets brought like, oh, no, that was not.
Right. So the confusion of it is I'm a partner and one of my titles in that partnership is managers.
Yeah, it's more like management.
Yeah, Management.
Yeah. Right.
So that's a part of my. That's a part of one of my job descriptions as a partner.
Yes.
I post to manage the business and manage the asset, but also a part of my duties as a partner is to invest into the company. Yeah, right. Another one of my duties as a partner. Not only am I investing financially, but I'm in. I supposed to build the infrastructure for the business.
So I have.
As a partner, you have multiple hats.
Yes.
And that you don't. You don't wear multiple hats when you're a manager because there's probably a record label, there's probably a publishing company, there's probably a business manager, there's probably a booking agent, there's probably a lawyer. Yeah. So you're managing the overall moving pieces.
Right.
But you're not the booking agent.
Right.
Sometimes people are booking early.
Yes.
Right. From that perspective. But once it gets like it starts to make money, people kind of like hand it over to the expert.
Yeah.
But even the experts on our team consulted with me to get strategy. So that means that the experts identified that this ain't a manager. I need to run my strategy by them because they're going to have a strategy as well. Even the lawyers would be like, my job is not as intense when I'm working with you because most managers don't even understand contracts like this. And that's no knock to the. A manager is not supposed to understand contracts. Not better than a lawyer at times. They're supposed to know what the weaknesses are and go hire the people to feel those weaknesses.
Right.
That's what management is. You know, a general manager does not supposed to be the expert at all of the different realms of that business. They're supposed to know that they're not an expert and go hire somebody 100%.
But again, I just wanted to note that. Why? So it's so cool that you're having these conversations because it allows someone that might want to be a partner and wear multiple hats like that. They like they have an example now because I don't know if you had an example exactly how you run things.
No, I didn't have an example exactly. How I run was a bunch of, like, Birdmans and J. Prince and Chaka Zulu and Jason Jeter. When you combining partners and Top Dog and, and even Fly from Tig, like, you're seeing these different small businesses who they have these deals with, the artists where they're participating as, like, the manager, the label, the publisher. It's like this 360 approach. My 360 was just to say, hey, artists, let's get together and let's build a360 business that protects both of us. Right. And yeah, you're signed to a 360, but you are the 360 you're in for. You're. You're. You're the partner.
Yep.
You're the artist.
Yeah.
You're the manager, you're the label. You. You're the 360 as well, you know, and so that was me just putting a bunch of things together from my. My ideas and thoughts and, like, make. Just putting my own twist to it. You know what I'm saying? But for the sake of, like, the overall thought process of the conversation is it's important to be aggressive if we're going to have takeaways, right?
Yeah.
It's important to be aggressive for the things you want. It's important to be intentional with your aggression. Right. And it's important to identify in real time when you're being overly aggressive.
100%.
Being overly aggressive is when the arrogance, the ego, and a lot of the other things come in. Being intentionally aggressive is when the confidence, the strategies, the bravery, the confidence, all of these different things comes out of place. And I think that that's a big takeaway for, you know, everybody to understand when you talk about how that positions you for you money.
Yeah.
How that takes you out of the places of arrogance and ego and, like, being stubborn and knowing. Like, I'm confident, I'm intentional and I'm brave.
Amen.
Yeah.
And that is another episode of FYM with Ty and Yo. Please, like, comment, subscribe. Send this to someone who might benefit from a great conversation about aggression, about business, about wellness. Yep. See y' all next time.
Peace.
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