May 14, 2024 • 37 mins
Ep. 165 Ryan Leslie is a Grammy nominated musician and producer, and founder at SuperPhone which helps creatives and businesses increase engagement, drive revenue, and build better relationships with SMS / MMS marketing.
On this episode, Ryan talks with AfroTech's Will Lucas about the economics of the music industry, why artists are selling their catalogs, and how creatives get wealthy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Will Lucas and this is black Tach, Green Money.
Ryan Leslie is a Grammy nominated musician and producer, having
produced hits for artists like New Addition and Cassie, which
he found in nurtured as an artist, and wrote and
produced her hit single Me and You. He's also founder
as Superphone, which helps creators and businesses increase engagement, drive revenue,
(00:23):
and build better relationships with sms MMS marketing. I've been
a fan of Ryan since I heard about his work
in the early two thousands, So this is what is
the phone for me. We're seeing so many of our
great artists selling their catalogs and the rights to their
music for sms that are very large and others that
are at least we as the public don't feel are
large enough. I asked Ryan to explain what's happening in
(00:45):
the music business that's brought on this trend of sell
off with so many others are preaching ownership.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah. Well, I would say for me, when you look
at money in hands versus money in the future, there's
a lot more that can be done with money in it,
and that's what's so important. And so when you have
the ability to navigate financial markets, navigate investments, decide whether
(01:11):
you want to make investments in a number of different categories.
The way financial markets work is it takes money to
make money, and so to actually decide to say, Okay,
maybe I have two hundred million dollars at some point
in the future versus the ability to actually put that
(01:32):
money to work right now, in my opinion, becomes a
no brainer when you have that much future value that
can be unlocked immediately.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So what kind of artists does it make sense for
If you're on the other side, you're a financier and
you're seeing, Okay, here's this artist X and they've had
some pop hits, They've had some hits that you know,
some would argue are not like, you know, classic, but
they maybe hits. At what point does it make sense
for them to have conversations with artists where you know,
(02:06):
though that long term value.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Is there right Well, what I would say is this
is very, very detailed and data driven. So they just
look at the streams. They look at what they would
call steady state, meaning hey, no matter how long it's
been since this record came out, this is how much
money is being generated on a consistent basis, and so
(02:29):
they make an extrapolation on the catalog to decide what
they believe the future value of that catalog will be.
And that's how they that's how they do these deals.
These deals are very, very specific. It had nothing to
do with the subjective. Do I like the songs? I
like the catalog? They literally just look at how many
streams are these records making, and how many streams are
(02:52):
these records generating, and what is the actual what what
will actually be a great return on investment for them
in terms of ownership, and then obviously the partnership and
when we look at some of the big players that
are doing this, the partnerships are able to potentially even
(03:16):
rejuvenate the music. Right. So when you have investors who
also have their hands in film, television, sports, other arenas
of entertainment, then they're able to acquire these catalogs and
then give a song of brand new life because now
it is the soundbed for a hit series somewhere, right,
(03:37):
So they understand what they need to do to actually
take this to the next level. And it's you know,
when you talk about the accounting and the mathematics that's
done in order to come to the valuations of these
catalogs is very it's very data driven.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
At the risk of making this even a little bit
more technical, you know, we hear this argument from artists
talking about, you know, they may get point zero zeros
zero zero five to seven cents on these streams. But
then you have these you know, financers who obviously see
the math and you know, they believe that they can
get their their investment back. What is it that they're
(04:14):
taking advantage of that that artist can't take advantage of
to be able to make that math math.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, they're taking advantage of money up front. Okay, So
that's you just have to think about this, all right.
So if and just for simple math, let's just do it.
Let's think about it in terms of simple math, all right.
So let's just say you got a penny per stream,
all right, instead of breaking it down to the fractional
it means a million streams you would get you would
(04:41):
get ten thousand dollars, all right. So when you have
a record that just you know, goes crazy, right, ten
million streams, one hundred thousand, right, a billion streams, right,
ten million dollars. Right, So when you really think about this,
the ability for these records to actually generate this and
(05:03):
if the artist wants to wait until the revenue is
paid out, then obviously they can wait the difference though,
And you know, this is kind of what I've definitely
worked with a number of artists that have come to
me that are looking for mentorship in terms of how
to get their finances right. Is. Look, when you have
(05:24):
the ability to navigate the financial markets in the right way,
you can take one hundred k today and turn it
into two hundred thousand by June of this year. You know.
So you know, we've got folks, I got our artist managers, etc.
That I work with. They'll come to me the beginning
of the year and say, look, you know, I just
(05:45):
got this advance and I'm looking to actually go ahead
and make it stretch. You know, I know that the
label is going to take care of all of the expenses,
but this advance, I need this to stretch. And so
really it's about giving people the edge education that has
been missing from the our middle school to high school
(06:06):
to college education system. How do you navigate financial markets?
And this is these are these are concepts that are
really you know, very very We talk about middle school
math to understand. They have just been sort of shrouded
in secrecy up to this point. And so the difference
is not that an independent artist or an artist would
(06:27):
not be able to realize that, uh those returns. It's
just do they actually have the ability to sit around
and wait for that to actually be accrued to them.
The difference is when someone has money, their money is
losing money if it's just sitting there. So when you're
an artist and you don't have the money and you're
(06:49):
waiting for the money to come to you, well then
that's great because at some point that is some some
some value that will be accrue to you in the
future when you are financia or you actually are even
an artist that has money that's just sitting there. When
that money is not deployed, then it's actually losing money.
And so that's why I went especially over the last
(07:11):
couple of years, where we saw the rife that was
you know what was we found financial markets that were
reeling from over extension due to all the money that
had been you know, sort of pumped into the economy.
That is when you started to see smart folks looking
(07:32):
for alternative places to put the money to work because
the usual places where they would put money to work Google, Apple, Amazon,
the Nasdaq, the S and P five hundred, those places
were over extended, and that money, while it was deployed
in those places, those far reaches of the financial markets,
(07:54):
was actually moving in the opposite direction that was desired.
And so when you can find and alternative ways to
put the money to work where those returns are let's say,
uncorrelated to the stock market, then that really becomes a
prudent investment.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
You've seen like as many of us have these you know,
fake drake AI, you know, recreations of artists and their sound.
And I wonder with us, with us giving up these rights,
do you foresee any potential regret that may come because
we don't know what you know, these things may be valuable,
what the value of these things may be. Because AI
(08:35):
blockchain the center is happening so fast.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, I think to look at it that way is
really looking at it from a scarcity mindset. Right. It's
almost like when I first got into the music business,
there was a record I had that I thought was
gonna be my singles called hot Tonight. The single ended
up being a single for New Edition and I just
knew at that juncture being creative, when you look at
(09:02):
just life in general, as a creator, you want to
be able to create. And so, yeah, maybe you have
the song that got away, maybe you have the you know,
the show idea that got away nine time out of ten. Okay,
when you decide to put that piece of intellectual property
(09:24):
into the hands of a different custodian, the hopefully that
custodian has an incentive to actually make that a very
increase the value of whatever you have have delivered to them.
And so in a case of new edition, in the
case of writing and producing me and you for Cassie,
(09:44):
for example, instead of thinking of this from a scarcity
mindset and saying, oh, you know, if I give this
catalog away, you know, you know what did I leave
on the table? I am always thinking in terms of
my gift is the fact that for what they just bought,
I can actually create one hundred two hundred one thousand
more and they wouldn't even have to pay me to
(10:07):
do it. It's something I want to do anyway. So
whether they paid me upfront now to do this or
they didn't, I would still be in the studio the
next day. Deciding that I wanted to create. And so
when we look at our lives from that through that lens,
when we look at our lives through that lens, we
are able to really, you know, kind of strip away
(10:29):
all of those kind of distractions around what really matters.
And money really is just currency. It just kind of
flows through accounts if it comes to your account. The
only difference is and the reason why you want it
to flow through your account is because you can exercise
control on where it is distributed. And so really, the
(10:50):
shrewd musician, the shrewd businessman, the shrewd person in general
is looking to understand the science because it really is
a science of how to get currency to flow through
your accounts, because when it flows through your accounts, you
can direct the flow.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I want to talk to you about your brand a
little bit. I've been following you for a long time.
I remember YouTube videos where you would jump off the
keys onto the drums, jump off the drums onto the guitar,
and it will be these You were a pioneer in
that way, you showing that one person could be in
the studio doing all these things. I mean, you had
artists who could do that, but they didn't have the
gift of YouTube to be able to show the world.
(11:29):
And what we've learned about brand is that if you
can build a successful brand, people will follow you wherever.
They'll go, buy your thing, they'll come to your show,
et cetera. Congrats on your successful crowdfunding raise. What have
you learned about storytelling and branding that allows you to
deploy your brand in any direction you wish?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, I think really stories are what connect humans and
even just what we're doing right now, we're telling stories
and that's why people are going to tune in. And
stories are the way that we convey and communicate our
value to one another. And so whatever it is that
you do, your ability to tell a story, a story
(12:13):
of success, a story of challenge, a story of obstacle,
a story where people can relate and see themselves in
that story. That will give you sort of a universal
appeal on a human level. And when you strip away,
hey is this music, is this technology? Is this finance?
And you get down to the human level and you realize, hey,
what is it that people really want? Well, they want
(12:35):
to live their best lives. They want to be able
to spend time with those that they love. They want
to be able to not have to trade their time
to be employed in some kind of work that they
you know, that they that they wish they could do
something else. So when you can help people to improve
their lives in that way, whether it's just hey, you know,
(12:58):
a record that they can play over and over and
over again when they're at the job that they probably
wish they were doing something else, or when when they
are able to learn how to to finance whatever it is,
maybe it's a new business or a vacation that they
might have, or or some medical procedure that will you know,
or to hire a trainer or get to the gem,
(13:20):
whatever it is to eat better. You start realizing that
as you can empower people to live their best life,
the brand therefore becomes universal.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Aside from Prince, you probably want them at least my
earliest memories on people talking about, you know, ownership and
taking your own path in the music business, and again
back to those early YouTube days. What was obvious to
you about because you had labels coming to you saying
here here's the contract, and you decided to take your
own path, what was obvious to you was obviously not obvious.
(13:57):
No point intended to so many other talented me issues.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, I think really, music is one piece and the
business is another. And what we understand now, which became
very very apparent to me early on, is that those
businesses who had a direct relationship with their customers were
(14:24):
going to be the businesses that would have exponential success.
What does that mean? That means that when I am
a massing of following on any platform, that platform, because
it's free, I am the product, meaning that Instagram is
selling me to acquire data and users. Right. And though
(14:45):
it may seem that I am a massing of following,
when I look at the engagement, when I look at
the clickthroughs, when I look at the conversions, I'm saying, wow,
I really don't own these people. And it was very
very i would say, very very clear when we had
built this quarter million person following on MySpace with Cassie
(15:07):
and then all of a sudden that was no longer
the platform DuJour, and so once everyone migrated away, we realized,
oh man, we got to go do this all over again,
and what a what a shame and a waste of time,
energy and resources to go and do it all over again.
So really, for me, it's always just been about understanding
(15:29):
that the companies in which I invested when I got
my advanced checks, the Amazon, the Google, the Apple, the Facebook,
now Meta, those companies were really very clearly paving the
way for businesses that had a direct relationship with their
customers and not just the ability to contact them, but
(15:52):
the ability to build a profile, to personalize the products
and services that were offered. Those were the business that
would be able to thrive, and in their ingenuity and
their ability to create an infrastructure to do this for themselves,
they were able to build platforms on which other businesses
(16:13):
could also be built. The number of people who have
built multimillion dollar businesses on Amazon's platform, the number of
people who utilize Facebook's advertising network to build multimillion dollar
or multimillion dollar businesses, the number of folks who rely
on Google's cloud services, the same cloud services that they
(16:34):
use to deliver their products and services to their users.
You find that the ability to have that kind of
close relationship with those who support you allows you to
refine your products and services so that you can even
price them in a premium fashion, and so that also
(16:54):
reduces the number of people, the number of customers, the
number of supporters that you need to hit a threshold
financially to live and thrive in business. The way that
you were, that you that you aspire and in the
way that you aspire.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
So I became aware of you in early two thousands,
late ninety late nineteen nineties, I was writing for Brian
Michael Cox. I was a songwriter and him and a
guy named a Donna Shropshire, you might know a Donna's
we're having a conversation about you. And we were at
Doppler in Atlanta. Oh, we had stink Onnia in Atlanta, actually,
and the reason your name came up was because they
(17:33):
were talking about ownership and studios like you were. You
were the only guy back then when everybody else was
written our studio time, you were building your own and
buying your own equipment, your own keyboards and your own
drums and stuff. And that's how I became aware of
Ryan Leslie or Less. And we have these conversations about, well,
if we got you know, the Lebron James of the
(17:55):
world to go to Africa and build the NBA there,
like they could own it and they don't have to
be tied to this organization. And if the jay Z's
of the world built over wherever else they could start
their own. Why do those things not connect to reality
in the way that we don't have the people who
have this amount of wealth and power decide to secede
(18:18):
away from institutional organizations and build their own in different ways.
I mean, you have ice Q doing it like with
the Big Three, but you don't have It's not like
a proliferation of people taking it away from the institution
and doing it on their own like you did.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, well, I would say that first and foremost, though,
there is an infrastructure in a history with those institutions
that allows them to continue to grow, acquire, consolidate to
the point where like the government has to get involved
and say, hey, antitrust. Right, So that's number one. Number two,
(18:53):
we also need to think about the fact that, you know,
we are probably just one generation away from having the
kind of wealth that we control as a people. To
do that, when we think of the institutions, those institutions
were built on our backs, and to build on the
backs of those to amass that kind of wealth and influence,
(19:14):
you had to actually you had to do that in
such a way that completely separated them from the math
and mechanics around how to actually generate that kind of wealth.
And so we are starting to see this now. But
how many players in the NBA did it take? How
(19:35):
many success stories and failures did it take for us
to have a billionaire athlete in a short amount of
time as it took for Lebron to get there. How
many artists did it take, mega, massive, ultra multi extra
platinum artists did it take to have the ability for
a jay Z to then shorten the time for Rihanna
(19:57):
to get to that billionaire status. And at the end
of the day, when we think about this, we need many, many,
many many of those folks, and then we also need
sort of care, concern, consideration, and collaboration to actually happen
amongst them. And what we've seen so often, especially in
our community, is that besides, almost in contrast to care, consideration, concern,
(20:25):
and collaboration, we have competition, right, And so when we
have that, it starts to sort of pit us against
one another as opposed to having the kind of fabric
that can actually collectively when the money's pooled, when the
influence is pooled, to actually build the way that we
(20:46):
want to build, and so I think we're probably just
one generation away.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
One of the business lessons I learned later than I
wish I would have, but I did learn it was
about reinvesting the profits.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
So yeah, because you.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
You know, put in nine hundred, you got a thousand,
don't go spend that hundred. Put the one hundred in
to grow.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You know the.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Origination. So obviously you learned that lesson and you were one,
you were the one buying your own equipment in et cetera.
How did you learn that lesson? And how do you
communicate it to other entrepreneurs or creatives who would be
entrepreneurs to take the revenue that they generate put it
back in. Because I heard you say before and the
end of the interview which we were talking about you
were completely fan funded in so many ways.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yes, yes, And I would say that that reinvestment is
on so many different levels. It's not just finances, it's time, energy,
and resources. And those resources are not just finances, it's
time and energy as well. So what I would say
is Number one, I had great mentor. I had a
(21:49):
great mentor and other great mentors, and I showed up
the way I needed to when I had the ability
to actually learn, and I invested in relationship with those
mentors because I wanted to. Just as we saw Rihanna's
ability pathway to one billion dollars was roughly half, if
(22:11):
not shorter than Jay Z's pathway to a billion dollars.
And that really is a direct correlation to the kind
of mentorship, but also the ability for the mentee to
show up and be coachable. And so as I you know,
it kind of touched on the beginning of this interview,
I personally because I am only where I am today
(22:32):
because a great mentor took an interest in actually, you know,
investing time with me. Obviously I compensated that mentor, but
took an interest and gave me a shot. I have
made a commitment that any and I'm talking about any artist, manager, attorney,
software engineer, mail carrier, doordas driver, anyone who has an
(22:57):
interest in understanding the mindset, the mentality, the math and
the mechanics when it comes to money in the markets,
as long as they can come to me with the
spirit of a student and a respect for my time
and the energy and the expertise that I will share
with them, I make it a point to actually take
(23:17):
them under my wing one on one, and I have
literally a program that has been running to help folks.
You know, whatever they're starting with, let's get you to
a pathway to not just six figures, not seven, you know,
let's get you to eight or nine figures. And the
beauty of compounding is that when you have the patience,
(23:38):
you can actually get there. And I've literally shown folks
how to start with a if your investments only. I
was literally talking to one of my mentees today, I said, look,
if your investments grow by thirty eight dollars this year,
I can show you a pathway that you'll leave ninety
million dollars to your family when you pass on. Now,
(24:01):
that obviously means that he's starting at age thirty three
and he's looking to leave whatever he's leaving at ninety
five or one hundred, but all of those years, with
the right kinds of decisions, the right kinds of techniques
and strategies, you can do what so many others have done.
(24:21):
And you know, and then maybe they don't. They're not
the same shade that we are, right, but so many
others have done because they learned it early, and it's
never too late. You know, they say the best time
to start investing was twenty years ago. The next best
time is right now. And so for those where they're
right now is right now. That's the way in which
(24:43):
I lend myself and make myself available to anyone that
wants to learn. And so it's very easy to get
in touch with me. You go to your browser, you
type in text Ryan dot com is going to ask
you for your phone number. And I have built a system.
I've built a technology that allows me to actually find
the people that are really serious about making that kind
(25:03):
of difference. And so it's been super rewarding. And so also,
you know, I was just looking at a documentary around
Warren Buffett and he said, look, you know, at one
hundred billion dollars, you know a guy that's worth one
hundred billion, He said, look at one percent of that,
it still will be so much more than I would
ever need to live. And I'm at a place now
(25:24):
in my life and career that one percent of what
I've been able to mass and earn will allow me
to be very very comfortable for the rest of my life.
So the rest of it I want to actually and
in terms of time as well the rest of it.
I want to be able to pour into folks that
actually want to reduce the time that it takes for
(25:45):
them to realize some of that same success. So that's
the way that I that I pay it forward.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I've been a fan of yours obviously follows your story,
you know, about twenty years now, and one thing I'm
have been I've always always thought it was remarkable is
how you built an international presence. And I wonder, because
you were talking about going to Switzerland and Belgium before
I saw our stars, you know, on stage in these countries.
(26:12):
How did you grow that or was it something about
the music that just spoke to that those audiences over there.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I believe it was really a combination. And also I
believe that, you know, very early on, I was using
technology to identify and pinpoint where the audiences were, and
so when I realized that my listeners were in a
specific locale, I wanted to make sure that I was
providing even higher level of service by saying, hey, I
(26:40):
see that there is an appreciation and enjoyment of the music,
let's step it up to the live experience. And then
I would go and do sort of that research there
and say, okay, what is it that you love when
an artist comes from another country to come and perform. Well,
they said, well, we don't know exactly what we love. Also,
we love the muse us, but we can tell you
what we don't love. I said, okay, well tell me
(27:02):
and they said, well, you know they'll come on, they'll
just you know, have a track playing, and then you
know they'll do thirty minutes and act like you know,
it was such a pleasure and privilege for them to
come over and me on stage, and I said, okay,
I'm gonna do you one better. We ain't gonna just
do the track with the DJ if I have to
pay for it, I'll bring the band out and we're
(27:23):
going to do two and a half hour sessions. Why
because it's music. Music is so beautiful that you know,
you can the record might only be three minutes, but
when you do it on stage, you could do it
for ten minutes and people love it and they're rocking
with you, and so you know, I really just look to,
in any area of my life, deliver the highest level
(27:43):
of service. So if as a music producer, look what
is it that folks need? If folks need x number
of tracks per day they need too, I try to
give them nine. If people say, well, you know what,
it's not enough to just do the tracks, I need
the top line too, where we'll record a top line
four year as well. Well, you know, somebody will come
to you and say, well, you know, I also want
to think about a rollout strategy as well. We helped
(28:04):
to devise that four you as well. And then when
it came down to being of service to my fans,
my community, the ability for them to come have a
great experience, have it curated for them, have them be
able to you know, write in the set list and
choose all of those kinds of different elements of the show.
I think really all of that lent itself to the
(28:25):
relationship that I have to this day, where you know,
my last record per se may have been years ago,
and we'll still fly across on July to eighth, and
we'll fill out a three thousand person venue in Cologne, Germany,
of all places. So I believe that, you know, technology
nowadays gives you the ability to actually pinpoint the audience,
(28:46):
the supporters, where the listeners are coming from, where the
supporters coming from, and then it's up to the entrepreneur
or the business mind of your operation to actually know
what to do with that data. And you know, I
think we're talking obviously about it all being self contained,
and yes, that's great. The other piece of this puzzle
(29:08):
is it's also important to just understand when your special
gift is the creativity and someone else's special gift may
be the business acumen. And when those two minds, those
two worlds combined, you really have a scenario where one
plus one may equally leave it.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, yeah, I told you I want to talk about
superphone just for one second. Many companies have recognized that
email just doesn't do what it used to do. They're
trying to get the phone numbers. Now, how does this work?
How do superphone particularly work to work? I may not know.
I can't put a call to action in every message,
you know, I may need to, you know, just actually
provide value. And it's easier to do. And so in
(29:50):
the top of mind via email maybe a little harder
or maybe not. I'm gonna let you say that.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
In SMS, Yeah, I really look at SMS as a
more inbound versus outbound. You know, I find it a
number of folks to say, oh, yeah, I want to
build a big list, and then I want to you know, broadcast.
I think email lends itself to that kind of exchange.
I believe that the communication channel of SMS is personal,
(30:21):
it's intimate, it's the most important real estate in everyone's phone,
and it works extremely well on the inbound side. So
if I say, and really this is how I launched Superphone.
I said, look, if you want my album, send me
a text. So that means the intent has already been captured.
From the time they send a text, I already know
where this is leading they're looking for the album. So
(30:41):
at that point I can say, okay, great, I want
to provide you the highest level of service. What's you're at,
what's your email address? And where can I ship it?
If I'm going to give you something, if I'm going
to deliver you something that's physical, and so in that exchange,
the intent has already been captured and the ability to
actually have that communication. And also the beauty of a
(31:04):
phone is that it can vary very quickly sort of
upgrade to an actual real conversation. The beauty of thinking
about intimacy when you're thinking about your supporters, friends, family,
followers whoever. It may be. The beauty of thinking about
intimacy and a pyramid is that when you start with
(31:26):
social media you can think about the expected response time
or expected response rate. So when you post something on
social media, people are I guess the response is optional? Right.
Then when you get to email and it's a broadcast,
once again response optional. And even in personal relationship, you
might spend an email and it's very easy to be
(31:48):
oh I and get that or within the spam e s.
Once you move up to text, the text is a
much more intimate and much more important real estate in
someone's mobile device. And then the beauty of text is
that it can actually upgrade to that in person real
time conversation. So if you send someone an email and
(32:09):
they don't respond for a couple of days, you might
actually say, ah, it's all right. You send someone a text,
they don't respond for a couple of hours, you start
getting worried. You on the phone, and it's a live conversation.
Someone doesn't respond within moments, you might have to say, hey,
you all right? Right, So you see that there's sort
of a pyramid in terms of expected response time. And
(32:30):
so with superphone we really want to unlock that SMSs
to voice because of how powerful that communication channel actually is.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I was reading an interview and you talked about this
is a quote from you. I'm fan funded. The people
that come to my concerts and pay double and triple
the prices of an album to watch the music being
performed live is the way that future albums, videos, and
tours are going to be funded. Talk about what you
see when you recognize startups and projects taking on a
(33:01):
lot of investment without that product market fit. You know,
we've seen a lot of companies burn out because they
took a bunch of money and didn't have the revenue
coming in. But just valuations are magical numbers, but they
thereby they give up so much because they don't have
the leverage.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, you know, I think that every sort of business,
and I believe that every sort of business has a
has a unique path. And in the same way that
so many businesses have been successful, the ability to just
apply a template and say this is going to work
(33:41):
for someone else, I believe sort of undermines the unique
value proposition in each product or service that a business innovates.
And so I believe that it's just important to be
almost machine level in your ability to analyze the data
and allow the data to tell the story and drive
(34:03):
your decision making and business. And so you know, in
some cases, growth may be more important than revenue because
to a mass a large audience is when you can
then monetize the audience with advertising, et cetera. So I
believe that every business, every artist, every entrepreneur, really it
really makes sense to find an expert, find someone with
(34:26):
some great experience, whether that may be a mentor a coach,
or even whoever comes in as an investor. They need
to be truly invested in not just a return from
whatever the business may may may yield, but also they
must be committed to the growth not only of just
(34:47):
the business, but the humans that run the business. You know,
we can name off name brands across the board, and
it is those name brands that have leaders business minds
that we relate to on a human level that we
sometimes may remember more. And so in my businesses in
(35:08):
you know, some of the great businesses that I've invested in,
these CEOs and founders have become synonymous with their businesses.
And Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, you know, uh and Elon
musk right a jay Z all right with rock Nation
and many of the other businesses. So at the end
of the day, I believe that when we realize that,
(35:30):
you know, product market fit and just looking at data
in and of itself can help to drive our decisions
at the end of the day. And I think the
the theme of this interview even is just that we
are looking to derive and provide value. That is what
gives us purpose as humans. And so when we understand
(35:50):
how to quantify that in a real way, we can
really find we could really find some extraordinary success.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
All right, Less, It's an honor for me to talk
to you, man, if I'll even twenty five years, so
this is a.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Pleasure, Yes, sir, Yes, sir Man. Well look text Ryan
dot com man, drop the number man. And literally I
say this all the time. I say it on every podcast.
I'm really interested in building real relationships, and you know,
folks have to show up for those relationships. So for
folks that I had people that sent me text messages before,
(36:26):
and we've gone on to you know, co investing businesses together,
we've gone on to you know, take trips together. We've
gone on to you know, build businesses together, and so
I'm very very committed to that being My driving purpose
in life is to be a living example of everything
I talk about, and really that's about connecting on a
human level.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Black Tech Green Money is the production of Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect podcast network in night Heart Media,
and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas,
with additional production support by Sayah Ergan.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And Rose McLucas.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Special thank you to Michael Davis, Vanessa Surrundo, and Maya Moldrew.
Learn more about my guests and other tech This rupt
is an innovators at afrotech dot com. Join Black Tech
Green Money, Share this with somebody, Go get your money
piece and love
I'm Will Lucas and this is black Tach, Green Money.
Ryan Leslie is a Grammy nominated musician and producer, having
produced hits for artists like New Addition and Cassie, which
he found in nurtured as an artist, and wrote and
produced her hit single Me and You. He's also founder
as Superphone, which helps creators and businesses increase engagement, drive revenue,
(00:23):
and build better relationships with sms MMS marketing. I've been
a fan of Ryan since I heard about his work
in the early two thousands, So this is what is
the phone for me. We're seeing so many of our
great artists selling their catalogs and the rights to their
music for sms that are very large and others that
are at least we as the public don't feel are
large enough. I asked Ryan to explain what's happening in
(00:45):
the music business that's brought on this trend of sell
off with so many others are preaching ownership.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah. Well, I would say for me, when you look
at money in hands versus money in the future, there's
a lot more that can be done with money in it,
and that's what's so important. And so when you have
the ability to navigate financial markets, navigate investments, decide whether
(01:11):
you want to make investments in a number of different categories.
The way financial markets work is it takes money to
make money, and so to actually decide to say, Okay,
maybe I have two hundred million dollars at some point
in the future versus the ability to actually put that
(01:32):
money to work right now, in my opinion, becomes a
no brainer when you have that much future value that
can be unlocked immediately.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
So what kind of artists does it make sense for
If you're on the other side, you're a financier and
you're seeing, Okay, here's this artist X and they've had
some pop hits, They've had some hits that you know,
some would argue are not like, you know, classic, but
they maybe hits. At what point does it make sense
for them to have conversations with artists where you know,
(02:06):
though that long term value.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Is there right Well, what I would say is this
is very, very detailed and data driven. So they just
look at the streams. They look at what they would
call steady state, meaning hey, no matter how long it's
been since this record came out, this is how much
money is being generated on a consistent basis, and so
(02:29):
they make an extrapolation on the catalog to decide what
they believe the future value of that catalog will be.
And that's how they that's how they do these deals.
These deals are very, very specific. It had nothing to
do with the subjective. Do I like the songs? I
like the catalog? They literally just look at how many
streams are these records making, and how many streams are
(02:52):
these records generating, and what is the actual what what
will actually be a great return on investment for them
in terms of ownership, and then obviously the partnership and
when we look at some of the big players that
are doing this, the partnerships are able to potentially even
(03:16):
rejuvenate the music. Right. So when you have investors who
also have their hands in film, television, sports, other arenas
of entertainment, then they're able to acquire these catalogs and
then give a song of brand new life because now
it is the soundbed for a hit series somewhere, right,
(03:37):
So they understand what they need to do to actually
take this to the next level. And it's you know,
when you talk about the accounting and the mathematics that's
done in order to come to the valuations of these
catalogs is very it's very data driven.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
At the risk of making this even a little bit
more technical, you know, we hear this argument from artists
talking about, you know, they may get point zero zeros
zero zero five to seven cents on these streams. But
then you have these you know, financers who obviously see
the math and you know, they believe that they can
get their their investment back. What is it that they're
(04:14):
taking advantage of that that artist can't take advantage of
to be able to make that math math.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, they're taking advantage of money up front. Okay, So
that's you just have to think about this, all right.
So if and just for simple math, let's just do it.
Let's think about it in terms of simple math, all right.
So let's just say you got a penny per stream,
all right, instead of breaking it down to the fractional
it means a million streams you would get you would
(04:41):
get ten thousand dollars, all right. So when you have
a record that just you know, goes crazy, right, ten
million streams, one hundred thousand, right, a billion streams, right,
ten million dollars. Right, So when you really think about this,
the ability for these records to actually generate this and
(05:03):
if the artist wants to wait until the revenue is
paid out, then obviously they can wait the difference though,
And you know, this is kind of what I've definitely
worked with a number of artists that have come to
me that are looking for mentorship in terms of how
to get their finances right. Is. Look, when you have
(05:24):
the ability to navigate the financial markets in the right way,
you can take one hundred k today and turn it
into two hundred thousand by June of this year. You know.
So you know, we've got folks, I got our artist managers, etc.
That I work with. They'll come to me the beginning
of the year and say, look, you know, I just
(05:45):
got this advance and I'm looking to actually go ahead
and make it stretch. You know, I know that the
label is going to take care of all of the expenses,
but this advance, I need this to stretch. And so
really it's about giving people the edge education that has
been missing from the our middle school to high school
(06:06):
to college education system. How do you navigate financial markets?
And this is these are these are concepts that are
really you know, very very We talk about middle school
math to understand. They have just been sort of shrouded
in secrecy up to this point. And so the difference
is not that an independent artist or an artist would
(06:27):
not be able to realize that, uh those returns. It's
just do they actually have the ability to sit around
and wait for that to actually be accrued to them.
The difference is when someone has money, their money is
losing money if it's just sitting there. So when you're
an artist and you don't have the money and you're
(06:49):
waiting for the money to come to you, well then
that's great because at some point that is some some
some value that will be accrue to you in the
future when you are financia or you actually are even
an artist that has money that's just sitting there. When
that money is not deployed, then it's actually losing money.
And so that's why I went especially over the last
(07:11):
couple of years, where we saw the rife that was
you know what was we found financial markets that were
reeling from over extension due to all the money that
had been you know, sort of pumped into the economy.
That is when you started to see smart folks looking
(07:32):
for alternative places to put the money to work because
the usual places where they would put money to work Google, Apple, Amazon,
the Nasdaq, the S and P five hundred, those places
were over extended, and that money, while it was deployed
in those places, those far reaches of the financial markets,
(07:54):
was actually moving in the opposite direction that was desired.
And so when you can find and alternative ways to
put the money to work where those returns are let's say,
uncorrelated to the stock market, then that really becomes a
prudent investment.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
You've seen like as many of us have these you know,
fake drake AI, you know, recreations of artists and their sound.
And I wonder with us, with us giving up these rights,
do you foresee any potential regret that may come because
we don't know what you know, these things may be valuable,
what the value of these things may be. Because AI
(08:35):
blockchain the center is happening so fast.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Yeah, I think to look at it that way is
really looking at it from a scarcity mindset. Right. It's
almost like when I first got into the music business,
there was a record I had that I thought was
gonna be my singles called hot Tonight. The single ended
up being a single for New Edition and I just
knew at that juncture being creative, when you look at
(09:02):
just life in general, as a creator, you want to
be able to create. And so, yeah, maybe you have
the song that got away, maybe you have the you know,
the show idea that got away nine time out of ten. Okay,
when you decide to put that piece of intellectual property
(09:24):
into the hands of a different custodian, the hopefully that
custodian has an incentive to actually make that a very
increase the value of whatever you have have delivered to them.
And so in a case of new edition, in the
case of writing and producing me and you for Cassie,
(09:44):
for example, instead of thinking of this from a scarcity
mindset and saying, oh, you know, if I give this
catalog away, you know, you know what did I leave
on the table? I am always thinking in terms of
my gift is the fact that for what they just bought,
I can actually create one hundred two hundred one thousand
more and they wouldn't even have to pay me to
(10:07):
do it. It's something I want to do anyway. So
whether they paid me upfront now to do this or
they didn't, I would still be in the studio the
next day. Deciding that I wanted to create. And so
when we look at our lives from that through that lens,
when we look at our lives through that lens, we
are able to really, you know, kind of strip away
(10:29):
all of those kind of distractions around what really matters.
And money really is just currency. It just kind of
flows through accounts if it comes to your account. The
only difference is and the reason why you want it
to flow through your account is because you can exercise
control on where it is distributed. And so really, the
(10:50):
shrewd musician, the shrewd businessman, the shrewd person in general
is looking to understand the science because it really is
a science of how to get currency to flow through
your accounts, because when it flows through your accounts, you
can direct the flow.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I want to talk to you about your brand a
little bit. I've been following you for a long time.
I remember YouTube videos where you would jump off the
keys onto the drums, jump off the drums onto the guitar,
and it will be these You were a pioneer in
that way, you showing that one person could be in
the studio doing all these things. I mean, you had
artists who could do that, but they didn't have the
gift of YouTube to be able to show the world.
(11:29):
And what we've learned about brand is that if you
can build a successful brand, people will follow you wherever.
They'll go, buy your thing, they'll come to your show,
et cetera. Congrats on your successful crowdfunding raise. What have
you learned about storytelling and branding that allows you to
deploy your brand in any direction you wish?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, I think really stories are what connect humans and
even just what we're doing right now, we're telling stories
and that's why people are going to tune in. And
stories are the way that we convey and communicate our
value to one another. And so whatever it is that
you do, your ability to tell a story, a story
(12:13):
of success, a story of challenge, a story of obstacle,
a story where people can relate and see themselves in
that story. That will give you sort of a universal
appeal on a human level. And when you strip away,
hey is this music, is this technology? Is this finance?
And you get down to the human level and you realize, hey,
what is it that people really want? Well, they want
(12:35):
to live their best lives. They want to be able
to spend time with those that they love. They want
to be able to not have to trade their time
to be employed in some kind of work that they
you know, that they that they wish they could do
something else. So when you can help people to improve
their lives in that way, whether it's just hey, you know,
(12:58):
a record that they can play over and over and
over again when they're at the job that they probably
wish they were doing something else, or when when they
are able to learn how to to finance whatever it is,
maybe it's a new business or a vacation that they
might have, or or some medical procedure that will you know,
or to hire a trainer or get to the gem,
(13:20):
whatever it is to eat better. You start realizing that
as you can empower people to live their best life,
the brand therefore becomes universal.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Aside from Prince, you probably want them at least my
earliest memories on people talking about, you know, ownership and
taking your own path in the music business, and again
back to those early YouTube days. What was obvious to
you about because you had labels coming to you saying
here here's the contract, and you decided to take your
own path, what was obvious to you was obviously not obvious.
(13:57):
No point intended to so many other talented me issues.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Yeah, I think really, music is one piece and the
business is another. And what we understand now, which became
very very apparent to me early on, is that those
businesses who had a direct relationship with their customers were
(14:24):
going to be the businesses that would have exponential success.
What does that mean? That means that when I am
a massing of following on any platform, that platform, because
it's free, I am the product, meaning that Instagram is
selling me to acquire data and users. Right. And though
(14:45):
it may seem that I am a massing of following,
when I look at the engagement, when I look at
the clickthroughs, when I look at the conversions, I'm saying, wow,
I really don't own these people. And it was very
very i would say, very very clear when we had
built this quarter million person following on MySpace with Cassie
(15:07):
and then all of a sudden that was no longer
the platform DuJour, and so once everyone migrated away, we realized,
oh man, we got to go do this all over again,
and what a what a shame and a waste of time,
energy and resources to go and do it all over again.
So really, for me, it's always just been about understanding
(15:29):
that the companies in which I invested when I got
my advanced checks, the Amazon, the Google, the Apple, the Facebook,
now Meta, those companies were really very clearly paving the
way for businesses that had a direct relationship with their
customers and not just the ability to contact them, but
(15:52):
the ability to build a profile, to personalize the products
and services that were offered. Those were the business that
would be able to thrive, and in their ingenuity and
their ability to create an infrastructure to do this for themselves,
they were able to build platforms on which other businesses
(16:13):
could also be built. The number of people who have
built multimillion dollar businesses on Amazon's platform, the number of
people who utilize Facebook's advertising network to build multimillion dollar
or multimillion dollar businesses, the number of folks who rely
on Google's cloud services, the same cloud services that they
(16:34):
use to deliver their products and services to their users.
You find that the ability to have that kind of
close relationship with those who support you allows you to
refine your products and services so that you can even
price them in a premium fashion, and so that also
(16:54):
reduces the number of people, the number of customers, the
number of supporters that you need to hit a threshold
financially to live and thrive in business. The way that
you were, that you that you aspire and in the
way that you aspire.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
So I became aware of you in early two thousands,
late ninety late nineteen nineties, I was writing for Brian
Michael Cox. I was a songwriter and him and a
guy named a Donna Shropshire, you might know a Donna's
we're having a conversation about you. And we were at
Doppler in Atlanta. Oh, we had stink Onnia in Atlanta, actually,
and the reason your name came up was because they
(17:33):
were talking about ownership and studios like you were. You
were the only guy back then when everybody else was
written our studio time, you were building your own and
buying your own equipment, your own keyboards and your own
drums and stuff. And that's how I became aware of
Ryan Leslie or Less. And we have these conversations about, well,
if we got you know, the Lebron James of the
(17:55):
world to go to Africa and build the NBA there,
like they could own it and they don't have to
be tied to this organization. And if the jay Z's
of the world built over wherever else they could start
their own. Why do those things not connect to reality
in the way that we don't have the people who
have this amount of wealth and power decide to secede
(18:18):
away from institutional organizations and build their own in different ways.
I mean, you have ice Q doing it like with
the Big Three, but you don't have It's not like
a proliferation of people taking it away from the institution
and doing it on their own like you did.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, well, I would say that first and foremost, though,
there is an infrastructure in a history with those institutions
that allows them to continue to grow, acquire, consolidate to
the point where like the government has to get involved
and say, hey, antitrust. Right, So that's number one. Number two,
(18:53):
we also need to think about the fact that, you know,
we are probably just one generation away from having the
kind of wealth that we control as a people. To
do that, when we think of the institutions, those institutions
were built on our backs, and to build on the
backs of those to amass that kind of wealth and influence,
(19:14):
you had to actually you had to do that in
such a way that completely separated them from the math
and mechanics around how to actually generate that kind of wealth.
And so we are starting to see this now. But
how many players in the NBA did it take? How
(19:35):
many success stories and failures did it take for us
to have a billionaire athlete in a short amount of
time as it took for Lebron to get there. How
many artists did it take, mega, massive, ultra multi extra
platinum artists did it take to have the ability for
a jay Z to then shorten the time for Rihanna
(19:57):
to get to that billionaire status. And at the end
of the day, when we think about this, we need many, many,
many many of those folks, and then we also need
sort of care, concern, consideration, and collaboration to actually happen
amongst them. And what we've seen so often, especially in
our community, is that besides, almost in contrast to care, consideration, concern,
(20:25):
and collaboration, we have competition, right, And so when we
have that, it starts to sort of pit us against
one another as opposed to having the kind of fabric
that can actually collectively when the money's pooled, when the
influence is pooled, to actually build the way that we
(20:46):
want to build, and so I think we're probably just
one generation away.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
One of the business lessons I learned later than I
wish I would have, but I did learn it was
about reinvesting the profits.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
So yeah, because you.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
You know, put in nine hundred, you got a thousand,
don't go spend that hundred. Put the one hundred in
to grow.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
You know the.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Origination. So obviously you learned that lesson and you were one,
you were the one buying your own equipment in et cetera.
How did you learn that lesson? And how do you
communicate it to other entrepreneurs or creatives who would be
entrepreneurs to take the revenue that they generate put it
back in. Because I heard you say before and the
end of the interview which we were talking about you
were completely fan funded in so many ways.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yes, yes, And I would say that that reinvestment is
on so many different levels. It's not just finances, it's time, energy,
and resources. And those resources are not just finances, it's
time and energy as well. So what I would say
is Number one, I had great mentor. I had a
(21:49):
great mentor and other great mentors, and I showed up
the way I needed to when I had the ability
to actually learn, and I invested in relationship with those
mentors because I wanted to. Just as we saw Rihanna's
ability pathway to one billion dollars was roughly half, if
(22:11):
not shorter than Jay Z's pathway to a billion dollars.
And that really is a direct correlation to the kind
of mentorship, but also the ability for the mentee to
show up and be coachable. And so as I you know,
it kind of touched on the beginning of this interview,
I personally because I am only where I am today
(22:32):
because a great mentor took an interest in actually, you know,
investing time with me. Obviously I compensated that mentor, but
took an interest and gave me a shot. I have
made a commitment that any and I'm talking about any artist, manager, attorney,
software engineer, mail carrier, doordas driver, anyone who has an
(22:57):
interest in understanding the mindset, the mentality, the math and
the mechanics when it comes to money in the markets,
as long as they can come to me with the
spirit of a student and a respect for my time
and the energy and the expertise that I will share
with them, I make it a point to actually take
(23:17):
them under my wing one on one, and I have
literally a program that has been running to help folks.
You know, whatever they're starting with, let's get you to
a pathway to not just six figures, not seven, you know,
let's get you to eight or nine figures. And the
beauty of compounding is that when you have the patience,
(23:38):
you can actually get there. And I've literally shown folks
how to start with a if your investments only. I
was literally talking to one of my mentees today, I said, look,
if your investments grow by thirty eight dollars this year,
I can show you a pathway that you'll leave ninety
million dollars to your family when you pass on. Now,
(24:01):
that obviously means that he's starting at age thirty three
and he's looking to leave whatever he's leaving at ninety
five or one hundred, but all of those years, with
the right kinds of decisions, the right kinds of techniques
and strategies, you can do what so many others have done.
(24:21):
And you know, and then maybe they don't. They're not
the same shade that we are, right, but so many
others have done because they learned it early, and it's
never too late. You know, they say the best time
to start investing was twenty years ago. The next best
time is right now. And so for those where they're
right now is right now. That's the way in which
(24:43):
I lend myself and make myself available to anyone that
wants to learn. And so it's very easy to get
in touch with me. You go to your browser, you
type in text Ryan dot com is going to ask
you for your phone number. And I have built a system.
I've built a technology that allows me to actually find
the people that are really serious about making that kind
(25:03):
of difference. And so it's been super rewarding. And so also,
you know, I was just looking at a documentary around
Warren Buffett and he said, look, you know, at one
hundred billion dollars, you know a guy that's worth one
hundred billion, He said, look at one percent of that,
it still will be so much more than I would
ever need to live. And I'm at a place now
(25:24):
in my life and career that one percent of what
I've been able to mass and earn will allow me
to be very very comfortable for the rest of my life.
So the rest of it I want to actually and
in terms of time as well the rest of it.
I want to be able to pour into folks that
actually want to reduce the time that it takes for
(25:45):
them to realize some of that same success. So that's
the way that I that I pay it forward.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
I've been a fan of yours obviously follows your story,
you know, about twenty years now, and one thing I'm
have been I've always always thought it was remarkable is
how you built an international presence. And I wonder, because
you were talking about going to Switzerland and Belgium before
I saw our stars, you know, on stage in these countries.
(26:12):
How did you grow that or was it something about
the music that just spoke to that those audiences over there.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I believe it was really a combination. And also I
believe that, you know, very early on, I was using
technology to identify and pinpoint where the audiences were, and
so when I realized that my listeners were in a
specific locale, I wanted to make sure that I was
providing even higher level of service by saying, hey, I
(26:40):
see that there is an appreciation and enjoyment of the music,
let's step it up to the live experience. And then
I would go and do sort of that research there
and say, okay, what is it that you love when
an artist comes from another country to come and perform. Well,
they said, well, we don't know exactly what we love. Also,
we love the muse us, but we can tell you
what we don't love. I said, okay, well tell me
(27:02):
and they said, well, you know they'll come on, they'll
just you know, have a track playing, and then you
know they'll do thirty minutes and act like you know,
it was such a pleasure and privilege for them to
come over and me on stage, and I said, okay,
I'm gonna do you one better. We ain't gonna just
do the track with the DJ if I have to
pay for it, I'll bring the band out and we're
(27:23):
going to do two and a half hour sessions. Why
because it's music. Music is so beautiful that you know,
you can the record might only be three minutes, but
when you do it on stage, you could do it
for ten minutes and people love it and they're rocking
with you, and so you know, I really just look to,
in any area of my life, deliver the highest level
(27:43):
of service. So if as a music producer, look what
is it that folks need? If folks need x number
of tracks per day they need too, I try to
give them nine. If people say, well, you know what,
it's not enough to just do the tracks, I need
the top line too, where we'll record a top line
four year as well. Well, you know, somebody will come
to you and say, well, you know, I also want
to think about a rollout strategy as well. We helped
(28:04):
to devise that four you as well. And then when
it came down to being of service to my fans,
my community, the ability for them to come have a
great experience, have it curated for them, have them be
able to you know, write in the set list and
choose all of those kinds of different elements of the show.
I think really all of that lent itself to the
(28:25):
relationship that I have to this day, where you know,
my last record per se may have been years ago,
and we'll still fly across on July to eighth, and
we'll fill out a three thousand person venue in Cologne, Germany,
of all places. So I believe that, you know, technology
nowadays gives you the ability to actually pinpoint the audience,
(28:46):
the supporters, where the listeners are coming from, where the
supporters coming from, and then it's up to the entrepreneur
or the business mind of your operation to actually know
what to do with that data. And you know, I
think we're talking obviously about it all being self contained,
and yes, that's great. The other piece of this puzzle
(29:08):
is it's also important to just understand when your special
gift is the creativity and someone else's special gift may
be the business acumen. And when those two minds, those
two worlds combined, you really have a scenario where one
plus one may equally leave it.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Yeah, yeah, I told you I want to talk about
superphone just for one second. Many companies have recognized that
email just doesn't do what it used to do. They're
trying to get the phone numbers. Now, how does this work?
How do superphone particularly work to work? I may not know.
I can't put a call to action in every message,
you know, I may need to, you know, just actually
provide value. And it's easier to do. And so in
(29:50):
the top of mind via email maybe a little harder
or maybe not. I'm gonna let you say that.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
In SMS, Yeah, I really look at SMS as a
more inbound versus outbound. You know, I find it a
number of folks to say, oh, yeah, I want to
build a big list, and then I want to you know, broadcast.
I think email lends itself to that kind of exchange.
I believe that the communication channel of SMS is personal,
(30:21):
it's intimate, it's the most important real estate in everyone's phone,
and it works extremely well on the inbound side. So
if I say, and really this is how I launched Superphone.
I said, look, if you want my album, send me
a text. So that means the intent has already been captured.
From the time they send a text, I already know
where this is leading they're looking for the album. So
(30:41):
at that point I can say, okay, great, I want
to provide you the highest level of service. What's you're at,
what's your email address? And where can I ship it?
If I'm going to give you something, if I'm going
to deliver you something that's physical, and so in that exchange,
the intent has already been captured and the ability to
actually have that communication. And also the beauty of a
(31:04):
phone is that it can vary very quickly sort of
upgrade to an actual real conversation. The beauty of thinking
about intimacy when you're thinking about your supporters, friends, family,
followers whoever. It may be. The beauty of thinking about
intimacy and a pyramid is that when you start with
(31:26):
social media you can think about the expected response time
or expected response rate. So when you post something on
social media, people are I guess the response is optional? Right.
Then when you get to email and it's a broadcast,
once again response optional. And even in personal relationship, you
might spend an email and it's very easy to be
(31:48):
oh I and get that or within the spam e s.
Once you move up to text, the text is a
much more intimate and much more important real estate in
someone's mobile device. And then the beauty of text is
that it can actually upgrade to that in person real
time conversation. So if you send someone an email and
(32:09):
they don't respond for a couple of days, you might
actually say, ah, it's all right. You send someone a text,
they don't respond for a couple of hours, you start
getting worried. You on the phone, and it's a live conversation.
Someone doesn't respond within moments, you might have to say, hey,
you all right? Right, So you see that there's sort
of a pyramid in terms of expected response time. And
(32:30):
so with superphone we really want to unlock that SMSs
to voice because of how powerful that communication channel actually is.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I was reading an interview and you talked about this
is a quote from you. I'm fan funded. The people
that come to my concerts and pay double and triple
the prices of an album to watch the music being
performed live is the way that future albums, videos, and
tours are going to be funded. Talk about what you
see when you recognize startups and projects taking on a
(33:01):
lot of investment without that product market fit. You know,
we've seen a lot of companies burn out because they
took a bunch of money and didn't have the revenue
coming in. But just valuations are magical numbers, but they
thereby they give up so much because they don't have
the leverage.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, you know, I think that every sort of business,
and I believe that every sort of business has a
has a unique path. And in the same way that
so many businesses have been successful, the ability to just
apply a template and say this is going to work
(33:41):
for someone else, I believe sort of undermines the unique
value proposition in each product or service that a business innovates.
And so I believe that it's just important to be
almost machine level in your ability to analyze the data
and allow the data to tell the story and drive
(34:03):
your decision making and business. And so you know, in
some cases, growth may be more important than revenue because
to a mass a large audience is when you can
then monetize the audience with advertising, et cetera. So I
believe that every business, every artist, every entrepreneur, really it
really makes sense to find an expert, find someone with
(34:26):
some great experience, whether that may be a mentor a coach,
or even whoever comes in as an investor. They need
to be truly invested in not just a return from
whatever the business may may may yield, but also they
must be committed to the growth not only of just
(34:47):
the business, but the humans that run the business. You know,
we can name off name brands across the board, and
it is those name brands that have leaders business minds
that we relate to on a human level that we
sometimes may remember more. And so in my businesses in
(35:08):
you know, some of the great businesses that I've invested in,
these CEOs and founders have become synonymous with their businesses.
And Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, you know, uh and Elon
musk right a jay Z all right with rock Nation
and many of the other businesses. So at the end
of the day, I believe that when we realize that,
(35:30):
you know, product market fit and just looking at data
in and of itself can help to drive our decisions
at the end of the day. And I think the
the theme of this interview even is just that we
are looking to derive and provide value. That is what
gives us purpose as humans. And so when we understand
(35:50):
how to quantify that in a real way, we can
really find we could really find some extraordinary success.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
All right, Less, It's an honor for me to talk
to you, man, if I'll even twenty five years, so
this is a.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Pleasure, Yes, sir, Yes, sir Man. Well look text Ryan
dot com man, drop the number man. And literally I
say this all the time. I say it on every podcast.
I'm really interested in building real relationships, and you know,
folks have to show up for those relationships. So for
folks that I had people that sent me text messages before,
(36:26):
and we've gone on to you know, co investing businesses together,
we've gone on to you know, take trips together. We've
gone on to you know, build businesses together, and so
I'm very very committed to that being My driving purpose
in life is to be a living example of everything
I talk about, and really that's about connecting on a
human level.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Black Tech Green Money is the production of Blavity Afro
Tech on the Black Effect podcast network in night Heart Media,
and it's produced by Morgan Debonne and me Well Lucas,
with additional production support by Sayah Ergan.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And Rose McLucas.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Special thank you to Michael Davis, Vanessa Surrundo, and Maya Moldrew.
Learn more about my guests and other tech This rupt
is an innovators at afrotech dot com. Join Black Tech
Green Money, Share this with somebody, Go get your money
piece and love
Host
Will Lucas
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