July 1, 2025 • 50 mins
Booked & Busy Abroad: SuaveSki’s Blueprint for Going Global
What happens when your biggest fans aren’t in your backyard, but across the ocean?
In this episode of Tickets to Travel: The Business of Travel Experiences, we sit down with SuaveSki — a rising independent hip-hop artist and touring entrepreneur — who’s turned his U.S.-based hustle into an international movement. From Romania to Rome, and Zurich to South by Southwest, SuaveSki shares how he built a loyal fanbase abroad, booked venues without a major label, and financed it all while mentoring the next generation of creatives.
We talk strategy, mistakes, merch, booking hacks, sponsorships, and why international fans sometimes show more love than local ones. If you’re an artist, agent, venue operator, or anyone trying to crack the code on global fan engagement — this is the blueprint.
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For more, visit www.tttpod.com
Follow SuaveSki at @suaveskimusic and @suavemob
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario DeWine, and today we have SUA Ski. Welcome to the pod. Hey,
(00:01):
what's Scott? What's Scott? What's got,
man, you have been grinding away in the hip hop game for a while. And you just got back from a tour, right?
I did. Absolutely.
Te tell us about where you went and what the experience was like.
Just came back, man from tour with a bell snow Goons, Sean Strange Chubbs, and Jay Sos Chucky Campbell. I remember all the artists 'cause we had a, it's a tour package essentially. Yeah. And it was a good squad man.
It was a good team. It was actually nine. It was nine shows. But lemme just read it off real quick. Yeah. And I'll just give you a little recap. Bucharest, Romania. They love hip hop, , classic hip hop.
I got in touch with the culture there, I feel, so I really met the scene in Buca Rest Romania, so we turned this tour a little into a vacation, Of course, as you do. Yeah. I didn't know but we slid right after that over to Budapest and there was no show there.
Then, right after that, we went over to Istanbul, Turkey,
and then we went over to Prague, Czech Republic. , then we shot forward to Milan, Italy, took a train from Italy down to Naples.
Naples, took a flight over to Rome for a little bit. Then from Rome, flew over to Thessaloniki, Greece. Wow. Then from Greece, took a train down to Athens then Athens, and then flew over to Basel, Switzerland, then Zurich, Switzerland, Lucerne Switzerland, then Munich, Germany.
We ended in Germany. I appreciate you going through the tour process. You know what's interesting is that. You went to Europe.
Yeah.
But you have a pretty big fan base here in the States as well? Probably in Northeast,
yeah.
Do you also tour here in the States?
Man it's, as of right now, it's not hitting the same. I'm like, I do have people listening to my music and watching my videos, but not really I guess maybe it's because I haven't positioned myself to like headline a bunch of shows yet.
So once I learned about the tourist circuit and how you you jump in to open up for a few big artists and then grow your name.
Yes.
I learned about that Little late in the game or else I would've done it sooner. Yep. But once I figured that out, I just kept going. Like with Apathy, he took me out to Canada for the first time. I might have did three tours with him in Canada already. Then from there he introduced me to Chris Webby and his team. So after I learned that, I was just like, let's go, let's keep it moving. So it's been four, five tours.
Now I'm losing track of time, man.
Yeah. I think what people don't understand is the music industry in general is so fragmented, mms, there's lots of different ways to enter it.
(00:22):
Yeah. And there are your Jay-Z's and the Kanye Wests and these big label artists, but the majority of artists who are out there are entrepreneurs. They manage and run their own businesses. What is really interesting is that what's changed over the last few years, not few years, but many decades since streaming came about.
You've had to become more of the business owner and to take hold of your career. Actually Goldman Sachs just came out with a study this past week. Oh really? Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs. Everyone's heard about them. We could learn from them. Yeah. Yeah. So they broke up the music industry in three sections.
Wow. The first was streaming. Yeah. The second was publishing. And the biggest section of growth in the music industry is live events to, because it takes a lot of streams to make some money.
Yeah. It takes too many. That's the lowest. Yeah. We know. That takes forever to get streaming money, you gotta have a hit of all that's like top 40.
Top 10, yeah. And you have to have a pretty solid strategy to work on Spotify and Apple Music to get these streams up. Yeah. And so the publishing side, that's the big label end of it. It's a good,
it's a good side right there. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out my way in there a little more too.
Publishing, 'cause yeah there's money you could be leaving on the table if you don't really that dig in and learn and see and figure it out.
Yeah. So the ask apps, the bmgs, those type of things to make sure that with your stuff gets played right. Or if a big company wants to pick it up, like for a video game or something like that, that you're getting paid on each one of those.
So yeah, definitely placements. But I think the easiest and most attainable one is live events doing shows. And you went to Europe and what I think a lot of people don't understand is that hip hop is global man. It's huge. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's
worldwide right now.
It's growing a lot of different languages that are involved in it too. They're all rapping over there. Russian rap, like the French rapping, they're going hard.
Oh yeah. Japanese rappers. I was I'm an old guy. I listed a lot of hip hop over the last 50 years. Experience.
Experience. Seasoned. Yeah. Seasoned. But it's always been that way with underground hip hop. Is that Europe is always this hotbed for it, whether it be the Netherlands or Germany. Yeah. To, so is that where you're seeing all the engagement for your music?
Yeah. Right now it is.
Like when I look on Spotify and I look at the analytics, it is in Europe, a lot in South America. And there is a lot here as well, but like I said, it doesn't really transfer over. Yeah. In the live events, but when you go somewhere that they're not used to seeing you, like they're gonna appreciate it more.
Yeah.
Even more, especially if you have the right vibe. And you get them going when you meet them and like you you have a good show performance. That's a whole aspect of the artistry that people don't really lean into or they don't learn it until the end. Like they start making music, they find their sound, they find their image, but then like now you gotta have your show that you gotta have a show give them something to want to come back and see whether it's lighting, pyrotechnics, dancers we're in my realm right now in like the, in the boom bap in the classic rap.
Yep. You don't really need all that. You can just come out with a DJ and just kill it. Beat rhymes in life. Beat rhymes in life and keep it simple. But you could have a break dancer, you could have a graffiti dude tagging up. You could do KRS One does that a lot. So there's people I'm seeing, I'm witnessing them like web's killing it with the drummer.
He'll bring his drummer out, his dj and they have a good dynamic. So like just add something to your show? Yeah. At some point. So right now that's where I'm at. I'm like learning like what do I need to add to make this a 30, 45 minute show like that people will pay for it and want to come out. It's here in the States.
Yeah. Because you actually get to keep more of that margin Yeah. Of that ticket sale. So obviously there's booking the venue. Yeah. Promoting it, marketing it, and getting people to come see you. So you have to put on the show.
Yeah. Yeah.
(00:43):
From your perspective, you've been all over Europe at this point.
You're going back too, right? Going back. You're going back. Yeah. Canada. And in the States, when you perform, what are the differences between the fans?
Wow. I would say Americans, they will come out they'll support, maybe they won't spend as much ah, on merchandise as like Europeans and Canadians, but I think they just take you for granted, man.
Yeah. That's what it is. I think it's most artists here, like where you're from, if you, and I've always heard, yeah, you go blow up somewhere else and you come back and then your hometown will love you whatever it is. It's just, it's some sort of psychological thing. But I think it's actually working.
'cause it's been happening lately. Like now people are like, they want to take pictures and do certain things. I'm still here. I said, yes, I still rap, still do music. But like now we're on the road touring, so they must see the trajectory and think something's about to pop.
So that's American fans and you see just more engagement in general in Europe. Yeah. They're more passionate about your kind of straight ahead hip hop music.
Yeah. Yeah, they are. So I would say I guess maybe Canada really, they get rowdy to whatever they love, like live music, maybe. I can't say there's not a lot, but maybe there's not a lot of Americans that go over there all the time. Yeah. So when they do they really support it and they come out strong.
And then Europe, anyone that's crossing the the pond come over to over there and rock with them they come out
And so I, in, in terms of the podcast, we do a piece that's called Fan Travel Stories, where we talk to super fans.
Yeah. People who are crazy. I've talked to Taylor Swift fans, K-Pop fans, t. Liverpool football club fans. Oh, okay. And so what I find is that it's the event itself that drives the travel because one, it's probably more affordable , but two it's an experience.
You get to go experience of a lifetime. Yeah. Yeah. And you get to experience the destination. And so you're in a unique spot because you're an artist, you have a following. Yeah. And you're still trying to promote the business. And so when you started to line up, obviously you were with Ill bill and the snow goons and everyone on this last tour, have they set up the tour in such a way where they had the venue set up, they had ticketing already set up?
Like how did you guys plan? I know it's not really your tour, but it's
not mine, but like I pay attention to all of that stuff, i'm trying to learn, . It seemed like a lot of it was Eventbrite. It was like, okay, what's that third party self-service. Eventbrite.
Yeah.
So self-service, Eventbrite, they're still using more independent methods to sell their tickets and pack places out. But I would say drop the deposit on the venue or it works a little different with the artists. So with the artists, if you have a headliner, you get a guarantee.
They get a guarantee. Usually they're like, Hey, I'm about $1,500.
Yeah.
That's how much. And then the venue will decide yes, we want to, we wanna do the show. Or the promoter will put the money up, maybe the promoter will be like, okay, I'll put the money up and I'll promote this event and get my money back.
And that's the the idea. Yeah. But a lot of artists are putting their own money up now. They're like
self-promoting.
They're self-promoting. Yeah. They'll put their own money up to book the venue. And then they'll get a deposit for the guarantee from the venue. 'cause they're still booking themselves so there's different ways you can go about it.
(01:04):
Yeah, then there's buying onto a tour that's already booked out. And that's
basically, or a
festival. Yeah. Yeah. So a festival's even better, right? Yeah. If you got festivals, you're you're doing the right thing, man. You're on the right path. If you can get to those festivals and before all that, yeah, I would advise any artist to figure out what artists that you sound good with.
Maybe someone that's already touring that you know you could build a relationship with and shoot your shot. Try to buy onto their tours. 'cause you'll see their tours going out and they always have, they bring artists with them. Yeah. They bring openers. So like you, you gotta have a show.
Yeah. You gotta have a shot.
You have the following where, you know, like-minded fans. If they like a certain style of music. Yeah. They're, oh, this is similar, but different. And you can carve out your own sort of sub fan culture with that
look on Spotify, right? Yeah. You look up, if you look me up on Spotify and you go down and it's like similar artists, you'll see similar artists reach out to them.
If you're an artist, maybe try it that way so they'll classify you with other similar artists and then follow all those guys and reach out to them and see what they're doing. Is that what you do? You, that's not what I don't You create the relat relationships. Now I'm always thinking of like how I can help other artists too.
'cause I'm a mentor at the end of the day. So if I think of something and we're talking, if you talk with me and you're an artist and you come here and we talk and we're like building, I'm gonna throw you like a million ideas and there's gonna be a lot of good ones in there. So you decide which ones you want to take.
But I, it's something I would've told myself years ago Hey, look at these similar artists. It was like Mercury Lees, it was apathy, it was self-titled. It was like, like Vinny PAs, certain other artists were popping up. I should have reached out to every one of them and maybe, or just followed them and try to like implement yourself into that.
Yeah. That audience.
Yeah. It's similar. I just got done listening to my favorite podcast is diary of a CEO. Oh, okay. Have you ever heard that one? No,
I have not. Honestly. You
should. So the latest one is with Scooter Braun. Oh,
man.
So Scoot, I just literally listened to it like last hour, and he said something that was really interesting that's along the lines of what we're talking about.
Speaking
of T Swift and all that, right? Is that his he's got that's a whole nother thing. No, politics. He was trying
to, he was trying to avoid that question, I think a little bit, but Right. In terms of what we're talking about. He said maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, billboard came out with the top 30 up and coming people 30.
Under 30.
Oh yeah.
(01:25):
And so he made it a point to call all of those people and introduce himself. On that 30 for 30 30. Under 30 was Daniel Eck, the guy who created Spotify.
Wow. And
this was before. It had blown up. And so he was able to become an early investor of Spotify. That's amazing. Of picking up the phone and developing a relationship.
Yeah. But it's all relationships. 'cause then of course Daniel's gonna get to la and he offers up, Hey, let's hang out. Let's go play ping pong, have a couple of soda pops. Smart man. Get to know each other. So smart. So you take that right from that level. And it's a very simple thing to do.
It's almost like you going to. A festival lineup and started doing the research. And find out who those promoters are, who their managers are, and getting your team involved and finding the right mix of right relationships that'll get you to the next tour. We definitely did that.
Yeah.
At
each venue for sure. We definitely figured talked to the promoter the venue, whoever was the owner if they were there. So we got all that information. We were very heavy on our promotion. It was just two of us, me and Gemini. It was more affordable. That's another thing when you're coming up as a as an artist, you're not gonna have a lot of budget to be able to.
Pay for all these expensive tours. It gets expensive.
Yeah. Travel in particular is expensive, especially when you go in terms of seasonality. Yeah. And then the venue itself. So the venue what size rooms were you playing? Five. What was 500? 500 cap. Yeah.
It could be. There was some that were like 1,500 to a thousand.
Yeah, I would say. Gotcha. And then where
was your kind of target ticket pricing for those rooms? I don't even, I'm not really sure. I thought it was 35 to 50. Okay. Yeah, that's about right. That sounds about
right. And then you obviously, whoever promoted it would probably get a piece of the bar and so are you comfortable in that 500 room or you think you could do a thousand, you think you could do
Yeah, I because that's a
bit of a graduation. And artist impact.
Yeah, to have all, get all the way up to the stadium, yeah. The stadium, the arenas, the festivals.
That is the goal and I'm aspiring for but I would say I guess one thing Gemini would always tell me is he's trying to put me in position with certain people ahead of my time before I'm ready to be there. Just so you can witness it and see. Yeah. So it's, that's been happening we're meeting all these people ahead of time and we are more prepared for when the moment comes.
I guess so. Yeah, the arenas and the festivals are right around the corner, man. They're coming. But before that we worked every room by ourselves and lemme just jump back, like me and Gemini doing this tour I wasn't able to bring the ua, mob shooters, Jackson, GA couple guys that always come with us on these tours.
It, it was a little more expensive for us to be able to travel get another hotel room, things like that. But. The bigger artists that are doing it, they have a system in play where they're getting like some sort of discount for multiple rooms
and that's working out for them. But the byon a lot of the time gotta work on the openers, the supporting acts. They gotta thug it out and figure it out. And that's okay with me right now. I'm okay to do that. I felt like it was but Gemini was making sure we didn't thug it out and we were staying in amazing places.
(01:46):
Yeah. We went to some amazing hotels and he was keeping like rumors in Germany. Okay. It was called Rumors. And it was an amazing place. And that's where we met some like higher end, I would say, connections. Like we met this lady Orley, we met her son her nephew is Ariel Levi, he's the F1 race car driver.
Wow. And he's 24 and he's the only Israeli race car driver in F1 in Porsche. Yeah, doing it right now and there's connections that we start making out on the road. You would never make if you weren't in these hotels, in these places. Meeting these people, yep.
You have to level up your game to get to that level.
Yeah. So I, yeah, and I think that's very, if I was at
Holiday Inn, it'd be a lot different is all I think so it was it was expensive in that manner. So we had to cut back. We couldn't even get merch 'cause it was a lot. It's expensive to buy the merch to be able to sell. It cost a lot too.
So you, you
self fund your tours, your trips. Like even when I met we haven't even talked about how we met.
Yeah,
I know. Yeah. South by Southwest Texas. Texas, yeah. We were in Austin. We'll get back to that question, but we'll tell this story. Yeah. I'm in Austin for South by Southwest.
I'm meeting with various companies different partners of mine, and it was just a regular, what was it, like a Wednesday night, something like that. It
was like a regular night man. Just, yeah. Regular south by Southwest night.
Because you've gone before. Yeah. You go to South by all the time.
'cause this is where a lot of artists break their music. Yeah. Actually I never even asked you like what you I've been a few times. Yeah. What
I was there doing was to perform at a couple of places and then we were with YNVS, shout out to Shampoo Conan. The entire YVS DJs team, the YNV Def Jam for sure.
Like man, they we were out there to perform. He threw a showcase at a venue and me and Conan were gonna perform our song. We shot our video for Back on the Road. We had a music video we were filming for and we were just trying to be in the mix. Yeah. And we were like filming with the UA Mob and YMVS.
We were filming other artists. We were doing those mic drop videos. Yeah. We had a bunch of those come out and just getting to connect with these people. 'cause we knew what it was like. There's people everywhere, promoters, managers, artists. Label
guy, Spotify, people walking
around different, you man, we met you.
So it was just like how here I am. Like how is everyone? Yeah. Here you are. We go back to the hotel. It was the Fairmont, I believe.
We started talking and yeah, of course I know some of the related artists, whether it be Webby or Apathy. Webby, yeah. Because of just being a fan of hip hop and just understanding the localization of it all.
And then as we started to talk, it's maybe my expertise can help your expertise in some ways. And so we decided to do a podcast one, but also just to connect in Connecticut,
(02:07):
man, connect in Connecticut. I think we wanted to connect in Connecticut, so we, when we came back and we reached out, we tried to make it happen a few times.
It you're looking for these tools to enhance the tour, obviously to make an income, but also to promote yourself to get to those other levels. Yeah. What do you think a venue. A ticketing company should think about in terms of attracting someone, an artist of your caliber who's gonna obviously blow up at some point and try to create that relationship now, because there are ticketing conferences, there are venue conferences.
Yeah. I go to some of these actually I was gonna suggest you, there's Neva, which is the National Independent Venue Association. Wow. Takes place in Milwaukee. What next month. Oh man. And so basically it's everybody. Who is not Live Nation.
Okay. Okay. So everybody else is there. If you're not Live Nation and Ticketmaster, you're there.
Okay. And so that's a good place. Yeah. I absolutely. That's smart.
Yeah. So where you can just talk to everybody and people start drinks start flowing and they have performances there, so you could actually perform there and do showcases there. That'd be cool.
That'd be cool. But that's one kind of suggestion from a business perspective. Like you start developing those relationships. From 500 cap rooms all the way up to 5,000 cap rooms are all there. There's festival promoters walking out throughout, but it's more of a business. Five.
Yeah.
It's not like a, maybe
a booking manager, Maori managers would be there. Yes. Like certain things like that. But as an artist to show up yourself is, that's a statement too. I like that. Yeah.
It's different.
Yeah. It's different. I come up, so you were, we were talking earlier and you, I do give like an entrepreneur vibe as a business owner.
Rather than just a artist because I've been running my own businesses for a long time. Marketing and promotion. I had creative connection. It was a storefront in New London and I was doing like content creation. You could come and take photos here, something similar to this setup here. And I was running that for a little bit.
And we were throwing events every weekend, like it was booming, but it is a small town so it can only go so far. And I had some issue with the landlord and it was just like, okay. Can't do this no more. Yeah. I gotta focus on me and make sure I can bring in some revenue to try another business, yeah. Try it again. Or get a sponsor or something. Just create attention and more momentum and then we'll figure it out from there. But yeah. As an entrepreneur I'm interested in all of that, man learning the business behind the scenes, like what it takes, like what app are you using? Is it a CRM?
Yep, yep. My he's acting as an agent now, but my, my, my good friend Peter, he's in Florida right now and he's building an app called Develop, and it's a, he's a tech founder, so he's been working on that for years now, and it's a CRM, but we were, we're trying to figure out a way for me to use it as an artist to keep.
Track of all the fans and everything besides like a Patreon. And then we come to terms with we might need something better like our own server, our own app, our own something. Yeah. So we can talk about all that stuff. Yeah, we can talk about all that stuff, I think.
Yeah. Because that's the challenge, right?
Yeah. If you don't, how do you control it? How do you take control and keep
control of
you have to own, right? So it starts from your website a newsletter.
Yeah.
(02:28):
Patreon's a good way to capture all of them, obviously, but there are different tools and it's not a one size fits all. No.
Depending on how you wanna run your business. Yeah. And I think that's where going back to the music stuff these record labels, they do that for the artists. And when you're in a situation where, hey, this is my business. Yeah. And I want creative control, because we haven't even talked about how you started rapping yet, by the way.
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But
I think that's where. That's why we're having conversations like this to bring a little bit more awareness of it. Because I think there's various artists who have followings and they create content and they have, yes, it's the product itself. The creativeness the talent that's on, that's being recorded, but at the same time, don't dig enough into the actual business of it all, because that's where it gets disconnected.
Yeah. Some you got kids out there who are like, oh, I'm just super talented. I got a million streams on on SoundCloud, and then nothing ever happens because they don't have the grind that you do. Quite frankly. Yeah. To go out and tour. To go out and figure
out the next step.
Yeah. Besides the likes and the streams. Yeah. 'cause yeah, you can get those numbers, but you can also buy those numbers. Yeah. A lot of that stuff isn't even real. It's smoke and mirrors, so That's totally true. You gotta watch out for that. Are you really making an impact? You'll know if you're really making an impact by the people around you and how they respond to you.
As or if they're coming up to you like, Hey man, you still do music. Yeah. A lot of people do that. Yeah. And it's yo, if you don't know, then you, I haven't been putting it out there enough for you to already know, but
yeah, it's no that's why I admire you a lot because I had a cousin who was an underground rapper in San Francisco.
Yeah.
And just watching his career. Very talented guy. Yeah. He was into drugs and different things that happened and he didn't want to grind,
which is an easy thing to do on, of course, drinking and all that stuff's there. Music and, yeah.
But here's the thing. He wouldn't even tour and I would just look at him and be like, and he'd go to the studio.
He, they'd burn the CDs, sell 'em out of the trunk, that kind of thing, right? I like
that hustle too. That's a
hustle came from that. As, as well as anybody, you have to be in front of these fans.
It's not sustainable either unless like you're gonna be out the trunk forever, like trying to sell,
right?
You have to perform. You have to show them who you are, be authentic. And so I used to always be like, you know what man? You're the best rapper in my car.
You are the best rapper in my car, man. Cause we would be hanging out in the S whatever in
the Spotify. Yep. You're the best rapper in my car.
(02:49):
And I really wish cause I was doing my own business stuff right. And trying to get my career going and I'd always just want him to. Really take it seriously because he was so talented. And so that's why I admire you guys in that you're hustling. Thank you,
man. Yeah.
It's a hard it's a long journey and there is a lot of ups and downs. And then when you're doing it by yourself, it can get overwhelming. I see. Where people would quick give up. I see it, but I also see the other side and how when you accomplish that, want that thought, you finish every idea.
And then some of them get left behind. Of course you're not, nobody's perfect, so you're gonna forget some things or you're gonna do some things wrong. But you'll see you, these opportunities that open up for you from that that are even bigger. And it's just start, it starts to grow like that.
And then you have to just keep trying them. Keep trying 'em. Yeah. You can't give up. The failures don't really hurt. At this point. They don't hurt. They're just like. We could have got more, we could have had more engagement, or we could have had a call to action, or we coulda did more with that, but like, all right, let's try it again.
Yeah. Let's go shoot and every time we shoot and we put things out, we're all growing. Like even the, all the way down to the videographers and the photographers and the people that are behind the scenes helping everyone's trying to grow so that all the businesses can thrive together.
Yeah. Because there's,
you have to go out there and create Yeah. And put it out there so that you never know, yeah. One song, you never know. It takes one, it does one takes, takes one song and or one video or one social post. Exactly. That could just turn things. But if you don't get in the game at all Yeah.
You don't even have the opportunity.
A lot of people lose themselves at the nine to five at . Once you start working. That's something that I personally had to deal with, which is it's a tough one. All right. So I work for Curin Livery Transportation Group, and my boss, Greg, he's an amazing dude.
He was very supportive of all the music and everything I've been doing all the way to the point where he would invest in the first tours I was doing with Webby. He was, he would help me out. And at some point because of that investment and because of the tours, it started to, I started to grow at a rapid rate where it's these opportunities are coming.
Am I gonna tour or am I gonna go to work? And I told him we had a tough talk about it. He is you are at the point in your career or your life where you're gonna have to decide which one you want to do. And I'm in, I'm literally in that middle space right now, where do I go back to the nine to five and work so that I can pay everything comfortably?
Or do I live a little uncomfortable like Gary V said,
And thug it out for another year or so. And I'm at the point where I definitely, I'm gonna thug it out. I'm not gonna go back to Yeah. You can't stop. Yeah. There's no and e
even if you do choose something you you have a little more leverage to understand your own personal situation.
Yeah. Where you can put the time because we get a hundred years. Yeah. I think Kanye West said that. Somebody said that we get a hundred years. You get a hundred years. Yeah. So you have to do what you can in those a hundred years. So whether you start when you're 20 Yeah. Which that's probably the best situation.
Yeah. Or younger or you realize it, right? Someone like myself who's had a long career already, 20 plus years, but now. Being a consultant, doing these podcasts, these type of things. It's a whole different sort of entrepreneurial journey, which I wouldn't feel right if I didn't try it.
Yeah. No, I think you're doing a great job, by the way. Oh, thanks man. I really do. And the fact that we're here right now doing this just proves that you're not stopping either. So that drive to, to keep growing and adapt to whatever's happening now is that's a tough one. And it's not a trending thing, it's more because you're bringing, like the knowledge and expertise.
A lot of people will jump on trends just because it's a trend instead of adding value to it. I feel like we're adding value to a lot of artists, a lot of other people that are watching that could learn from, what it takes to take that next step into touring and to get into the ticketing side of Yeah.
Music. So let's let's back up a little bit. How long you been rapping? Oh, boy. I'm pretty sure you've answered this question a million times. No, but I just for the
Just context so everyone knows I've turned I, this 2025, I turned 35 and it's been about 12 years, I would say. Yeah. 12 years in the game.
(03:10):
In the beginning. I don't consider any of that being in the game. It's just like you record. I'm in my cousin's room, he's got the beat pad. He's making the beats. I start writing in the first like few years. Were absolute trash. I hope I to never hear anything from those years ever again. I don't want to hear none of it.
No, man. When
you get big or release some a that's gonna come
with some old Yeah. I already know it's gonna pop up in, in my future.
But you never know, man, that stuff could, you're just very critical.
Obviously. I'm very critical of it now.
There was a lot of changes. Like I used to make breakup songs. Like I could write right now I could get a publishing deal right now if anybody's interested. I could write and I could like make r and b music. Any sort of songs any genre. Yeah. I've been doing it for that long at this point.
And then after we started doing some of these like albums, we'd press 'em up and do the high school promotion thing. I got signed to Dallas Records back in the day and it was like one of those things you wish you, maybe you didn't do, but it was all right. We did it. I went and did a showcase tours, like all these different showcases I learned.
The grind of shows and how to perform and things there started in Texas. And then it was just like, I needed videos, I needed photos. I picked up my laptop and I was, I don't know where I started to do Photoshop, but once I started, I never stopped that either. And I was doing all my own promotional materials. I had to learn Premier Pro and Photoshop to gimme a edge back then, because I wanted to look like maybe there was a label behind me or something. Like a little more official. But. It was bad too.
Like it was bad work then too. So after five years in, maybe 10 years, then it just started to become like second nature. Like I could I could do the laptop, I could do the graphic designs for the single cover, for the artwork. I could do the promotional video. Yeah. And then I could do edit my own music video.
And then I would do that for years and that would start to put me in, Conversations with actual artists
What was the thing that just made you.
Boost your confidence, be like, yeah, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go tour Europe, I'm gonna go release a couple albums. What was the, was it was it apathy? Was it a record that you put out and everyone just went crazy? What was the turning point
there?
I think there was a few different moments to be real, but like with apathy, like when I was actually sitting in the studio in the beginning, sitting in the studio with him and seeing like him write some records in 15 minutes and then record him. And it'd just be some like, like what is this? This is crazy.
Like this guy's a monster. Like he's a beast. Like at what he does, he can produce the record, he can write in 15 minutes and and then going on tour with him and seeing that part of it and how he did it alone him and self-titled and how they were running it on their own. That gave me confidence to be able to do it on my own too.
But then I would say when other people, and this might be strange, when other people started to believe in me. A little more than I did myself.
Then I started to believe a lot more, When someone was like giving me like more fire, like a passion about what I'm doing than what I'm doing, and it was like it was a weird point and it was just like introspective because I'm a dad now too, so I can get carried away and go do soccer practice and go do this and that and live a whole nother life and go clock in and be comfortable. I guess people could get comfortable.
I was falling into that a little, I feel at times, but anytime someone else would come with an idea or believe in me and a little more than not that I believe in, that I don't believe in myself. 'cause now it's, I believe in myself more now. No, it's just
validation.
Yeah. That kind of validation.
(03:31):
Yeah. You don't think you need you don't really need it as an artist, but when you've been doing it for so long, you've, at some point it's gonna change something in your mind when you start seeing people from the past come back and yo, they're trying to help out now. And they want to invest or they want to like, make these moves with you.
And I, I've learned to, to continue to do that no matter what. I feel like I'm on autopilot. Like no matter what happens, I'm a artist, I'm gonna stay true to my art and I'm gonna make a song or release something consistently. I'm always gonna have something coming out.
The consistency is key, like we said earlier too, is that I take it back to the podcasting 'cause I'm not creative person. I'm creative in a lot of business dealings and such. Yeah, I'm sure. But like when it came to. To the podcast my brother, who's my engineer he goes, once you get past seven episodes, you're a podcaster.
Oh, yeah.
And then I had another friend who said the same thing, but he had a studio in Vegas and he had like millions of people he would interview celebrities.
And he's yeah, once you hit 20, that's when people really take you seriously. Wow. And then if you stick with it and you continue to go past 20, then you're a legitimate business because then you've gathered enough. And if you're buying ads and you're doing all these different things to support it.
Yeah. Even better. Yeah. It just, it sort of amplifies. And that's the purest form I can think of because really anybody could pick up a microphone and talk to a camera and do it. Yeah.
For you it's different. You have a set of talent. 'cause even when I met you guys in Austin, I went back to the room and I pop popped on your tracks.
And I was like, wait a second. I would this is great. This is, thank you, man. This is the type of hip hop that we need that that type of messages, man, like messages and positivity and yeah, it's fun. But also it's beach rhymes in life, like I said before. And I was happy that we connected because there's probably something there, whether you look at the bigger scheme of things that we're all supposed to meet and help each other out, right?
Yes. Along the path. Absolutely. And I think you're at that point where. You need another reference point. Yeah. Whether it's a corporate one or another partnership, or actually bringing it back. You mentioned sponsorship,
right?
So tell me a little bit about that. What are you thinking?
Is it you need someone to sponsor the hotels, the, yeah the tour, the,
it could come down to that, but like, all in all, let me just say, so we've built the umbrella, all right? We have the suave mob. All right. Yep. We're building a community. It's bigger than me as an artist. I'm suave ski.
That's cool. I can do videos, do content, bring all this attention back to the Suave Mob, which is all of us, which is my boy here, Jackson Man we created suave mob shooters. We're filming for people. We're helping other people we're, we created a business out of it. And now we're just trying to grow that.
And like we have some fans that are jumping over and they're starting to help invest into the monthly Patreon and things like that. And we're creating content for them, but. From that we're looking to be our own label in a way so that we can have these things these tours and have flights.
But yes, it gets expensive. Okay, so you buy onto the tour and then sometimes all that other stuff's not covered or included. So what we like to do is, in return any company that wants to get into that realm of hip hop shows, recap videos lens for hire, he's been killing all of our like recap videos, last web tours.
So it's we'll throw your logo right on there, like Bonsai bud right here. Shout to bonsai Bud. He's his current sponsor. He's a grower out of Rhode Island. And they have a lot of dispensaries that put their product out and we're collaborating on some merch with them right now.
But he's helping out with other things as well, like events and being able to put some money into either an event or travel. And it, I've been doing it myself. As an independent artist, we have no choice. We have to put your own money up and make it happen. But at some point we have content, we have eyes, we have engagement, so we want to be able to help others as well. I wanted to talk more about that because our tour, it was planned to an extent. Like we bought the tickets in the hotels, but we didn't have everything mapped out itinerary wise, like we could have, it could have been a lot more. Operational for us,
yeah. It's all in the planning. I worked at a startup called Pollen. And what Pollen did was they did destination festivals. And so I ran the travel team that managed all of the hotels and all the travel stuff. So we'd go negotiate full buyouts of resorts because this happened during full buyouts.
Full buyouts. We're talking anywhere from three to $5 million to a hotel resort, because this happened during COVID.
(03:52):
Wow.
So at that point, and those artists couldn't perform in a Live Nation venue, right? But where they could do it. Is out on a beach, ah, or in an open air pool. And so we legitimately did stuff for Jay Balvin Carol G, Justin Bieber.
Wow. Dead mouse, Tiesto. So my team had 70 people globally. 70. Yeah. The team.
Always a team. Always a team.
So we would go out and negotiate all of that stuff, and then, put together a package. So it would be a party and a two to three night stay, and then you'd get little extras maybe a meet and greet, maybe go jet skiing with the artist or whatever it is.
Oh, wow. And it worked out really well for the artists too, because at that point let's face it, Justin Beeber was probably getting high on his couch, right? Yeah. And then these guys come in and say, here's a million bucks, let's go and put this on. And so that gave me a lot of perspective in terms of one, the traditional travel industry and how it works, but then bringing in entertainment and how I.
People like yourself. You're, you are, you're at a level where I've met guys at Live Nation and these big promoters, and they're all just like you. Swarski, they're all just like you. They're all hustling. Okay. Trying to figure, doesn't matter if they got several million dollars in the bank they're still hustling. Yeah. They're all trying to put a deal together. And that's what really brought it out of me, because that's how I started my career. I was a kid. I could burn up the phones. I could I was good at closing, I was good at doing that stuff. But then I got into this mode of travel where it almost got too easy in a way.
And so I always credit the entertainment side, the ticketing side to bring me back to where I am in terms of. I like going to do the deal. Yeah, let's go do the deal. Let's create a really good relationship and then let's scale it. Yeah. So yeah, you're starting off with 500 cap venues currently.
Yeah. But what's the secret sauce to get it to a thousand and then 2,500 and then 5,000 and then we're talking about the stadium later on. And so I'm confident that we have the right people and the network and the know-how to figure those things out.
But again, it comes down to the hustle. Unless you
buy onto a stadium tour. Or yeah you could buy the space.
No, there's sometimes that you can get ahead. Get ahead of yourself. Yeah. And as long as you're prepared preparation is key, then you can have that moment will be yours, man.
Sure. No. So
actually that was going back to what I was thinking too. 'cause you're right, it has to be planned. Yeah. Whether it's taking a look at the data of where all your fans are. That's key, right? You wanna see where the most engagement are, and then taking a look at which venues are in each one of those areas that would fit the bill.
So you can almost guarantee you can sell them out. Then that allows you to price the tickets a certain way and then provide value. So let's take you have a huge following in Amsterdam, for example. Okay. Which maybe you do probably do. You could find a 500 or a thousand cap room.
Yeah. But you could stay there for a week. Do two to three shows and then do a meet and greet or a luncheon or an activity at a store where they sell your sponsor's product or something like that. I like that. So you're creative man.
Yeah. Because it's all about perceived value. Yeah.
So yes, it was a $35 ticket for one night show, 45 minutes, but why couldn't it be 250 bucks if you're giving more value throughout the process? So it comes down to the planning, understanding where your audience is. Finding the right kind of venues and the right hotels
And also thinking out of the box in terms of doing this with a partnership with maybe a beer guard. Yeah. Yeah. You become the promoter for these type of venues. And so I think that's something to really think about and really lay out the numbers.
And then going back to what you said earlier about having a cm. And that's where you understand the behavior and the engagement of those fans. Because then very easily on Patreon you can put out a survey Yeah. And say, Hey, would you like to go water skiing with me and Jackson?
Would
(04:13):
you guys like to help design a t-shirt or the next cover for my single, come to the coffee shop and grab a coffee with us, hang out, yeah, exactly. And then you create a package around it. So yeah, we're gonna be in Amsterdam for two nights, you get to go to both shows and you get to hang out with us and that's $300.
Wow. See, I love that side of it. Personally, I love that side so much that I want to jump in it and be in the emails with you and talk about it and figure things out and get on the calls, the consultations. But in reality I need to figure out what we're gonna do. At those other events, like those places, the beer gardens to, to be more creative about that.
And I want to focus on that. And that's what Gemini was trying to help me do as well. And everyone else in the swag, mob is helping me to become more of an artist and focus on the music and the art and the performance and Yep. All of that so that, I can have more time to, to do that and not focus on the business so much and let someone else, but we don't have that person yet that can, But you still need the data to Yeah. To find that person. So take the Amsterdam example. You find a fan, a straight at the hip hop fan who wants to be in the music industry. Usually it's a college kid or somebody. Yeah. Hey buddy, here's the list Yeah. Of different venues that we're interested in doing.
Where's a beer garden, a bar, whatever it is. And here's the checklist of things that you need to ask for. You can get some kids to do that. A little
delegation goes a long way. That's what the mob is for. So we're trying to get people to like, want to, that want to help out and be a part of seeing this idea that we have and then seeing it come to life.
And then again, and again, we keep doing that. Yeah. Until we're out of there and we're able to like all have like dinners together and things like that. Yeah. But I
feel like you, you can leverage that as a community. Yeah. Because, the things that kids don't have. Now, when I say kids, I mean like college kids.
Yeah. High school kids, whatever the youngins is that they don't have experience.
So by finding the right person who is actually going to do what you ask them to do
Then they have that on their resume. So if they wanna go apply for a job at Live Nation right now, they're promotions assistant for SWA Ski.
And so that's how you have to spin it, is that it's all business. It's not fun. And this is a serious thing. We're gonna be a reference for you and so do X, Y, Z or a BC that we ask you to do.
Like an intern.
Like an intern.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that, that's, and that's free for you. Yeah. But again, you're the.
The value is leveraging the experience that they're gonna gain from that. So finding those people are key.
I want to help them, man. I love helping people, man. It brings, it's what I do it for, I feel like. Yeah. So I feel like there's somewhat a lot of people relying on me right now to really break this door down.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of, there's pressure and there's another thing, being a artist and being the person that puts your face out there all the time, put everything out there, your information, your songs, your vulnerability. It's then it's what happens from there? It's either it all falls down 'cause you just stop or everything.
Or you stay at that door. A lot of people stay at that door and keep knocking instead of kicking it down, man. That's the thing. Yeah. I'm just at a place where I feel like we're about to kick this door down, whether it be with Onyx right now, slam, we come in and just kick that door down and just start doing festivals.
(04:34):
Yeah. So just as we start to wrap up things a little bit, tell me about that. Tell me, yeah, I was how did you get Onyx happen? How did that in that I was hooking that, I
was trying to throw that out there right now. 'cause I know you know what you're doing, man. Yeah. The next, okay, so the last tour was epic, man, it was cool, but it's like it felt like I'm warming up and now that I'm ready to light these stages on fire.
Bigger to the next level, the bigger stages. Shout out to Perry, right? He's doing some sort of managerial help with Onyx. Okay. Personally, he's in the mix. He's booking shows. He's doing all of that. And he's been doing it for a while now and he's also been helping another friend of mine acapella, who's a producer.
He took his music and he put it out on a hundred Mad, which is Onyx label. Yeah. So maybe he just, he's works for the label either way. Perry is the man. He's been very, he's been very helpful. So he reached out. He is yo, listen you can run out on this tour with us next.
He just re he was like, yo, I talked to the guys. He was like, just let's handle this. And then from there, these are the dates. And then I was waiting like a week or so, and then he started to populate the dates. And I'm just looking at it like, wow. And then we get on a FaceTime. Me, him and Gemini are talking and just, I.
It was a really good vibe. It's yo, listen, I see where you're at in your career, and like how we could we, it could change right here. Like you, it could change. You just gotta follow through. The finances would hold a lot of people back right here. But now I'm digging in and I'm getting more help from family, from anyone that I can to like, continue this motion, keep this going.
'cause doing these I was looking at the venues and a lot of them are festivals, man. They're arenas. It's already there. So it's like, all right, I'm prepared for the show. I've been promo, I've been doing it enough. I got the show. Yep. You've worked out the muscle. I've worked out the muscle.
Now it's time to get on the road. To stay on the road. My, my family's been instrumental in helping with my kids. So I'm blessed to be able to do this. So it's like there's no reason why I can't and why I shouldn't. And so that's why we're going full throttle. But. This is also the perfect opportunity for sponsors and people that want to get on that level in front of arenas on the recap videos.
And on the t-shirts we make, I'm definitely gonna design a shirt for it. And then anything else, all the content, the lives, the videos, I'll be shouting y'all out, man. So I really am trying to promote that heavy, as you could see. Yeah. To get some sponsorships and some help with this because it's gonna be big man.
This is a big turning point I feel in my heart from my personal career. Yeah. Because from here we're gonna leverage that into whether we go back on the road with them, back with Webby. I know Apathy wants to tour again. He has the album coming out next week. Shout out to Apathy Mom and Dad album.
It's coming out June 13th, Friday, June 13th. Check it out. Yeah. I'm on there three times and oh, you have three features on the new apathy. Yeah. Yep. That's my brother, man. Like the whole shore life movement is still a goal for Life Man. Shore Life for life, no matter what.
We created, we dug in and created that out of our so
there'll be a sh there'll be a set of shows to support the album.
Yeah. I'm sure he is gonna, yeah he's booking some they're doing some booking right now for a tour. I can't really talk too much about that. Yeah. But I know for a fact I'm rolling with him to go promote that.
Promote and just to stay on the road, keep this action packed year alive. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's it. We're just trying to like, really just break through to the end of the year with. More performances, more fans and more merch. And basically the suave mob is we're promoting so ba when people ask, they're like, what is it?
Like what is the sua mob? Yo, we are a positive mob that is promoting positivity through music, media and mentorship. The music is obviously the music and everything that's involved with the music. The media is the photography, videography, graphic design, anything media based. We have tech founders, web developers, all of that.
I like, if it's not me. Talking to you about it. It's someone else that's a professional. Like we haven't started like podcasting much like this or anything yet, but that's definitely gonna happen. We're gonna have like people, whether it's Zooms where everyone's talking to each other. I will always wanted to do the coffee shop meetups with artists where we're all here and yo, we have two hours.
What do y'all working on? What do y'all need help with? Let's all talk about it together. Oh, you're not on Harry Fox, you're not on BMI even, let's, all right let's use all of our resources and pool it to everyone to grow a little. Yeah. These
masterminds that you could do virtually pretty easily.
You
could do it virtually I, I don't know. It's something about being in person and like seeing it. If we were in person at a coffee shop and we did it once a week, I feel like within a month, like your artistry and your everything would be leveled up. Like you'll see it you'll see real results.
(04:55):
You don't have to just go on YouTube and look up everything. That's what I did. YouTube University, man, every time there was something, I look it up. But if we're there and we have these masterminds and then I invite you to come one day. Yeah. And talk. I invite someone else that has apathy, anyone that has some experience.
Then all these other artists, let's say it's 15, 20 artists, we're all learning, then we all grow together. And that's something I learned from Texas, like Texas hip hop. And they all stuck together. Yeah. And helped each other. They were featuring on each other's music. They were like promoting each other and that helped them blow up the East Coast.
Everyone's a little more divided. Yeah. They wanna do their own thing. The egos, you put those to the side and that's what, that's why I'm a different artist. I feel I'm a mentor man. Yeah. I'm a man. I want to mentor. I don't want to gate keep, I don't wanna keep information from you. I don't wanna always talk about it and but if we have a, a time and a place let's learn together and I wanna learn too.
I'm learning by, by failures and by. Talking to people like you and that have experience in certain places. Yeah. Hey man, we we wish you all the luck. Yeah, bro. And we will keep taking a look at your progress. Yeah. Because I know it's gonna be sky high. And so give us the last drop.
Tell us what is the big project right now?
The big project right now I would say is my last record back on the road produced by 3 57. My brother from Fort Worth, Texas, he got that bop It's it's not so boom bap. It's a little more trapped out. But I like to dive into both directions a little more modern music and the classic rap.
Check back on the rollout, it surpassed a hundred thousand views on YouTube. It's my first video to do that. Amazing swab, mob shooters, helped out lens for hire edited shot and edited. It was a good, it's a great video. It has Conan shampoo, YNVS I want people to go check that out.
And then I'm working on a nineties mix tape right now. I talked about it on the DJ Dru Ski podcast and I wanna follow that through. So I've done a lot of those records already, and it's just gonna be a mix tape of me rapping on classic nineties beats. If you have one that you want me to do, let me know, bro.
I'll send you a list. Yeah. And I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna get 10, 15 of those. I'm gonna put 'em out and just get some reels, some content going. I'm, like I said, on Mom and Dad on Apathy's album, I'll be promoting that alongside him. This is probably gonna be one of his biggest releases is how it's looking.
It's time. Yeah. Aside from that I would say I, I got singles ready for the rest of the year. I have a back. Back catalog of stuff ready to go. So I'm just gonna drop every month. That's, I'm gonna drop every week. I'm gonna start doing more lives, more content and things like this. But follow sua ski music on all platforms at SUA ski music and then suave mob anywhere we're on patreon.com/suave mob and we have at Suave Mob on Instagram, but it's not hard to find just the . Suave dash ski. Whether you put Suave ski, whether Siri says suave ski, you're gonna find it, you're gonna find it. It's very Googleable and it's like there's nobody else. So check it out.
We're gonna make more fans. Thanks for your time. Yes. Appreciate you, man.
Welcome to Tickets to Travel, the Business of Travel Experiences. I'm your host, Mario DeWine, and today we have SUA Ski. Welcome to the pod. Hey,
(00:01):
what's Scott? What's Scott? What's got,
man, you have been grinding away in the hip hop game for a while. And you just got back from a tour, right?
I did. Absolutely.
Te tell us about where you went and what the experience was like.
Just came back, man from tour with a bell snow Goons, Sean Strange Chubbs, and Jay Sos Chucky Campbell. I remember all the artists 'cause we had a, it's a tour package essentially. Yeah. And it was a good squad man.
It was a good team. It was actually nine. It was nine shows. But lemme just read it off real quick. Yeah. And I'll just give you a little recap. Bucharest, Romania. They love hip hop, , classic hip hop.
I got in touch with the culture there, I feel, so I really met the scene in Buca Rest Romania, so we turned this tour a little into a vacation, Of course, as you do. Yeah. I didn't know but we slid right after that over to Budapest and there was no show there.
Then, right after that, we went over to Istanbul, Turkey,
and then we went over to Prague, Czech Republic. , then we shot forward to Milan, Italy, took a train from Italy down to Naples.
Naples, took a flight over to Rome for a little bit. Then from Rome, flew over to Thessaloniki, Greece. Wow. Then from Greece, took a train down to Athens then Athens, and then flew over to Basel, Switzerland, then Zurich, Switzerland, Lucerne Switzerland, then Munich, Germany.
We ended in Germany. I appreciate you going through the tour process. You know what's interesting is that. You went to Europe.
Yeah.
But you have a pretty big fan base here in the States as well? Probably in Northeast,
yeah.
Do you also tour here in the States?
Man it's, as of right now, it's not hitting the same. I'm like, I do have people listening to my music and watching my videos, but not really I guess maybe it's because I haven't positioned myself to like headline a bunch of shows yet.
So once I learned about the tourist circuit and how you you jump in to open up for a few big artists and then grow your name.
Yes.
I learned about that Little late in the game or else I would've done it sooner. Yep. But once I figured that out, I just kept going. Like with Apathy, he took me out to Canada for the first time. I might have did three tours with him in Canada already. Then from there he introduced me to Chris Webby and his team. So after I learned that, I was just like, let's go, let's keep it moving. So it's been four, five tours.
Now I'm losing track of time, man.
Yeah. I think what people don't understand is the music industry in general is so fragmented, mms, there's lots of different ways to enter it.
(00:22):
Yeah. And there are your Jay-Z's and the Kanye Wests and these big label artists, but the majority of artists who are out there are entrepreneurs. They manage and run their own businesses. What is really interesting is that what's changed over the last few years, not few years, but many decades since streaming came about.
You've had to become more of the business owner and to take hold of your career. Actually Goldman Sachs just came out with a study this past week. Oh really? Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs. Everyone's heard about them. We could learn from them. Yeah. Yeah. So they broke up the music industry in three sections.
Wow. The first was streaming. Yeah. The second was publishing. And the biggest section of growth in the music industry is live events to, because it takes a lot of streams to make some money.
Yeah. It takes too many. That's the lowest. Yeah. We know. That takes forever to get streaming money, you gotta have a hit of all that's like top 40.
Top 10, yeah. And you have to have a pretty solid strategy to work on Spotify and Apple Music to get these streams up. Yeah. And so the publishing side, that's the big label end of it. It's a good,
it's a good side right there. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out my way in there a little more too.
Publishing, 'cause yeah there's money you could be leaving on the table if you don't really that dig in and learn and see and figure it out.
Yeah. So the ask apps, the bmgs, those type of things to make sure that with your stuff gets played right. Or if a big company wants to pick it up, like for a video game or something like that, that you're getting paid on each one of those.
So yeah, definitely placements. But I think the easiest and most attainable one is live events doing shows. And you went to Europe and what I think a lot of people don't understand is that hip hop is global man. It's huge. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's
worldwide right now.
It's growing a lot of different languages that are involved in it too. They're all rapping over there. Russian rap, like the French rapping, they're going hard.
Oh yeah. Japanese rappers. I was I'm an old guy. I listed a lot of hip hop over the last 50 years. Experience.
Experience. Seasoned. Yeah. Seasoned. But it's always been that way with underground hip hop. Is that Europe is always this hotbed for it, whether it be the Netherlands or Germany. Yeah. To, so is that where you're seeing all the engagement for your music?
Yeah. Right now it is.
Like when I look on Spotify and I look at the analytics, it is in Europe, a lot in South America. And there is a lot here as well, but like I said, it doesn't really transfer over. Yeah. In the live events, but when you go somewhere that they're not used to seeing you, like they're gonna appreciate it more.
Yeah.
Even more, especially if you have the right vibe. And you get them going when you meet them and like you you have a good show performance. That's a whole aspect of the artistry that people don't really lean into or they don't learn it until the end. Like they start making music, they find their sound, they find their image, but then like now you gotta have your show that you gotta have a show give them something to want to come back and see whether it's lighting, pyrotechnics, dancers we're in my realm right now in like the, in the boom bap in the classic rap.
Yep. You don't really need all that. You can just come out with a DJ and just kill it. Beat rhymes in life. Beat rhymes in life and keep it simple. But you could have a break dancer, you could have a graffiti dude tagging up. You could do KRS One does that a lot. So there's people I'm seeing, I'm witnessing them like web's killing it with the drummer.
He'll bring his drummer out, his dj and they have a good dynamic. So like just add something to your show? Yeah. At some point. So right now that's where I'm at. I'm like learning like what do I need to add to make this a 30, 45 minute show like that people will pay for it and want to come out. It's here in the States.
Yeah. Because you actually get to keep more of that margin Yeah. Of that ticket sale. So obviously there's booking the venue. Yeah. Promoting it, marketing it, and getting people to come see you. So you have to put on the show.
Yeah. Yeah.
(00:43):
From your perspective, you've been all over Europe at this point.
You're going back too, right? Going back. You're going back. Yeah. Canada. And in the States, when you perform, what are the differences between the fans?
Wow. I would say Americans, they will come out they'll support, maybe they won't spend as much ah, on merchandise as like Europeans and Canadians, but I think they just take you for granted, man.
Yeah. That's what it is. I think it's most artists here, like where you're from, if you, and I've always heard, yeah, you go blow up somewhere else and you come back and then your hometown will love you whatever it is. It's just, it's some sort of psychological thing. But I think it's actually working.
'cause it's been happening lately. Like now people are like, they want to take pictures and do certain things. I'm still here. I said, yes, I still rap, still do music. But like now we're on the road touring, so they must see the trajectory and think something's about to pop.
So that's American fans and you see just more engagement in general in Europe. Yeah. They're more passionate about your kind of straight ahead hip hop music.
Yeah. Yeah, they are. So I would say I guess maybe Canada really, they get rowdy to whatever they love, like live music, maybe. I can't say there's not a lot, but maybe there's not a lot of Americans that go over there all the time. Yeah. So when they do they really support it and they come out strong.
And then Europe, anyone that's crossing the the pond come over to over there and rock with them they come out
And so I, in, in terms of the podcast, we do a piece that's called Fan Travel Stories, where we talk to super fans.
Yeah. People who are crazy. I've talked to Taylor Swift fans, K-Pop fans, t. Liverpool football club fans. Oh, okay. And so what I find is that it's the event itself that drives the travel because one, it's probably more affordable , but two it's an experience.
You get to go experience of a lifetime. Yeah. Yeah. And you get to experience the destination. And so you're in a unique spot because you're an artist, you have a following. Yeah. And you're still trying to promote the business. And so when you started to line up, obviously you were with Ill bill and the snow goons and everyone on this last tour, have they set up the tour in such a way where they had the venue set up, they had ticketing already set up?
Like how did you guys plan? I know it's not really your tour, but it's
not mine, but like I pay attention to all of that stuff, i'm trying to learn, . It seemed like a lot of it was Eventbrite. It was like, okay, what's that third party self-service. Eventbrite.
Yeah.
So self-service, Eventbrite, they're still using more independent methods to sell their tickets and pack places out. But I would say drop the deposit on the venue or it works a little different with the artists. So with the artists, if you have a headliner, you get a guarantee.
They get a guarantee. Usually they're like, Hey, I'm about $1,500.
Yeah.
That's how much. And then the venue will decide yes, we want to, we wanna do the show. Or the promoter will put the money up, maybe the promoter will be like, okay, I'll put the money up and I'll promote this event and get my money back.
And that's the the idea. Yeah. But a lot of artists are putting their own money up now. They're like
self-promoting.
They're self-promoting. Yeah. They'll put their own money up to book the venue. And then they'll get a deposit for the guarantee from the venue. 'cause they're still booking themselves so there's different ways you can go about it.
(01:04):
Yeah, then there's buying onto a tour that's already booked out. And that's
basically, or a
festival. Yeah. Yeah. So a festival's even better, right? Yeah. If you got festivals, you're you're doing the right thing, man. You're on the right path. If you can get to those festivals and before all that, yeah, I would advise any artist to figure out what artists that you sound good with.
Maybe someone that's already touring that you know you could build a relationship with and shoot your shot. Try to buy onto their tours. 'cause you'll see their tours going out and they always have, they bring artists with them. Yeah. They bring openers. So like you, you gotta have a show.
Yeah. You gotta have a shot.
You have the following where, you know, like-minded fans. If they like a certain style of music. Yeah. They're, oh, this is similar, but different. And you can carve out your own sort of sub fan culture with that
look on Spotify, right? Yeah. You look up, if you look me up on Spotify and you go down and it's like similar artists, you'll see similar artists reach out to them.
If you're an artist, maybe try it that way so they'll classify you with other similar artists and then follow all those guys and reach out to them and see what they're doing. Is that what you do? You, that's not what I don't You create the relat relationships. Now I'm always thinking of like how I can help other artists too.
'cause I'm a mentor at the end of the day. So if I think of something and we're talking, if you talk with me and you're an artist and you come here and we talk and we're like building, I'm gonna throw you like a million ideas and there's gonna be a lot of good ones in there. So you decide which ones you want to take.
But I, it's something I would've told myself years ago Hey, look at these similar artists. It was like Mercury Lees, it was apathy, it was self-titled. It was like, like Vinny PAs, certain other artists were popping up. I should have reached out to every one of them and maybe, or just followed them and try to like implement yourself into that.
Yeah. That audience.
Yeah. It's similar. I just got done listening to my favorite podcast is diary of a CEO. Oh, okay. Have you ever heard that one? No,
I have not. Honestly. You
should. So the latest one is with Scooter Braun. Oh,
man.
So Scoot, I just literally listened to it like last hour, and he said something that was really interesting that's along the lines of what we're talking about.
Speaking
of T Swift and all that, right? Is that his he's got that's a whole nother thing. No, politics. He was trying
to, he was trying to avoid that question, I think a little bit, but Right. In terms of what we're talking about. He said maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, billboard came out with the top 30 up and coming people 30.
Under 30.
Oh yeah.
(01:25):
And so he made it a point to call all of those people and introduce himself. On that 30 for 30 30. Under 30 was Daniel Eck, the guy who created Spotify.
Wow. And
this was before. It had blown up. And so he was able to become an early investor of Spotify. That's amazing. Of picking up the phone and developing a relationship.
Yeah. But it's all relationships. 'cause then of course Daniel's gonna get to la and he offers up, Hey, let's hang out. Let's go play ping pong, have a couple of soda pops. Smart man. Get to know each other. So smart. So you take that right from that level. And it's a very simple thing to do.
It's almost like you going to. A festival lineup and started doing the research. And find out who those promoters are, who their managers are, and getting your team involved and finding the right mix of right relationships that'll get you to the next tour. We definitely did that.
Yeah.
At
each venue for sure. We definitely figured talked to the promoter the venue, whoever was the owner if they were there. So we got all that information. We were very heavy on our promotion. It was just two of us, me and Gemini. It was more affordable. That's another thing when you're coming up as a as an artist, you're not gonna have a lot of budget to be able to.
Pay for all these expensive tours. It gets expensive.
Yeah. Travel in particular is expensive, especially when you go in terms of seasonality. Yeah. And then the venue itself. So the venue what size rooms were you playing? Five. What was 500? 500 cap. Yeah.
It could be. There was some that were like 1,500 to a thousand.
Yeah, I would say. Gotcha. And then where
was your kind of target ticket pricing for those rooms? I don't even, I'm not really sure. I thought it was 35 to 50. Okay. Yeah, that's about right. That sounds about
right. And then you obviously, whoever promoted it would probably get a piece of the bar and so are you comfortable in that 500 room or you think you could do a thousand, you think you could do
Yeah, I because that's a
bit of a graduation. And artist impact.
Yeah, to have all, get all the way up to the stadium, yeah. The stadium, the arenas, the festivals.
That is the goal and I'm aspiring for but I would say I guess one thing Gemini would always tell me is he's trying to put me in position with certain people ahead of my time before I'm ready to be there. Just so you can witness it and see. Yeah. So it's, that's been happening we're meeting all these people ahead of time and we are more prepared for when the moment comes.
I guess so. Yeah, the arenas and the festivals are right around the corner, man. They're coming. But before that we worked every room by ourselves and lemme just jump back, like me and Gemini doing this tour I wasn't able to bring the ua, mob shooters, Jackson, GA couple guys that always come with us on these tours.
It, it was a little more expensive for us to be able to travel get another hotel room, things like that. But. The bigger artists that are doing it, they have a system in play where they're getting like some sort of discount for multiple rooms
and that's working out for them. But the byon a lot of the time gotta work on the openers, the supporting acts. They gotta thug it out and figure it out. And that's okay with me right now. I'm okay to do that. I felt like it was but Gemini was making sure we didn't thug it out and we were staying in amazing places.
(01:46):
Yeah. We went to some amazing hotels and he was keeping like rumors in Germany. Okay. It was called Rumors. And it was an amazing place. And that's where we met some like higher end, I would say, connections. Like we met this lady Orley, we met her son her nephew is Ariel Levi, he's the F1 race car driver.
Wow. And he's 24 and he's the only Israeli race car driver in F1 in Porsche. Yeah, doing it right now and there's connections that we start making out on the road. You would never make if you weren't in these hotels, in these places. Meeting these people, yep.
You have to level up your game to get to that level.
Yeah. So I, yeah, and I think that's very, if I was at
Holiday Inn, it'd be a lot different is all I think so it was it was expensive in that manner. So we had to cut back. We couldn't even get merch 'cause it was a lot. It's expensive to buy the merch to be able to sell. It cost a lot too.
So you, you
self fund your tours, your trips. Like even when I met we haven't even talked about how we met.
Yeah,
I know. Yeah. South by Southwest Texas. Texas, yeah. We were in Austin. We'll get back to that question, but we'll tell this story. Yeah. I'm in Austin for South by Southwest.
I'm meeting with various companies different partners of mine, and it was just a regular, what was it, like a Wednesday night, something like that. It
was like a regular night man. Just, yeah. Regular south by Southwest night.
Because you've gone before. Yeah. You go to South by all the time.
'cause this is where a lot of artists break their music. Yeah. Actually I never even asked you like what you I've been a few times. Yeah. What
I was there doing was to perform at a couple of places and then we were with YNVS, shout out to Shampoo Conan. The entire YVS DJs team, the YNV Def Jam for sure.
Like man, they we were out there to perform. He threw a showcase at a venue and me and Conan were gonna perform our song. We shot our video for Back on the Road. We had a music video we were filming for and we were just trying to be in the mix. Yeah. And we were like filming with the UA Mob and YMVS.
We were filming other artists. We were doing those mic drop videos. Yeah. We had a bunch of those come out and just getting to connect with these people. 'cause we knew what it was like. There's people everywhere, promoters, managers, artists. Label
guy, Spotify, people walking
around different, you man, we met you.
So it was just like how here I am. Like how is everyone? Yeah. Here you are. We go back to the hotel. It was the Fairmont, I believe.
We started talking and yeah, of course I know some of the related artists, whether it be Webby or Apathy. Webby, yeah. Because of just being a fan of hip hop and just understanding the localization of it all.
And then as we started to talk, it's maybe my expertise can help your expertise in some ways. And so we decided to do a podcast one, but also just to connect in Connecticut,
(02:07):
man, connect in Connecticut. I think we wanted to connect in Connecticut, so we, when we came back and we reached out, we tried to make it happen a few times.
It you're looking for these tools to enhance the tour, obviously to make an income, but also to promote yourself to get to those other levels. Yeah. What do you think a venue. A ticketing company should think about in terms of attracting someone, an artist of your caliber who's gonna obviously blow up at some point and try to create that relationship now, because there are ticketing conferences, there are venue conferences.
Yeah. I go to some of these actually I was gonna suggest you, there's Neva, which is the National Independent Venue Association. Wow. Takes place in Milwaukee. What next month. Oh man. And so basically it's everybody. Who is not Live Nation.
Okay. Okay. So everybody else is there. If you're not Live Nation and Ticketmaster, you're there.
Okay. And so that's a good place. Yeah. I absolutely. That's smart.
Yeah. So where you can just talk to everybody and people start drinks start flowing and they have performances there, so you could actually perform there and do showcases there. That'd be cool.
That'd be cool. But that's one kind of suggestion from a business perspective. Like you start developing those relationships. From 500 cap rooms all the way up to 5,000 cap rooms are all there. There's festival promoters walking out throughout, but it's more of a business. Five.
Yeah.
It's not like a, maybe
a booking manager, Maori managers would be there. Yes. Like certain things like that. But as an artist to show up yourself is, that's a statement too. I like that. Yeah.
It's different.
Yeah. It's different. I come up, so you were, we were talking earlier and you, I do give like an entrepreneur vibe as a business owner.
Rather than just a artist because I've been running my own businesses for a long time. Marketing and promotion. I had creative connection. It was a storefront in New London and I was doing like content creation. You could come and take photos here, something similar to this setup here. And I was running that for a little bit.
And we were throwing events every weekend, like it was booming, but it is a small town so it can only go so far. And I had some issue with the landlord and it was just like, okay. Can't do this no more. Yeah. I gotta focus on me and make sure I can bring in some revenue to try another business, yeah. Try it again. Or get a sponsor or something. Just create attention and more momentum and then we'll figure it out from there. But yeah. As an entrepreneur I'm interested in all of that, man learning the business behind the scenes, like what it takes, like what app are you using? Is it a CRM?
Yep, yep. My he's acting as an agent now, but my, my, my good friend Peter, he's in Florida right now and he's building an app called Develop, and it's a, he's a tech founder, so he's been working on that for years now, and it's a CRM, but we were, we're trying to figure out a way for me to use it as an artist to keep.
Track of all the fans and everything besides like a Patreon. And then we come to terms with we might need something better like our own server, our own app, our own something. Yeah. So we can talk about all that stuff. Yeah, we can talk about all that stuff, I think.
Yeah. Because that's the challenge, right?
Yeah. If you don't, how do you control it? How do you take control and keep
control of
you have to own, right? So it starts from your website a newsletter.
Yeah.
(02:28):
Patreon's a good way to capture all of them, obviously, but there are different tools and it's not a one size fits all. No.
Depending on how you wanna run your business. Yeah. And I think that's where going back to the music stuff these record labels, they do that for the artists. And when you're in a situation where, hey, this is my business. Yeah. And I want creative control, because we haven't even talked about how you started rapping yet, by the way.
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. But
I think that's where. That's why we're having conversations like this to bring a little bit more awareness of it. Because I think there's various artists who have followings and they create content and they have, yes, it's the product itself. The creativeness the talent that's on, that's being recorded, but at the same time, don't dig enough into the actual business of it all, because that's where it gets disconnected.
Yeah. Some you got kids out there who are like, oh, I'm just super talented. I got a million streams on on SoundCloud, and then nothing ever happens because they don't have the grind that you do. Quite frankly. Yeah. To go out and tour. To go out and figure
out the next step.
Yeah. Besides the likes and the streams. Yeah. 'cause yeah, you can get those numbers, but you can also buy those numbers. Yeah. A lot of that stuff isn't even real. It's smoke and mirrors, so That's totally true. You gotta watch out for that. Are you really making an impact? You'll know if you're really making an impact by the people around you and how they respond to you.
As or if they're coming up to you like, Hey man, you still do music. Yeah. A lot of people do that. Yeah. And it's yo, if you don't know, then you, I haven't been putting it out there enough for you to already know, but
yeah, it's no that's why I admire you a lot because I had a cousin who was an underground rapper in San Francisco.
Yeah.
And just watching his career. Very talented guy. Yeah. He was into drugs and different things that happened and he didn't want to grind,
which is an easy thing to do on, of course, drinking and all that stuff's there. Music and, yeah.
But here's the thing. He wouldn't even tour and I would just look at him and be like, and he'd go to the studio.
He, they'd burn the CDs, sell 'em out of the trunk, that kind of thing, right? I like
that hustle too. That's a
hustle came from that. As, as well as anybody, you have to be in front of these fans.
It's not sustainable either unless like you're gonna be out the trunk forever, like trying to sell,
right?
You have to perform. You have to show them who you are, be authentic. And so I used to always be like, you know what man? You're the best rapper in my car.
You are the best rapper in my car, man. Cause we would be hanging out in the S whatever in
the Spotify. Yep. You're the best rapper in my car.
(02:49):
And I really wish cause I was doing my own business stuff right. And trying to get my career going and I'd always just want him to. Really take it seriously because he was so talented. And so that's why I admire you guys in that you're hustling. Thank you,
man. Yeah.
It's a hard it's a long journey and there is a lot of ups and downs. And then when you're doing it by yourself, it can get overwhelming. I see. Where people would quick give up. I see it, but I also see the other side and how when you accomplish that, want that thought, you finish every idea.
And then some of them get left behind. Of course you're not, nobody's perfect, so you're gonna forget some things or you're gonna do some things wrong. But you'll see you, these opportunities that open up for you from that that are even bigger. And it's just start, it starts to grow like that.
And then you have to just keep trying them. Keep trying 'em. Yeah. You can't give up. The failures don't really hurt. At this point. They don't hurt. They're just like. We could have got more, we could have had more engagement, or we could have had a call to action, or we coulda did more with that, but like, all right, let's try it again.
Yeah. Let's go shoot and every time we shoot and we put things out, we're all growing. Like even the, all the way down to the videographers and the photographers and the people that are behind the scenes helping everyone's trying to grow so that all the businesses can thrive together.
Yeah. Because there's,
you have to go out there and create Yeah. And put it out there so that you never know, yeah. One song, you never know. It takes one, it does one takes, takes one song and or one video or one social post. Exactly. That could just turn things. But if you don't get in the game at all Yeah.
You don't even have the opportunity.
A lot of people lose themselves at the nine to five at . Once you start working. That's something that I personally had to deal with, which is it's a tough one. All right. So I work for Curin Livery Transportation Group, and my boss, Greg, he's an amazing dude.
He was very supportive of all the music and everything I've been doing all the way to the point where he would invest in the first tours I was doing with Webby. He was, he would help me out. And at some point because of that investment and because of the tours, it started to, I started to grow at a rapid rate where it's these opportunities are coming.
Am I gonna tour or am I gonna go to work? And I told him we had a tough talk about it. He is you are at the point in your career or your life where you're gonna have to decide which one you want to do. And I'm in, I'm literally in that middle space right now, where do I go back to the nine to five and work so that I can pay everything comfortably?
Or do I live a little uncomfortable like Gary V said,
And thug it out for another year or so. And I'm at the point where I definitely, I'm gonna thug it out. I'm not gonna go back to Yeah. You can't stop. Yeah. There's no and e
even if you do choose something you you have a little more leverage to understand your own personal situation.
Yeah. Where you can put the time because we get a hundred years. Yeah. I think Kanye West said that. Somebody said that we get a hundred years. You get a hundred years. Yeah. So you have to do what you can in those a hundred years. So whether you start when you're 20 Yeah. Which that's probably the best situation.
Yeah. Or younger or you realize it, right? Someone like myself who's had a long career already, 20 plus years, but now. Being a consultant, doing these podcasts, these type of things. It's a whole different sort of entrepreneurial journey, which I wouldn't feel right if I didn't try it.
Yeah. No, I think you're doing a great job, by the way. Oh, thanks man. I really do. And the fact that we're here right now doing this just proves that you're not stopping either. So that drive to, to keep growing and adapt to whatever's happening now is that's a tough one. And it's not a trending thing, it's more because you're bringing, like the knowledge and expertise.
A lot of people will jump on trends just because it's a trend instead of adding value to it. I feel like we're adding value to a lot of artists, a lot of other people that are watching that could learn from, what it takes to take that next step into touring and to get into the ticketing side of Yeah.
Music. So let's let's back up a little bit. How long you been rapping? Oh, boy. I'm pretty sure you've answered this question a million times. No, but I just for the
Just context so everyone knows I've turned I, this 2025, I turned 35 and it's been about 12 years, I would say. Yeah. 12 years in the game.
(03:10):
In the beginning. I don't consider any of that being in the game. It's just like you record. I'm in my cousin's room, he's got the beat pad. He's making the beats. I start writing in the first like few years. Were absolute trash. I hope I to never hear anything from those years ever again. I don't want to hear none of it.
No, man. When
you get big or release some a that's gonna come
with some old Yeah. I already know it's gonna pop up in, in my future.
But you never know, man, that stuff could, you're just very critical.
Obviously. I'm very critical of it now.
There was a lot of changes. Like I used to make breakup songs. Like I could write right now I could get a publishing deal right now if anybody's interested. I could write and I could like make r and b music. Any sort of songs any genre. Yeah. I've been doing it for that long at this point.
And then after we started doing some of these like albums, we'd press 'em up and do the high school promotion thing. I got signed to Dallas Records back in the day and it was like one of those things you wish you, maybe you didn't do, but it was all right. We did it. I went and did a showcase tours, like all these different showcases I learned.
The grind of shows and how to perform and things there started in Texas. And then it was just like, I needed videos, I needed photos. I picked up my laptop and I was, I don't know where I started to do Photoshop, but once I started, I never stopped that either. And I was doing all my own promotional materials. I had to learn Premier Pro and Photoshop to gimme a edge back then, because I wanted to look like maybe there was a label behind me or something. Like a little more official. But. It was bad too.
Like it was bad work then too. So after five years in, maybe 10 years, then it just started to become like second nature. Like I could I could do the laptop, I could do the graphic designs for the single cover, for the artwork. I could do the promotional video. Yeah. And then I could do edit my own music video.
And then I would do that for years and that would start to put me in, Conversations with actual artists
What was the thing that just made you.
Boost your confidence, be like, yeah, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go tour Europe, I'm gonna go release a couple albums. What was the, was it was it apathy? Was it a record that you put out and everyone just went crazy? What was the turning point
there?
I think there was a few different moments to be real, but like with apathy, like when I was actually sitting in the studio in the beginning, sitting in the studio with him and seeing like him write some records in 15 minutes and then record him. And it'd just be some like, like what is this? This is crazy.
Like this guy's a monster. Like he's a beast. Like at what he does, he can produce the record, he can write in 15 minutes and and then going on tour with him and seeing that part of it and how he did it alone him and self-titled and how they were running it on their own. That gave me confidence to be able to do it on my own too.
But then I would say when other people, and this might be strange, when other people started to believe in me. A little more than I did myself.
Then I started to believe a lot more, When someone was like giving me like more fire, like a passion about what I'm doing than what I'm doing, and it was like it was a weird point and it was just like introspective because I'm a dad now too, so I can get carried away and go do soccer practice and go do this and that and live a whole nother life and go clock in and be comfortable. I guess people could get comfortable.
I was falling into that a little, I feel at times, but anytime someone else would come with an idea or believe in me and a little more than not that I believe in, that I don't believe in myself. 'cause now it's, I believe in myself more now. No, it's just
validation.
Yeah. That kind of validation.
(03:31):
Yeah. You don't think you need you don't really need it as an artist, but when you've been doing it for so long, you've, at some point it's gonna change something in your mind when you start seeing people from the past come back and yo, they're trying to help out now. And they want to invest or they want to like, make these moves with you.
And I, I've learned to, to continue to do that no matter what. I feel like I'm on autopilot. Like no matter what happens, I'm a artist, I'm gonna stay true to my art and I'm gonna make a song or release something consistently. I'm always gonna have something coming out.
The consistency is key, like we said earlier too, is that I take it back to the podcasting 'cause I'm not creative person. I'm creative in a lot of business dealings and such. Yeah, I'm sure. But like when it came to. To the podcast my brother, who's my engineer he goes, once you get past seven episodes, you're a podcaster.
Oh, yeah.
And then I had another friend who said the same thing, but he had a studio in Vegas and he had like millions of people he would interview celebrities.
And he's yeah, once you hit 20, that's when people really take you seriously. Wow. And then if you stick with it and you continue to go past 20, then you're a legitimate business because then you've gathered enough. And if you're buying ads and you're doing all these different things to support it.
Yeah. Even better. Yeah. It just, it sort of amplifies. And that's the purest form I can think of because really anybody could pick up a microphone and talk to a camera and do it. Yeah.
For you it's different. You have a set of talent. 'cause even when I met you guys in Austin, I went back to the room and I pop popped on your tracks.
And I was like, wait a second. I would this is great. This is, thank you, man. This is the type of hip hop that we need that that type of messages, man, like messages and positivity and yeah, it's fun. But also it's beach rhymes in life, like I said before. And I was happy that we connected because there's probably something there, whether you look at the bigger scheme of things that we're all supposed to meet and help each other out, right?
Yes. Along the path. Absolutely. And I think you're at that point where. You need another reference point. Yeah. Whether it's a corporate one or another partnership, or actually bringing it back. You mentioned sponsorship,
right?
So tell me a little bit about that. What are you thinking?
Is it you need someone to sponsor the hotels, the, yeah the tour, the,
it could come down to that, but like, all in all, let me just say, so we've built the umbrella, all right? We have the suave mob. All right. Yep. We're building a community. It's bigger than me as an artist. I'm suave ski.
That's cool. I can do videos, do content, bring all this attention back to the Suave Mob, which is all of us, which is my boy here, Jackson Man we created suave mob shooters. We're filming for people. We're helping other people we're, we created a business out of it. And now we're just trying to grow that.
And like we have some fans that are jumping over and they're starting to help invest into the monthly Patreon and things like that. And we're creating content for them, but. From that we're looking to be our own label in a way so that we can have these things these tours and have flights.
But yes, it gets expensive. Okay, so you buy onto the tour and then sometimes all that other stuff's not covered or included. So what we like to do is, in return any company that wants to get into that realm of hip hop shows, recap videos lens for hire, he's been killing all of our like recap videos, last web tours.
So it's we'll throw your logo right on there, like Bonsai bud right here. Shout to bonsai Bud. He's his current sponsor. He's a grower out of Rhode Island. And they have a lot of dispensaries that put their product out and we're collaborating on some merch with them right now.
But he's helping out with other things as well, like events and being able to put some money into either an event or travel. And it, I've been doing it myself. As an independent artist, we have no choice. We have to put your own money up and make it happen. But at some point we have content, we have eyes, we have engagement, so we want to be able to help others as well. I wanted to talk more about that because our tour, it was planned to an extent. Like we bought the tickets in the hotels, but we didn't have everything mapped out itinerary wise, like we could have, it could have been a lot more. Operational for us,
yeah. It's all in the planning. I worked at a startup called Pollen. And what Pollen did was they did destination festivals. And so I ran the travel team that managed all of the hotels and all the travel stuff. So we'd go negotiate full buyouts of resorts because this happened during full buyouts.
Full buyouts. We're talking anywhere from three to $5 million to a hotel resort, because this happened during COVID.
(03:52):
Wow.
So at that point, and those artists couldn't perform in a Live Nation venue, right? But where they could do it. Is out on a beach, ah, or in an open air pool. And so we legitimately did stuff for Jay Balvin Carol G, Justin Bieber.
Wow. Dead mouse, Tiesto. So my team had 70 people globally. 70. Yeah. The team.
Always a team. Always a team.
So we would go out and negotiate all of that stuff, and then, put together a package. So it would be a party and a two to three night stay, and then you'd get little extras maybe a meet and greet, maybe go jet skiing with the artist or whatever it is.
Oh, wow. And it worked out really well for the artists too, because at that point let's face it, Justin Beeber was probably getting high on his couch, right? Yeah. And then these guys come in and say, here's a million bucks, let's go and put this on. And so that gave me a lot of perspective in terms of one, the traditional travel industry and how it works, but then bringing in entertainment and how I.
People like yourself. You're, you are, you're at a level where I've met guys at Live Nation and these big promoters, and they're all just like you. Swarski, they're all just like you. They're all hustling. Okay. Trying to figure, doesn't matter if they got several million dollars in the bank they're still hustling. Yeah. They're all trying to put a deal together. And that's what really brought it out of me, because that's how I started my career. I was a kid. I could burn up the phones. I could I was good at closing, I was good at doing that stuff. But then I got into this mode of travel where it almost got too easy in a way.
And so I always credit the entertainment side, the ticketing side to bring me back to where I am in terms of. I like going to do the deal. Yeah, let's go do the deal. Let's create a really good relationship and then let's scale it. Yeah. So yeah, you're starting off with 500 cap venues currently.
Yeah. But what's the secret sauce to get it to a thousand and then 2,500 and then 5,000 and then we're talking about the stadium later on. And so I'm confident that we have the right people and the network and the know-how to figure those things out.
But again, it comes down to the hustle. Unless you
buy onto a stadium tour. Or yeah you could buy the space.
No, there's sometimes that you can get ahead. Get ahead of yourself. Yeah. And as long as you're prepared preparation is key, then you can have that moment will be yours, man.
Sure. No. So
actually that was going back to what I was thinking too. 'cause you're right, it has to be planned. Yeah. Whether it's taking a look at the data of where all your fans are. That's key, right? You wanna see where the most engagement are, and then taking a look at which venues are in each one of those areas that would fit the bill.
So you can almost guarantee you can sell them out. Then that allows you to price the tickets a certain way and then provide value. So let's take you have a huge following in Amsterdam, for example. Okay. Which maybe you do probably do. You could find a 500 or a thousand cap room.
Yeah. But you could stay there for a week. Do two to three shows and then do a meet and greet or a luncheon or an activity at a store where they sell your sponsor's product or something like that. I like that. So you're creative man.
Yeah. Because it's all about perceived value. Yeah.
So yes, it was a $35 ticket for one night show, 45 minutes, but why couldn't it be 250 bucks if you're giving more value throughout the process? So it comes down to the planning, understanding where your audience is. Finding the right kind of venues and the right hotels
And also thinking out of the box in terms of doing this with a partnership with maybe a beer guard. Yeah. Yeah. You become the promoter for these type of venues. And so I think that's something to really think about and really lay out the numbers.
And then going back to what you said earlier about having a cm. And that's where you understand the behavior and the engagement of those fans. Because then very easily on Patreon you can put out a survey Yeah. And say, Hey, would you like to go water skiing with me and Jackson?
Would
(04:13):
you guys like to help design a t-shirt or the next cover for my single, come to the coffee shop and grab a coffee with us, hang out, yeah, exactly. And then you create a package around it. So yeah, we're gonna be in Amsterdam for two nights, you get to go to both shows and you get to hang out with us and that's $300.
Wow. See, I love that side of it. Personally, I love that side so much that I want to jump in it and be in the emails with you and talk about it and figure things out and get on the calls, the consultations. But in reality I need to figure out what we're gonna do. At those other events, like those places, the beer gardens to, to be more creative about that.
And I want to focus on that. And that's what Gemini was trying to help me do as well. And everyone else in the swag, mob is helping me to become more of an artist and focus on the music and the art and the performance and Yep. All of that so that, I can have more time to, to do that and not focus on the business so much and let someone else, but we don't have that person yet that can, But you still need the data to Yeah. To find that person. So take the Amsterdam example. You find a fan, a straight at the hip hop fan who wants to be in the music industry. Usually it's a college kid or somebody. Yeah. Hey buddy, here's the list Yeah. Of different venues that we're interested in doing.
Where's a beer garden, a bar, whatever it is. And here's the checklist of things that you need to ask for. You can get some kids to do that. A little
delegation goes a long way. That's what the mob is for. So we're trying to get people to like, want to, that want to help out and be a part of seeing this idea that we have and then seeing it come to life.
And then again, and again, we keep doing that. Yeah. Until we're out of there and we're able to like all have like dinners together and things like that. Yeah. But I
feel like you, you can leverage that as a community. Yeah. Because, the things that kids don't have. Now, when I say kids, I mean like college kids.
Yeah. High school kids, whatever the youngins is that they don't have experience.
So by finding the right person who is actually going to do what you ask them to do
Then they have that on their resume. So if they wanna go apply for a job at Live Nation right now, they're promotions assistant for SWA Ski.
And so that's how you have to spin it, is that it's all business. It's not fun. And this is a serious thing. We're gonna be a reference for you and so do X, Y, Z or a BC that we ask you to do.
Like an intern.
Like an intern.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that, that's, and that's free for you. Yeah. But again, you're the.
The value is leveraging the experience that they're gonna gain from that. So finding those people are key.
I want to help them, man. I love helping people, man. It brings, it's what I do it for, I feel like. Yeah. So I feel like there's somewhat a lot of people relying on me right now to really break this door down.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of, there's pressure and there's another thing, being a artist and being the person that puts your face out there all the time, put everything out there, your information, your songs, your vulnerability. It's then it's what happens from there? It's either it all falls down 'cause you just stop or everything.
Or you stay at that door. A lot of people stay at that door and keep knocking instead of kicking it down, man. That's the thing. Yeah. I'm just at a place where I feel like we're about to kick this door down, whether it be with Onyx right now, slam, we come in and just kick that door down and just start doing festivals.
(04:34):
Yeah. So just as we start to wrap up things a little bit, tell me about that. Tell me, yeah, I was how did you get Onyx happen? How did that in that I was hooking that, I
was trying to throw that out there right now. 'cause I know you know what you're doing, man. Yeah. The next, okay, so the last tour was epic, man, it was cool, but it's like it felt like I'm warming up and now that I'm ready to light these stages on fire.
Bigger to the next level, the bigger stages. Shout out to Perry, right? He's doing some sort of managerial help with Onyx. Okay. Personally, he's in the mix. He's booking shows. He's doing all of that. And he's been doing it for a while now and he's also been helping another friend of mine acapella, who's a producer.
He took his music and he put it out on a hundred Mad, which is Onyx label. Yeah. So maybe he just, he's works for the label either way. Perry is the man. He's been very, he's been very helpful. So he reached out. He is yo, listen you can run out on this tour with us next.
He just re he was like, yo, I talked to the guys. He was like, just let's handle this. And then from there, these are the dates. And then I was waiting like a week or so, and then he started to populate the dates. And I'm just looking at it like, wow. And then we get on a FaceTime. Me, him and Gemini are talking and just, I.
It was a really good vibe. It's yo, listen, I see where you're at in your career, and like how we could we, it could change right here. Like you, it could change. You just gotta follow through. The finances would hold a lot of people back right here. But now I'm digging in and I'm getting more help from family, from anyone that I can to like, continue this motion, keep this going.
'cause doing these I was looking at the venues and a lot of them are festivals, man. They're arenas. It's already there. So it's like, all right, I'm prepared for the show. I've been promo, I've been doing it enough. I got the show. Yep. You've worked out the muscle. I've worked out the muscle.
Now it's time to get on the road. To stay on the road. My, my family's been instrumental in helping with my kids. So I'm blessed to be able to do this. So it's like there's no reason why I can't and why I shouldn't. And so that's why we're going full throttle. But. This is also the perfect opportunity for sponsors and people that want to get on that level in front of arenas on the recap videos.
And on the t-shirts we make, I'm definitely gonna design a shirt for it. And then anything else, all the content, the lives, the videos, I'll be shouting y'all out, man. So I really am trying to promote that heavy, as you could see. Yeah. To get some sponsorships and some help with this because it's gonna be big man.
This is a big turning point I feel in my heart from my personal career. Yeah. Because from here we're gonna leverage that into whether we go back on the road with them, back with Webby. I know Apathy wants to tour again. He has the album coming out next week. Shout out to Apathy Mom and Dad album.
It's coming out June 13th, Friday, June 13th. Check it out. Yeah. I'm on there three times and oh, you have three features on the new apathy. Yeah. Yep. That's my brother, man. Like the whole shore life movement is still a goal for Life Man. Shore Life for life, no matter what.
We created, we dug in and created that out of our so
there'll be a sh there'll be a set of shows to support the album.
Yeah. I'm sure he is gonna, yeah he's booking some they're doing some booking right now for a tour. I can't really talk too much about that. Yeah. But I know for a fact I'm rolling with him to go promote that.
Promote and just to stay on the road, keep this action packed year alive. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's it. We're just trying to like, really just break through to the end of the year with. More performances, more fans and more merch. And basically the suave mob is we're promoting so ba when people ask, they're like, what is it?
Like what is the sua mob? Yo, we are a positive mob that is promoting positivity through music, media and mentorship. The music is obviously the music and everything that's involved with the music. The media is the photography, videography, graphic design, anything media based. We have tech founders, web developers, all of that.
I like, if it's not me. Talking to you about it. It's someone else that's a professional. Like we haven't started like podcasting much like this or anything yet, but that's definitely gonna happen. We're gonna have like people, whether it's Zooms where everyone's talking to each other. I will always wanted to do the coffee shop meetups with artists where we're all here and yo, we have two hours.
What do y'all working on? What do y'all need help with? Let's all talk about it together. Oh, you're not on Harry Fox, you're not on BMI even, let's, all right let's use all of our resources and pool it to everyone to grow a little. Yeah. These
masterminds that you could do virtually pretty easily.
You
could do it virtually I, I don't know. It's something about being in person and like seeing it. If we were in person at a coffee shop and we did it once a week, I feel like within a month, like your artistry and your everything would be leveled up. Like you'll see it you'll see real results.
(04:55):
You don't have to just go on YouTube and look up everything. That's what I did. YouTube University, man, every time there was something, I look it up. But if we're there and we have these masterminds and then I invite you to come one day. Yeah. And talk. I invite someone else that has apathy, anyone that has some experience.
Then all these other artists, let's say it's 15, 20 artists, we're all learning, then we all grow together. And that's something I learned from Texas, like Texas hip hop. And they all stuck together. Yeah. And helped each other. They were featuring on each other's music. They were like promoting each other and that helped them blow up the East Coast.
Everyone's a little more divided. Yeah. They wanna do their own thing. The egos, you put those to the side and that's what, that's why I'm a different artist. I feel I'm a mentor man. Yeah. I'm a man. I want to mentor. I don't want to gate keep, I don't wanna keep information from you. I don't wanna always talk about it and but if we have a, a time and a place let's learn together and I wanna learn too.
I'm learning by, by failures and by. Talking to people like you and that have experience in certain places. Yeah. Hey man, we we wish you all the luck. Yeah, bro. And we will keep taking a look at your progress. Yeah. Because I know it's gonna be sky high. And so give us the last drop.
Tell us what is the big project right now?
The big project right now I would say is my last record back on the road produced by 3 57. My brother from Fort Worth, Texas, he got that bop It's it's not so boom bap. It's a little more trapped out. But I like to dive into both directions a little more modern music and the classic rap.
Check back on the rollout, it surpassed a hundred thousand views on YouTube. It's my first video to do that. Amazing swab, mob shooters, helped out lens for hire edited shot and edited. It was a good, it's a great video. It has Conan shampoo, YNVS I want people to go check that out.
And then I'm working on a nineties mix tape right now. I talked about it on the DJ Dru Ski podcast and I wanna follow that through. So I've done a lot of those records already, and it's just gonna be a mix tape of me rapping on classic nineties beats. If you have one that you want me to do, let me know, bro.
I'll send you a list. Yeah. And I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna get 10, 15 of those. I'm gonna put 'em out and just get some reels, some content going. I'm, like I said, on Mom and Dad on Apathy's album, I'll be promoting that alongside him. This is probably gonna be one of his biggest releases is how it's looking.
It's time. Yeah. Aside from that I would say I, I got singles ready for the rest of the year. I have a back. Back catalog of stuff ready to go. So I'm just gonna drop every month. That's, I'm gonna drop every week. I'm gonna start doing more lives, more content and things like this. But follow sua ski music on all platforms at SUA ski music and then suave mob anywhere we're on patreon.com/suave mob and we have at Suave Mob on Instagram, but it's not hard to find just the . Suave dash ski. Whether you put Suave ski, whether Siri says suave ski, you're gonna find it, you're gonna find it. It's very Googleable and it's like there's nobody else. So check it out.
We're gonna make more fans. Thanks for your time. Yes. Appreciate you, man.
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