WILL RUNZEL (Prodigy Artists) - Manager of Slander, NGHTMRE and more

Will Runzel is the co-founder of Prodigy Artists, one of the most successful management companies in the dance music industry who represent Slander, NGHTMRE and a strong roster of other talented artists.

In this episode we discuss how to effectively launch and market your brand to get the attention of a manager, the early years of Slander, NGHTMRE and Prodigy Artists, and the inner aspects of what it takes to be successful in ANY industry and life in general.

Follow Will here:
https://www.instagram.com/willrunzel

Follow Nik Cherwink here:
https://www.instagram.com/nikcherwink

And visit my site to join the mailing list or book a free coaching call:
https://www.nikcherwink.com

Transcript

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Going and trying to play a bunch of support slots is always a backup plan plan A is always create buzz, pop out as a headliner You might go let people know, Hey, I'm an artist. I have an artist project. Listen to my music. I'm part of this tour. But you've also branded yourself as part of the tour as the opener for the tour and now in people's eyes and in their psyche, you have to overcome the fact that you're the backup dancer. You're the backup dancer. Do people want to be fans of Jennifer Lopez's backup dancers. No, they want to be fans of Jennifer Lopez. What's up everybody. Welcome to the headliner mindset podcast. Today's guest is the co founder of one of the most successful management companies in the dance music industry, prodigy artists, his company started off by helping launch and build the careers of slander and nightmare, and now has grown to represent a huge roster of amazing talent. He knows not only how to master the outer game of business, but also the inner game of mindset, energy, and spirituality. This is Will Runzel. Will, my man, welcome to the show, bro. Thank you. Thanks for, uh, for having me. I've been watching you do these and I was like, I imagine Nick will call me eventually, but it sounds like it's been going great for you and, uh, I've been, uh, very entertained by the ones you've, you've released already, so congratulations. Well, thanks so much, man. it's an honor to have you here. It kind of worked out perfectly. Like you're definitely on my hit list. And then, um, your, your publicist hit me up and was like, do you want to work with this guy? Will? I'm like, uh, yeah, I know. Will we go way back? We go way back. So that's been my favorite part of doing the podcast has just been like catching up with people that I've known from 10 or 15 years ago, you know? So, oh yeah. The Avalon days. Yeah, bro. Yes, sir. Now, uh, with that being said, you have really created something cool for yourself and for a lot of other people and have made a huge impact in the dance music industry, uh, and the work that you're doing with the artists that you're working with. Uh, let's go back to where it all started. Prodigy artists, uh, before you had prodigy, you were, you started off managing by yourself. And then you found a business partner and you guys grew this really, really dope management company. So let's go back to who I believe was your first act was slander. Is that correct? Second act. Second act. Okay. Yeah. So you had, you had an act before them. I want to talk about slander specifically though. Um, obviously I go way back with them as well, working at icon collective. I heard a story that you had, well, first off, what was it about slander that caught your eye that had you be like, I want to work with these guys? Uh, their ability to perform was the, the first thing that was head and shoulders above the competition. And for guys that, you know, were playing like their first big shows, maybe with led walls or production, they had a lot of confidence. And even more so when we sat down at our first, you know, get to know you, I won't say the name of the artist, but they looked me in the eyes and they were like, we're going to be bigger than so and so artists one day, you know, one of the greats and just quantifying that now, I feel like they are at a level where, you know, 10 years ago, they looked me in the eyes and said something that sounded kind of ridiculous at the time and they accomplished it. And so confidence on stage and confidence, um, in person and in their, in their abilities and their, in their ability to work hard. And I think, um, you know, I, I worked with Afrojack a couple of years back and one of the things he taught me was you can teach people to write great songs, but you can't teach people to be stars. And I think Slander, uh, their stardom, their ability to be stars was, uh, was paramount and the initial thing that attracted me to them. Yeah, sounds like they were aiming high. They had a real big vision. They weren't like, we just want to get in the game and just sort of survive and be able to, you know, make it in the industry. They were like, we want to be at the fucking top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The sites were pointed at the very top when they were at the very bottom. And not just, I mean, I think a lot of people say that, and a lot of people have maybe that dream, but it also sounds like you said, like they had the confidence and really the belief, not just like, Oh, we hope that this happens someday, but like, we're going to do this someday. Like the belief and the confidence piece is huge. This is what I noticed throughout 15 years of other people telling me that. Slander told me that one time, and they never mentioned it ever again. I had other kids come into my office and tell me they were gonna, we were gonna win a Grammy together, and they would tell me that every six months. Then it was three years of them telling me, and I'm like, oh he's, okay, alright. Yeah. So it was, they literally said it to me one time and never again. Yeah, I also never forgot that because now I think I think I heard a Story from them from their side of it that you came in with like a full like PowerPoint presentation like you were pitching yourself to them like you were selling yourself to them. Is that is that true? I remember hearing. Oh, man, that's been true for the first day of my management career to Last week, like we're always, you know, except it was a lot. Now the presentation goes something like this, you know, humbly, we can do anything you can dream. And here's examples of us doing it. Right. The pitch back then was, here's all the stuff that I'm good at. And here's all the stuff that I'm not good at that I'll be better at. And I think that candidness of, Hey, we're going to kind of be on this journey to get together and I'm not going to oversell myself. You know, maybe it didn't make me as competitive to someone who was more well rounded or, you know, was a manager who had five years experience when I had five days of experience, but that's how I presented myself to them. And that's, you know, Bixel Boys were my first client before them, but that's how I presented myself to, to both of them. That's right. I remember that now. I remember the Bixel Boys and that fucking, that genius merch drop. Yeah, slanders train of thought was if he can blow up those guys off a t shirt He can probably blow us up off of music and performance and branding and all that. Let's, let's dig into that real quick. Just cause a lot of people probably don't know what we're talking about. Bixel boys and this epic t shirt that you guys had. What was your strategy around that? What exactly did you pull off? Let's share that with the listeners. Cause they probably don't probably haven't been around long enough to, to remember this awesome moment in dance music history. Yes. So I was a talent buyer before I was a manager and through, you know, writing checks, and having people come perform for me, I was Pretty popular guy, you know, and, uh, I made a lot of friends because they were like, Oh, that's the booker, you know? But also we were doing really cool stuff and, you know, I, I booked a Skrillex show when, um, when he was doing like six nights of Skrillex and. You know, met Martin Garrix along the way. He like came to a Tommy Trash show and I brought him in through the back door and things of that nature and just made friends along the way. And the Ian from Bixel Boys was an incredible graphic designer and he was just developing this incredible merch that everybody loved. And to get some hype around the merch, I gave it to Skrillex. I gave it to Martin Garrix. I gave it to RL Grime. I gave it to Lil Jon, who was a buddy of mine. I And they all started wearing it because it was really cool. I didn't have to twist their arm. It was just a cool shirt. Next thing you know, it's goes completely viral. Martin Garrix wears it at the Tomorrowland main stage. Skrillex wears it at the ultra main stage. And it says like Pixel boys this big. So what we did was we had people apply. To be part of the free life team that was their brand, right? And then we picked winners. So we had a kid from germany who was like a semi pro soccer player who had cancer And was also a music producer on the side. And he was wrote, wrote this whole story, how he deserved to be part of team free life, sent a picture of us in the hospital. You know, he sent a video back when he got the t shirt and he's survived cancer. And now he's like a soccer coach. And so we went viral with that moment and we made like three or four moments like that. And then when we finally put it for sale, there was this thing called like a thunderclap or something where it was a, it was a fundraiser, but at all at the same time, Everybody would post about this t shirt, on their Facebooks through this like coordinated viral post. You know, this was 12 years ago. I don't know if they have this function anymore. And we sold like a hundred thousand shirts in like four hours or something like that. And then I lost my mother to cancer. And my sister was at the University of Berkeley and she was the head of this program called Camp Kesem, which was basically free summer camp for kids who had lost their parents cancer. So you go hang out with other kids who had, you know, who lost their parents to cancer. And we donated every dollar we made to Camp Kesem. And it was the largest donation that they had like ever received from the like a non corporation just from like, you know, a couple of guys or whatever. And, uh, that went viral, the, you know, the edm. com and dancing astronaut and everybody picked it up. And, you know, then big, then they, Bixel boys got signed to Latin E Hughes at Windish and went on tour. And, that was like my first, like, Hey, I did a thing as a manager, you know, that was literally 12, 12 years ago. I think. I remember all that now, man. It's all coming back. And I love what you said about making moments. Creating moments. You guys, you guys created a moment, right? You had, you had something to build around. You know, like there was a story there, there was a merch drop there. there's so much to, to unpack even just in that one lesson. On a basic level, When it comes to merch, a lot of artists are thinking about like, Oh, I'm going to make merch and put my logo across the chest and that's my merch. Such a good example of how it's so important of like, if you can make some shit that's cool that even people that don't know who you are Art going to buy like that's where your thought process and your head should be when it comes to your merge, like design, really cool shit. Think like a fashion designer. Don't just plop your logo across the fucking chest, you know, and, uh, you could see the power of that just on the branding and, and merge side. But yeah, man, incredible story, like great, great start to your management career. and I love what you were talking about when. It came to, you know, pitching slander. Uh, you were being honest about, Hey, this is what I'm good at. Here's maybe where I'm not. And then along the way you met a partner, Steven Haddad, and you guys partnered up, um, and this is, this is where I'll, I'll interject myself into the story slightly because Steven actually reached out to icon and it was like, Hey, who are like, who are you? The up and coming acts over there that are, dope that, you know, maybe I could, be looking at, um, or maybe it was for like a specific project. I think he was looking for a producer and I think I sent him like three or four artists and one of them was, was nightmare. And then he was like, Ooh, this guy, he's like, this guy's got something. And I remember that bro. It was like, yeah. Tyler's shit. It just sounded different. It just was like, it was just original and unique. And he had his own little swag and flair. It was like, he was still a young producer, but even then it was like, he was just making shit that nobody was. And so Steven picked him up. Tell me about how you guys partnered up. How did that come? Because that's really where prodigy artists was formed was, was in that moment. Yeah, it was actually Nadia Ali. Technically I had slander and Vixel boys. He had Nadia Ali and a couple other artists and he was trying to sign Nightmare, but one of Nightmare's advisors was like, that guy's not big enough. You can do better. You can wait. And then Steven and I were driving to EDC and he played me the Victor Nelio remix. It was called Jiggy was the name of the song. Of nightmare song and I looked at him and I was like, this is the kid and he was like, yeah, and I was like, call him right now. Yeah. So then him coming from a very musical background and me showing up and saying, Hey, I can put you on the road. Cause I was, I was booking shows all over as a talent buyer in LA and Texas and Illinois. I was like, dude, I can put you in six cities. Tomorrow and that pushed it over the top and he was like, you know, and we had all and he was friends with slander at That point slander was also telling us look you got a sign And, you know, we've been with those guys, both of those guys for over 10 years now. Yeah. Yeah. So Steven was more of the, he was on the music side, kind of like the A and R side. You were more on the promoter, live show talent by your side. So, uh, just that right there, man, it's like. just teamwork, like building the team, understanding where your strengths and weaknesses are for anybody. I think that's building any kind of business. I'm even going through that myself where it's like, there's certain things I'm really good at that. I love, I love people. I love coaching. Like that's, that's my zone of genius, but like sitting there and running fucking ad campaigns or editing podcasts, you know, shit that it's like, I get to hire other team members to do that. Like, that's not my, zone of genius. So just even to plant that seed, I think for is like, start seeing yourself as running a company and having a team. You know, you have a manager, maybe you have two managers. They're helping with different things. You have other people, even when it comes to making music, you have maybe other producers that you're bringing in other artists, other songwriters. A lot of times we're so. Playing the lone wolf game, you know, like how far do you think you could have taken it if it was just you like by Yourself the whole time, you know what I mean? Like it really is when we when we start to yeah work with others that it's like one plus one equals ten Right. Yeah to answer that question completely limited You know, a much more limited, sphere of what I could have done and how many clients we could have had and the impact we could have had. And, you know, the expert level impact, you know, I would have learned, I have learned all the stuff that Steven knows at the end of the day, but he's an expert at all the things that he is like, I'm an expert in all the things that I am. He knows the basics of my side. Two, but instead we have two experts and it's hard to, you know, the maybe five or six things we're talking about here, touring, publishing, marketing, branding, record deals, A& R vocals, for sub one person to be like, quote unquote, expert at all those things. I mean, they're probably older than I am. It just takes time. Yeah. Yeah. No, I really want to dig into. Strategy and like what you guys did to really help grow those acts. And also what you're doing to help, you know, grow the acts that you're currently working with. Obviously the game is a little bit different 12 years later. But I'm curious about your thoughts. Cause a lot of artists are wanting to find a manager, right? A lot of people think they need a manager, which a lot of times they probably don't yet, but. The advice I hear over and over is usually to like, wait for a manager to find you. Do you agree with that? Like that you should be kind of hustling and making buzz for yourself and like, if you need a manager, they're going to find you or. Do you think that artists should be proactive to kind of get out there and knock on some doors? It just depends how prepared you are. If you're prepared, you can go knock on doors for sure. But generally speaking, the manager will come to you. You know, we've got all our interns and assistants with their ears to the ground. You know, my Instagram use is really healthy, frankly. I'm not like looking at memes as much as my algorithm is. To, you know, new talent and interesting music and stuff like that. So, this is how you want to prepare your project for. Literally, if you're watching right now, pull out your apple notes, your pen and paper, whatever. Okay. This is the secret ish sauce, even though it's when you really think about it, it's quite obvious. Okay. So one, you're going to want to have great music. You know, easier said than done, of course. You're going to want to try and have some sort of sonic palette. Okay. I think Skrillex is, you know, the multi genre artist out there. Do it like Skrillex did it. He was dubstep, then he was pop with Jack U and now he's like garish and like underground stuff, but he didn't do them all at the same time. So number one, have a sonic palette, right? Prepare out your project, your album, your EP, so that you have a lot of music in the chamber. Okay? Take that music, start building content around it. Right. You know, if you can get it to the point where you have four or five, six, seven pieces of content that can live on Instagram main and be eye catching for your song, great. You're going to want that planned out for at least the next like four songs. Okay. If you're doing dance music and your music can be supportable, try and network your way to those DJs that will play the your sound, right? Don't send dubstep to house DJs, et cetera. Once your music is competing and some of the DJs are playing it and then you've built content that's around your brand and you can take four or five, six records and say, here's a either a 1001 track list proof that my song got played out, or here's a video. Cause I ripped it off the live stream. And you can go and say. Here's track one. It's getting played by Dom Dalla, John Summit, and whoever. And here's my pieces of content around it. Here's track two. This one's getting played by Jamie Jones, and this person, blah blah blah. Here's track three. You can absolutely go to a manager because you have everything. You can go to Spotify. You can go to everything. Now what I just said is Extremely difficult to do, right? But that is the formula. And if I'm developing an act right now, and I can tell you we're doing this across the board at Prodigy right now, that's how prepared my young guns are right now, their weight, their plan is perfect. 12 months in the future. They're getting crazy amounts of DJ support and they've got you know, it's a visual art project. It's not just music anymore. And they have a visual art project that they're unfolding one Instagram reel and one tick tock at a time. And that can be anything from doing a selfie video, skateboarding down the street, to some elaborate drone, you know, uh, drone footage of you playing Ableton Live on a cliff, right? You know, the, the cell phone with the skateboarding, like that's almost free. Doing a drone thing like that's more expensive, you know, but that's it you put those things together and then also now For the people out there There's your barometer if you're just putting out one song at a time and like hoping it catches fire You're not ready to call Respectfully, you're not ready to call me You're not ready to call the people that are on Nick's podcast, but if you're that prepared, yeah, Hey, and if you're that prepared, we'll let prodigyartist. com email me or whatever, whenever you're that prepared, I'll be ready for you to guide you through the process, you know, to, to, to show the world, to, to, to knock on every gatekeeper and say, Hey, look, we're prepared. This is what the next year looks like. Yeah, yeah. And I was really thinking, you know, as we think about, you know, 12 years back, 10 years back, working with Slander and Nightmare in the early days, in my mind, I was really like, okay, I wanted to pick your brain about what was the strategy you used back then, and really thinking that, like, well, what's the strategy now, 10 years later? As you say that, It's kind of still the same because I'm, I'm remembering back in slander. I think they were really the ones that were like the first ones that I remembered to really do this. When you talk about having the visual, really the visual content, everyone we know now it's like, yeah, Tik and social media and everyone's content creators now, but like. Even 10 years ago, they were taking their song and putting it on like a random video and then putting it out on Facebook. And then that shit was going viral. So they were mashing up their music with some kind of cool visual content. And that shit went crazy on Facebook. This was back when like the goal was to get Facebook likes, you know, this was pre, tick tock and, uh, you know, just a different era. But it really was the same shit, right? Having really good music and really good visual content. It's like commonplace. Now, how many times do you see? some marketing company, you know, and the artist doesn't even know about it and their songs behind some like anime video or their songs behind, I know, I know we did this with one of our campaigns. Like, you know, you don't really know what videos they're going to make, but then we saw like one of my clients songs and it was like Rinaldino playing soccer against like 75 six year olds. You know, and then the song was behind it and it was just like hysterical video. And next thing you know, it had like 28 million views and you're like, damn, 28 million people listen to our song because of this, but yes, slander pioneered that. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. They were the first. We used it. We use that strategy on, like all of our artists back then, but I think slander was the first one to do it. I think they were doing that before we managed them. Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting. It's just like, things shift like the platform shifts perhaps but it's just a lot of the I don't know. Invisible marketing fundamentals kind of are, are still there, right? Totally. I'm curious about, you've helped a lot of artists progress through different stages in their career, right? curious if, if you're able to kind of identify and break down what those stages are. Right? There's that kind of more entry level stage where, you know, you're just, you're just probably trying to get your first shows or, or maybe getting to that point where like, okay, you, you just get an agent for the first time and you're starting to play, you know, maybe a couple shows a month. I'm just curious about how things change, like, how the game looks differently, along some of these other, higher level stages that people get to. Yeah, you know, I don't think stuff has changed all that much. It's, it's mostly based around momentum. You know, I think Nightmare started off with a show in San Marcos, or maybe it was in Orlando, I forgot. No, Slender's first show was in Orlando. And Nightmare's first show was in San Marcos. And then you kind of like waited, you know, we've got an artist right now, Matilo, who's, you know, going viral, um, on Tik TOK with his music and we're just doing the echo in LA just to kind of like test it out, you know, there's other artists that can go on the road right away. And I think when I talk about that plan that I outlined, if you do that plan for seven songs or eight songs, if the music's good, you should be able to hit the road as a headliner by like, you know, by the time your first song comes out, you've put 10 songs out. If you really plan it out the way that I said, we're doing that with an artist right now, like, uh, Looch, he has five songs out. We, he followed the formula that I outlined. He just headlined spotlight last night with framework. Who's. the tastemaker brand and that, Afro house tech house space right now on the West coast. And all the dominoes are about to fall for him. That took four months, sometimes it takes two and a half years, you know, I, I don't want to name other artists that are on my roster, but I've had artists for, Two and a half years that like kind of tried to tour and did it and didn't sell enough tickets and whatever And I've got artists that for two and a half years We plan their album that planning phase that I keep going back to Like we have an artist Shima, for example And she has one song out right now for the second phase of her project But the album that's about to come out and all the content she worked on over the last two and a half years You has she been playing shows during that time? Or have you guys been like, kind of holding off? The shows wouldn't be quality shows. Yeah. You know, we're now brownies and lemonade is, you know, helping us write a plan. She's going to go on tour with Toki monster because she signed a young art. And all of these are great strategic decisions. And every single young artists on my roster is like, when can I play shows? When can I play shows? And I go, when we get the right ones. The last thing I was going to say, just because I know this is really a lot of young artists will relate to this. Is there like, can I get the local shows? Can you set me up with like the starter kit shows so I can practice? And the answer is no, I don't have the connections to the people who pay 200 and ask you to play top 40 music. Like that's not in my repertoire. So if you want to go play those shows and practice and whatever, it's go be out in the streets in Los Angeles and go be part of the culture, hop on a fucking, uh, you know, a stage one day, maybe we're not branded on it or a house party or whatever. So just to get some reps in, and I think this, this brings up a good conversation around really, it's kind of, it's really supply and demand back to just sort of the, you know, invisible laws of marketing and economics, cause I remember. Seeing the difference between slander and nightmare where slander came up as, you know, they were DJs first, like they were playing college parties, frat parties. They were just like DJs, DJs. They were playing stuff all the time. And then they got into, you know, production building their, brand and their audience through their music. But yeah, I remember getting them like a, Slot at control for like 200 bucks, you know, as, as like the closers, you know, just, kind of typical, opening closing, DJ stuff. And, then obviously, you know, they had their moment, they had their, music really pop off. But strategically seeing what you guys did with nightmare was very different where you guys held him off for a while. It was just like a year of just like, put out tracks, put out tracks, build buzz, build the audience so that the first, I remember the first show I saw him playing was, what was it that that's at the Yost in Santa Ana in Orange County headlining slot, right? So was really able to skip. You know, a lot of people want to climb the ladder, like, Alright, I'm going to get that 8, 9pm slot, I'm going to be the opener, and then I'm going to get the, the next support slot, and kind of slowly climb my way up the ladder, and, not saying either way is right or wrong, but it seemed like there was some intentional strategy around that, right? Like, let's say no to everything until we actually come out as the headliner. 100%, I mean, his first show in LA, was Control Avalon with Luminox and Mo Green, I believe, as direct support. And they were like pretty big trap DJs at the time. That he just leapfrogged, you know for his first gig ever. Yeah, and that's what we're doing You know with all of our artists now I would venture to say that going and trying to play a bunch of support slots is always a backup plan which is again, you know for all the young people that are listening in right now who are like Oh, man, I just want to go become like a support dj and like get my name out there You Okay, cool. That's, that's like plan B. Plan A is always create buzz, pop out as a headliner because it's hard. You might go let people know, Hey, I'm an artist. I have an artist project. Listen to my music. I'm part of this tour. But you've also branded yourself as part of the tour as the opener for the tour or whatever. And now in people's eyes and in their psyche, you have to overcome the fact that you're the backup dancer. You're the backup dancer. Right. Do people want to be fans of Jennifer Lopez's backup dancers. No, they want to be fans of Jennifer Lopez. Right? So it's like now you have to say, I'm the new Jennifer Lopez eventually, but that's, you're going to have to do work elsewhere. So yes, maybe you've created a larger amount of people who know about you, but they know about you in a context That's not befitting of what your end goal are, which is to be a headliner. Yeah. Yeah. You've created what we would call it just like brand perception. All right. What's the perception of your branded yourself as that? So I really only let my artists play support stuff if they're, I mean, there's, look, there's always, you're going to get direct support to Skrillex. You're going to get direct support to Fred again, some hyper influential artists. Sure. Absolutely. Go do it. Right? But generally speaking, I'm not demanding support slots. Hey, agency, can you go ask every single touring act at your agency if we can hop on tour with them? It's like, no. Yeah. Just, just chill. We'll, we'll put out great music. We'll make great content and your time will come. Now. One of the things that you said. About slander that you really loved about them though, was that they were really great performers and that's because they had played like dozens and dozens of shows, right? Like, and really kind of put those hours in. So how does somebody navigate around that? Of on the one hand, I want to hold off and not play shows. I want to build demand. But also to actually be able to come out and kind of know what the fuck you're doing when you go on stage and actually really put on a good show, right? You got to go find some busted CDJ 2000s. You know or someone that you can borrow on Sunday night when they're not using them and you go to their house because they gave You know, they give you the key to their back door or whatever and you just got to practice Being on stage and being a star is totally natural I'm just telling you that when a star gets on stage for the first time if they've Practiced just like in the NFL just like in music they're gonna be a star period but it is about getting the reps in and Having, you know, all right, I'm going to mix this song into this song and these are in key and, you know, this is the set that I've proposed and here's my backup plans if the crowd likes rap music more or whatever, definitely hard to go up there and, not be overthinking, it's hard to act like a star if you're overthinking and you don't know, you know, how to cue up the next song and all of those things. But like. you can jump on a stage with a microphone and be a star with absolutely no practice whatsoever. Cause you were just born that way. Yeah. Yeah. I love, I don't know if you know, this techno artist, Anna Kim, uh, had him on a little while ago and he was talking about how. He just for a long time was just practicing in his room, but like also mentally rehearsing, like seeing himself on stage. And it's the same way as an athlete. I love that you bring up the NFL is like, yo, before you go play the game, you see yourself win the game in your mind. I'm, I'm visualizing, what am I going to do when I go on the field? I'm visualizing myself scoring the touchdown. I'm visually visualizing myself, you know, holding the trophy over my head. Like. That's some real sports psychology shit that I love to dig into. And I work on with my clients is like, before you go on stage, you see yourself crushing it. Don't just hope to accidentally go up there and kill it. You win in your mind first. So, you can be doing that in your room every day. You can be playing EDC in your fucking bedroom every day. You know, see that shit manifest that shit, shit. So when the time comes, it feels normal. You're like, yeah. That piece of paper I just held up is all the things that I've written down in the present tense that I'm going to be manifesting over the next couple years. And I don't know if you're in the woo woo stuff, but August 8th was like the Lionsgate portal. So that's my manifestations from the lion's gate portal, meditated, burn some, uh, Palo Santo. Let's go. Let's go. Um, I love the woo woo stuff. All the audience knows that we, we go fucking deep into it. I'm curious about your, you know, cause I feel like I saw, uh, as all of us, I mean, we met when we were like early twenties, like we were fucking kids, you know, we were, we were young. I don't know. I think we've known each other. And you know, when I first met you, you were this like very like just this boisterous Hollywood club promoter, you know, like, and, and then I remember seeing you later like, you know, you just, you were the Hollywood Club promoter, right? Like just this fucking loud, wild dude. Not that you're not a loud and wild dude anymore, but I remember Getting lunch with you years later and like I think you would just come back from burning man And you were like way more just deep and like there was this this woo woo aspect of you started to come out I'm curious about your own personal Journey and transformation just you know through obviously through the industry because that's part of our life But really just through life and where that came from and where that shift kind of started to happen for you Oh so many different places, but uh Going to Burning Man for the first time. This is going to sound really corny when you've gone to Burning Man like 12 times, like I have now, but the first time you walk around Burning Man and everybody loves you. And if you're thirsty, you don't need to say anything. Someone will handle you a water bottle. And it's this like, you know, community that's based around like taking care of your neighbor. And I got back from Burning Man and I was like, wow, that's kind of, it's kind of cool. So maybe I was like a little bit nicer then, right? Um, my fiancee, she was always instilling spirituality on me somewhat reluctantly to me at times. And then during the pandemic, uh, you know, when we lost everything, I met, um, one of my best friends in the world, Syra. She wrote Bangarang with Skrillex, Grammy nominated songwriter. And she taught me all about quantum mechanics and how, you know, in the law, law of attraction and manifestation. And, um, you know, I have like a note on my phone that I've shared with over like 4, 000 people that. Kind of guides the, like, what I, how I live my life every day. And some of those things are like, um, don't say anything negative about yourself, because it's actually energy. You say you, you sub stub your toe and you say, Oh, I'm stupid. I don't mean that. That's, I'm, I'm telling the universe that right now. So it doesn't, but you say, you say that thing out loud and then you'll be one half of a percent stupider or whatever. You know, people call in so many things into their life through anxiety, through them saying things out loud. Oh, I'm not going to do well on that test. I didn't study, you know. You're probably not going to do well because you didn't study, but you're also losing confidence and affecting other people. the, the, the quantum field by saying out loud that you're not going to do well on that test or I'm not going to get that job. So I just realized how much more powerful I could be if I followed some of her kind of woo woo guidelines that have now become permanent parts of my life, self love is like another thing, like start every day and just understand that like you, you have to start by loving yourself. You can't love anyone else. You can't lead anyone else. If you don't look in the mirror and say, Hey, you know, I'm enough. It's all good. I'm not perfect, but I love myself enough to know that I'm enough. And now I can go out into the world and affect everyone else. Another thing is that people do is try to get the answer to the question, right? It kind of goes back to the taking a test analogy, right? People say, Oh, you know, this song's really good. I bet it'll go this far, right? That's my, that's my prediction. Don't predict an outcome. Think of the most optimistic outcome. Say it out loud. Say we're going to get on new music Friday and we're going to win a Grammy and it's the greatest song ever. When you believe it, you don't need to say it for every single thing that you do, but don't get into that. Oh, I need to get the answer right. Oh, it's a shot from half court. Oh, I bet he, I bet I hit it. I bet I don't hit it. You ever heard the phrase like Michael Jordan thought every single shot he took was going to go in? Don't predict if something's gonna happen. Just assume and then if it doesn't happen all good Maybe that's God just telling you, you know that that's an obstacle. You got to work harder. You got to take more jump shots You got to study the test harder or whatever, but don't don't try to predict the outcome That is the most common thing that people do is they try to say, but analyze it. Oh, this is what's going to happen next. Be more optimistic. Go further. You actually will end up going further. Yeah. What changes and results did you start to see in your life as you started to, Get into some of this deeper spiritual quantum mechanics mindset stuff. I know it sounds absolutely ridiculous to say this, but I got everything I wanted and nothing I didn't want. And I love my life so much, even when like I've lost a client you know, which means money or whatever. Like I woke up the next four or five days and I was like, Oh my God, I have more time on my hands. My life's amazing. I'm not dealing with, you know, someone who is stressful or, you know, was unhappy with themselves or whatever. I'm not talking about any client or person in particular when I say this out loud, but if you have that mindset that everything happens for a reason, And you always hold the highest timeline and you're optimistic to a fault at times. It's really hard to, for anything to go wrong, literally, you know, you become invincible, you become invincible. And, and, you know, maybe I'm privileged and I haven't had the challenges that some other people have had, my family didn't grow up with very much money, but I didn't grow up in, you know, I had friends who grew up in Cabrini green. It was a lot harder. for them to, you know, one of my best friends, I'm so proud of him. He owns two houses. He's a great dad, et cetera. He had 10 times, you know, harder time than I did growing up. So once you factor that in it, you know, it makes everything a little bit murkier. But at the end of the day, if you hold all these truths to be self evident and you, and you have the, it's, it also starts with like discipline, right? Because I have this list of things that I. Try to do every day because of how it affects my well being on a quantum level But I don't do all of them every single day because it's hard, but that's another thing that's on the list It's like not everything is absolute You're not going to always be something and you should also not speak in absolutes don't say always don't say never You know, so I could go on, I could go on for hours about this stuff. Well, I love it, man. I love it because I think it's so important for people to see. And I love how we can kind of shift into this. It's like, yeah, on the one hand there's strategy, there's business and there's strategy and there's things that we have to do. And I've been really like thinking about this a lot lately is like the energy that you're doing it from actually matters more than the strategy itself. And I say this because. I talk to and I see hundreds and thousands of artists and, and over our 10, 15 years in this business, we see so many of them. Trying, trying, trying. They're actually doing the things, right? It's not that they're not doing the things, but it's like, how are you doing it? Are you doing it from a place of stress and anxiety and trying to prove yourself or trying to be better than other people? Doing it from a place of ego. How much fucking ego do we see in the music industry? You know what I mean? And so to, to be able to shift into this conversation and see that like, you got it bro, like you got that fucking fork in the road and, and being. There's a different level of work to do the strategies on the surface, building the fan base and all that stuff that's on the surface. The inner work is. I'm going to say even more important because if you don't do the inner work and your mindset isn't in the right place, you're not creating from a place of joy and passion. You're not operating from a place of love. You're not building your relationships from a place of like authenticity and fucking joy and love. Then good luck. You, you, you might get successful. You might get some success, but how many people do we see that are successful with that? But they're having a fucking miserable time and they're just like, they're bitter and they're like, You know what I mean? They're just like, like decaying from the inside out. So, uh, this is the work that I really love to do with people. And usually when a lot of clients come to me and they're like, Oh yeah, I want to, I want to build my artist project. I want to be more successful. I'm like, okay, cool. Once we start digging in though, it's like, no, this is the foundation of that work. You can build the, uh, the house and, uh, above the surface and hammer your two by fours together and, and, and, and all of that. But what's the foundation that is laying on in the first place? If that foundation isn't there, you're going to be spinning your wheels. I see that shit all the time, right? Either you're spinning your wheels to get anywhere or you've gotten there, but you're, you fucking hate it. And like. That's neither of those are winning. Yeah. What are some of the things that are on your list? You said you have a list of things you try to do every day. Oh, you guys want some more sauce? Yeah. Give us all the sauce, bro. We want to know. I'm ha I love, I love helping people. You know, I think if you take the like, Hey, this is how to market your records and then you, you, you live as much to this, okay. I'm going to read, read it off. Um, it says how to plug into the universe. Love yourself at all costs. Number one, be present. Concentrate on being present. When you're with someone, put your phone away, try and feel their energy. Your intuition will be much stronger if you practice this. This is great when you're doing business deals, when you're trying to talk to someone for the first time, when you're trying to sign an artist, even when you're just trying to build a stronger connection with someone on your team. Uh, everything is a practice. Nothing is absolute. Meaning that you'll never reach some ultimate goal of enlightenment and you'll never fall all the way to the bottom where none of this is possible. Try and meditate every morning for 15 minutes. After your meditation, write down three things you're grateful for. One of the, uh, one thing that you are in present tense. And again, this stuff's not rocket science. I didn't invent any of this. This is through Syrah and my fiance and people much more intelligent than me that have studied books about this and taught it to me. And this is how I interpret it. But again, this is nothing I've invented or anything like that. Um, strangle your ego every morning. The best way to do this is to be present and aware and not reactive in every moment of the day. Don't say anything negative about yourself. Okay. Everything is possible. No negative thoughts. Let the universe guide what's possible. Ask for nothing. Manifest everything. You know, a lot of people, they're like, I want this and they, you know, they try to pull from people. Just do it here instead of asking for things and on paper. Again, that's number 10. If you write it down, it will happen. Do everything with love in your heart. This is what you were talking about earlier about getting to the essence of effective creativity. That's the core of, of that. Do everything with love in your heart. Don't be hard on yourself because it's a negative energy. You'll be judged by what you do next. Always accept and receive love, energy, and compliments. Never brush them off. Receive. Someone says, you look good girl. Say, thank you. Don't say, Oh no, I don't. I just rolled out of bed. Someone says, I love you. Don't say, no, you don't say, I love you too. Or thank you. Maybe you don't love them the way they love you, but receive it. Don't brush it off. Superlatives. Nothing is never or always listening is more powerful than getting your point across. Practice listening every day. Don't just wait until it's your turn to speak. One of the most powerful things you can do is you shut the fuck up and Literally you will be Astounded at the things that you'll notice in space when nothing's being said Yeah That awkward moment when someone's done trying to get their point across and you want to see how genuine they were Just wait an extra 20 seconds and see the look on their face before you even reply. It'll be way more powerful than whatever you're going to say next. This is the last one, stop being a realist. Be an optimist. You don't need to predict the outcome of events based on the potential barriers. Dream it, do it. And if it doesn't happen, that's just the universe speaking to you. Go around the roadblock again with positivity in your heart while listening to the universe and stay optimistic. There is no reason to be a realist any longer. So the overarching thing about all of these things is that all of those negative thought, uh, You know, whatever it may be, these are all reacting in a scientific way on a quantum mechanic level. So when I say woo woo for the people that really have no idea what I'm talking about, but when you dig into this stuff, it's based in science. It's not based in. You know, Oh, you know, the, I don't even want to offend anybody by talking about other things that are woo woo that I may not have figured out the science behind, so I'm not even going to make a comparison, but the reason why I kind of got hooked on this stuff and had it guide my life is because it was presented to me in a scientific way. Yeah. A hundred percent, man. A hundred percent. It's a, we're living in a really cool time where it's like, woo woo slash spirituality. Is intersecting with science where people are starting to prove that like, wait a minute, we are vibrational beings. We know that scientifically my body is not actually solid. It's made up of a bunch of trillions and billions and billions of little atoms. And that, those atoms are energy and everything is energy. So there's also a spectrum of energy, right? We can be in a higher frequency of energy, you know, love, optimism, gratitude, and we can also be in a lower, vibrational frequency of energy, fear, scarcity, resentment, jealousy, right? And, and this is the game. Try to bring yourself into that higher frequency as much as possible. Simple as that, right? Why you're going to dip, you're going to be human, but a lot of people are living in that lower frequency. You know, and, and when we can start to, uh, embody, like it's, I look at it, I'm in a place now where I've intellectually understood a lot of this stuff. And now it's a matter of embodiment. Now it's like, I go to the gym and I work out my physical body, but let me also put in the reps to work out my internal. vibrational frequency, you know, my emotional body, my nervous system. And there's literally exercises that you can do. Like you said, meditate for 15 minutes, right? Three, three things down that you're grateful for. I've been doing, uh, I'm doing 75 hard right now. And so I have to do two workouts, two 45 minute workouts every day. One of them has to be outside. My new morning routine for the past week or so has been, I'll do a, I'll put a ruck on like a 20 pound weight vest and I'll go on a walk for 45 minutes. What I used to do was listen to podcasts, listen to music, kind of be like, just mindlessly trying to get over, you know, the, that 45 minutes. Now I leave my phone at home and I literally am doing like affirmations and gratitude. And I'm like, just kind of, I'm literally kind of like, I'm talking to myself the whole time, but I'm just like speaking these things into life and into existence. And bro, 24 hours, like the next day I started having like cool opportunities pop up, new clients popping up, like, like really, really cool synchronistic shit. So here's the thing. You don't have to take my word for it. You don't have to take Will's word for it. Fucking try it out for yourself. Give it 30 days. of these things out. See what happens. Especially if you feel like you're stuck, and you're spinning your wheels, and, you know, you're not moving forward in life in the way that you want to be. You're probably looking at everything outside of yourself. Rather than looking what's inside of yourself, so that just inviting y'all try the shit on try the shit on, you know, you're not the first guest that has also shared this and, it's working for a lot of us. So, started off saying, that you've created some really cool stuff for yourself over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years since we've known each other. Beyond any of that, bro, I am just so pumped to see like who you've become in the process, how you've grown, the man that you've become, the person that you've become, the, the, the impact that you're having, not only on, your clients and your roster, but just, I'm sure everybody that, uh, is in your world. So, um, really fucking cool to see that. It's really cool to get reconnected with you and, uh, just super grateful that you took the time to come on and share. Everybody go back and listen to this one. If you didn't have your notepad out, go back. You got the formula. You got the formula for the strategy, the outside game, and you got the formula for the inside game. So go back and take some fucking notes. That was fire. Yeah, we, we, you, you got it all. So literally. You got the sauce, baby. That's, that's, that is the inside and out sauce for artists, for people, for, for life in general. And yeah, it totally has changed my life. I, I, I think my lucky stars every day for having met those two women who changed my life. Hell yeah, man. Thanks for hopping on brother. Oh man. Thank you.