[00:00:00] James: Welcome to episode 205 of the Bandhive podcast. it is time for another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. My name is James Cross, and I help independent artists tour smart. This week, I am pleased to welcome back the one, the ma The one, the

[00:00:14] Matt: I am the only mat.

[00:00:16] James: podcast, I am pleased to welcome back the one, the only, Matt Hoos, and his sheep of Alive in Barcelona.

[00:00:23] James: How's it going today, Matt?

[00:00:24] Matt: we're doing great. Now that we've got the sheep as a part of the band, we really are just filling out our sound, man.

[00:00:29] James: I love it. I think

[00:00:31] Matt: hear about those artists that like, take a bunch of drugs, and they're like, We need more flugelhorns! The more flugelhorns will give us the perfect sound!

[00:00:40] Matt: The heroin that I did made me realize I need an army of flugelhorns! That's what it's like. we now have sheep, they just round us out.

[00:00:47] James: you're

[00:00:48] Matt: that I

[00:00:48] James: using sheep.

[00:00:50] Matt: wanna bring you back to life!

[00:00:53] James: Yeah. And I mean, realistically, if you don't have sheep in your recordings, you're not a real band.

[00:00:57] Matt: That's right. Wow, that was [00:01:00] really bad.

[00:01:01] James: I know, but it was so worth it, but you know, on the bright side, Matt, for this episode, we're going to be talking about what musicians do in a band. And we all know they play music. Unless you play exclusively to a laptop. If you're, you know, a DJ or something, then you push buttons. Shots fired. But, if you're a musician, in a band, you play music.

[00:01:22] James: The fact of the matter though is, you also coordinate your band's schedules for rehearsals, shows, recording time, You book your own shows. You schedule your social media posts, or if you're slacking off, you ignore social media entirely, which you should never do. You should never ignore it. You design and sell your own merch. You drive everywhere. You cook your own meals. You have to develop quality relationships with agents, promoters, venues, other bands, anyone in the industry. You load your own gear. If you're playing bad venues, you run sound for yourself. Which, there's a caveat to that, we'll get to that.

[00:01:54] James: You review your own contracts, which DO NOT DO THAT! If you're signing like a label deal or something, or something [00:02:00] big, hire a lawyer to review the contract, so you don't end up in a Victory Records type deal where you hate the label and the label hates you and there's, lawsuits flying left and right.

[00:02:09] Matt: Or a bravado deal. Or an exclusive merch deal, where you sign away your ability to make money for ten years in exchange for one paycheck.

[00:02:18] James: Yeah. You sign away your name. Have to change your band name.

[00:02:21] Matt: get to a good story about that, because contracts are very important.

[00:02:25] James: that is one reason I advocate, If you're signing any contract, sign it as your LLC. Because then, unless there's key clauses in that contract, the contract is with your company and not with you. So if you go start a new company, that contract's not binding.

[00:02:39] James: Now, have a lawyer review any of this to make sure that's the case. Unless there's that key person clause there that's like, hey, this also applies to you personally. It should only apply to your company. But that aside, there is so much more that a musician in a band has to do. The music is only 10 percent of what you do [00:03:00] in your day to day life as an independent artist. Even at the bigger levels, you look at a band who's headlining festivals, they're gonna play, 90 minutes of music maybe, but they're doing interviews all day long. They'll be on the phone. They'll be doing photo shoots. They'll be doing video shoots. All kinds of stuff that's not actually the music. When they get to the end of the day and they get to play that set, that's probably their favorite time of the day. Because they don't have to think about all the other stuff that they've been doing all day. So to the artists who I hear say, Ah, if only I had somebody else to do all this for me, I wish I could pay somebody.

[00:03:38] James: You're still going to have to do all that stuff, even if you're paying somebody to do things for you. Because there's going to be different things that you have to do. There's never enough time in the day, but you can do it. It comes down to 10 percent of your time is actually spent on music. And that sucks, but there's so much more you have to do, and until you're at a level where a team will be willing to work for [00:04:00] you on a percentage basis, you'll either have to do it yourself, or hire contractors and spend your hard earned money for certain aspects of what you do. It's really tough, but you might be able to outsource certain things. to get better quality and save time for yourself so you can focus on the creativity that's so important to you. If you're willing to pay. So Matt, do you want to take us away with some of these things that you can outsource easily?

[00:04:26] Matt: Absolutely. when you're on the road, you are obviously driving a lot. one thing I want to add to not just outsourcing, outsourcing and automating. These are two very, very powerful tools. So you can automate a lot of your social media posts. you can dedicate like a single day, a week to outlining your weekly posts.

[00:04:42] Matt: You know, maybe you have one person in the band who's a little bit more uh, social media savvy, and they're the ones that run, run the social posts, or they're the ones that know optimal times of day for boosting posts, or they're the ones that know the optimal type of content for boosting posts. If you can basically designate that as the responsibility of one [00:05:00] person in your band, then that person, is not going to have to be pulled away from doing other things.

[00:05:05] Matt: So social media is a good thing that you can keep in house, because part of the… Appeal of social media is actually being able to interact directly with your favorite artists I personally think that social media is not one that you should outsource I think it is one that you should partner with people You should work with promotion companies that are running ads and are running stories on their own Publications and with some of their partner publications and then you have the ability to still create a channel to Do whatever it is that that specific outlet is designed to do each social media should kind of have its own piece.

[00:05:39] James: Yeah, 100 percent agree with you, Matt. And I think a great example of social media being run by the band themselves is Senses Fail on Twitter. Buddy runs their Twitter, and it's hilarious. the entire thing is just him trolling. about a week ago, which we're recording this in mid September, so by the time you hear this, I'm, like, October 24th or something.

[00:05:59] James: It's long [00:06:00] past. But he tweeted about somebody complained. that they love Census Fail, but they hated the show and they're never going to another Census Fail show ever again because the set list was so bad. It's the Life Is Not A Waiting Room Anniversary Tour. What did he expect the set list to be? and he was saying like, something along the lines of, I know at least ten people who also said they're never going to another Census Fail show ever again because was so bad. then I replied something that was like, people just don't read these days. basically the conversation, Buddy replied, and then I wrote back saying, Yeah, you know, this is the kind of guy who would walk into, like, an Arby's, and then complain that they don't have the Burger King menu, and say that at least ten people he knows are never going back to Arby's.

[00:06:39] James: what did you expect?

[00:06:40] Matt: Bye!

[00:06:41] Matt: It's alright, merch because you can't read anyway, so… that's the problem. See, people are dumb. There's lots of dumb people in this world. overridden with dumb people. Even Buddy Nielsen is a dumb person. I love him, you know. Senses Fail one of my childhood favorite bands.

[00:06:54] Matt: But everybody in the music industry hates Buddy because he like, almost got famous and we all grew up on his music and then he just [00:07:00] kind of turned into a big jerk. but what he does is, effective on Twitter, and, you could go and look at their Facebook versus their Twitter versus, you know, their Instagram, and they're all completely different.

[00:07:09] Matt: Buddy's not on Instagram trolling kids, and Buddy's not on Facebook trolling kids. But Twitter is a more appropriate platform, or I guess, X. Now as it's called is a, is a more, yeah. What a dumb name. Screw you. Elon Speaking of internet trolls on Twitter,

[00:07:24] James: You're right.

[00:07:24] Matt: bought one.

[00:07:25] James: He trolled so hard he got forced into buying

[00:07:28] Matt: as I say, spent 4 billion, but now, so there are different platforms for different things with your social media.

[00:07:34] Matt: So like Facebook, you can use for just like basic announcements and things like that. there's not a lot of high traffic on Facebook anymore. It used to be a younger demographic. Now a lot of it is for like, you know, old college friends and the overall age demographic of Facebook is actually getting higher and higher, because more and more of like our parents are using it.

[00:07:50] Matt: So that way it's becoming the old person. Social media, but it is still a very very important thing because it's good to have a centralized database of all of your show information All of your tour [00:08:00] flyers all of your promotional materials All of your dates like bullet pointed and things like that So if somebody were to go to your Facebook page They could type in a keyword like the date of your show and pull up that information

[00:08:09] James: agree with you, but also, please, bands, make a website.

[00:08:12] Matt: Yeah, absolutely

[00:08:13] James: website is the place to go.

[00:08:15] Matt: the website is more important. On the e commerce front. So Facebook is a horrible platform for e commerce. Twitter is a horrible platform for monetization. Instagram is actually a magnificent social media. It's actually one of the largest marketing platforms in the world. And so that's huge for like releasing new products, releasing a nice little graphic image that shows, you know, your latest CD.

[00:08:35] Matt: print with, you know, your new t shirt and whatnot. Really fantastic way to get pre orders is via your Instagrams. with Instagram it's, there's a picture intrinsically attached to it. TikTok is a lot more intimate. In my opinion, is kind of doing In the social media space, what Snapchat was doing, only it's a little bit more permanent rather than just this one time thing that goes away. I think it was DJ Khaled that was really, really huge. nobody really knew who he was. [00:09:00] But he ended up developing a giant snapchat following and it was just simple little things You know, he'd make 20 snapchat videos a day And it always be about just random stuff, he'd be out a jet ski, you know And so he'd be like, oh, we're out having fun today on the jet ski Then he put his phone away and he go ride around jet ski And then he like get caught in a thicket and he'd make a video about being caught in the thicket Then he like cut his foot open So he made a video about getting his foot cut open and before you knew it He just had like so many people because he had used that platform for its intended purpose really figuring out, you know, this is a good one to insource because all of these are viable options and really all of you can work together because maybe one person doesn't have that skill set of, like if you have somebody that's a little bit more charismatic, like I'm very outgoing.

[00:09:37] Matt: My drummer is not very outgoing. He would be a bad face for a tick tock brand, however, he's well thought and he's well spoken. So he would be like a good person to have on like. Facebook posts and things like that because he's going to reread everything and he can reread it ten times before he has to post it.

[00:09:53] Matt: There's no live conversation that has to happen. when you kind of divvy up these responsibilities, social media is kind of the only one [00:10:00] that you really end up keeping in house unless you decide to automate it and use things like Hootsuite, or other social media. Publisher's another one.

[00:10:07] James: one these days.

[00:10:08] Matt: check both of those out, figure out what works best for you. Things you can outsource are things like driving. none of you need to have a specific skill set. Most of us can drive, most of us can drive before the government says that we're allowed to drive. you want to have somebody that stays awake.

[00:10:21] Matt: That's really the only criteria for driving is that they, can stay safe. depending on how long your vehicle is, that they know how to… Drive it and to park it a slight understanding of like how inner city stuff works, you know might be a good thing understanding that in certain places There are bus lanes certain places.

[00:10:36] Matt: You cannot turn left certain places. There are one way streets certain places. There are trolley lanes go to New Jersey know, every left turn on a major road has to be made via a jug handle so they don't actually have left turns off of major state highways.

[00:10:49] Matt: you know, those are things that your driver should know. You don't want a narcoleptic driver. You don't want somebody who's going to fall asleep. and I'm saying that from experience. I've met somebody who was narcoleptic who drove and slammed into the back of another band.

[00:10:59] Matt: From the [00:11:00] parking lot across the street. That was State Champs. State Champs got slammed into by um, I don't remember who, but it was their rental U Haul. But their whole trailer wouldn't open anymore after that. they had to like load and unload out of their side door, and then return their trailer, all busted, and get a new one.

[00:11:12] Matt: It was a whole ordeal. you need a good driver. that's a good thing you can outsource. and you want to be careful. You want to have somebody that understands that like a large portion of your driving commitment is like them sleeping during the day Some of the time people will be fine, like, sleeping in your van in the heat.

[00:11:26] Matt: Some of the time they will not. Some of the time, like, they need a hotel room, because they want to live like a human, or get a shower, or have a climate controlled bedroom. those are things to keep in mind. So, if you need to outsource that, a driver is very important. They take your lives into their hands every evening.

[00:11:40] Matt: So, cut corners. Loading and unloading. This is also another very easy thing. This can be compartmentalized into some other, more important jobs, like photography. So if you have somebody on tour with you that is going to take photos for your said Instagram and social media posts, they can also do other things.

[00:11:57] Matt: So a lot of the time industry people will be [00:12:00] bundled into one. you need more media content while you're out there. Somebody's going to come and take pictures of you while you play your shows. They're going to maybe have a preset light pack that they've built. And so that way they can quickly edit a lot of these photos and a lot of the time, they'll be able to also work merch or also work social media stuff for you or, be able to help you load and unload.

[00:12:19] Matt: And a lot of the times these people can be like, really good relationships and they become like your close friends for a long time. One of my buddies has done photos and merch and loading for us. Quite a few times whenever we go out and he's just always ecstatic to just be on the road and the people that are really passionate about being on the road understand that it's like, I might be the singer, but I'm also the merch guy and after I'm done being the merch guy, like I'm the roadie and after I'm done being the roadie, I have to be the backup muscle in case they decide they're not going to pay us, you know?

[00:12:47] Matt: So always, you know, These are the responsibilities. Sound. having a front of house sound guy. it really cannot be expressed enough how important having a consistent sound guy that understands how you're supposed to sound every night. A lot of those things [00:13:00] can be streamlined, and there are more demands now in the music industry. You back in the day when, Metallica would be playing a night six figures, amount of production that was going into that is absolutely insane.

[00:13:09] Matt: The amount of people that need to get paid is absolutely insane. And, you need to kind of realize that like, once you get to a certain level, having a consistent, Team member who knows how you should always sound who understands you know It's like oh, yeah, you're you have Really sharp mids, so we need to bring down the frequency and You want people that are really good about that if you can't afford people that are good at that, there are ways to do it, slowly but surely over time, to be buying specific pieces of technology, where get an You run everything into your X32, and you set your own sound. You all run into your monitors, so you all have the same sound every time, 100 percent of the time. You're never playing in a different audio environment. When you walk into a venue

[00:13:51] James: is one of the best investments a band can make.

[00:13:53] Matt: what do they go for right now James

[00:13:55] James: If you look on Reverb, you can get them for like, a thousand to twelve hundred, including a,[00:14:00] rack case.

[00:14:00] James: And they just need an iPad.

[00:14:02] Matt: That's cheaper than what I remember

[00:14:04] James: Yeah, I knew they were like 17 or something. my X32 Compact here, I picked it up for 1600 including tax and road case.

[00:14:11] James: was a hell of a deal.

[00:14:12] Matt: when it came out. It was like 3,

[00:14:14] James: well this is the Compact, so it's the 16 fader instead of the

[00:14:17] Matt: Instead of 32 or

[00:14:18] James: channels, but only 16 preamps. Which, I have Stagebox anyway, so it doesn't matter.

[00:14:24] Matt: See, this is where the gear head comes in and sets me straight. But yeah, so like having an X32, you can run all your axe effects into there, you can get everything literally perfectly dialed in, and you walk in and you say, Here's my snake. Here's one input and you plug that into your sound.

[00:14:35] Matt: we will get up on stage and play You mix live sound because and every one of your venues is gonna be different and have different acoustics, be different size. But this essentially eliminates all of the changing variables on your end. when things are consistent, that's how you can continuously play good show after good show after good show after good show. So, sound is good thing to have a person there for. It's a good thing that certain parts of it to automate, with [00:15:00] more and more tools and pieces of technology and plug ins and preamps and all this stuff.

[00:15:04] Matt: the tools exist it's amazing what a single musician can do nowadays. That it took… teams of people to do back in the 70s and 80s, really mind blowing. Legal. don't ever in source legal. Unless somebody in your band is a lawyer, and if they are, they will probably be smart enough to understand they need an additional pair of eyes to once over a contract.

[00:15:25] James: They need somebody who understands entertainment law specifically.

[00:15:29] Matt: absolutely. and entertainment law is a wide variety of law. It's not just, you know, you have performance rights, you have intellectual property rights, you have ASCAP and BMI, you have, all sorts of these weird little inner workings. And then you have like a whole sect of the industry that's all kind of like an underground, everybody's paid under the table, circular economy, black market type thing going on, legal is not something that you wanna mess with.

[00:15:50] Matt: It's very, very easy for you to get into a contract, especially as a young artist who's eager to sign a record deal and to sign your life away. a perfect example of this, James, you mentioned [00:16:00] Victory Records. And today to remember, they have had a horror story after horror story, after horror story, actually won.

[00:16:04] Matt: Oh, that's right. Street Line Manifesto was another big one on there. And they had just absolutely horrible, horrible stories with victory. You know, Victory was known the 360 deal, you sign your name on the dotted line and they take 100 percent of everything. And you lose the rights to the name, you lose the rights to your music, they literally take everything, and they write you a big fat check, and you continue to perform it as long as they say that that's okay.

[00:16:25] Matt: Because they own everything. So they can literally give you a 360 deal because they like your music, and then they can kick you out of your own band that you started, because they own it. They own the music, they own the rights, they own the name, they own you. of course, you LLC'd and you protected yourself.

[00:16:40] Matt: and there are other more intricate ways of doing that. But this is why having a legal person is incredibly, incredibly important. If you do not protect yourself, you will find yourselves trapped, broke, with no band. perfect example of this is, Bravado, the merchandising company, who has a tendency to come in and sign one million dollar [00:17:00] deals with artists.

[00:17:00] Matt: This sounds incredible. Until, of course, you get one member in the band who decides that they're going to sign an exclusive merch deal. And that contract says that any band that they're in is also a de facto part of the contract. then you end up with a lead singer who signs away the rights to everything.

[00:17:16] Matt: And then before you know it, they're out of money. And the band has an exclusive merchandising deal that Bravada was the only one who makes money off of. And, guess what? You were a 25 year old kid who just got a million dollar check. What do you think you're going to do? You're going to go blow your money.

[00:17:29] Matt: You're going to go buy a nice house, you're going to go buy a nice car, you're going to go buy all the gear you want. You're going to be an idiot with that money. And then, Congratulations these guys are pros bravado provides all the merch for Justin Bieber, these are not small time artists.

[00:17:42] Matt: These are people who understand. Hey, look I'm gonna make 000 a day in merch sales because so many people want a Justin Bieber shirt that, the venue has to supply merch. these things are mind numbing once you're getting up to that level of competition as somebody who has a lot of experience with merch inventory running large [00:18:00] scale business can't even contemplate like a concert at the pepsi center In Colorado.

[00:18:04] Matt: because when you have 30, 000 people packed into a room, how many shirts do you bring? you got to have 30, 000 shirts there. you figure off, you have five different designs. That's still only 6, 000 of each shirt, which means that a lot of people, if a bunch of people buy a popular design, then a bunch of them are going to left high and dry.

[00:18:19] Matt: you imagine having… Oh, I'm playing Pepsi Center. going to have 60 cases of merch delivered there tomorrow. more…

[00:18:25] James: underestimating,

[00:18:27] Matt: Oh, 100%. way underestimating. I'm throwing out childlike figures.

[00:18:30] Matt: like, 60 cases, that would be 6, 000 shirts. If they needed 30, they would need 300 cases. A case is big. I you're talking about a semi, an 18 wheeler full of t shirts. just for you to be able To sell merch. it's crazy. Once you get into these big, huge shows, it's like, you know, every time Taylor Swift takes a stage, you're talking about 000 worth of production.

[00:18:47] Matt: So it's like, yeah, no wonder she makes a million dollars per show, because she's spending three quarters of a million per show. has outsourced so much stuff to the point where she can focus on more than just 10 percent of your music. And that's kind of the whole thing that we're getting to is that like with [00:19:00] things like driving, loading, sound, legal, social media, you can do things.

[00:19:04] Matt: yourself as needed as a means to like help out. But if you want to avoid the pitfall of being trapped in this cyclical parade where you want to play music, the two highs of being a musician are, recording songs and playing live shows and only 10 or 5 percent of what you really feel your passion and your, your calling to do in this world is, and it's to perform and create art.

[00:19:28] Matt: then you're going to start getting, artistically fatigued. Because you're going to spend so much time in business, which is the complete hyper opposite end of the spectrum from. Art in general, art and business very seldom go hand in hand. Generally, they only go hand in hand.

[00:19:45] Matt: Once there's long periods of economic prosperity, like a golden era or a Renaissance and things of that nature, So when you get into these eras where it's like, you have to work hard in order for anybody to hear anything, all the tools are out there. Now anybody sitting in their basement can put out a [00:20:00] billion dollar idea.

[00:20:01] Matt: our Instagrams of the world made by a couple of kids. you can put out a song, you can put out a piece of digital content that, Really explodes and goes really far and you can do it all with 50 plug ins in your mom's basement You know, you can do it through global distribution channels via the internet and social media networks that are all now free to us can get radio play on all sorts of college stations across the country without ever having to pay a penny But the issue is is that the more time you spend doing that the less time that you're spending making music And if there's one thing that the music industry has hit home was law of large numbers.

[00:20:34] Matt: The more songs that you as an artist write, The better opportunity that you have to succeed. It's just basic math. And if you are only spending one tenth of your time writing music, then you are cutting out 90 percent of your capacity. And in reality, you're cutting out more than that, because the more you start to do something consistently, you get faster at it, you get better at it, you get more inspiration.

[00:20:56] Matt: If I could spend 100 percent of my time writing music, I would have [00:21:00] 30 hit songs, because I would have 3, 000 songs. versus now, it's like, oh, you know, when you, when you're constantly pulled away from stuff and it's like, oh, I got to be making sure I'm doing this. I can't think about writing music because as soon as I finish this show, I got to go get in the, in the bus and start driving.

[00:21:14] James: Yeah. 100%. And while we're talking about all the things that you can outsource, I want to say that I absolutely do not recommend hiring a manager or a booking agent on a flat fee basis.

[00:21:28] James: Those are scams. Maybe they're well intentioned, but it's a scam. unless it's a flat fee like per show, where it's smaller shows and they say, hey, I'll book you for 50 a show.

[00:21:38] James: But if it's like a monthly retainer, run away. That is not the kind of management or booking deal that you want to be in. Legitimate agents will work on gross income from any performances they book. Just from the performance. They won't take a cut out of your merch, for example, that you sell at that show.

[00:21:55] James: It'll be just the deal that they negotiate. Managers will get a cut of [00:22:00] all of your income as a band. They'll probably ask for gross, but if at all possible, talk them into a net deal. because that incentivizes them to keep costs down, because they're only making money if you're making money.

[00:22:12] James: Whereas if they're on gross, they don't care if you're making money or not after expenses, because they're making money no matter what.

[00:22:17] James: You might actually be losing money because of your manager. But when it comes to finding people who are going to do tasks for you, if you're gonna go the flat rate route, which most contractors are gonna be a flat rate, so if you're doing like graphic design, sound, driving, all that stuff, Depending on what it is, you know, you can go to Fiverr, and you can get great results.

[00:22:35] James: my band, we have gotten designs from Fiverr, and we love them. But you could also get horrible results. The first ever podcast art for the Bandhive podcast, before we were called Bandhive, I got it on Fiverr, and it was terrible. I did better in Canva.

[00:22:49] James: Then when we rebranded to Bandhive, I paid a designer. And it was fantastic. All our logos, our mascot, all that stuff was designed by a phenomenal designer named [00:23:00] Richard Portman out of the UK. His info will be in the show notes at bandhive.

[00:23:03] James: rocks slash 205, that's the number 205. you want a great designer. Hit up Richard or also my friends Dan Brophy and Shannon Fahey. They're great designers as well So they'll be linked in the show notes all three of them and they all have different styles So you can look at their portfolios see what you like They all do great work if it's in person work rely on your network You never know who you might find just ask them to be like, hey, do you know a sound engineer?

[00:23:29] James: Hey, do you know somebody who can drive a 15 passenger van with a trailer? Whatever it is, if you find a quality worker, or when you find them, keep them close. Now Matt, I think you have a story about this.

[00:23:39] Matt: I should do. We were out on Warp Tour and we had a local printer, so we ordered 100 tank tops, black tank tops. We didn't know how they were going to sell. We got to the first date of Warped Tour. We basically said, oh, there's 50 shirts. There's like 45 days of Warped Tour. So if we sell one shirt a day, you know, then that's an extra 500 bucks so like, oh, it'll help us pay for gas. We sold out of [00:24:00] shirts by day two. Let's just say that.

[00:24:02] Matt: because the first day was one of the bigger Warped Tour dates, which is Salt Lake City. And we had no idea what we were doing. First time we'd ever gone out to Warped Tour to sell stuff, and we got out there and, We did really, really well, but we were like, Oh, if we sell, like, five shirts, you know, If we make 250 bucks, that'll be enough to cover gas to make it to Denver, and we can go.

[00:24:19] Matt: We were gonna skip Denver, which was day two, and we were just gonna go straight to Vegas, Cause it went Salt Lake City to Denver back to Las Vegas. Anybody who understands geography knows that you then have to turn right back around to drive right back through Salt Lake City to get to Vegas. So we decided to go to Denver because we sold shirts and then we sold the rest of shirts in Denver and if we had more we would have sold a ton more but we didn't know what to do we're like how do we do this so we called that our printer and said hey like can we make this happen and he was like oh yeah man sure totally and then he sends us white shirts I think he sent us white shirts so then Jesse Being the band liaison contacts him is like, Hey man, these are supposed to be black tank tops, not white shirts.

[00:24:59] Matt: like, [00:25:00] it's not really the demographic here at warp tour. You know, a lot of kids like wearing black clothes, not white clothes. And the guy, you know, after a long conversation, he was like, I'll make you a new batch at cost. We were like, okay, cool.

[00:25:10] Matt: That's awesome. So he makes a new batch, sends it out to us. They show up. It's black shirts, not black tank tops. So, Jesse called a complaint essentially again, And the guy, like, basically got defensive about it.

[00:25:22] Matt: And Jesse's like, well, look, this is how you want to run your business, that's fine. If this is how you want to present yourself, that's cool. But I'm just like, I can't work with you if that's the case. so we were like frantically trying to figure out what to do. We had pretty much no money, so we scraped together the rest of our money, and we found a printer, a local printer in California.

[00:25:37] Matt: that's where we were the next day, was San Francisco. And so, we found this printer, we're like, look man, this is the craziest request. We told him everything that happened, and he was like, don't worry. I can get you a hundred black tank tops. by tomorrow. And we're like, what? he's like, it won't be tomorrow morning.

[00:25:53] Matt: So you won't be able to sell them at San Francisco, but you can do that. Stop by here, get them for on your way down to Irvine or Pomona or [00:26:00] Ventura, wherever we were the next day. And sure enough, we go there and this guy's like, oh, I used to do all the printing for yellow card. He's like, so I totally understand doing like overnight orders.

[00:26:09] Matt: He's like, I'm not afraid to come in here at nighttime and just work through the night to send out orders. And we were just like, what? Not only did he get all the shirts like printed, boxed, mailed, he had it you know, next day shipped to us, and we were able to get there. And we got really lucky because day in San Francisco, it ended up being overcast, so we were still able to sell all of the black shirts because it wasn't super hot.

[00:26:29] Matt: So instead of needing to have black tank tops, we were able to sell all the black shirts, and then we ended up with this extra box. So it ended up working out really, really well. But it was specifically his… Work ethic and his like understanding that it was like, look, we explained our situation we told him that we are just stopped working with a different printer because screwed up two orders in a row and Also couldn't meet the demands of a high grossing merchandising business essentially is what we were doing.

[00:26:53] Matt: So That ended up in us developing this really great relationship with a guy who ended up sending us merch [00:27:00] across the country for years and years, and especially on every Warped Tour, where it was like, this is the only guy that understands how to print shirts in LA, get them sent to Pennsylvania, and get them to the right place at the right time.

[00:27:09] Matt: once you find people like that, it's like, oh dude, welcome to the family, oh yes, I love you. you know, a good worker when you meet one, or at least if you are a good worker, you are a hard worker and you meet another hard worker, there's instantly this, chemical, just bullshitting here, I don't know if there's actually a chemical reaction, but it's, for me, there's a sixth sense when I meet somebody who actually knows what they're doing, who works hard, and the second that they get them, In my Rolodex, it's like, sweet, never letting you go ever again.

[00:27:37] Matt: Thank you so much for you being an awesome business partner. And when you find good business partners, hold on to them for dear life.

[00:27:43] James: Yeah, having those people in your circle and just keeping them there is so important. But just remember that you have to pay people. Because the easiest way to get somebody to resent working for you is to underpay them and not value them.

[00:27:57] James: Now that's assuming you're not a dink. If you're being a dink to [00:28:00] them, that's totally something else. just don't be a jerk. But you have to pay people what they're worth. I want to shout out episode 52, which is now like three years ago. There's no I in team. Make better music by knowing when to ask for help.

[00:28:12] James: That is an entire episode about outsourcing. You can find it at bandhive. rocks slash 52, that's the number 52, to hear more about outsourcing. But above all, Don't be afraid to jump into these tasks even though it's not music and learn how to do those tasks. The 90 percent of being in a band that's not music.

[00:28:31] James: You need to learn these things.

[00:28:32] Matt: Yep, you cannot

[00:28:34] James: I don't know how is not an excuse.

[00:28:36] Matt: 100%.

[00:28:37] James: world is at our fingertips. You can look anything up online. So that's not an excuse. You can do anything if you want to. And if you want to succeed in music, you need to want to do the other things. Even if that task is boring, you say, I want to do this because of the results.

[00:28:55] Matt: if you don't understand how your business works, you can't really outsource it.[00:29:00] goal is to understand the system and then to outsource to somebody who can optimize that system. that means that you have to understand the inner workings already.

[00:29:07] Matt: you can't say like, I want to start a band and I don't know anything about music.

[00:29:12] James: I know a guy.

[00:29:13] Matt: right? And the sad thing is, is we kind of We've all met that guy before you have this guy who's like, I want to be able to do everything.

[00:29:19] Matt: But then the second that it's like, okay, we need to set up social media accounts. And they're like, well, why? Well, why do I need a website? you've already failed. You need to understand how your business works. So that way you can outsource to the right person. If you're outsourcing to the wrong person, then you're going to fall into those scams, those flat rate deals, those 360 deals that we were talking about.

[00:29:37] Matt: Those horrible, horrible pitfalls that you want to avoid.

[00:29:40] James: The more you understand about your business, the less likely it will be that you fall into a pit. You don't want to be Andy Dwyer. You want to be Leslie Knope. She figures out how to do it and gets it done.

[00:29:52] Matt: We'll leave you guys with an awesome quote from uh, I believe it's Bette Midler, of all people. But when they asked Bette Midler what she [00:30:00] accredited her success to, and she just said, I don't believe in roadblocks. Every time I find a roadblock, I just figure the way around it. And she did that by knowing, by finding the right people, by putting them in the right place, and setting her mind to it.

[00:30:14] Matt: Because, as cliche as it sounds, you can absolutely do anything if you just set your mind to it.

[00:30:20] James: Uh, Check, check, one, two, three, four. Go ahead, Matt.

[00:30:23] Matt: Baaaaah! Rubby baby buggy bumpers.

[00:30:28] James: Matt the Sheep. Not the Sean.

[00:30:30] Matt: Baaaaah!