One of the privileges of my early career was working with Ryan Leslie on the project that became Superphone. In short, Ryan noticed that because artists couldn’t communicate with fans, they had to pay for publicity, paid ads, and promotion whenever they released new work. 

Ryan decided he was going to communicate directly with fans in order to build a database. He released a new album, and made sure it was only available if you sent him a text.

Going direct meant more freedom and control, but it also took a lot of work, something that Ryan was never one to shy away from.

Initially, I participated as a fan. After I bought a couple of products and suggested ideas to him, he invited me to work with his team. I got a sense of how it felt both as a fan and an artist. I wrote more about the big takeaway: own your marketing, own your income.

I recently read about how streaming was minutes away from becoming obsolete. It reminds me of an essay my friend Danny, who was also on Ryan’s team, wrote over a decade ago about hacking the music industry.

The most useful thing I took away from all of this was the mindset: to add value to someone else’s life through media, create conditions for you to build new relationships and deepen existing ones (via text or email list, or even a blog), and to create new products and services that could add more value to their lives. 

While I didn’t have a huge fanbase like Ryan did when I was selling my first book, I had my friends and I learned to develop thick skin.