Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #36: Beyond Vanity Metrics: Monetizing Music with Lil Cross

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 36

Interviewee: Lil Cross

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast. 

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Jason: Hey, welcome to the show today. Our special guest is Lil Cross, and his company is Dead to the World. As I’ve done some research on him, he’s a rapper, but he has a studio. They do coach for artists. They’ve coached well over 100 artists, which is awesome. They’ve got some unique things that I think can help musicians with understanding how to monetize and be successful financially as a musician. We’re going to hear some of your stories. Maybe start with introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about how you ended up in the music industry.

Lil Cross: Awesome. Well, first of all, I just want to say thanks for having me, Jason. I’m really grateful for the opportunity to speak on this platform and to have the opportunity to maybe help some musicians out there. In terms of myself, I’ve been making music my whole life. It was early on when I was 15, 16, while I was pursuing it as a career and trying to monetize it. During those years, that was all to no avail. I was just investing in a bunch of promotion and vanity metrics rather than things that were actually bringing in revenue, like turning it into a viable career. The way that I did that for myself was through hosting events. I used to be someone who bought slots to open up for artists that I admired and stuff like that. Then I started thinking, “Okay, why aren’t I doing this?” I’m talking to the venue owners and I’m like, “The money that I’m paying for the slot isn’t even that much less than the money that I could pay to rent out the venue.” I started hosting events myself and I became full-time when I was 17 by hosting more than one event a month and profiting like 5K.

I got kicked out of college, unfortunately but at that point, I was already full-time doing my music, so I just put my all into it. By putting my all into it, I brought on two business partners, Gumby DTW and Ethan Merino. We filed for an LLC. We got a commercial business building in the Bradenton, Florida area, and that building functioned as both a recording studio and a venue. I had always been someone that had my own studio equipment and mixed and mastered my own songs, so we saw that as another source of revenue. That was about almost three years ago when we opened up for business. That’s how I got started before doing coaching or anything else, was just hosting events and studio time at that building.

Jason: Got it. Very cool. I know with these events that you’ve learned a lot along the way. As you look back, what are some of the mistakes you see that artists are making when they’re trying to get into a venue, or you said paying to get on board with some other artists? What are some of the big mistakes you see people make?

Lil Cross: Okay, well, first of all, 03:18 the biggest mistake I see people make is the vanity metric thing. It is like investing in Spotify playlist, investing in things that are going to get your numbers up but you’re not actually selling anything. First of all, if you don’t have a product for sale, then you’re never going to make any money because I think the number is 200,000 streams monthly for you to make federal minimum wage based on what Spotify is paying artists. If you were selling a $10 product to 200,000 people, you’d have two million instead of federal minimum wage.

In terms of event hosting, event hosting is a very… It covers two birds in one stone where you could do something that’s lucrative while simultaneously still being in the music industry and also performing your own events and stuff like that. When it comes to hosting events, the biggest mistake people make is not being able to minimize their input. A big part of being able to do this is holding the wall stuff. For example, most people want to rent out a venue that’s like a bar or a club. What does that mean is that they get none of the money from drink sales. Boom. They just cut their profit in half. You know what I mean? Drink sales are one of the most profitable things from an event. Not only that, but these venues function the same way. They hold the same amount of people. They’re just really nice and have all these cool lights and blah, blah, blah, stuff that you don’t necessarily need to have a good event, so they charge more.

A big part about it is input minimization and getting resourceful. Maybe running out of Airbnb for $200 that has three acres but that can fit 1,000 people on it, and you don’t have many restrictions in terms of needing any permits or being able to sell drinks and be in full ownership of the profit of that. Input minimization and taking ownership – being the person who sells the drinks, being the person who sells the food, being the person who sells the sponsorships, who sells the vending slots, who sells the artist performance slots, who sells the tickets. You’re the person that reaps 100% of the profits. If you throw the same events that these other people are throwing and you reduce your input to 5 to 700, you could throw a 300-person event and make $10,000 off of it with only $500 of input. If you’re questioning how $500 of input is possible, I mean, find an Airbnb with a couple of acres on and spend $300 on that. Find a DJ that’s also a performer and offer him a free slot if he DJs the gig for free. Find a big, tall, muscular rapper and tell him that he gets a slot for free if he does security.

Then spend a couple of hundred dollars in food and drinks before the event so you can sell it there. Now you just put an event together for 500 bucks, an event that is at a venue that can house thousands of people that could sell thousands of tickets. It’s at a venue that you could be out all day so you could sell as many slots as you possibly want, and at a venue where you can set up as many vending booths and sponsorship opportunities as you could possibly want. The ceiling for revenue on that is well beyond $10,000.

Jason: With the Airbnb’s, as somebody’s doing that, you bring 500 people, is there going to be a lot of complaints to get? I’m just curious. You probably don’t have to have permits, but I’m just curious if you’ve seen any.

Lil Cross: That’s just an example. You always want to be cautious about, okay, let’s get this Airbnb in a place where there’s no neighbors so there wouldn’t be any complaints in the first place. That’s just an example. The ideology behind this is getting resourceful. I’ve had clients that have knocked on the door of a farmer and been like, “Hey, those three acres right there, do you use them from 7 PM to 12 AM?” He’s like, “No.” It’s like, “Okay, I have 300 bucks’ cash in hand. Can I have it Saturday night and it’ll be cleaner by the time I leave than it was when I got there?” That’s free money to that guy because he’s going to be sleeping and maybe he has to deal with five hours of a concert going on, but he gets 300 bucks just for dealing with that. You know what I mean? We could keep going, warehouses and stuff like that, warehouse building. It’s like, “Okay, are you an operating warehouse from 7 to 12? No, you probably close at five. How much money to rent it out for five hours and leave that place cleaner than it was before I left it? You come back, nothing ever happened.” That’s a free 500 for you. You know what I mean?

Jason: That’s great. Awesome. With these, the people that you’re coaching, as they’re trying to decide what to do, a lot of the stuff you’re saying seems a little bit overwhelming. Usually there’s the one man show, one man band, and you’re expected to not only know how to do the music, but you’re expected to figure out how to do an event and do food and do ticket sales. What do you recommend for the musician that’s trying to do this? How do they get all this done without a whole bunch of help?

Lil Cross: Well, here’s my recommendation. The first thing is to invest in help. The reason why I’m at the point where I’m at is because I’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars in mentorship and help. I’m not 21 years old speaking in this business acumen because I’m a genius, I’m not. I’m far from it. You know what I mean? It’s because I surrounded myself with people who were, and I shut up and I listened to them, and I paid them for their time. 08:34 Don’t quit your day job, invest in your career, but invest in things that CARRY. Invest in business knowledge. You know what I mean? Invest in coaching, invest in figuring out how you can make money and how you can be able to quit your day job and become full-time, not really as a musician yet, but as an event host, which is a step closer, you know what I mean? 08:58 Instead of spending your money on studio time and Spotify playlisting. Essentially, it’s sacrificing the short term for the long term. If I’m going to be honest, it’s like, can you really say that you’re putting your all into your career if you’re sacrificing the money that it takes to learn how to monetize in making the music?

Even if you make the music and spend that money on the studio time, if you don’t have any money left over to monetize it, then that’s not you trying your hardest to monetize your career. That’s you trying your hardest to make music. The first distinction you have to make in yourself is which do you want more? Do you want to do this as a hobby or do you want to do this as a career? If you want to do this as a career, that takes sacrifice. That takes sacrificing the time that you could be spending on music and the money that you could be spending on music and rather spending that time and money learning how to monetize your music so that once it is monetized, you can do it for the rest of your life and get paid for it.

Jason: I heard the other day somebody talking about how you need to be passionate about what you’re doing. When people are working their regular jobs, having passion for that job, they explain passion is actually being willing to suffer for that thing. I think a lot of us think, “Oh, I really enjoy doing this.”, but getting to that next level where you’re willing to put in that time like you’re saying and suffer to get better and learn and level yourself up is the key. I find it interesting you said you got kicked out of college, but then on the next thing you just said, you spent tens of thousands of dollars on coaching and learning. Look at what people spend on college these days. It’s great to have that degree and I’m not bashing a degree. That’s helpful in a lot of careers but oftentimes you spend tens of thousands of dollars on taking a whole bunch of classes that are not going to have anything to do with helping you move in, at least move closer towards where you want to be. There’s absolutely lots of great classes that you can take. I think a lot of times, myself included, and then seeing people that are going up to school even now today, people, you have to do those general education..

It’s like, “Okay, do I have to really spend $10,000 or $20,000 or whatever amount it is to learn about history class all over again that I did in high school? I love my history class, but did that help me long term?” I don’t know. Then when you talk about coaching and buying courses, I think people sometimes back it, “Oh my gosh, it’s $1,000, or it’s $299.” Really? You probably spent $1,000 on that class you really didn’t want to take that you wasted four months of your life in.

Lil Cross: Yeah, it’s a very fair point. I like to piggyback on that and say that 11:45 sometimes the fastest way to learn is through execution and through failure. The thing is, when you’re in college, you learn all this stuff, and then guess what happens? It doesn’t work when you try it. Then it was trying it the whole time, that was the only thing you needed to do to figure out how to do it. If I didn’t get kicked out of college, I would still be in college right now. Getting kicked out of college is the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. I made six figures at 20 years old. I would still be sitting in class right now without a dollar to my name, learning how to run a business instead of actively running one.

Jason: Right. Well, I think the other hard thing is when you commit fully to school, you’re learning lots of great stuff but if you don’t implement those things, you may retain 5 or 10% of that. People go to conferences all the time. You spend $5,000 going to this summer retreat or get away or conference and you fly home with tons of notes and then people don’t do anything with it. It’s just like complete… I mean, you had fun, but if you don’t do something, why bother?

Lil Cross: Exactly. I think in this industry, the artist industry in particular, creatives, a lot of artists, not to be crass, but can be egotistical. I think that there’s a level of entitlement that they have where they feel like, “Oh, just because I make great music, just because I went to school for four years and got this degree and got educated on it, that thing should work out for me.” That’s not the case because I know dozens of hundreds of artists that make horrible music and the reason why they are where they want to be is because they actually worked for it. They didn’t have a sense of entitlement, like, just because I make great music, this should come to me. They actually accepted responsibility for their own success and said, “If I’m making this great music and no one’s listening, then I must be doing something wrong business wise.”, instead of blaming the world and making it the world’s responsibility, take that responsibility upon themselves and stop being so entitled.

Jason: The more I’ve been around very successful people, you realize really quickly that those successful people are usually the fastest learners that are always investing in education or trying to figure out, “What can I do? What’s that one more thing that I can do a little bit better?” They’re also some of the very most coachable people. I’ve seen lots of situations. I coach my son’s soccer team. I’ve been coaching for years and it’s very interesting to see how sometimes the talent level is going to be all different across the team. Yet there’s always that one or two kids that maybe they come up and say, “Hey, Coach, what do I need to do a little bit different? Am I kicking the ball wrong? Am I doing this a little bit differently?” There are those people that are actively soliciting feedback that just all of a sudden… they may have been on the same level as the other people on the team but all of a sudden because they’ve asked for it and they’re proactive about it, it changes.

Lil Cross: I have real data on that. With my offer, we offer a guarantee, specifically with the event hosting offer that’s like, “Hey, if you don’t make 10,000 off your event, then you get your money back that you spent on the program.” One of the contingents of that guarantee is that you raise your hand and ask for help when you run into a problem. What happens is that people don’t make the money and then they ask me for their money back and I ask them what happened, and they tell me a problem that happened the first week in the program and I’m finding out about it three months later. For those people, I gave them their money back but from that point forward, I built into the contract, that’s a contingent because the common denominator I’ve worked with, like you said, about over 100 artists at this point, the common denominator between the ones that see the most success and the ones that see the least has very little to do with work ethic, prior knowledge, prior experience, and stuff like that. It has way more to do with ability to ask for help, and ability to learn, and ability to ask questions, and ability to communicate.

Communication is by far.. you could be the dumbest client I’ve ever had but if you communicate better than any of my other clients, you’ll make more money than the guy that came to me that’s a genius.

Jason: I totally agree with you. I find it interesting. I love studying the origins of words. The word that just popped in my head was “humble”. It’s the opposite of “me, me, me”. Somebody who’s humble, the origin of that word actually comes from Latin. I think it’s humus, so H, U, M, U, S. Humus is like the most fertile soil. If you think about that… I think what you’re saying is, if you’re willing to be humble enough to be coached and accept feedback, and that growth or that soil that’s the humus soil, that’s the most fertile, that’s the type of situation that that humble person is in, in order to grow way more than anybody else. If they aren’t willing to allow the nutrients and the other stuff to help them in that growth process.

Lil Cross: 17:04 I also think that the second most important thing is confidence, because what I see is people bury their heads in the sand. It’s not that they don’t have enough humility to ask for help, it’s that they don’t believe in themselves that even if they did ask for help, they did not execute. They’re like, “No, this is my fault. I’m going to bury my head in the sand and not ask for help because I’m just messing up. It’s all on me.” I think a huge thing is confidence. Like I said, you can be the dumbest person on earth, but if you have the confidence, the confidence is the catalyst you need to be able to raise your hand and ask for help. If you raise your hand and ask for help enough times, you’ll become the smartest person on earth, comparatively to the person who might be smart but might not be confident enough to ever ask for help or might not have the humility or enough humbleness like you said to ask for help.

Jason: I’ve been through all kinds of courses and programs, and oftentimes people come into those and they’re all gung-ho, they’re excited about it. I heard somewhere that only about 20% of people actually finish a course, an online course, if they start it.

Lil Cross: 15%. 87% of people that start an online course do not finish it. 87%.

Jason: Whatever that high number ends up being, you think, “Okay, are you willing to stick it out and focus and just make sure you’re spending the time to do that?” It’s so interesting that people… I think what it all comes down to is believing in yourself. There’s a lot of courses. The ones that I think I’ve done the best with as I look back is the belief sometimes this, “You can do it”. You’ve got Tony Robbins of the world and all these other coaches that get up, cheer and lead you. Sometimes, at least me personally, sometimes I feel like, Oh, my gosh. Really? I gotta get up on my feet and dance and get excited about this thing, but as I’ve gone through them and seen people succeed or not succeed, the fact that you believe and really are convinced and confident that you can do it makes all the difference. The actual getting the thing, doing the tactics and all of the stuff that goes into the process, yeah, you can learn how to do that but if you don’t believe really truly deep down that you can, it doesn’t happen.

Lil Cross: It’s funny what you said there because I’d like to point out a connection. Part of that is the responsibility of the coach. 19:30 If you’re a good coach, you know that part of your job is to instill confidence in your clients. One thing that I’m constantly doing and that my mentors constantly did to me was in those moments where things were looking horrible and those moments happened, they were like, “Dude, this is nothing. You’re the best. You can get through this.” As a coach, it’s important to understand that and to instill that confidence in your clients. That’s part of your responsibility for fulfillment or else they will not see success.

Jason: Yeah, it’s interesting. I’m curious, as you look back on your career so far, has there been any words of advice that people have given you that’s been impactful? You look back and you’re like, “That was that one moment where it really hit me. Now I know what I need to do.”

Lil Cross: I could say a lot of things, and I’ve said this multiple times during the call, but I think it’s the most important one. I’ve hopped on hundreds of sales calls with artists. The most common distinction that I have to help people make on the phone in order to even get them to a point where they can start making money is to 20:41 view their career as a business. In order to view it as a business, the metrics that you use to measure success cannot be followers, likes, streams, reposts. It has to be money. It has to be. If you want this to be a business, then it has to be money. Then the question becomes, “If I’m not making money right now, what is the reason for that?” A lot of artists say, “It’s because I don’t have enough fans.” And what I tell them is this, “You don’t have enough. What does that mean? Well, you have people that listen to your music, but not enough people to make enough money.” I said, “Okay, how many people do you have to listen to your music consistently? 200. How much money have you made off those 200 people? Nothing.”

Let’s do the math. Let’s multiply it by two, 400. What’s zero times two? Zero. Let’s multiply it by a million. You know what I mean? 400 million. What’s a million times zero? Zero. If you don’t invest in learning how to make money and create a product or service and invest in something that’s going to see ROI and you’re investing in real metrics, but metrics that aren’t financially related, then you will never be a full-time musician. Period.

Jason: You talk about these vanity metrics, and that’s great. Okay, if somebody’s got those 200 listeners that it tells you that listened to your music last month, my guess is most of those artists don’t have any clue who those listeners are other than maybe their mom and their family.

Lil Cross: Exactly. Then what you do is once you’ve made that distinction that ROI is the top priority, part of the reason why you haven’t been seeing success is because you’ve been misdiagnosing what the actual issue is. What making that distinction does is it gives you the leverage to diagnose the correct issue. Let’s say that example you use is the correct issue: “I don’t know which one of these people are my fans.” Then the next thing you should invest in shouldn’t be studio time, it shouldn’t be a performance. It shouldn’t be a Spotify playlist; it shouldn’t be hitting the blue boost button on Instagram. What it should be is, “How can I figure out where my fans are coming from?” That’s step number one. Then what happens next? You figure out where your fans are coming from, but you don’t know how to sell to them and you don’t know what to sell. What is the next thing you invest in? You invest in learning how to create a product and service out of your musical skill sets. You do that. What’s the next thing you invest in? Learning how to sell that because now you know where your 200 people are and now you know what you’re going to sell to them. Now you just have to learn how to sell.

By making the distinction in what the goal is and what metric you’re using to measure success, that gives you the leverage necessary to properly diagnose the issue. Then once you properly diagnose the issue, isn’t that what you’ve been waiting for this whole time is to know what you have to do to get to where you want to be? Well, now you figured it out. Do it.

Jason: I think the connection with your fans as a musician, you need to know who those individuals are. Maybe you’ve got the names on Facebook if they follow you or Instagram whatever, but without getting that name and the email address and probably a number that you can text them at, you’re not going to be able to… How are you going to tell them about a concert? How are you going to tell them you’re coming out with a new…

Lil Cross: How are you going to communicate with them enough so that they like you enough to when you do tell them about the concert, they actually buy a ticket.

Jason: Absolutely. It’s so funny. People don’t think they can do it. Just the other day, I was in a store. My daughter needed shoes, so we went into this sporting goods store and was talking to the guy, and he was telling me, “Oh, we keep losing our shoe brands. We can’t carry it. They just had a very small number. It kept shrinking.” I said, “Well, do you have a list of who your clients are that buy from you?” “No, we just switched to our computer system and now I don’t have enough help.” I don’t know that he didn’t care but wouldn’t figure out how to solve the problem. Okay, if I have somebody coming in, buying sporting goods, or softball mid, or whatever it is, they’re probably going to need to come back and get something else from me. If you can’t even solve… If you’re not willing to solve that problem or serve your client or your fan, what are you even doing? You’re probably not going to be in business if you don’t care enough to even solve that problem.

I think musicians need to back up and ask themselves, Okay, that’s great that you made a cool song, but if you’re not willing to actually serve and help and care about your audience, you’re not going to be successful unless there’s those one or two flaky things, then you’re probably not going to be successful very long enough.

Lil Cross: 25:36 You have to face the reality that that work of soothing and providing value to your clients is not music. It is not making music. It is making content. It is communicating with them. It is creating products and services that are money grabs but are genuinely beneficial to your clients. It’s about cultivating a brand that has an inspiring and positive message that actually resonates with people that incentivizes them to become bigger fans of you and eventually make a purchase. You have to accept the fact that in order to go full-time off of music, unless you want to get signed by a label, unless you want to get pimped out, for lack of a better term, then your best option is you have to do two things at once – you have to be the best musician ever and you have to be the best business owner ever. You’re going to have to face that cold, hard reality if you ever make money off of your music without someone doing that for you and taking the majority of it.

Jason: The connections, as I think of people that have done a really good job of that, whether you like her music or not, Taylor Swift, you look at her career, and she’s still a master at it. She connects with people and fans, and she’s active on social media. When she was starting out, she would stay at her shows, and she would sign every CD and interact with the fans. Just game changing things that even the people sometimes that she was on tour with. I know quite a bit about that story. She was incredible at doing that. She was the opener even. You’d have these big-name artists that would come to see, and they wouldn’t sell as much stuff as she would. It was because she took the time to care. I think caring was really where it all started. Do you care enough about your people that you’re serving to give them and help them solve or serve them in that next way? Right.

Lil Cross: An exercise that I do with my clients to help them figure this out is I tell them to list out their five favorite musicians, and then I have them work backwards and figure out how they become such big fans of those musicians. I don’t know if you’ve heard of names like Juice World, people that the younger kids are listening to these days. Juice World is notorious for helping his fans through depression and heartbreak by singing and rapping about those sorts of things. Half the young artists I get on the phone with, their favorite artist is Juice World. That works backwards. It’s like, “When I heard the lyric in his song, when I went to his performance and he told me on stage that he loved me, when I went on his Instagram live and he said, everyone in this Instagram Live, I love you.” If you’re going through something, they list out the things that made them. When we look back at that list, guess what ends up happening? Ninety percent of the things on that list have nothing to do with music.

Then I tell them, so you’re posting this great music, you’re doing 10%. What about the 90%? How do you expect someone to become just as big of a fan of you as you are of Juice World if you’re only doing 10% of what he did?

Jason: That’s a super cool way to look at it. Well, awesome. I think we’re coming about the end of the time here. If people want to go check out some of the stuff you do or they want to find out about coaching, what website or where do you send them to?

Lil Cross: You can book a call through our website, which is www.dtwheadquarters.com. You can also reach out to me on Instagram to book a call. My Instagram is @crossDTW, Then same thing with my business partners, @GumbyDTW and @EthanDTW. Also our business Instagram page is @DeadPeriod or the @PeriodWorld. You can hit us up on any of those accounts if you have any questions or if you want to hop on a call. Then if you want to check us out on streaming, Dead to the World on all platforms for our group music. Ethan Marino, on all platforms for his personal music. Lil Cross, on all platforms for my personal music and Gumby DTW on all platforms for his personal music.

Again, I really want to say thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk to you and to share what I do on your platform but not only that, but just to give some advice to anyone who’s listening out there. I really hope that at least one person walks away from this and makes some money because of something that was said between us today. I think.

Jason: You’ve given a whole bunch of value bombs. I think people ought to go back and listen to some of this stuff two or three times. It would definitely help. Appreciate you taking time to share, and we’ll catch up another time. Awesome, man.

Lil Cross: Thanks again for having me. Thanks.

Finding success and fulfillment in the music industry is possible. Looking forward to seeing you in our next episode.