AcadianaCasts Presents:
AcadianaCasts Presents:
Unlocking Your Voice: How to Stand Out Online with Tim Benson & NetScore
In this episode, Tim Benson, founder of NetScore, unpacks the challenges of content creation and finding authenticity in today’s crowded digital world. We discuss the struggle of staying consistent, why many creators quit just before success, and how to push through the noise to find your unique voice.
Tim also shares insights into the evolving music industry, the power of personal connections over automated strategies, and how independent artists can thrive—even in challenging markets like Louisiana. Tune in for practical advice on staying true to yourself while building meaningful connections with your audience.
AcadianaCasts Presents: Tim Benson!
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Thank you to our sponsor, NetScore! Go to netscorepro.com today to take your free website and Facebook audit today.
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"AcadianaCasts Presents" is the Flagship Podcast of the ACADIANACASTS NETWORK. Lafayette, LA based host, Carter Simoneaux talks with entertainers, business owners, athletes, chefs, and more - anyone who can help tell the story of Acadiana.
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If you want to watch this episode on YouTube, check out our channel!
If you're a poster and you keep posting and you get no likes, you're the real hero, Because it takes guts to just keep doing it. Eventually you're going to start to get people that will start to resonate with you and like and respond to reposts. But it's hard at first because it might take 10 to 20 pieces of content before you start to get traction and most people quit well before then.
Speaker 3:Glad to have you. I'm Carter Semino, host of Acadiana Cast Presents. You can follow Acadiana Cast on Instagram, tiktok, acadianacastcom as well. It's kind of a work in progress. Right now. We're building some stuff on the back end. Get you some exciting things coming this year in 2025. But we're excited to have you on Acadiana Cast Presents and welcome back to the show. Friend of the show, tim Benson. He is the founder of Netscore, which we're going to talk a little bit about today. You'll also hear an ad a little bit more about NetScore and how to get involved. He also owns Music Academy of Acadiana Acadiana or Lafayette.
Speaker 1:Acadiana, it is Acadiana. Yeah, it's Acadiana. See, this is how you know it's not rigid, because I just messed up.
Speaker 3:That's okay. We're not stopping, we're running right through. We're going to talk about Netscore and the Wild Wild West and its content creation in the world right now, but first let's hear a little bit more about Netscore. We'll be right back to the episode in just a bit, but first I want to hear from our friends over at Netscore. We're here with the founder of Netscore, tim Benson, a friend of the show. Tim, yes sir, I'm a small business owner with Acadia and a cast. How can NetScore help me and others like me?
Speaker 1:Well what we see from people that are in similar situations. Make sure your website's optimized, make sure that Google recognizes what you do and can easily rank you in Google searches, and also just make sure you're active on social media. I know that's easy to say, but it's so easy to overlook as well, too. Make sure you're posting, and you may even want to try some paid advertising. Get some more eyeballs your way, so we can easily help out with that.
Speaker 3:Okay, how do you guys help out with that?
Speaker 1:So we'd find out what service are you primarily doing right now. We could help assist. On the social media side. Our team can actually post for you. Just give us an idea of what you like, what your personality is, of your business, and we can get content out for you in a done-for-you format. And then, on the website side, listen if you are not happy with where your website is, or if you don't even have a website, think of your website as your home base on the internet, and that home base has to look really good and it's got to be visible. So we can help create your website. We can revamp your website and we can do it pretty fast too. We've got team members of different backgrounds that can fit the personality of your business.
Speaker 3:Well, there's all kind of different types of businesses. You know, it's like a snowflake, each one's kind of unique right, and I use in part of my business, you know, this new AI in certain things, whether it's writing copy or in my editing software. But you guys have like an AI element as well that people can use with Netscore.
Speaker 1:Right. So what's really cool is I developed an AI marketing assessment so you can plug in all of your information about your business and it will give you a diagnostic of what things you're doing great and what things you might need work on. And then we can get that report and know exactly where to start in your business.
Speaker 3:Well, okay, I'm sold. Where should I go to find out more?
Speaker 1:information so you can go to netscoreprocom or send us an email info at netscoreprocom. Our team will be more than happy to help anybody out.
Speaker 3:Help you guys out too Well, thank you, tim. Thank you, netscore. Let's get right back to the conversation now. Great job, tim. Hey, thank you. Not all like there'll be. These ads will be in a couple episodes these ads will be in a couple episodes.
Speaker 2:I won't be going from us to us every single time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure. But yeah, man, like Netscore, it's helped a lot of the stuff that we do with Love of People. Yeah, but right now there's just like content is king and every business is trying to get in on it. But I called it the Wild Wild West earlier because sometimes it seems so hard to break through when there's so much coming at us. What have you found? And you know Netscore can help kind of alleviate some of those issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So it's all about getting content out consistently, but I feel like right now, you have to be just be you, be authentic, be original. You know, if AI is here, okay. So if you are trying to separate yourself just by like sleeker ads and better content copywriting, that's only half the battle. I think people nowadays just want authenticity. They want your voice, you know, cause they can get. Ai can spit out anything now. So, hey, right, write a good script for a movie. Ai can do that.
Speaker 1:So where does that leave the content creator? Where does that leave the entrepreneur? So what AI can't do is replicate your voice completely. So if you can still find ways to be original, post things like photos of you working or like things that are unique to you. I think people are still very interested in that. So, to answer your question about how Netscore can help, we've got a CRM, customer relation management software called the Netscore app that can help push content out on all your socials email and text automation sending out. So if you come up with things that you want to say in your own voice, you can shoot out to all your people. Email as well, too, yeah, so there's a lot of ways that we can help with that for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I use it for, let's say, in post production.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you know I'm a loud talker Sometimes the audio isn't mixed all the way, but I can use little things like a dialogue leveler that would just kind of use AI to kind of bring our voices a little together. I know you do a lot of audio production as well, so you've probably attested some of those things from the music space, but also the distribution platform that I put the audio versions of these podcasts on. It's called Buzzsprout and they'll put it on Spotify, apple. All that for me, but I also pay for another service within Buzzsprout called Co-Host AI, and it will listen to the entire episode and then give me an entire episode description based off of the conversation. It'll give me like five different titles. It'll give me a sample social media posts, a blog post, um. It will give me chapter markers, um. And then what I'll also do sometimes is I'll take that episode description and you know it's got some things spelled wrong. We're in South Louisiana, so some of the names are spelled wrong and maybe it wasn't quite clear.
Speaker 1:Like who like that?
Speaker 3:there's someone hosting and it's got some things spelled wrong. We're in south Louisiana, so some of the names are spelled wrong and maybe it wasn't quite clear like who, like that there's someone hosting and it's a and there's a guest and there's a conversation, um, and it's a little kind of wordy. So sometimes I'll take that description and put it in the chat gpt and make that a little shorter, and so I'm using ai's just to like kind of save me some some time. But to your point, when we're recording and when we're having these conversations, it's still me I'm the one driving this thing.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I think that that is still coming through, but you could like there's so many applications to use AI to just especially for a one man show like myself, you know make it a little easier.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, and the AI will just, it'll kind of cut corners as far as, like, time spent, um, and your productivity is going to go through the roof. At the end of the day, though, I think people still crave individual, genuine personality, right, and that's the one thing I don't think ai is ever going to quite replicate, because you know, we're humans and we have our own thoughts about the world and how we say certain things. So what I like to say is use ai to get you about 95% there and just make sure that you still have your your fingerprint on it too, right?
Speaker 3:now, why did? Why did you get into that score and creating?
Speaker 1:this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, good question.
Speaker 1:So my business mentor about six years ago, who was a very heavy hitter in the music coaching realm, uh, and actually works right close with Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels, told me you know, tim, we help a lot of people in our music school niche. You should create a marketing service for them, because you have a really good way of taking complex ideas and breaking them down into simple to follow steps. So I kind of just reverse engineered that and said, great, well, if somebody's struggling with like their website or maybe getting found on Google or maybe their social media, I seem to have a pretty good grasp of that, and so what I just did is like reverse engineer my brain and put it in steps and then hired team members to help put it together, and that seemed that tended to work, you know. So that's how we got started in the net score, and then it grew and grew and now we have the software app where we could help businesses manage their incoming prospect leads, their current clients, with all of their emails and texting and just keeping track of everybody.
Speaker 3:So how do businesses? Because sometimes businesses will come to me and they don't want to do a full podcast, but they want to have that podcast. Look right, and that's just for reels. And some of these businesses aren't even throwing ad dollars or ad spend behind, it's just being a part of the content machine, which I don't know. There might be pros and cons to doing that, instead of paying for like an ad spend to boost those numbers. But you know how does a business cut through? Can they cut through without using ad posts?
Speaker 1:Oh, certainly, absolutely. It's a great question. You can. You just have to stay consistent on your organic posting, and I think the key to breaking through without having to spend a lot of money or any money is find your voice and find the people that you think would be watching your content or viewing your content, and find things that they're passionate about in each video, and just keep posting about that until one or two of those really start to take off. And then what I've noticed with these algorithms is that one or two take off and it starts to piggyback into all of it, right so then your fourth video starts to do a little bit better than your 10th video.
Speaker 1:People give up too fast, though. They'll do one or two reels and then that's it Right, and it might be the 20th reel that starts to get momentum. So get in the habit of the process. Let the results take care of themselves. Just be process oriented.
Speaker 3:That's it. Yeah, process oriented, that's such a great uh bit of advice. You know, uh one of our last episodes we had uh Chastity Terrio. She, she, uh has this internet personality called lady in the bathroom I've seen.
Speaker 1:I saw that episode actually. Yeah, it's good. She's got millions of followers by just dancing great stick, it's a great angle, yeah yeah and uh.
Speaker 3:You know, with all the negativity around on the world, it's nice to just like yeah, just see some fun.
Speaker 1:And yeah, on your timeline yeah, my wife knew all about it.
Speaker 3:She's like, oh, he's got her on, that's cool yeah that's awesome, yeah, um, but you know, one of the things that she said and, yeah, that a lot of successful content creators and people in the content space have said is consistency so it's finding a good process um and with the consistency element.
Speaker 1:that's funny because I'm I'm pretty active on x and there's I'll see posts where people are like if you're a poster and you keep posting and you get no likes, you're the real hero, because it takes like guts to just keep doing it.
Speaker 1:You know eventually you're going to start to get people that will start to resonate with you and like and respond to reposts. But it's hard at first because it might take 10 to 20 pieces of content before you start to get traction and most people quit well before then pieces of content before you start to get traction and most people quit well before then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like a lot of like the. Uh, a lot of the threads that you see now on X are like the. The Dalai Lama went through a hunger strike. Now let's see how this can help you with your marketing business and five easy steps. Follow the thread.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a pretty. It's an interesting tactic. Uh, are are the reply guys you know, they to elon musk's post, and then they'll be like oh yeah, elon's crazy. By the way, follow me for more.
Speaker 3:Like you know, it's like it kind of works, right or you or you have someone who, like, maybe has like 20 likes per post, maybe even less, and then they'll just hit one, yeah, and then they're like they don't know what to do, so like, uh, follow my, my other pages, yeah right underneath.
Speaker 1:My most successful Twitter post was I called it reverse engineering your ad copy by using a competitor's bad reviews against them. So what you do is like, let's say you're selling a product on Amazon and you could use this still. Now, go to go to a competitor, if you're e-com seller, go to Amazon, um, and see their negative reviews, and then put those negative reviews in the chat GPT and say, hey, create an ad around how I can solve these problems and that's my position. Isn't that great? Wow, okay, that post got like 300 shares and they're like why didn't I think of that, you know? And it was something that just like, like this would kind of make sense, and I just posted it and then, and then my next post was like something about the saints because, you know, and it was like two likes.
Speaker 3:I'm like back to the x twitter graveyard you know back to the graveyard, oh man, yeah, so uh in in net score. And you know, helping these businesses, yeah, you businesses grow their business a lot via social media and that consistency. What are you seeing with these different apps? We just talked about X. That seems like I keep using this term, but that seems like the most Wild Wild West social platform right now.
Speaker 1:TikTok would probably be right up there too, with Wild West.
Speaker 3:Yeah, tiktok, you've been following what's been going on, yeah.
Speaker 1:So okay, so I'll kind of break down my hierarchy of how I view social media. Yeah, facebook is good for legacy buyers, grandparents, mature boomers Probably going to get hate for that comment. I'm a boomer. No, I'm Gen X actually. So people that are veterans in the social media game, you know, bleed over from the MySpace era for sure. Instagram is going to be your young adults, gen X to Gen Z to millennial, you know, going to be on Instagram Reels, short form content there is king, right?
Speaker 1:The good news about Facebook, meta and Instagram is that the algorithm has years of data. So whenever you decide that you want to run paid ads, the, the audience targeting is superb, right? People for years have said, last few years said, you know Facebook's dead, you know you shouldn't do Facebook ads. I disagree. I think Facebook's probably now, now that Zuck has kind of done some transitioning in his philosophy, yeah, I feel like meta is actually back to where it used to be a few years ago and the ad spend wise. So instagram, same boat.
Speaker 1:Now the wild west, tiktok let's talk about tiktok the tracking mechanisms for audience targeting. Like, if I'm a business and I want to target people of a certain age group, of certain interests. There's not a history yet on that platform for it to do that accurately. So what a lot of marketers do are two things. Number one just keep posting stuff and hashtag and like. It will resonate. The algorithm will find those people you just got to like. It might take 50 tick tocks before you find the one that hits. The second thing is, if you do put ad spend behind it, what I found is do wide open, just say good, just promote this to anybody and everybody with maybe one or two sort of hashtag preferences, and it works like a charm. Okay, twitter is interesting because now Twitter X is a. There's a premium service where you don't see any ads.
Speaker 1:No-transcript to not see any ads yeah so you're kind of shooting your own foot off, right, right, uh, so maybe posting like organic content is the way to go there now, what about linkedin?
Speaker 3:hate it, please. This is really tickling me, because my mother you know, she, she's a high level marketer and she's always preaching to me uh, linkedin, linkedin, yeah, more so from like the business to business type thing, and there's a and she's also like she kills it on on LinkedIn. Yeah, but I want to know why you.
Speaker 1:Great, oh boy, I'm going to get a lot of hate by the way.
Speaker 2:I say that every episode huh, people are just going to hate me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I haven't seen any hate yet, so there's nothing inherently wrong with LinkedIn.
Speaker 1:If you want to run paid ads, it's extremely expensive. You're going to spend a few thousand dollars to get maybe a few qualified leads. In LinkedIn's world, they feel like that's a win because you're getting the right people that are qualified. But that's a lot of money, right? So what a lot of LinkedIn marketers do is they use their program called Sales Navigator to find their ideal client.
Speaker 1:Let's say, you're a CPA, okay, and you want to promote your financial services to business professionals. Well, linkedin is littered with thousands and millions of people, so ideally, that's a flourished playground of potential leads, right? So what sales navigator would do is say, okay, place the type of people, what's their demographics, and then you can start sending friend requests or connection requests on LinkedIn to people that fit that demographic. All's good, right. So you make the connection, the connection request. What a lot of renegade marketers do on LinkedIn is then create a messaging sequence that will be like hey, this is Tim the CPA. I noticed you, carter, are a business professional. Have you ever thought about getting a new CPA? And then I send you a bunch of messages.
Speaker 2:Here's the problem.
Speaker 1:You go to LinkedIn I'm sure everybody watching will attest to this. You go to LinkedIn. It's like message, message, message message. Like hey, you ever thought I noticed you were in? Like it's like canned, canned, canned, right. So I'm not saying that that strategy can't work, it's just a huge turnoff to a lot of people. And I think correct me if I'm wrong, cause I don't know everything Right, I think people go on LinkedIn for, like, better job opportunities. They're not there to like browse cat memes, right?
Speaker 3:Maybe, I don't know, maybe LinkedIn will change and that's, I think, what her argument was not not so much as like putting ads on there, more so like developing a professional business profile and using that to network in your community and within your industry.
Speaker 1:It's possible, um, and I'm sure that I'm going to get get the LinkedIn bro that's watching this and go, like you know, tim's way off on that. And I could be, but my personal experience and I even had an assistant that did LinkedIn messaging outreach where we did connect with a lot of qualified clients but we weren't hitting them in a ready to buy stage it was like an annoyance, like, oh, I got this message from these people that are promoting this product and, yeah, that's cool, but I'm in the medical field and I'm actually looking for a new job, which is why I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not on LinkedIn to browse and be casual. I'm actually looking to get into a new position and I'm in and out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Whereas on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok I'm spending a lot more time, and so I think there's a difference there right. Now there could be ways to make LinkedIn work, and I know people have made it work. It's just, it's a different animal, for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think another element that could be good for LinkedIn is if you want to be a voice in your industry, sure yeah, maybe authority statement like positioning Sure, totally get it.
Speaker 1:A lot of those type of people, though, would also have a podcasting page or some sort of like PR page on their website, where that would fulfill the same function too. So you know, it can work. It's just it's a very long sales cycle.
Speaker 3:And that's the thing you know, especially as a small business owner, with the idea of wanting to scale, the idea of having to put contents on all these different platforms is extremely daunting Yep, and you can use a net score app to do it.
Speaker 1:So basically, you can connect all of your socials, post one piece of content and blast it out. We do that for many, many, many clients. Another secret gym is doing that on your Google business too. A lot of people don't even realize you can post on your Google business profile every day, which also helps your organic ranking too, which is pretty neat anymore right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Google's in an interesting spot. They don't like this AI thing at all. In fact, I saw a report literally today that I believe for the first time they're starting to lose market share in like internet traffic.
Speaker 3:Interesting.
Speaker 1:Why that is the case. Well, this thing called chat GPT came out and people like chat GPT because not only does it give you a search result, it gives you opinions about the search result. So now I don't have to search for pizza place near me. I can search for, hey, what's the best pizza place? Well, looks like this place down the road is really awesome. And here's the reasons why you don't get that with Google you get the listing and you get the reviews, and that's it.
Speaker 3:You don't get opinions yeah listing and you get the reviews and that's it. You don't get opinions. Yeah, does that make sense? Yeah, and, and you know, google's started to use more like the ai gemini yeah, gemini's their version of it. Um, and sometimes you'll type in like a question to google or something and then, but you still have to go from like yeah, link to link to link to try and find the answer when chat gbt let's say let's say, hey, how, uh how, I wonder how long I need to bake fish at 400 degrees, you know whatever.
Speaker 3:And then I'm looking at eight different recipes or different recipe sites. I go to the recipe site, then I've got to scroll through like someone's dissertation about baked tilapia, when ChatGPT would just be like 20 minutes, 400 degrees, boom.
Speaker 1:Right, the difference is Google is data, chatgpt is conversation with data, which is really meaningful for us as humans, right, so that's really cool. Now this thing called DeepSeek just came out a few weeks ago, which is shaking up the market. And I will tell you it's pretty powerful. I almost prefer it than to ChatGPT. In what way? So when I go in and want to create ad content, Luke pull up, a pull up deep seek yeah, pull up deep seek when I want to create ad content.
Speaker 1:I feel the results are very good. It gets me where I want to go faster than chat gbt, which I didn't think was possible. Right, and I'll give you kind of some insider baseball. If we're working with the client and we want to create ad content in the voice of Russell Brunson or Gary Vaynerchuk or Grant Cardone, it'll do it in a way that is like oh my gosh, this is just like they would do it Now. Chatgpt can do it too, but I feel like DeepSeek has figured something out that ChatGPT is not doing Now. This is interesting. We live in an interesting time. There's like an AI battle going on right now. Right, and then I use grok as well, yeah, I've used grok a little bit.
Speaker 3:I turned it on to asshole mode the other day. Oh yeah, is that cool? It is fun.
Speaker 1:I haven't tried that. The images on, I will. If you want to create memes, it is S tier. It's S tier, man. It is so awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I made a picture the other day of like Pat Mahomes kissing a ref.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and it's almost like Grok loves doing that. Oh, he loves it yeah, so Elon's really onto something.
Speaker 2:Because, Elon's a meme guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, listen, man, whether you like it or not, we are in the meme economy. Whether you like it or not, we are in the meme economy, whether you like it or not. Now, people that have done business for years, this is jarring to them, but one of the best things you could do as an entrepreneur is exist in the market that you are in, not in the market you want to be. Understand the game you're playing. Right, the world changes like that. Paradigm shifts can happen very fast, and what I mean by that is things that happened five years ago, that used to work, may not work tomorrow, and it could happen very fast. So this AI thing blew up a year or two ago. And can you imagine a world now without using chat, gpt or AI? I'd be spending a lot of time writing a copy, yeah, and most people would so.
Speaker 1:So what I mean by that is you know we're in a meme world. You know whether we, whether we like it or not, and we want to convey ideas via funny, humorous images, and that gets our point across faster than like a paragraph or like it's clever ad copy. You know, and as a marketer, I am paying attention to that right and it's no coincidence. Like you know, and as a marketer, I am paying attention to that right, and it's no coincidence, like you know, we've got a new president that dropped a meme coin. What three weeks ago, right, I mean, that would have never been possible, even like three years ago. Like, can you imagine? Like a government official dropping a meme coin? Like we are in the new world, man.
Speaker 1:Otherwise known as yeah, otherwise known as yeah, and I'm heavily in crypto man, so I I get it, but I do think there's a correlation to the ai thing marketing and, like the meme world, we're in that world now okay.
Speaker 3:So yeah, let's break this down a little more because you said you're big in the crypto. Crypto. What is this meme coin? What is the value behind it? Is it what we yeah? Good question like I don't understand the point of it when it seems like a lot like. Look what happened to the Hawk Tua girl. Right, she probably got some bad advice and then the people invested and the rug was pulled.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to dive deep here in a little bit. You ever watch Game of Thrones, of course? Okay, luke, I don't know if you've watched Game of Thrones. Okay, there was a riddle that Varys told Tyrion, okay. And he said if you're in a room locked up with a sellsword, a priest and a king and only one of them, you could take orders from one of them. Well, who's going to win out? And the answer to the riddle was the value of who you follow is based on the belief of who everybody thinks has the most value.
Speaker 1:So let's take that concept over to this crypto thing and meme coins. Value really is placed in the consensus of where people think it's placed right. Think of, like magic cards, pokemon. It's a cardboard thing, right, but people place value in it. Same thing with meme coins it's the consensus, attention value that people place on it that gives it a value. Because right now that attention is on like Hawk Tua. There was like a 15 minute timeframe where everybody's attention was there. But the deeper meaning is there is a monetary value to attention in a certain time frame.
Speaker 3:Does that make sense? Yeah, so value executives have been knowing that for years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so we're really. When I say we're in a meme economy, we are really in a short term attention economy, if that makes any sense. We're in an attention economy and the reason why that's so powerful is nowadays people are just bombarded with ads every day of their life, so we have to find ways to get their attention, because there's so many stimuluses hitting us every day. So the way to get value is what thing can people get behind and get passionate about and that creates value?
Speaker 3:Okay, wow, does that make sense? Yeah, I mean. And that creates value. Okay, wow, does that make sense? Yeah, I mean. Like a holographic Charizard card, there you go. Is it that rare that it's worth that much? Or is it the value that the collectors have?
Speaker 1:Exactly. It's the human consensus that this is valuable that gives it value Now.
Speaker 3:But, like you said, that could change now, but that.
Speaker 1:Like you said that could change, but that could change and it does, which is why a lot of meme coins, for instance, do this and they do this because and there's many reasons for that other than there's just value people do like put money in and they pull it out. You know before.
Speaker 3:Think of a meme that goes viral, then everyone's like pointing attention to it sending to their friends and then like the next day it's gone, you know.
Speaker 1:And and what's interesting about that, carter, is that also highlights a bigger paradigm shift happening now versus 20, 30 years ago. In the entertainment and music industry. Trends fizzle up and down much faster now because the technology has allowed that hype cycle to happen at a more exponential rate. Right yeah, back in the 80s and 90s, bands and artists and musicians and entertainers took a lot more time for their hype to build up. And now Wait how much was? That, what's that?
Speaker 3:It was at a Charizard, psa 10 graded $40,000. $40,000 for a piece of cardboard.
Speaker 1:But because that piece of memorabilia has a consensus value, then it has value right, yeah. There's no functional value, but there's a consensus value. Okay, yeah, but going back to the hype cycles of yesteryear happen exponentially faster now, and that goes across not just like meme coins or cards.
Speaker 3:I think it's everything you know I think it's, um, you know, shifting gears slightly, but it's kind of similar to why one of the reasons besides people being jaded is one of the reasons why I think cancer culture is kind of slowly dying, because people's attention just moves on to the next thing just right, right after then and I think we're so like dopamine burnt out now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I am, and I try to like monitor how much time I'm on the phone. I'm terrible, you know, because I'm always on it. It sucks, you know, but I think a lot of people are like that. So it's just like, and then you're really fighting for people's attention, because now everything just becomes like static you know. So if you happen to break through that, you've really got something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's fascinating. I heard Dave Smith, comedian political commentator, on this past weekend with Theo Vaughn his podcast the other day and he was saying like it feels like content nowadays is either like six seconds or an hour and a half.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 3:It's this weird like we need that dopamine, dopamine, but people like the reaction against that and the pushback against it's like no, we actually inherently, and it's just something I believe in my core. I think we like truly inherently in our human bodies, need long-form communication I think so too. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's why, like these, these podcasts have blown up so much in this world over traditional media.
Speaker 1:Yeah and listen. What you're doing is a great example of giving your unique voice into the world, right? So you doing these podcasts give you a value, because there's no other Carter Seminole doing podcasts. It's only you. Not that I know of, not that you know of Not in this universe.
Speaker 3:Could be in the multiverse right.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, yeah, but no, but that gives it value. On one hand, it's like there's so much music out there, right, and every day there's more songs, but on the other hand, it's like you know, there's only going to be a February 4th 2025, where music comes out. So there is a timestamp really to everything. So, as vast as there's new songs coming out, there's still a timestamp, you know, and there's still a shelf life of people. So even you know, all these new bands coming out, they may not be here tomorrow. So over time, that actually does kind of create values. Like hey, remember 10 years ago this band came out and that's kind of cool that they're no longer here. So that, in a way, creates value because there's a scarcity attached to it, right, interesting.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm glad you brought up, you know, the music industry and scene, because that's the other thing that we kind of wanted to discuss on this episode. So, um, a little backstory. I believe in the last um episode we talked about, uh, your band, which I was able to cover, give them a shout out real quick criers, that's right, criers, c-r-y-r-s no e no e yeah uh, and how would you describe it like? What's the elevator pitch of criers?
Speaker 3:oh, we're a emo pop punk tribute band yeah, yeah, and which is such a great genre and and especially my generation, you know, grew up on that music, um, but there's, there's, there's not really. I mean, I'm, I'm not, I'm different, but there's not really a band from that era that I would like pay to go see in concert. But I love a song from this band, I love a song from this band. This band, yeah, and you guys really bring that whole experience into one night. Yeah, we try to for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. So it's been fun, and thank you for covering a lot of our stuff too, you know, on the media side.
Speaker 3:It was fun, got to kind of see y'all's family in action, the band in action, working on a little documentary with you guys as well as with our friend Jai Benoit, but kind of putting both of our conversations together. You found great success in selling out these 500-cap venues across the Gulf South for this emo experience Sometimes. I think I heard a story one time where you guys did better than a band that we covered yeah. And a lot of that is through this Facebook marketing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, facebook ads, yeah, so kind of break down, like how you kind of combine those two worlds.
Speaker 1:I love it's probably my favorite question I love talking about. So, as a entertainer, you always want, if you're trying to get people to get around what you're doing and hyped up, you want to sell the result. Meaning, if I'm going to market this type of band, I need to show people. What does the end result look like? What does the concert look like? What does the light show look like? What does the band sound like? What do they look like on stage and, more importantly, what does the experience look like? That I, a potential patron to go see this band, what am I going to potentially experience?
Speaker 1:So, if you can package all of those things in some photos and videos and show it to your market that you're about to play, well, you have a much better chance of success, of getting more people to come to the show, right? So if you're a band and you're watching this and you're just trying to find ways to get more buzz about what you're doing, find ways to showcase what you do. As the result, what does the show look like? Not, hey, we do this type of music in a text, right? You want to show them like video and like sound. I know it sounds simple, but it's so often overlooked.
Speaker 1:So, we've just literally run video ads on our concert footage. We've recorded a lot of these songs that we cover so people can hear our versions and they go into the show knowing I've heard about this band. But they sound good and they look good because I've seen all their content. So I'm gonna go check them out, you know yeah, and you create a great atmosphere.
Speaker 3:How much, uh? When was the band founded? 2022 okay, so my so my question is how much do you think the COVID shutdowns affected this want and need for people to kind of really vet out their entertainment before going to it?
Speaker 1:It was a game changer. I've seen so many YouTube videos of major artists saying that same thing. We were kind of at a point where there was a year and a half of nothing happening and people were just like we're going stir crazy, we need music. And literally 22 hit and all these major tours you know when were your young fests and that was like sold out, you know. And then all these legacy bands are coming back. Dude, creed is creed is making more money now than they did 25 years ago. I just saw the report. Their their tour is grossing more now.
Speaker 3:I'm six feet from the Eastern Offinghouse.
Speaker 1:And he's selling out arenas, man. So I think what happened is it reminded people that being cooped up is not cool and we miss when times were better and let's go relive those times. I think that's what's happening.
Speaker 3:So you're saying, especially in the immediacy, everyone came out and was doing their stuff and everyone had such a thirst to go out and experience yeah. And so there was, there was, there's so much offerings that you kind of had to like, really narrow it down and stand out by not just being like hey, you know this band, or like right, this is kind of what we do, like no, you're seeing it, you're feeling it and feeling it before you've even gone to the show.
Speaker 1:So you know, going in, what to expect, okay, um, you know. And also showcase not just what the band does, show the atmosphere you know. Put footage of, you know, people buying tickets or like you know, just like, because people will look at themselves and say I look like I'd want to be a part of that, you know, yeah, so I think that's a big, important piece of it too what you got.
Speaker 3:What's that say? Uh, let me see. Creed earned more money in 2024 than they did in their entire 30-year career how is that possible? Scotch rap and creed earned 64.8 million dollars this year from 825,000 concert tickets sold in the summer. 55 shows from a 14-year gap from their last concert. That's insane.
Speaker 1:And you know what? Good for them? Yeah, good for them. I saw someone the other day post on Facebook that said like I've always liked Nickelback and Creed, yeah, and look, I'm sure Nickelback they're probably going to do really well too, because a lot of that same era people that were younger then now get to experience those bands in a different way, with a little bit more money to go and really experience these bands.
Speaker 3:So, no, it's great and there's so many bands that are doing this, those same type of things too I forgot the name of it but I think I saw it on netflix, but it's a recent documentary that just came out about nickelback, yeah, and it kind of covers, you know, their music career but also how they faced the most internet hate at the time when memes were in the internet, social media culture was exploding, yeah, um, and how they've kind of, like you know, navigated that which was super interesting.
Speaker 1:It's a it astounding. You know they get a lot of hate. I admit I liked their first record. They started to go off the rails about mid-2004, 2005.
Speaker 3:Well, a lot of the complaints against it, and you know you are a classically trained artist. But a lot of their songs are formulaic. But sometimes you just want a formulaic song to just jam to at a party or whatever in a crowd.
Speaker 1:You know, look at the end of the day, they've sold a lot of records. They're massively successful.
Speaker 3:They had the most radio play of any band in the 2000s.
Speaker 1:They figured it out. You know they figured it out, so you gotta tip your hat. I mean, you can like them or not like them. You gotta tip your hat that they've been massively successful and they've they've like, created a career that most musicians would only dream of.
Speaker 3:So before we kind of, you know, localize it. You know this is the katiana cast and we'll talk about the louisiana scene, but what's the future of criers?
Speaker 1:look like I know you guys are in a hiatus while you're lead singer I just had a baby yeah, we have a new record coming out, so 10 more songs that we do tribute to and a few more videos will be hitting later in the year. We've got ton of shows happening later this year too, so we're all anxious to get back, uh, in the scene and playing. You know, yeah, people ask me you know that's awesome, tim. You know you've been doing music thing for a long time what, what motivates you? You know, and it's just being in the scene man doing the practices, loading in for shows. There's just a fun. You know he's pulled up the uh cry. So we, yeah, we're, we're to do a slow release, slow reveal, declassifying our songs. We don't want to give away everything. Yeah, we're going to slowly let people guess and peel away their guesses, uh, of the next songs that are going to be on the records.
Speaker 3:See, one of the reasons what makes Tim a great guest is that you know without me, even asking him. He asks himself what his motivation is. So I can just sit back and just let him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll just talk to myself, you know. Just let him cook. Yeah, let me cook, right, but?
Speaker 3:man in the past, like we've chatted you know we were kind of lamenting about this whole Louisiana music scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:In which you are entrenched. You, you're a band full of Louisiana musicians. Yeah, um, you, you did the kind of the touring thing when you were younger. You have a music academy. Yep, we're surrounded by so much talent in this state. So many indigenous genres have come from Louisiana. Yet it is like hell for original artists to make it through. They have to leave the state. You know, we've had Dustin Gaspar kind of come on and talk about that, and he talked about how Mark Broussard pulled him aside and said, like get the fuck out of here. Like you, have to why um.
Speaker 1:The short answer is the economy is not where it could be to help support artists thoroughly okay there's a reason why, like texas, has so many emerging artists, nashville, florida, because I feel like they're they've got the support system economically to have people go to shows consistently, pay money to go see bands, buy merch, and here, and I hate to say it, it's unfortunate we're just not in a great position relative to those other markets.
Speaker 1:We're in like a C market on the entertainment route and that's long known for a lot of artists coming through national artists they'll skip over louisiana. So if you want to know why artists skip over louisiana except for like a select few that come to the cajun dome or new orleans is the economy has a hard time facilitating what needs to happen to have a thriving music scene. Okay, I know it's not easy to hear. It's not easy to hear.
Speaker 3:It's not easy to hear. No, I mean, it makes sense. We're one of the poorer states and you know it's just numbers.
Speaker 1:You know it's just dollars and cents.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, yeah, people have to pick and choose what they want, and entertainment just isn't there, especially when we built this culture of access to free music that it's so beautiful to
Speaker 1:have. It's amazing. And on the flip side, there's so many great artists that they almost have to work harder than other markets to get the same traction. But what that has done is really sharpened the sword. You know, I've seen for years.
Speaker 1:When we go out of market, I've heard venues and club owners and promoters say man, just give me a Louisiana band. They're always the talents there there and they bring it. You know, it's because we've had to fight and scrap for everything here, so we've got that scrappy mentality. When we go out of town we're like we got to be on our game. You know, we don't take this stuff for granted. So we find a venue that's nice and there's people that show up or like oh wow, this is amazing. You know like. And so we really have to deliver. You know so it's a double-edged sword. Um, can that change over time? I think so, but uh, there's a lot of macro, economic things that may have to change before the scene really gets to where it wants to be so in music academy of acadiana you know you have a wide range of musicians who come through there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, some are just parents, want to have something for the kids to do, a healthy activity. Yeah, some, you know, get that light bulb yep going off and then they really get into it and and you know some, but eventually hit a wall. Some kids probably you almost see them never, never plateau, they just keep going. We've seen them. Yeah. So for those, that demographic of students, what kind of advice are you giving them as far as next steps in their career?
Speaker 1:You know, stay with it. Number one, number two there's no one formula. You just have to keep being the best version of yourself. If that means, if you're a singer-songwriter, keep writing songs, keep booking shows, keep getting your content out there. If you're a band, you're trying to do the same thing, keep putting videos out, keep putting songs out, tour play in front of as many people as you can. Basically, just hang in there. You know, this is a game, this is a marathon, not a sprint, and you might. That breakthrough might be in month 30 of your career, not month three. You just have to stay with it. It might be three or four years in before you really start to get some traction, but it can't happen. You just got to hang in there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then you know, hopefully you can, like you said, hang in there, because you know, as life gets tough and bills start stacking up, you know it was maybe like, well, maybe the dream wasn't for me yeah, well, you know what is the dream?
Speaker 1:that's a good question itself. You know, uh, and I will tell you look, the music industry right now is very fractured. The major labels don't have the answer anymore, uh, because all the traditional outlets are not really there as much, you know, to break a new artist. You don't have major radio conglomerates that can break an artist nationally. You've got fractured audiences everywhere because now people just have so many choices. They can go to Spotify, they can go to a custom curated playlist, they can go on YouTube. Are they listening to the radio? Probably not, you know so, you're not. So there's no, what we call. There's no more monoculture. There's no. Oh, this is the one new big thing. There's not that anymore. It's a fractured. There's so many fractured, so it's harder to break artists, and so the music industry right now is trying to figure that out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like there's not a lot of people who are going to the radio to discover new music.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, here's the question I've been trying to answer what is the one thing that artists can monetize themselves on? So traditionally it's been record sales. Right, that was the thing that record sales lead to touring, lead to ticket sales. It's great. Ticket sales can still happen now, but what's the vehicle that can drive people to learn to invest in the band before they go see them live? I don't know the answer to that, because it's certainly not. Nobody's buying CDs anymore, you know, and streaming is like virtually free now.
Speaker 1:There's only so many t-shirts you can print and sell. And so what is the unit of production that a band can manufacture to sell on mass volume? If you figure that out as a band, you've got it figured out. Think about that.
Speaker 3:I was really hoping you would give us the answer.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there is an answer right now other than nfts meme coins right, so would a band I buy a creed coin. Yeah, I would too. Yeah, a nickel back coin coin.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so there's something there chad kroger coin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a nickel ch Chad. So what unit of value could a band sell that is scarce and unique, that people would want to pay and that's not like a ticket thing but something that could be sold en masse? That's what the music industry is trying to figure out, because it's not record sales anymore. That's what it was. You figure that out. You've solved the music industry riddle.
Speaker 3:Licensing out your music for video content creators? Yeah, publishing. Yeah, sure Publishing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but what can a teenage person that wants to buy something from a band in Tulsa, oklahoma, and the band's in Los Angeles, like what are some things that they could invest in and get something in return that can monetize the band and can be sold millions, move millions of units? Think about that At-home Oculus performance. That would be awesome, you know, like a tiny desk in your own home.
Speaker 1:So in order for that to happen, everybody would have to have Oculuses ready to go and have the, so the adoption curve would have to be there for that to happen.
Speaker 2:Does that make sense sort of like in the 70s.
Speaker 1:Hey, we're just going to sell cds. Well, nobody has a cd player, because it hasn't been invented yet, right? But records are there, so it's vinyl. So, but could vinyls have worked in the 20s? Not yet, because not everybody had a vinyl player, is it so? The adoption of the technology to facilitate the sale of a million units of something has to be there first, and then that unit of value then has to be broadcast on mass production. Does that make sense?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's fascinating and I certainly don't have the answer.
Speaker 1:So traditionally it was the music, the songs themselves could be the unit of value. So if a band or artist can figure out the singular unit of value that could be produced and sold on a mass scale, that's the answer how much?
Speaker 3:is uh like a spotify raking over artists a lot.
Speaker 1:Uh, in fact, I saw a report a week or so ago about it's gotten worse. It is like penny fractions of a penny per thousands of plays and the way it works is yeah, the.
Speaker 3:The algorithm is weird according to business insider, spotify pays artists between 0.003 and 0.005 dollars per stream yeah however, the exact amount paid per stream can vary depending on several factors yeah.
Speaker 1:So you can have thousands and thousands of streams and get like 10 bucks, you know, whereas if you had thousands and thousands of record sales, even even if you only got like a dollar or two per sale, that's pretty good for the band because you know, obviously the record company gets most of that, you know. So, yeah, that's, that's the question. You know what can be monetized, you know? I've been trying to figure that out, by the way and what is the?
Speaker 3:current role of a record company, or what give us a quick like what was it before the kind of the internet and what is it now?
Speaker 1:so a record label traditionally was the entity that would take an artist and cultivate them for mass production and distribution. Right, they'd get their image. Right, they'd get their songs right and produced. They would open up all of the necessary channels to get them in front of a bunch of eyeballs and ears quickly, right At a very high cost, because now you got to pay them back. So the price of getting you all of this fame will cost you the artist, probably for a very long time that you're going to have to pay us back.
Speaker 1:It was basically the entity that could get you in front of a lot of people at once on multiple channels. Right now, because all the channels are so fragmented, uh, if you're, unless you're like universal records, and even then they can't get you in front of all these same people anymore because, again, the monoculture doesn't exist as much anymore, so their power has diminished. So now it's all about what can the artists do on their own, and then can they partner with an entity like maybe Universal Records or Interscope or like Warner Brothers, to help them, not break them on the monoculture sense, but like open up more doors that they themselves could not, that had been closed to them right. So it's sort of like a partnership more so than like a caretaker that's elevating them to the next level of like a partnership more so than like a caretaker that's elevating to the next level, feels like a netscore, can do a lot of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we can. And and for criers, we've kind of done a lot of that late work you know a lot of it was like the marketing, because you know musicians marketing's not a natural thing. You know we play music, we write music. Promoting it is not part of a normal musician's DNA, because they're so busy on cultivating the art side, not the promotion side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the promotion to some artists could taint the art.
Speaker 1:And there's a big stigma about artists feeling that marketing is like a bad word. Yeah, and it's not. You're just trying to get more people aware of what you do.
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that Well, getting close to wrapping up, tim, this has been great. You got my mind moving a thousand miles an hour with all the internet stuff. But back to kind of Louisiana. You know we mentioned how. You know, quite frankly, our economy is one of the reasons why.
Speaker 1:It's hard, it's hindered, you know.
Speaker 3:Now, at the same time, I've heard a lot of people talk about you know the role of that a music venue can have. So what's you know? You don't have to obviously say how any venues, because you're still trying to get booked in all of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we don't want to upset anyone, but what are certain things that venues do poorly that could be changed for the better? Or, you know, some of it is just pure economics, like you know, when it comes to ticket sales and whatnot. There, like, yeah, they, you know, when it comes to ticket sales and whatnot, there's only enough money to go around, but at the same time, I'm sure there's orders or businesses that are shorting folks or whatnot, or not making the, making the barrier of entry a little more difficult.
Speaker 1:yeah, that's a really good question. Um, the first thing that came to mind might be funny, but hear me out parking. A lot of these venues haven't figured out the parking fiasco. They have a venue that's like 200 or 300 cap room and there's no place to park. So how are we supposed to get people comfortably in and out of the venue on any given weekend night? You know what I mean? Yeah, that's a problem that I feel like is often overlooked, right?
Speaker 1:Number two there's this weird paradox of venue books. Artist Venue expects artist to bring crowd. Artist expects venue to market to bring crowd, and so nobody brings a crowd because they expect the other party to do all the heavy lifting, when in actuality, it should be sort of like a partnership. Right? Luke and I were talking right before we started. There's a new venue that he booked Criers for, and it looks like they're going to help with some of the marketing spend, and we have the understand with them that we're going to do some. We're going to do a lot of legwork on our own too, and I think that's how it should be, especially for new venues. So I think there's a lot of expectations that are placed on each party that never get clarified.
Speaker 1:And then number three is just communication. You know, I thought you guys were going to do this and that's like like easily solvable, easily solvable Just get on the phone, email it out, get it in writing and boom, all's good. Get it in writing, get it in writing, man. You know, on the flip side, I will give the credit to Louisiana venues. Most of them have their heart in the right place, and I know a lot of the venues here locally probably overextend themselves because they want the scene to thrive and flourish. But you know, you do have to make business decisions too, and so you've got to get artists that are going to pull their weight. You can't always rely on just a hope and a dream.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've got Herman Fusillet's book about you know the kind of coming and going of Louisiana dance halls and yeah it's a beautiful book. It's got all the pictures of old dance halls and old photos and some of them what they look now and some of them are just dilapidated buildings. It breaks my heart. But I guess one of the reasons why dance halls aren't as important is because there's more access to entertainment than ever before.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that goes back to the attention economy. We're all in an attention economy. We're trying to get people's attention to see what we're doing. Whether it's a business, whether it's a music, whether it's a movie, whether it's our bakery, it doesn't matter, we're just trying to get people's attention.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I've seen it's gotten my attention. Several Texas dance clubs have done a fantastic job on social media. You know, putting beautiful women up on on a social media post and get them line dancing yeah, you know you know fellas too, but like showing people, like having a good time and line dancing be like. Oh, I want to go to that sell the result.
Speaker 1:you know what? What do I? The experience? If I go to this place, what am I going to experience? Oh I, okay, great, and I know that sounds like common sense, but I so much see businesses overlook that step. They sell the recipe. They don't sell what the final product looks like you know, and so just always try to sell the result.
Speaker 3:This is going to be good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, trust me, we're putting all these things in there. It's going to be good, okay, well, what does the end result look like? I want to see what it looks like. Right, you know.
Speaker 2:I want to see what it looks like right.
Speaker 3:You know, there you go. Well, man Tim, it's always a pleasure picking your brain about stuff. You've been a good friend of the show and I can't wait to see Criers when they come back. And I don't know when the next time you guys are going to be in Lafayette June 14th.
Speaker 1:June 14th at Rock and Bowl.
Speaker 3:Nice, yeah, everyone go out, check them out. June 14, 14th at Rock and Roll. Put it on the calendar Way ahead in advance. Any big Mardi Gras plans? I don't really do Mardi Gras, you don't do Mardi Gras, okay, just Mardi Gras it out.
Speaker 1:When I was younger it was fun, but now it's sort of like cool. It's a quiet day for me to catch up on some stuff. I don't know Party pooper over here. Yeah, a little different now, a little different so it's like you get dragged out there, yeah, yeah, yeah, boy, this Diet Coke's really good.
Speaker 3:Well, we've got to hook them up with Joe Luke over at Miss Reba's. Get them the Reba water. Yeah, yep, but is there anything else that we need to talk about when it comes to Netscore, or anything you want to talk about with Music Academy Acadiana, anything you guys are working on pushing?
Speaker 1:Man. We have our musical theater camps that happen in the summer. Those have been a massive hit and it's one of our new features of the school is like doing acting and musical theater performances. We do them at Cité des Arts Great venue and they do a great job hosting us and another good Lafayette venue there too.
Speaker 3:All righty, and one more time, remind folks how to get in touch with you guys regarding that score.
Speaker 1:You can go to net score procom or email us info at net score procom. And what's this website? We got here Net score app. That's our other website that talks about our client management software. Automate your leads follow up all in one place. All in one place, love it.
Speaker 3:And then also, I've used the app. It works great, it's super user friendly, awesome, and they've got a great team over there that, can you know, help you get past any sort of learning curve there might be. Well, as Tim, as you might remember, care. Sorry, andrew Santino, but we get our guests to look at this camera and it could be a word, a phrase, advice, something to impart on the internet world at large as we end this episode.
Speaker 1:If you are trying to get out there, make a difference in the world, be authentic and understand that you're in an attention economy. So do whatever you can to you know, get people to know who you are and just stay consistent.
Speaker 3:And it was never a phase.
Speaker 1:And it was never a phase, and it was never a phase.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks for tuning into the show. Since you made it this far, might as well give us a like, a follow, a subscribe. You know whatever you got to do to alert you that there's a new episode out. Look, it helps us grow and it allows us to give you the content that, well, you deserve. If you want to be a sponsor, if you want to be a guest, if you just want to berate me, hey, all goes in the same place. Info at Acadianacastcom, email info at Acadianacastcom and for more locally sourced podcasts, go to Acadianacastcom. Bye.
