Welcome to The Manager’s Playbook, my personal newsletter where I share insights from Music Executives and Artists for aspiring and emerging music managers, executives and artists on how to navigate the music industry. This newsletter is brought to you by Mauricio Ruiz.

Very few people want the process.

I had a conversation with Tommy Brown, renowned producer and songwriter with many Billboard hits under his belt and what resonated was not the resume or the hits. Not the fact that he’s helped shape records for one of the biggest pop stars on the planet.

It was the process. The real one. The ugly one. The one with repetition in it. The one with humility in it.

We live in a time where people want the title before they’ve built the habits to hold it.

“Hit producer” sounds sexy on a bio. Looks amazing on a lower third. Makes for a hard Instagram caption too, I’m sure. But when Tommy started unpacking how he became Tommy Brown, the answer wasn’t “talent.” Not by itself anyhow.

It was upbringing. It was consistency and exploration. It was studying. And It was sacrifice.

In other words, all the things people love to tweet about and hate to actually do.

Quick business check:
If you’ve got music out, you’re probably leaving publishing money on the table.

Publishing royalties can come from streams, performances, and online usage, but collecting worldwide is a maze of registrations and middlemen.

That’s why KOSIGN exists. Built by Kobalt, KOSIGN lets you submit once and they handle global registrations to help you collect every cent you’re owed, plus direct DSP licensing (Spotify/Apple) where possible. No long lock-in either: rolling quarterly term.

It’s selective, but the application is 100% free. Apply now.

That detail matters. Not because pain automatically makes people great. It doesn’t. Pain alone just makes you hurt. But sometimes pain introduces you to the thing that gives your life a direction. Sometimes it gives you somewhere to put the energy.

For Tommy, that place was music. He started making beats, walking up to his longtime collaborator Abso Banks’s house, playing ideas, trying to cope, trying to create, trying to make sense of life through sound. That’s a different entry point than “I wanted to go viral.”

And I think managers, artists and execs should pay very close attention to that.

Because when you’re trying to figure out who is built for the long game, you better learn how to identify what brought them to the work in the first place. Some people are in music because it looks cool. Some people are in music because they need applause. And some people are in music because they’ve found the one thing that makes the world make a little more sense. The last group tends to last longer.

The game can strip almost everything from you at some point. Money. momentum. confidence. sleep. your damn mind, honestly. If the work is not attached to something deeper, people drift real quick.

Then came Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins.

And this is where the story gets good.

Tommy gets around Rodney, sees plaques everywhere, gets in the studio, and has that young hungry reaction a lot of talented people have when they are standing too close to greatness to understand it properly.

He’s thinking, “I know people that make better beats than this.” Which, to be fair, is a very human thought. A lot of people confuse taste with mastery. A lot of people confuse a hot loop with a real record.

A lot of people hear a beat and think they understand the room. They don’t.

Because then the 16th beat shows up.

Then the 17th beat shows up.

Then the song that sounds like a smash shows up and all of a sudden the whole lesson changes.

That’s when Tommy realized something I wish more artists, managers and young executives understood early: there is a massive difference between knowing how to make beats and knowing how to make records.

A beat can impress your friends.

A record can move culture.

Those are two different businesses, fam.

And the bridge between the two is usually built through repetition. Rodney was doing five songs a day. He understood that the super hit might be buried in the 13th song, not the first one. That’s not a music lesson but a systems lesson.

Too many people in our business want every session to produce magic immediately. Too many teams panic if the first idea doesn’t sound expensive enough. Meanwhile the greats are just working. Again and again and again. They are not emotional about the reps. They know the reps are the point.

Because whether you’re managing an artist, developing a producer, signing records, or building content around a release, the same truth applies: the people who win are usually the ones who can keep showing up without needing every day to feel extraordinary.

They don’t need fireworks to stay committed. They don’t need applause to stay in rhythm. They understand that mastery has a boring section.

A long one.

Let me say this plainly to the managers and execs reading this:

If the people around your artist are not curious, you have a problem.

If the producer thinks they know everything already, if the writer can’t take direction, if the manager refuses to study what better managers are doing, if the exec only shows up when the numbers are moving, you do not have infrastructure. You have ego wearing a fitted cap.

Tommy’s story is a reminder that exploration matters. The great ones are not precious. They are willing to test. Willing to miss and willing to make ten versions. Stacking 36 kick drums if that’s what the record needs. Willing to follow a strange idea long enough to find out whether it’s genius or garbage.

That spirit matters because hits are not usually found by people protecting their image in the studio. Hits tend to reveal themselves to the people willing to keep digging.

And then there’s sacrifice.

That’s the word everybody likes until it’s their turn to live it.

Sacrifice is getting there earlier and leaving later. It’s taking the lesson instead of taking offence. Studying instead of showing off.

Sacrifice is saying no to comfort while your peers are busy cashing little checks and heading straight to the mall. Truth be told, a little bit of money has ruined a lot of development in this business. Seen it too many times. Somebody gets a taste, starts moving different, stops showing up the same, starts believing the hype before the results are really cemented.

The game has ended a lot of promising careers with a modest advance and a false sense of arrival. Smh.

Tommy Brown became Tommy Brown because he didn’t mistake access for achievement. He treated proximity to greatness like a classroom. He treated repetition like a requirement. He treated sacrifice like tuition.

That’s what makes a hit producer.

Not just taste.

Not just talent.

Certainly not aesthetics alone.

It’s the consistency to keep showing up. The exploration to push beyond the obvious. The discipline to study greatness instead of competing with it too early. The sacrifice to stay in the room long enough for the record to reveal itself.

So if you’re building a team right now, developing a producer, or looking for the next person to help shape your artist’s sound, don’t just ask whether they’re talented. Ask better questions.

How do they work when nobody is watching? Can they take a lesson? Do they know how to search? Can they stay in the discomfort long enough to find something special? Do they understand records, or are they just good at moments?

Because moments are everywhere.

Records are rare.

And the people who make them usually earned that ability long before anybody knew their name.

Watch Episode 60 with Tommy Brown LIVE NOW

To celebrate 50,000+ subscribers on YouTube and 50+ podcast episodes, we turned the first chapter of The Manager’s Playbook into a digital magazine issue.

But before anything, thank you. If you’ve watched, listened, shared, or even sent one message saying “this helped,” you’re the reason we’re here. You didn’t just support content. You helped build the community around it.

Inside the issue is a curated rundown of every episode, the biggest takeaways, and the lines worth revisiting when you’re building in real time. Think of it as a reference guide you can save, share, and come back to whenever you need clarity.

Read the 50th Edition Magazine below.

I’m offering private 1-on-1 sessions for artists, managers, and execs who want real, practical advice on how to move their careers forward.

With 16 years in the music business and experience working with some of the biggest artists and executives in the world, I can share insights, strategy and ways to execute the pain points in your career as it currently stands.

Book your private consultation below.

Bio

I’m Mauricio Ruiz, the host and creator of The Manager’s Playbook podcast, dedicated to demystifying the world of music management, and Founder/CEO of 8 Til Faint, an Artist Management company with over 5 billion audio streams worldwide. Our past and current clients include Grammy nominated, Juno Award winning multi-instrumentalist and singer/songwriter Jessie Reyez, Skratch Bastid and more.

I am also the Co-Founder of Mad Ruk Entertainment, a content agency with over 3 billion long form video streams worldwide. Our client list includes The Weeknd, Eminem, and Celine Dion, along with renowned brands like Nike, Pernod Ricard and the NBA.

Follow me on IG @mauroisruiz

Follow me on LinkedIn

Follow the pod on Youtube