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.

Ruiz’s Note:

As we wrap the year, I just want to say this has been a great one. A wild one but a great one indeed. The music business feels upside down right now. The rules keep shifting. But one thing hasn’t changed. The work still matters.

There’s no shortage of opportunity. The real challenge is visibility. Getting in front of the right audience. And above and beyond all, making quality music. That’s been the entire point of The Manager’s Playbook this year. Creating clarity where there’s confusion, sharing real experience, and opening doors through conversation, education, and honesty from a wide range of guests and topics who operate at an elite level. The value we can bring with this platform to aspiring music executives and artists is will forever be the North Star. Grateful for all those who locked in with us.

I’m proud of what we built this year and even more excited about where it’s going. This will be our last newsletter for the year. We’re going to take a short Christmas Holiday break, reset, and come back ready to keep pushing this forward in 2026.

I hope everyone gets some time to rest, be good to themselves, be good to each other, and recharge. See you on the other side my good people.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, ya filthy animals!

-Ruiz

THE MANAGER’S PLAYBOOK PODCAST

(FEAT. Nima Nasseri)

Nima Nasseri is not supposed to be a “TikTok guy.”

On paper, he’s the opposite of what the algorithm-obsessed music internet thinks it wants:

Hit-Boy’s manager. Former VP of A&R Strategy at UMG. Ex-Roc Nation management. Deep label rooms, big records, real credits.

That’s supposed to be the land of boardrooms, not For You pages.

And yet… when you listen to Nima talk about the state of the music business, you realize something:

He might understand the current moment better than almost anybody I’ve talked to.

At one point in our conversation, he dropped this and it just hung in the air:

That’s someone who’s seen the old model from the inside…
and watched it quietly die in real time.

Let’s start with Hit-Boy.

Hit got out of an 18-year deal that literally had language about CDs in it. Eighteen years. Whole eras of the business came and went while he was stuck in that contract. When the door finally opened, Nima and Hit didn’t “announce a new chapter.” They went on the offensive.

They launched with “What’s The Deal?”

Not just as a song title, but as a question, a slogan, a billboard, a bus wrap, a stencil, a whole sentence sprayed across LA and the internet at the same time.

Everywhere you turned: What’s the deal?

That’s not aesthetic. That’s narrative architecture.

And while that’s happening, Hit is in the best headspace of his career. Therapy, mental health, flow state. He turned IG off for 7-8 months just to get his mind right, then came back sharper, and as Nima put it, his creativity went up “10x.” For every record they dropped, Hit made ten more.

That’s the part people don’t see when they just look at “content.”

From the outside, it’s:

• Billboards

• Live streams

• Viral clips

• Panels

• Podcasts

• TikToks

• Reels

On the inside, it’s:

• A mentally healthy artist

• An insane volume of records

• A manager who understands that visibility is now part of the craft

Look at the run:

“What’s The Deal” to “Eco” to “Still Dissin” going into a live stream party with 50K viewers where they literally shot the music video at the event. Then straight into Fast Company Innovation Fest, Bloomberg, On The Radar, Breakfast Club, Rory & Mal.

The songs are drops.
The world around the songs is a visibility campaign.

That’s motion.

That’s what Nima means when he says the system now serves motion, not talent.

Here’s where Nima gets scary.

He doesn’t talk about content like an “industry guy” who suddenly discovered TikTok last year.

He talks about it like an engineer.

In his mind, every piece of content is a collection of mechanisms:

length, colour, tonality, caption, sub-caption, hashtag, framing, soundtrack, posting time… every element is a lever that either increases or decreases your odds with the algorithm.

Not because TikTok is mystical, but because TikTok is honest about what it is:

TikTok doesn’t care who you are.
That’s the good news and the bad news.

You can have two followers and still go crazy on there if the content hits.

So when smaller artists ask, “What about me though? I don’t have a following,” Nima’s answer is brutally simple:

• Make great content.

• Test.

• Try this, try that.

• You have nothing to lose.

And then he sneaks in the part that most people skip over:

Some of the best artists he points to, Sombr, Benson Boone, aren’t just making great songs. They’re great creators. They found their frame, their shot, their tone and their system. And they repeat it until the algorithm has no choice but to reward the consistency.

This is where the “talent vs content” conversation gets childish online.

It’s not either/or. It’s compounding.

Talent + Content + Consistency = Career.

Now, let’s talk about Norris.

Because if you want to understand how deep Nima’s conviction about content really goes, you have to look outside the music business for a second.

Norris Williams is 72.

He spent 12 years living on a train in California, neglected by the system, with his dog. No drugs, no alcohol, no criminal record. Just invisible.

Nima met him on the street in LA.

He didn’t see “content.” He saw injustice.

So he did what any decent human would do: started a GoFundMe, hit up everyone he knew in the industry, and got Norris into an apartment.

Hit-Boy’s Grammy tsunami for Producer of the Year was happening at the same time… and Nima couldn’t shake the contrast of that moment versus Norris getting his dog stepped on in a train car.

Then he did what a modern creator does:
He picked up his phone.

He started filming Norris on the train at night while a friend shot a proper documentary on a handheld camera. Nima stacked iPhone clips for three months, stockpiling content the same way he tells artists to do it.

Day 90, day 91… a video finally cracked. It was cut to a sped-up version of Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things,” which was already going crazy on TikTok. That one piece of content hit the right pocket of the algorithm and everything changed.

From there, he doubled and tripled down.

Variations on the same style, new angles, different audios, but the same emotional truth in the story. Norris started getting Amazon wishlist gifts daily. His GoFundMe grew. He turned back into what he had been in the 70s: a dog trainer. Now he’s living in an apartment, training dogs, and Nima’s trying to get him into a bigger space, a sanctuary.

If that wasn’t enough, Nima then built a shelter dog page, filming dogs that were about to be euthanized, posting their stories, and watching them get adopted the same day because the videos went viral. He’s literally using the algorithm to beat the clock on death row for dogs.

You want to talk about “content”?
That’s content with stakes.

So when Nima says, “If a homeless guy can do it, artists have no excuse,” he’s not being cute.

He’s being very, very literal.

We grew up on the myth that someone “discovers” you.

A label guy in the back of a club.

A manager who happens to hear your SoundCloud.

A random co-sign from someone with a logo in their email signature.

That’s not the world Nima is describing.

Is that depressing?
Only if your entire strategy is waiting for someone else to do your job.

The game Nima is talking about is harsh… but it’s also fairer than the old one:

• No gatekeepers.

• No secret handshakes.

• No “you had to be there” dinners.

If you create energy, the system will find you. If you don’t, it won’t.

It’s that simple and that brutal.

Here’s the part where we stop romanticizing and get practical.

These are some of the best practices I’m pulling directly from Nima’s brain, filtered through what I see working every day.

1. Treat TikTok Like a Lab, Not a Stage

TikTok is not there to validate you. It’s there to test you.

• Post daily. Multiple times if you can.

• Think experiments, not masterpieces.

• Try this, try that, try again. You have nothing to lose.

The algorithm doesn’t care about your follower count. It cares about how people react to the thing in front of them right now.

2. Stockpile Content Like You Stockpile Songs

What Nima did with Norris, months of filming before anything “worked”, is what every artist should be doing with their own life.

• Shoot everything around the music: studio, writing, voice notes, early demos, shows, off days, conversations, failures.

• Keep it in folders. Build a personal content library.

• You’re not making posts, you’re building ammo.

The day something cracks, you’ll be happy you have 50 more in the same world ready to go.

3. Find Your Format and Marry It

Look at Sombr or Benson Boone. Same framing. Same energy. Different songs, different moments, same visual language. The algorithm loves that.

Ask yourself:

• What’s my default shot?

• What’s my way of talking to the camera?

• What’s my recurring bit, angle, or POV?

When you find it, don’t get bored. Get consistent.

4. Give Each Platform What It Wants

Nima’s play:

• TikTok: pure content machine, testing ground, hero platform.

• IG: repurpose, brand wrapper, ad shell.

• YouTube: shorts, shorts, shorts “give it what it wants.”

As a new artist? Go crazy on Shorts. Go crazy on Reels. Go crazy on TikTok. There is no penalty for volume, only for silence.

5. Copy Matters (Yes, Even for Musicians)

Nima is obsessed with mechanisms. That includes copy.

• First line of the caption = hook.

• Make the viewer curious before they even hit play.

• Explain the context: “72-year-old man lived on a train for 12 years…” is a better scroll-stopper than “New video up.”

Write like you’d text a friend you’re trying to convince to watch something right now.

6. Organic First, Ads Second

For TikTok, Nima is clear:

• The best “boost” is great content. The promote button gives you bots.

• When something is already moving, then you can run ads to amplify, hit specific territories, and ride the wave.

Ads are gasoline, not the engine.

7. Fall in Love With Content or Stay Mad at the Algorithm

This is the uncomfortable mindset shift.

Content isn’t the annoying thing you have to do so people “finally hear the real music.”

Content is the real music now, just in visual form.

The same honesty, detail, and care you put into your songs has to live in your:

• Stories

• Lives

• Behind-the-scenes clips

• Mini-docs

• Throwaway iPhone moments that end up not being so throwaway

If a 72-year-old man who lived on a train can build a platform, get his own apartment, restart a dog training business, and potentially a sanctuary… all off content and kindness…

You, with a laptop and a mic, are fresh out of excuses.

Here’s the part people might get twisted about Nima:

He’s not anti-label. He’s not even “pro-TikTok” in some shallow, trend-chasing way.

He’s just anti-delusion.

He’s allergic to artists and managers acting like it’s 2010 while living in a 2026 algorithm.

He understands the value of great partners. He’s lived inside the machine. But he’s also doing the work outside the machine, whether that’s reinventing Hit-Boy’s rollout or helping a 72-year-old man and a bunch of shelter dogs beat the odds with nothing but story, a phone, and an understanding of how attention actually works.

If you meet him where he actually lives, in reality, in motion, in content, in community, he’s one of the clearest playbooks you can study right now.

And like Nima said…

Everything you thought you knew?
Yeah. You might want to throw that out and start again.

Watch Episode 49 with Nima Nasseri LIVE NOW

1:1 CONSULTATIONS WITH RUIZ

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.

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