Ashanti Abdullah Podcast Transcript
Ashanti Abdullah joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast.
Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Ashanti Abdullah. Ashanti Abdullah is the founder and CEO of Ternwheel. Ashanti is changing the way musicians approach their careers by addressing two of the biggest challenges artists face making a sustainable income and managing the complexities of touring.
Ternwheel is helping musicians focus on what they do best, creating and performing.
Well, good afternoon, Ashanti. Welcome to the show.
Ashanti Abdullah: Oh, thank you so much for having me, Brian.
Brian Thomas: Absolutely my friend. I appreciate it. And you’re hailing out of the great city of San Francisco, up in Northern California, bay Area. Love that place. When I visit. I’m in Kansas City now, so, but we’re just a couple time zones apart today.
And Ashanti, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna jump right into your first question. As a founder with firsthand understanding of the music industry, what were some of the hardest lessons you learned as a manager that influenced Ternwheel, design and tackle these challenges?
Ashanti Abdullah: Yeah, I mean, thanks for asking.
That’s, that’s really what it is in a nutshell. You know, I spent 20 years just under 20 years managing artists and getting people on the road and touring, and throughout the process of doing all of that was realizing that there’s so many opportunities for us to come home with a few more dollars than we did, but we wouldn’t know that until the end of a tour.
And so I said, there’s gotta be a way to kind of model this out and think about it in real time. And that’s really what kind of spawned this whole idea. This whole world of Ternwheel.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And that is a lot of grinding, you know, 20 years as a manager. Lot of tours, lot of grinding, lot of shows.
I can just see at the end people are probably tired and, and you know, cutting quarters maybe, whatever. But you saw that opportunity that there’s gotta be a better way. And of course you implemented, I. A new process and looked at that and, and now we’re gonna talk a little bit more about what you’ve built.
So I appreciate that, Ashanti, how does Ternwheel help artists shift from surviving to thriving financially, especially in today’s streaming dominated music economy?
Ashanti Abdullah: Yeah, so, you know, really touring is kind of the only way, or not the only way, but it’s. The major way that artists make money these days, right?
Streaming has taken away this album, sales, things of that nature. There’s something to be said for the merchandise sales as well, something that people can take home with them, but really touring is how artists make their money. Um, it’s where the labels stay out of their business and I. Kind of let them make the money that they make.
And so this is the game, right? And unfortunately, a lot of artists, when they step in, they kind of jump into it. They get a couple of guarantees on a couple of venues. They get out there and then they overspend, or they spend more than they should have when they’re out there and they come home with no money.
So if this is your only way of making money and you’re overspending, it’s gonna very quickly not be your only way of making money anymore. Correct. So what we wanted to do is make sure that artists had the ability to budget prior to kind of see what the tour looks like, just based off what they’re getting offered, and then be able to follow that along the way every single day.
Every single moment. So if they need to pivot. And maybe stay at a different hotel or do something a little different, they can stay specifically on that budget and know exactly how much money they’re gonna come home with. So that’s really what this is in a nutshell, with the added benefits of being able to communicate with your teams, specifically individually, knowing exactly where you’re supposed to be, at what time everybody’s on one page.
It’s kind of the one single source of truth for the entire group.
Brian Thomas: I love that single source of truth for everybody, and that’s one way to do it is to centralize that and find obviously the shortest points from A to B and do that efficiently and effectively saving a little, little bit of money. Yeah. We see over the years, and you know this, you’ve been doing this a long time, touring is now the major way people can.
The brand Right. Can get in there and make some of their own money.
Ashanti Abdullah: Yeah.
Brian Thomas: Streaming has certainly changed the way for them make money. It’s changed for everybody, but for them to make money, it’s been hard.
Ashanti Abdullah: Yeah, I was just gonna say, yeah, streaming’s become more of like the, uh, especially if you’re thinking, thinking about something like a Spotify, it’s become more of the way that people discover music now.
Right. They discover you and then they buy into you. That means either they’re buying a piece of your product if it’d be a T-shirt or something of that nature, or they’re showing up to a show. So yeah, it’s just changed how people come to the music. It’s not so much MTV anymore. It’s definitely on the streaming side.
Brian Thomas: Thank you again, I appreciate that. Ashanti, Touring remains one of the most chaotic parts of an artist’s career. How is Ternwheel simplifying or streamlining this process?
Ashanti Abdullah: Yeah, I mean, from beginning to end it’s pretty streamlined. So if you think about how this works, generally a, an artist that’s of a decent level will have an an agent and a manager and a tour manager, and then they’ll have their staff and everybody will kind of go out.
That’s kind of a medium sized artist. So the way that streamlined is their agent gets on the platform, pokes in a couple of things that gets sent over to the uh, manager. The manager then takes a look at it, says, ya nay. Sends it over with, still all within the platform. Sends it over. The tour manager. Tour manager puts dates, times, and all those things that they need to be where they need to be at.
And he presses one button and boom. A shout out through the entire crew. So not only the crew, but the artists know exactly where they need to be, what to do, all the way down to the guest list. Like everyone on tour can request guest list through the app. So, yeah, I mean, it really takes all of the hassle and the hustle and the back and forth and group texts, and one of the big things that I say is you can take your phone back as a tour manager or an artist.
Your phone doesn’t have to have a bunch of different text streams going on it. Once you get outside of Ternwheel, your phone is your phone again. So there’s not a bunch of other stuff going on on it. So, yeah.
Brian Thomas: Really love that and I appreciate the effort. You went into it, obviously you saw a problem and you came up with a solution, which I really love streamlining something as complex as this from beginning to end.
Yeah. But you’d mentioned agent manager, tour manager, crew artist. Hold on. Yeah, that’s, that’s a lot to manage, but to do it all in one single place, I think that’s amazing. So I appreciate that. Ashanti, last question of the day. Can you share a story, an artist who have successfully transformed their careers by using Ternwheel.
Ashanti Abdullah: Yeah, I hate to use him. I use him all the time, but he’s just like the number one champion for Ternwheel. His name’s Grieves. He’s been in the business for about 20 years. He’s touring is really how he lives his life. It’s how he makes his money, takes care of his home, his kids, and all of these things. And this was such a massive game changer for him.
He’s in a place where he is a manager, but. He knows more about being a tour manager than a tour manager does, and so this is a perfect tool to help him with that. Although it’s not set up to replace someone, it can in certain situations if someone doesn’t need that. And so it’s been super helpful for him.
And on average, he’s seen about a 21% increase in how much he’s bringing home, which is pretty mind blowing. Just from that alone, instead of him coming home with 32%, he’s coming home with 52%. And because this is something, this is what he does for a living day in and day out, I’m just overjoyed to see it actually show and prove and work out there in the wild.
He’s what you’d call a a blue collar artist, an everyday artist. So.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. I appreciate the story and obviously success stories are something that people love to hear, but having, bringing an average of 21% increase on the take home pay basically is amazing. Just streamlining that whole process through one app, which is yours, Ternwheel.
So I appreciate that, Ashanti, I just wanna let you know it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Ashanti Abdullah: Oh, thank you so much. I enjoyed myself. Thanks for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Ashanti Abdullah Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
