Episode 16 Title: The Truth Shall Set You Free Featuring Patrice K. Cokley

Episode Info: In this episode Durell is joined by talent manager, entrepreneur, and former college professor Patrice K. Cokley. Durell and Patrice begin the episode talking about her earliest memories of being introduced to music with her father holding her head up to the speaker listening to Color Me Badd as an early introduction to ear training. Patrice shared that she dibbled and dabbled in rapping in middle school and early high school as well as organizing talent shows. She talks about auditioning for The Detroit School Of Fine Performing Arts and making it into the school but not going because she was afraid of being a little fish in a big pond. When she got to college she started out as a music major but there was no business program and after a year of music theory and ear training she knew she couldn’t continue as a music major. She decided to attend college and major in business and marketing with the goal of applying her business skills to the music industry.

Durell talks to Patrice about being widely known for her work with Matthew Knowles. She shares how much she respects him because of the way he approached and navigated his way through the music business and achieving massive success. Durell talks about how Matthew designed the success of the members of Destiny’s Child after they each went solo. Patrice shares how she got connected to Matthew by reaching out to him for advice as she began to get frustrated with the music industry. She shares that she sent a long email to him about her frustrations and he responded to her within 15 minutes and a meeting was set up to meet and speak about his girl group Blush. They had the meeting one week later and after the call Matthew was officially her client. She began doing work with his girl group by setting up their online brand across social media and the internet. He was so impressed with her work that he asked her to build his brand online and manage his social media accounts. She shares the story of how she was the one who posted about Beyonce’s twins on his social media accounts that went out to millions of people around the world.

Durell and Patrice speak about processes of how he goes about getting new clients and wanted to gauge her opinion to see if she uses a similar approach when prospecting. She shares that she used to have that approach but has since changed her process because she gave so much strategy during her meetings. She knew a much better approach was to build her case studies so that they can see her value. She now charges for her initial consultation but for those who don’t want to pay they can take advantage of the free content that she puts out on her social media platforms daily. Patrice talks about the fact that she’s not a salesperson and that she doesn’t believe in putting out content to ultimately sell a course or something similar. She shares that there are so many “gurus” on Instagram that promise all kinds of results and most of the time never deliver. Durell and Patrice share that they both enjoy the face-to face one on one coaching sessions with their clients.

Durell and Patrice talk about coaches who build online courses and how difficult that can be. Patrice shares that she rather create a program that might be only for a few people in which she can get her hands dirty in helping them achieve their goals. She shares that when she got hired to teach a multimedia and web development course at SAE in Chicago without any prior teaching experience, and that she was tasked with creating the whole course from scratch. She created the syllabus and even added an element for branding and marketing because she says you can’t build a website and not have those elements intertwined all together.

Patrice talks about even though she enjoys the building process of working with a new artist like her artist Ken The Messeng