We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Danny Blaq. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Danny below.

Danny, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

This is somewhat a loaded question. I believe there are many levels to “success” as it is very subjective and can mean different things to different people. I would think that for most it relates to money, fame and influence.

I look at life like a recipe, you must have a bunch of different ingredients with the right amount for the flavor to be just right. Too much or little of one thing and the entire dish can be turn out bad. You have rich people that people think have it all be miserable and poor people very happy, then of course you have everything in between but the point is that for you to find your sweet spot there are a lot of things that must occur.

The biggest thing is your mindset, that’s where it all happens. You must be able to visualize, absorb, comprehend, strategize, and execute. You must and keep learning; today’s society has created a narrative that I think is bad for people. The “You are special”, “You can do whatever you want”, and so on. It’s basically inflating people’s egos for no reason and championing mediocracy – why are you special? What have you done in life to be so special over someone else? In order to be special you need to do special things, the participation trophy in today’s society has done more harm than good and I think it is showing today. People are highly delusional of their abilities and accomplishments calling themselves bosses and experts but barely can keep themselves afloat. Social media, promotes that even more, influencers giving advice in areas they barely understand themselves but yet give people only the things they want to hear.

Youtube is filled with the learn how to code in 48 hrs, or land a 6 figure job with my course and program, what they forget to tell you is that you are looking to learn something in 2 days what individuals dedicated their entire lives to and have built up their reputation by their accomplishments and talent and not just words and cap which is pretty much 90% that’s floating around. I know it sounds negative in a “postive vibes only” environment but it needs to be said.

Success, you must earn! One of the biggest hustles are all of these “success” programs and now on YouTube all the influencers are selling you a pipedream with the how become a millionaire, success, etc. with Crypto, products, and whatever they are trying to sell people on. All of it to me is like Ponzi schemes and I don’t understand why people still believe that there is a short cut? People look at the edge cases and outliers for their reality and use this somehow as a baseline for their life which is completely false.

Have you ever noticed? All people that have never been anywhere, done anything, haven’t accomplished much and/or experienced any type of situations are usually the ones with the biggest opinions and offering up advice. I usually don’t listen to anyone I can’t validate has experience and qualifications to speak on any topic. You can take this pandemic for instance; how many high school dropouts have been telling people the virus is / was a hoax while a lot of people really died from it directly or indirectly in numbers that is not normal but yet. Or the vaccine issue, how many people have become instantly doctors and scientists but it is usually the same people that will tell you “I don’t know what’s in there and I am not putting anything unknown in my body” but yet they will buy drugs from their favorite dope boy and they definitely don’t know what is being put in it but don’t ask one question and you know they are willing to put jet fuel in it if will make some money.

You have to be thirsty for knowledge but not just the interesting stuff but the things that you can actually use in real life. You have to learn about the system you hate so much, how can you challenge anything when you don’t know how it really works? You don’t fix a problem by assuming, you have thoroughly research, investigate and brainstorm to come up with something that will fix the problem right. Your life is no different. In America today everyone has trauma, this is our culture. We enable, we have become professional victims, we have become entitled and very much privileged, and I am talking about everyone has their own self entitled ways.

My childhood was extremely rough, without love, compassion or even much encouragement. All I heard was how much of a disappointment and failure I was. No different than the other sob stories out here. I grew up with a heavy street mentality and I have endured a lot of situations that most won’t even see in their entire lifetime. The biggest difference has been that I never was comfortable where I was. I used to be around really sketchy people and I would get questioned by some folks that were concerned why you associate yourself around these types. The way I looked at it was from a operational POV, if you want the best football team, you have to be around the best football players, if you are at war you would want to surround yourself with true soldiers that are not timid or scared.

The demand for

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am entrepreneur in entertainment & technology. I own Digetects, LLC a digital marketing, brand and tech studio where we specialize in enterprise digital marketing application development, implementation and business intelligence. We are SME’s (Subject Matter Experts) in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and many other leading technologies and platforms. What exactly does that mean? We pretty much design, architect and develop digital marketing infrastructure, applications and integrations for enterprise. Think of all the marketing emails, targeted Facebook ads, push notifications and text messages you get on your phone from your favorite apps or companies. We build the entire infrastructure from the roota to the toota.

This includes building all the databases, websites, email templates, automations and building all the digital profiles so that we can target customers based on their behavior, preferences, engagement and actions that they take on a website. Think of you have a store with millions of items for any person with any type of background, taste and/or preferences. We build everything so that a company’s website can provide their audience the exact things that they are really interested in where they don’t have to sift through all those items, we want them to find all their favorite things whenever they interact with a brand.

You know — people have said, they were talking about something, and then, when they go online, an ad will show them exactly that. That’s what we do and any discipline that’s required like writing all the code from scratch, make different software, applications and platforms communicate with each other so that data flows back and forth. Someone buys from your website, some of the data is sent to the email application to send the receipt and/or welcome message. We capture what you do, and HOW you move on the website may display different things based on your actions. We have done it and are currently doing it for companies like WebMD, Charbroil, Kool Smiles, AMC, Herbalife Nutrition and many smaller businesses like Patchwerk Recording Studios, Grand Hustle Gang, Striver’s Row.

I also own 66 Raw (66raw.com) the internet radio station that started out on XM Satellite until Sirius Satellite bought XM and replaced the programming with Shade 45. We slowed down a bit due to the pandemic but also were going through some bad partnerships where I lost a whole lot of money. I am currently restructuring, fusing my big tech and entertainment expertise to build an online entertainment metaverse.

My unique background – at first – the software engineer / entertainment professional doesn’t add up but for me it makes perfect sense.

The music business was my first love and career path since I remember. I was in love with Hip Hop and knew at around 6 or 7 that I would be doing something in entertainment, however, I had never a desire to be a “star”. I dread the spotlight; I am too private of a person to have random people digging in my business and/or have an opinion about me based on gossip and fake news. I wanted to be a producer, music is soul food and just loved hip hop … I used to breakdance and graffiti at that time it was just a lifestyle.

This is where my passion for the music business ignited, I had moved, not too long out of high school, to Philly to stay with some friends around the time Boys 2 Men, Motown Philly movement started and I thought that’s where I would get my foot in the door but circumstances brought me to Atlanta in 1991.

I was heavy in the streets at that time, networking with people and pretty much staying the clubs where we connected with people before they really blew or right around when they made it like Playa Pancho, 404 Soldiers, India.Arie.

Eventually, I started working with MCA Records where I did street and radio promotions – THAT — during my time – was a tiring and abusive job. Having to go to all the night & strip clubs all over the country, convince DJ’s and Radio to play your records and having to keep following up. Imagine, having to be in the clubs all night, politicking with DJ’s, Strippers to use your song to dance to, bouncers to let in free, and so on. Today, you don’t have to do anything but sit on the couch and play with apps, but that is what really got me in the tech game.

I met a guy that introduced me to the web from a “development” side. In the 90’s, websites were nothing what they are today in terms of functionalities but he introduced me to a software called “MS Front Page” and “NetObject Fusion” those were the website builders of the 90’s. By learning the software and web, I quickly realized that if people from all around the world can simply go to your website via the internet and emails can reach them within seconds that this would be a game changer for me.

I came up with the idea to have all the DJ’s, promoters, clubs, etc. come to me because I would promote their events, products, artists on my website, I would review music, I would do artist interviews and my website at that time TheClubLine.com was my ticket to everything.

We had the labels because we created programs that would help them promote their artists, our members loved us because we gave them exclusive access to events, concerts, products for free and the businesses would get their patronage because we were the only plug to access that normal people may never got and when you are the “plug” that people follow you didn’t have to do as much convincing unlike today because everyone is doing something.

Skipping ahead, I was doing some street promo for Patchwerk Recordings where owner Bob Whitfield got wind of my website where he wanted to create an online music website which at that time could be compare to Spotify, we were toying around with ideas but then Bob asked me if I would take over the label which I did for a few years until Bob asked me to help Curtis with the studio because he would shut down the label. There I built their first website, people would ask me to do graphics or online things all the time so I started doing mixtape covers for artists and websites.

Curtis, one of the co-owners of the studio introduced me to Muhsin “Moose” Muhammad, one of the leading NFL wide receivers, because he was thinking about getting in the music game. After some time, Moose asked me if I wanted to start & run his entertainment company “Baylo Entertainment” where I created one of the first mixtape websites in the south and it soon became an indie power house that nobody talks about. In early 2000’s we crossed “Chopped & Screwed” into the mainstream, we became distributors for it all over the world. I dealt directly with Slim Thug’s sister Nel and mom who were running the mixtape business, G Dash from Swishahouse, OG Ron C, Paul Wall and Chamillionaire used to come to my office in Atlanta. Trae Tha Truth used come to Atlanta to bring his CDs by the boxes.

We were working with the labels, we put together mixtapes because my DJ crew for Baylo at the time was NYC’s Get Money Nation which included DJ Ty Boogie, Action Pac, Sickamore where we released with Warner Bros and Sho Nuff Records the Jody Breeze mixtape and The Takeover. DJ Cee Money who became our in house DJ after he first started working for me at Baylo filling our online orders, started doing all our mixtapes with Hot 107.9 the Dirty Awards, The Spring Break mixtape in Miami, The Durtty Boyz, J-Nicks aka Stuey Rock and others.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn a lot of things, to learn a lot more & different things in order to understand, how life really works. Life is a recipe, all the things within it are the ingredients, your choices are the measurements. A recipe only tastes its best, when all the necessary ingredients are mixed at the right amount. The wrong ingredients and amount are the wrong choices you make at wrong situations which could have lifelong consequences. Some things you can recover from, but others may exclude you from future opportunities and when you operate with limited options you stay stagnant or regress.

If you mess up your credit, you exclude yourself from getting any credit or much cheaper rates or just being financially free … buy what, when and where you want without a problem because your credit is stellar, whereas bad credit, gets you nothing but higher fees and rates.

We are being fed a lot of nonsense throughout our lives and it comes mostly from our environment. If you grow up around people that believe that education is stupid, most likely you will believe it too.

One of the biggest things I had to unlearn to think that you are special and that you deserve everything simply because you exist. That is the biggest disservice you can give to someone, matter of fact, you are overinflating people’s egos and breed entitlement where they start to believe that the world only evolves around them and everyone else is just an extra.

Society is enabling that behavior by shunning criticism and viewing opposing views or beliefs as negative but also by paradoxical narrative. It has created a society of professional victims and spoiled brats.

I grew up where school better never call home, they didn’t care if I was right or wrong. It was my responsibility to navigate difficult teachers who couldn’t stand my guts. I didn’t get to cry at home about how unfair the teacher was and then the parents run to the school ready to fight the teachers.

In my childhood it was always my fault because I should have handled my situation better because life is not fair and no one really cares about you which in turn gives you thicker skin, you appreciate things different, you tend to think a lot different or you are more aware about personalities, you may pay attention a lot more to detail. Your mentality is everything that will let you win or lose. Why is it that some people enjoy jumping out of airplanes and others are completely terrified? It’s all mental. Being disciplined, having integrity, loyalty, etc. those are all mental strength, mental weakness is when you are easily influenced, or you cave easy and can’t stick to your guns. We all know how spoiled brats are created.

The quality of my life started to change the more I unlearned the things that were keeping me stuck which I picked up from my younger years. Now, I am pretty much quite the opposite from 20 years ago and my life overall has completely transformed into what I used to dream of when i thought it doesn’t exist for me. It required a lot, even how you comprehend things, Most people can only see things their way, they are unable to play devil’s advocate or from a different lens. Once you understand that many things in life never are what they seem. The more you experience, the more you can relate.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

Funding is the one and most important component in business. You can have all the talent and ideas but if you don’t have the funding to support and maintain that venture, it won’t happen. However, if you have the funding, you can do whatever you want because you can hire the talent to execute your ideas or someone else’s.

You must change your relationship with money first! You can’t get funding if you don’t understand money. I worked with some artists where I had to keep pushing to complete an album because they kept recording new material and not completing the required songs. Ultimately, the deal fell through but that’s because they didn’t understand the money aka business.

Studio time, features, beats, engineering, etc. all have a price tag that has to be recouped from the product created which they were hired for. If they were about the money, they would have completed the album the way it should because if the product sells well, that’s their livelihood but instead they blew all the budgets, no more deal and everyone back doing what they were doing before.

In order to get funding, you must approach it as you are willing to put your last on the line for it. I have seen many occasions where individuals would barely invest their own money into their “dreams” but expect a stranger to fund their quest to becoming millionaires. They can spend money on the things that they enjoy but have no funds to put into the business and have their hand out “If I only had the funding or money”.

I invested any money I could, I was always thinking of ways of making money for something I needed to get my business started. I hooked up cable, I was doing oil changes, I was looking for ways where I could put my money in to get more bang for my buck. If I needed $1500 for something that I knew could get me an extra $500. Then keep building on it and reinvesting it. There is so much opportunity out here, but people want it the easiest way and if it is not easy they don’t want to do it. “If it was easy, everyone would do it”.

Keep in mind that in the world there are 7.75 billion people but only 56 million Millionaires. This info alone should let you know that there is something very different between the two. More so that 80% are self-made and not privileged for the most part. We see your favorite artists, the more successful they become, the more “mature” they become.

My philosophy has always been that were there is a will there is a way. If you can cook well, you can sell plates for side money. Love dogs? Why not offer dog walking for a fee. There are so many more options today than when I was hustling. TaskRabbit, Fiverr, etc. you can put your healthy body to work by helping move, fix something, cleaning and so on. If that’s how you feel that you need that money to get your idea of the ground and others see how you are not afraid to invest in your own dreams regardless others will take notice. An investor wants to know that their money is being used so that you can pay them back with interest and you display that by showing that you will put your money in first, their money is second.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://digetects.com
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• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digetects
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