How to Succeed by Great Customer Experiences
Many businesses struggle because of a failure to develop great customer experiences at their touch points and the same is true for musicians. So today, I want to give you a tool I was introduced to by Tabetha Taylor when I was a Product Manager: The Customer Experience Pyramid.
(Bottom Part says: What your customers will experience with you)
What it Means
The pyramid is a reminder your goals are supported by, and will ONLY be supported by a foundation of customers. Two points:
- are the foundation for your career. Period.
- Therefore, what your customers – fans, supporters, fellow musicians, actual customers, club owners, etc., etc., etc. – experience with you MUST be purposeful if you want to reach your goals.
- Everything else is supported by this foundation.
But even though pyramids work from the bottom up, you’re going to use this tool from the top down using four steps.
Step One
First, you must decide your exact goals in detail. The more defined they are, the easier the rest of the steps are to do.
Step Two
Once you know what you want, ask yourself these two questions:
- Who do I need to have help me reach these goals (your specific set of “customers”)? Make a list of all these people either by name and/or in groups. For instance, as a drummer, my customers were producers, other players (particularly bass players), singers, and singer/songwriters because those were the people that hired drummers.
- What specific actions do you want each of them to take? I wanted producers to hire me. I wanted other players to recommend me and hopefully demand I be the drummer when they worked. I wanted singers and singer/songwriters to recommend me and hire me to play live and on their demo recordings.
Step Three
With a clear picture of who they are and what you need them to do, figure out what they all have to believe about you so they’re personally motivated to take those actions. So using me as an example again I’ll give one answer for each group. You will have multiple answers (and “that I’m great” doesn’t count):
- Producers: That I created great sounding and feeling drum tracks fast.
- Players: That I was fun to play with musically and personally.
- Singers and singer/songwriters: That I made THEM sound incredible.
Step Four
The last step is to then figure out what all these people have to experience every time you’re interacting so they believe everything in Step Three.
What are you doing to make sure every touch point creates the purposeful customer experience you need to build your career?
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Money Basics for Musicians, Songwriters, Singers and Artists
Why Money?
“Many people say that money is not the most important thing in life. That may be true. However, money does affect everything that is important.” – Kim Kiyosaki
Since money buys things like food and shelter (not to mention equipment and clothing) and I therefore recommend you know how to use it, I offer you some basic money terms and insights:
Expenses
Things like food, shelter, equipment and clothing are expenses. Specifically, they are mandatory expenses because you need them to live. Ice cream is also an expense, but it’s not mandatory.
Income
Though this word literally means money coming in, it is NOT the most important money word and here’s why:
Positive Cashflow
There are two drummers:
- The first has $1,280 a month in mandatory expenses. He has $350 in the bank and just got a gig on a cruise ship getting paid $4,000 per month. The gig starts in Mid-February (it’s February 2nd) and he’ll get his first paycheck on April 1st.
- The second has $1,800 a month in mandatory expenses, no money in the bank, and two jobs. She stocks shelves at WalMart three nights a week and plays Wednesday through Saturday at a local club. Since she gets a $500 check from WalMart on the 1st and 15th of each month and $500 each Wednesday from the club, she got $1,000 yesterday. She paid her rent and has money left over to eat until next Wednesday.
Drummer number two is doing fine because she has positive cashflow. She has money coming in when or before she needs it. Even though he has lower expenses and a better paying gig, drummer number one is in serious trouble because he has negative cashflow.
The key to having freedom to pursue your career and life is positive cashflow even if the amount is small.
Give
Giving keeps you grounded in the only thing that truly does matter in life, loving others. Start developing a habit of giving at least 10% of everything you earn early in your career. You will never give 10% of $100,000 if you haven’t been giving 10% of the $125 you made the other night.
Savings
Same thing with saving. Pay yourself 10% to 15% too. Money multiplies at an amazing rate so even if $12.50 isn’t much, “not much” over and over again is WAY MUCH!
Spending
- Mandatory Expenses: The simple but truly helpful advice is to keep these as low as possible for as long as possible. You’ll have better Cashflow, more to give and more to save.
- Other Expenses: You’ll also have some money to spend for fun – something you should ALWAYS do. Take a little amount of purposely set-aside money to have fun with.
Those are the basics, what did I miss?
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How to Build Your Music Career One Touch Point at a Time
You Can’t Succeed Alone
If it’s true that you need other people to succeed in your music career (and it is), then it’s equally true that your career depends on the success of every “touch point” you have with other people.
Customers and You
Touch Points are nothing more than exactly what they sound like: the points of contact between a business, product or service and prospective customers. In the case of you and your music career, this means any and all interactions you have with your fans, supporters, fellow musicians, producers, etc., etc.
Yes I mean any and all interactions.
As a musician, singer, songwriter or artist, it’s critical that you understand that YOU are the product and service and therefore, you are never NOT marketing.
Branding
This means that every Touch Point must fully and clearly represent the brand that is you if you want to (a) build a long term career and (b) build a long term career staying true to who you are and what you want. Here are two suggestions on how to do this well:
1.) Get a sheet of paper, draw a circle in the center and write “You” in the circle. Then draw other circles around You and write the names of people or the names of groups of people (Band Fans for instance) that are in your network. Connect your circle and the other circles with lines (here’s a blank example).
2.) Consider the literal or potential touch points between you and this network.
- Social Media presence – which Networks, bios, photos, etc.
- Web Page – look, feel, usefulness
- Answering machine/cell phone message
- Your appearance – all the time
- Business cards
- Your equipment
- Your work – what kind you do and how it represents you
- Your personality and interactions with people
- Your friends and associates
- Every other touch point you can think of
Be You, just Be You Consistently
It would be easy to misunderstand this entire post as one long suggestion to become a salesperson selling out at every turn. That is NOT what I’m saying at all.
I’m saying that the way to build the music career of your dreams is to make sure that any and all touch points between you and your customers fully and clearly represent you, your talents and the career you want because careers are built one touch point at a time.
Which Touch Points did I forget?
Read MoreThe 4 Personalities and Your Music Career
I Wasn’t a Dead Fish
My wife screamed at me, “I’d get more response from a DEAD FISH!”
We had been married about 2 years and were having a discussion (fight) about something. She was walking back and forth telling me everything she was feeling when she paused for a response.
She yelled when she didn’t get one.
What neither one of us knew at the time was that I wasn’t a dead fish, I was a Peaceful Phlegmatic.
The 4 Personalities
Did you know that everyone of us – including you – has one of four distinct personality styles that dictate how we think, act, relate, and communicate?
In our Dead Fish incident, my wife expected an instant response because one of the strongest personality traits is that she thinks out loud. If she thinks it, she says it. Period. When I didn’t respond, she thought I was blowing her off.
My personality is EXACTLY the opposite. I think and think and think and THINK before I speak just to make sure what I say is precisely what I mean. I wasn’t blowing her off, I was thinking.
Your Music Career
Learning about the 4 Personalities has done more to help my career (and marriage) than almost anything else I know and it’ll do the same for you.
- Knowing how people think, act, relate, and communicate will help you better understand, communicate, work and live with the people in your life.
- Knowing YOUR Personality Type will help you take advantage of your strengths and properly manage your weaknesses.
Think, Act, Relate, Etc.
This post is not meant to fully explain everything there is to know about personalities, but here are the basics:
- Powerful Choleric – These people are direct, firm, ambitious, and no nonsense.
- Popular Sanguine – think bubbly, talkative, sociable, charismatic, and FUN (my wife)!
- Peaceful Phlegmatic – These people are thoughtful, calm, relaxed, and peacemakers (me).
- Perfect Melancholy – People with this personality are detail minded, introverted, often artistic, and deep thinkers.
Learn More
I encourage you to learn more about the personalities. Check out this chart I made and get the book, Personality Plus. It literally changed my life and I know it’ll change yours too.
Which personality are you?
Read MoreCould Your Attitude be KILLING Your Music Career?
A Not So Funny Joke
Question: How do you get a musician to complain?
Answer: Give ‘em a gig.
15 Minute Conversation
I was at the office of a business associate this past Friday when one of his staff members said, “Hey, did you ever talk to that girl interested in the Knoxville job? What did you think?”
To which he replied, “Not good. Basically, nothing was her fault. All I heard was how bad all her former employers were, that they all had bad policies and rules, and that she had been fired by all of them for no reason. I heard more complaints and excuses than I’ve ever heard in a 15 minute conversation.”
She won’t be getting the job.
No One Likes a Complainer
We live in a society of criticizing and complaining – just think Reality TV and Political Campaigns, right? We are a society that feels entitled to complain about everything because we feel entitled to have everything.
But don’t be fooled by this “norm.” While it can indeed make “Must See TV,” all complaining does in real life is make you a “must avoid at all costs.”
You Might be a Complainer, If:
- You’re answer to how ya doin’ is, “I’m tired,” “just trying to make a living,” “alright I guess,” or similarly depressing answers.
- You talk behind the back of players, singers and songwriters telling others how bad they are, how they can’t sing or how bad the songs are while you’re actually working with them at the time (like backstage).
- You honestly believe everyone in your past has done you wrong in one way or another.
- You talk about how you honestly believe everyone in your past has done you wrong in one way or another (and you can’t understand why nobody agrees with you).
- You feel tired and drained all the time.
- You say things like, “I’m doing this for now, but someday I’m going to…”
- When people compliment you, you’re response is, “nah, it was nothing” or, “I screwed up the section…” or something else that sounds humble but actually tells the other person they don’t know what they’re talking about.
- The only good thing you can say about your current gig is, “it sure beats digging ditches” and you actually SAY that out loud.
Attitude Determines Altitude
I’m not suggesting that you have to be bubbly, excited and sickeningly positive all the time. I am suggesting that many, many musicians I know have torpedoed any chances of success because no one wanted to be around their bad attitudes. Make sure that doesn’t happen to you.
What are some tips for staying positive in situations that BEG for complaining?
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