I was catching up on my RSS feeds and found several excellent posts from Seth Godin. There’s rarely a day that I don’t learn something profound from him and I hope you’ll take my advice and visit his blog regularly. Here are the posts:
Money, popularity, quality describes the fact that successful is now defined as “great.” Meaning that if something reaches the success level of riches, fame, popularity, then it must also be great.
We all know the two are unrelated, but if you want to make a living playing music – and I assume you do – then you’d be wise to “get good at predicting ‘great’ before the market takes action.”
Thrill seekers is about two groups of people: thrill seekers and fear avoiders. “Thrill seekers love growth…Fear avoiders hate change.”
“Seeking thrills was risky. But no longer. Now, of course, safe
is risky. The horrible irony is that the fear avoiders are setting
themselves up for big changes because they’re confused. The safest
thing they can do now, it turns out, is become a thrill seeker.”
Hmmm, so which are you? Are you moving with the massive changes in the music industry, or hoping they’ll go away?
And lastly, Choice is a powerful piece about the effects of choices on careers and success:
“The movie business provides us with a clear window on what happens when
people make good choices (and bad ones). Very few people–with the
exception of Sean Connery or Daniel Craig–have the option of sticking
with one movie forever. Everyone else in the industry makes critical
choices on a regular basis. Smart choice makers do far better than
those that don’t work at it. I’m willing to guess the value of smart
choices is responsible for a 10 to 100 times difference in lifetime
earnings in Hollywood.”
It’s easy to assume that the path to success is to take as much work as possible so you can hone your skills, get to know other artists and get in the public eye or industry network. But success is often thwarted by saying yes to everything.
The Future of Music blog has a post about a new business model being pioneered through CBS. I encourage you to read to catch a glimpse of where your industry is heading. In a nutshell, CBS is relaunching the CBS Record Label with the express purpose of integrating their artists songs into CBS and CW television shows. There’s a bunch of industry insight in the article, so be sure to check it out.
However, a completely unrelated subject jumped out at me. In the middle of the post, an artist named Will Dailey is being apprehensive and resistent to the thought of “contributing to the soundtrack of “The Young and the Restless.”"
That is until his appendicitis left him with $50,000 in debt.
This struck me as a cool topic to discuss because it’s based in reality. It’s so easy to get high and mighty and/or romantic about a career in music. And though I don’t want to take anything away from that – it is art afterall – but, it’s okay to live in the reality that this is how you want to support your living. In fact, I BEG you to live in this reality.
Your career choice puts you in the middle of an industry. An industry every bit as business like as automobiles, computer chips or agriculture. And just like the millions of people that work in those industries, your number one concern should always be putting food on the table and a roof over your head.
I hope you enjoy every glorious moment of being a musician, but treat it like a business that provides your life support – because that it what it is.
I found inspiration for you today from this post from Two Hat Marketing.
“Don’t study your competition for new ideas. Study people and organizations outside your daily world and steal their ideas.”
These words hit me two ways: First, I am all about looking to the world of business – for principles, skills, knowledge, mentors, etc. – and stealing everything you can. That business world is FULL of stuff that most musicians will never know about or apply.
Second, don’t just study other bands/artists for inspiration. Look at what Google’s doing and why. Or Coca Cola, Nike, Virgin, Jet Blue. What trends are they following? How are they marketing? What are their customers thinking? Are these your customers too? If so, are you attracting them in the same way? Could you?
When you copy someone else’s success, you are merely a copy. When you synthesize original thoughts and perspectives because you’re always open and looking, you’ll always be steps ahead.
I write this blog for two main reasons: One, I want you to reach your dreams. Two, I can’t help you, but I can direct you to resources that can.
I spent the lasts few days at a meeting in Florida with my company’s best operations leaders from the region. These are the folks that ensure that things get done at our locations. They are all about “doing” – or getting others to “do” – all day long, week in and week out.
I attended this meeting with several other “corporate folks” such as myself. We’re a national company with about 90 locations that are increasingly linked together by the internet and the fact that most of our customers travel extensively. The biggest challenge our company faces is making the change from a locally based to a nationally based culture and this was the topic of much of the meeting.
It was evident that the ops people did not think much of us corporate types and it reminded me of musicians.
Why? Because just like these operational managers, most musicians spend their lives working hard, day after day, playing each and every gig they can and struggling to make a living. They exist from week to week with a week to week, gig to gig perspective.
Then one day they awake to find the world has changed and they are no longer relevant to what’s going on around them. They’ve missed changes in music, customers, clubs, distribution and technology.
This is why I write. I hope to broaden your perspective by pointing you to the knowledge and wisdom found in the business world. Read my blog, buy a book, subscribe to some magazines, hang with some talented businesspeople and pick their brains – do anything and everything to build a bridge so you grow in your strategic and long term business building skills.
Terrific post today at Ask the Advisor. Entitled “Top 25 Personal Finance Myths,” I LOVE the first two:
- I don’t deserve to rich.
- Rich people are scum.
- I’m NOT saying that you DESERVE to be rich, but you are absolutly, imphatically entitled to PURSUE the work, life and money you want. You have just as much right to it as anyone else.
- Scummy people who are rich are scum. Terrific and generous wealthy people are terrific and generous – and they help tons of people in the process.
I also have to add that in most cases, wealth is only gained from helping people. Of course there are crooks and unscrupulous cheats, but that’s not the norm. Pure and simple, money is an exchange tool.
Check out the list and let me know your thoughts.
About 20 years ago, shortly after we were married, my wife and I ran into Tony in the lobby of a hotel in Dallas. Tony was a drummer that I knew from college and he was playing a gig in the Hotel bar. After hearing him cuss like the Brooklyn native he was and TOTALLY dominate the conversation like a bully, we said our goodbyes and walked away.
My wife commented on how bombastic the guy was and then asked me what kind of drummer he was. I said he plays the exact same way.
Those words sum up what I’ve found to be true again and again. People play exactly as they are. Know a musician who plays confidently? They’re likely to be confident in all that they do. Same is true of wimpy players.
Why is this important? Well, two reasons. First, whatever you think about new players you meet is likely to be how you’ll feel about their playing. Second, you can learn about yourself by looking at your playing.
Let’s take me for example:
If there was one constant throughout my music career, it’s that people were amazed at how agressively and confidently I played drums. Why? Because that’s not how I lived my life. If you’ve read any of my stuff at all, you know that I was a really nice guy that sorta took life as it came. I never pushed myself much or sold my abilities very well. I was very content to be in the background and not bother anyone.
Behind a set of drums, however, I was, and still am, a different story. I know my role and that role is control the music. To guide, lead and push the music, and the players, forward. Kick butt, take names, no apologies and no excuses. Because I was so comfortable playing drums, and I was secure behind them, the real me came out.
I would have been wise to look at why there was such a disparity between my living and playing. I would have been wise to realize that the player was the real me. And I would have been wise – and WAY further along – had I fought to live my life like I play drums.
So what about you? Is there a disparity that’s crying out to teach you something? It isn’t a question of confidence vs. timidity, or bombastic vs. taste. It isn’t a question of quality. it’s a question of integrity. Are you living out the real you?
You’ll never be happy, or succeed, until you are.
I’ve heard it said that the quickest way to raise someone’s self esteem is to get them a nice set of clothes. Merely putting them on can change a person’s entire attitude and outlook on life.
ACTING confident has the same affect – and yes, I said acting.
Since joining the corporate world, I’ve come to realize that few people are truly confident in what they’re doing. Whether it be presenting, planning, strategizing or negotiating, most of us are making it up as we go along. The cause isn’t ignorance as much as the fast pace of change we’re faced with. We know alot, but we’re constantly faced with assembling our knowledge and skills in new ways.
So, we act confident, even if we’re not. And you know what? We gain confidence in the process.
All of which supports Kent Sayre’s list of “7 Helpful Tips to Immediately Iincrease Your Confidence” taken his own book: “Unstoppable Confidence.”
Here are the seven, but be sure to read the details behind each of them:
1.) Ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
2.) In doing something for the first time, imagine that you have already
done it in the past.
3.) Find someone who is already confident in that area and copy them.
4.) Use the “as-if” frame. If you
were confident, how would you be acting?
5.) Go into the future and ask if what you’re faced with is such a big
deal.
6.) Remember that you lose out on 100% of the opportunities that you never
go for.
7.) Disarm the nagging, negative internal voice. That negative internal
voice can keep anyone stopped.
Before I let you go, I want you to consider the difference employing these tips would have on your career and life if you used them ALL THE TIME. The 7 tips apply to tasks and situations, but realize that everyday in every inter-relation with people, you are portraying yourself a certain way. And that “way” is teaching them what to think about you and how to treat you.
Tip #3 mentioned a confident person you know. How do you feel about them and why? Why did they come to mind? How do they say and do the things they do? Are they in life where YOU want to be, or at least getting there?
Act like them and you may get there too.
