Slow Growth, Greater Depth

Dilated eyes, calmer minds, and an unexpected productivity hack

(Slowing down on tour in the UK with Brandy Clark - pic by my tour bud Cy Winstanley)

A couple of days ago, I went to the eye clinic to have my eyes dilated and get some tests done.

I took my laptop and book with me, expecting a long wait before I was seen, but when I registered with the receptionist, she reminded me that before a dilation test, they don’t want you to look at screens or read anything while you wait. They ask that you just sit and… do nothing. What a terrifying concept in this era of constant mental stimulation and 7-second attention spans!

It took a few minutes to quell the urge to pick up my phone to text a friend or note something down, but eventually, I settled into the… nothing. As I sat quietly watching the other people in the reception area, I thought about how timely it was.

Slowing down and finding a calmer life pace has been a theme for me lately.

Feeling happier comes from the cumulation of many smaller moments of joy, but some days I can barely take 5 minutes to sit and sip my morning cup of coffee because I’m in such a rush to get into the day.

The unpredictable nature of life in music means sometimes I just need to hit the gas and hustle to get everything done. But I’ve been thinking lately that I produce much more meaningful work when I slow things down.

This time last year, I followed a punishing (and self-imposed) social media schedule for Pro Music Guide. I posted carousels, tips, and inspirational posts on Instagram daily, made reels several times a week, wrote Substack pieces, created YouTube tutorials, and shared my daily life in my stories. I was re-purposing content to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn while also coaching clients, touring, and helping Jake with his business.

I knew that frequency and consistency were what the algorithm wanted, and I thought that if I built up the numbers on my socials, I’d be able to help more musicians. I wanted to show people they weren’t alone in pursuing a music career and that other musicians out there knew what they were going through and wanted to help.

But toward the end of 2022, I realized I was spending so much time making content to keep up with the schedule I’d instituted that I was running out of useful or interesting insights about the industry. I was starting to feel like I was becoming a feedback loop of myself, repeatedly talking about the same things, and I began to feel like they weren’t even the right things to be talking about.

You can google “how to make a reel go viral” and find 100s of tutorials and tips, I don’t need to teach that. And how does knowing how to go viral help if you secretly don’t believe you’re even worth listening to?

How does knowing how to make a kickass carousel post help when you’re trying to get over the profound sense of unworthiness that comes with watching someone else get an opportunity you thought you deserved?

Does brilliant hashtag strategy help if you don’t know what story you’re trying to tell?

I love helping clients learn marketing skills because I know how empowering that knowledge is, but that’s because when working one-to-one with someone, we can balance that learning with essential conversations around self-worth, life balance, and sharing your story.

Without viral reels and relentless online posting, my community is growing more slowly. And I know my community growing slowly will mean less income through coaching clients and paid subs to this newsletter. But I stopped posting daily on social media because it was diluting the potency of the help I could offer the people already here.

Focusing on the quality of content instead of the number of posts and the speed of growth of the community means the people who do find this community will ultimately get more value out of it.

That feels like a worthy trade, and in line with the reason I started doing this: to help musicians feel empowered and supported.

Ultimately, there’s a cost to everything we do: time, money, wellness, or growth.

If you want to grow something quickly online, the benefit is growth, but the cost is the time you have to spend to achieve it or the money you need to invest in ads.

Before deciding what costs you’re willing to incur in pursuit of your music career, it’s worth considering the outcomes we can control.

We can’t control how many people buy an album, come to a release gig, or whether a magazine gives us a good review.

But we can control the journey to those outcomes and how much we enjoy the album's creation.

If you intentionally enjoy the writing, creating, and recording of an album and consider the enjoyment the true goal, you win once, whether anyone loves it or not.

Additionally, if you actively enjoy the process of creating something and people do love it, you win twice.

When you rush through the process blindly, fixating only on the possible awards at the end, and then people don’t love it, you have nothing.

The only scenario where you are guaranteed to win is viewing the experience of creating the album as the goal.

There’s no finish line to being a musician, there’s just a long, meandering journey filled with study, inspiration, successes, challenges, and - eventually - fantastic creative expression and maybe a sequin jacket and a smoke machine or two.

The journey is everything.

Ok great, I hear you saying, but what if I really really want people to like and buy my album???

Ask yourself, why?

When setting expectations for your art, you must dig deep and ask yourself why something feels essential.

If album sales feel like the ultimate goal because you need the income to survive, maybe it’s time for a part-time job to ensure financial stability regardless of how the album does.

If it’s validation or bragging rights that feel like the entire point, maybe you need to find a way to untangle your self-worth from your career success.

Creating music with the primary goal of making money or finding self-worth is a plan doomed to fail. You have to make music for the sake of making music first. Everything else is just gravy.

Overall, my focus this year is embracing the slow growth resulting from a kinder pace. It’s ensuring I am mentally and physically healthy and connected to my music so I have the capacity and energy for the conversations I believe are missing from the music industry.

I want to share my struggles with self-worth in the industry so you know you’re not alone in yours. To talk about how I set goals and cope with failures so that you might have an easier time with yours.

The greatest strength we can demonstrate is when we lift each other, and I want to be the wind beneath your... 🤣 haha, just joking. I just want you to know that we’re all in this together in the hope that the togetherness makes it a little easier to cope.