The Anti-Inspirational Speaker
The cold hard truth you probably don't want to hear
Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit like an anti-inspirational speaker.
When I first started coaching musicians on marketing and career strategy I thought if I just showed people how to “do things", they would flourish.
That if I helped them define their audience and create content pillars, understand how social media algorithms work and create a solid plan they would have everything they needed to crush it.
It seemed so simple!
Everyone just needed to learn the basic business skills they’d never been taught and we’d have an industry of badass musicians crushing their to-do lists, sprinting towards their clearly defined goals, and building the music lives they’d always dreamt of.
But after a few years of coaching, I’ve noticed something odd.
When I covertly checked in on people 3-6 months after we’d stopped working together, they were often doing exactly what they’d been doing before they came to me for help.
I would go to Instagram, hit up their profiles expecting to see a glorious demonstration of all the wonderful “ah-ha” moments they’d had about what constitutes great content, and find…. pretty much the same inconsistent and uninspiring content they were making before we started working together.
After the initial surge of excitement and inspiration from working together started to wane, why did clients always seem to slip back into their old habits? Why couldn’t people keep the momentum going on their own without our weekly sessions?
This is why:
When it comes down to it, all the skills and knowledge in the world won’t help you build a career in music if you haven’t dramatically shifted your mindset as well.
Here’s the cold hard truth that makes me feel like an anti-inspirational speaker:
Most people won’t succeed in building a music career.
Most people won’t succeed NOT because they’re not good at music.
Most people won’t succeed NOT because they haven’t found the ultimate social media hack to grow an audience or the music marketing guru of their dreams.
Most people won’t succeed building a music career because they believe there IS an ultimate social media hack or music marketing guru out there that can make their dreams come true for them.
Most people won’t succeed because deep down they don’t want to do the challenging work that success requires.
Most people won’t succeed because they want to outsource the hard work of building a career in music to someone else.
The people that DO build a successful music career are the ones who’ve learned the hard skills and have also fully adopted the following three mindset aspects: consistency, charisma, and courage.
Consistency
This is the most important aspect of building a career in music, which is why I put it first.
Without consistency, you will never achieve your goals.
It’s also the least sexy - sorry, that’s something you’re just going to have to deal with.
Consistency is boring, but it’s also essential.
You succeed not by creating, posting, connecting, and showing up when you feel like it - but by creating, posting, connecting and showing up when it’s the LAST thing you feel like.
It’s easy to show up when you’re feeling excited and inspired about something.
It’s hard to keep showing up and giving your audience a reason to connect and care about you even when you’re going through tough times and doubting yourself.
It’s easy to show up when you’ve just read a book or watched a tutorial and you feel excited about the results you might achieve.
It’s hard to show up when you’re trying something new but haven’t seen the instant results you were expecting.
The difference between a professional musician and an amateur is that the professional has to get on stage and bring their A-game, making the audience believe they’re having the absolute time of their life, even when they’re tired, hungry, and the airline lost their bag on the way to the gig.
A professional has to show up to every performance and make it the best it can be, because that’s the job they’ve signed up for and what they’re being paid to do.
It’s just the same with building a career.
Growth and success come from showing up consistently and doing the work, whether you feel like it or not.
Charisma
The internet means that people have access to more music than they could possibly ever consume. There are more than 50K songs uploaded to Spotify every day. There are more musicians on social media than a potential fan could ever possibly even consider engaging with.
The fact is: just being a musician, online, with music to share is not enough.
You have to give people a reason to connect with you otherwise they’ll simply move on to someone who does.
You need to have lyrics that are heartbreakingly poignant.
Or a breathtaking voice.
Or impeccable style.
Or a divisive stance on current events.
Or hilarious captions to go with your songs.
Or a compelling backstory that you share regularly.
Everyone has something interesting about them. And that doesn’t mean you have to be a model or a standup comedian. You just have to find your unique perspective on the world and share it so people who enjoy that perspective can find you.
You have to have something more than just music because there is so much music out there, music isn’t enough on its own to build an audience and career.
Courage
The reason most people choose the easier life path of working a job they feel meh about and living mostly in regret of what they could have done instead, is that following your dreams requires an incredible amount of courage.
It takes courage to step out on a stage for the first time.
To sing a brand new song in front of people not knowing if they’ll react well.
To pursue a life of creativity even when family and friends think you’re crazy.
To have the audacity to create something from nothing and put it out into the world for other people to connect with - or not.
To keep going even when you’ve been rejected or you think you’ve failed.
It’s easy to create a reel that goes viral (trust me, the algorithm has a basic set of rules and if you follow them, you WILL go viral) but it’s hard af to keep putting yourself and your music out there when you’re not sure how people will respond to you or if they’ve responded badly in the past.
Fear is a sign that whatever you’re about to do is worth it. That you’re moving outside of your comfort zone into the growth zone. That you’re choosing a courageous life over a cowardly one.
Find your courage and don’t let fear hold you back from what you want to achieve. Your fear is there to tell you that you’re moving in the right direction (unless you’re literally on the edge of a cliff.. then fear is telling you to take 6 steps back towards safety!).
The reason most people fail at building a music career is because they believe they can outsource the required hard work either to a magic algorithmic hack, to paid ads, or to someone else to do the work for them.
It IS possible to build a highly successful career in music, and you might be one of the few who manage it. But to do so you need to do more than stay up late at night googling “tricks for growing an audience online”. You need to do more than hire a social media manager to promote your music for you or even a marketing coach to teach you how to do it yourself. You need to do more than just make nice music and hope for the best.
To build a successful career in music you need to dramatically shift your mindset.
You need to find the courage to do the hard work. You need to figure out what your unique charisma is and why people will connect with you. And then you need to show up consistently and do the work, even when it seems hard and even when you don’t feel like it.
And, I’m not going to lie to you, it’s tough work.
But it’s also so incredibly worth it.
This week I’m going to do my first open Q/A session for paid subscribers, so now is the perfect time to join our community of passionate independent musicians dedicated to building an amazing life in music. Join for as little as $5 a month (annual sub). In the Q/A paid subscribers can ask me anything and I’ll respond in a post.