Mid-Terms

We are stuck in our homes...everything’s closed or cancelled...which means we have more time than we did before, let’s not let that go to waste! This week well will discuss ways to Use this downtime to build your business, brand and musical biceps giving you actionable steps to put into your life right now

0:00:01.5 S1: Welcome to the show that explores the methods and strategies on lock in the financial side of your music business with over 40 years combined experience. Here are your host, Chris Webb and Dave takeo to Miss tip chart. We talk about musicians and money when we find ways to make your ass kicking sound a kick-ass asset.

0:00:23.7 S2: I'm your host, Chris web, joined my co-host, the head Boulder it, Dave Daman.

0:00:31.1 S1: Heady additive of liquor, poem intoxicating or having a strong or exhilarating effect. I'm not sure if you offer any of those to your episodes here, musicians, tiptree to my best.

0:00:46.9 S2: Well, here we are stuck in our homes, everything's closed and cancelled, which means we have more time than we did before, so let's not go and waste that time. This week, we will discuss ways for us to use this down time to build your business, your brand, your musical biceps, giving you the actionable steps to put into your life right now, right after this.

0:01:10.6 S1: Today's episode is brought to you by stone cottage studios. To believe that music and visual heart is transcending, has no borders, represents everyone and has the ability to live the heart and soul. They believe that music has the power to unite and light, motivate and inspire. To cottage studios provides a venue for musicians to reach their fans through video and audio production right here in Boulder, Colorado, check out their interview-based artist sessions, live stream events and filming and recording projects at stone cottage studios dot com.

0:01:43.9 S2: How do we make a transition to thinking longer term with our musical career? That's a big question, branching from those immediate ways to make some income that we try to cover in episode 1-5 to the more fundamental actions that create a sustainable business that is to set up and create a constant income and generate new business without you having to do constant work. We want you to be ready to capitalize on every opportunity when things start to return to normal, we'd like to remind everybody that these early episodes are meant to be more of a broad overview, pushing us to take action while we see the big picture, the music business tactics to help create big change, and we will deep dive into these individual topics in later episodes as we progress.

0:02:32.9 S1: I help that be elaborate more on this, but I think it's nice to get a nice... I think it's nice to get a nice vocabulary or not to eat the same word over and over again, but we'll get into more depth later on each of these topics over the week by failing to prepare, you prepare to fail. Benjamin Franklin House. I have another one, it takes as much energy to wish as it does to play in Lino Roosevelt, and perhaps my favorite of the three I had to add three

0:03:10.0 S2: This I love God as you can't tell. But there on I have is tomorrow belongs to the people who plan for it today. It's an African proverb.

0:03:21.6 S1: Those are all great. I wonder when the first one... The light bulb just went off.

0:03:28.0 S2: This week topic, we're gonna try to talk about three main areas updates, creating and planning. Let's start with updates. Let's take a look at everything that we've built and make sure that it's up-to-date so that when we do become busy again, everything will be ready to go. First thing that usually comes to mind, and something that we've talked about before is your bio...

0:03:56.6 S1: The last time I submit in my bio for a review for these home concerts of the East Coast, there's a panel of four or five people that read the bio and then would allow you either into this home concert community. And the feedback I got was, Who cares? He is just listing off his achievements, who he's played with, I know nothing about this musician, what does he stand for, what does he believe in, what is his reason for playing music? And that really made a difference on how I thought of my bio, did it make me change my bio to this point... To this episode, no, I have not changed my bio yet, but when I think about changing it... That's the first thing I'm gonna do. So hopefully by the time this episode airs, I have an awesome bio that this is why I play music, this is what I wanna give back to the world. And I think connecting to your reader on that level is very important, rather than just saying you are in Dirac, you've played with these musicians.

0:05:08.3 S2: Yeah, and I also like to push that people should write their own bios, I think they're too often we see it get third-partied out because you think it's a great solution to have a great writer do it for you, but the truth is, you should tell your own story, and it's sort of like, You should write your own song, and I think that's pretty true for most song writers that you can sing your own song better, so that's the first thing that I think people can do with their time. Another thing will be update your photos, even if that means just taking down photos that you don't wanna keep up anymore, if that photo doesn't look like you because it's 10 years old, perhaps you should take it down or 10 years younger, Chris. You could also then get updated photos, family, friends, local photographer neighborhoods also out of work, who do you gotta find that can help you update your photos, who's also out of work that you can't pay to take pictures of you. And then the third one I would also suggest would be to update your logo and your branding, that's something that obviously you can do the cheap way or the most expensive way, right now, we are in the process of getting our initial branding started for this podcast, and we did it the cheap way because that's when we're trying to practice what we preach here and try to experience all the things that we're gonna be recommending, and so we use the logo boutique for our first one, and it's very inexpensive, and I think it worked pretty well, they were responsive and it was functional...

0:06:47.3 S2: Easy to work with. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know if we'll keep it, but we'll keep it for the time being, and it's updated it, but other ones, like five or another option that we've mentioned before, they're a good place to go, another one is a website optimization.

0:07:08.8 S1: Well, I'd like to jump in here, and the first thing is if you type in your domain name and you don't have a secure website, that's the first thing that Google is gonna just kick you off for any searches, so you're not gonna come up first and also on most like Norton computers that just have a warning to say that this website is not secure, so you don't want that to be the first thing that someone sees when they go to your website. So I would take care of that right away. If you're on GoDaddy domain Monger, whoever, Squarespace, whoever is hosting that, Well, Square Space automatically secures it for you, but the others, I would definitely reach out and get that taken care of, the second, I would say make it easy for your fans and the people that are interested in finding more about you easy, easy titles. Have everything above the fold, bio music contact, tour or live streams. Now, where is your EP? Where can they see everything in one space? Where's your Facebook Instagram, tiktok? So make sure that everything is above the fold, and you have a call to action that says, once someone comes to your website, what do you want them to hear first, do you have an announcement fire, this is my new album, and they came out this date, or sign up for my newsletter, make sure it's somewhere easy for them to see, so it's a pop-up that might comp or also your newsletter, it request is about the fold, and How are you incentivizing them to sign up for your newsletter? Are you giving them free music...

0:08:43.3 S1: Well, if they have Spotify or iTunes, they already have that. So what else is the VIP experience that you could bring your fans in and say, This is worth my email, I wanted to offer this up to this musician and continue to follow them.

0:08:59.7 S2: Also, when you're doing all that, you wanna also make sure that it all fits into your brand and it all fits into your niche... Absolutely, and it may be that you wanna think about the niche prior to doing all that work, 'cause you don't wanna have to do this twice when it comes to what the pictures are, what's it all gonna have... Is there gonna be a theme to it, like maybe spend a little time watching some YouTube videos about ways to keep a brand unified, and spend a little time trying to dream up what you want us to look like and how it fits with your sound and try to give yourself a very defined brand, somebody once told me that the easiest way to do that is to create an avatar, and then this person has to basically be everything that you think your direct fan loves. Where do they shop? How do they dress? What are the music to this to... What's the favorite movies? If you can create an avatar that has a thing, you're basically answering a lot of the questions about your niche, so that's a pretty cool way to try

0:09:51.7 S1: It. I sent you a few avatars that I thought we can use for each other just for our promo material, and you weren't so much on the fan of cartoons, and maybe we're gonna have to talk about that a little bit later, so I'd like to see a cartoon Chris.

0:10:08.8 S2: I do love The Simpsons, and if you could SimCity us and then maybe that's the way to go, another one to do is to check your pros, which is your public performance organization, and make sure that that is up-to-date. I think a lot of us will sign up for ASCAP or BMI or CSA, and then walk away, you don't really keep up with it. And those people are working for you. That is the job of them, and we'll spend an episode on that stuff, but at least make sure you remember your log in to get somewhere, and then find out is all of your music still attached correctly, are all of the songs that you have out in the world, even if they are co-writes, are they categorized correctly, because if they aren't, a lot of these are the things that we're gonna talk about in the more advanced levels are gonna make no difference to you because no money is coming back if they're not...

0:11:04.2 S1: Another thing I think would be important, I mentioned capturing emails, but look at other email services as far as MailChimp kinds of content, bangle, Squarespace has its own, but you can also connect it to any of those, a plug-in that just not only captures an email, but your fan's name. So when you can write them an email and you can say, Hey, Frank, from the sounds, I'm coming to Chicago, you wanna be able to see where that IP addresses and say, Okay, well, this is the city that they live in, so you could email the list when you want to announce a new album, but if you're coming to their town, you don't want to have a tour of the West Coast and you're nowhere near in New York, but you're emailing all of them for that week of that announcement for the whole tour. Sure. Email the whole list and then you can start to IoT. And I think that's very important. And while you're doing that, be able to track who's opening your emails, how many people are opening them, how many people are clicking on certain parts of your email, if you can't tell if it's working...

0:12:17.8 S1: How are you gonna improve on it? And I think we need to pay attention to that. 'cause you can improve otherwise.

0:12:25.4 S2: Well, and like we've mentioned before, and so many people say emails are internet real estate, that is the most valuable asset you can create and manage well, in order to really solidify your fan base with the stuff going on with Facebook right now, and they're getting sued. There's talk of it being dismantled like this, I don't think that will happen, but it sort of reminds you, this is why email is so important. In all these people that have 60000 followers and their Facebook could be gone, could just disappear, and if they didn't keep those emails and gather emails from those fans and make sure they have that secure way to keep in contact with, engage with them on... They're gonna be here. We'll spend... This is great, this is such a great topic on the email, 'cause I need to do this, I have a big email list, but it is not organized, and so when we get to that episode, I'm gonna be the only one writing down and you're gonna be the only one talking because I have a lot of work to do on that.

0:13:27.1 S1: Well, something to pay attending to now and again for a later episode, but... Text is gonna be the new thing. Email is gonna slowly become something of the past because everyone's email boxes are undated with so much you'll be missed, so what's that phone number worth that you can get your fan phone number that they want to hear from you every time you have a new announcement that you can text them. So there's platforms like community that is growing larger every day right now, but we can touch on that later, I just thought something to looking to always be prepared to see what's coming up next.

0:14:07.7 S2: Another area that a lot of people overlook are contracts and agreements, this is something that I, as somebody who performs a lot for four higher gigs, such as weddings and corporate events, I have finally gotten to a point where I have these templates, these contract agreement templates that I can know, just grab in my files and then just fill in the blanks for that individual event, I know that all of my needs are gonna be in there, all my requirements are gonna be in there, and it saves me so much time, but I think a lot of people, especially some of the students that I coach at the university, some of the stuff has never even crossed her mind, so it isn't hard to find... You can Google them and find one that fits what you need, and then just you spend some time making sure that it says, Oh, I need to be out of the shade, or I need power within... I don't know, five meters or whatever it is that you decide that your requirements are grapes as if the only red grapes that are organic and... Those kind of things need to be on that.

0:15:11.9 S2: And then once it's done, it's done. And that a lot of times that does. You have to update it, you're in, rates might have changed, your address, might have changed, things like that, so this is an opportunity for everyone to just check in on that and make sure it's well organized.

0:15:25.6 S1: Seem with the W-9. Make sure you have a up-to-date W9 and have your EIN number ready handy to send out with that as well, and stage Plato that changes have one for every version of your set up, so you don't have to make a new one every time someone requests one.

0:15:44.8 S2: Subscriptions or another area where a lot of people have kind of neglected to keep an eye on what they're subscribed to, and I think just even the... An immediate concept that you could reduce your bills, because you don't realize you're paying for Spotify twice, or you're signed up for that package that includes three other services that you never use, I know that that sounds like something that will save you 20 bucks or 30 bucks a month, but man, it adds up, and a lot of us... We just don't pay attention to it.

0:16:20.2 S1: Well, true Bill is one that hits all your cards and lets you know that you have a bill coming up, so if you forgot about something or a subscription that you might have signed up for 11 months ago, and your yearly subscription is coming up and you don't want it for the next year, that's something that'll just pin your email and let you know you better, or the app for that matter, which is also good, and means that... The same for me.

0:16:50.8 S2: Yeah, which brings us to invoicing and accounting, certainly, if you do not create a budget, you need to get a budget going, there should be a separate budget for your business and for you, you're home or family. So that's another great way to spend your time right now is just, I recommend using Mint and QuickBooks, which are both owned by Intel, that would be a good place to start because they're free for independent contractors, you can get a small account with QuickBooks that's free, and you can link it with your minds, which we'll do your budgeting, and it's about as easy I can get everything syncs with your card, with your business cards in your accounts, but it's so valuable to keep track of stuff, and obviously we are just brushing over these things right now, and I could talk about budgeting all day, which

0:17:45.8 S1: I understand. We're gonna budget, Chris.

0:17:49.9 S2: That's right. We're gonna keep track of every cent we spend, and we're gonna cuisine two of our conversation today is about creating, now using your time wisely while you have less going on to create is probably one of the most valuable things we can be doing for our art. But it's not just something that we should be treating. Is a random thing. I like to make it more intentional. And so the four areas that we just kind of listed out is creating time chunks for songwriting, creating video content, which usually would use for your social media platforms and practice, practice practice, practicing that without that foundation of what you're showing up for every day is one of the most important things you can do, and if you're having a hard time getting motivated for it, just recently, I called two friends in Chicago and every Sunday, we check in with each other just to show what we did this week.

0:18:56.2 S1: You know... Did you get this much time in... And if you don't wanna talk about it, just in recording of yourself doing what you were doing at the begin, the... At the end of the week, and it's just kind of one way to check in with each other, you know, keep me motivated.

0:19:11.0 S2: Number three in our section is gonna be about planning. Now, this is a broad umbrella here that we're trying to give you a broad scope of ways to plan and use this time, like we say in that beginning of... Be failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. And that's what we're talking about with planning, the first thing you should really do is to create a goal list, and that could be anything from, I'm gonna teach this much, I'm gonna play this many shows or live streams, I'm gonna have this much in sales per month, those are the kind of goals we're talking about.

0:19:50.1 S1: And you can divide that up a daily... Maybe just pick two things in each category and say, This is how I'm gonna start my day, hopefully it is something profit-driven for you to make sure you can take care of yourself and fund these endeavor Enders to something that's creative and fun. And then three, make sure that you're giving back to your community, and it's something that inspires you to... How about others? And I think the combination of those three things, if you can get six things done to each every day and move down that list and prioritize them, you're probably doing a lot more than most.

0:20:29.2 S2: Perhaps the best place to start is just making a 12-month goal and just start saying, Okay, from wherever we are in 20, 21 in the next 12 months, this is what's on my list, and then start breaking it down in... Say this, Give me the first half of the year, the second is the second half of the year, and then break that down into the month, break that down into the weeks, and then... There's this great book called The One Thing. And it was what I call the one thing.

0:20:57.8 S1: No, I know, but

0:20:58.3 S2: Tell me what that one... On the next call it, you break down basically all the way down to doing one thing that would get the most progress each day, and you start with that one thing, and that's the first thing that you do. Creating a one and a three and a five-year goal would be something else that if this 12 month is too easy for you, then you can branch out to the three and five years, I can say that it's a daunting thing to do, and it's something that you can be willing to let change as you go, and you re-evaluate it every year, so that five-year gets pushed out here, but it's worth doing, especially if this is your business, and you're seeing if other is like, Well, how are you ever gonna make money it's really nice to be able to say, Well, here's my five-year plan, and the same goes for your parents, if you're just about to graduate college and how your parents are like, Great, now you have a mess degree, now what... This is a way to back yourself up, and it's really something that every business needs to have, so there's no reason that the musicians to get a free pass on such a very fundamental part of a business as a plan.

0:22:04.8 S2: The last one too, on this list of planning will be social media tactics.

0:22:09.3 S1: One thing with social media tactics, I think it's important to represent your brand and make sure when people see something that you post, that they can almost tell that it's you without even seeing your handle for that. And if anything engage them, ask them questions, it's called social for a reason, so if you're blasting them all the time about you, you... You think you're missing the point. And if anything, try to connect and bring them back to your website so you can get their newsletters or in the future to their phone number, so you can reach someone, you need you.

0:22:42.5 S2: And the last one on that list is a set of schedule, and that means that you basically wanna try to plan out these times every day, and I know we all have challenges on this, I have two little kids, and they drive me crazy 'cause they're always home right now, and so my wife and I have to... We have to give and take what we need in order to continue progressing individually with our work... It's easier for her because she has a 95 essentially job. That basically has an expectation of when she's gonna be working in mind, doing this is a much harder thing to say, I need this half an hour block every day for that, and I wanna have six of these half an hour blocks. And so I understand that this is hard, but I wanted to give you guys sort of an example of what a day would ideally look like, so this is just an outline, 80 AM practice, make sure you have something you're specifically focusing on during your practice, 900 am song writing, 100 am recording or tracking, 11 video or social media content updating or preparing the videos for social media, noon workout all and bam.

0:23:58.3 S2: Take a break. See the kids, make sure that I still alive. 20 PM emails, social media posts, updates to five would be more focused business attention stuff like updates and planning topics, and after 50 PM, it's nice if you can shut it down if you've gotten all that time and that focus, then after 50 PM, you can be present with your family, you can do things that you want to do with the rest of your day and make that the purpose of that time, which is just as valuable... You mean

0:24:28.7 S1: A good point? That you make it habit, and sometimes people feel like even song writing as something that it's hard to show up to... I only write when I'm creative. Well, if you show up to be creative every day, your chances of being creative or a higher percentage than if you weren't showing up to do that, so I think that's important to make some time for it.

0:24:53.6 S2: So that's basically the outline of a day in an ideal situation, right? And then we all loners are gonna look differently depending on our situations, but these are the kind of things that you have to be done intentionally, and with this time that we have this extra bit of time or this unusual change in our lifestyle, it's great an opportunity to have to create new habits and find ways to use this time as best you can, so we're gonna give you some actionable steps here to motivate you and get started on using some of these ideas. Number one, schedule your time, block those windows out, build that habit, they say it takes about 60 days to make it to have it actually stick. Number two, analyze what is gonna be your top priority, look at that book, the one thing, and the concept that there's gonna be one thing, if you keep looking, there's one thing that will move everything else the most by doing that one thing. Find that one thing and make it at your top priority each day, number three, make you one... Your goal, start there. Figure out where you are and where you wanna be in one year.

0:26:08.4 S2: And make that the first thing to do, it's fun. You can take a hike or whatever, you can just get out and get some fresh air and just write down no Jay walk by the time done with that walk, you can look down and you can see that you have a year's worth of goals, and now you can break them down and try to figure out actionable steps within there, and that is number four, and actually follow through one thing with that last step visually, sometimes people are better with seeing that they've actually finished each step. So I have a calendar and I have a different market next to my desk, and when I finished practicing, it's a red when I get my work on it, it's a blue when I get my business done, it's a black, so I can see how I'm doing throughout the day and then it could just as easily turn into something that's using those markers and it doesn't become so heavy or heavy.

0:27:06.0 S1: Absolutely. See, I brought that back to the beginning of the episode.

0:27:10.6 S2: And we're gonna try to create a little form, a general form that we use, that maybe we can all kind of share and uses our template that will be on our notes, and hopefully that's something make and download for free from the coming to our website. If Dave, if they wanna get a hold of us and ask questions or make suggestions, what's the best way to do that?

0:27:30.9 S1: Well, come to us out at musicians tip jar dot com, or you can send us an email at musicians jar at gmail dot com, and we'd love to hear your ideas too. So send us an email. Let us know how you do it. And as always, thank you for joining us and remember, there's already enough for everyone, you just need to know how to get it. Until next time, on behalf of day, tampon and myself, Peeples day say, stay healthy and take care of each other. Great results have never happened by accident. This is musician. Steve, nothing on this show should be considered a veneration advice, please consult an appropriate tax legal dissonant Al professional or individualized advice. Individual results are not guaranteed and oldest or strategies have the potential of a property loss, those are operating on behalf of musicians, Timur, LL and he exclusively.