Everything They Didn't Teach You in Music School
I really needed this reminder!
This tweet completely sums up the creative process for me in 11 words.
And from a storytelling angle, I love how Josh chose to illustrate his point. Not only the words but also the spacing.
This is a powerful reminder for whenever I feel like I am constantly running uphill!
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
—Joan Didion
This quote got me fired up so I’m passing it along.
Live recklessly. Take chances. Seize the moment.
In this clip from Episode 181 of The Brass Junkies, the incredible Kevin Newton of Imani Winds shares what his mindset was before heading into graduate school.
I will play this clip for every single student I have who is entering graduate school.
It is remarkable when someone as young as he was is this intentional about their life.
For so many students, graduate school is what comes after undergrad and that’s as far as the soul searching goes for exactly why they want to get a graduate degree.
But Kevin saw graduate school as having a specific role in the development of his career and he crushed it.
We can all learn from this kind of awareness while heading into any new chapter of our lives!
Entrepreneur Brian Clark likes to say that it’s easier to make yourself an authority on something than you might think. He argues that anyone who reads two books on any subject will know more than 98% of the world about that topic.
Reading two books about marketing is obviously not going to make you an expert. But any entrepreneurial musician who reads Purple Cow by Seth Godin and Influence by Dr. Robert Cialdini is going to know significantly more than 98% of their peers about marketing and sales.
The great news is you don’t need to be a true expert on marketing to have your messaging stand out among your competition. You just have to be a little more curious, a little more intentional and a little more remarkable with your marketing to have it be something which sets you apart from the crowd.
Remember, obscurity as the result of blending in is the biggest threat to any artist today. If you apply the proven and effective ways of getting your message out that Godin and Cialdini lay out in those famous books, your marketing and messaging will be remarkable and as a result your music will cut through the noise.
Of course this doesn’t only apply to marketing. This principle applies to any aspect of a portfolio career.
In my experience, a lot of musicians spend almost all of their time on their music and close to none on learning how to make their website easier to navigate, their networking more meaningful or their social media presence more useful and relevant to the people they are trying to reach.
All of this provides a great opportunity for any musician willing to put in the work. And that work can be as simple as reading two books.
“Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.”
The problem with choosing unhappiness over uncertainty is that uncertainty is where all growth comes from.
Seth Godin calls it tension which he defines as not knowing whether something is going to succeed or not.
The happiest people I know in the music business intentionally put themselves in situations where they don't know whether it's going to go well or not. And they do it regularly.
This goes for teachers attempting to teach new material or teaching old material in a brand new way. This goes for performers playing in new genres or completely reimagining some aspect of performance. This goes for musicians trying new approaches in the practice room.
It can be applied to literally any aspect of the music business.
The bottom line is you must lean into the tension and away from the certainty. You'll be happy you did.
This tweet is from the @TEMCoaching Twitter feed.
Here’s why you should actually be praying that there’s no map to take you where you want to go:
If there’s a map, you won’t be the first person to use it. And if by some miracle you are, others will follow that same map after you do.
When multiple people follow the same map they are fungible. If you are fungible, the only differentiator is price point which is a race to the bottom.
If a number of people can do what you do, you are by definition replaceable. When you are replaceable you don’t have much job security and will be compensated accordingly.
As a result, if we are headed somewhere professionally where there is already a map we must do so with our eyes wide open. Even if we follow the map perfectly we may very well not like what is waiting for us.
So we have to make our own map. Sounds great, right?
But there’s a problem.
If you don’t have practice doing it, making a map is hard, uncomfortable and can be terrifying.
When we follow someone else’s map and don’t like where it took us, we can get mad at the map. Or at the person who made the map.
When we make our own map and don’t like the results, the only person to blame is staring back at us in the mirror. That’s the scary part.
Think of any project where you make the map, big or small, like opening a physical store.
When you open your store in someone else’s building and over time grow to not like certain aspects of that building, you can blame others. Why would they not put the main door on the front of the store? Why is there not more storage space? Why would they make the overhead sign so small?
But when you find a completely empty lot and design and build your own store, it’s all on you. Not the ideal location? You chose it! Space too small? You designed it!
The exact same thing applies to starting your own thing. Get a teaching job where the faculty meetings are tedious and pointless? You can judge the powers that be and roll your eyes at the bureaucracy from the back of the room. Partner with someone on a business or a project and the meetings you have aren’t efficient or productive? That’s on you and you are one of the few people who can do something about it.
That’s why it is so much scarier to make your own map, to build your own building. When you ask to speak to the manager you are talking to yourself!
The store analogy is also why there is not one correct answer to questions like “What should I put on my website?” or “What goes in my bio or resume?” That’s like asking “What’s the best location for my store?” What are you selling? Who are you selling it to? The answer to questions like this are always unique to the person or business.
When there is a “correct” answer to questions like these, or when we act as if there is, that means there’s already a map made and as I’ve already mentioned above, that’s a problem.
But there’s another problem.
Guess what almost none of us learned how to do in school? How to make our own map!
With very rare exceptions, every class, from kindergarten through graduate school, has to tell you precisely what you need to do to get a good grade before the class starts. The teachers are literally required to hand you a map. It even has a name. It’s called a syllabus.
If you are diligent about following the map you will get a good grade. That’s the deal. Follow the entire map on the schedule that is laid out and you will get an A, which is the main goal of the vast majority of students I have taught over the years.
The problem is that doesn’t do much to prepare us for doing any meaningful work once we are no longer in school.
(And this goes without saying, but there are some incredible teachers who manage to train students to be creative and draw their own maps even within the confines of being required to give those same students maps. But they are awfully rare in my experience as a student and a teacher.)
I don’t say this to drag school! I say this because it is possible to excel at school for a couple of decades and never develop the single most important skill needed to succeed in the world today: making your own map. Just about every person I know who has succeeded in blazing their own path in the music business realized at some point after graduation that were was a lot of things they were never taught in school and made a plan to figure it out on their own.
When the amazing Amanda Gookin started the Forward Music Project, she was not handed the equivalent of a syllabus with a checklist that said do these things on this schedule and your project will get traction and have an impact on the world. John Mackey was not told do X then Y then Z and your band music will resonate deeply with many people. Aaron Dworkin was not told how to turn The Sphinx Organization from a great idea into an actual thing that is having a profound impact on the world.
None of them had a map. If they were given one, none of them would have created art that has impacted the world so profoundly because others would have already done it. They made their own maps. Ideas are the easy part. It’s executing them that is so difficult. That’s why you need your own map.
So to sum it up, if you follow a preexisting map you won’t have much job security or make much of an impact. And making your own map is so scary because you will have no one else to blame if it doesn’t go well and because none us have much practice in making our own map until we take it upon ourselves to start doing it.
So start today!
Your first few maps won’t be nearly as good as your 20th map. That’s the way it works for everyone! But you have to have a 3rd map in order to get to a 20th map.
The world desperately needs more people like you to make your own map. Good luck!
“Of course, we don’t create contribution by flitting from one thing to another whenever things get difficult. But we also sell ourselves short (and harm the people we’d be able to serve) if we’re unable to quit a project that’s gone sideways.
What happened yesterday already happened. It’s a gift and an asset from your previous self. You don’t have to accept if you don’t want to.”
Don’t miss this powerful blog post from Seth Godin on sunk costs and knowing when to quit.
What an incredible perspective here from Gary Vaynerchuk. Short and sweet.
I needed this!
“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”
―Leo Babauta
If you aren't in love, really and truly IN LOVE, with some aspect of your life or career, make a change. What are you waiting for?
Far too often I see people (myself included!) continuing to do something they don't love because they lack the courage to make a change. But rest assured, any time I am not making a change because I'm afraid of the uncertainty on the other side of it, I tell myself a great story that involves all sorts of reasons other than fear to justify it in my head. And I always believe that story, too!
I can't tell you how many TEM Coaching clients I've had over the years who wrestled with a decision that to me as an outsider was an obvious one and when they finally made it they were ecstatic they did.
And I would be remiss to not point out that even though I'm someone who gets paid to help people make these kinds of decisions that I still struggle with making them myself occasionally!
Derek Sivers has a great formula for living life. He says if it's not a &@#$ yes, it's a no. If you are presented with an opportunity (or considering staying in a current one), a no is obviously a no. A maybe is also a no. Derek says that even a yes is a no. The only things he recommends you say yes to are ones that are a &@#$ yes!
Circling back to the above quote, doing anything that I'm not fully and 100% into feels like wasting the gift that is the life we have left. We have to do what matters today because we aren't guaranteed even one more day. There is no time like the present.
This is of course an oversimplification. There are lots of reasons to not simply cut loose an aspect of your portfolio career or your life in general, especially during a pandemic.
Health insurance. Shelter. Food on the table. Stability for yourself or your family. None of these are optional.
But even while checking these vital boxes, we all have more control over how we choose to spend our precious time than we sometimes realize. This is a point that I’ve seen made over and over again in the books that have had the biggest impact on me. It's also a point I've seen the people I look up to model repeatedly through their actions.
In my professional career I’ve quit four college teaching jobs and two professional brass quintets and every single time it was a good decision for me and for them. Anyone reading this is busy just like me. Any time we say yes to anything, we are by definition saying no to other things.
Saying yes to something you like but don’t love or to something that doesn’t have much impact on the world is saying no to doing more important work with the limited amount of time you have left on this earth.
It’s a cliche but this isn’t a dress rehearsal! We only get one crack at this. That’s why I am constantly trying to evaluate my priorities and always trying to have the courage to make difficult decisions. Those decisions will never end in my career and in life so all I can do is face them. Because putting off a difficult decision becomes a decision in and of itself.
Do what matters, now.
Wow! The mastery. The passion. The swagger. Musicians who play with this much conviction, both technically and emotionally, tend to have lots of success in the music business.
— Andrew Hitz (@AndrewHitz) March 2, 2020
These two minutes are a hell of a way to start the day! https://t.co/uLuLHuh4rP
This gymnastics routine from UCLA student Nia Dennis went viral for a reason.
She has obviously spent an untold number of hours acquiring the skills to become an elite gymnast. But there are lots of people who do that who don’t end up making my radar. So what’s different about her performance?
The conviction she displays in this routine is astounding.
You can tell that she wants to scream this routine from the rooftops. That she feels it in every bone in her body. That comes through with vivid clarity.
As I mentioned in the tweet above, musicians who can play with this much conviction, not just on how they are playing but on why they are doing it in the first place, almost always have a huge impact on their corner of the world.
And income follows impact.
(ICYMI The Savvy Musician’s David Cutler talked about the link between income and impact in TEM40)
So we should all take note of this amazing young woman, even though (to my knowledge) she has nothing to do with music. If we perform/teach/coach/produce/compose with the same conviction that she displayed in this routine, we will develop true fans.
The sky is the limit if you keep doing that day after day over a prolonged period of time. You just have to keep showing up.
**Godin on looking for solutions and why long-standing problems can be hard to solve.https://t.co/tULGfglgMc
— TEM Coaching (@TEMCoaching) January 13, 2020
Some good stuff from Seth Godin including a reminder that solutions can often be found in places that feel uncomfortable, risky or difficult.
“Waiting for perfect is a never-ending game.”
—Seth Godin from his blog post “More right”
Your website will never be perfect.
(No website has ever been better at sales conversions than Amazon yet they are constantly tweaking and improving it which means it’s not perfect.)
Your book will never be perfect.
(You can always do just a little more research before you actually start writing. Or a little more editing before you share it with the world.)
Your presentation will never be perfect.
(Oprah has never given a perfect speech or conducted the perfect interview. She has too much self-awareness to ever think anything couldn’t be improved somehow.)
Your pitch will never be perfect.
(You can always tighten things up or add one more contextual detail that will resonate just a little more with your target audience.)
Your performance will never be perfect.
Even if you “hit” every note and make no “mistakes”, the interpretation could always be a little better or more informed.
Your video will never be perfect.
You can always get the lighting just a little bit better or make some subtle improvements to the script.
Waiting for “perfect”, whatever the hell that even means, is simply a form of hiding. Possibly the best advice I ever received was either do the thing as well as you can at that moment in time and then share it with the world or don’t do the thing at all.
Because waiting for perfect is a never-ending game.
A photo of my dog for no reason other than it makes me happy.
— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) August 26, 2018
Vaynerchuk nails it here like he always does.
Plan for the long game and good things will happen. Chances are almost zero that you will be a success quickly.
The distance between what you're doing and what it is you want is as thin as the thread that sews on your button. It is a matter of your tenacity, your courage, your honesty about your ability, and your gratitude. You can pretty much accomplish what's on your mind.—@hwinkler4real pic.twitter.com/lwtsfwVT6A
— Portfolio Composer (@theportcomposer) August 15, 2018
Oh man if I were the tattoo type and I was looking for a really long tattoo this would be a good candidate! I love how one good quote can fire me the hell up!
(You can listen to the entire Henry Winkler interview with James Altucher from which that quote is taken plus read a summary of the best points he makes here.)
Examples of investing in yourself:
— Ramit Sethi (@ramit) June 26, 2018
- Books
- Courses
- Conferences
- Taking someone interesting out to coffee
- Going to a party where you might meet interesting people + new friends
Those are the obvious ones.
What are the non-obvious examples of investing in yourself?
What a beautiful way of thinking about this. Every time I read a nonfiction book, I am investing in my business skills, musicianship or teaching abilities. Any time I read a fiction book, I am investing in my imagination.
I have taken plenty of online courses, attended conferences and master classes, and done any number of other things to invest in myself over the years. I had just never really thought of it that way.
But Ramit's framing of it will only help to ensure that I'll keep plugging away on my current book (Gary Vaynerchuk's Crushing It!) so I can get on to the next investment.
"Quitting merely because you’re behind is a trap, a form of hiding that feels safe, but isn’t. The math is simple: whatever you switch to because you quit is another place you’re going to be behind as well."
—Seth Godin
Yet another truth bomb from Seth Godin.
You are always behind so using that as the primary reason to bail on something is just an excuse. Try to get to the heart of why you don't want to continue so you can decide if that is in fact the best thing for you moving forward.
Don't fall for the trap.
A mentor once taught me to evaluate my belief systems by observing my actions rather than my thoughts.
If you are an entrepreneur who only “finds” a couple of days a week to work on your business and yet somehow are able to watch Netflix every day, you believe you can succeed while prioritizing Netflix over your business.
If you would ideally spend money to properly market your entrepreneurial endeavor but don’t have the budget yet you go out for drinks every weekend, you believe that going out for drinks is more important than getting the news out about your product or service to the very people it could help.
If you’ve been talking about spending money to market a product or service but can’t afford it while simultaneously going out for drinks every weekend, you believe that going out for drinks is more important than getting the news out about what you have to offer.
If you are always tired from not getting enough sleep yet you spend a full hour on your phone at night before you go to bed, you believe that scrolling through Instagram or TikTok is more important than that extra hour of sleep and the productivity boost that science promises it will bring.
If you are learning to improvise but you transcribe one solo a year rather than one solo a week, you believe you can learn how to play jazz by transcribing far fewer solos than just about anyone who came before you and successfully learned the language of jazz.
Let me make one thing very clear: It is very much okay to prioritize going out with friends every weekend over having a marketing budget.
The problem occurs when our actions don't align with our goals. And especially when we don't realize it.
So what can you do about it? Here are some steps I propose to make sure you are on the same page with yourself.
Action Steps:
Write down your 1-year, 2-year and 3-year goals. Be specific. Only specific goals are measurable and only measurable goals can get you into the feedback loop that is essential for success.
Take a week to document your actions. How long are you spending doing each activity? Which activities are you doing during your most productive hours of the day? Write it down. Consider this an audit of your behavior. Be brutally honest about it.
Figure out exactly where your actions are not 100% aligned with achievement of your 1-year, 2-year and 3-year goals and write down what changes will help bring them into alignment.
I once heard someone say that when setting goals, people frequently commit to doing way too much when making one-year goals and don't commit to nearly enough when making five-year goals. That's why I suggest one-year, two-year and three-year.
But do whatever works for you!
And remember, a goal that's not written down is just a wish.
So stop thinking about what you should be doing and examine what you actually are doing. Then use this data to make sure those actions are aligned with your clearly defined goals. If you do all of the above steps regularly the sky is the limit!
"Begin in the middle."
—Seth Godin
That's from yet another concise and to the point blog post from my spirit animal, Seth Godin.
How many times have you started watching a YouTube video, Instagram story or Facebook video and you end up clicking 'next' within 10 seconds.
There is lots of data that a whole lot of us do this most of the time. There is way too much content out there to consume for us to stick with a video, podcast episode, blog post, ebook or Netflix series that doesn't immediately grab our attention.
So when creating content we've got two options:
Complain to anyone who will listen about how technology is ruining attention spans and yearn for the glory days when things used to be so much better and blah blah blah
We can begin in the middle
As Seth challenges us to do in that blog post, begin in the middle. Begin with the good part. Provide value to your listener/viewer/reader as soon as you have their attention. They will always be happy you did.
As a side note, that is exactly what I love about Seth Godin's blog posts. They are "high protein" as I like to call them. He gets right to the point. Like, every single day.
And that is precisely why of all the blogs in the world, his is the only one I have delivered to my inbox every day of every week. I can't imagine life without his blog and a big part of that is because I don't have to sift through the pleasantries to get to the good stuff.
If beginning in the middle works for Seth, it can work for the rest of us, too.
I highly recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic. It is a wonderful read that really helped my perspective on my art, my career and my life.
One of my favorite things in the book is her recognizing out loud that her best work is almost certainly behind her.
What does she mean by that? She is the author of the blockbuster best-seller turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts, Eat, Pray, Love.
She is right. There is almost no chance she will write another book that will sell that many copies, that will affect that many lives. Big Magic has been hugely successful and it hasn't been a drop in a bucket compared to Eat, Pray, Love. And they aren't turning into a movie starring Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep any time soon.
But so what? The only person in the world who can let that almost certainly accurate observation affect or even grind to a screeching halt her creative output is her.
She's the only one with that power.
All of us throw up roadblocks all the time. And its always for one reason and one reason only: fear.
The only surefire way to guarantee no one thinks the book after your blockbuster didn't live up to its predecessor is by never writing it! But that sure seems like a silly decision to make out of fear.
You might be saying, "If only I had the privilege of worrying about people being disappointed with the book (or album or movie or whatever) after my global smash hit!" Yeah, I don't have that problem either.
But we all can sell ourselves from time to time on narratives that are very similar. We would never say these things out loud to friends or colleagues because they would instantly point out that we were being ridiculous. But the crazy and terrifying thing is that we totally buy this bullshit when it is just a one-sided conversation in our head! Some possible examples:
"My performance of the Bach Goldberg Variations will never be as good as Glenn Gould's so why bother."
Here's the problem. No one wants another version of Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations. (Full disclosure: His 1981 recording of that might be my single desert island recording of any piece of music in any genre ever.) But he already played that. Who gives a shit if some tuba playing podcast host thinks that's the gold standard? If you have a version inside of you, for the love of all things holy share it with us!
"I've always composed for choir in the past and really don't know anything about wind ensemble so even though I'm interested in learning, I know my writing won't ever be as good as John Mackey's or even my choral writing so I'll just drag my feet and never start, or at the very least never share it with anyone."
No, you won't speak with as clear a voice as John Mackey does when you first start writing for wind ensemble. But here's the problem with this one: Nor did John Mackey when he first started out! You know how John Mackey got to be "John Mackey" and Dale Trumbore got to be "Dale Trumbore" in the choral world: By composing their first piece and then composing another one. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Everyone has to start somewhere.
"I could never produce an album that sounds as good Dark Side of the Moon so I'll just stick to playing bass (even though my shifting passions really are leaning strongly towards producing.)
And you may already know what I'm going to say here, but Alan Parsons, who produced the Pink Floyd masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon, didn't start at that level. He was an assistant at Abbey Road when the Beatles recorded their album by that name and then went on to work on many albums in a variety of capacities. The point is he learned from some of the best in the business and wasn't intimidated that he wasn't a finished product the day he first walked into Abbey Road.
So take the road that Elizabeth Gilbert has and tell those internal voices that are always trying to derail you to go screw. Like any other skill, you get better at it with practice.
The world needs your art. So don't talk yourself into selfishly hiding it from the world.
Here's a 42-word blog post from Seth Godin that will have you thinking for a good while.
In other news, how the hell does he say so much in so few words?!