Quartet #32: A Warning About Social Media's Effectiveness, 10 Secrets to Productivity and More!
#1 is must-read if you have any kind of professional social media presence. Things are getting bad and they are going to get worse by design.
But on a more positive note, #3 is a simple question that will reframe what you do and make everything you do better.
Oh and #2 is a warning to not be serving a sad salad like the one pictured above, charging like it's a fancy salad, and then wondering why no one is buying your salad!
And without further ado, here are this week's ideas...
Quartet of the Week
1. The Enshittification of Social Media (7-min read)
If you click on this you might wonder why a guy who has quit four different college jobs over the years is linking to a piece about academics sharing research online.
The reason is because this piece perfectly encapsulates my relationship with social media today: It does not work for business purposes like it used to.
The author points out how things have changed and predicts how they will change further - and I agree with every word of it.
10 years ago you could make something, share it with the audience you had built up over time and be sure it would spread to the people who had already chosen to hear from you. Those days are gone.
There will be a TEM episode about this in the not-too-distant future because it is really important. If you use social media for your portfolio career I can not recommend reading this enough.
2. Two Kinds of Salad (1-min read)
First an article about academia and then one about salad. No I have not been hacked.
This super quick read from Seth Godin shares an analogy that is perfect for musicians like us. I swear it feels like he is speaking directly to musicians with a portfolio career about 90% of the time - and yet he is simply talking to all marketers.
"Too often, freelancers end up offering just a boring salad. It feels safer than getting rejected. Or they pretend to offer a fascinating salad, but at the end, they lose their nerve and simply charge more than they should for a boring salad that’s pretending to be fascinating."
3. Constantly Ask What They Really Want (1-min watch)
Here's a big promise for a 1-minute video: Asking this simple question will make everything you do better.
4. Casey Neistat's 10 Secrets to Productivity (20-min watch)
This is a video by author Ryan Holiday about his friend and colleague Casey Neistat. This video is a good blend of philosophical and practical advice on how to be more productive.
What's New With TEM
No TEM episode the past couple of weeks but I have been hard at work making my first ever course for Hitz Academy called Networking for Musicians!
The music business has always been about who you know but that has never been the case more than it is right now in today's highly collaborative industry. Our art is dependent on networking with other creators. Finding an audience for our art is dependent on networking. And selling it is dependent on networking.
In this course I will share everything I have learned in a career that has featured gigs is almost 30 countries around the world - the good stuff and the mistakes I've made!
Release date is October 23rd with a presale date that will be announced soon.
My Final Thought of the Week
Here's a quote to send you on your way:
"Ideas are cheap. Ideas are easy. Ideas are common. Everybody has ideas. Ideas are highly, highly overvalued. Execution is all that matters."
—Casey Neistat
This can be hard to hear for someone like me who has way more ideas than follow through (although I'm making some real strides on that front!) But it is very much true.
If your business doesn't have a hard part then you don't have a business - and the hard part is never having a good idea!
It's having the courage to finish something and to share it with the world. That's the hard part! In a word: execution.
Glad I stumbled onto this quote because it confirmed what I already knew and is encouraging me to keep at it on the follow through front. I'm choosing to celebrate my recent progress today (see an actual launch date for my first course!)
Here's to having a creative week!
Cheers,
Andrew
The Entrepreneurial Musician
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