TEM94: The only true key to success (and yes there is one)

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TEM94: The only true key to success (and yes there is one)

There actually is one true key to success and this is it.

Topics Covered:

1:20 - 95% of the music business makes it incredibly easy to get along with them all of the time but your reputation is based almost entirely on how you deal with the other 5%

3:57 - Why it's so important to hold your tongue (and why that is incredibly true with any kind of written communication which has no tone and usually lacks context)

6:35 - The Gary Vaynerchuck 51/49 Rule

7:50 - The tale of a chamber group who ignored the 51/49 Rule, went for short-term gains above everything else and how it ended (Spoiler Alert: It didn't end well)

11:34 - The best advice I ever received from anyone about getting along with other people

16:21 - The importance of remembering that whatever gig you are playing is always important to the person who hired you, no matter the circumstances of the gig

Links:

TEM 92: Steve Dillon of Dillon Music on Passion, Becoming an Authority and Always Thinking
TEM 1: Ranaan Meyer of Time for Three
The Gary Vee Audio Experience

You can help me reach two specific goals I've set for TEM:

1. Help me get to $50 per episode on Patreon by pledging as little as $1 per episode to support the show:  https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast

2. Help me get to my goal of 50 ratings at iTunes by leaving a rating and review.

And finally, a huge thank you to Parker Mouthpieces for providing the hosting for TEM.

Produced by Joey Santillo

Why self-awareness is everything

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"Ideas are worthless without execution. Execution is pointless without the ideas."

—Gary Vaynerchuck from "#AskGaryVee: One Entrepreneur's Take on Leadership, Social Media, and Self-Awareness"

There aren't too many people in the world who are really great at both ideas and execution. There are some, but there aren't many.

If you are reading this right now, there is a very good chance you are great at one of these and only good at the other. Or great at one and average at the other.

This is why partnering with the right person (or people) is so imperative for anyone looking to be an entrepreneur. Find someone who compliments your strengths and weaknesses well and move forward with them. (That's why I partnered with this knucklehead to form Pedal Note Media.)

If you don't want to partner with anyone, outsource whatever it is you aren't great at. Even if you had the time to get great at everything (and if you're a human, you don't), I argue you shouldn't be wasting your time learning how to do these other things at the expense of spending more time doing the work you think will change the world.

And the key to all of this is self-awareness. If you are brutally honest with yourself about what you can and can't do, it informs who you partner with and even what you attempt to bring to the world in the first place.

Self-awareness informs the ideas and the execution. So the question is what can you do today to get a little more honest with yourself?

TEM33: Act like you belong (TEM Short)

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TEM33: Act like you belong (TEM Short)

As Sam Pilafian shared in Episode 32, you have to act like you belong no matter who you are talking to in the music business.

Links:

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer and Buddy Deshler of FredBrass

The danger of great marketing

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"If you're great at marketing and your product is $#&@ it actually exposes you quicker because they have more awareness of how sucky you are."

—Gary Vaynerchuck from The Ask Gary Vee Show: Startup Grind LA

I harp over and over again in speeches, on the podcast and on this blog that getting noticed is the number one obstacle in 2016 for any artist "making it" in the music business. This point can't be made too many times.

But Gary Vaynerchuck makes a really great point in that quote above.

If you spend a lot of time mastering your marketing and engaging your potential customers where they are hanging out you need to make sure that one thing is true: that your product isn't sucky (as Gary colorfully puts it.)

You need to be sure that what you are doing is worth getting noticed by a large number of people before you attempt to get their attention. Because with all of the options available to human beings in 2016, none of us are going to give you attention again if our first taste was terrible.

(Note: If you want to get fired up and don't mind some profanity, click the link above to hear Gary Vaynerchuck address Startup Grind LA. It is a two hour talk that flies by. It's crazy how much information and passion that guy can pack into one speech.)

Shows you should listen to: The #AskGaryVee Show

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The #AskGaryVee Show is an absolute must watch (or listen) for any musician with even one entrepreneurial bone in their body. It is hosted by Gary Vaynerchuck whose energy is manic and contagious.

askgaryvee.jpg

Gary is a marketing and entrepreneurial genius who is really great at quickly breaking down any topic or problem to its core and stripping away everything else.

His book "Crush It" is what led me to start andrewhitz.com which then led to Hitz Publications and eventually Pedal Note Media and The Entrepreneurial Musician. The passion he puts forth in that book made me believe that I could do anything I set out to do and I was off and running.

The #AskGaryVee Show is just Gary answering questions submitted by his fans. The episodes range from insightful to life changing. You never know when a nugget is going to fall out of his mouth.

You can find the show on YouTube as well as a podcast via iTunes or your favorite podcast app.