Everything matters

"Everything matters if you want to be great. If you want to be average, let it go." 

—Lee Cockerell (former Executive Vice President of Operations for Walt Disney World Resorts) 

This goes for performing. This goes for websites. This goes for using social media. This goes for photo shoots. This goes for your bio.

Warren Deck once said "The difference between good players and great players is not a few big things but a whole bunch of small things." I believe this to be true for every aspect of business as well.

Everything matters.

The danger of great marketing

"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.)

Two ingredients to success

So this seems pretty obvious at first glance but I think it is worth sharing.

This quote comes from one of the many podcasts I consume on a regular basis, Hack the Entrepreneur with Jon Nastor.

In episode 159, Bryan Cohen of the Sell More Books Podcast gave his advice for starting a business:

"Combine what you're strong at with what you're passionate about."

He goes into detail about this in the interview but the important part of that quote is the second half of it.

Not a single reader needs this blog post to tell them that they should pursue something they are good at. This is pretty obvious.

The reason that the passion is the important part of the above equation is that being an entrepreneur is really hard work. There have been times when hosting two regularly produced podcasts has not been at all convenient. If I wasn't passionate not only about making podcasts but also the subject matter that's being discussed there is no way I would still be doing them a year later.

If you need proof, check out how the iTunes store is riddled with podcasts that have anywhere from 5 to 20 episodes with the latest episode being over a year old.

That's because producing content like a podcast regularly is a pain in the backside. But so is anything else in life that provides value to people. If it's not a lot of effort, a whole bunch of people would already be doing it and it wouldn't be worth it for you to even start in the first place.

So for just about any endeavor, you don't need passion in the beginning but there always comes a point when that is the only thing that will keep you going.

So make sure you have both parts of that quote covered before you embark on anything.

Ignore the path and leave a trail

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm not sure you could get better advice in less than 20 words for someone making a go of it in the music business today than this quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson (who obviously wasn't speaking about the music industry in 2015!)

If your plan is to play in a string quartet that is very similar to the Kronos Quartet that simply does it better than them, good luck to you.

If your plan is to write a book that basically mirrors the message of The Savvy Musician by David Cutler and simply write it better, good luck to you.

If your plan is to play in a brass quintet that mirrors the repertoire and persona of the Canadian Brass and simply do it a little better than they do, good luck to you.

To be clear, I'm not sarcastically wishing you luck because any of those three things are impossible. To the contrary.

You can absolutely do what Kronos does a little better. You can absolutely write a better book than Dr. Cutler did. You can absolutely be a better version of Canadian Brass. (Although all of these will be incredibly difficult to accomplish!)

The point is that the market place is not looking for a book that is 2% better than The Savvy Musician. Why was it such a wild success? Because there were no books like it. People talked about it. People shared it. People spread the word.

No one will get excited about a slightly improved version of anything that already exists and that's if they even notice in the first place.

But if you leave a brand new trail that is interesting, people will do your marketing for you. Just ask Time for Three, Gustavo Dudamel, Alarm Will Sound, and countless other artists and ensembles.

It's been done many times before and the beautiful thing is there's always room for more trails. Always.