Tweet of the Week: James Clear (@JamesClear) on getting started
So get started!
Tweet of the Week: @WholeHeartedMus
I love how granular this tweet is. Every action, big and small, huge and miniscule, either brings us closer to who we want to become or further away.
The word vote is also quite descriptive here. The version of you with the most votes wins. And those votes can be really small things.
Vote wisely.
Tweet of the Week: @TheRialMichelle
This is so good!
These two graphics sum it all up and don’t need any of my words to muddy the waters.
Enjoy and then act!
Tweet of the Week: @ArisTake
I made a promise to myself when I was young. The only life scenario I was not going to be okay with was this:
Sitting in a rocking chair at my family summer house as a 75-year-old not having “made it” in music and knowing in the pit of my stomach that I didn’t do absolutely everything within my power to succeed.
There is so much out of your control when it comes to making a living in music. Some of us have a longer runway to play with before having to pay our bills with music. Others have very serious situations come up early in life that take away from their ability to devote large amounts of time to a career in music.
But acknowledging all of that, I knew that I was going to empty the tank in an effort to make music be the way I earned a living.
I don’t think having a long-term backup plan in place before I even started would not have served me well.
This does not mean not having a plan in place to immediately satisfy your ongoing need to live indoors and eat food. This means not being all in on pursuing a career in music before deciding it isn’t going to work for you.
And as a quick side note, deciding it isn’t going to work for you is not failure. Our goals can and do change. Life changes. Our calling changes. Change is natural and good. To arbitrarily decide that a goal we set at one point in time is the definitive word on the subject for the rest of our lives is not helpful to anyone!
Your mileage may vary. All I know is I was served well by not having a backup plan!
Tweet of the Week: @lxiaoan
This is one hell of a list! I am particularly fond of these ones:
#1 Network sideways - This is a really important one. The lesson here is not to only network sideways. Introducing yourself to the big fish at a conference is frequently a good idea, especially when you won’t have the opportunity to elsewhere. But networking sideways as Li calls it is vital. Those are the people you can really provide value for and they will be happy that you bothered them.
#2 Mostly listen - My wife is very popular. Everybody loves her. Not that there’s only one reason but a big reason is a rule she has for herself: Any time someone asks her a question about herself she makes sure to ask the other person two questions about themselves. She learns more that way and everyone likes talking about themselves, especially when asked!
#5 Be especially nice to the new and terrified - That is something that will never be forgotten by another person. The main reason to do this is to be a good human. But it will also pay dividends for you down the road in a business sense if you do it regularly.
#7 The bit of “black magic” as he calls it - This one needs to be shouted for the people in the back. Take one minute to Google someone and you can learn an awful lot. I also do this when playing gigs. If everyone’s contact info is visible on an email I will look up each person on Facebook. I learn who they are, what they are into, and most importantly, what mutual friends we have. This is huge at conferences, on gigs, in life.
I’m glad I ran across this list. It’s a good one!
Tweet of the Week: @JamesClear
I have mentioned being a fan of James Clear many times here on the TEM Blog. This tweet is a great example of why.
“A habit is a lifestyle to be lived, not a finish line to be crossed.”
I have framed a habit in my head as having a finish line many times. Maybe not explicitly, but that’s how I’ve approached them theoretically.
This is a call to action over the long haul. Sustainable change is what we are really looking for.
And as a bonus, here is a reply to the above tweet which also resonated with me:
Frequency over intensity! I have successfully created new habits in the practice room, as a writer, as a podcaster and as a small business owner using frequency as the engine so this is a good reminder!
Tweet of the Week: Seth Godin
(Every once in a while this weekly post will feature something that’s not a tweet! I just don’t know what else to call this series of posts and most of them will be tweets so I’m going to keep calling it the Tweet of the Week.
Okay, enough about how the sausage is made around here…)
This week’s post is about a quick passage from a great episode of Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast. Akimbo is a weekly podcast that Seth has been doing for a while now. I am almost an entire year behind! I tend to listen to his stuff so closely that I can’t ever have it on “in the background” but I am making an effort to work my way through them. So much good material!
This clip is from his episode titled Thrash Now. (It’s pretty cool that you can share podcast episodes with time stamps so it goes straight to the part in question!)
In this clip, he talks about changing the culture of something. He says that if 2/3 of people think you are too early, you have a chance to change the culture. That really got me thinking.
Change is hard for all humans. It can be even harder when humans get together and form an institution. So changing the culture of an institution (or a specific corner of the music business) can be very difficult.
I like that Seth specifically says that to have any real shot at changing the culture somewhere that the people who aren’t down with what you’re doing (or at least not when you’re doing it) will outnumber the people on board by a full 2 to 1 ratio! I find this kind of empowering.
Meaningful change is important and difficult and we always have to go in with our eyes wide open. It is a gift that Seth has told us ahead of time that way more people than not won’t be ready for it. It also serves to take that away from us as a usable excuse for not proceeding.
Thank you, Seth!
Tweet of the Week: @EricWhitacre
This is a great reminder, and not just for students.
As entrepreneurial musicians it can be so easy to get wrapped up in the grind of making your art, developing true fans, updating your website, networking, staying on top of social media, making enough money to live indoors and eat food.
It can all get so overwhelming.
That’s why it is so important to carve out some space to regularly get back in touch with why we signed up for this grind in the first place. It makes our art better and reaffirms our mission.
I’m glad Eric posted this.
Tweet of the Week: @garyvee
This is a great list!
Skills can be acquired. (Especially if we bring a growth mindset to the table!)
But each thing on this list comes only from years of cultivation. That is why they are more valuable than skills.
This list is especially relevant when considering a new partner in a business venture. Always look for a skill set that is complimentary to yours. But even more importantly, always look for the human qualities that are most important to you.
Because acquiring them is not as easy as watching a few how-to YouTube videos.
Tweet of the Week: @operancoffee
We are constantly bombarded by advice, feedback, lecturing, trolling, pontificating and tons more information that is not helpful to us moving anything forward.
The internet is the most powerful tool the world has ever known for sharing and for learning new things. The problem is the signal to noise ratio.
Now that anyone can broadcast anything literally any time of day, it is hard to get noticed. But getting noticed is a topic for a different post.
The powerful reminder in this tweet as I read it is that the pull to conform to what other people suggest is right for you or for the world can be quite strong. Sometimes that advice is great and will move you forward. But frequently that advice is vague, without context and not helpful.
Listen to your inner voice and let it steer you while also always remaining willing to accept new information. That has been the key to surviving and thriving throughout history but is especially so now.
Tweet of the Week: @JCrongeyer
The first thing I told my students in The Entrepreneurial Musician class at Shenandoah Conservatory this semester is “In today’s music business, if you’re invisible, you’re dead.”
A little dramatic but an important point!
Ron Davis warned about being fungible in TEM19 and I have quoted him about 900 times on the podcast since that interview in 2015!
Ric Ocasek, who just passed away yesterday, was someone who sure didn’t fit in. His songwriting career was remarkable. His performing career was remarkable. His producing career was remarkable. His look was unmistakable. He was not fungible.
And for sure he wasn’t for everyone. But the people he was for gobbled up all of the art he produced and told the people within their corner of the world all about it. That’s what great artists inspire.
So thanks for the reminder, Ric. Fitting in is for the timid. Being yourself is not only marketable, it’s also how to lead a successful and fulfilling life as an artist. #RIP
Tweet of the Week: @pwallinga
Not only should you not feel bad about being the least experienced or least “talented” in the room, you should seek it out!
Whether as an artist or an entrepreneur, you should actively seek out situations where everyone around you can do things you can’t do. Or they do can do them just a little better. Or a little more efficiently. Any difference that gets you closer to achieving your goals as an artist.
And as Patricia points out, absolutely take credit for even being in that room in the first place. It takes courage to be in that room. It takes none to stay out or to only find rooms where you are the best one there.
But that’s not where growth happens. And that’s not how great art is made.
(FTR I love her use of quotes around the word talent. Get that fixed mindset stuff out of here!)
Tweet of the Week: @gildawabbit
I really like these two tweets. So straightforward yet the kind of thing that I need to hear with some regularity.
“So fail y’all. Fail hard. Then get back up and try again.”
(And I love the two gifs!)
Tweet of the Week: Gary Vaynerchuk (garyvee)
To quote Gary Vaynerchuk, ideas are shit. This is a little bit of an oversimplification but the point remains a vital one.
Once on an episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience, I heard Gary tell a room full of 30 people that they as a group within a day could come up with next 100 great ideas that will change the world.
The hard part is not coming up with a great idea. The hard part is not only executing on one of them but executing better (or earlier or in some way different) than everyone else in your tiny corner of the world.
The idea muscle is one worth flexing. But the execution muscles are the ones that most people only engage every so often.
And that’s why most of us aren’t that good at getting things over the finish line.
Tweet of the Week: @ThisIsSethsBlog
Seth mentioned this story about Pema Chodron and the radiator in one his episodes of Akimbo and I almost pulled the car over it was so good.
So for him to mention it again in a blog post this past weekend brought a smile to my face.
“My biggest takeaway is that the key leap wasn’t in discovering that the sounds came from a radiator. The lesson is that acting like it comes from a radiator completely solves the problem.”
It’ll make sense if you take 45 seconds to read the post!
Tweet of the Week: Rachel Syme (@rachsyme)
This is for all of us who think we are “too busy” to accompish _________. (I’m looking at YOU, college students!)
In fairness, I’m looking at all of us, because we all fall into this trap from time to time. The trap is believing the voice in our head that says we are “too busy” to accomplish something without recognizing it for what it almost certainly is instead, an issue of priorities.
Toni Morrison was a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who had nothing to do with the writing business until she was 36. That is the opposite of having an “in” within a profession.
She wrote her first book, which wasn’t published until she turned 39, by waking up before her kids did every morning because she was a single, working mother. That’s when she could get the writing done.
Now that’s dedication.
Anyone can wake up two hours before their children and do two hours of work before they are on parent duty. Anyone.
My primary gig for the last five years has been stay-at-home dad. The time I’ve been able to devote to my podcasting, freelancing, consulting, Pedal Note Media, college teaching, private teaching, residencies, writing, recitals and everything else I’ve got going without my son present has been at a premium for over five years.
Guess how many times in those five years I woke up early enough to get hours of work done before my son woke up. Twice.
TWICE.
Why? Because being a parent is hard as hell. It is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I just didn’t have it in me to wake up that early.
But that’s okay!
I got to a place where I was at peace with my Band Director’s Guide series not having a new volume come out for years. I got to a place where I was okay that I didn’t release the TEM Podcast on a rigidly regular schedule.
The fact is I made a choice, whether intentionally or just through my actions (or lack thereof), that making those things happen wasn’t worth me trying to parent on dangerously little sleep (dangerously for my sanity!)
If anything I’ve been putting off ever rose to the level of truly urgent, I would have woken up at 4:00 am. Or quit my teaching job (which I did but then a much better one fell into my lap!) Or put my son in daycare (which we wanted to avoid if we could.) Bottom line is I would have changed something to make it work.
So the next time you tell yourself you are “too busy” to do something, think of Toni Morrison and ask whether it might just be an issue of priorities.
What an inspiration that woman was to us all. She is dearly missed.
Tweet of the Week: James Clear (@JamesClear)
This one is pretty straightforward and was still something I needed to be reminded of.
The big things we do are reinforced.
The little things we do are reinforced.
The intentional things we do are reinforced.
The unintentional things we do are reinforced.
Proceed with caution.
Tweet of the Week: James Clear (@JamesClear)
Great list! I should do more of these regularly!
Tweet of the Week: Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog)
Whoa.
This blog post left a mark.
“Too often, we quit in the dip. Not because we can’t tolerate discomfort for an hour, a week or a month, but because we mistakenly believe that it might last forever.”
Seth Godin is a national treasure.
Tweet of the Week: Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee)
Straight fire from Gary Vaynerchuk about paying attention to haters online.
“Go do something because the only thing holding you back is being worried about what other people might say.”
Warning: Lots of strong language in this one!