Stop Giving Away Your Time and Talents

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“If you don't value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know and start charging for it.”

—Kim Garst

I was approached recently by one of the big music publishers to appear on a music business panel. A really big music publisher! I was excited by the opportunity because I'm sure this panel will get some eyeballs.

When I asked them how much the appearance paid they were surprised by the question and said they would inquire with the powers that be. They eventually let me know that they would not be able to offer any compensation and were apologetic.

The others on the panel were tenure-track college professors who will use this appearance in their tenure/promotion files or industry leaders who are paid to represent their companies and their shareholders.

But I work for myself. I can't get promoted and I don't have shareholders.

For the record, I do lots of things for no money. I have done countless hours of music business consulting for people who who didn't have even a fraction of the head start that I had in the business and in life and who would never be able to pay for consulting.

But providing labor for one of the really, really big music publishers for zero compensation beyond a promise of "exposure"? Hard pass.

One of my major income streams is sharing my experience from the last almost 25 years in the music business and I have gotten really picky about when and where to give away my time and talent, as the opening quote talks about.

If I don't value my own expertise (and honor the years and years of struggle that went into earning it) then I can't expect anyone else to either.

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Coda: If you are a multi-million dollar company, stop asking people like me to work for no compensation! Thank you in advance.

Your Problem Isn't Actually Motivation

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Near the very top of my short list of books that every musician should read is James Clear’s Atomic Habits. I have read it multiple times and each time through it makes me a better performer, teacher, and entrepreneur.

He makes so many great points in that book that I find it hard not to highlight entire pages at a time. But one point in particular has stood out to me each time I’ve read the book.

In the chapter “The Best Way to Start a New Habit”, Clear writes the following about motivation:

“Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.” 

This applies to the practice room as well as to developing the skills needed to further a portfolio career.

If, for example, you have been telling yourself for months that you are going to build a website and haven’t done so yet, you don’t lack motivation. There is a good chance you are quite motivated to have a website. That’s why you wanted one in the first place.

What you lack is the clarity that comes from having a specific plan that includes a clear next step.

For a long time the website for The Entrepreneurial Musician was just a part of my personal site, andrewhitz.com. There are some benefits to setting it up that way, but eventually I came to the conclusion that it would be best to spin it off as its own website. That was when I decided to build tem.fm.

But in spite of being motivated to make it happen and a decision having been made, it took almost two full years until there was actually a website! So where was the lack of clarity?

I decided I wanted to build this website on a platform that was new to me, Wordpress. There were specific advantages to using Wordpress and having familiarity with that platform was a skill that would serve me well moving forward. I was all in.

Then came all the decisions I had to make. Where would I have my site hosted? Which plan would I sign up for? Should I go for a paid Wordpress theme or a free one? Should I survey fellow musicians to find a theme or would it be best to go with a popular one?

The number of decisions I had to make on this very powerful and new to me platform was many times over more than the websites I had built in the past using Squarespace. In fact, there were so many decisions to be made that I never quite figured out which one should be made first so I barely made any of them.

All of this was complicated by the fact that I am fully capable of learning everything there is to learn about the Wordpress platform. With a lot of work, all of it would be well within my technical abilities.

When I combine the belief that I could learn Wordpress with the feeling that I should learn it and with a lack of clarity about what my next move should be I predictably kept myself busy with other things. For like 22 months!

In retrospect, if I had sought a resource that led me through the entire process from the very beginning I would have checked off each box one by one and made it happen. I’m sure there are countless online courses and YouTube channels dedicated to this very thing. That’s where I easily could have gotten clarity about the entire process.

The main takeaway for me is that when trying to learn about myself and why that process was such a failure for so long it would be a mistake to conclude that I only lacked motivation when in fact it was a total lack of clarity that led to my inaction.

So there is a very good chance that your problem is not motivation, but clarity.