Doing What You Love Will Not Lead to Fame or Fortune

Earlier this week I was having a conversation with a musician who is struggling to save his money to have his demo disc duplicated. I said something like, “You should do something special with the first thousand – sign & number them or something.  After that you’ll have the momentum and the cash to do more.”

This statement caught him by surprise. He wasn’t thinking about anything more than the first 1,000 copies of his CD.  In his mind, that first batch was all there would be. This person isn’t short-sighted and he wants to make music his lifelong career, but he just hand not thought in terms of scope – that there would be THOUSANDS of people who wanted to hear his music.

This is the Entrepreneurial Myth in action (also referred to as the E-Myth). The basic premise is that if you know how to do the technical aspect of something, and even if you LOVE doing that something, whether its music, art, fixing cars, doing taxes, cutting hair or cutting the lawn, that the worst thing that you could do is get into that thing as a business.  In 1985 a powerful business book was written about this subject by Michael Gerber, oddly enough called The E-Myth.  The basic problem is that if you know HOW to do the technical part of the business, like playing music, you will not do all the strategic parts of business (marketing, promotion, bookkeeping, bookings, etc.) that will cause your business to thrive.

How many people do you know who could do some technical work so they thought they could open their own Remodeling/Painting/Landscaping/Repair shop? And how many of us have had really bad experiences with those same businesses?   Are you doing the same with your music?  How much time to you set aside each week to focus on promotion, marketing and customer satisfaction?  Let me give you two real-world examples. Or maybe we’ll call these “reality” world examples.

Do you know why the band Kiss is still around, after 37 years? Unlike the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen, it isn’t because they are still putting out solid new albums.  Kiss is still here, and being talked about because of Gene Simmons.  If you haven’t seen his Family Jewels TV show, it should be required viewing for any musician or band that expects to make a career in music. Gene is the definition on an entrepreneur. He can’t write a song to save his life and his vocals are pretty rough around the edges, but what Gene delivers is total attention to marketing, licensing, promotion and customer satisfaction.  He makes sure that everyone is happy with what they got for their ticket price. I know we were all members of the Kiss army back in the day, but have you tried to listen to a Kiss album all the way through recently?  Do yourself a favor, put Season One of Family Jewels on your To-Do list for this week and get back to me after you’ve completed season three and tell me you haven’t learned something about the music business or just business in general.

My Trifecta of reality shows are basically The Apprentice, Family Jewels and Chef Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. I have eaten at one of the 11 restaurants that Mr. Ramsey owns in NYC and it was one of the most absolutely amazing meals I’ve ever had.  The man not only knows how to create an amazing culinary experience with each of his restaurants, but he also helps other restaurant owners. The premise for one of his two reality shows, Kitchen Nightmares, is that he travels to a restaurant in the US and helps the owners and the staff come to terms with how bad their restaurant is.  He provides them with the reality that the hundreds of thousands of dollars they’ve lost, is a direct result of usually just a handful of normal business tactics (inventory control, portion size, marketing, customer experience, etc.).  What I always find impressive is that in nearly every episode he draws the owner and the staff OUTSIDE their business and attempts to get them engaged with the outside world.  He gets them to give something away for free, like meatballs or pizza slices, as a way to build local buzz.  He almost always invites the local mayor, governor or a local celebrity to take part in the new Grand Re-Opening. Where so many businesses fail is in engaging their local market, because most restaurant owners would rather run their business or, to use Gerber terms “they work IN their business instead working ON their business” that they fail to be relevant to their own local customers.

So this week, work ON your music!  You will always find the time to do the work in you love, but please dedicate time to developing relationships with your potential friends, fans and followers.  Find a few music blogs that you enjoy and post some comments on the writing and the music. Develop a list of 20 radio stations that you want to send your CD to and then SEND IT. Work on getting your music heard as much as you work on creating your music.  And be sure to watch Family Jewels for other important music business lessons from Professor Gene.

-pjc