Tag: motivation

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[How To] Make A Plan To Succeed in 2019

Change, Life improvements, Resolutions, New Years

“A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.” – Brian Tracy

If you use any social media platform, then you have no doubt witnessed an avalanche of resolutions, hopes, and dreams for the new year being shared over the last few weeks. You may have participated yourself. If not, that’s okay too.

Resolutions are good intentions with a better name. Hopes and dreams are much the same. We all want to be better, and most of us tell ourselves each new year will be different than the last. Some of us make lists filled with changes we hope to make, while others choose just one or two areas of life they would like to improve. Both methods are useful, but neither one guarantees results.

Most people don’t understand that a declaration of a desire for betterment is not enough to create meaningful change. Most know what they want in life, and many try to get there, but the vast majority fall short of their goals for one simple reason: They don’t have a plan.

Resolutions are nothing without plans. As Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

Maybe you want to sign a record deal this year, or perhaps you want to launch a label of your own. Maybe you want to write for your favorite magazine or speak at a half-dozen conferences. There are no apparent reasons for those goals, or any other (within reason), to be considered impossible. You can do more than you know, but even the simplest of goals can feel hard to achieve without a good plan.

To borrow a quote from Benjamin Franklin, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

This week, take some time to sit down with pen and paper. You can use a computer or phone if you desire, but studies have shown that writing — real writing, by hand — helps forge a meaningful connection to what you are creating.

Once you’re seated and comfortable, write out the things you hope to accomplish this year. Dream big and use as many details as possible. If you want a record deal, what kind of deal and with what label? If you’re going to write more, how much and for whom? If you want to write a novel, what will it be about?

After the goals are in front of you, grab a second sheet of paper and outline your plans to achieve every goal you’ve set. We all have to start somewhere, so where will your next journey begin? Details matter. You cannot go from writing once a week to churning out chapters overnight. Just like those who wish to lose weight must commit to lifestyle changes so must those who want to be more creative commit to changing their habits. Maybe you need to get up earlier, so you have more time to create, or perhaps you need to find a new career that allows you to express yourself better. Whatever it is, write out exactly how you plan to achieve that thing, step-by-step.

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The Best Reason to Not Care About the Opinions of Others

Everyone wants to be successful in their pursuits, but there’s always a catch. The problem with finding success in the arts, especially at an early age, is that it establishes a standard that might not align with your goals. Maybe you dream of writing pop music, but your metal band takes off first. Perhaps you want to be known as a musician, but all your friends consider you a great promoter.

Breaking from the standard sounds easy enough. After all, most of us were told at some point in our adolescence that we should always strive to be ourselves. But something changes when success enters the picture. Once people like you or appreciate you for something, the risk of doing anything else can trigger fears and anxieties, you never knew you possessed.

Before you let the fear of rejection stop you from pursuing something I want you to consider death, which will inevitably come for us all. We have lost some great people in recent years, including legendary musicians such as Prince and David Bowie, but how often do you find yourself thinking — or more importantly, talking — about them in your daily life? The world may have mourned them when they passed, but how long did that last? Two days? A week?

Information is now exchanged at speeds never before witnessed by the human race, and a lot of that is owed to the rise of social media. We consume news and opinions at a rate that is almost hard to wrap your head around, and all signs point to that speed rising as technology continues to advance. If the best of all-time is only given 48-hours of attention when they pass, how long will people talk about you?

The answer, for both you and I, is probably not long at all. Our family and friends will care, of course, but their opinions probably aren’t the ones you’re worried about when considering a new endeavor.

As for the haters, those anonymous people whose opinions haunts your every ambition, they will be forgotten just as fast as the rest of us.

If we accept that we and everyone who knows us will be forgotten almost as soon as they have died, then why give a damn what people think about you now? Their opinion of you is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but how you feel about yourself and the things you pursue will last as long as you have air in your lungs.

All we have is now. Lose yourself in the moment. Take a chance on yourself because you may never have the opportunity to do so again. Squeeze the juice out of life until your last breath.

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Remember to save some art for yourself

Self-preservation is important. Don't make everything you enjoy into work.

Music writing can be a double-edged sword as far as fandom is concerned. The fact you’re in a position to influence a group of consumers makes it possible for you to get closer to your favorite artists than you probably would otherwise, but it also means you have to continue following those artists’ every move long after your initial interest in their work has begun to fade. This is honestly a best-case scenario because more often than not writing about music means you have to not only know but learn to appreciate the works of many artists whom you would otherwise not make time to experience. Establishing a career in writing requires that you be engaged with the wide world of music, and that entails keeping tabs on far more artists than those you personally enjoy. Over time this can make the joy of writing feel a lot more like work than most would care to admit. But that’s because writing is just that — work.

This is not a complaint, per say, but rather a matter of fact. You cannot make it in music writing simply by covering the artists you enjoy when you enjoy them. You need follow-through, and more importantly, you need to engage the fans of artists regularly to ensure people continue to care about your writing and/or publication exists.

When I began writing about music I did so because I felt there were artists I knew and enjoyed that most of the world had yet to recognize. If you could find my first hundred articles, I can almost guarantee every single one would be based on an artist or group I admired at the time, and if I’m completely honest, I would also wager most of those posts are fairly similar. They each praise a group I loved at the time, and they each argue others should feel the same. I built my initial following by covering bands like A Day To Remember, Chiodos, Secret Secret Dino Club, and The Wonder Years whenever possible, and I made it a point to interview someone from the band every time a new piece of news presented an opportunity for discussion. As word of my work grew, so did interest from others bands and labels about having their talent promoted through my channels. I was completely blown away by these requests, so of course, I agree to almost everyone that hit my inbox, and as I began to network with the industry at large my writing began to encompass more and more bands. Some acts I enjoyed, but most were perfectly average in my mind, and looking back now I know the only reason I covered them is that I felt that it is what my (arguably non-existent) audience wanted. Whether or not that was true is something I’ll never truly know, but I do know that covering a wide array of talent helped me navigate the industry and secure full-time work in the business I love the most. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Do I continue to cover any and everything that comes my way as a result? Hell no.

It’s incredibly difficult to land a job in music that allows you to share everything you love all the time. Most jobs are far more focused than that, be it covering solely alternative music or perhaps just hip-hop. Finding a paid position that covers everything is rarer than a Morrissey performance that goes off without a hitch, and they are becoming increasingly hard to come by as the demand for specific content curators continues to rise. I used to have a big problem with this because I felt, and still do believe, that everyone is able to enjoy a little bit of everything. I might not love country music, but there are several country artists I enjoy. The same goes for musicals, top 40 radio pop, and obscure shoegaze bands. None of these areas of music are where I spend the majority of my time, but they each are filled with wonderful talent that is deserving of exposure and praise. Just because this is true however does not mean I am the person to tell you these acts exist. I can tweet about it, sure, but I cannot dedicate every minute of my day to telling you about everything I love as I once did. That is not my job.

At first, the need to separate the work I am paid to do the work I would like to do was incredibly frustrating. I felt as though my initial mission to help more people discover great music had been compromised by the need for a paycheck, but over time I came to realize that was not true. Having full-time employment gave me more freedom than I had ever had before as far as creative pursuits were concerned, and though I couldn’t argue the need to cover everything I could do more to help a specific set of artists and bands than ever before. Instead of writing about 40 or 50 acts a week I wrote about 10 at most, but I made sure to make each piece released as good as it could be. Having fewer artists to cover made it possible for me to dig deeper into my coverage and, ultimately, provide higher quality content to my readers.

But what about all that other stuff I loved? Did I turn my back on a world of talent just because they didn’t fit my 9-5 lifestyle?

Of course not.

I still love a wide array of bands as I always have, but these days I keep some things I love to myself if for no other reason than the ability to enjoy certain songs or records without turning that enjoyment into work. Before I had full-time work in music, I viewed everything I enjoyed as something I would eventually cover, which in turn made everything I enjoyed some form of work. Maybe it wasn’t hard work, but it was work nonetheless, and as a result, my relationship with music began to change. The idea of listening to music for the sake of simply enjoying it became an absurd concept, as I hadn’t purely enjoyed music for years on end. I liked it, and I wouldn’t know what to do without it, but at the end of the day I was trying to put food on my table based on what I was listening to, and that put a lot of undue pressure on myself, as well as the talent.

When I speak to aspiring writers and music professionals today, I encourage them to experience as much music as possible. As soon as I do this, I immediately tag my comments by adding that not every great song or record needs to become the sole focus of their work moving forward. It’s not only perfectly acceptable, but it’s also needed. If you lose your ability to simply enjoy music, you will be unable to accurately critique it. The reason anyone begins chasing after a career in music in the first place is based on their love of enjoying music in their youth, and when you lose the ability to appreciate music in that way you begin to lose track of why you work in music. It’s not about clicks, and it’s certainly not about being the first person to hear the next buzz-worthy release. It’s about celebrating art and the appreciation of art, as well as making others aware of undiscovered talent. You can only do this to the best of your abilities if you too are still able to be wowed by music. If you’ve lost that passion, or even if you believe it has begun to fade, take a step back from writing and unplug from everything except your stereo. Put on the records that first inspired your career aspirations and reconnect with the source of your drive to succeed. Never lose your passion.

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The near-mythical power of cutting yourself some slack

Time. It’s the one thing we all want that is always fleeting and impossible to replenish. The luckiest among us realize the value of time in their teen years, but most don’t appreciate it’s true nature until some great loss occurs in the mid to late twenties. Whatever the case may be for you, it’s likely you feel your time to quote/unquote ‘make it’ in music is constantly slipping through your fingers. Every day it seems there is a new, younger hitmaker finding success. That yodeling kid from Wal-Mart went from viral fame to releasing a (really freaking good) hit single distributed by a major label in under a month — all before he’s old enough to take a driver’s education course.

Here’s the thing you have to remember: You don’t have to find success at a young age to become successful in life. There are no age restrictions on happiness. The digital age has presented new opportunities for overnight success, as has reality television, but that kind of exposure the associated success comes from chance, and you cannot rely on luck to get you through this life. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, it just doesn’t make sense. The universe cares not for your flights of fancy and the things you wish you were, nor will it ever bend over backward to assist you in the day to day struggles of being a functional human being.

So, if viral success isn’t the ideal path, then the only one that remains is the same one traveled by every person working in music today. Success in this industry is, by and large, earned through years of handwork and dedication to your craft. It’s the result of treating others well and always doing your part, regardless of whether or not others did the same. Success, for lack of a better description, is the sum of everything you’ve done over the entirety of your time in music.

With this in mind, you may think you need to work harder than ever. We’ve been conditioned to believe that any waking hour not spent working on something that helps us inch closer to our goals is time wasted. After all, someone somewhere is no doubt chasing the same dream as you or I and they’re probably working on something incredible, right? That’s what my brain tells me.

The fact of the matter is that whether you pull an all-nighter tomorrow or not isn’t nearly as important as your longterm commitment to this field. Success in music, especially the kind of success that leads to a legitimate career (with benefits, etc.), takes time. There is no way around it. There is also no rush because there is no endpoint. There will never be a day when you reach a professional peak, and the sky suddenly disappears. There will always be another thing to make, pitch, sell, or whatever it is you wish to do with your life. Always.

Do not be afraid to rest. Take the night off if you need it. Heck, unless you’re getting paid to do something feel free to take as much time as you need whenever you need it. Those who are indeed called to this industry can never stay away for long, and in time you’ll feel that passion you’ve been searching for return. This journey we are on lasts a lifetime if you want it to, but you have to take care of yourself. No one else can do that for you.

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Don’t get comfortable

It is the dream of every adult to find job security. For those of you who have never heard of such a thing, job security refers to a job where long-term employment is yours, just so long as you don’t royally mess up. This kind of work was once even considered the ‘American Dream,’ but that employment does not exist in the music business.

No one reaches full-time employment in music by chance or sheer will alone. Success in this business is earned through the total work put in overtime, and for most, it takes many years to reach a point where they do not have to worry whether or not their bills will be paid from one month to the next. Even when they get there, and if they do everything right, there is still a better than 50% chance something beyond their control will change their trajectory within five years time.

Don’t let this break you. If you want to work in music then you have to accept the fact you the hustle really never ends. That doesn’t mean you have to work 24/7, but it does mean you need to be constantly pushing yourself towards bigger and better things. Full-time employment is not enough. Paying your bills is not enough. It’s not about money and it’s not about things. Longterm success in music is about constant personal development, both for yourself and for those around you.

Several years ago the head of publicity at an iconic heavy metal label told me that he challenged himself to develop a new skill every year that would – in some way – aide him in life. The year we spoke he had set to learning video editing, and by the following spring, he was making additional money creating promotional clips and lyric videos for bands of all sizes. He was also creating more interesting content for work, which in turn helped push the label forward.

We apply a similar practice here at Haulix. We invest in the skills our marketing and sales team need, such as public speaking and graphic design. We encourage our programmers to be creative with their designs, make training available to support team members, and hold weekly meetings to discuss the economics of our market with the entire team present. We don’t want our team to understand our business alone, we want them to understand the industry and our role in it, as well as that of all our competitors.

So ask yourself: What don’t I know?

The answer will shock you.

…And once the shock settles, get to work.

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The simple, yet effective magic of making lists

What are you doing today? How about this week? Do you have a set of goals for the days ahead, or are you simply wading through the waters of life while checking things off a non-existent list of tasks you claim to maintain in your head? Are you sure of where you’re going? Do you know what needs to be done?

For the vast majority of my adult life I was lost in nearly every sense of the word. I did not know where I wanted to be professionally, and my aimless pursuit of recognition from the industry lead me to strain relationships with those who cared about me most. If I tried to make up for it I inevitably let things slip on the professional side, which in turn caused the whole cycle to repeat. “There’s never enough time,” I would proclaim. “I’m too busy for _______.”

But that wasn’t the truth, or at least not the entirety of it. The reality of the situation was that I had poor time management skills, aided in part by a complete lack of planning, and as a result I was placing time and energy in places other than where it was needed most. In terms of growth and progress I was essentially walking through life blindfolded with little more than the hope of doing well to keep me afloat. I never knew for sure where I was or wasn’t going because I didn’t have a plan. I simply did, and when I finished one thing I moved to another and another until I fell asleep. When I awoke the next day the cycle would continue as it had every day prior for as long as I could remember.

The funny thing about trying to make your way in this world is that we as humans often ignore obvious tips and tricks because we desire to blaze our own path. This is a mistake as old as time itself, since the first young people tried to escape the shadow of their ancestors. The thing most up and comers fail to realize is that those who succeeded before did so for good reason. Their success was no more a fluke than your own, and there is always something to learn from the paths they traveled. You don’t have to duplicate someone’s behavior in order to learn from their experiences, but you do need to recognize how developing certain skill sets will help you get ahead.

This brings us to lists. Say what you will about Buzzfeed and their overuse of list-driven articles to bring traffic, but you know what? It works. People like lists, and not just for entertainment purposes. Lists make life manageable in a very literal sense. Lists make it easy to organize daily, weekly, monthly, and lifelong goals. Lists also make it possible to plan a day, or two better understand where there are needs going unmet. Lists can help you do just about anything as long as they’re specific, but for some reason many — including myself — feel that are not needed. I don’t know why, even though I subscribed to this way of thinking myself, but I can tell you I have changed my stance.

Every week I make at least 8 lists. The first is week-long overview of goals and projects. These are big idea items, like finishing a new tutorial for Haulix or writing another thousand words for that novel I hope to one day finish. The next seven are lists created before each work day begins. Somewhere between seven and nine every morning I outline my goals for the day. In these lists I am as specific as possible, setting detailed goals and ranking them based on urgency. Under these items I add 2-3 more ambitious goals, just in case time allows for it.

You can do the same, and I guarantee if you stick to the goals you set each day and week you will see results. Any time you find yourself drifting into that lazy river of relaxation you can turn to your list and recognize whether or not that time off has been earned. Furthermore, you will find in time that you are able to accomplish more and more. As you become accustomed to working with lists you will learn to better manage your time, and with that understanding you can better plot each day. Better days lead to better weeks, and before you know it you’ll be making a list of new goals because the ones you set originally were already met.

One last thing: Be patient with yourself. Establishing new behaviors/routines is no easy feat. You have been living life without list making for as long as you’ve been on this planet, so don’t be surprised if you struggle with making lists daily when first starting out. Take things one day at a time and don’t be upset if you fall short from time to time. What matters most is that you continue trying each and every day.

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Job Board News


Tear it down. Start again.

Not long ago, my life fell apart. In a matter of weeks I found myself with no relationship, no office, no apartment, and no real plan of what I was going to do next. I moved back in with my parents, who were thrilled to see their son for more than two days in a row for the first time in years, and setup a desk in the back of their living room. I’m sitting in that same place now as I write this post.

I could not have anticipated most of the changes that came my way, and I certainly could not have guessed how many would seemingly happen all at once. Depression came knocking, but I refused to answer the door. It never has anything productive to offer anyways.

Deep down I knew if there were a way to keep my life and career in tact it would have to come from within, even if I did not know where to find it.

To focus, I stopped…..

-Talking to people who didn’t help me create value.

-Opening Facebook/Twitter.

-Paying attention to politics 24/7.

-Watching T.V. and Netflix.

-Going out to eat.

-Making excuses to spend money just so I had something to do

-Writing about things I knew I did not care about

The first few days were the hardest. Instead of thinking about my situation or the work in front of me I wanted to check in with the rest of the world. The news makes things seem so terrible right now, and to some extent they legitimately are, but I found a sense of escape in occupying my time with the woes of the planet. I escaped further by engaging in conversations about these things, all of which would inevitably amount to nothing more than me agreeing with people who agree with me on things we’ve likely always agreed on. I wasn’t helping them or the planet, and I certainly wasn’t helping myself.

Then I heard a song. I would share it now, but the truth is that the particular track doesn’t matter nearly as much as the spark it ignited within me. I couldn’t shake the song. I couldn’t shake the band. I wanted to know everything about the music and I wanted to tell people everything I was able to learn. Passion had found me while I was busy trying to run from it and here I was, back where I always wanted to be.

When I wrote about that song I felt the freedom that only comes from doing the thing you love for no reason other than your love of doing it. That is what really matters, after all. Money, fame, popularity, even jobs will eventually disappear. The only real reason anyone has to pursue something is because it makes them feel alive. It gives them purpose.

As this realization sat in I began to evaluate how I came to such a conclusion. I thought about my fight with myself to avoid work and the mounting personal problems that needed addressing, as well as why I fought so hard to ignore them. That inner monologue then turned into a post about that subject, which gave way to another, and another, and now to this post.

I had made a classic mistake that many of us encounter when things go awry in our lives: I lost focus of what made me feel alive. Instead of running from that fact I chose to write about it, which in turn helped me find my way back to the thing that first ignited my passion for music and writing in the first place. All the chaos that had kept me up at night stressing over what the future might hold had transformed – through no one’s doing other than my own – into material that would serve as the path I followed back to finding my center in life once more.

There is a great country song that features the hook, “If you’re going through hell, keep on goin’”. That may sound simple to many of you reading this now, but in reality it is not. Keeping on, or in other words moving forward when life gets tough is one of the hardest things we as people must learn to do. If we fail to do so life has a way of consuming us and making us feel small, insignificant, and even stupid, but believe me when I tell you that is not the case with you or I. We are better than that. YOU are better than that. Believe in yourself and stay true to what you know. The rest will still need to be sorted, but as long as you maintain personal your course in life things will inevitably work out. Choose to move forward and wake up every day with the goal of doing just that. After all, what is the alternative?

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Job Board News


Learning to trust ‘The Pinch’

Next March will be a major occasion for me. I don’t know the date specifically, but that month will mark seven years of full-time employment in the music industry. I will be thirty when it happens and, hopefully, it won’t be the last year that I get to celebrate.

I still remember getting the call that changed everything, and it could not have come at a more opportune time. My friend and frequent collaborator, Ben Howell, was seated across from me inside a gas station in rural Arkansas when my cell phone rang. We had spent the night in a motel we could barely afford after my car blew a rod and left us stranded on the side of the freeway the night before. We were broke, hungry, upset, and – according to a kind mechanic who woke us to break the news that the car could not be fixed – stranded.

When the call came in, I was expecting the worst. If the past twenty-four hours had lead me to believe anything it was that the music industry might not be as interested in me as I was in it. Ben and I had spent the several days prior attending SXSW in Texas, which was fun and filled with networking, but ultimately did not provide any leads to paid work. Then the debacle with my car happened, not to mention the fact we were over one-thousand miles from home and several hundred miles from anyone we knew in a town of less than 1,000 people that was not easily found on a map. If the universe or God or whatever really gives people signs, this felt like a big one.

But then I answered, and within a few minutes I was offered a thirty-hour a week job in Boston at a music discovery startup that wanted to leverage my writing talents to help grow their business. It was exactly what I had always wanted to do, the very job I felt I had been training my entire life to do, and here it was being offered to me at a rate that would allow me to pay my bills and live away from my parents. I excitedly told Ben the news, but considering the fact everything good I had to say would do nothing to free us from our Arkansas predicament, he was less than amused.

Several years later, trouble struck again. The same job offer that brought me to Boston turned into a source of constant trouble after the business ran into trouble securing and maintaining investors. Weeks would pass without anyone below top ranking staff being paid, often with a handful of people being furloughed (a fancy term where you’re not really fired, but you’re also not getting compensated for any recent work you’ve done). If us lower lower employees did get paid it was usually a fraction of what we were owed, with promises that everything would come to as us funds were made available.

After a months of these erratic fluctuations with cash flow the company came to a crossroads where those in charge either had to close things entirely or cut the staff to a small skeleton crew. They chose the latter, keeping me on board, and cut more than a dozen people. They also sold our longtime offer, which was a sprawling space just outside of Boston, and moved the remaining eight employees into a shared working space in a different town. I soon found myself working in a windowless room smaller than my childhood bedroom with another individual, and between the two of us we were doing the work a team of six or more had been assigned just weeks prior.

As humans, we are often able to sense trouble is on the horizon. Something in our DNA alerts us to the fact that we are standing on unsteady ground and need to make changes. I could feel that uneasiness when the Boston gig lost its main office, then again when I found myself spending eight hours in artificial light working for a company that might not be able to pay more for the time I was putting in. To make matters worse, the financial uncertainty had put strains on my home life, including my relationships. I knew something needed to be done, but I was so set on continuing to work in the music business that I refused to sever ties until something else came along.

It was on a day like any other, tucked away from the sun in that tiny office shared office with bills piling up, that my life changed once more. For reasons I still don’t fully understand I chose to contact Haulix and inquire about their marketing efforts. I think my interventions were to attempt securing freelance work to cover bills while my primary job found funding, but after only a few email exchanges I was offered a role in the company that matched the pay I was supposed to be receiving from my current career. Better yet, I could work from home.

Over four years later, I still have that job at Haulix, and my position in the company has grown over time. There is still a lot of uncertainty about the music industry and where it is headed in the years to come, but for now we are a leader in our market and a trendsetter for promotional distribution. I would never dare take credit for all of that, but I do like to think I have found a home in this business that will welcome me as long as it can afford to do so. In this business, that is as close to ‘making it’ as any professional can hope to come.

But recently, something changed in another part of my life. After sever years together my partner, who only became my wife in the last year, decided she needed to leave. It hit me as a complete shock, one which I am still recovering from as I write this entry. In a moment I needed to find a new home and a new life without her. I never planned on having to do the latter, and I had yet to even consider where we might move next. Now I needed answers quickly, but I had no idea where to start. I packed my belongings, and in the process split our possessions into two piles of stuff.  I loaded my cats into my car and headed to my parents’ home three states away so that I might get out from under the roof my wife and I once shared.

I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t scared about the future. The thought alone keeps me up at night. My brain tells me that if I could not predict her leaving me then there must be other things on the way in my life that I don’t foresee at this point. Maybe I lose my job due to an evolving industry, which would make me an unemployed divorcee on the edge of turning thirty who currently lives with his parents. The likelihood all that comes to pass is very low, but still — it could happen and that is more than enough to prevent me from finding any sense of peace.

But last night I had a thought, and that thought lead to this entry. Every time I have found myself cornered  in ‘the pinch,’ which here means any situation I do not know my way out of, something happens to renew my faith in the path I am on. Sometimes it comes in the form of a phone call, an email, or maybe just a conversation with a close friend about how you’re really feeling. When you find the strength to admit you do not have control over the situation, but continue to do everything in your power to influence it in a positive sense, change happens. It might not be what you thought you wanted, and it might demand sacrifices on your part, but your path is much longer than it appears to be at this moment. You have more stories to write, more adventures to go on, and a lifetime of memories to make. I do too, and sometimes I need to remind myself of that.

Trust ‘the pinch’. Feeling pinched by life does not mean you made the wrong choice, it just means you are due for a change. Whether you believe it in the moment or not, change is good for you, and if you continue to pour your heart into everything you do the changes in life will not stop you from becoming the person you aspire to be. Just believe in yourself and it will all work out in the end.

James Shotwell is the Director of Customer Engagement for Haulix. He is also a ten-year veteran of music journalism, host of the Inside Music podcast, and a frequent commentator on the future of the music business. You should follow him on Twitter if you enjoy business talk, cats, The Simpsons, and in-depth discussion of the latest Law & Order: SVU episodes.

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In Life and Business, Build It Yourself

One of the more bittersweet struggles in life and business is the wait between having a great idea and being able to act on it. Once you begin turning your ideas into actions your desire to continue doing so becomes unstoppable. You hunger for the next thought because it might be the one that changes everything, or at least something that pushes you a bit further forward in your creative pursuits.

Expressing yourself through action soon becomes purpose, the thing we all seek, and the wait to produce something original can be absolutely maddening. We’d rather pay people to do the work for us or short cut the traditional methods of release for the sake of self-gratification. We seek short cuts and ways around delays because we just have to get our ideas into the world, which is precisely where everyone goes wrong.

When we outsourced work on a new platform early last year, we thought we were doing it for the right reasons. After years of growth and success we had the means to create an updated system for our clients that met many long time demands. In our minds it was a move for them, not us, and it could happen much quicker with additional help in development.

We knew what people needed because we spent our days engaged with them in a dialogue about our product. You know who didn’t? The team we hired to help us build the site.

This is not a slight against them. The entire team was very talented and they helped us build a beautiful system. If only that system actually worked it would have been a gorgeous product release, but as many users know that is the furthest thing from what happened. The release crashed our system for days, leaving clients and members of the media without access to their music. It was a borderline worst case scenario.

We do not blame the team that we hired for this mistake because we knew it was our rush to get a new product out that ultimately lead us astray. We could have built the platform ourselves, but instead we tried to take a short cut in our personal development by seeking help from people unfamiliar with our mission and focus. We asked people to think like us rather than thinking for ourselves.

In the weeks following the failed launch of the new platform we came to a realization: We need a new plan and we still have to pay off the now largely useless updated platform. After much debated we decided to return to our core product and revisit ever single page and tool one item at a time. We made lists of everything we could change and talked about the things we wish we knew how to build ourselves. Instead of one big update we would make several minor updates throughout the year, each furthering the overall quality of our platform.

Our biggest success has been the product of our team working together. We may not be the biggest team in the world, but we are dedicated to our mission and we stop at nothing to deliver high quality work to our consumers. If something we need can be gained through our own efforts then it us our responsibility to see it through.

It doesn’t matter what it is you want to pursue in life. Whether you want to create, teach, build, or work in middle management you need to do the work involved to find true success. Houses and countries and cell phones and stereos do not happen simply because they are wished for. People just like you and me put their own blood, sweat, and tear into something because they wanted to see it exist. They sought like-minded people, but they never relied on them to do the things they wanted.

Don’t seek a legacy –  build one.

James Shotwell is the Director of Customer Engagement at Haulix. He is also a Managing Editor at Substream Magazine and a ten-year music industry veteran. You should probably follow him on Twitter.

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Stop comparing your career to outdated music business models

Earlier this year I traveled to Detroit in order to interview an Leo Bautista, a young man who is better known to the world as Rival Summers. Leo’s fans had requested I feature him on my podcast several times in the months prior through emails and tweets, which in itself wasn’t entirely usual, but the volume of requests far exceeded any other artist week after week. Anyone in entertainment will tell you that is the kind of thing you need to pay attention to, so – I did.

I was largely unfamiliar with Rival Summers before scheduling the conversation, but the ten hour drive from Minneapolis to Detroit provided ample time for me to become immersed in Leo’s discography. He’s single-handedly creating (and recording – Leo often plays most, if not all the instruments on his albums) a style of pop rock that takes just enough cues from the soundtracks of John Hughes film to feel timeless in their own way.  It is immediately accessible and undeniably catchy music that people of all ages can relate to, but there are layers to the material that provides a depth many in his genre struggle to achieve. There is also an ever so slight edge to it all, making Rival Summers a project that could just as well be found on Warped Tour as it could opening for bigger radio rock artists in arenas. In short, it’s something special:

After realizing all of this over the course of my drive you can probably understand how surprised I was to hear Leo tell me, on record, that was a bit disappointed with how his last EP, Undeniable, had performed. The album was the product of nearly five years’ work, and Leo’s fans had contributed money through a crowdfunding campaign to allow him a full month of recording time in California alongside one of his music idols, My American Heart frontman turned producer Jesse Barrera. It was a month that Leo says changed his life and career. For the first time he was able to fully focus on music in a place that inspired him in a way his home in the midwest could not replicate. He was more or less on his own and doing the thing he loved because people who believed in his art cared enough to support his continued development without knowing what would come from doing so.

Undeniable, a name Leo chose because it is what he inspires to be in music, was released in April of 2016. Leo did his best to promote the record online, receiving several mentions on blogs and a few positive reviews, which his fans then promoted through their networks with retweets, likes, and shares. Everyone who heard the record seemed to enjoy it, if not love it, and that made Leo happy. Still, in the back of his mind something was missing. Despite all the love and support from his fans Leo was not seeing the opportunity to take the next big step in his career that he believed the album could create. Add to this the fact he parted ways with his creative partner at the time, which hindered touring as a full band, and it is easy to understand why there seemed to be a negative for every positive.

Leo eventually came to realize he was wrong all along. Like anyone striving to turn their passion into a career he unknowingly allowed himself to get caught up with the business of art, which has a nasty habit of making people undervalue their creativity based on how they believe the world outside their audience feels about their work. Leo’s fans had told him Undeniable was a record they needed and were willing to support before it was even created. He was empowered by an audience he built through his own hard work to further chase his dreams and build a career. The record may not have brought a label deal his way or provided a management contact with a massive network of powerful influencers, but it reaffirmed his relationship with his audience and brought numerous new believers to his craft. Touring may hurt in the short term, but we are quickly approaching an age where digitally-inclined talent can build thriving careers without going broke on the road to play for 30 kids a night. Leo has the ability to try alternative paths because his fans are already dedicated to seeing him flourish.

You probably realize this by now, but Leo is not alone when it comes to this problem. Entertainment as a whole has changed very quickly in the last ten years. The ways we tell people to think about careers in entertainment however, have not. In today’s industry anyone with an engaged audience can build a meaningful, financially stable career as long as they are willing to work hard and constantly give back to those who support them. Today’s artists can create Patreon pages that allow fans all over the world to give as little as $2 a month to see their continued success, which can very quickly turn into hundreds or even thousands of a dollars per month total, all without an artist having to leave their home. Today’s artists can use StageIt and similar platforms to host concerts from their living rooms. As long as an artist has a fan base that wants to hear more from them it is possible to completely circumvent the traditional music industry model and find major success, including platinum records and sold out shows around the globe.

James Shotwell is the Marketing Coordinator for Haulix. He is also the host of the Inside Music Podcast, as well as a ten-year music industry veteran. You can follow James on Twitter.

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