D.I.Y.

Nobody Cares About You, So Raise Your Baton

The new music industry offers the opportunity for an artist to go it on their own without a record label, a manager, agent, publicity firm, merchandise company or publishing company.  The same is true at startups – bootstrapinstead of buying your way in, use open source tools, virtual offices, online colloboration, Skype, Google tools and more.

But it's also a reality that trying to do everything can make you nuts. There are never enough hours in the day to tweet, post, network, fix your WordPress theme, make calls, ship orders and… the list is endless. So smart advisors tell you to gather a team.  Not an unwieldy permenent team,  but rather a small nimble group brought together because of a specific project and then dispersed until needed again.

Iimage from www.voiceacting.com t makes sense and it works.  But no matter who is on your team and how small or large it is, nobody cares about you as much as you care about you. I'ts just human nature.  They're responsible for their own well being and happiness; and you need to do the same. But how?

Raise Your Baton

The fact that people don't care about you as much as you care about you doesn't mean that you have to do everything.  But it does mean having your own clear vision and communicating it.  It also means knowing what success looks like and enough about what has to be done to get there so that you can tell if your team is on the right path.

The conductor doesn't know how to play every instrument, but he know how to read music and he knows what the symphony should sound like. 

Think of yourself as the conductor.  Start by learning the business. Assemble the players. Then raise your baton. – Bruce Houghton

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4 Comments

  1. Very good advice. It can definitely be overwhelming, so ask your friends and family for help. You’d be surprised what a great job they can do when given the task.
    Many indie labels, managers, agents, etc, got their start exactly this way. “My friends had this band and I wanted to help them out.” Simple as that. Nothing new.
    As to your point that nobody cares about you as much as you care about you, this can actually be a good thing when asking others to help: they won’t obsess over details they way you would!

  2. This is such an important part of our business. There are so many talented artists that think they not only can play music, but also deal with the big corporate artists (no point intended). I can not play any instrument to save my life. However, I can track down distribution channels, worldwide marketing and publishing royalties just as good as Santana plays the guitar with his eyes closed. In this day in age, indies should not take the “indie” part seriously. It is good to be a master at one trade than trying to be the master of all. – Wil Ochoa

  3. Knowledge is a first class companion to creativity. You don’t get great ideas in a vacuum. What our band has discovered is …….that ” small nimble group ” are capable of contributing large ideas….. executional and conceptual. No one person owns all the ideas. -Julian Clopet

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