Dream big, work smart method in Music Business

So many years I wasted dreaming about “the big time” in my music career. Dreams are great, without them life would be… well just flat… But every time I tried to take steps towards my dreams I tried to jump ahead, I tried to run before I learned to walk. The result was most of the time, nothing! I hit a rock wall even before I got going. But life is a learning curve, so I am glad to say I have learned from my mistakes.

In the past six months I took the advice some people have been trying to tell me for few years now and I started to see growth. I started to see things happening. My social media following started growing, and so did my mailing list. People started sharing my music! I had spent years in the past trying to get projects to this stage with only little success. I set up my self weekly and monthly realistic goals, I set up my self schedules and deadlines. I set out to learn how to reach these goals. I asked my self what would it take to reach 100 Soundcloud followers, 1000 Facebook likes, 5000 Twitter followers? And the answer was much more simple than I thought. One at a time. Instead of trying to reach As many people as possible, I set out to reach one person that matters at the time. I made everything personal. I wrote everything on my website, my blog, social media the same way I write my songs, straight from my heart. It’s amazing how the honesty comes through everything. People pick up on it and out of no where, I started to get requests for interviews and radio shows asking tracks, instead of me asking them to play me, or write about me.

But the biggest lesson here is to look at your goals, where do you want your career be? Figure out few stepping stones on the way, and figure out how to get there. For example, if your dream is to tour abroad. Before there is any point in doing this you need to build interest in the area. This can be done for example through social media and again one person at a time. Get to know bands or musicians in the area, make friends with them. Find people who like similar music to yours, they are your target audience. Go after them, give them something free, make friends with them. And that is another key point. Fans should become your friends, not your friends become your fans. Set targets, for example lets say you always wanted to come to perform in Dublin (where I live) and your music sounded similar to Dropkick Murphys. Find the people who live in Dublin and like Dropkick Murphys and make friends with them. Talk about music, or something else you have in common. Offer few free tracks for them. Now set up to reach for example one person every day. I know this sounds like a long way of doing it, but I can promise it works! With time you get better and faster, and you’ll be talking to tens of people every day 🙂 If you have few hundred people in Dublin on your mailing list, suddenly organizing a show is not that difficult.

Dreams are nothing more than dreams without small manageable goals. So use the Dream big, work smart method and apply it on all aspects of your career.

J.P.