Working Smarter, Not Harder, To Achieve Music Success

In this video, I’ll reveal…

• The 3 letters and 2 numbers that can skyrocket your fanbase and your music sales

• How to avoid the “busy work” that chews up a lot of time but doesn't actually move you towards finding new fans and selling more music

• Why working harder won't make you a successful musician... and what to do about it

• How to make more money from your music... by doing less work!

• How to avoid the pain of another year going by without making a great living from your music

• The mistake most independent musicians make that almost guarantees their music career will be a failure

We're at the end of another year. Often as we look back on the year we feel some amount of disappointment, frustration or bitterness that we didn't achieve our goals in our music careers, that we didn't grow our fanbase as much as we wanted, or sell as much music as we wanted, or play as many gigs as we wanted, or make enough money from our music to quit our day job and pursue music full time. It's really heartbreaking because we begin the year with so much hope and optimism at what's possible for our lives and our music careers.

I talked last time about setting goals for your music for 2019, and why it's important to do that and to start doing that now. I'd like to add another layer to that today by giving you some concepts that can help you set the kind of goals that will make the biggest difference in the shortest amount of time.

I think musicians get a bad rap as being lazy. Sure, there are plenty of lazy musicians, but I see a lot of dedicated musicians that are incredibly hard-working. We're expected to consistently be improving our craft, to practice and rehearse, to write new music, to record, to perform, to make videos, to maintain a social media presence, to do marketing, to build a fanbase and nurture relationships with our fans, to be our own managers, publicists, booking agents, and roadies.

With everything we're expected to do, it's really easy for us to feel overwhelmed. We feel confusion at where we should be directing our time and efforts. We don't know what to do next or how to move forward. To make matters worse, sometimes we feel like all this hard work we're doing isn't actually getting us anywhere, like we're just spinning our wheels. We think that all we have to do is to work a bit harder and then everything is going to turn around and we'll start to see the results we want, we'll start getting more fans, we'll start selling more music and making more money. So we do work harder and harder to the point where we feel burnt out. And the results still don't come, and we feel so frustrated, so demoralised, and so crushed by this lack of progress, by this failure, that we just want to give up in despair.

So the key is not necessarily working harder, it's working smarter. A certain amount of hard work is necessary, but if you're working hard on the wrong things or on things that aren't going to make a tangible difference in your music career, you're just going to keep spinning your wheels.

There are 3 letters and 2 numbers that can absolutely skyrocket your results in your music career. Let's talk first about the 3 letters. Those 3 letters are R.O.I. That stands for return on investment. This is an idea that comes from the business world. It's a metric used to compare the cost of an investment to the return or gain from an investment. Positive ROI is when you make a profit, negative ROI is when you lose money. If you have low ROI, then you have a low return compared to the cost that you've invested. So maybe you have a high cost but it didn't net you much return. A high ROI is when you have a high gain or return relative to the cost or the amount you invested. Are you still with me?

This can be absolutely game-changing to use in the context of our music careers. There's an internet meme going around that's the perfect illustration of this concept of ROI... perhaps you've seen it.

It says: A musician is someone who puts $5000 worth of gear into a $500 car to drive 100 miles to a $50 gig.

This is the epitome of low ROI... low return on investment. This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing as musicians.

Why is it important? ROI is important for both time and money, two resources that musicians typically don't have enough of. It's about getting the most bang for your buck. The music business can be an absolute black hole for money. It's really easy to blow your life savings or get yourself into crippling debt pursuing your dreams of music success.

We all have busy lives. We're usually trying to balance our music careers with our day jobs, relationship and family commitments, social lives, our health and fitness, and hobbies. I see musicians constantly doing things that are low ROI activities.

One example that I see all the time. If musicians have a gig and they want to promote it, what do they do? They go and print posters and flyers and stick them up around town. Realistically, how many people do you think are going to a.) see the posters, b.) be interested in what the poster is advertising, and c.) respond to the poster and actually go to the gig?

The answer would be a.) not many, maybe 200, b.) ever fewer, and c.) almost no-one, maybe a handful of people at best. And musicians wonder why they don't get people to show up to their gigs. That's an entire conversation in itself for another time. This is a classic example of low ROI. You've spent $20 to $50 printing gig posters, and it results in almost no extra people showing up to your gig, and subsequently no extra sales of your CDs or merch. Not to mention the amount of time you spent going all over the city putting up the posters. So is this the most effective way to get people to your gigs? Clearly not.

Let's consider an alternative. Let's say you took that same amount of $20 and instead of printing posters to advertise your gig, you ran a Facebook ad. So how many people could you reach with the Facebook ad? It can vary a bit, but one average is that a Facebook ad will cost you $0.25 per 1000 impressions. So 25 cents to reach 1000 people. So that's 4000 people for every dollar you spend on a Facebook ad. So if you spend $20, that's 80,000 impressions... potentially 80,000 people. Some people might see the ad more than once, so it might be lower than 80,000. But regardless, you're reaching tens of thousands of people for $20 compared to reaching a couple of hundred with your posters. $20 for 80,000 impressions is a HUGE ROI.

The sheer number of people you can reach with a Facebook ad would be enough of a reason to use that as your primary mode of advertising. But there's another reason why Facebook ads will get you a much higher ROI than putting up posters.

Facebook offers incredibly precise targeting of advertising thanks to the amount of demographic data it has collected from its users. You can get really granular with the targeting for what kind of person sees your Facebook ad. You can target by location, age, gender, interests, relationship status, connections, languages, education, and occupation. With Facebook ads, you can reach your target audience with almost pinpoint precision and do it with minimal expense. So if you know who your ideal fan is, if they're a particular age or gender, you understand their interests, their hobbies, which other artists similar to you that they like and listen to, then you can show your Facebook ads to only those people.

Why is that important? Because those people are more qualified to buy from you, and in this example it means they're far more likely to come to your gig than an average, random person. They're a better match for your music. You have absolutely no control over who sees your gig posters. The chances that your ideal fans, the people that would be most interested in coming, are actually going to see your poster are pretty slim. So for your investment of $20, which option gives you a better return on that investment: printing a couple of dozen posters and sticking them up around town where, at best, a couple of hundred random people might spot them and probably won't be enticed to come to your gig? Or, running a Facebook ad that will be seen by tens of thousands of highly targeted, highly qualified people who will have a much higher affinity with your music and, therefore, be much more likely to come to your gig and then to buy your CDs and your merch?

Clearly, running the Facebook ad will give you a much higher ROI and be much more likely to get you the result you want.

Now let's talk about the 2 numbers that will skyrocket your music career. Those 2 numbers are 80 and 20. This is from what's called the 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto Principle. The 80/20 Rule states that 80% of the activities you're doing are only getting you 20% of the results. That strikes me as being a very poor and ineffective use of our time, effort and money. The flip side of this is that 20% of what you're doing is getting you 80% of the results. What you want to do is optimise and focus on doing the 20% that will get you 80% of the results. This is going to save you massive amounts of time, energy, and money.

So what should you focus on? The key 20% to focus on is your product and your marketing. Your product is what you're selling, whatever your fans, your customers, are consuming. It's your recorded music, whether it's on a CD or vinyl or a digital file to be streamed or downloaded. It's your live performances. It's your merch. Your marketing is anything you use to communicate with your fans. It's your website, it's advertising, it's social media posts, it's emails, it's videos, and yes even gig posters – not that they're the most effective form of marketing.

Within each of those categories, there will be a key 20% that will give you 80% of your results. That can vary depending on where you're at in your music career. With your marketing, it might be doing market research. Finding out who your ideal fans are, what their interests are. That way you know who is going to be the best fit for your music and you can find those people and speak to them more effectively, in a way that they respond to, and you'll be more likely to sell more of your albums to them, get them to come to gigs, buy merch, support your crowdfunding campaigns, get them to become patrons and give you money every month. With your product, it might be your recorded music, and within that it might be focusing on your songwriting, really honing your craft so you've got memorable melodies and meaningful lyrics that add up to undeniable songs. There would also be a key 20% with your live performances and with your merch.

So to tie this back to your music goals for 2019... you want to set goals that are actually going to make a difference and move you forward in your music career, that are going to grow your fanbase so you can start making a sustainable living from your music. You want to use these concepts of ROI and the 80/20 Rule to help determine your goals. That way you can drill down to the things that are going to give you the most bang for your buck, both in terms of money and time.

This is about working smarter, not harder. So start by asking yourself, “Is this opportunity/action/goal going to give me high ROI?” And then ask, “What's the key 20% of this that will get me 80% of the results I want?” And then use your answer to create a goal in that area.

When you understand and apply these concepts of ROI and the 80/20 Rule, you can avoid the “busy work” that chews up a lot of time but doesn't actually move you towards finding new fans and selling more music.

You can eliminate feeling so paralysed and overwhelmed that you can't make a decision about what to do next or how to move forward. You won't feel frustrated at your lack of progress and want to give up in despair.

You'll avoid having days, weeks, months going by without you coming any closer to building your fanbase or making any money from your music. You won't have to look back with regret as another year comes and goes and you haven't made any new fans, gotten any more Youtube views or Spotify streams, or sold any more CDs or digital downloads.

You'll make faster progress. You see results more quickly. You get excited by seeing some early results and be encouraged to keep going and building momentum. You'll eliminate that crushing feeling of failure you get when nothing's happening.

You'll stay motivated, you'll stay on track and won't get derailed by doubts and fears that you're not talented enough to be a successful musician. You won't have to keep struggling or “paying your dues.”

I hope that's clarified things for you and given you some ideas to help you set goals for 2019 that will help you grow your fanbase and sell more music in the shortest amount of time. Just before I go, let me know in the comments what your biggest insight about ROI and the 80/20 rule was, and how you're going to apply that to one of your music goals. And if you want to go deeper on this so you can understand which 20% to focus on to give you the best ROI, then reach out and contact me and I can help you apply these concepts to really supercharge your music goals for 2019.