What is the fundamental factor that determines whether you will succeed in the music business or fail?
The answer is: Your mindset. The level of success you experience in your music career is perfectly analogous to the choices you make and the actions you’ve taken up to this point. Both of these things are a result of the mindset you have.
Massively successful musicians in the music business are not born with superior musical talent or more potential than other musicians. They just think with an entirely different mindset than everyone else, which causes them to take different actions and get entirely different results.
When you possess a positive and self-motivating mindset, you will make decisions that lead to actions (for the majority of the time) that produce tons of success for your music career. If you’re not sure how to build your music career, having a positive mindset will cause you to ask all the correct questions and seek answers in all the right places.
When you have an average mindset, you may achieve a little bit of success in the music industry, but chances are, you will not see long-term sustainable success.
When you have a negative mindset, you simply will not make it anywhere in the music industry… regardless of what positive things are going on for you currently.
Think about three musicians who are all in equal standing in their music careers, facing three common music industry situations (discussed in a moment). These musicians are exactly the same in every possible way except for one thing: their mindset. The first musician has a negative mindset. The next has an average mindset. Finally, musician three has an empowering mindset.
Read through these examples to understand how big of a difference your mindset can make for the results you get in your music career:
Music Industry Challenge One: Building A Financially Stable Music Career
Musician #1 thinks: “First I need to have a backup plan in case my music career doesn’t pan out.”
This mindset is fundamentally rooted in a fear of failure, rather than a desire to succeed. In most cases, musicians who think like this choose to get a job that is entirely unrelated to music. Then, they eventually become trapped in their day job. In the end, the fear they have takes them further away from achieving their musical goals.
Musician #2 thinks: “I don’t want to distract myself from my music career by having a backup plan. I will only focus on music until I’ve achieved my goals. I won’t do anything else that could get in the way of my musical goals.”
This approach drastically increases your chances of making it in music. When all that is left is either success or failure, choosing success is the best choice for achieving what you want.
However, this approach is also very black and white… which leads to unnecessary risk. Although it increases your chances of achieving your goals, it does almost nothing to eliminate your chances of failure. If you ignore any short-term financial responsibilities or deadlines, you will struggle to build a successful career in music. Tons of musicians have this mindset and give up… never realizing their musical dreams.
Musician #3 thinks: “I need to build my music career without struggling financially. I must earn money using an approach that: 1. Allows a lot of freedom to work on my music, 2. Works hand-in-hand with my long-term musical goals, 3. Doesn’t force me to work 40+ hours every week. By doing this I can pursue my musical goals without any financial struggle or hardship.”
Understanding how to grow your music career in this manner is simple (you can find out how by getting music career mentoring). The difficult part is staying away from the two previously mentioned mindsets.
Before you continue reading, test yourself to find out how close you are to having a financially secure and stable music career.
Music Industry Challenge Two: Getting More Paying Gigs:
Musician #1 thinks: “I’m not making enough money from my gigs because booking venue owners don’t pay well and are ripping me off.”
Musicians who think like this will never be able to find the best gigs that pay tons of money. If you want to earn more money from a gig, you have to help that venue earn more money. By just showing up and playing, you won’t achieve this goal (unless you are already a huge band with tons of fans).
Musician #2 thinks: “I need to get more people to come to my shows. This will help any venue see the value I have to earn them more money, so they’ll pay me more.”
This kind of thinking helps you make more money from your gigs. When you build value in the eyes of the people you want to work with, it raises the amount of money they are willing to invest into working with you (i.e. paying you for a gig).
However, this mindset is still limited in the amount of success it can bring you.
Musician #3 thinks: “I need to get more people to come see me play AND get them to purchase my music/merchandise + actively support my band.”
Using this mindset causes you to take drastically different actions when it comes to self-promotion (when contrasted to the other approaches I mentioned). This will lead to very different and bigger results.
This mindset will help you:
1. Get more people to come out and see you, helping the venue earn more money in the process.
2. Make way more income overall (from the money you make from the gig + music and merchandise sales).
3. Not worry too much about how much money you make from the show itself.
4. Make it easier for you to get the gig, since you can do it for much less money than anyone else.
5. Build solid relationships with the people who book your shows, venue owners and your fans. This increases your chances of getting better gigs in the future.
Music Industry Challenge Three: Getting Valuable Opportunities In The Music Business:
Musician #1 thinks: “If you want a shot at valuable music industry opportunities, you just have to get lucky, be in the right place/right time or know someone in the business.”
These kinds of musicians take control out of their own hands, and put it into the hands of people they never knew and will probably never meet. They are full of excuses, and avoid taking responsibility for making their musical lives better.
Musician #2 thinks: “If I just put in a lot of hard work, I’ll eventually reach the goals I want.”
This mindset supports self-motivation, taking responsibly and having a great work ethic all important traits to have in the music industry). This is light years ahead of the negative mindset I just described, and will help you go far in the music business.
However, hard work alone will not bring you long-lasting success. A lot of musicians fail to achieve success in the music business, because they aren’t sure exactly what to do or how to do it.
Musician #3 thinks: “I’m not sure how to get really big music business opportunities… but I’ll do whatever I have to in order to find out. I have to get training from someone who has already done it before. I can’t make assumptions about how the music industry works based on advice from people who have never succeeded in it at a high level.”
No matter how much you know about the music industry in this moment, having an empowering mindset will help you discover the things you don’t know, and put you on the best track for success.
