The Modern Musician Skillset: Integrated Personal Development, Artistic AND Entrepreneurial Skillset

In my experience working with hundreds and serving thousands of Artists and Creators over the last 10 years, i’ve learned that passion, talent, and even the driving ambition required to succeed in today’s world-are NOT the problem that they are struggling with most. Despite what some of the critics may report/surmise-it’s not typically an issue with an unwillingness to do the work, but rather-one stemming from sheer overwhelm, lack of guidance, training, and strategy.

(Note: I am not talking about those unwilling to do what it takes-to achieve what they want with their career and their talents… That is not who I serve. I can only spend my limited amount of time and effort on those that are committed, that do the work, but typically lack an effective strategy and mindset.)

Our extensive research + experience coaching consulting and training Artists and Creators-on all relative factors with hundreds of students and clients at every level have shown us there are several core issues, as well as 5 key areas-that prevent them from succeeding in generating the income, and making the impact they can and should be making with their unique content, their talent, their experience, and their message.

The several issues are…

—> A deep rooted-negative belief about marketing and sales.

—> The lack of an effective content strategy, marketing strategy, and a plan that optimizes and maximizes their most valuable assets. (Both free and paid content)

—> Limiting beliefs about being worthy, or their own “worthiness” to succeed. Which can result in sabotage, stagnation, and overwhelm.

—> Lack of education, comfort, and expert guidance in leveraging the internet and the tools of the modern creator.

—> Lack of specialized knowledge and skills training in particular as relative to marketing funnel setup and sales funnel optimization.

—> The lack of a well structured-optimized environment guiding them throughout the process of where they are, to where they want to be. This has a critical effect on both mental and emotional health, and is one of the biggest hindrances-which can have potentially damaging physical consequences as well. This makes it hard to build a solid foundation, improve productivity, and perform at their best.

—> The lack of a clear ROADMAP, and simplified, accountable-next steps. That eliminates the excess clutter, and focuses their attention on the the few highest leverage, highest impact activities-and nothing else.

Thus, the growth of their Careers/Content Business is effected in each of the following ways.

5 Key areas of any Content Business

1. Platform – Not enough loyal subscribers and customers.

2. Production – Not able to either produce, and/or TRANSLATE the value of your content effectively.

3. Positioning – Not able to distinguish your Unique Value Positioning. The central source of your message.

4. Promotion – Not able to drive targeted traffic to a sales funnel that works.

5. Performance – Not able to effectively test, track, assess, and profit from your efforts and content adequately.

Without resolving the issues that impact each of the 5 errors their Content Business cannot thrive, and in many cases will not survive.

Success in the new music business, the publishing industry, and really any content business in the new economy-will be a combination of the learned development of ones artistic craft, technical savvy, and creative and entrepreneurial ambition.

Progressively, consistently, my goal throughout this training is to help you begin the upgrades of your INNER OS, to lay the foundation for you to actively grow to the next level in your ability to see and embrace the opportunities that exist all around for your talent and content in the world. Today you are going to learn the 10 individual skills you need to exercise and integrate to embrace both sides of your brain, harness your full power as a creator, and truly become a MODERN Artist.

Here’s how you can tell if you need to develop the Entrepreneurial/Modern Musician Skillset.

• If you are spending more money than you make.

• If you aren’t maximizing your resources.

• If you aren’t looking at challenges and setbacks as a call to work on your leadership and conflict management skills.

• If you aren’t actively seeking and developing innovative ways to do things and improve processes to make them more effective.

• If you don’t currently have a vision, and/or haven’t set a vision or goals before.

• If you are waiting or hoping on a record deal wishing without any kind of plan.

Then with all due respect, remember this!

—–>In The 21st Century and beyond, you are BOTH Artist AND Entrepreneur!

I see so many Artists complacently neglecting the added responsibilities that inherently come with all the NEW opportunities of being an Artist, Musician, Songwriter, or Producer in the Modern World. They are not embracing what it means to be a Modern Artist.

Those who integrate what it means to be an Artist in the Modern world embrace BOTH sides of their brain, and become both Artist AND Entrepreneur- will find success no matter what they do, while those who don’t will be left behind. I hate for it to sound so fatal, but I know no other way to put it.

The game changed as did all the old rules. While most of us recognize this statement, be someone who sets the example for how we need to take better strides to educate and empower each other, share what’s working, and learn to better use the tools at our disposal to fill the world with music.

The Entrepreneurial Skill-Set = The ability to produce, generate, manage and distribute value.

Modern Musicians-now have the control… But it’s clear that artists have-in most respects been largely unprepared to take advantage of this “control.” This control-I speak of is of course the management and allocation of resources, the development of assets, and the enterprising spirit.

The dormant capability that is powerfully embraced by the Modern Artist is that of the Entrepreneurial Skillset.

Modern Musicians understand that it’s all about creating and adding value, through experiences, with stories, by solving problems, innovating, and finding ways to creatively improve the quality of life.

You need to start using your creative mind and imagination, keeping your eyes peeled, and looking out for ways to create, generate, or add value to life in any and every way you possibly can. It’s like a muscle. a habit.

Modern Artists become both the Artist AND the Entrepreneur, synergizing both sides of their brain to create lasting freedom & fulfillment and the lifestyle they choose.

Modern Artists inventory their assets, drill down to really identify their strengths and weaknesses, and get more clear on the unique value that they contribute to the world. 

Modern Artists realize that they are in the business of creating and adding value to peoples lives. They don’t act entitled, nor do they complain when things aren’t fair-because they are too busy finding the solutions and CREATING more value.

They realize that they are the farmers and creators of value in the new economy, and their focus is on creating unique content and experiences-and always finding ways to add value to the world.

They don’t get stuck in any mentality of distinguishing themselves by saying things like… “Well, i’m me, isn’t that good enough?”

While you are uniquely valuable, no doubt… In the world of commerce, it certainly doesn’t put bread in our beak. Sometimes you have to get brutally honest with yourself about what you are really able to bring to the table, but you’ll be better for it in the long run.

1) Personal Development + Imagination and Inner OS Personal development is the development and improvement of yourself and your life through activities, habits, practices, beliefs, self concepts, conscious and subconscious training to activate and actualize the potential in all areas of your life. Your imagination and your inner OS is the superpower that you can learn to cultivate to awaken and activate your excitement, interest, desire, clarity, focus, new spiritual experiences, achievement at greater and greater levels, and of course fulfillment. Your imagination is actually just one of 6 mental faculties that give us the power as human beings. Reason, willpower, memory, perception, and intuition being the other faculties that separate us as a species. Modern Musicianship is about the development of your full human potential throughout all 8 dimensions. It's a never-ending upward cycle of growth, achievement and fulfillment. The imagination is also said to be God. God is in your imagination was one of many golden messages Neville Goddard taught. It is how you use your imagination that will determine how effectively you utilize your spiritual potential. The imagination is a storehouse of riches that connects to the thinking stuff, the substance that creates all matter of reality.

2) Decision Making Effectiveness

Everything we do as human beings starts with a decision.

Your decision making effectiveness is the most valuable skill you could ever develop because, how you handle each momentary decision is what is going to make or break the success of any project, any goal, any outcome in your business or life.

This is where it all comes down to it…

People typically make poor decisions: Follow the majority, anywhere, and you will find the evidence.

“An American Bar Association survey found that 44% of lawyers would recommend that a young person not pursue a career in law. A study of 20,000 executive searches found that 40% of senior-level hires “are pushed out, fail or quit within 18 months.” More than half of teachers quit their jobs within four years. In fact, one study in Philadelphia schools found that a teacher was almost two times more likely to drop out than a student. Business decisions are frequently flawed. One study of corporate mergers and acquisitions

—some of the highest-stakes decisions executives make—showed that 83% failed to create any value for shareholders. When another research team asked 2,207 executives to evaluate decisions in their organizations, 60% of the executives reported that bad decisions were about as frequent as good ones. On the personal front we’re not much better. People don’t save enough for retirement, and when they do save, they consistently erode their own stock portfolios by buying high and selling low. Young people start relationships with people who are bad for them. Middle-aged people let work interfere with their family lives. The elderly wonder why they didn’t take more time to smell the roses when they were younger

An estimated 61,535 tattoos were reversed in the united states in 2009.

A british study of more than 3k people found that 88%of new years resolutions are broken, including 68% of resolutions to “enjoy life more.”

There is a 50% divorce rate in america”

Clearly your decision making effectiveness is a crucial life and career skill. You begin to get better at it by realizing you are really making value judgements based on a lot of criteria to filter and weight those decisions. By getting more and more clear about why and what those values really are, you begin to align better with your priorities. Decisions can be made easier and more quickly. Another vital element in improving your decision making effectiveness is to consider all the attributes, dependencies, and effects that each decision or indecision may have on all things concerned, now and in the future.

Obviously, there are a lot of things to assess, a lot of options to account for. You don’t have to strive for perfection, as that’s an impossible task… But just making the effort to improve your ability to analyze and weigh the gravity and aftereffects of your important decisions will increase your mental sharpness.

3) Learning and skills development

I believe it was Business Genius Peter Drucker who said-“the only business skill that won’t become obsolete is the skill of learning new skills.”

One of the best ways i’ve found to manage overwhelm and traverse the abundance of data to very effectively stay on track and acquire new skills consistently is what I call serialized learning. It’s really pretty simple, but it works. The way to make sure you don’t oversaturate your brain with too much is to sequence your learning based on need and precise application.

So, for each project, as i tackle something new or want to improve in some area, I simply have an archive of stuff to study that i’ll consume as i directly implement that precise nugget of info. This way i’ll develop the most valuable level of insight from each morsel of content i consume, experiential knowledge.

With your ability to identify and acquire the new skills you’ll need, you can move on to…

4) Strategic Planning and Organization

Strategic planning is an absolutely vital skill that will simply make the difference between those who get ahead, and those who get caught up in the CURRENT.

The ability to map out, account for, and plan a route to success for your career is a make or break skill for any Artist or Creator in the Modern World.

The bottom line is – YOU must Define what “Making It” means for you.

Success simply means the achievement of an end goal. So that’s where we start. Often times, that goal can and will change, our direction and the meanings will evolve… But you need to have a direction for your career, otherwise you’ll be subject to the direction of the current or playing a role in someone else’s dream.

My recommendation is to DESIGN the exact kind of lifestyle you want, and then reverse engineer what it takes to make that a reality. Now, in the meantime-while you’re working your plan, you aren’t “Waiting” for the distant future where you will supposedly then begin to “Act the part,” but rather you are doing the same things you’re training yourself to do now through conscious habits and clear focus.

This way you don’t have to try to pretend to be something you’re not, because you’ll become who you chose to be!

If you identify the skills, form great habits, design your ideal lifestyle, and start doing ALL you can right now with what you got then there’s really no disconnect when more and more opportunities show up because you ALREADY have built a rock solid foundation-doing the right things…

I think I’ve harped on this point enough by now, but it’s the cornerstone of everything you are going to do in your life. It all starts with Values, Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Goals.

Mindset, Strategy, and an Effective Plan. See, you’re starting to get it!

Some questions to ask yourself are:

• Do you want to take advantage of and leverage corporate sponsorships?

• How much would it cost to fund your project entirely?

• What would the ideal/dream situation be?

5) Project Management, Delegation, and Goal Achievement

But Strategy & Planning are only half the battle. The goal of strategic planning is to make goal achievement more effective.

It should start with getting clear on your purpose, vision, mission, goals, forming a strategy, building a solid plan, and then consistently executing it. But you need a ROADMAP to get there.

Later, at the end of this training series i’m going to share with you a plan that will teach you how to use the tools, master your functions, implement and develop these skills we’re talking about here, and form your OWN custom strategies along with a proven Roadmap to make sure you fully achieve your goals.

One of the ways we go from planning mode to execution mode is through the use of the Next required Skill.

Modern Artists and Creators work in projects. Our workspace-the Modern Project Studio.

How do we consistently follow through and achieve our goals?

We turn our Goals into Projects.

Project Management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing, managing, leading, and controlling resources to achieve project goals.

A project is a temporary endeavor with a beginning and an end. Usually time constrained by funding or deliverables.

It is undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or added value.

Each project is inherently a challenge to meet the goals, honor the constraints, and complete the mission.

Notoriously, the biggest obstacle we face as entrepreneurs and content creators in the modern world is… When it all comes down to it, a lack of clarity and focus on the right things.

Procrastination, overwhelm, frustration, not knowing where to start, not knowing which thing to do, etc. etc.

Regardless of whichever you may have fallen victim to, there is only one thing that needs to happen…

You need to get back on course!

Now, if you don’t have/or don’t know “the course,” that’s a bigger problem, and where you should start.

But even if you DO know what you are trying to accomplish, so often the problem is that there is a seemingly infinite amount of options, micro-decisions, infinite variables-controllable or not.

You need a structure or a default system to process the myriad mega-bits of data and information and simplify the path toward a specific outcome or objective.

This is where Disciplined Focus and Project Management come to the rescue.

You have to focus on the highest leverage activities, what i call your Core Focus Activities. And with the structure of your Project Management System you will improve every aspect of your productivity, and the overall enjoyment in your work as well.

Modern Artists understand that the better we can get at both our CFA’s and our ability to manage and execute projects, the more effective and productive we’ll be. In both business and life. Again because Artist Development IS people development.

The Mission of the Modern Project Studio is to create and master a functional set of systems, effectively broken down to their smallest single components, and then consciously optimized so as to create a balanced and fully integrated system that does three specific things…

Lets us do what we love, what we are best at, (our 20%’ers) and leverages our focus, time and energy by intelligently work-shifting the rest.

Lets us create and live the ideal lifestyle custom built for each of us.

Lets us choose and generate the income level we desire.

Transformative Truth: Think big, but keeps it real.

The underlying theme that you want to install into your thinking is that it all starts with the NEXT step. No matter how big, no matter how exciting your major goals and lifetime dreams are, you need to focus all of that energy and enthusiasm into the single NEXT action.

Once you’ve set the mission or individual goal, then you create a project AROUND that goal so you can fill in all the details of what needs to happen to get their.

We Turn our goals into PROJECTS.

6) Brand Building and Core Craft Development

Here is where you need to think like an effective brand builder. In addition to that you need to manage and master the skills of your core craft. Whether that's writing, producing, singing, acting, speaking, painting, directing, etc.

7) Marketing and communication

No traces of starving artist syndrome are allowed in once you’ve broke free of that Artist Growth Trap, and broken THROUGH as a Modern Musician. Marketing is not what you probably think it is. There is nothing wrong with marketing, and the good news is that for us, for Content Creators running a Content Business… Marketing is simply COMMUNICATION.

Communication happens whether you like it or not. Marketing is a non-stop message that is sent out to the universe, to your audience, and to everyone you encounter. All the time. The key for good marketing as artists and creators in the modern world – is that we get it right at the core. That we understand what we are saying, and are congruent in what we are communicating as a brand.

It starts at the center of who you are as a person, what you believe and have to say as an Artist, and the outward expression that forms the visual and external dimensions of your brand.

You’ll learn more about the 3 dimensions of your brand in the next couple lessons, and this is one of the most important concepts for you to understand and implement as you become a Modern Artist in complete control of the things you can control, in alignment with your values, and locked in on purpose.

When you are operating in 3D, you are just doing what you are here to do, and things start to flow in an almost effortless way. You’ll feel like you’ve claimed your power and are an unstoppable force in the world. This is something that you will experience more profoundly than you’ve probably felt before.

8) Sales and Negotiation + Equipment management – Resource and asset allocation

You must be a Skilled Craftsman – With Excellent care for, management and leverage of-all assets and resources available.

If you were starving and the only way to eat was to catch a fish, would you just kinda drop a string in the water with a hook on it, and hope to maybe catch something…?

Of course not!

You would test every kind of line, and every kind of bait, in every different part of the river UNTIL you got the result and fed your belly.

Ya know what i loved about being in the Infantry…

Well besides getting to blow stuff up… (That two minutes in between sitting in the dirt and cleaning toilets.)

Every thing the infantry did, we did the very best WAY we could.

It was all about THE WAY you went about doing things, and much less about doing the thing itself.

We didn’t have much, and often times our most essential equipment was pretty worn out.

But we figured out how to get the MOST out of everything we had to work with.

Transitioning Into business and in civilian life I know we can all sometimes lose  focus along with our attention to detail… Sort of resign ourselves to “well, if only i had this…” kind of mindset. But unless we regain the proper mindset, figure out what we want, and then resolve to go and LEARN how to do it, we can’t be successful.

We must remember to leverage our assets and resources, play to our strengths, and get the most out of the skills and equipment we’ve got to work with. Equipment management 101.

But you cannot allow that attitude of indifference that results in you sort of “hamster wheeling” your “responsibilities” to prevail, IF you want to grow your brand and your tribe.

The ability to go up to someone. particularly someone who would be interested in whatever it is you had to sell, and go all the way through a successful sales process is vital to being an entrepreneur, and is an essential skill that every Modern Musician must be able to do. Without any “i’m not a sales person,” or “well, you can buy it if you’d like, or somethun…” These attitudes are just no longer acceptable. They are obsolete.

If you cannot, using the resources you have available, sell one of your CD’s to someone somewhere in the world… Then that is the first place to start. It will teach you a whole lot about yourself, and toughen you up a bit for what can be a brutal world out there.

9) Risk Assessment, Systemization and Procedurization

Risk assessment. Not only must Artists be able to weigh the risk of publicity or social activism, they must also analyze the risks of making certain business decisions.

Let’s take a real simple and small example: Say you have 1000 fans and each of them in terms of overall “fan value” is worth $100 a year to you. By embracing the concepts we teach-you are able to increase the annual value of each fan by 50% – 100% and is now worth say $200(and this is both possible, and practical) you’ve now increased your income from $100,000 to 200,000 just like that.

BUT…what if you lose some fans by doing this?

Even when handled correctly there will be some loss of fans when you raise your prices, so let’s take a big number and say a full 25% of your fans leave you so now you only have 750 fans each giving you $200 each per year. You’re still bringing in $150,000 (a 50% INCREASE from your previous income) a year and doing LESS work.

You want and need to be able to think about and make business decisions like this. Practice by thinking about the logistics behind everything you do.

10) Fully Integrated Thinking and Being - Conscious, Subconscious and Superconscious Harmony

I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason and compare.. my business is to create.

William Blake Quotes – Artists

The Mission of the Modern Project Studio is to create and master a functional set of systems, effectively broken down to their smallest single components, and then consciously optimized so as to create a balanced and fully integrated system that does three specific things…

Lets us do what we love, what we are best at, (our 20%’ers) and leverages our focus, time and energy by intelligently work-shifting the rest.

Lets us create and live the ideal lifestyle custom built for each of us.

Lets us choose and generate the income level we desire.

One thing I make all my clients do is setup their Fan conversion system, which is a perfect example of automating technology in the ways it should, and leveraging great content. You’ll learn more about that later.

I’m truly proud to be serving thousands of Modern Artists and amazing Content Creators like yourself with the trusted, time tested, tool and skills training. If you want in, sign up for the rest of the series as well as receive more proven strategies and valuable content served fresh on the regular. Yours Gratis!

I will email you as soon as the next post is published without you having to remember to check! Again, go here and signup-and i’ll send you each lesson in this training series directly to your inbox so you won’t miss a beat.

Be Your Best,

@JamieLeger

A Modern Artist and The Content Business Architect for Artists and Creators

Mission #4

How many customers do you have currently?

HOW do you create more income in your business?

How do you create more EQUITY in your business?

What “DELUXE” style packages could you offer your superfans?

List out THREE additional products/services/or offerings you could make that people would buy from you.

_______

_______

_______

@JamieLeger