Don't blindly follow the Cow Path. When the city of Boston was new and unpaved the city fathers decided against laying out a regular street plan and instead merely paved the paths that had been worn by cattle. This resulted in a chaotic and inefficient street plan that lacks logic. The path of least resistance, though may be easier for cattle, does not necessarily lead you to the destination you want most effectively. The game changed as did all the old rules. While most of us recognize this statement, I think 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 more beautiful music. This requires that we not pave over cow paths in the growth and development of our careers. The traditional music industry evolved into the modern music business, and that implies a substantial amount of cowpaths be re-examined. The traditional pathways for Music Career Development consists of outdated, inefficient, and in most cases-unsustainable approaches or strategies.  

Grassroots Music Career Development

10 years ago, when i started my first content business i used to think of strategy and execution from what we call the top down…

In other words, i’d design campaigns with thoughts like… Well, if i get 100,000 visitors and 10% of that traffic converts to a subscriber, while only 1% buys my content, then i’d be looking at 10,000 subscribers, and 1,000 sales… Logical. Not bad.

But as i became more and more experienced I became more and more focused on the importance of MAXIMUM service to a smaller amount of select clients and students. Going deeper with them and delivering greater value. I started to think in terms of creating SUCCESS as the most important measure for service, not profits or statistics. Because the residual value that the ONE person whose life and business actually transforms, is more valuable than 10 who purchase, yet never actually do the work or see the results. While the ONE person whose life I was able to influence and change-can now transmit that successful energy and positivity into everything around him in their environment.. On all their relationships… That success can RADIATE and have greater impact because it was true, and honest, and profoundly transformative.

Though you are not serving clients, (most of you) I want you to start to integrate this principle, which is apart of Rule #5 of the GAME. (Grassroots Authentic Music Experience) Modern Artists go from the bottom to the top. Not the other way around.

Modern Artists honor and embrace the opportunities around us, start from where we are and build up.

We work our way up. That’s how you know it’s always real. That’s what Grassroots Authentic means. It means no one can ever take it from you. It was all earned by you.

We don’t vaguely dream of playing madison square garden before we’ve filled our local pub…

Many artists and musicians think they have a traffic problem…

If I could just get MORE of it, then it’d be ok.

But more exposure, more plays, more likes, more streams aren’t the goal…

A bigger tribe does not mean a better one. As if a larger community of people automatically assumes a larger-WHATEVER your goal is… Profits, engagements, fulfillment, whatever it is that you truly want.

This Creative Growth Trap is a disease we call like-a-holism… Be careful because it’s contagious!

Modern Artist Breakthrough = Breaking through in the Modern Music Industry = Reaching a CORE base of true fans that support you doing what you love, on your own terms. This is the name of the New Game. The Grassroots Authenticated Music Experience

It's still about people and connection, and experience…

That's what's missing from all the irrelevant banter over streaming services and high level, top down solutions to the music industry. It's about people, stupid.

The goal for Modern Musicians is not in pleasing the anonymous masses by compromising the integrity or freshness of your message to reach the lowest common denominator. To do work we love that matters to the tribe we choose. To create the lifestyle and the career that we want.

The Modern Music Business is about authentic connection and the ability to TRULY connect and prosper via passionate tribal communities and the technology that helps connect and empower us all to do what we love.

From Top Down thinking, inefficient, impersonal, expensive… To…. Bottoms Up thinking, planting seeds, grassroots authenticated career development, the ripple effect.

Think global, act local.

Grassroots career development, like tiny ripples, start small in one place and then influences outward and we believe that's the basis for success in the modern music industry. Authentically connecting with and reaching a smaller group of fans or patrons that support you doing what you love.

Grassroots Career Development

If you wanted to get to toledo, and you'd never been there before, how do you think you'd get there? You'd be intentional about it. Your goal would be to end up in Toledo. Not Tallahassee. Not Bizmark. Toledo. Pretty straightforward right? Well here's where it get's a bit more tricky... You wouldn't just set a goal to somehow end up in toledo and hope somehow someway you'd make your way there, would you? Of course not, you'd follow a roadmap of some sort to arrive at your destination. There are certain roads that if you travel them for a certain distance, will certainly take you to Toledo. Grassroots Career Development is much the same way. Look at our first destination as earning a full-time income. It's the direct path from point A, to point B. So how do you get to that first milestone, and all the milestones afterwords using GCD Methodology? The short answer is through Career Development Pathways, or what we call a Career Development System. A natural and precisely tuned roadmap with the steps to take to get to our target destination with all we need. In this case, our first target being Milestone #1.  

Earning a Full-Time Living with your Music Career

Success is scientific, so we must determine all the required properties that need to be fulfilled before success is achieved. We need to know where there is, as well as how to get there. What are targets are, and how we can hit them. Other provisionals include what we'll need to have with us, (tools and resources) and what we'll need when we get there. (skills & experience) Since our careers are 3dimensional, as opposed to 1dimensional, we have to account for, prepare, and develop in 3 areas to be completely successful. This is what we mean by Complete Artist Development. First is to determine what our expenses are, and then determine at least the initial, minimum viable income level we'd need to be cash-flow positive. So let's say you add up all your monthly expenses and that amounted to $1500. You'd then need to earn at least $1501 to become cashflow positive. Of course, it would be preferable to give yourself a bigger coushan than that, but our point here is to first be able to cover all our expenses, and then build up from there. Second, we'd need to break down the skills involved and required to effectively operate all functions of our career. Third, we'd need to know which systems and processes we'd want to develop to give us the ability to manage our music business productively, and focus the majority of our time on the things we're good at, and that we most enjoy. Additionally, though we'll not cover directly in this lesson, there are two invisible factors that are worth mentioning. Our friends Habit and Mindset. These are powerful players in our career development and will be addressed in future lessons.  

Music Career Development Pathways

Music woke me up again in life. High school put me to sleep and delivering pizza's lost it's luster after the first couple years…

Music gave me something to look forward to. It renewed my interest in actually learning stuff again, not because i had to-but because I wanted to- and it gave me enough joy to do something crazy that could have very easily not have worked out in the long run. Music was my first love, and i instantly knew that I would be making it for the rest of my life.

The idea for building this community and my first content business activated almost simultaneously as i was notified and mobilized for deployment to Baghdad as an Infantryman, 6 months after graduating from bootcamp and airborne school.

WordPress had just come out and I started writing and sharing articles about modern music production and music business.

Traffic grew pretty quickly as I managed and nurtured my first content site whenever i had down-time and a wifi-or ethernet connection within reach. My little project started as my side hustle, my passion project after the days mission, in between letting my steam exhaust out in the little gym we had, and my hurried shuffle to the chow hall to feed my small behind with enough calories to do it all again tomorrow.

When I first started my content business and career in the music industry I had very few skills of much value to anyone else.

It was a strange progression of skills acquisition and experience over the course of 10 years that shaped a pretty natural evolution into where i'm at today, why and how i'm delivering this message, and what we've now come to call grassroots career development. It is the direct path to grow your music career from the ground up-without the need for a degree or someone else's permission. It's important to note that all though-in retrospect, my GCD has been an organic development pathway that has shaped much of who I am today, it is one that didn't really make sense to me in a linear or traditional way until looking back on it at the end, and seeing how all the pieces connected.

In the next lesson we'll be getting into a few core principles of Grassroots Career Development including micro-progression, the mastery mindset, and simplifying your world with a well tuned development system. You'll also get to meet Chuck, and see how this stuff works in action.

Now let me hear from you! I'd love to get your feedback on whether these concepts and this material is clear enough, please let me know if it is helpful, and/or what you'd like to have expanded on or improved...