In many personal development circles, this is about the time when people start asking whether you are starting to reflect on what you have achieved this year and what you are planning for next year. I wanted to just throw out a blog post here based on that, but from the perspective of your music business.

The question “What do you really want?“ tends to be the basis on which this kind of discussion trips us up a lot. I’ll rephrase it to focus on your music career:

“What do you want to achieve in your music business in 2009?”

“How many gigs do you intend to play next year?”

“What’s the goal for your mailing list size, and how do you plan to get there?”

“How many CDs do you plan to sell and how do you intend to do that?” 

Imagine if today is the first day of the rest of your life. You’ve probably heard that before. But it implies that there is both good news and bad news. 

Bad News: You’ll never get today back. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Good News: Right now, the day is ahead of you. The choice is up to you: spend your time doing things that are unimportant or uninteresting to you, or spend it on things that move you closer to who and where you want to be.

Here’s what I recommend you do:

1. Break down your music career into segments: marketing, administration, gigs, recording, production, etc

2. Then list down your goals for the year in each of your segments.

3. Break down the goals further by each quarter.

However easy this may sound, it usually is not if it’s done correctly. It requires a lot of thinking, dedication and self-questioning to get out of yourself the real goals you have for yourself, not the superficial ones. Musicians Mastermind members go through many exercises in the first 3 weeks to get clear and create a road map for their success.

There is still some time to go before the end of this year and the start of the next, but I suggest you make some time to plan right now. Then leave it and return to your planning in a few weeks time to see what you have written and whether it still makes sense for you.

The problem with goal setting only at the turn of the year is that you have a lot of motivation and energy but you don’t follow through to achieve all the goals because they are created out of excitement rather than true desire.

Please give your feedback:

January has always been an amazing time for musicians to kickstart their businesses to even higher levels of success. I have found that musicians in the audience of January workshops always seem to outperform and achieve better results throughout the year than those musicians who attend at any other time of the year. 

Based on this and other feedback I have received from readers, I am considering running a 30-day KickStart your Music Business 2009 program based on the internet so I can work with people around the world. I will include the right planning documents that my private clients use to supercharge their careers with laser focus. I will also include training teleconferences, daily e-mails and personal support where applicable.

Whether you want to get more exposure, more paid gigs or more sales, this program will kickstart you to that success in 2009. If you achieve your music business goals, would it be worth paying for the support to get you there? I’d like to know your thoughts on having this type of a program and whether you would join. 

Let’s discuss… (leave a comment)

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Until today, I’ve never had business/contact cards for myself as a Tabla player. I never saw a real need for it - in fact, I still don’t. I got them because one, there is sometimes the odd occasion where I am doing private work and I get people come up to find out more and how I can play at their events, and two, I just wanted some MOO cards.

Yes - I got the above cards from MOO.com. They are mini-cards rather than standard business card sizes. Printed on high quality 350gsm card which makes them feel really special. And with MOO I can have as many images as I want on the front. I chose 4 different ones - although after seeing them, I only like two in particular.

So are business cards necessary for musicians?

When you are networking with industry executives or other musicians and need to give them your contact details, it is sometimes good to have a contact card. Your contact card should stand out. It’s like the recent discussion on whether MP3 or CD as a demo is better. What will make you stand out?

My personal music website www.londontabla.com, although still in its re-construction stage, pulls in a lot of teaching and private and corporate gig enquiries each and every week. More than I can take on. Therefore in creating my contact cards, I had to think about the number and type of enquiries they would bring in and whether or not these cards would really add value to my business.

The biggest place they will have an impact is when people see me performing and ask how they can learn to play as well. I am shifting my limited teaching schedule to focus only on working with adults now rather than children as I used to and I feel that they will have a good return on these, but I yet have no concrete statistics on this to share with you. 

I am now in what I like to call the “testing phase” of using 100 contact cards and will report back in a future blog post to see how many results they generate immediately. 

With MOO’s mini-cards you are limited to the amount of text you can have - I think just six lines. More than anything, it makes you focus on what you are doing and what is the core message you want to get across.

I decided to have my name and what I play on the same line. So it reads, “Kavit Haria - Tabla Player”. Even though the front side has an image of my instrument, it’ll help people associate my name with Tabla player which is how I am branded in the Indian music field.

I decided to have a contact number where I can be reachable. As I am normally on the go, I decided against my office number and used my cell phone. I realized that the cards will only be used minimally and to people who were really interested. I am not in the game of aiming to hand out hundreds of cards. I also included my e-mail and web address which is where most of the information of what I do is located. 

An alternative to the mini-card or traditional business card is the CD business card. This is a wallet sized CD that has all of your information on it, as well as a link whether they can go and hear samples, photos and whatever you want. Most place that manufacture audio CDs should offer CD business cards at affordable prices. 

Are business cards really necessary for musicians, and how do you use them?

Let’s discuss… (leave a comment)

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This is a side of things we musicians don’t particularly enjoy doing. I’m not sure why. But without a doubt, we still know that it is key to our growth, advancement and success in our careers.

The business end of music is all about the promotion, management, recording and distribution of your music. Of course, there are other things involved like the administration, bookings and legal issues.

More than anything, this is a time management issue because we already know how important doing the business end of things ourselves is at least at the start of our career and so I need not convince you of that.

In my time working on my own business end of performance and consulting other musicians, I have found that the key is to do a small bit on a regular basis. It is all about consistent, never-ending action.

Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Make a list of all the business end of things you need to do on a monthly basis to help you business tick.

2. Group them into categories - i.e. promotion, management, recording, distribution, press, legal, admin, booking, etc.

3.  Then prioritize each task in each category by A, B and C. (A being most important, B, intermediate and C, least important).

4. Then create a monthly calendar. Slot in all your activities on a daily and weekly basis for the next 30 days. Add into your calendar all the items you need to get done. Try not to slot in more than 30 minutes a day to begin with if you are working a full-time job. If you are focusing on your music business full-time, be sure to do more. 2-3 hours a day is good.

5. Then simply put up your chart where you can see it and take action daily.

6. Do this at the end of each month for the following month.

I guarantee you will be light years ahead within just 4 months than you would ever have been. This is the exact template many of my consulting clients use and I have also instilled it with employees of record labels I have worked with. It works - all that’s left is for you to try it.

Another important point is that you should not give up. We tend to give up when a task becomes hard. Devote some extra time to learning and growing your knowledge so the task is no longer hard. Come join the Musicians Mastermind if you want to get step-by-step marketing instructions for your career.

We all need a time management system that is cutomized for us - not only for the next few months, but for years to come. Something that will help us grow, and be more productive in our careers. 

Try my suggested method out. If it doesn’t work after two months, that’s fine. Drop it and go find something else. But don’t tell me it won’t work for you if you haven’t tried it.

How do you manage your time and get the business end of things done?

Let’s discuss… 

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Seth Godin’s new book “Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us” is out in the US. I bought it as an audiobook from iTunes for just £0.95. Not sure why it’s that price for a 3-hour audiobook, but great value indeed. Seth also did an interview geared to the music industry with Bruce Houghton of hypebot - here is part one and part two. 

Every tribe needs a leader who will engage, interact and act on an idea by creating a movement. Bob Dylan did that. The Beatles did that. Michael Jackson did the same.

Out of the independent musicians I have worked with, I can pick out the following as tribe leaders or those currently developing their own tribes: Rhonda Dene’t for special style of work, Evelyne Brink for sharing her messages of confidence through her music, Manisha Shahane for bridging hemispheres, Darren Taylor for spreading Jazz in and around London.

It would be forgivable to think that all artists are leaders and their fans are tribes but that is not the case. Not all artists are leaders. Not all of them have an idea (or ‘hook’ as we like to call it) that gets people energized, excited and hyped up.

Today’s society and modern world caters for us leaders. It gives us the platform to rise. We may run different tribes for different passions. I run a tribe with my Tabla in London. I also run a tribe of serious independent musicians via my writing and speaking on the topic of music marketing. I also run a tribe with my charity work.

The key is to stand up if you want to be a leader and seize the opportunity. Choose your style of music and develop an angle to it that hooks people and start introducing it to your friends, family and current fans.

A tribe is a group of people who follow a particular idea. Simply put, you can look at it as your mailing list. But they are more active than just everyday people who sign up to receive your e-mails. They follow a thought, idea or movement. They want to interact and share their views. They want to engage. This is where a blog is good.

A tribe doesn’t have to be very large. A small one is sometimes better. If you build a loyal tribe, they will continue to buy your music as you release it, for as long as you can keep them in your movement. If you build a large tribe, there is a risk of breaking up your movement. Either way is fine depending on how you look at your music business.

Is your music business and career set up for you to just release one music product? Or are you in it for the long-haul, ready to release regular music products maybe once or twice a year for which you develop good relationships with your tribe so that they buy from you all the time? Decide on your approach first and then decide on the size of tribe you are out to build.

What are your thoughts on this idea of tribe? Let’s discuss… 

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