| Today I’m gonna discuss 3 Big Mistakes that I see singers making all the time without even realizing it. Make these mistakes, and you’re going to have a hell of a time EVER getting off the day-job band wagon and making a big impact with your voice.
These 3 Big Mistakes all grow out of one thing. . . .
You think of yourself as an Artist.
NO! You are a BUSINESS
Until you stop thinking of yourself as an artist and start thinking of yourself as a business, you will probably make one, if not all, of these 3 Big Mistakes that keep you from having the success you know you deserve.
Mistake #1: No Strategy
I see singers trying to build what in the business world would be called a “Franken-career”. You’re learning everything you’re going need to know for a successful singing career, but it’s like they’re each a puzzle piece from a different box.
- You learned vocal technique from this expert voice teacher over here
- You learned performance skills from that program over there
- You learned audition techniques from this class over here
- You learned songwriting or recording techniques from that intensive over there
- You learned about promotion and marketing strategies from this course over here or from free content you found online
- You learned tools for social media strategies from that online expert over there you subscribe to.
So you’ve got all this knowledge and all the tools for a successful singing career, and you’re baffled why it’s not all working together to bring you success.
It’s because you don’t have a strategy. When you’re busy being Dr. Frankenstein, you’re patching it all together. This from here, that from there. There’s no thread, no strategy that links it all together. But you can’t see that because you’re so busy being Dr. Frankenstien, you’re too close to it. You can’t see where the holes are and trust me if there are holes, you’re gonna walk right into them.
And I see it happening to talented singers all the time.
But I know you. . . . you don’t just want to be a talented singer, you want to be a successful one. So you need a strategy, a thread, that’s going to link everything you already know and take you from where you are now to where you want to go with no holes.
To do that, you’ve got to start thinking of yourself as a business.
What does someone who has a successful business do?
1) They have a Strategy
2) They Invest in Growth
So right now you’ve got to get out of the Starving Artist mindset and get into a Business mindset.
A Starving Artist mindset is focused on lack and contraction. It’s all about what you don’t have and what you can’t afford. It’s about cost rather then investment. In this mindset you’re not thinking of things as investments, you’re just thinking about what things “cost”.
There’s a huge difference between Cost and Invest.
Cost is purely money out. You walk into Starbucks and a coffee costs $3. You buy the coffee and you give the $3 and once you drink the coffee, that’s it. You’re not getting anything more for that $3, it’s spent.
When you’re in the Starving Artist mindset, all you’re focused on is the cost. Everything just feels like money out which makes it really hard to spend on things in a way that could really move the needle towards having the biggest impact and bring the most success.
But a Business mindset is a growth mindset. And in order to grow, every successful businessman knows that you have to invest. No business that ever got off the ground and remained successful did so without investment.
But the Starving Artist mindset prevents us from investing because we’re focused on lack – what we don’t have, what we can’t spend – and so we don’t invest because we don’t see how we can.
The Business mindset makes us resourceful and willing to do whatever it takes to invest so we can realize the dream.
Listen, I get it – I know it’s not easy out there. I used to be in Starving Artist mindset. I remember what it was like. And it kept me stalled for a long time. I was penny-wise and pound foolish. I’d see how much I could get for free, I’d spend on discount/spend-thrift solutions for the big endeavors in my singing and my career and I always got what I paid for – which wasn’t much cause I wasn’t investing much so I had very little skin in the game and I got minimal results each time.
It wasn’t until I got into that growth mindset and started investing in workshops and masterminds with a Mentor who could see the holes and who had a comprehensive strategy – who gave me that thread to link all my knowledge, did I really start to see success.
That’s why I continue to invest in Mentoring. Every time it’s been a BIG decision because the best experts come with a big price tag. But those investments continue to pay for themselves by coming back to me tenfold with what I’ve created from their guidance.
So let’s recap for a sec.
The first two mistakes are:
- Not Having a Strategy
- Starving Artist mentality – Not Investing In The Business that is you
And #3, the last mistake
3) Substituting INformational support for TRANSformational support.
You can have the best strategy in the world but if you don’t know how to implement and apply it correctly then you’re lost. So even if you have a great strategy, someone has to be there guiding you, walking you through implementing it.
That’s the difference between all the programs and learning you did before – they were Informational: you got the info but nothing really changed. But support that is TRANSformational: it walks you through from start to finish, helps you see and close all the holes, deal with the blocks, if you get stuck, they help you through, if you don’t understand, they illuminate it for you.
So be wary of Mistake #3 and make sure that whatever training you decide to invest in, at this point it’s got to be TRANSFORMATIONAL.
You’ve got all the information at this point – don’t invest in anything else unless it involves transformational support.
Now you know the 3 Big Mistakes.
Let other singers make them. Let them be the ones:
- releasing records that no one is listening to and that aren’t making any money
- keep plugging away as the third understudy for a minor role in a non-Equity regional show.
- Keep doing unpaid ensemble work with B and C level opera companies telling them self that they’re just “paying their dues”,
You be the one CHANGING YOUR THINKING to change your singing and make the biggest impact with your talent.
YOU BE THE ONE getting the gigs and the recognition that you know you deserve – performing in the most prestigious venues, working with the most elite collaborators, releasing songs to a huge stable of loyal fans – and doing it regularly.
YOU be the one with the BUSINESS MINDSET
- Get a strategy
- Invest in yourself
- Get TRANSformational (rather then informational) support from the best Mentor you can find and spend whatever it takes to work with them.
Now go forth vibrate! |
