Your real goal is an integrated mix of successful mindsets, processes, skills and habits to achieve optimal performance and workflow for the long haul.
Let’s just put that right out there.
This is what no one tells you on your race to get more likes and followers…
It’s the infrastructure to success. Your habits, skills, and mindsets, your systems and your processes are the foundation of your success in music. If you could get this infrastructure right, if you develop all these pieces into place you’ll always have the foundation from which to build on and to grow from, thus will always progress.
And isn’t that what it’s really about anyways… GROWTH?
Artistic, Entrepeneurial and Personal growth. Expansion.
As The Music Business Architect I blueprint that growth, help artists build the foundation and content, and coach them to their next level. Today, I want to share with you some content that will help you on your journey as an artist no matter where you are at.
Traditional artists suffer because traditional education didn’t teach them what they needed to know, so they never learned the skills habits and mindsets of modern musicians.
Their optimal career growth counterparts. Let me break down several of the most important things for you to know for being your best self and living your best life.
Here are 5 keys for optimal performance and productivity as a musician in the modern music business.
Key #1: Feed your mind and Develop your powers
Start with your conscious mind through reading and audio programs and then work on your subsconscious mind through meditation and entrainment. Constantly be feeding your mind with the nutrients to grow and expand your whole world.
Stand guard at the garden of your mind and diligently direct or redirect all that comes into your life.
Constantly feed your mind with the positive ideas that strengthen your sense of self and your connection to the world around you. Constantly nourish the seeds of motivation that light the fire in your heart and propel you toward your goals. Never stop learning. Modern musicians are learners. They are constantly growing their capabilities and gain a lot of energy through learning. They want to know everything they can as they go about developing their skills.
Every day find a way to kindle your inspiration to keep the passion alive and growing. Nourish your mind with the examples of happy, successful living. Feed and strengthen the mind like a muscle. That is your golden asset, with which you focus your attention and develop your powers. Guard that garden like your life depended on it. It does.
Key #2: Greatness Starts With Vision and Clarity
Modern musicians have vision and clarity. You have to know what you want before you can have it. Isn’t this the truth? So why do so many of us fail to gain this clarity and focus? Well, Most of us don’t really have a vision for our life or careers. We don’t really know what we want… So we just end up somewhere…
But the fundamental starting point is clarity and focus. So paint a vision. Be bold and make it count. Don’t allow yourself to be pushed around and into the patterns of fear and doubt. You can do this. You can live your ideals. You do this by painting a vision onto the screen of your mind and holding onto that vision until it’s actualized in real life. You’re the leader. Know where your there there is. You lead your music business there.
You also manage and perform the functions of a modern music business owner. The other two roles utilize the content from your vision, they rely on the leader to form the vision, the creative imprints, the blueprints of your dream. You must keep success in mind. See what you want and hold it in mind at the exclusion of all other bids for your attention.
“Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it’s difficult to score.” — Paul Arden
It was a vision that lifted me out of poverty 15 years ago and led me to my exact right spot in the universe doing what I love, coaching musical artists and creating content for you. Vision activates your creative subconscious to find ways to reach your goal. It’s vision that can transform lives and careers. Don’t be without a vision. Artists are the CEO’s and leaders now, they are the visionaries and must never be without a vision they are working toward. If you have not already, begin to cultivate visualization techniques to focus on your goals on a daily basis.
In order to be your best self you have to visualize what that looks like. Visualization techniques help to strengthen the connection between your internal motivation and your external action. Vision can be thought about in long form as detailed pictures or stories that you can develop or focus on in hour long (or however long you prefer) meditations, or as brief flashes of insight and inspiring thoughts, visions, and feelings that can serve as motivation for those other moments when you don’t see it so clearly.
Use as much emotion as possible to activate the most powerful results with using visualization. Repeat daily as often as needed to keep the dream alive. You must remain in a state of becoming who you want to be and living into your blueprints of your greatest self. Ever present on your mind must be the visions of precisely what you want.
Key #3: Become Your Message.
Fall in love with the stories that make you who you are. Let them engrain so deeply that you can’t help but burst with the radiance of your message. Build an unstoppable character and mindset. This first requires that you understand what an unstoppable character looks like for you. But once you’ve constructed the picture, go to work on all the stories that make up your message and your core brand. Work yourself through a process to get to the essence of who you are at a cellular level and program that message to be the strongest message driving your life.
What are the core drivers for your message and does it support the culture you are trying to build? Define empowering stories that support your narrative and review and recall them until they are integrated and propelling you forward.
Be in love with what you have. Think of the potential that you have each day. Fall in love with that potential and spend the use of it each day activating that potential through the development of your powers through building success habits and rituals which we’ll talk more about in a moment.
When you become your message, you become powered by purpose.
Your reason why becomes your driving purpose. Always know your reason why. When you’re powered by purpose you can accomplish anything. When you’re powered by purpose you are armed with an unstoppable energy to overcome any challenge, complete any project or solve any problem.
It’s the generator for your vibrance. When we are powered by purpose we feel capable of performing and thinking at a world class level. It’s purpose that keeps us coming back to the daily dials and core practices despite ever present avenues for distraction. Purpose must be the driver of the show, the captain of the ship. Let purpose guide and shape you as you follow your path to greatness. If you have not already, be sure to write out your purpose so that you are clear on it moving forward.
Key #4: Build Success Habits and Rituals
I’m obsessed with reducing complexity. It’s central to how I operate. When I coach artists I simplify everything you need to know and do down into daily action steps. Those action steps go onto the calendar and are logged daily on an ever evolving GPS toward your goals. I prescribe the regimen that is right for them based on many variables and factors. The core of those action steps are built on the foundation of your life and career, your success habits and rituals. Success habits are the core habits and rituals that you do to develop your powers every day, or every week or month or seasonally or annually or whenever.
Like a morning ritual, or your routines for writing, recording, meditating, exercises, training, coaching, etc.
Your goal is to implement each habit or ritual one at a time until you have all the inner workings of the life and success you want, operating in congruence with your values and goals.
Think in Work-blocks and Work-sets. Find your rhythm. Some people like 20-30 minute work blocks throughout the day, some prefer the 50-60 minute workblocks with a 5-10 minute break and then a 30 minute break after 2 or 3 work blocks. I’m still very fond of the 60-60-30 workset, but your energy patterns and circadium rhythm is unique so you will want to test and assess until you find the right balance that will work for you over the long term. Everything you are doing each day is to grow the capacities, experience the breakthroughs, gain the insights and share the content. It is like a garden.
Meditate twice daily every day, take breaks to refresh your mind body system, another thing I do that I recommend is to listen to binaural beats or meditative music in the background to stimulate creativity and focus, just find whatever works for you and stick with it.
Live your dreams now. Drive the dream with the daily action steps that keep you on the path to success. Build the success rituals to bridge the gap between where you are now and where you are trying to go.
Key #5: Know thyself
To know thyself is to know the power you hold.
The power within.
Yes. Rather than outward, turn inward. For answers, for clarity, for peace. Know your personality type as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Get it right at the source. Get yourself right. Know the little nuances that make you most motivated or where you are limited and understand the things that you could do to improve your skills or better yourself in some way.
Understand that life is a process and that your life is on a journey and that should be the journey that is the path to the actualization of your true self and the oneness with your greatest self. Your highest self. It could never hurt you to deeply consider what your highest self truly intends for you, and what exactly that looks like… This content is pure gold for your creative imagination and whats called your Reticular Activating System. The RAS is used to amplify whatever you are aware of and filter out non-relevant information.
Know your real goal
Once again, your real goal is an integrated mix of successful mindsets, processes, skills and habits to achieve optimal performance and workflow for the long haul.
Your fundamentals are your habits skills and mindsets… Core processes and systems. Your Website, Email, socials, music and project management.
Other fundamentals include your health and fitness. You live in a body, but you are a soul. Knowing how to manage your states and your focus are the key to optimal performance. This comes down to managing your thinking, your feeling, and your actions until all are aligned and functioning effectively to serve your purpose.
Take an active and proud role in the long term mastery of self. Proactively pursuing the development of your authentic self. Your true self. Always maintain a mastery mindset. One of always improving and getting better. Growth.
It’s on you. You have to create content. And then you have to connect that content with who wants or needs it.
That is your job.
It’s not more complicated than that-but it’s a cycle that will take many many years to become excellent at.
It’s all in a cycle. It’s about managing a project, and running a campaign. It’s about getting into flow and developing your genius. It’s about the game of modern music business.
Modern Musicians take action. They are proactive. They’re both entrepreneurial and artistic. They are Creators. They live their life on the foundation that they can fundamentally create their own success by being proactive in creating their reality. They understand that there is a procedure to success, and that means sticking to the plan and individual blueprints.
They play whats known as the New Game or the Great GAME. I look forward to sharing with you how to play the Great GAME in my next post so stay tuned or click below to subscribe and I’ll send you several free gifts.
The great GAME is the mastery of self, career, content and lifestyle. The inner and outer game of music business.
I invite you to play the Great GAME and encourage you to accept this gift from your friends at The Music Business Liberation Coaching and Training Academy, here to help you step your game up from Traditional to Modern Musicianship: click here to get The Music Business Expansion Package, free.
Stay Fresh,
Jamie Leger
The Music Business Architect for Independent Artists & Creators
—> FREE GUIDE: Double New Fan Signups At Your Next Show!
Proudly Helping Hundreds of Modern Musicians liberate the music business, declare their artistic independence, and unlock their full potential doing what they love-on their own terms.