Because if you’re going to have staying power you’re going to tweak.
And the alternative(s) to tweaking while things are good is to tweak things while they’re bad…or even worse, stale.
Over the long term, the truth is you are going to tweak at all three of these stages, but it seems like the first one to we forget about is the good stage.
The best way to keep the good times rolling is to change them a little.
Everyone thinks their contribution was the most important part, the key to making it happen. Even if theirs was the tiniest part, it was the most important…there’s a voice inside saying “this wouldn’t be what it is without me”.
And they’re right. And you’re right. And I’m right.
So you have an opportunity to tell them that they were the key. Not in a patronizing way, but in a genuine way…and by doing that you’re also saying “what you were secretly thinking was the truth“ and that is something we LONG for.
p.s. Most of us are afraid of admitting someone else was the key, because we then believe that if they are they key that we aren’t the key…and if we aren’t the key then what’s even the point.
If you are a professional t-ball player you get to call yourself a professional.
But you are very different from a professional baseball player.
Tis true, the professional t-ball player and the professional baseball player are both professional, and they walk and talk and breathe and work as such. They both hit a round ball with a bat and run bases and catch pop-ups.
But they are not the same.
A pro baseball player has the capacity to play pro t-ball, but will always choose not to because professional baseball is where all the t-ball players aspire to be. It’s the more mature, precise, direct version of the game.
A pro t-ball player does not have the capacity to play pro baseball (yet), even though he carries the tag of “professional”.
So obviously the word “professional” does not mean the same thing for everyone, and it certainly does not mean the same thing for everyone in the music business.
Some people play at very high levels…levels the t-ball players can hardly imagine.
So it might be time to up your game. It’s time to imagine bigger, to implement bigger, to begin operating on an extremely high level, to have razor sharp vision, to not waste anymore time (yours or theirs), to be clear and content with what you have to offer each situation at the given time.
There’s a lot you got wrong the first time around.
But there is in fact some things you got right the first time…
believing you could
putting raw desire into action (be the action right or wrong)
being willing to step on stage performing like you had it all while knowing you didn’t…yet
playing that show to only the bartender (yes, that was the right decision back then)
the guts to put the band together
at every second of the day living out: I am doing this. I made this. I intend to rock the world.
It might not be a long, extensive list (and maybe you have some additions you can make), but it’s important to remember that you had some stuff right on the money from beginning. Some things that you can actually look back on your younger self and say “You were right”.
It’s pretty common to undervalue the aspects of your band that have brought you success and given you even a shroud of unique identity in this saturated market.
Because since you have those strengths you figure everyone else must have them too, and if everyone has them, they can’t be worth much.
Or you figure because this set of strengths hasn’t sky rocketed you to fame that they must be the wrong set of strengths and you need a new set, someone else’s set.
Or you figure that if you truly adopt this set of strengths as a core of your identity as an artist, that it will limit you from participating in opportunities outside of that identity.
Don’t be afraid of what you’re good at.
(and I know how that sounds…but hey, maybe it’ll push you into the light)
Once you understand the strengths of your identity, keep doing them over and over and over. No matter the consequences.
That’s what you need and that’s what we need from you.
