All dream, no plan, no goal, no action= sleeping in your parents basement forever…with your big break always just a day away.
Dreams, plans, no goal, no action= a serial talker…big hat no cattle.
Dreams, plans, goals, no action= you know enough to know that you’re not doing the hard part, the action part. Ultimately fear and laziness are winning the day.
Dreams, plans, goals, action= change is happening for you and the world around you…you’re a true participant.
Wherever you are on the slide, keeping working your way down.
These days everyone has a feature on their record. This song by this artist featuring that other artist.
So…if someone called you up to feature you, what would they be calling to feature?
They probably want to feature the thing you’re best at and are known for.
Do they need your voice? Ok, but why do they want to feature YOUR voice…is it the tone? Timbre? Your cadence? Your high range? Your low range? The lyrical content and style? Your conviction?
If someone called you up to feature you, they would already know the answer to that question. That’s probably why the bothered calling. They would know exactly what they want to feature of you.
Do you?
Do more of what someone would want to feature you for. Regardless of having a feature.
I was talking with a producer friend of mine, and naturally we came upon the question of what is the first personal luxury each of us would indulge in if money was no issue.
He had an instant, well thought out answer.
A foot massage every night as he’s going to sleep.
Great.
He would get into bed. Foot massage begins. Foot massage ends. Nighty night.
So we decided to break it down a bit. And it was a very fun, meaningless, presumptive, over-blown problem to figure out while standing around a cocktail party.
In order to pull this off you’d need to have a person on-call during a certain time frame each night. We decided that time frame to be 11pm-1am. At any point during that time, you send a text (and the masseuse would have to live fairly close…that’s a requirement), they show up already with a house key, let themselves in, do the massage and that’s it.
So you’re paying for two hours of someone’s premium time, and that person has to be really good at rubbing feet…and you’re also paying for them to be available any night that you’re in town.
We ballparked that someone who could fill these qualifications would probably work for a rate of $40/hr.
That’s $80/day. And lets just say that you were in town every single night for a the whole year, which means they are on call every single night for the whole year…you’d end up shelling out $29,200.
Ok, yes, that’s a lot of money. Nothing to sneeze at.
BUT think about it, of all the personal luxuries, if that’s the ONE luxury that you’ve always wanted if money were no issue at all…it’s just not that much!
You don’t have to make a gazillion dollars a year to have someone come massage your feel every single night.
Here’s the thing. It’s easy to say how you wanna be a huge rockstar career and have stacks of cash everywhere so you can finally buy all the things you’ve always wanted…but when it comes down to it, they money doesn’t matter as much as you might think.
My producer friend doesn’t need a bunch of #1’s and millions of dollars to have the luxurious night time routine he’s always wanted. He just needs $29,200.
They life you want is perhaps then a better discussion than the money you want.
I stopped into a local coffee place a couple weeks ago and I knew the cashier.
I don’t know him particularity well but he’s a drummer, so we talked drums and bass and bands for a few minutes (it was mid-morning so the rush was over and there wasn’t a line behind me) and then I ordered my coffee.
He handed it to me and said don’t worry about the $2.50
Getting free coffee is awesome.
The truth is I have $2.50 to spare, but even all the money in the world can’t buy free coffee.
If I’m getting free coffee, life is going well…And I felt like a million bucks walking out of there. When I can walk into a public establishment, order something and the person working says ‘Nah, don’t worry about the money part’…things are happening.
May we all be willing to be the type of people who give and receive ‘free coffee’…giving and receiving the things money can’t buy.
I hung out with a good friend tonight. It wasn’t the greatest hang we’ve ever had, but not bad. I know him really well, so we don’t really need to have the greatest time ever in order to have a great time.
It sure beats the alternative: me going to try and find a brand new friend to hang out with.
Maybe I’m not really in the market for new best friends.
It’s a lot of work. It’s too risky. At a minimum I know I’m going to have a pretty good time with my old friend, and I know it’s possible for our time together to even be GREAT. So I go with that.
But if I go looking for new friends, I’m either going to find my new best buddy of a lifetime, or have a lousy night.
I’m going with what I know.
I’m hanging with my tried and true.
This is exactly why it’s hard to have a hit song.
You could have the best song, but most people would rather spend time with a decent Bruno Mars tune. Because we know Bruno, he’s our good friend. There’s a pretty high baseline of quality and entertainment there. At a minimum he’s a familiar face, voice and presence…so we don’t have to work so hard to make the connection.
Bruno is a LOT less risky.
This is why an acts first smash is so often what they’re known for.
Because it has to be!
And then after you’re in,you don’t have to be quite as good because the relationship starts taking over.
It’s hard to have a hit because even though people may have crappy friends, having crappy friends is still a lot easier than going out and finding new friends.
