As your fans or customers pull back the layers to what you do and what you’re all about, what will they find?
Will they peel back the layers to find even deeper beauty and intention…or will they find they would have been better off not peeling?
If they look closer will they discover a trail of beauty you’ve been building for them all along?
What would it look like for your thing to be imbued with meaning?
If your style of music is only one or two degrees away from the kind of music that is successful and famous and generates lots of revenue…then it probably makes sense to stick with what you’re doing and simply wait for those markets to shift toward you.
However if your style of music is nine or ten degrees away from the kind of music that is successful and famous and generates lots of revenue…you might be waiting a long time for that shift. It might make sense to adjust your style to make it more likely enough people will latch on.
»» Worth noting…if you’re way off-center, having a plan (and patience) to build slowly will always give you the best chance to bridge the gap to larger markets.
Brushing your teeth, taking out your contacts, washing your face, locking the door…the day doesn’t feel complete without these things. There’s a nagging awareness of incompletion until they’re complete. So you do them, without fail, every day.
The secret is you can add other things to this list. Whatever you want to add. Everything on that list is completely made-up and put into place by choice. And that nagging feeling is a gift of a reminder…use it to your advantage.
The Beatles had two mics out front but three people singing. Think about that for a minute. It wasn’t because they couldn’t afford another microphone.
In The Beatles Get Back documentary there wasn’t much, if any, complimenting each other as they were coming up with these incredible, historic songs. Perhaps the real affirmation was the others taking the idea and running with it. I’m sure their egos were as fragile as any but there wasn’t a constant ‘you’re doing a good job’ going around. But rather, there was a general trust (albeit fractured) of musical instinct between the members and that they would get to where they needed to go.
Not even The Beatles knew (or know) how they did what they did. For every controllable element of a career there are fifty uncontrollable elements.