The only way you can bring passion is to have passion. The job or project or circumstance doesn’t give you passion in and of itself…it uncovers it and can then grow it. The circumstance works with what’s already there.
It doesn’t bring it to you. It can only bring it out of you.
»» If you’re having a hard time finding the passion within yourself, a closely related idea is caring. And then putting action into that care. Care and action are the shovels that uncover passion.
It’s frustrating to sit in your room knowing you’re a skilled artist while not having the levels of success you think you deserve.
Being good at music is different than being good at having a career in music.
To be good at having a career in music it takes a different skill set than learning chords and rhythms.
In short, the difference is…you have to get good at putting a team together. Recognizing skill sets, recognizing complimentary strengths and weaknesses, building culture, sharing and inspiring goals and vision.
»» If that sounds like a lot…then at a minimum you need to be diligent about finding a manager who can do all of this.
»» But ultimately it will always come back to the artist.
“We’ve got a bunch of great C chords! There’s gonna be some E minors and some G’s! And some cymbal hits!”
That’s not a great way to sell an album. Information rarely sells art.
People buy an album (or a song, or artist, or design) for the way it makes THEM feel…not because of what you did to make it…unless what you did to make it connects with them emotionally.
»» Hey Jude is in the key of F. Most of you didn’t know that…because there’s no need to know that. It’s not a selling point. The selling point was the excitement my friend had in middle school when he said ‘you need to hear this’ and then when I listened it made me feel something I never had before.
We’ve all replayed conversations in our heads and come up with what we should have said in hindsight.
After doing this a few thousand times you might find that your hindsight voice has a theme and a tone.
My guess for most of us, the theme is often clarity and the tone is often confidence.
So how do we move our hindsight voice up closer to our real time voice?
By practicing and doing it wrong and having to apologize and trying again. Eventually, instead of the hindsight voice showing up five minutes after the conversation, it starts showing up after a ten second pause DURING the conversation.
You don’t have to be the best musician to start the band.
You don’t have to be the fastest player to get the team together.
You don’t have to give the most money to get the fund raiser going.
Often times the best musicians, fastest players and deepest pockets lack the skill or time or effort to go first, to initiate, to rally the people.
But once YOU get the thing going, they’re thrilled and eager to join in. Go first.
In all likelihood, if you’re there you belong there.
So the feeling that you don’t belong, the feeling of being an imposter, the feeling of being the fake…it’s important to couple that feeling with the fact that most of the time it isn’t true.
And leaning into the truth that you belong wherever you are frees you up to make a bigger difference and have a better time.