I’m helping my good buddy Steve Nixon put together a jazz piano lessons site called FreeJazzLessons.com

Check it out!

Thanks to my buddy Steve Nixon for turning me on to this monster:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhFIupVoVKc

Growing up sucks. Well, not really – I didn’t have a sweet job, big-ass boat, 4 awesome dogs or an incredible wife when I was 11. (That would’ve been weird.) What I did have was plenty of time to just be me – do the things that were important to me.

When we grow up, though, we get hit with “the grind.” These are the little things that we have to do in order to be productive adults, but aren’t necessarily things we identify with – they don’t complete us or make us happy, we just have to do them. They add up and wind up taking most of our time. And they snowball. Pretty soon, we’re only doing the things required by the grind and we aren’t doing anything that makes us happy any more.

(Good for you if you can’t relate to this – most adults that I know fit the bill though.)

I visited a client in Kansas City last week. After an awesome, fun night out with him and his executive team, I woke up the next morning not tired and hung over but alert and re-energized. I realized that I hadn’t relaxed, laughed, and enjoyed myself like that in months. So, the next morning before our meeting started, I thanked him. What he said will stick with me for years: “I live like that every day.” I asked him if he meant that he goes out until midnight and gets not-nearly-enough sleep the night before an important meeting (lol), and he said “No – I have an adventure or do something fun every single day. That’s how I want to live my life.”

Wow.

I haven’t thought that way since I was 14. Back then I just did whatever I wanted to do. I did fun stuff all the time. I walked or rode my bike to downtown Chicago or hopped a freight train to see where it took me. It was great. Why don’t I do that now?

I justify my behavior with ‘the grind’. “I’m just too busy to do (insert fun thing here),” I say. But before that morning of meetings in Kansas, I got schooled by a guy who operates half a dozen companies that do millions and millions of dollars of revenue a year. He is responsible for dozens of employees. He’s a single father. He travels 20 days a month for work. And he STILL makes time for fun every day.

Motivated partly by curiosity and largely by a desire to defend my own life choices, I made a list of how I spend my week. I divided the list as follows (in no particular order):

1. Essential work stuff.

2. Family/pet time.

3. Life-critical things (sleep, eat, exercise).

4. Non-essential work stuff. (Web browsing, industry blog reading, etc.)

5. Facebook and online game time, TV and other time wasters.

6. Music/guitar time (this is critical to keeping my head on straight).

7. Gambling (although I typically make a bit of money doing this each year it’s REALLY time intensive).

I quickly realized that I spend WAAAY too much time on non-critical work stuff and time wasters. My client is right. There is time for fun every day.

As a result, I’m eliminating everything that isn’t essential to my job and my relationships and replacing all that non-essential stuff with fun things. My goal for October is to not watch any tv (except Bears games) and substitute it with family/pet time, music, or something else fun – golf with friends, time putzing around on the boat, whatever.

What I’ve noticed in this first week is pretty amazing. Just by cutting out TV, non-essential work stuff, limiting my time on Facebook and not playing any stupid games (and not gambling), I’ve been able to:

1. Knock out 5 projects at home that my wife has been wanting us to get done for months,

2. Practice guitar 3-4 hours a night,

3. Increase productivity with clients,

4. Spend more time with family and pets.

The really interesting thing is that since I’m not just vegging out in front of TV and using that time on things that make me really happy and engage my brain (like music), I feel mentally refreshed and I actually require less sleep than normal – at least so far. I wake up really looking forward to what the day is going to bring.

It’s a pretty cool feeling. Now I just have to find a freight train to hitch a ride on….

P.S. Congrats to my good friend Steve Nixon on his marriage this weekend. He’s a great dude and his wife is a great woman. They’re gonna make some musical babies.

What makes a marketer/musician/businessman/individual truly “great?”

This is the ongoing debate I’ve had with a friend of mine. He believes greatness (particularly in the political arena) is defined by being “the smartest person in the room.” I disagree.

It’s not just about being the best, smartest, or fastest, or knowing the most notes, or helping others. Greatness is also defined by your limitations.

Can you look at a situation, acknowledge that you can’t pull it off alone, and bring in the pros? Can you hire for your deficiencies rather than just employ people who think like you? Do you play with musicians who are better than you or strive to be the best musician in any project?

I am TERRIBLE at arranging music. I like to write tunes and noodle around a bit with it but when it comes to arrangements I’m lost. Back in Chicago I discovered an awesome piano player and arranger. No matter how uncomfortable I felt with his suggestions, I did my best to implement them because I knew he had a skill set that I did not have.

It is hard to stifle yourself when you disagree with an idea, but sometimes that is exactly what you have to do to grow and become great.

(This is a follow up to my post “How to Supercharge Your Band’s Bookings.” You can read it on Steve Nixon’s blog.)

So you got the gig. Awesome! Now you need to make a good impression and  get booked there again. If you draw well, this shouldn’t be a problem. But what if your attendance has been spotty? Here are a few of my favorite techniques as well as a word of caution.

WORD OF CAUTION: You can’t expect to spend $0 on marketing and promotion and have a successful show. The venue needs to see that you are spending your own time and money to promote a show –  you’ll earn a great deal of respect from them. My fan recruitment techniques necessitate spending at least your first night of earnings IN ADVANCE to get butts in seats. You will make $0, maybe less on your first couple of shows. However you’ll gain professional respect from the venue and your next gigs will pay out in spades.

These techniques fall in to two categories: “More Fans” and “Less Cost to Venue.”

Less Cost – “Insure” Your Gig

If you have a performance contract, request from the venue that you get paid $0 unless you bring X number of covers. If you don’t have a contract, refuse to accept money from the venue owner if your draw is less than stellar. I have turned down money and it resulted in a second chance every single time.

Less Cost- Drink On Your Dime

Many venues comp food and drink to band members. Lots of guys abuse this, particularly at smaller venues (bars, irish pubs, blues clubs, etc). When your waitress arrives, turn down the comp and tell her that you want to carry your own weight. Which brings us to…..

More Fans – Tip, Tip, Tip

The best way to promote your band is to get the venue’s staff working for you. Most musicians are cheap. Waitresses are used to this. They are also frequently the gateway to another gig. So tip the crap out of them. At our first show at a bar outside of Chicago, our draw was ok but not stellar. We took entire $550 check and make sure the wait staff and bartenders were each tipped out. This worked out to $50-$75 per person. It was really really expensive but paid off. We got our “second chance” one month later. The staff promoted our band to every single person they saw for an entire month. When we showed up to load in the bar was already turning people away at the door and their patio was jammed. It was one of the best Fridays in the bar’s history. The booking agent called me that Monday and faxed in a performance agreement for 1 Friday per month for the next 12 months at $650 per show. Not a bad night, and our $550 investment yielded  a return of $8,350 plus merch sales. Ten months later we booked an additional year at $750 per show.

More Fans – Party Bus

Although we had a decent fan base in the city of Chicago, tons of our fans were suburbanites. We had a big show at Hard Rock and needed to bring our ‘A’ game. We rented two charter busses, one from the north side and one from the south side. Pickup points were suburban bars that booked us regularly. (Of course they appreciated that since it increased their bar receipts for that night.) Everyone met, bussed in to the city, watched our show, partied, and went home. That night we made 3 venues happy – Hard Rock and the two pickup/drop off locations. We spend $1,000 but it was offset by “passing the hat” for the bus drivers’ tips, on-bus merch sales, and future bookings at the suburban bars.

More Fans – Use Craig’s List

Craig’s List is a great place to get fans, but don’t use the musician forum. Don’t use the activities forum. Use the jobs board. Post an ad that you’re looking for girls to come out to your show and that they’ll get free drinks and/or a few bucks for 1-2 hours’ work. Make sure you let the venue owner know that you would like to run a tab for some VIPs to ensure that it’s ok with them. Ask the girls to bring friends. Then have a friend with a camera take pics, post ‘em on your band’s web site and watch the single guys flock to your shows!

My good buddy Steve Nixon was kind enough to publish a guest post in which I talk about why most local musicians suck at getting booked and how they can change all that. You can read it here. In addition to being a great keyboardist, teacher and arranger, Steve is an example of what goes right when you combine marketing and sales skills with raw talent.