Continued from this post: @nathankaye/the-top-22-secrets-sabotaging-your-artistic-career-part-2
- If you haven't, then read this one first.
17. You’re a social media junkie addict!
You go onto Facebook or Instagram (or discord) to make a post about your next gig or song release, but you end up scrolling through posts and clicking on interesting, but ultimately friggin’ pointless things and before you know it an hour or so has past.
Then when you do get around to doing your promo post, you’re just vaguely trying to get more likes, shares or bods to your show.
You need to strategise your time on social media by having specific goals that give you specific reason to log on.
Social networks can be really effective, but they can also swallow you and your time up, so be self-disciplined and learn specific social media marketing techniques.
ACTION: Schedule a time (not first thing in the morning!) to go on social media and set a timer for 30-45 minutes. Then be self-disciplined and be productive.
18. You think business cards are so 2008!
Picture this scenario: You just finish a killa show.
You’re signing CDs (yes! CDs!!! they still sell heaps at gigs!!!) surrounded by a bunch of cuties and a slightly older gent approaches you saying he’s currently on holidays, but owns an awesome live music venue on a tropical Pacific Island and wants to book you, all expenses paid.
He asks for your business card and you illegibly scrawl your email on a torn napkin and tell him to look up your website and latest video, then you swiftly turn to flirt with a groupie.
You never hear from him again. Of course.
You don’t have a business card (nor any common business sense).
ACTION: Get some business cards printed. They’re dirt-cheap these days. No excuse. And take your art seriously. If you’re a musician, gigs are your work space. Picking up is fun and ok, but it shouldn’t be your highest priority if you’re a true artist.
Indications that your perspective of your artform maybe skewed
It is most difficult to see yourself as you truly are, or as others perceive you. Like a pendulum, you most likely oscillate between the extremes of seeing yourself and your art as pure brilliance incarnated or swing the other end of the spectrum and see yourself as never being good enough in the ‘others are always better’ syndrome.
19. You’re unwilling to change the way you do what you do, despite the signs that what you do needs a serious overhaul.
For years your focus on learning and improving was intense, but as time went on your practice regime became, let’s say, less self-disciplined and your skill level isn’t where you want it to be. Does this sound like you?
However, instead of seeking new resources, mentors and teachers to improve your craft, you make reasonable sounding excuses or you think you’re too experienced to learn from others unless they’re super famous or something.
You either take any constructive criticism personally and deflect it, or put up a wall to any kind of feedback, or conversely, you take every single piece of advice on, regardless of who gives it to you, which creates confusion and action paralysis.
ACTION: Think about criticism or observations others have made about you or your art over the years. If you’ve heard much the same thing more than once, make a note to observe it. If you’ve heard it 3 or more times, especially from unrelated sources, then you’ll need to do some serious reflecting and honest assessments and realise that maybe you’ve got blinkers to this part of yourself or your works. Then make positive adjustments.
20. Perhaps you’re too confident
Now don’t get me wrong. Creative artists need confidence and, gosh, a lot of it, but there’s a point where you can come across as a bit arrogant and put people off, like repellent.
Perhaps you reckon you don’t need feedback because you have so much experience.
If you’re too intransigent to keep growing as an artist then your art will stagnate.
Then you end up blaming situations outside of yourself (like the music industry, the government, The economy, etc) for your lack of success and even focus on the success of others as being based on nebulous concepts things like ‘luck.’
Ever heard yourself say things like: “Such and such got their success (further than me) because of (insert rational sounding reason).” “Oh, I just wasn’t in the right place at the right time, like so and so.”
Sound familiar?
Change it.
ACTION: Be confident. Don’t be cocky. Don’t blame your situation on outside circumstances. Take control of your career and your life.
21. You have perfectionism syndrome and don’t share your work whilst it’s fresh
At first you love what you’ve created, but very quickly notice (what you think are) it’s imperfections and keep working away at it (sometimes making it worse, rather than better).
The never quite finished album or art piece or book.
Over time your enthusiasm for the piece of work diminishes and you’re already onto the next piece without having even released the previous work to the world because you’ve ‘moved on ‘and it’s stale for you now. “It’s just not me anymore.”
For example, I have an über talented singer-songwriter friend who rated super highly on a huge TV vocal contest show (You can guess which one, right?) which presented her with incredible opportunities nationally and internationally, including the elusive record deal many musicians desperately seek, but after spending over $50,000 on recording her album (which she played the first mix to me and it sounded just friggin’ incredible! Like better than many Grammy winning albums), she has been repeatedly mixing and re-mixing and mixing and mixing it for the past 5 years, and now only does the occasional low-paid front bar gigs and works fulltime in an ice-cream warehouse!!!
Note: Don’t make that mistake.
The flipside of this is that you lack confidence and that fear impedes you from presenting your work to others, let alone releasing it on the market.
Either way, this obnubilates your growth as an intelligent artist.
(for example, like expanding your vocabulary to understand big words when you come across them, which helps your growth with communicating, writing, songwriting, etc).
ACTION: *If you have a recording (or almost finished novel or art pieces) set a date (soon, in the not too distant future), make several public posts and newsletters about that release date and then release it on that date.
The indications that your presence online is weak
If your website is substandard, or worse, non-existent, then how do you expect to nurture a growing relationship with your fans?
Your website allows people to find out about you, to look deeper into your reasons for your passions, to generally learn more about the creator and the creations she/he makes.
22. Do you have your own Domain name?
Not unlike what I said about social media owning the sites you sub-domain (for eg. www.yourname.yola.com/yourname) your website presence on, if they fold or something drastic happens, then you’ve suddenly lost your web presence. It only costs $0.99 to buy your domain name for 12 months on sites like Godaddy. Let’s not mention how unprofessional it appears to your potential fanbase. Or if you pay for hosting on basic monthly plans with the hundreds of hosting website platforms (like wix.com , yola.com , squarespace.com , etc) they almost always throw in a free domain name registration.
ACTION: Go get your domain now.
23. No Website whatsoever
(yes, it's an important bonus)You think that having a Facebook page, a Snapchat, a Soundcloud, an Instagram, (Steemit, Musicoin, etc) etc on social media is enough.
It’s simply not enough.
And as I’ve now said many times.
You need to own your own site.
Maybe you’re embarrassed by your old site.
It doesn’t need to be perfect and you don’t need to be a website designer with knowledge of PHP and html, but there are so many website hosts now that have easy drag and drop website building applications online, there’s no excuse not to build your unique website.
What Now?
You can do your art form and make a living from it, but as illustrated in this book, you must be aware of how you could be sabotaging yourself.
We are in this world together right now. If you’re doing what your soul purpose is and happy, then this world is a better happier place.
That’s great for you.
That’s great for me.
That’s great for everyone you come into contact with and that’s wonderful for our precious planet!
I am absolutely certain that if you apply these principals and the principals in my courses, you will reach the height of your success faster and easier.
Nathan Kaye
IS AN INDEPENDENT ARTIST THAT WITH 25 YEARS OF PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE EXPERIENCE TOURING THE WORLD AS AN ACTOR AND MULTI-INSTRUMENTAL ONE-MAN-BAND AND IS PASSIONATE ABOUT SHARING THE SECRETS OF MAKING A LIVING AS AN ARTIST.PLAY THIS DAILY TO HELP RECALIBRATE YOUR MIND FOR SUCCESS: @nathankaye/recalibrate-for-your-success-play-this-daily-just-before-you-go-to-sleep-daily-affirmations
Copyright © Nathan Kaye All rights reserved worldwide.
YOUR RIGHTS: This book is restricted to your personal use only. It does not come with any other rights.
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This book is protected by international copyright law and may not be copied, reproduced, given away, or used to create derivative works without the publisher’s expressed permission. The publisher retains full copyrights to this book.
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