As a self-employed musician, looking at your bank account isn’t the only indicator of how well your career is doing. It’s important to see yourself as a complete business. I learned about the importance of reflecting on your business each week from Dan Kennedy, in his book,
No BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs (affiliate link). Thank you in advance for all your support should you decide to purchase through my affiliate link.Transparency is important to me, so I’ve decided to be as candid with you as I possibly can about my business, without compromising the privacy of any client, vendor, partner, sponsor, or organization that I have a relationship with. I invite you to give me your feedback below so that I can learn more about how to serve people better. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.
What I Know This Week That I Didn’t Know About:
My Business
Learning to delegate more effectively has been on my wish list for some time. This week, I reread my favorite book on the subject. It’s called, If You Want It Done Right, You Don’t Have to Do It Yourself!: The Power of Effective Delegation (affiliate link). I also purchased the worksheets and set the goal of delegating 5 projects with this new system.
I am a big believer in the idea that any problems in delegating come directly from the person doing the delegating. In this case, I’ve been a real problem. I got off to a rough start with this on Monday because I had to fight old habits. By the end of the week, I began to come to terms with the fact that I cannot expect people to read my mind.
When it comes to communication, speaking comes very easy to me & writing is slowly getting better. However thinking through the details of a project and how to express that to someone is really new for me. After going through this new system with 5 projects, I felt like I had a very productive week. As I mentioned in a previous article, I set the goal of asking for 65 appointments (on the phone or in person) for my drum clinics this month. I can proudly say that 37 of those 65 appointments are awaiting a response thanks to delegating.
My Industry as a Whole
We’re all just people
My Competition
Great drummers are everywhere. I can’t even keep track of all the drummers that I am friends with. Even though I might feel that someone is more skilled than me, I have to continue to feel confident just being me. Clients pay ME to be ME.
My Clients as a Group:
Since I developed a better system for billing my clients, I have gotten paid much faster by everyone.
My Top 10 Clients:
This week one of the producers that I work for hired me to play drums on a song. Even though I had thoroughly listened to the song and prepared several drum parts, this producer didn’t communicate what he wanted from me. It wasn’t personal. He was just overwhelmed with other projects.
After the sound check, I did my first take of the song. He stopped the recording after 30 seconds and came in to the drum booth and asked me to do a few things differently. On the next take, he stopped the recording after 1 minute and did the same thing. I felt bad and assured him that I had prepared the music. He said with a smile, “Mike, you sound great. I just can’t expect you to read my mind.”
We decided to stop the recording and have him go through my chart telling me what he wanted. He had some ideas and even asked me for my ideas. Together we went back-and-forth, while having so much fun collaborating. We then agreed on what I was to play and I told him that he was a genius. He responded back and said, “No Mike. We’re both geniuses.” After a firm handshake, I went back into the drum booth and recorded 2 more takes. Everyone was happy.
I live for moments like this. There are times when a project seems completely chaotic. Then, at just the right moment, it comes together. This is one of the reasons I am a musician.
I invite you to give me your feedback below and be sure to check out the book,
No BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs (affiliate link).
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