Good things come to those who hustle.
We often forget the power we have to control our own path. Stop letting the industry dictate what your career needs to look like for you to be happy. It’s time to re-define the hustle!
You’re listening to Episode 22 of the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast.
Hey there! You’re listening to Episode 22 – Re-Defining the Hu$tle.
I’m your host, Suz – a mindset coach to help music-preneurs build sustainable careers in music by setting clear goals and creating time management systems that enable them to work smarter, not harder.
A few weeks ago, in Episode 11, I discussed silencing the fraud talk. It’s that voice that pops in your head when you start to think, “Why would anyone believe I’m any good?” Or, “I can’t believe I’ve tricked people into thinking I know what I’m doing.”
We all have it. And that’s ok.
Full disclosure, I experienced it this past week. Two weeks ago I was in Dubai visiting a friend and taking time to live my life. I had it all planned out – or so I thought.
I was going to outline some podcast stuff on the way there – I think a 17 hour flight gives one plenty of time for that – and then record and edit it once I got to my friend’s apartment and then send it out.
I would then sit by the pool each morning, do some work, and then begin my day. It would be a work-cation and no one would even need to know I was traveling – they wouldn’t even realize I was gone!
Because I’m superwoman, right?
Aside from arriving in Dubai and realizing I needed a vacation more than I ever thought I did, no amount of work ethic and passion for what I do was going to be able to fix the data and wifi issues I encountered once I got there.
Certain websites like Skype were blocked in Dubai. They also didn’t have the same hotspots and wifi availability that we’re used to in the States – something I never considered researching before leaving for my trip.
My first day was spent re-evaluating what work would have to wait and what devices/services I would need in order to get the bare necessities done while I was there.
My very good friend I was there to see gently pulled me away from the desk and suggested I go relax by the pool.
Episode 21, When the Band is Out of Sync, went out a day late, and the world kept turning.
“Ok, no biggie. I’ll unplug for a bit and I can do the rest of the work on the flight home for next week’s episode because I know when I get home my usual software and connections will be waiting for me.”
Sure, because why would life ever get in the way? After an amazing week abroad I boarded the plane – 7 hours to London, a 3 hour layover, and then another 7 hours back to NY.
PLENTY of time to work! Or sleep… which is what I did.
I woke up in London feeling groggy, and hugely disappointed in myself.
So much so that I spent most of the 3 hours at the airport eating my feelings and wondering if I made the right call to take this trip in the first place.
Yes. An amazing week of memories was completely dismissed because I chose sleep over work.
I’ll cut to the chase – the week I came home this episode did not go out.
For the first time I skipped a week with no explanation or email to my community.
All I had to do was hop online and write an email. I always say to clients – you can change plans, just keep your community informed, that’s what builds trust.
But I didn’t do that. I slept.
And then I came home, and then I slept some more.
And then I saw friends I hadn’t seen in a while.
And then I went to dinner with my mom to tell her all about my trip.
And then I caught up on some TV.
And then I looked at my phone and thought about updating social media… but I didn’t.
Something in me just needed a break. A TWO WEEK BREAK! I can’t remember ever taking two weeks away from work. Ever.
To be honest, it wasn’t two weeks away from work. I still worked, I still took meetings, I still met other deadlines. I just couldn’t seem to sit and record my thoughts or communicate with people online.
For whatever reason I needed to retreat inward.
While I was out with a very good friend of mine over the weekend I admitted to her how embarrassed I was that I did what I always told people not to do – I disappeared with no explanation.
I took a break without properly preparing.
I dropped the ball. I neglected a deadline. I was inconsistent.
She turned to me and said, “So what?! For whatever reason you clearly needed to do that. And you’ll fix it. And do better.”
And I will do better, I am doing better, and I apologize to anyone listening who didn’t hear from me last week when they thought they would. Thank you for letting me realize I’m human.
Sometimes we need permission to be messy, to not do the right thing even when we know what the right thing is.
Just because we’re not living as our best selves everyday doesn’t automatically mean we’ve been living as our worst selves the whole time and didn’t see it.
That’s that fraud talk.
It’s the voice that chimes in the minute we mess up and says, “HA! You thought you actually knew what you were doing? Nope! You’ve just managed to trick yourself and everyone around you and now the truth is out!”
It’s kind of an asshole and it’s definitely a liar.
Sometimes you’re gonna screw it up. Sometimes even when you know how to do it right you’re going to do it wrong.
You can’t be at your best 100% of the time and you shouldn’t want to be.
Living life means we have the good and the bad days. That ebb and flow allows us to appreciate just how good the good days are.
I often think about the book, The Four Agreements. In Episode 20, Cipha Sounds mentioned how life-changing Agreement #2 was – “Don’t Take It Personal.”
I always cherished Agreement 4 – “Always Do Your Best.” It states that you won’t be able to operate at a full 100% everyday, but that you should aim to live to the best of your ability, whatever that day’s “best” is for you, and be satisfied.
So, if you’re sick and you’re only able to give 40% that day, be happy with giving that much. Give your best 40%, don’t push yourself to give what you can’t and don’t judge or berate yourself for not being able to give more.
You’ll be back at 100% in enough time and when that time comes give that 100%. Until then, just do your best.
It’s easier said than done because often times we’re not honest about what our best looks like on a given day.
The need to be giving even when there’s nothing left to give in order to be successful is a characteristic of any driven, passionate human being.
It can be hard to “turn it off” and focus on the simpler things in life.
But, I believe it’s especially hard for musicians, or anyone in the creative industries, as we are taught from day 1 that everyone wants a piece of this pie and we better pay our dues and be happy with what we get.
“Sleep when you’re dead.”
“It never gets easier, you do it for the love of the art.”
“If you don’t want to do it there will be someone else waiting in the wings who will do it and do it for less.”
Those are just some of the things I would hear on a daily basis when I got my start in this industry. It turned me into a highly-anxious, work-at-allcosts {often at no cost}, numb android for most of my 20s.
I describe a piece of what my first job in the industry was like in Episode 2. But the mentality to work harder no matter what lasted well after I left that position.
I remember working at my first job outside of the industry and showing up sick to work. Based on my past experience I expected my boss to be proud that I pulled it together and made it in – no fan fair, just a head nod that I was doing what needed to be done.
Instead I got yelled at for risking the infection of other employees and was turned away and told to go home. I was dumbfounded. How would my work get done if I was home laying in bed?!
Sure, I had mono, but I could still type, my fingers still worked.
Even though I’m much better at taking care of myself these days I still find it hard to shake off that way of life and trust in the work smarter principles I’ve learned over the years.
Knowing how hard it is to rid oneself of these unhealthy habits, I’ve made it my mission over the years to end the sleep shaming, end the unhealthy competition, and re-define the hustle.
Because that’s what we’re told all the time right? Hustle. Grind. Prove yourself.
And I get it. Success isn’t easy. And we should work hard. But at what cost?
Building a career in music isn’t about that one song or that one performance or that one meeting, or even that one podcast episode.
It’s about being able to survive a lifetime of them, hopefully enjoying them in the process.
It’s not about the unsubscribers or the trolls or the people who said they’d come to your show and bailed.
It’s about the people who dig what you’re doing and showing up for them in the biggest way so that they are moved to convince others to support you, too.
Passion may be infinite, but time and energy are not.
It matters where we put our energy and how we spend our time and more often than not I see people funnel their energy & time into the wrong things.
Mainly due to guilt, outside pressures, and bad advice.
If you’re constantly trying to win over the wrong people or sacrifice for those who don’t show you love back or prove yourself to anyone other than yourself, you’ll never have enough energy or time for what matters.
That voice inside may have been telling me that I was focusing my time and energy on the wrong things during those two weeks off, because I wasn’t focusing it on work, but my body was telling me something different.
It’s not easy to make the choice on which voice to listen to at any given time, but if you can get clear on your priorities and what matters to you, rather than what you think will matter to others, the choice gets easier.
The reason this podcast was created was to help you see yourself as the one in charge – the one calling the shots. So many musicians are focused on getting signed to a label in order to make their dreams happen.
For some, that may make sense. Not everyone is meant to build their own path. Some do better with clear orders and expectations. But, being signed means you work for them and play by their rules.
Your success and your hustle is defined by them and their priority is their bottom line, not yours.
When you are a music-preneur you define what your hustle looks like. It’s scary and liberating all at the same time.
If you need a break, you take it. If you want to experiment and release something that strays from your usual sound, that’s your call to make.
Working for yourself doesn’t mean you work alone, it simply means you work on your terms. In order to do that there are some hard truths you need to accept in order be able to determine where to put that finite time and energy of yours.
For instance, some of my friends tease me when I’m taking a break in the middle of the day. “What do you even do? Do you work or nap for a living?”
They know I work hard, but if I work what’s perceived to be a 4-hour day they think I’m slacking.
What they may not have seen were the 10 days they didn’t hear from me as I worked an average of 10-12 hours each of those days to finish a project or create a course. Or the holidays I didn’t observe or cut short in order to make a deadline.
Another truth I had to accept, something that’s unique to entrepreneurs, is that even the hours you’re not working, you’re working.
You’re thinking about the next thing, you’re worrying about the last thing, you’re wondering if you should be working this very moment. There’s a lot more riding on the work when it’s your vision and your creation.
Someone may work a 60-hour week for someone else but when they clock out, most likely they’re thinking of anything but work.
The mental and emotional workload can sometimes be more draining than the physical workload when you’re an entrepreneur in the music industry, especially given the fact that the product you’re producing is coming from
a more vulnerable place.
You’re not making cars or selling clothes, you’re creating something that often comes from your own emotion and experiences.
Anyone who’s ever been to therapy knows that after that hour is up you still need time afterwards to pick up the pieces of everything you just tore open in your session.
That thing I said before about showing up for those who support you? Yea, that’s where the Oxygen Mask Principle comes in – that speech we hear on every flight about putting our mask on first amidst turbulence before we
go to help someone else put on theirs.
You MUST put yourself first in order to serve others.
If you want to be at your best more than you’re at your worst you need to give yourself permission to slow down or take a break when you feel the need to do so.
Recently, at the same time I was torturing myself over my extended break, a musician posted in The Rock/Star Collective – my private FB Group – asking for advice on how often to unplug.
They said, “I just took 2 weeks off and I am feeling way more creative and with a different perspective on my goals. But I also feel bad for taking 2 weeks off.”
Welcome to the club!
Even though I needed a reminder of this last week, taking a break without the guilt requires you to be super clear on what your hustle looks like and block out what everyone else tells us it should look like.
That image we have of the struggling musician or sleep-deprived executive finding success in the music industry is a load of shit.
Not saying people have found success the hard way, but there are others who have found success with balance and their health in tact.
It doesn’t mean they always had balance or that that balance was ever easy, but they made smarter choices and prioritized the important stuff that mattered to them.
I called this episode Re-Define the Hu$tle because I want you to realize you have more control than you think. You have the ability to grant yourself the permission you need to do things on your terms.
There is no one way to succeed and there is no one type of success.
Your definition of success is not going to look like anyone else’s so why bother comparing your situation to someone else’s?
Only you know what constitutes “enough” when it comes to how much work you put into something.
You also have the power to change where that bar as set at any time. Your parents don’t set the bar, your best friend doesn’t set the bar, and the industry sure as shit doesn’t set the bar.
The music industry may feel like a free for all these days, but there’s beauty in that. You don’t need a label to determine you’re qualified to be here. You don’t need a certain venue to deem you worthy to play.
You simply need to believe in yourself, passionately protect your time & energy, and be unapologetically you in order for the right people to connect with you.
That’s hustle.
If you’re ready to stop asking for permission and start defining your success and your journey on your own terms, head on over to www.therockstaradvocate.com/ep22 and download My New Hu$tle Workbook to begin re-defining what your hustle looks like for you.
If you enjoyed what you learned today, you can access all current episodes using your preferred podcast app, including iTunes & Spotify, or by visiting www.therockstaradvocate.com/podcast.
If you’re looking to get clarity on your next steps, find time to balance everything on your plate, or if you’d like more help with defining what success means to you, let’s talk!
As always, feel free to email me at any time: suz@therockstaradvocate.com.
Until next time, Rockstar! Have a wonderful week and I hope to see you back here next Wednesday so we can get grounded to get rising! Take care.
Key Highlights
- My trip to Dubai [00:55]
- My unexpected week back home [02:26]
- That damn Fraud Talk [04:36]
- What the music industry tells us about Hustle [06:22]
- What your career is really about [08:00]
- You have more control than you think [09:19]
- The Oxygen Mask Principle [11:41]
Re-define what your personal hustle will look like to create the career you’ve always wanted!
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Links/Rocksources
- Theme music brought to you by DC-based Indie/Pop band Sub-Radio
- More podcast episodes can be found here
- You can download a copy of the episode’s transcript here
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