Annette

SUCCESS BY DESIGN
PART 1

If I were to ask you where you wanted to be with your career in, say 2 years, you’d probably say “A big rock star”, right? Or maybe you’d say “Running my own label and being able to just play my own original music for a decent living.” Maybe you’d say,
simply, “A successful musical artist.” And, of course, success is relative; everyone’s definition of success is different. Either way, you’d probably say you wanted to be successful or well on your way to it.

What if my next question to you were “And how do you plan on getting there?” Would you say, (assuming you have a killer band, CD, and cool band shirts,) “I’m going to play all over L.A. and Orange County for about a year, while selling CDs and Tshirts
along the way, build up a good name for my band here in L.A., then use that clout to get out on the road for about 10 days to 2 weeks at a time every 2-3 months all across the U.S. and build a name across the country, while still selling merch. Our guitarist is in charge of finding the right venues in the cities we’d like to visit,
I send out our press kits, and he does the follow-up phone calls. And we can use my dad’s RV. Also in between our road ventures, I’ll be contacting the relevant press and any radio stations in those towns that might have a new music specialty show that could play our music and hype the band. Then, while we’re out on the road, my friend who also knows a little about making phone calls to press and radio people will be making calls for us while we’re out there, doing all the last-minute follow-up with those papers and radio stations that are in the town we’re visiting. I’ll always
have my cell phone for any last-minute changes and catastrophes and stuff. All the while this is going on, my drummer, who is an anal-retentive data collector, will use his database of indie and major label A&R e-mail addresses, and we’ll send out e-mails to all these A&R types with news about each show and any relevant press and
radio airplay, and what’s upcoming, so if any one of those A&R people happen to be in that town, they can come see us. By the end of that two years, I can say that I honestly think we’ll have some major, if not good-sized indie-label interest. I know
this entertainment lawyer in town, and he told me that once we get to that point where we’ve got label interest, he can help us with how to handle what comes after that.”

Is that what you would say?

I didn’t think so.

OK, then, so how did YOU expect to get there?

My point is, it’s actually not very hard to create your own success. The word “luck” is not in my vocabulary. Sure, luck may indeed have a VERY small part in the success story of any act. But really, the fact is that that band was prepared, and that preparation met with opportunity and it allowed them to take advantage of that
opportunity. Be it a great gig opening for The Foo Fighters at Paladino’s, be it getting your song played by Rodney on the ROQ, or a great review in PublicityWhore. The only part luck may possibly have in the grand scheme is how particular
opportunities came about. But the fact of the matter is, and what most people don’t realize, is that those kinds of opportunities are everywhere, especially in this town. But that’s only if you make yourself available for those opportunities to appear in front of you. These opportunities won’t come around if you’re at home
watching another episode of “Sex in the City” (arguably one of the STUPIDEST--it’s SSOOO stupid I have to create a word for how stupid it is--shows on TV today) instead of out there playing a gig or updating your bio or writing another song or working an
extra shift to pay for band photos or practicing those power vocals that you know you have but still have to work on a bit in terms of technique and consistency.

So, you must think my argument is that you have to be a workaholic in order to get your career moving at even a slow to slow-medium pace. Perhaps I am. We all know that every band has that one or two guys who do all the work. Well, I’m also here to
tell ya that being that one or other of the two guys sucks pretty bad. And it DOES hinder a band’s progress when the whole band is not on the same page. But this article is not about motivating your other band members. It’s about creating success by designing a successful plan.

And there are A TON of different ways you can make your band a success; EASILY more of a success than what it is now. Sometimes you have to spend money. Sometimes you don’t. Oh, and another thing, the more money you spend, as long as you’re spending
it wisely, (which the great, great majority of indie bands DON’T,) the more success you can expect. Even if your band ain’t that good. Believe it. Ever hear of Creed? $5 million. Get my point?

Most indie bands go about trying to get a record deal with all these random shots in the dark, one after the other, a shot here, a shot there, playing the Vans Warped Tour, getting your disc to the head of A&R at Epitaph, having the newly opened Amoeba Music carry your disc, etc, etc, but not having any plan as to what to do with any
achievements. There is no PLAN. There is no story being built. There is no direction as to where you’re going and, even worse, no idea about where you even want to go in the first place.

Here’s how I see success happening by design:

STEP 1:

Choose a goal. Decide where you want to be with your band in, say about 1 to 2 years: Do you want to be functioning as a total indie band, selling your own CDs, looking for/having distribution for your small, in-house label, creating a name for that label, and maybe or maybe not eventually being able to sign other acts? Or do you see yourself getting signed, and to what kind of label? Or, touring and selling CDs and merch and not dealing with distro and being a touring band only? Whatever goal you choose, unfortunately, you ARE going to have to make some tough choices when you devise your plan. Because you can’t EFFICIENTLY do both the indie route and the label-shopping route. Sure, you can try. But if you do try, just make sure you have a good, strong team of people working on one specific end goal, and others working on the other end goal. (And chances are you don’t have enough team members to do that.)
There’s a reason there’s only one goal for each team in hockey. I’m not sure what it is, but it could be the fact that achieving one goal is already tough enough. (Why do you think hockey scores are almost always in the single digits, like 1-4, not 225-198?) Could you imagine if those hockey players all had the option to try and
achieve some other goal simultaneously, like if there were two goals for each team, one in each corner of a rectangular playing field? They’d go berzerk trying to create effective team plays! All those guys skating around so fast, one guy would pass to another guy who thought the team was going for the other goal, etc., etc. It would be a mess.

And the amount of time required to build and achieve just ONE of those goals (total indie vs. shopping for a deal) is way too time consuming to sacrifice any energy towards that goal. You think scoring in hockey is tough? Try landing a good (and the effective word here is “good”) record deal, or try building your own record
label. It’s called “time management”, people, and it seems to apply immensely here, given the amount of work required to meet the goal. And, once you’ve actually achieved some success with your indie label, you can then think about “selling it” for that coveted major-label deal. There’s one compromise I’ll let you have. That’s
how Lit did it. Anyone know anybody in Lit? I’d REALLY like to interview those guys about how they got where they finally wanted to be. Or maybe they’re not even quitethere yet? Who knows?

next week: part 2