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Segment 13 - 11 Ways to Turn Your Career up to 11

In your career and then now we feel when you feel like a pretty long day trust me coming on okay, we've got to turn it up to eleven because that's, how you end up getting ahead in this world, you know, keeping it down on three just you know, trees is along, so we're going to get eleven is one more than ten one, yeah, well, unless I said three u turn it up to three and not going anything doing like you go to eleven that's a spinal tap, you know doesn't go to eleven that's a spinal tap picture your brother picture from there, so present yourself profession legend because I'm notorious, but I've gotten past that point and I'm trying a little more professional when I'm doing this, but you're in my office, I'm in shorts, flip flops, you know, it's, just the way we all dress like we're on the tour, you know, I wear shorts on the tour too, because it's appropriate on that tour and that's fine, but as one of the leaders of the tour, you know they're not too short and the tank tops not too tiny...

and, you know, we really notice when guys have shorts on whether in the office, I think they make rules where your shirts in the hotel or you don't get hotel so, it's, just a dress for the job that you want beyond time be memorable a good way. We've kind of talked about that throughout the day where b positive be helpful and really any single job you have when I was putting together that job, attributes grid, every single job, pretty much I checked checked off be organized, which means something different for different jobs, but thinking about how can I be organized is really important. Prioritizing this has been tonight and that's a thing like your first gig loading, and you want to work on a show dressed for your job where shoes, footwear, flip flop were something you could earn being that's going, protect your feet if it's that's a job that's going to be out there, you know things like that? Yes, it just kind of being observant of ways people showed up. I want to help with the show, and they're wearing flip flops. You can't let him really around this kind of equipment, because you can, um, prioritize. So this is called the eisenhower. This is a decision matrix on gets the idea that a task is either urgent for it either urgent or not urgent or important or not important, and looking at things and determining the difference between urgent important and putting it in a category can help sort out what should you be spending your time on? So the first thing that you have to spend your time on is things that are urgent and important. These are the crises, the deadlines, the term paper that dio the show, the george we're going to be open in twenty minutes at certain e mails, of course, so those are the things that you have to do first quick like urgent being timely behind that needs to be done now now important being just it's important it's important so things that are important but not urgent it was like when mike mints he was talking about turn your email off for an hour and think up some ideas and I think that's not urgent, but that's the hardest thing I think we've all gotten into, you know, it's with our mobile devices and everything it's everyone wants an answer now here and there and there it's the biggest thing with young people that come to work for me, and the thing is they don't stop and think before they email you know, just I could be as guilty as anyone. I used to be very much like a train of thought, like booking, you know, I've got eighty deals going on bands and instead of just stopping going back, reorganizing to move on and it's gotten hard to turn off your phone just a society without you we feel like things are urgent because it shows up on our phone but it's not necessarily the most important thing to be doing right then. So the stuff it's uh urgent but not important those air kind of the e mails that you feel like you need to respond, tio but if you can look at ways tio schedule in doing that or delegate that to somebody else if that's possible, it'll make your time more efficient on before things are things that are not important and not urgent which are kind of mindless tv mindless internet, you know, it's okay to do some of that got you know, I would argue everyone knows my mindless tv on a sunday road is the nascar about yeah, you know, it's mindless tv everyone goes on a sundae usually mellow days and stuff they know for about four hours I might be sitting now had a tv, a nice outside the bus I put up the ten people come over and we just watched things go around, sir, my wife was saying, I wonder why you like nascar she said it the other day in such a great relationship because I think if you just it's just the time you let your brain just been itself out yeah and so that's actually an important but not urgent where you need to relax and you need to take time to stretch it to just let your mind go and build relationships both in your personal life and in your business life. So thinking about which category those things fall into and thinking about how you really you're spending your time the more time you can spend planning and strategizing the better you're going to be a reaching your long term goals um make to do lis that's just like get out of your heart and get it down on paper put it down on paper because the more you get you know busy and gets complicated easy just write it down and you can always go back to it and then he organized the list into the prioritized the list you know and I like that love don't procrastinate you know that's something that I think is taught in school taught everywhere but you know tackle the task well and my big tip is if there's something you hate doing like we're going to talk about you know, writing resume you don't want to get started on it set a timer for ten minutes until you tell yourself you only have to do it for ten minutes and after ten minutes you'll probably find that you're on a roll and you can kind of keep moving with it sometimes do that when the jury has started but that dreaded challenges in life you know pay your pay your parking ticket you know it's like those things come back on and you're going down the road paying your taxes you know I found it starting a business and getting it in order as I was going as quick as possible sure save me a lot of grief down the road than people that didn't yes, I think I think about how you're spending your time and you know do the things that are going to be good for your future um no when you do your best work I have to do complicated math that sometimes your car requires arguing about numbers at like midnight and that's fine with me you know, my time of day I can I can roll with that very first thing the morning after I wake up is actually not what I really want to d'oh that type of thing so being into our accountant kind of works out perfectly for that but my my successes lent that I worked at any given time at any time with so people get emails at four thirty in the morning that own part of the world I'm just kind of stays ahead of people I believe if your morning people you know and I'm gonna martin atkins who is a great another teacher of music and has been his big thing is get out of bed that's the thing this businesses get out of it if you're a late sleeper just get out of it you know, maybe in our artists even get out of bed early, you know they get out and do stuff a lot now used to feel like I'm in a band because I could sleep till two you know that kind of gave me working on you're working on your social media, you've got to be working on your strategies and everything else I think it's really important to do one thing at a time if you multitask, you're not doing each thing fifty percent well there's some statistic on this, but I'm making it up but you're doing each thing like twenty percent well right your heads in two different places if you focus on one thing, you're really doing it one hundred percent well and that will come up when we talk about writing e mails and paying attention to a lot of details and focus on one thing. I think having a resume obviously is essential the's days you can really put together a nice personal resume website which gives you know, space constraints on demonstrating what you've done there's some nice services like career sushi that have a really beautiful layout to document who you work foreign what you've accomplished but I think it's really important to still have a traditional one page resume that highlights your work um and of course, you should know that your entire presence online is looked at not just to resume so every tweet facebook post instagram that reflects on you as a professional even if you're putting it out there in your personal life, you have anything on that seems obvious, right? It's so obvious how it is, you know, that's what's most obvious is help you blow it so hard for you because we've gotten so quick, you know, if you have that thing and you have the baby controversial or something, put it all together, look at it, don't hit sand and then descend if you decide if you want that to be out there forever yeah that's, that's slowing down it's okay to put her on there like some things I write sometimes and I'm like, you know not you know, I can call that person on the phone and just tell him what I just thought I don't need it out in the blogosphere. Um one specific on working the music industry uh, don't just list bands that you like on your resume. We all know that you like bands and what's really important is, you know, not even just the band you've worked for, but what have you done for that fans? The work that's important on band names certainly kind of reflect on sometimes the level of touring or the level of management that you've done, but the qualities of the job are actually more important and don't leave your first female I love some band's name and I want to work on the work tour that it is to me it happens I get a lot of those, you know, and I hate to say I tried that something is going to get a delete pretty very quickly because I hope you love music and I love band, but I'm not going to put you out there to stop being, you know, a stalker, you know, um I think this is really important to have a visually appealing resume I'm thinking about how it looks, people are going to be more drawn into something if it's visually appealing, so playing around with the fonts and spacing and bold and caps and I tell italicized and underline out like all of that stuff spend time on it, play around with it and come up with something that looks good and people spend more time looking at it it's really great to quantify whenever possible, you know, when people look at my resume, they feel they're like, wow it's so impressive but and it's not but it's so impressive it's and I put a bunch of numbers on there they're accurate numbers, but numbers stand out as a thing so with the example of, like let's say you have a festival and you increased increased the festival attendance in the second year, it doesn't really tell me very much, but if you tell me that you increase your festival attendance by fifty percent to twelve thousand in the second year, that tells you a lot more about the festival and about how you grew it right? So just finding ways to include numbers helps paint a better picture of what you're trying to describe on the resume in our industry chronological experience chronological listing job is unnecessary thinking about what your experiences because there's a wide range of stuff here that you may have done and thinking about how to organize that into different categories to group things together will help save you space and not repeat the same words, right? So let's, say you tour managed a whole bunch of bands rather than spending a lot of space writing tour manager, tour manager, tour manager have a tour manager section list all the vans that you've worked for, and then you can have some bullet points that will reflect what you did for those bands as a whole because you, teo that's, how we know we know everyone who manages each other and that's how we check, but we say, ok, we don't need to know that what you did that day we know you did a good job or didn't do a good job. We're gonna find out really quickly, so spend time on the resume, make perfect asked friends and family for help have others proof read it like every single character, every single bullet point every word, look at it, make it perfect and then make it more perfect and have friends and family help and keep it updated because I know I know having written my resume several times, it's feels like a daunting task, but it's not really the fun thing to dio, and it feels like work and if you're under pressure because you have to send it in the next day to somebody that's when it feels really hard to dio, but if you can do it when you are in that planning relaxed strategizing phase, tell yourself to start on it for ten minutes, get it done, and then you have it when it's ready, because now I feel great whenever somebody says, can you send me over your resume? Yeah, I just hit attach I don't have to think about putting it together at that stage when you have this on, if you purchase the course and have this kind of take a look at this was somebody that came to me for some help and she had some great experience. But it was figuring out how to reflect that great experience on a piece of paper on dh so there were some things that she had on here that didn't tell me very much music business experience, events experienced sales experience what does that mean that you're not telling me anything solid there on dh she thought that her only relevant experience was her internships we'll get talking about what she actually wanted to dio she really wanted to kind of work in the sponsorship activation area and she still I've worked in a lot of events working at sponsor tables, but they've been like one day things and I said that's ok list them all and then say is a group what you did for all of those so her second version here was on the left and so this is version two inversion three and just glancing at the's from afar the one on the on the right draws you in more. We played around with fonts and underlining and in denting and really highlighted things like the responsibilities and who were these artists. And so we really kind of, uh, tried to use really descriptive words and put his many numbers in there as we could but it's exactly the same information really as she had in the second version, which it isn't as visually appealing and is a little bit harder to really look at the details up s o, we won't get into the details of those, but if you kind of go back and look and compare those two, I think there's some tips that you'll find in there on how to take what seems like simple experience and make it shine and really show that you can, um you've done something he wasn't working, I mean, it's still about relations, you see how everyone's talking throughout that it was about meeting people in seeing putting yourself out there, you have to learn how to put yourself out there? Um, it's a business of people, you're always networking, you know, I gets to a point, you know, and we don't have time because I'm going through different phases of my life, and I've reached another phase of my life that I don't necessarily network people want a network of me, so I'm enjoying things a lot more now, I could go to south by southwest just hang out, people freak out that I'm just hanging out, but I gotta be working or meetings. But it's a cool spot, you know, make the most of ever in an ever every interaction you know, especially as you're developing your career. The business card may be outdated, but it's still something, and it's still the thie I'm a person, and I have I'm professional and I have something to hand you that hopefully you might want to get back to me, there's a lot more ways linked in and all these kind of things are very important to be part of its that's, a big tool online volunteer professional conferences ok, there's all these professional conferences out there too early pollstar, billboard, electronic music, somebody many of them out there, but when you go there, go there with a plan it comes down to planning, it comes down to planning, I have to meet these three people. Look at the registrants, these air, the three people that I want to meet, strategize where those people might be like if they're going to be panels doing panels, try to get in the panel ready room, try to get the person that watch the people to the panel don't get stuck at the door somewhere down by the front door. If that's what you're there for unless you're at the front door registration and there's a bunch of people you want to say hello to and maybe get more of a visual and really outgoing personality, and they're gonna want to talk to you and feel comfortable that you walk up in the bar later on when everyone socializing at these events. Focus and ice t said a thing called pimp past it you got to get rid past all the clutter in your life to get to the pimp to get to the end. So, like in a bar it's all these things going to be going on and if you're at this conference was millions of distractions walk to the end, meet the person you want to find a way to meet a lot of people have done that have ended up working for me because I took notice of him in a really good, positive way we're going to make a hit list of people always follow up on the meeting thank you email even in the state people have me the business cards in those things majority of the time I go right to my room and I say nice to have met you great, you know, nice to see you again. Hopefully we'll cross pass half the time I don't know if that's the person that I met that hung my jacket up or if it's a person that might do business but that I still in that present likes to send that out as a hey, I met you thank you okay there's a whole course on networking with steve running music business one oh one like it or not, you should know some basic math because every day it's a business it all comes down to the numbers, so whether it's budgeting, understanding, deal structures, counting t shirts counting teachers, knowing how many tickets you need to sell to cover your expenses on a show is actually some at some algebra. So if you've got expenses of five hundred dollars and your ticket price is ten dollars, you have to do a little math to determine you need to sell fifty tickets, right? But that's an important calculation have in your head when you're thinking about balancing your revenue, new lyrics and learn the math. I was an idiot in math, but people know I'm a survivor with numbers I can walk in and almost hit the numbers when jen tells me something very closely, I could be within a small fraction. I could do my budget for next summer right now in my brain, because you've had practice at a practising things like that is gonna make you or natural no more natural and it's not like you have to dio, you know, calculus it's, you know, some basic algebra is good on dh, then work with spreadsheets like excel so that you don't have to do the math so that you can create a formula and it does the math for you, it is really like the essential tool to be able, tio put together a budget or do anything that is presenting number was careful to double check that, except I'll just plug the numbers, and I run into this problem always share that we share xl a lot and things and people send it around formula gets off, and I've seen it so many times people are just plugging in the numbers and everything's wrong in the whole thing and it's like, wait, you just put one hundred plus ten people's ten thousand, right don't blindly wiley plug numbers because I've seen a lot on things, so we're going to talk a little bit about writing way are such a written world these days where email is so important, texting, tweeting is a regular part of our lives and it's really something that it's important to slow down when you're writing especially emails and spend time on having it present yourself the way you want to present yourself in writing so clear, concise writing is really essential and not only spell check, but read through the email I read through my e mails out loud at least once, usually before I send it and then I re word and I re craft and I make sure I have the tone that is coming across that my punctuation is correct, my sentences are complete, and this is something you feel like you're trying to highlight. Something by putting it in capital letters like, you know, don't because you someone did that to me last week, a young guy at the company you almost got him fired, right? Remember capital letters, letters, capital like he and he had screwed up bad, and he was trying to throw people under the bus that was me on the phone within seconds and telling him he better be calling me right now because he was conveying something in a tone that he didn't mean to convey by using caps don't do that. So if you're writing email, it should have to someone new, especially it should have a greeting, a signature, complete sentences with proper, proper grammar and don't write it as a text or a sweet email is a different format than texting and tweeting and knowing that difference, especially when you're communicating with people that have been in the industry for a long time, is important, and we are in that transition. You know, maybe this is all going to change in ten years and no one's going to know how to talk on the phone because there has a generation that's never spoken on the phone, but you're still in a bridge of a world that everything was done by phone and communication so things can get out of whack very quickly if it's not done correctly. Just be real conscious of hitting reply or replied, all on dno that even though this kid intentionally are unintentionally before word is so be careful about what you're saying, uh, and we're saying it about because it can accidentally end up in the not where you intended it, and I have made those mistakes, especially when email was starting out. Everyone was would replied, all on everything and the phone calls in the fighting, and it was crazy. It was awesome, but it was crazy music industry classic one thing's rock stars everyone thinks partying all night. We're talking about email and how important it is to check your reply all this's what takes somebody from being somebody who just wants to play music or has a dream to somebody who is doing this for real gotta love that you're covering. This is so thank you guys. All right, I think that it's important when you're sending an attachment to your email to send it in the format that it needs to be in it's a resume and it's a completed finished product, put it in a pdf so that somebody just can open it and hit print if they need teo and there's not accidentally, you're going to be something deleted or something added in. But if you're sending an excel spreadsheet for a budget that the other person is going to need to work on, make sure you send it in excel format so that they can access it and work on it this one's are you take initiative to take initiative it just take initiative but no one to go to someone to ask for advice it's just taking initiative without overstepping your bounds know what? What what those are you know it's it's you want to give in our business we tend we let people paying themselves it's sad and a lot of ways people contend to hang themselves but he'll be free to know but we also let a lot of freedom go you know it's it's a business that could do it so so no put your ideas out there no ideas stupid it really isn't in our business we're thinking ahead we're trying to think even on the road I'm getting ideas people are putting things together sometimes I'm going to think that's crazy or someone's going to think it's not good but sometimes they're gonna go wow, you put it out there we are in a world of creativity we're not cutting dry there's no book on how to do office as well we've pushed so much to the end so put your ideas out there it's kind of like dakota having ideas and pushing them to you and uh you know, not just sitting there waiting for me to tell him what to do. Fruit? Yes, biggest problems are coming the type of business we're in, usually the ceos and everything aren't going to micromanage you, they might micro magnets, the big picture, but they're not going to tell you each day what to get done. Each day you're going to be given a task and you have to get it done, it's, how you get it done somebody gotta figure out on your own, you just gotta fit, you know, hopefully you'll have someone nice and mentor you and passed you some things that have been successful, but I find a lot of this business people close there, keep their information very close to themselves, and they don't want to share too much. They don't want to share advice, so if you get that person that's willing to do that, work with it on dh sometimes going figure out call people on the phone it's ok, especially during business hours to call someone unannounced on the phone or meet them in person. Some conversations air really best had face to face or on the phone rather than via email. A lot of times, I would say the three male rule if it goes back and forth three times, just pick up the phone I think our officers some contract or someone was very adamant about being picking up the phone and the other people make fun and they had a rap about a pick up phone pick up the phone because you know but it is true I still believe that you know, you go back and forth you get lost in a chain and all of a sudden it just just get it done and you'll find out how much more efficiently you can work then keep this long conversation going back and forth on email so feel free I love still talking to people on the phone on day I'll drive a car if it's a real problem I'll just jump in my truck and I say I'll be there and help our people are like ok there's gonna be serious we gotta sit down figure this out, have a financial plan and start your financial plan early just like you say you start your being an interpreter early on when you're interpret or with your philanthropy we need to be able to start, you know, slow work times and for, you know, saved you know this is just basic stuff pay your taxes they money for taxes does a lot of times in freelance you're not having taxes withheld you need to save money for your taxes to pay and unexpected expenses and the whole world's changing we used to be independent contractors so you're going to find less and less legally, you're not really allowed to be an independent contractor, but our business used to pay a lot of people is independent contractors, and a lot of people got in trouble because they didn't save the insurance or are the tax money for that more and more now, most people are on payroll, especially if you're on our tour is now a lot of time the first time a ban on younger ban gets their business straight is out on my tours because they have to, and I learned that instance because you didn't make people have insurance, and then I'm sitting there getting the lawsuit because this ban didn't have insurance and stupid thing happen, people it's hard to do that, jenny, kind of just, you know, save a little time and start saving it's hard to say you can't save, and I'm not even saying saving, but keep up today on your bills and taxes at first. Yeah, so think about what you spend a three to seven dollars a day on, and that comes out to one hundred to two hundred dollars a month and you can go back and reference this if you buy the course, but this is if you save one hundred dollars a month. What are you gonna have five, ten, twenty or forty five years from now, right? So if you're twenty years old in forty five years you want to retire you save if you save two hundred dollars a month in forty five years we're going to have three hundred eighty five thousand dollars that otherwise you would have spent on, you know, coffee, cigarettes good starting with that is going to the band's dressing room when they leave and take other leftover stuff I lived off for years, you know, who cares that deli trays only been out? Come on, back it up. You know, I don't think I spend a penny on food for about twelve years because I always had a dressing room for that and you know, our number eleven thing is really get experience be willing to take a job that's going to get you some additional experience, find a mentor proactively, you know you need to make yourself available to them and be were there at the number one thing I probably did in my career early on I was working the accounting office a jam and I always wanted an on site job and I thought I wanted to be a production manager so I spent my free time in the evenings and on weekends shadowing the head production manager it shows and it not only showed me how an arena show is loaded in and build and torn down every day but I learned how to advance a show I learned what all the expenses were and you know, I wasn't getting paid to do that but it's the job that I wanted so I started doing the job that I want it now I then I realized I don't want to the production manager with mentor story about the one who had the mentor thank you for before but he became one of those are smoking kids so my boss's husband I'm sorry my husband's boss wanted a particular mentor, but he didn't want to be a mentor that guy but the guy was a smoker, so he made himself in the same area all of the times that he's outside having a cigarette break and I don't know whether or not he took up cigarettes but he ended up making his way into the mentors life rather than the mentor having to make time for him he found a way tio build a relationship, be proactive and build a bond and really learn a lot from the sky and and now he's like the ceo of cars I mean it's just there's ways, you know, I know we've covered up a lot of that was probably the most we probably have three people watching online just going out after like like school or you know, but it is true, it's taking your life's, you know, seriously, you are music is ultimately why you're watching this the passion of music don't ever forget that you're bringing joy to people you're bringing people together. Andi that's really? What? What drives the people that really make it in this business, it's that they're doing getting to be around something they love all the time. And I haven't found a person that hates music. You may not hate a type of music, but in the world I have never found the two things food, music are the only two things that I found that every person, the world like, some sort of and, you know, that's why I'm lucky, tio getting to do this now for thirty five years? Um, I hope to continue to do it for a while more. Jen has been a great part of this whole operation to code of the people of creative live are trying to bring really cool programs to you guys. You guys giving up your saturday let's? Get it for you guys. I mean, I know you guys. Somebody a lot turned off online, so people are gone. But the people there still there thank you for watching, and hopefully, you know, this is what are the entertain the entertainment is who is going to be all about and a lot more time about that, just as an ongoing thing now, you know, we're ending here for the day, but let's, talk about the education. Yeah, so the entertainment institute thank t I dot com way actually have a survey on there because we're trying to figure out what are the best ways to bring this sort of experience, then thiss sort of access to industry professionals. We're trying to figure out kind of what exactly the path is, and we got a lot of really good ideas, but it would really help awful for people to take the survey so that we can make it the most valuable experience where several web site now, yeah, we have a website now and that's www I think t I dot com, we're also on facebook and instagram and all of it were on all of it and it's, just something you know, as you know, we look it is something I'm you know, I'm going to still be on a parking lot next summer, but I'm trying to evolve as a person and continue to evolve, and having people around you allowing you to evolve is really a great spot to be in. So I just want to read you something really quick from someone online and a few other people also agreed with this, they say. As an avid attendee of war tour for the past eight years, a musician and a pure lover of music, kevin and warped has inspired me to enter the music business and to never give up. Far too often, we, as a society, are told that we cannot achieve something, and it is amazing. You have such a respectable person tell us that we can strive to achieve our goals. Thank you, kevin and jen for such a detailed and inspirational. Well, thank you for that that's. What keeps us going here, and that once in a while.