Are you finding it difficult to manage your money as a musician? Do you have a system you follow, or do you just wing it?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I reveal the steps I’ve taken to manage my finances, and what has worked for me.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Disclaimer

00:32 – Tips for managing your personal finances

02:13 – Percentages are your friend

02:42 – Tips for managing your business or career finances

03:23 – Final thoughts

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me. Today I want to talk about managing your money. Now, I'm not an accountant or financial expert or anything, so please seek professional advice if you're looking for more qualified advice on this topic. These are just a few things I've picked up over the years and I'm sharing them in hopes that they will benefit you.

First, I’ll address personal finances. I would suggest setting up three different buckets of savings. The first is your emergency fund. This is where you should save roughly six to nine months of your expenses, whatever amount that you're personally comfortable with if you needed to fall back on it at some point.

The next is your guilt-free entertainment fund. We tend to put off a lot of things in life and delay gratification. That's fine if you're working towards a specific goal. But ultimately, we never know when we're going to be done here, so you should go and have fun while you can still have it. That's what this fund is for. Whatever it is that you want to do now, whether it's a vacation or weekend outing, you want to use the money that's in your entertainment fund to go and do that sooner rather than later.

The last one is your aggressive growth fund. With your emergency fund and entertainment fund squared away, the only thing left to do is invest your money. A lot of people are naive and assume they will never need to invest, that's simply not the case. The sooner you can begin saving, the better I find. If you already have an emergency fund, you're basically playing with money that you're okay to lose and that's really the best position to be in when you're investing.

If you could pay into each of these funds regularly, that would be ideal, but I haven't found that to be easy. So, I would suggest starting with your emergency fund. And once that's a built up, gradually put money into your entertainment and aggressive growth fund. I would suggest saving at least 10% off the top of every paycheck, 20% if possible. As your income goes up, you're going to be paying more taxes, so you want to be prepared for tax season and not be caught off guard or be taken by surprise.

One more thing I will say before moving into business or career finances is “percentages are your friend”. I like working with percentages a lot. For instance, after a check is deposited into my account, I will take 10% of that to pay down one credit card. I will take 10% of that to pay down another credit card. And I will immediately save 10% or 20% off the top, but that still leaves me with 60% to 70% of the lumpsum for my daily expenses.

When it comes to personal finances, percentages are your friend.Share on X

Now, let's talk about business or career finances. First of all, I suggest opening a no-fee bank account, not a business bank account, which can be costly. If possible, pay all your earnings as a musician into this no-fee bank account. You can still pay yourself out of the lumpsum, but it's important to save as much as you can, because there are many expenses associated with running a music career.

Also, you should effort to pay all your career related expenses out of this no-fee bank account. That way, you're never going into debt, and you're never overextending yourself unnecessarily. You just look at the amount that you have in your account and that's the amount you have to spend.

If you master these simple tips, I believe you'll be well on your way to establ...

Do you find yourself trying to do too many things? Do you easily lose track of time and find yourself unable to manage your to-do list?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I discuss how you can simplify your routine to get more of the right things done.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – We tend to make life more complicated than it needs to be

00:42 – Tips on how to get some time back to focus on your creativity

00:48 – #1: Eliminate unnecessary clutter

01:38 – #2: Be willing to make sacrifices

02:24 – #3: Map out your ideal schedule

03:11 – #4: Transition from a day job to freelance work

03:42 – #5: Become a student of productivity

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me. Today, I want to talk about how to streamline your life. Look, we tend to make life far too complicated sometimes and we get ourselves into a mess. The less you have to do, the easier it is to focus on the things you need to do.

The less you must do, the easier it is to focus on the things you need to do.Share on X

But so often we spread ourselves too thin with a ton of projects, a massive to-do list, and social obligations. I've had the privilege and honor of helping a few people find a better balance between their work and creative life. So, here are a few tips on how to gain some time back to work on your music career or business.

#1: Eliminate Unnecessary Clutter

Now, you might have garbage or stacks of paper or Knick Knacks just sitting around and they need to be sold or thrown out or done away with, but clutter isn't always just physical. It can also be emotional and mental.

We carry a lot of thoughts with us, and sometimes other people occupy our minds and we tend to dedicate too much energy and time to thinking about them and not enough time to think about ourselves and our own life.

So, if you have any half-finished projects, decide what you're going to do with them. If you're getting two hundred texts per day from your friends, decide whether that interaction is worthy of your time. If you have a friendship or relationship in your life that's not serving you, then decide whether that's something that you want to keep in your life long term. You'll feel a huge sense of relief when you clear the clutter in your life. And, your brain will start to clear too.

You'll feel a huge sense of relief when you clear the clutter in your life.Share on X

#2: Be Willing to Make Sacrifices

I remember my business mentors used to say, “If you're willing to do it, you may not have to.” Over the years, I haven't had any aversion to giving up things like TV, video games, and sometimes even sleep if it meant that it would help me move closer towards my goals.

Now, I don't think we need to be extreme when it comes to making sacrifices. But, if your bills are too high then you may need to sell your house or your car and downgrade. Although exercise is good, maybe spending twenty hours at the gym every single week isn't what you need right now to help you simplify your life. If you're working nine to five and then come home and watch Netflix for the rest of the night, you may want to cancel your Netflix subscription, even temporarily, so you can focus on the creative work that you know you should be doing.

#3: Map Out Your Schedule

I think it's idealistic to think that we could have a perfect week every single week, but we can at least map it out, set it in front of us, reference it often, and take actions that help us move in that direction.

I would suggest opening a spreadsheet and mapping everything out hour by hour exactly what it is that you're going to be doing, and what you need to do to advance your career, be healthy, live a great life.

Life gets a lot simpler when you have a routine you live by, because you don’t have to think about it anymore.

Think of Steve Jobs. He always wore the same outfit. That’s so he didn't have to dedicate unnecessary time and me...

A strong mindset is essential if you want to achieve big things in your music career. Sometimes, moving forward in your endeavors is a test of the will, and your mindset will determine how far you make it.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share several questions that will help you assess how strong your mindset is right now.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Getting your mindset right

00:45 – Having a strong mindset begins with a healthy body

01:15 – Questions to help you guide your thinking

01:22 – Long-term thinking

02:18 – Commitment to success

02:52 – Your social circle

03:36 – Where your time is going

04:14 – Managing your time

04:42 – Experimentation and iteration

05:43 – Building a strong mindset

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me. Today, I wanted to look at something that doesn’t often get talked about in the music industry, which is getting your mindset right. I believe that your mindset will determine what level you will rise to in your life and your career. That’s how important it is.

Everybody has challenges in life. As you go along your own music career, you’re going to encounter some obstacles as well. The strength of your mindset will determine your willingness and ability to push through when things are difficult. Guaranteed there will be some difficult times ahead.

One thing I would like to address before I get into the meat of this episode is just that it’s difficult to have a strong mindset when you’re exhausted emotionally and physically. You must take care of yourself first. You could say that having a strong mindset begins with taking care of your body.

Having a strong mindset begins with taking care of your body.Click To Tweet

If you’re burnt out right now and you try to push through with willpower, you’re going to discover that everything is going to be that much harder to do. If you were well-rested and in a good mental state, you will find it much easier to do the same tasks.

Here are few questions to help you guide your thinking in terms of the strength of your mindset.

Are you thinking long term? Do you have a five-year or even ten-year goal for your career? Most of the time, in life and business and in our career endeavors, we’re only focused on the present. I don’t have a problem with that. I think we should live in the present as much as possible. But when you’re trying to do something difficult, like build a sustainable and profitable music career, you must have a long-term mindset. That goes for business too. If you don’t have goals and a plan to achieve them, you need to ask yourself why, because chances are you’re still leaving the backdoor open so you can escape if you need to.

I’m not saying that we should be so stubborn that we’re not willing to adjust our strategy as we go, because oftentimes that is a necessary part of working towards the fulfillment and achievement that we’re looking for. But if you’re not thinking ahead, and you’re simply leaving a lot to chance, and you’re failing to plan which is a plan to fail.

Here’s my next set of questions. Are you committed to your success no matter what? Are you willing to make the necessary sacrifices to get to where you want to go? This goes hand in hand with having a long-term mindset. You’re going to grow over time as an individual and as an artist. Things that may appear difficult today could become much easier a couple of years down the line. Somebody with a strong mindset is always going to be committed to their personal success because they understand that nobody else is more invested in it that they are.

Here’s the next set of questions. Are you associating with the right people? Do they lift, support, and encourage you? Or do they criticize you and put you down? Everywhere you look, the “crabs in the bucket” mentality is prevalent, just as one person attempts to rise above and get out of the bucket,

Search engine optimization isn’t everything, but it can still be an important aspect of your digital marketing as an artist or band.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share some of the best SEO tips and tricks I’ve come across.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Search engine optimization for musicians

00:20 – How people generally find bands

00:38 – SEO tips and tricks

00:49 – Building your website

02:24 – Listing your tour dates on your site

03:10 – Your branded keywords

03:47 – Links – internal, outbound, inbound

05:40 – SEO can be complicated

06:11 – Resources referenced

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me. Today I want to talk about SEO or Search Engine Optimization for musicians. Generally, people don’t find artists or bands via search engines. They first learn about you via word-of-mouth, social media, streaming sites like Spotify, YouTube, at venues and so forth, and only then do they search for you using a site like Google.

Here are some worthwhile tips and tricks I’ve come across. SEO for musicians is important despite the fact that it may not be how people find you in the first place.

My first tip is to build a website. You’ll want to refer to episode three of the podcast with Ross Barber of Electric Kiwi to learn more about the importance of having a website as a musician.

When people search for you online, the first thing they should see in the search results is your website. So, building your way towards the number one position in Google may take time, especially if you already have established social media profiles, because those can sometimes be prioritized in search results.

But blogging is a good way to boost your rank overtime. If you keep updating your website with fresh content and pay attention to the keywords you’re using in your tittles, over time Google should recognize you as the authority on the content that you create as a band or artist.

Building a sitemap for your website is always a good idea. This is a page on your website that basically offers your visitors an overview of the different pages they can find on your site. Every primary page on your website should be highlighted on the sitemap.

Make sure your website loads fast and is mobile responsive. This is another important point as far as search engine optimization is concerned. Generally, just keep your site updated. If you are regularly touring and then keeping in contact with your fans, this should be relatively straightforward.

And one last thing you can do is to hold on to your domain name. It seems Google over time trusts domain names that have been registered to the same person for many years. So, aged domains tend to be pretty good as well.

Another thing you should definitely do is list your tour dates on your website. Google seems to place an importance on specific days and times when events are being held and will sometimes prioritize them in search results as well.

Be sure to optimize the tittle of your tour page. Don’t just call it “Tour”, because that’s not necessarily what people are looking for. Call it something more descriptive, like “View Upcoming Tour Dates and Purchase Tickets”. This result more closely reflects what people are searching for, and also lets them know they can purchase tickets on your tour page.

Creating separate pages for each of your tour dates can also help with SEO, but make sure those pages contain valuable information. If you’re using one of the AudioTheme WordPress themes, they automatically create separate pages when you add a gig date.

Another important consideration is your branded keywords. Your band or artist name should be considered a branded keyword, so make sure it’s unique and not something that’s already out there online. The names of your band members, the name of your albums and songs, the lyrics to your songs, and other relevant words can all be considered branded keywords...

I recently received a few general questions regarding music and the music industry.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I field four questions that came through my email, and offer my own perspective on the subject matter.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Listener questions

00:31 – What makes someone a great musician?

02:03 – How can you evoke an emotional response with your singing?

03:37 – What is a music or record producer?

04:43 – What does “networking” mean?

06:04 – Send your questions in

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me. A few of you recently sent some questions through email so I thought I would take this opportunity to answer them. Feel free to send over other questions to [email protected]. It’s d-a-w-c-a-s-t dot com. I’ll be happy to answer them for you if I’m able.

The first question I had is…

What makes someone a great musician?

What makes someone a great musician is highly subjective and often depends on the person being asked. Some might say a great musician is someone who is talented, but even the definition of talent has become elusive and less clear as our attention is dominated by Top 40 music. I know a lot of people that would hear someone on the radio and go, “Wow! They are so talented!” But technically they may not be doing anything impressive. The songwriting may not be inspired in any way.

Some say a great musician is someone who’s original. Someone who can put their own spin on a topic or lyrical idea. Or someone who’s musical ideas are outside the box. Whether it’s a great songwriter like Elvis Costello, or somebody who is always a little bit ahead of the times like David Bowie, some people would point at these types of musicians as being great.

And still, some might say a great musician is someone who’s gained a lot of experience through the years. Someone who’s played on a lot of tours and recorded a lot of albums. Think of Bruce Springsteen for example.

As I was mentioning earlier, a lot of people would say that a great musician is just someone who they enjoy listening to, whether it’s Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift.

Now, ultimately, it’s hard to say what a great musician is. I think I already pointed out the fact that it’s pretty subjective, but I think a few things are clear. One, you must be making and publishing music to be great. Two, you must continually work on your music and strive to improve. Three, you must play to your strengths and identify what’s unique about you and look for ways to emphasize that through your music.

I was also asked:

How can you evoke an emotional response with your singing?

I would suggest starting by developing your vocal ability. You don’t need to be the best vocalist in the world to evoke emotion, but you can’t be a slouch either. So, if you aren’t much of a singer yet, you should probably start there.

Working with a vocal coach could help you find your voice faster and improve as a singer. Then, you’ll either need to write or pick a song that naturally moves people. Writing is obviously the harder alternative here. The song itself should be about a feeling or an experience that many people can easily relate to whether it’s love, heartache, new life, tragedy or something else.

The subject matter is really important, because people will only latch onto what they can relate to. This isn’t to suggest that people can’t find beauty in a song that doesn’t make total sense to them. But usually it’s something about the melody, or the hook, or the chord progression that brings out an emotional response in that situation.

When you go to sing the song, it needs to come from your heart. The better you can relate to the emotion of the song, the better able you will be to deliver it with feeling. That’s really the trick here. You need to deliver with feeling.

If you want to evoke emotion with your singing, deliver the song with feeling.Click To Tweet

Now,

Have you ever asked yourself if there might be a better way to engage your fans? Do you believe that if you could create a better experience for them, that your music career would advance further and faster? Are you looking for practical ways to create a stronger connection with your fans?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, Eddie Meehan, CEO of Wonderful Union shares how fan engagement benefits artists of all sizes.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Engaging your fans

00:32 – Today’s guest, Eddie Meehan

00:44 – What is Wonderful Union?

01:24 – Generating more income from fan engagement

03:11 – Databases in the music industry

05:16 – Fingers in the pie

06:56 – The importance of fan engagement

16:50 – The pressures of working with big clients

20:07 – What is bootstrapping?

25:55 – Does location matter as a music entrepreneur?

27:12 – What is direct to consumer merchandising?

29:12 – What lessons have you learned as a music entrepreneur?

34:52 – How important is social media?

39:32 – What marketing channels are most important for musicians?

42:04 – What apps or tools are essential to your business?

46:56 – Is there anything else I should have asked?

Transcription:

David Andrew Wiebe: Here to talk about Wonderful Union, I’m joined by president and co-founder, Eddie Meehan. How are you today Eddie?

Eddie Meehan: I’m doing well. How are you doing?

David: I’m great. Thanks.

Eddie: Thanks for taking the time.

David: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Let’s begin by talking about what Wonderful Union is. It sounds like you are doing a lot around fan engagement, ticketing, and VIP experiences.

Eddie: Yeah, exactly. The way that I like to put it is it all starts with - for us, the plan of engagement is the website. It's where people are going, whether it’s on their mobile device or whatever. We focus on building and managing websites, fan clubs. When you have your own website and fan club you have to sell tickets, and you have VIPs. If you have a fan club, you have merchandise. It all kind of works together in this big circle, and that’s kind of what we do.

David: Right. And overall, I think that would help a lot of artists generate more income from their art, right?

Eddie: Yeah, 100%. Especially when you have an engaged fan base. You are able to focus on driving all the traffic into one centralized place. A lot of times, a lot of artists will give those right away to a record label or sometimes even their friend’s cousin who does websites in their basement.

We come in and we maintain and build. We have a platform that we built from the ground up that allows for scalability, large bursts of traffic, large bursts of transactions and commerce. And so, as an artist you-- The climate is changing for album sales and whatnot. Being able to have that website as your centerpiece of your business because people, let’s face it, they go on Twitter and they engage and they communicate. It’s a short-lived conversation. Facebook is a little bit longer, but there’s a lot of trolling. Maybe you like some artists who you don’t want to talk about in your system.

The official website is that place where fans can go to obsess. They can build a troll-free environment, if you will. For the artist, it allows you to have a CRM. It allows you to have a database. It allows you to have all of your user information in one centralized spot and mailing for about a t-shirt or ticket or VIP package or for just a casual user who comes on to the website to hang out and discuss with other fans to talk. A one place and one platform for us that we’ve developed.

David: You raise an interesting point, because it’s so easy to give away a portion of your income or revenue to companies these days without even knowing necessarily what you’re agreeing to. That is a good thing for artists to be aware of. I think a lot of people may not necessarily be familiar with...

No matter how well you plan, things can fall through the cracks. Sometimes, they will go horribly askew. It happens to everyone.

So, it’s not about trying to dodge difficult situations. It’s about how you respond to them.

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, you’ll learn about the importance of going with the flow.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Hi, I’m David Andrew Wiebe

00:20 – Going with the flow

00:38 – You can’t control the results

00:57 – How to be flexible when performing with other bands

Transcription:

Hi! I’m David Andrew Wiebe with The Music Entrepreneur. Today, I’m sitting in The Brass Monkey in Calgary. The quick message that I want to share with you today is to go with the flow. It’s inevitable that things are going to come up in a music career. The unexpected may occur and you are going to have to deal with the situation and deal with it as necessary.

For example, tonight I actually have no idea how many people are going to show up. I did a lot of promotion. I put up some stuff on YouTube. I even bought some Facebook Ads. It’s all over social media, but the results aren’t up to me. That’s where going with the flow can really make a big difference in your attitude.

The results aren't up to you.Click To Tweet

Same thing with if you’re playing with multiple bands on the same night. Sometimes you may be asked to cut your set down to shorter amount of time. If you go with the flow, you’ll be remembered as somebody that is flexible and able to cope and deal with the situation as necessary. But if you whine about it and complain about it, you may not be invited back.

So, that’s the quick message that I wanted to share with you today. Go with the flow.

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Is it worth reading books? How much time should you put into it? How can it assist with your personal growth?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share why I choose to invest in my personal development.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Disclaimer

00:56 – Reading books

01:22 – Reading is on a lot of people’s minds

01:40 – How many books I’ve read in the last couple of years

02:00 – Book reading is an activity I prioritize

02:08 – Why I keep reading

03:06 – Reading Tools of Titans

03:26 – What is your motivation?

04:11 – Leave a comment

Transcription:

What you are about to hear is the audio from a video I put together back at the end of February. You may hear me make mention of the New Year, but as I record this episode, it’s already the end of August. The video has obviously been sitting on my hard drive for a bit, and I just didn’t get around to editing it and publishing it until now.

I also made a bit of a mistake. I said the book Tools of Titans is by Tim Francis. It’s not. The book was authored by Tim Ferriss. Tim Francis is a cool guy too. I’ve had the chance to talk to him in the past, but he didn’t write Tools of Titans.

So, there’s my disclaimer for this episode, and without further ado, here are some thoughts on why we should invest in our personal growth by reading books.

Thanks for joining me. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about books. This is not a new topic to the Music Entrepreneur community by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve already done some fairly in-depth posts and podcast episodes on a topic of books. I even have a ton of book recommendations on the website.

So, there may not be a ton of new insights here, but I still wanted to take some time to talk about it, because I think it’s on a lot of people’s minds right now. That could be because we’re still fresh out of the New Year and we’re just about headed into March here as I record this. But it’s something probably many people are thinking about in terms of New Year’s resolutions, and goals, and how many books they are reading.

I’ve succeeded in reading 52 books both in 2015 as well as in 2016. In both cases, a good chunk of those were books I hadn’t read yet, but there were some books that I had read before and took a second look or perhaps even a third look through those books.

So, for me, as you can probably imagine, book reading is a very important part of my studies and my life.

Now, because I’ve accumulated so much knowledge and information, some of it is just a regurgitation of things I’ve already read. So, I’m not always finding new insights, new ideas, new concepts in the books that I’m reading anymore, which has caused me to think about “why am I reading?”

Really it comes back to the fact that I want to keep growing myself. So that’s a huge part of it. But I also am looking for insights and ideas and things that I can share with you. Even just seemingly small things, because all it takes sometimes is little tweaks in our lives to make it to the next stage or the next level of growth that we’re looking for.

Sometimes all it takes is a little tweak to change your life.Click To Tweet

So, if I can find those ideas, I can find those concepts or even methods, whether it’s a marketing method or a method to apply to your life and fitness and health and things like that, I think there’s tremendous value on those things.

I’m reading a book [called] Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss right now. That book is full of those kinds of ideas and thoughts that could be of tremendous value. I’m getting some value from it, and hope to share some of that with you in the future. But that is why I choose to read 52 books per year.

I want you to think about “the why” as well, because it’s not just about accumulating knowledge after a certain point. My friend Maveen Kaura says he’s done with personal development books. He’s read a ton of them.

If you want to achieve anything of significance, you must work on it consistently.

But how is consistency achieved? How can you discipline yourself to work on your most important tasks daily?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share the importance of routine and how to develop one that helps you move quicker towards your goals.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Developing an effective routine and how to achieve consistency

00:53 – I don’t have the perfect routine but I’m working on it

01:26 – Your routine should change based on your goals

01:43 – Steps you can take towards building your personal routine

01:56 – #1: Determine what your goals are

02:17 – #2: Understand what your goals will require of you

02:53 – #3: Plan your ideal week

03:38 – #4: Stick to your plan

04:11 – Routine will help you build consistency, momentum, and traction

Transcription:

Thanks for joining me. Today I wanted to talk about developing an effective routine. Now, you may have heard me talk about consistency quite a bit on the podcast, as well as in my book, The New Music Industry. I do believe consistency is important, but you may be left with this question: “How do I achieve consistency?”

Well, it is achieved through routine. Now, routine is something that sounds relatively commonplace but it actually requires quite a bit of self-discipline to execute. Sticking to a routine allows you to find your groove within it, and to achieve more because you’ll be doing tasks daily instead of whenever you feel like it or whenever you have the free time to do them.

I admit that I don’t have the perfect routine right now for reasons I’ve already shared with you in the last few podcast episodes, but it’s still something I like to use as a tool.

Earlier this year, I had a very regular routine of going to bed at 1:00 AM and waking up at 9:00 AM. This is something that worked well for me with all the assignments that I had. When summer came along, this became unsustainable, because there’s a major difference between the daylight we get here in Canada between summer and winter.

So, in a way I’m kind of finding a new routine based on what I’m trying to accomplish in the next few months. I think this is an important point for you to understand. Your routine should change based on your goals and what’s required of you. You shouldn’t just stick to a routine that you’ve already established, unless it’s getting you to where you want to go right now. Ensure that your routine supports you. Don’t become a slave to the routine.

Here are few concrete steps you can take towards building your personal routine, because I can’t tell you what’s going to be most effective for you. You must determine that based on what you’re trying to accomplish.

Number one. Determine what your goals are if you aren’t clear on them already. You can certainly skip this step if you know what your goals are for the next year.

But without knowing what you’re aiming for, you can’t develop an effective routine around it. If you don’t have goals, it’s like starting a journey without a destination in mind. Yes, if you keep going, you’ll end up somewhere, but it may not be where you want to end up.

Without knowing what you’re aiming for, you can’t develop a routine around it.Click To Tweet

Number two. Take the time to understand what these goals will require of you. What will it take to achieve these goals? What will you need in terms of connections, resources, time, and so on?

Time is obviously the most important consideration here as it pertains to creating your routine. I find setting goals is a bit of an art form and rarely if ever can we set them perfectly, because we don’t know how much time or effort it’s going to take to reach those goals.

So, the better you understand what it’s going to take to achieve your goals, and the better you understand yourself,

People often talk about setting boundaries.

And while boundaries can be important in certain situations, they don’t always work. Sometimes others end up violating them, and sometimes we put ourselves in situations where they have the chance to be crossed, intentional or not.

So, we need to ask ourselves: Are boundaries important? Do they exist? What situations should they apply to, and in what situations do they do more harm than good?

In this episode of The New Music Industry Podcast, I share some thoughts on boundaries based on my own life experiences.

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Podcast Highlights:

00:14 – Why this podcast episode will be a bit different

00:48 – How I’ve been spending my time this past week

02:27 – How important are boundaries?

02:57 – Boundaries and client relationships

06:36 – How boundaries apply to musicians

07:13 – Setting boundaries with difficult people

08:48 – Setting boundaries with people you love hanging out with

11:35 – Life happens whether you want it to or not

12:38 – Final thoughts

Transcription:

Hey, thanks for joining me. This is going to be a little bit of a different podcast. I’m not at home, so first of all, I am not recording in front of a broadcast quality microphone. Second of all, it’s going to be a little bit of a different topic that I might not normally choose to cover on the show, even though you’ve probably noticed, I cover everything from like personal development and finances all the way over to various music marketing tactics and methods and so forth.

Today, I wanted to cover this issue of boundaries. Now, first of all I just wanted to let you know I am on the road right now. I am headed over to Chase, BC where I am staying in British Columbia. It’s a beautiful place. I just came out here to spend some time to recharge, and recover, reflect, think things over.

I haven’t really taken much time for myself in the last six years or so. I do believe I had a little bit of work vacation back in 2011 followed by a fairly brief true vacation where I took a little bit of time to rest and enjoy myself in Canmore and Red Deer.

I was going to be in Canmore again this year. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out because everything was booked up. That’s just following a theme with things that have happened this summer because I also got away from the long weakened with a friend. We headed out to Cranbrook. Now, we may have chosen to stay in Radium instead but the issue was that everything was booked up.

Anyway, that’s just a little bit about some of the adventures I’ve been on this month specifically. If you’ve been following my updates and everything else, you already know that I’ve done quite a bit of this this summer.

It’s just really important for me to do this, to take some time to recharge because not everything has gone according to plan, which is somewhat normal in life, and we have to roll with the punches a lot of the time.

So, getting back to this topic of boundaries, I think first of all we have to consider how important they are. To be perfectly honest, I don’t believe they apply to every single situation. Now, a lot of people talk about boundaries and setting boundaries. I think there are certain situations where they totally apply, but there are also other situations where they sort of get in the way and don’t serve you. That’s what I want to get in to.

I think boundaries are specifically important when it comes to client relationships. Now, as a musician you may not have clients, but as an entrepreneur you may. But in my situation, I still have other work outside of The Music Entrepreneur HQ, so I do serve clients in different capacities, whether it’s ghost blog writing or developing websites.

In some situations, I’ve either had to say “Look, I’m going to be a day late on this. I’m still finishing it. It’s still going to be important for me to do that. I’m going to get around to it right away.