I’ve been a musician for longer than I can remember. I started playing trumpet 32 years ago, but music has always been in my life in some way or another. I’ve been an entrepreneur – off and on – for the last 12-13 years. In 32 years, I’ve become pretty good at the trumpet. As far as being an entrepreneur? The jury is still out, but I like to think I’ve developed some good qualities. Of course, the biggest room in anyone’s life is the room for improvement.
That being said, there are a lot of qualities in the experience of becoming a good musician I’ve found are similar in becoming a successful entrepreneur.
You suck when you first start. Sometimes people like to argue over which instrument is the absolute worst to listen when someone first learns to play. The clarinet and violin are the unofficial winners in this extremely unscientific poll. Regardless, they’re all pretty awful when someone is just beginning to play. It usually takes a new trumpet player at least 3-4 years before their tone quality doesn’t drive its listeners to self-immolation. But you have to start somewhere. A blogger wrote something along the lines of, “If you wait until you’re perfect to start, you’ll never start.” When Apple first introduced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said, “Don’t worry, be crappy.” Being bad at something is a good way to stay humble and develop patience. Memories of your suckitude will also bring a source of amusement when you do achieve success. Which brings me to the next point...
Success is a process, not an event. This is something a chiropractor told me years ago. He showed me how my back and neck were out of alignment and then explained the number of treatments it would take to get them back in shape. It had taken years for my neck to get out of alignment and I couldn’t expect it to just pop back into place with a couple of adjustments. No one becomes a great musician overnight. It takes years of trial and error, two steps forward, one step back. Any time I get frustrated with my trumpet playing, I compare where I am at that moment to where I was a year prior. If I’m further along than the year previous, I tell myself at least I’m still going in the right direction. The process includes victories and failures. It runs the full gamut of human emotion.
Success is not a victory. It’s the culmination of many small victories. I remember when playing anything above a middle C was extremely difficult. Then it became easy. Then playing a G on top of the staff was difficult but it too eventually became easy. Today, songs and exercises I once considered impossible to play are part of my warm-up routine. There are no gigantic leaps on the journey to success. It’s a matter of stepping from one cobblestone to the next. Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs are in overcoming the most miniscule, tedious challenges that baffle the casual onlooker as to their significance.
You need a clear vision of success. Otherwise, you’re like a ship lost at sea. You don’t need to envision everything you’ll do in your career. But you need to know what or who you want to sound like, what style you want to play. If you bring a crowd to their feet with your performance, what have you just done? It’s not about the style or genre, it’s about the performer who had a vision of what they wanted to do with music, made a plan according to that vision and then stuck with it come hell or high water.
People will think you’re totally cray-cray. Well-intentioned friends and family members of musicians who do their craft for pay are always telling them to "get a grip with reality" and get a "real job." As well-intentioned - or even right - as they may be, what these people don't understand is that for a serious musician, music isn't just something that's heard on a radio. It's something that is constantly coursing through their head. It's a part of them. It defines them. You know you're obsessed with something when you do it when ...
