mjn | bass

From Hypebot.com: Nobody Cares About You, So Raise Your Baton
(http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/10/nobody-cares-about-you.html)

Another illustration on why it’s so important for us to treat our musical endeavors as a small business. And like “normal” business people, why it’s so important to be able to articulate your goals and vision.

“The fact that people don’t care about you as much as you care about you doesn’t mean that you have to do everything.  But it does mean having your own clear vision and communicating it.  It also means knowing what success looks like and enough about what has to be done to get there so that you can tell if your team is on the right path.”

Communicating your vision can sometimes be a very hard thing. After all, we’re artists and we communicate with our work, right? I know I have a hard time with it. At a music conference I recently attended, I jotted some basic talking points written on a note card that I kept in my pocket, and I would read it form time to time just to keep it top-of-mind. Not a “sales pitch” mind you, but more along the lines of what sort of things I’d like to accomplish in the short term with my career, and what I’m hoping to gain relative to those goals by attending the conference.

Would love to hear your thoughts on art-as-small-business and team building.