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| Set Goals: Your Rockstardom Wasn’t Built In A Day! |
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By Sheena Metal
Every musician currently living on the Planet
Earth would love nothing more than to wake up
tomorrow in the midst of their glorious peak of
superstardom. But, as Rome wasn’t built in a
day, neither is the career of any one musician.
A musical career is a long, sometimes arduous
journey of tiny advances and minor setbacks
filling the fragile shell of big breaks and huge
disappointments. It’s up, it’s down, it’s all
around and hopefully, as time passes, you can
see the course of your career building up slowly
through weeks and months and years of steady
progress.
But how can you tell if your career is actually
going somewhere? How do you know if you’re
really getting closer to your musical dreams?
How can you determine whether or not you’re on
the right path? How do you know what to focus on
in the immediacy and what paths can be left for
another time when you are better equipped to
tackle them creatively and concretely? While
there is no one set way achieve rock
superstardom, the clearest way to realize
musical success is to simply set goals.
As mundane as it may seem, setting goals, both
long and short-term, for your musical project
lends the same kind of structure and discipline
to your career that an athlete would use to
train for the Olympics. Realistic goals enable
you to build your band’s list of accomplishments
the way a runner builds his muscles… pumping up
your musical achievements as you lift off the
weight of each entertainment roadblock. And the
good news is that you can start today. At any
time you may put into effect a list of goals,
large or small, aimed at boosting your career in
any given area.
The following are a few tips that will help you
to set some goals so that you may get on your
way to achieving all that you want from your
music and the entertainment industry in general:
1.) Set Goals You Can Achieve---Nothing is more
depressing for an artist than setting lofty
goals for yourself and your music only to bottom
out with hopelessness when none of the goals are
achieved by the deadline. So, much of what keeps
artists plugging away in the industry, against
all odds, is the positive re-enforcement of
feelings of accomplishment. Keep that upbeat
mojo going by setting goals for your band that
you can absolutely actualize with lots of elbow
grease and some good creative flow. Take a
minute to assess each potential achievement and
put a realistic time allotment on it so that
you’re setting yourself up to succeed and move
onto the next musical goal.
2.) Keep Your Eyes On The Prize---It’s all well
and good to set goals just to see if you can do
them, but if you’re ultimate goal is to be a big
ole humongous rockstar, then try and set goals
that will help you on your way to a Rolls Royce,
a Bentley and a 2,000 square foot infinity
swimming pool. Set a goal to get one article of
press each month, to book a decent gig every two
weeks, or to update your website daily. Give
yourself six months to finish your full-length
album, three months to raise the money for your
band’s t-shirts or a year to find a good manager
to pitch you to labels. Each one of these goals
is a great achievement on its own but also an
important piece in getting your band where you
eventually want it to be. So it’s a win/win for
your career, any way you slice it, and the
feelings of accomplishment will certainly
empower you to keep pushing on in the
ever-frustrating music business.
3.) One Goal At A Time---It’s okay to have
twenty goals on the table but they should be
lined up in order of immediacy and priority so
that each one is given their own individual
time. Trying to work too many angles at one time
may jumble your ability and focus, and leave you
at your deadline with six or seven goals only
partially achieved. In an industry so dependant
on “what have you done lately,” it’s always a
good thing to get a goal completed in a timely
manner and move onto the next so that the
outside world sees a band that is always
accomplishing things, always achieving, and
always succeeding.
4.) If At First You Don’t Succeed---No matter
how hard you try, there will always be goals
that elude you past your self-imposed deadline.
While it’s good to discipline yourself into a
regiment of goal-setting/achieving, don’t beat
yourself up if circumstances beyond your control
lead you to fall short on a deadline or two. The
most important thing is that you realize your
goal. Secondary to this, is for you to
accomplish your goal in a timely fashion. So,
put your emphasis on the success and the
positive achievement and don’t give up on your
music and your goal if the deadline rolls around
prematurely.
Once you set a line of goals in front of you,
it’s easy to focus on achieving rather than
worrying about failing. As you begin to achieve
goals, you can rely on the confidence of all
you’ve done and dismiss the angst of worrying
about things that haven’t happened yet. You’ll
never be able to accomplish everything all at
once, so why not relish the successes that you
can manifest immediately whilst dreaming of the
goals you still have yet to achieve. Don’t waste
time. Sit down after you read this and scratch
out a list of goals, each with its own timeline.
Find something you can accomplish today for your
music, something you can get done by tomorrow
and something terrific you can nail down by the
end of the week. Your band will look better to
industry and fans alike and, most importantly,
you’ll look and feel great to yourself and your
music. RockSuperstardom awaits! Start knocking
back those goals and kick the music biz in the
butt, one positive achievement at a time!
Sheena Metal is a radio host, producer,
promoter, music supervisor, consultant,
columnist, journalist and musician. Her
syndicated radio program, Music Highway Radio,
airs on over 2,000 affiliates to more than 126
million listeners. Her musicians’ assistance
program, Music Highway, boasts over 10,000
members. She currently promotes numerous live
shows weekly in the Los Angeles Area, where she
resides. For more info:
http://www.sheena-metal.com.
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