A while ago I made a thread about How To Keep Your Excitement Alive, in that thread I wrote about my way of avoiding negative thoughts on what I do by people who are not likeminded: simply not talking with not likeminded people about it.
This thread will add to the before mentioned one. Initially I wanted to simply post it in the thread but since it's gonna be pretty long, I think it deserves its own thread
so let's view this as a 2nd part or
Alright let's jump right into that, first off, this won't be a story about a successful business, so if you expect that you won't find it in here. What you will find here are some lessons you can apply to your business journey.
We are back in 2011.
I was 19 years old and nothing but a lazy teenager living from weekend to weekend, on monday already planning what parties to visit the next weekend. Besides that sitting in front of my tv the usual amount of hours per day, either watching some bullshit or playing video games on my playstation 3.
I always had an extreme interest in music, especially HipHop music and for some time I had that thought in my head: I wanted to learn how to make beats. You know those banging beats you hear at the club. The Lil Wayne's 'Lollipop' or T.I.'s 'Whatever You Like' type of beats. I decided to place my a$$ from the couch to my desk and research that topic a bit.
Coming across some music producer forums aswell as blogs and youtube channels my desire to learn this art grew more and more. I downloaded a beatmaking software that most producers were using (FL Studio 9 at that time) and was ready to kick a$$ with my beats. There I sat, in front of my pc with a blank project opened in FL Studio, ready to unleash my creativity to this project.
I sat there, and I kept sitting there, but the only hot thing that came out of this beatmaking session was the delete button on my keyboard.
*On one of those producer forums there was a book recommondations thread, and someone in there recommended The Millionaire Fastlane . Long story short I started reading TMF at that time, but stopped reading it 1/3 through the book (I read the parts on the Sidewalk and the Slowlane, but not the part on the Fastlane), I loved the book but at that time as the lazy type of guy I was I think I simply got tired of reading something.*
It took me some days and a few youtube tutorials until I finally made my first beat. Excited like a little kid I exported the file into a .mp3 and put it onto my usb flash drive so I can listen to it in the car. I played it over and over while driving to my girl. There was really a melody and banging drums to hear in that track, I was so happy about the fact that I was listening to something I created out of nothing.
At that time I was not more than 4 months into a relationship. My girl was a passionate and talented singer, not doing it for profit or anything but I always got goosebumps if she sang B.o.B's 'Airplanes' in the car. In other words she was a musician while I was just a music listener. Let's be honest I had absolutely no idea of making music besides the knowledge from some youtube videos.
After I arrived at her house she got into my car and we hit the grocery store. Before we got out of the car in the parking lot I wanted her to listen to what I created. I turned up the volume of my speakers and let my girl hear what her boyfriend just created. After she finished listening to it I starred at her in expectation of a pat on my back for that piece of great work. That expected pat on the back ended more in something that felt like a slap in my face. Instead of a 'wow that beat is awesome honey!' her mouth formed a 'ahm.. do you have any feeling for rhythm?!' it wasn't meant bad but it felt like I just fell of cloud 9 onto the hard ground of reality.
'o.. of course.. ah.. don't you hear the rhythm in it?' I stumbled 'wait I'll show it to you again!' I said in hope of her changing her mind after the second listening. It didn't change.
I was ready to give up 'I don't have any feel for rhythm in me' sounded like a good enough excuse, or 'I'm just not talented.'
To make it short, I didn't give up. Later that day when I got home I called my girl and asked her what she meant with 'I have no feel for rhythm.' She told me that my beat was completely out of tact, that there has to be a rhythm in my beats, that instrument has to hit at the same time as this one and this one has to hit in a regular tact (I spare you all the technical terminology.)
My fire was back on. I googled those topics, rhythm, tact, being on beat, etc. I adjusted my first beat to make it sound in tact and played it to my girl, finally I received my pat on the back. It wasn't a 'wow!' but more of a 'at least it sounds like music now.'
I had a long way to go before I could convince my supporting, but honest girl of my abilities to make a banger. I felt empowered and made 2 more beats applying what I have just learned, watching tutorial after tutorial, reading forum post after forum post. I felt like a king when I drove in the streets banging my (at that time 3) beats as loud as possible. Then came a day where I had 2 friends with me in my car and I couldn't resist the urge to play them my 3 beats. Oh boy...
Them laughing at me for the quality of my beats would be a nice way to describe it. Their carefully chosen opinions ranged from 'you should better do something you're good at' to 'bro you're just not talented.' I felt down. Maybe they are right, maybe I will never be able to create a beat that really bangs and sounds like something you could imagine your favorite artist on. Maybe I'm just not good enough.
But there was something that kept those opinions of the others out of my mindset: I really enjoyed creating something from nothing, and I liked the product that came out of it, yes I liked my 3 beats. 'Maybe they'll change their opinion if they hear a rapper on top of the beat' I thought to myself. I headed to a music forum I been a member on for some time, I knew that there was a forum section for artists and producers to post their work to. I uploaded my beat to soundcloud and posted it on there. I didn't get too many replies but the ones who replied at least thought my beats were not too bad. I got into contact with one artist through this section of the forum and I managed to get him on my 2nd beat. When I played the track he made on my beat for the first time I had goosebumps all over my body, I was really listening to an artist from the US rapping on top of my nice piano beat. I was flashed.
I had to show this track to my friends, maybe they change their opinion now. They didn't.
I was frustrated. The likeminded people I played my beats to thought they were not bad, why can't my friends just like my work? Ready to give up again. But somehow I didn't. I kept learning and I kept improving my abilities, I made beat after beat, tried to learn something new with every beat. Everytime I showed my newest beat to my friends I felt frustrated at their reaction to it again. Thankfully I didn't give up making beats, but instead I gave up trying to get their acceptance of my beats.
Don't get me wrong I didn't treat my beatmaking like a business, but more like a hobby, doing it when I felt like doing it. I didn't know it at that time but I made some kind of progress, slow progress since I treated it like a hobby, but in the end it was some kind of progress. I got better and better. 3 years passed by until I finally felt confident enough to aim for the next level of my beatmaking: selling my beats.
It was in January of 2014, 3 years after I started learning how to make beats, when I sold my very first beat for $15.
Every day for hours I would search for the term 'send beats' on Twitter to find rappers looking for beats, then I sent them 3 beats via email and hoped they would like them and get back at me to buy them. That's how I made my first sale. In that year I sold around 20 beats for a total of about $500. It wasn't much, but for me it was incredible, I didn't have a sense for rhythm when I first started learning how to make beats and now I was able to make beats that people actually wanted to buy! I felt awesome!
Then in October 2014 my girl broke up with me, I felt like my music was the only thing I really had now (besides family and friends), I wanted to get a level higher, after working with a few smaller artists (getting them on my beats) I wanted to get to the big players in the game. Music was the main thing I had on my mind, I searched for marketing possiblities and methods to make my beats better. I contacted managers of big artists and actually got in contact with some. I sent them my beats, but nothing happened, the quality of my beats was not good enough for that class of artists.
We reached 2015.
I changed my producer name into one that sounds catchy and created a pretty basic website to sell my beats on, using a wordpress theme, specifically made for producers to sell their beats with. I wanted to make this year my year and be able to live off my beats. Make my hobby into my job. I made a plan on what I want to do, release a free beat tape, promote it and get traffic to my beatselling site through it.
My friends and me had a vacaction in the US planned for March 2015, I set my goal to get started with my beats website after we come home from that vacation.
After reading the last word of the book, my first plan was to keep making and selling my beats, and after I got some credits for working with big artists I gonna start a website through which artists could send their beats to big artists. That was the initial plan.
One day he told me he got a new source to a big artist, I asked him if we can send beats for the artist to that source and he told me to make 5 exclusive beats that we will only send to that artist, they have to be exactly his style, he will send them to his source if they are good enough. Ok that was a challenge, I loved it. I put the free beat tape I was working on on hold and started to work on those 5 beats immediately. One after one I created the best beats I ever made. It was a tough ride, a lot of tears and frustration spent on days I couldn't get one tone right, but I did it, one day I F*cked it up the next day I would create that catchy melody that it needed.
We didn't get any response at all. It was frustrating. But I wanted to continue it. I thought that's gonna be my Fastlane.
I can't tell you the reason for my mindshift, but somehow I started to shift my thought processes. I realized that my decision to FIRST work with big artists and THEN do a website, was only an excuse to not do it NOW. Doing something that I had no knowledge in felt way harder than doing something I taught myself over the last few years.
Long story short: I decided to quit the music production. I got rid of my excuse to not start a business NOW.
I started with my business idea of a website, that artists, music producers and graphic designers can use to submit their work to big artists in the HipHop scene. That's where my progress thread starts.
The biggest difficulty was to get into contact with the big artists to make this service even possible, so I contacted the guy who I knew was awesome with getting in contact with those type of people: the graphic guy from earlier on. To make it short, we are now business partners, threw the initial idea over board and started creating our business based on a need in the music industry.
That's the story until June/July 2015.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from all this is that I wouldn't be where I am today, if I had allowed someone else's reality to become mine.
I put that little disclaimer in the beginning, that this thread won't be a business success story for a reason. This thread doesn't end in the creation of a successful business. It ends in the beginning of a new journey, a journey to the possiblity of creating a successful business. I don't know if my business, that I'm currently working on, will be successful, but I know that not-likeminded-people's opinions on it won't affect the possibility of it being successful.
Back then I (subconsciously) made the choice to not allow my friends' reality become mine.
I didn't plan to make this thread THIS long.. I hope you could fight through it and if you did, I hope you got something out of it. This could actually serve as my intro, that I never did ...
This thread will add to the before mentioned one. Initially I wanted to simply post it in the thread but since it's gonna be pretty long, I think it deserves its own thread
so let's view this as a 2nd part orHow To Keep Your Excitement Alive (Part 2) - A Story From The Past
Alright let's jump right into that, first off, this won't be a story about a successful business, so if you expect that you won't find it in here. What you will find here are some lessons you can apply to your business journey.
We are back in 2011.
I was 19 years old and nothing but a lazy teenager living from weekend to weekend, on monday already planning what parties to visit the next weekend. Besides that sitting in front of my tv the usual amount of hours per day, either watching some bullshit or playing video games on my playstation 3.
I always had an extreme interest in music, especially HipHop music and for some time I had that thought in my head: I wanted to learn how to make beats. You know those banging beats you hear at the club. The Lil Wayne's 'Lollipop' or T.I.'s 'Whatever You Like' type of beats. I decided to place my a$$ from the couch to my desk and research that topic a bit.
Coming across some music producer forums aswell as blogs and youtube channels my desire to learn this art grew more and more. I downloaded a beatmaking software that most producers were using (FL Studio 9 at that time) and was ready to kick a$$ with my beats. There I sat, in front of my pc with a blank project opened in FL Studio, ready to unleash my creativity to this project.
I sat there, and I kept sitting there, but the only hot thing that came out of this beatmaking session was the delete button on my keyboard.
*On one of those producer forums there was a book recommondations thread, and someone in there recommended The Millionaire Fastlane . Long story short I started reading TMF at that time, but stopped reading it 1/3 through the book (I read the parts on the Sidewalk and the Slowlane, but not the part on the Fastlane), I loved the book but at that time as the lazy type of guy I was I think I simply got tired of reading something.*
It took me some days and a few youtube tutorials until I finally made my first beat. Excited like a little kid I exported the file into a .mp3 and put it onto my usb flash drive so I can listen to it in the car. I played it over and over while driving to my girl. There was really a melody and banging drums to hear in that track, I was so happy about the fact that I was listening to something I created out of nothing.
At that time I was not more than 4 months into a relationship. My girl was a passionate and talented singer, not doing it for profit or anything but I always got goosebumps if she sang B.o.B's 'Airplanes' in the car. In other words she was a musician while I was just a music listener. Let's be honest I had absolutely no idea of making music besides the knowledge from some youtube videos.
After I arrived at her house she got into my car and we hit the grocery store. Before we got out of the car in the parking lot I wanted her to listen to what I created. I turned up the volume of my speakers and let my girl hear what her boyfriend just created. After she finished listening to it I starred at her in expectation of a pat on my back for that piece of great work. That expected pat on the back ended more in something that felt like a slap in my face. Instead of a 'wow that beat is awesome honey!' her mouth formed a 'ahm.. do you have any feeling for rhythm?!' it wasn't meant bad but it felt like I just fell of cloud 9 onto the hard ground of reality.
'o.. of course.. ah.. don't you hear the rhythm in it?' I stumbled 'wait I'll show it to you again!' I said in hope of her changing her mind after the second listening. It didn't change.
I was ready to give up 'I don't have any feel for rhythm in me' sounded like a good enough excuse, or 'I'm just not talented.'
To make it short, I didn't give up. Later that day when I got home I called my girl and asked her what she meant with 'I have no feel for rhythm.' She told me that my beat was completely out of tact, that there has to be a rhythm in my beats, that instrument has to hit at the same time as this one and this one has to hit in a regular tact (I spare you all the technical terminology.)
My fire was back on. I googled those topics, rhythm, tact, being on beat, etc. I adjusted my first beat to make it sound in tact and played it to my girl, finally I received my pat on the back. It wasn't a 'wow!' but more of a 'at least it sounds like music now.'
I had a long way to go before I could convince my supporting, but honest girl of my abilities to make a banger. I felt empowered and made 2 more beats applying what I have just learned, watching tutorial after tutorial, reading forum post after forum post. I felt like a king when I drove in the streets banging my (at that time 3) beats as loud as possible. Then came a day where I had 2 friends with me in my car and I couldn't resist the urge to play them my 3 beats. Oh boy...
Them laughing at me for the quality of my beats would be a nice way to describe it. Their carefully chosen opinions ranged from 'you should better do something you're good at' to 'bro you're just not talented.' I felt down. Maybe they are right, maybe I will never be able to create a beat that really bangs and sounds like something you could imagine your favorite artist on. Maybe I'm just not good enough.
But there was something that kept those opinions of the others out of my mindset: I really enjoyed creating something from nothing, and I liked the product that came out of it, yes I liked my 3 beats. 'Maybe they'll change their opinion if they hear a rapper on top of the beat' I thought to myself. I headed to a music forum I been a member on for some time, I knew that there was a forum section for artists and producers to post their work to. I uploaded my beat to soundcloud and posted it on there. I didn't get too many replies but the ones who replied at least thought my beats were not too bad. I got into contact with one artist through this section of the forum and I managed to get him on my 2nd beat. When I played the track he made on my beat for the first time I had goosebumps all over my body, I was really listening to an artist from the US rapping on top of my nice piano beat. I was flashed.
I had to show this track to my friends, maybe they change their opinion now. They didn't.
I was frustrated. The likeminded people I played my beats to thought they were not bad, why can't my friends just like my work? Ready to give up again. But somehow I didn't. I kept learning and I kept improving my abilities, I made beat after beat, tried to learn something new with every beat. Everytime I showed my newest beat to my friends I felt frustrated at their reaction to it again. Thankfully I didn't give up making beats, but instead I gave up trying to get their acceptance of my beats.
Don't get me wrong I didn't treat my beatmaking like a business, but more like a hobby, doing it when I felt like doing it. I didn't know it at that time but I made some kind of progress, slow progress since I treated it like a hobby, but in the end it was some kind of progress. I got better and better. 3 years passed by until I finally felt confident enough to aim for the next level of my beatmaking: selling my beats.
It was in January of 2014, 3 years after I started learning how to make beats, when I sold my very first beat for $15.
Every day for hours I would search for the term 'send beats' on Twitter to find rappers looking for beats, then I sent them 3 beats via email and hoped they would like them and get back at me to buy them. That's how I made my first sale. In that year I sold around 20 beats for a total of about $500. It wasn't much, but for me it was incredible, I didn't have a sense for rhythm when I first started learning how to make beats and now I was able to make beats that people actually wanted to buy! I felt awesome!
*Since I only read 1/3 of TMF at that time I had no idea what the Fastlane is. My dream was to live off my beats at that time.*
Then in October 2014 my girl broke up with me, I felt like my music was the only thing I really had now (besides family and friends), I wanted to get a level higher, after working with a few smaller artists (getting them on my beats) I wanted to get to the big players in the game. Music was the main thing I had on my mind, I searched for marketing possiblities and methods to make my beats better. I contacted managers of big artists and actually got in contact with some. I sent them my beats, but nothing happened, the quality of my beats was not good enough for that class of artists.
*Then something awesome happened at the forum I was member of: 2 guys who always posted fan graphics and alternative covers of albums, etc. made it! They got their cover to one of the biggest artists in the HipHop scene. I was happy for them, and I thought maybe if I get in contact with them they could help me reach bigger artists with my beats. So I contacted one of them and asked if he could send my beats to the artist they made the cover for, I offered him 50% of every beat sale. He replied that he will help me, we exchanged numbers and he sent my beats to some artists. In their team his partner made the graphics and he did the management and getting the graphics to the artists. I remember one night, I was sleeping and he called me, he just got off the phone with one of Lil Wayne's younger artists and told me they are in the studio at the moment I should send him my beats so he can send them right into the studio to the artist. Long story short: not one artist wanted my beats. But we tried it over and over again.*
We reached 2015.
I changed my producer name into one that sounds catchy and created a pretty basic website to sell my beats on, using a wordpress theme, specifically made for producers to sell their beats with. I wanted to make this year my year and be able to live off my beats. Make my hobby into my job. I made a plan on what I want to do, release a free beat tape, promote it and get traffic to my beatselling site through it.
My friends and me had a vacaction in the US planned for March 2015, I set my goal to get started with my beats website after we come home from that vacation.
*That vacation changed everything. We been to San Francisco, L.A., San Diego and Vegas. For the first time in my life I not just read about, but also felt what is possible in life. That feeling of freedom, those Lambos and Ferraris, those Malibu beach houses, it was stunning. Those feelings made me think back to TMF, after we got back home I picked up TMF again and finished reading the whole book.*
After reading the last word of the book, my first plan was to keep making and selling my beats, and after I got some credits for working with big artists I gonna start a website through which artists could send their beats to big artists. That was the initial plan.
*I always stayed in contact with the graphics guy, sometimes we would write every day, we had the same interests especially when it came to music, so we always had something to talk about, I played him all my beats and we sent them to artists, at the same time he and his partner made cover after cover. They worked with the biggest artists in the HipHop scene.*
One day he told me he got a new source to a big artist, I asked him if we can send beats for the artist to that source and he told me to make 5 exclusive beats that we will only send to that artist, they have to be exactly his style, he will send them to his source if they are good enough. Ok that was a challenge, I loved it. I put the free beat tape I was working on on hold and started to work on those 5 beats immediately. One after one I created the best beats I ever made. It was a tough ride, a lot of tears and frustration spent on days I couldn't get one tone right, but I did it, one day I F*cked it up the next day I would create that catchy melody that it needed.
We didn't get any response at all. It was frustrating. But I wanted to continue it. I thought that's gonna be my Fastlane.
I can't tell you the reason for my mindshift, but somehow I started to shift my thought processes. I realized that my decision to FIRST work with big artists and THEN do a website, was only an excuse to not do it NOW. Doing something that I had no knowledge in felt way harder than doing something I taught myself over the last few years.
Long story short: I decided to quit the music production. I got rid of my excuse to not start a business NOW.
I started with my business idea of a website, that artists, music producers and graphic designers can use to submit their work to big artists in the HipHop scene. That's where my progress thread starts.
The biggest difficulty was to get into contact with the big artists to make this service even possible, so I contacted the guy who I knew was awesome with getting in contact with those type of people: the graphic guy from earlier on. To make it short, we are now business partners, threw the initial idea over board and started creating our business based on a need in the music industry.
That's the story until June/July 2015.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from all this is that I wouldn't be where I am today, if I had allowed someone else's reality to become mine.
I put that little disclaimer in the beginning, that this thread won't be a business success story for a reason. This thread doesn't end in the creation of a successful business. It ends in the beginning of a new journey, a journey to the possiblity of creating a successful business. I don't know if my business, that I'm currently working on, will be successful, but I know that not-likeminded-people's opinions on it won't affect the possibility of it being successful.
Back then I (subconsciously) made the choice to not allow my friends' reality become mine.
This led me to learning a skill, which led me
to dive into the music market, that led me
to spot a need in that market, and that led me
to build a business based on that need
to dive into the music market, that led me
to spot a need in that market, and that led me
to build a business based on that need
I didn't plan to make this thread THIS long.. I hope you could fight through it and if you did, I hope you got something out of it. This could actually serve as my intro, that I never did ...
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