00:19 CJ: Well, welcome to the Savvy Musician Show this CJ Ortiz, the branding and mindset coach here at the Savvy Musician Academy. Once again, get the privilege to interview some of our Elite students in the Savvy Musician Superfan System Elite program. If you’ve heard the previous interviews with Karen and Lindsay, you know what a treat it is to kind of be a fly on the wall, to hear from students who are just really proficient musicians in and of themselves, but what they’re learning and growing in as far as marketing is really remarkable.

Because we are at this very unique time in history where what was created by Napster, if you want to call it a problem back in the end of the 20th century, still dealing with today, although now it’s evolved into the streaming services and all of that. How do musicians find a career? How do they sustain themselves? So much has changed. The labels are suffering, so Leah has paved a way forward. You guys know that. So I’m excited today to have two people who’ve I’ve already had a chance once again to work with on a coaching call. It’s Jacqueline and Augustus from the Galaxy Electric. Guys, welcome to the Savvy Musician Show.

01:34 Jaqueline: Thank you so much for having us. It’s a real honor.

01:34 Augustus: Yeah, thanks for having us.

01:37 CJ: These guys are really cool. I’ve met with them before in one of my branding coaching calls and those are really great because it’s when you talk about the essence of what something is not just about the mechanics and that’s always fun and you’re learning a lot of mechanics in Leah’s program, all of the buttons to push and the software to use. But I think you guys even realized just how much this, who you are, what you’re about, who your audiences plays, the culture and all these sorts of things plays such a huge role really with you guys. Because you guys are totally unique. One of the more unique musical talents in our group. So why don’t, let’s start there. Let’s start out with what is Galaxy Electric? How did you guys come together to do this? Tell us about the genre and the culture.

02:24 Jaqueline: That is always fun to talk about. It’s definitely been a journey because we started in LA very much in the old music industry model. We wanted to make a record. We thought, “You have to make a record and then you have to get signed and then you have to tour.” And so we really focused on that and making a record that we thought we could get signed with. So that was kind of our starting point. We had been making music together for a long time, but this project, the Galaxy Electric started because we really wanted to make an album that we thought, “This is what we want our sound to be. This is what we think we can tour with.” Not that we don’t love the style of music we make, but that was really where our heads were at and we, lots of twists and turns along the way.

We recorded in a studio with a full band making what I guess would be called psychedelic pop focused on songwriting. I was really involved with songwriting groups in LA. That’s a very big thing. How many songs can you write in a day? Can you get them published? Can you get them out there? Can you get somebody else to sing them? That kind of thing. So that was where my head was at. And Augustus was playing bass with another band that was touring. So we were really in this kind of scene, we’re kind of like soaked in it. And I think our sound came a lot from being involved with so many other artists in this sort of, I guess the psych-rock scene was like really happening in LA.

03:52 CJ: Well, break that down a little bit just so obviously, I mean I’ve heard your music and what, so I get what it is and it should be understood readily by the terminology. But I mean it really, I mean from the way you guys dress to everything, I mean it really is a very specific vibe. So break it down just a little bit for those who may not be familiar.

04:13 Jaqueline: Sure. And this has been a lot of what we’ve learned from the course, having to do our artist identity work. It was always there, but-

04:22 Augustus: We thought we knew. We thought we knew exactly who we were, but we started the course, we realized like, “Whoa, we-

04:29 CJ: Isn’t that great?

04:30 Augustus: There’s a long, long way to go before we know. And we’re still tweaking it, honestly. Like that is, I would say the biggest hurdle is figuring out exactly who you are as an artist.

04:42 Jaqueline: When you want to say like, “I’m undefinable.”

04:44 CJ: Yeah.

04:48 Jaqueline: Floated in space with, “I’m not tethered to anything.” But yeah, through our work with you just digging more into our work with the course we have called ourselves cosmic tape music-

05:01 CJ: Very cool.

05:03 Jaqueline: Which is in reference to our love of retro sci-fi, psychedelia and our explorations of the space age and early electronic music that was being developed during that time. And-

05:18 Augustus: Using the studio as the instrument. Like letting sort of the tape recorder if you will, inform the music. And kind of treating the tape recorder as if it’s a member of the band.

05:30 CJ: Wow. Well, let me ask you something about that because it’s so easy for people to dismiss something as a shtick or a trend or that sort of thing. So when you guys look back on what you referred to as this space-age, what did you call it? The musical aspect, you said it was a particular-

05:51 Jaqueline: Music and… Yeah.

05:53 CJ: So I’m like, I’m not familiar with that, so I can only guess at what that is. But what is it about that that appeals to you and what do you think was a secondary thing that appeals to you? What is it about the artists at that time that intrigues you?

06:09 Jaqueline: Well, this all stemmed from what we call retro-futurism or what we’ve studied as retro-futurism, which is a nostalgia for the future that the past was developing.

06:21 CJ: Right, right.

06:22 Jaqueline: So sort of lost futures.

06:24 CJ: Right.

06:24 Jaqueline: And then that’s pretty exciting and emotional and there’s a lot to dig into there.

06:30 Augustus: Like the World’s Fair, like the ’60s.

06:34 CJ: Right. So people who are engaging in genuine future trending and that sort of thing, what was going to come about that may not have developed. Some were actually pretty scary. They were dead on about the internet and things like that. People reading newspapers on computer screens and all of that. They were dead on. This is like in the 60s but yeah, like the World’s Fair. There’s that… So you guys are like looking back at those and saying what if?

06:59 Jaqueline: Yeah, sort of like, what if we did all get jet packs and we were all able to do the space travel thing and like live like the Jetsons. You know what if that did happen, what’s the soundtrack for that?

07:12 CJ: Right.

07:13 Augustus: What’s the soundtrack, we still have flying cars, unfortunately.

07:18 CJ: That’s right. Yeah. What did I see recently? There was a, as of something date, I think we just passed it. We have officially moved past the year that Blade Runner had and the movie. So yeah, so a lot has not developed. And of course, a lot has, but there’s nothing, there’s nothing really romantic and creative about the time in which we live. If anything we’re seeing kind of more… I saw in fact I saw today a little headline a little while ago about that people are now having more digital conversations than they are physical conversation. I don’t know how they measure that, but I could see how that would certainly be the case. And it’s not anything creative. Yeah. We get creative with our little memes and our little texts and our little emojis but that’s the extent of it.

You guys are saying, no, no, no, no, no. Let’s, they had a romantic vision back then. You know what I mean? It was a, they were a creating a painting in what they were projecting. And so how do you stumble on, because I can see the fascination with that. I could see the creative opportunities that just opens a door that like nobody’s really addressing, gets you beyond the sappy love song gets you beyond the breakup thing or whatever. And takes you into a whole different space. And I think that’s just so interesting. How did you guys stumble on that?

08:42 Jaqueline: Well, we were always using like analog synthesizers and cassette recorders and Gus can speak to this more.

08:52 Augustus: Well, I was just going to say that the soundtracks and the films that we know of from the sci-fi genre, you had to use these tools to create things that literally don’t exist in the world as we know it. So for example, if you like take the sound of a synthesizer and you record it to a tape machine and you speed it up double like it’s going to sound like alien chatter. Like it’s going to be a sound that you couldn’t, that doesn’t even exist without manipulating the audio in that way. And so I think the inspiration for the music that we make is sort of like watching these films, listening to the soundtracks and sort of paying special attention to the things that seemed out of this world about the art and kind of like saying like, “What if we made pop songs that had that in there?” Like that’s kind of…

09:57 CJ: I’ll tell you, that’s one of the fun parts about participating in the Savvy Musician Academy is because it’s not just a country artist, a rock artist, a pop artist, a heavy metal band that’s there. It’s these guys like you. From what you guys are doing to pure ambient instrumentalists to you name it. And it’s just this smorgasbord of talent. And it’s so interesting for me and I keep telling people when I’m advising them on the social media thing. For example, we talk about the know, like, and trust element. But one of the things that came out of this was when you get to know somebody, and it may not be your musical genre for example, but you get to know them as people. Maybe spend an afternoon with them at a barbecue or go out and see them live or something.

And it may not be your genre music, but because you got to know them and because you saw them and you heard them, you’re like, “You know what? I’m going to listen to their music.” So I might not listen to anything else in that particular genre, but I’ll listen to the galaxy electric because I know them. And when, so this has to be a fascinating thing for you to say because you got to be saying to yourself, “Okay, well we know some other people like us who are into this sort of thing, but how do we find people around the world that are into this thing?” I mean, is there enough people interested in for us to do what Leah’s saying we could possibly do? So this has to be, once this program kind of opened up to you was like, “Oh wow, here’s a way to do this.”

11:32 Jaqueline: Absolutely. I think especially coming from the touring side of things and the traditional, record industry model that we were chasing, we found a small, I would say micro, micro-niche group of people that was sort of like, “Oh okay, they’re out there.” So we connected deeply with a very small group of people who encouraged us kind of to keep going.

12:02 CJ: Right.

12:02 Jaqueline: And once we found Leah’s course and we’ve done a few of them now, and especially with elite, it’s on another level. Like I never could have imagined. We have been able to kind of break that open. And you’re right, it is people. We’re based in the U.S. There’s definitely a contingency in the U.S. but it’s more in the international waters that we [crosstalk 00:12:31].

12:31 CJ: That’s just so great. And I’m so happy for artists like yourself because now you have this possibility, you have this opportunity. Obviously it takes a lot and any of us can always drop the ball. We have the principals, we have the coaching but that doesn’t mean we’re not, we’re going to do the work. And of course, I see a lot of students who don’t, they don’t do the work, they don’t follow through. They don’t… Because there’s nothing but resistance on every front. Because like you said, you’re still figuring out who you are as an artist and you’re still figuring out the audience, still figuring out the culture. So there’s all of that. But it’s because we remove labels. We removed the traditional method of doing things. So now all of this is falling back on us.

And we have now the onus to have to be the marketing department and the creative department and the whatever. But that’s fun too. And oftentimes when I’m talking to artists like yourself, I love to highlight the fact that because what you’re doing is so unique and has a very specific culture and so much creative stuff, resource to draw from, you have so many more options that the average musical artist is not even thinking of. For example, you guys can blog, you guys could podcast, you guys could write pulp fiction, you guys could do any number of things to create opt-ins, to create great content for people to kind of build up that culture where the music is just a part of it.

Where you’re not, the music doesn’t have to carry the burden but because you’re bringing people in and giving them all this creative resource, they’re like, “I just love following those guys.” And they get to know you and buying the music is just a byproduct because one of the things that I see with some of the students is that they feel like, “Okay, great. I like what Leah’s doing and I feel like this could possibly work.” But they’re still in this mind trap of thinking, “Okay, I’ve got to do all this other stuff, the social media and the engagement and this and that, so that they’ll buy the music.” So they already don’t want to sell their music.

14:38 Jaqueline: Right.

14:38 CJ: You know what I mean? They’re creatives. They don’t want to sound like a car salesman. They don’t want to have to do that. Of course, Leah’s like past that, right Leah will sell the heck out of that stuff. But for a lot it’s just, it’s a struggle. We don’t want to do that. We just want people to say, “Well, if they like it, they’ll come buy it.”

14:54 Jaqueline: Yeah. I’d love if that were the case.

14:55 Augustus: Yeah.

14:56 CJ: But it’s a lot easier for you guys to come out from behind the mixing board and, or in your case, the tape player and get behind the microphone and say, ‘We’re going to preach about this culture. We’re going to preach about this retro-futurism. We’re going to preach and share with you guys and have fun with this creatively.” And then that endears people and the natural byproduct is they’re going to buy the music. And I haven’t been able to mention that in any of the interviews. And you guys have really given that opportunity because what you’re doing is just so unique and so off the beaten path, but it just goes to show how like as Leah said, “How many do you really need to finance a music career?”

It’s really not that much. She says a thousand super fans, right? Spending about a hundred dollars a year. So for you guys, I mean, I can see you coming up with trinkets little, I mean, just cool stuff that kids would have bought in 1965, you know what I mean? That would’ve been given to them. Little things in a stocking stuffer, the little spaceships and what have you. So yeah, I mean from a creative standpoint, there’s just so much that you could do. Tell me, when did Leah come on your radar? Because it all started with an ad, I’m sure, right?

16:22 Augustus: Yeah.

16:22 Jaqueline: You got it.

16:22 Augustus: Yeah, yeah. When did it happen? Like say three years ago-

16:29 Jaqueline: I think it was about 2016, 2017 you actually saw her at-

16:34 Augustus: I did. Yeah. Yeah. She was appearing in my feed one day in between like my family and my friends. And her copy grabbed me and because of the fact that I think I had seen a video that was just sort of casually telling her story about being a mom and also being a musician who was able to sell a decent amount of records.

17:04 Jaqueline: And not having to tour. I remember you like-

17:06 Augustus: And not having to tour. And it’s sort of like-

17:08 Jaqueline: Chase me down about it.

17:09 Augustus: Yeah.

17:09 Jaqueline: “You got to see this. This is for you, this is what we got to do.”

17:14 Augustus: Yeah. I was very persistent about getting it in your hands because a lot of the work to me sounded, I know that we get a lot of like training through books and things that Leah recommends, but it seemed a little out of my zone of genius, like the day to day stuff.

And so I knew that if I could collaborate with Jacqueline on it, that together we could make it happen. And that’s very much been the case. And something I highly recommend to others is making sure that you recognize your strengths. As you go through the course you will sort of take these quizzes and things to figure out what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are and make sure that if you yourself, if you’re like a solo artist, don’t have all the tools that you are able to sort of outsource or find a friend or a relative or somebody that you can collaborate with to make sure you have the full package because it’s absolutely necessary.

18:13 CJ: Yeah.

18:13 Augustus: It’s needed, I think.

18:15 CJ: Well yeah, and there was a bit of a breakthrough. I remember Jacqueline right when you were going, I remember, it’s like you were going out the door to do something and-

18:27 Jaqueline: Oh yeah.

18:27 CJ: Tell us about that.

18:30 Jaqueline: I had been posting, following this idea of culture and trying to grow our sort of our social media presence. Trying to post every day or twice a day and things like that and not really seeing… I could have been one of those people you see all the time saying, “My organic reach is down, what am I going to do? Facebook hates me. They won’t show my posts to anybody.”

18:54 CJ: Right.

18:54 Jaqueline: I was complaining about all that kind of stuff because I’m doing the work, why isn’t it working? And then I think it was after one of our coaching calls when you talked about how, what does your feed look like? Does it look like a bunch of ads? Does it look like a bunch of things being sold to you? NO, it’s your friends talking about their day or your family saying they lost their dog, can you help or whatever. It’s like you’re having real conversations with real people you actually know.

And that completely changed my whole paradigm about what social media is for. And so I picked this random selfie, I don’t really take that many selfies.

19:28 CJ: Right.

19:28 Jaqueline: And I was like, “I’m going to try this.” Because I think Leah had said, “Just try a selfie one day.” She’ll throw challenges out like that. And I had found a selfie and I had my headphones in at the time. I must’ve been like feeling good that day. I was like about to go out the door with my headphones going to go for a walk and I asked people, “What music should I listen to while I’m walking? What’s good walking music?” And it just exploded with what recommendations people had and conversations that you get to have.

And so that was a real turning point for us because we realized, “Oh, we haven’t been talking to people, we’ve been talking at people.” That is not how you build a relationship.

20:10 CJ: No.

20:10 Jaqueline: And I think we had sort of a wall up of this fear of like, “What if they don’t like us?”

20:16 CJ: Right.

20:17 Jaqueline: “What if we start talking to people and they don’t like us?” So once I broke through that barrier, it’s where we’ve come from there is like-

20:29 CJ: That was several months ago, right? I mean, that was a while back.

20:33 Jaqueline: I mean, once we had that breakthrough. I mean we are making weekly videos where we’re talking to people. I mean it’s just-

20:43 Augustus: We started a Facebook group that was inspired yet again by the course called Cosmic Tape Music Club.

20:51 CJ: Cool.

20:52 Augustus: Yeah. It’s kind of a club and it’s a group and people post their favorite cosmic tape music, whatever that is. You know what I mean? Like we kind of sort of like, you know define it-

21:01 CJ: We’re all defining it together.

21:05 Augustus: In the group. Yeah. Defining it as a group as we go. But like, so people are sharing, the group’s 800 strong now.

21:11 CJ: No way.

21:11 Augustus: We started it maybe like four months ago, five months ago.

21:14 Jaqueline: Yeah.

21:15 CJ: That is a good size group.

21:18 Jaqueline: It’s kind of overwhelming. When it took off, we were kind of in shock. We thought, “We’re going to start this group and…” Because we got to start a Facebook group. That’s a big part of it. You’ve got to build real relationships, right? Like that’s what we’re supposed to do, we’re going to follow the checklist and we’re to start a group. And then it just kind of exploded in a way that we didn’t expect because your regular Facebook feed, it does not have this kind of engagement.

21:42 CJ: Right.

21:43 Jaqueline: People in a private Facebook group are having, I mean they’re going deep in the comments with talking about this concert they went to when they were 12 and how their brother introduced them to this music. And they’re so glad there’s a place that they can talk about this weird stuff that they didn’t think anybody else was into.

21:59 Augustus: It’s their favorite group on Facebook.

22:01 Jaqueline: We’re just like, “What?”

22:01 Augustus: It’s their favorite band and yeah.

22:04 CJ: That’s wonderful.

22:05 Jaqueline: I feel this way, but all of you are here too now. So yeah.

22:09 Augustus: And then we started, so this of course once again, the teaching and everything in the course. Like it’s coming to us and we started doing weekly conversations where we’ll like take posts from group members and kind of do deep dives. Like we do like our own little live stream podcasts where we like basically deep dive on members’ posts because it’s like stuff that a lot of people don’t know. They may know like this, they may post about one artist, but they don’t know the backstory as to like how they got into doing what they do. And so we kind of like take it a step further. We turn the post back around on the member. We’ll basically say like, “Hey, this is about you, for you.” Like it’s never about our own posts. It’s about our members’ posts.

23:00 CJ: Isn’t that amazing? How that, and it’s, I don’t want people to think this is just a technique. I mean it is just human psychology. Everybody wants to talk about themselves. But I know that you guys mean it and it’s about things that are very meaningful to these people. And it does endear them to you even more so.

23:24 Jaqueline: We find that, much like ourselves, like we say in all of the teaching that, “You’re probably your fan of your own music.” We are pretty introverted and we don’t do a lot of commenting on Facebook. That’s, we’re sort of voyeurs. So this is a way to be like, “It’s okay. Come on out everybody, we’re in a safe space. We can have this conversation.” And then once you kind of, we’ve been cultivating this for a while and seeing just how much the sort of quality of what people are posting in the group has increased. And like it’s more conversational now and less people just posting a pretty picture or a link or whatever. We’re trying to cultivate not just relationships between us and maybe our fans, but also what feels like a family. In this, like you said, this digital world where people are having digital conversations, we want it to feel authentic.

24:25 CJ: Yeah. That’s where the private Facebook groups really help. It’s funny when you said that “safe space,” I thought well that’s just, it’s, obviously that that term gets loved and hated. But as soon as you said that I could see it in retro-futuristic fashion. Safe space.

24:41 Jaqueline: Yes. Yes, exactly.

24:43 CJ: You guys are just pushing,” Hey, this is our safe space, literally.”

24:47 Augustus: Good point, yeah. It’s definitely not just a tactic. It’s like Jacqueline said, it’s really, I would say it’s my favorite place to hang out and have a conversation on Facebook now that we’ve created it. Like for the reason of it being all of our favorite stuff to talk about.

25:05 CJ: Yeah. You can see the logic of why. And Leah began to inform the group over a year ago that Facebook was moving towards groups obviously because it keeps people on the platform, right?

25:19 Jaqueline: Yeah.

25:20 CJ: Staying on the app and having conversations and that’s ultimately what Facebook wants. And so this is where the challenge is always for us as artists who are using it from a business standpoint to constantly be changing, constantly be adjusting, learning how to adapt whatever new changes are and whatnot for the purpose of ultimately getting our music and things out there. How do you feel like you’ve grown then from the sales stamp? And I’m not talking about just what sales you’re making, but as salespersons, the confidence or are you okay with it morally or does it keep you up at night and you’re like, “Oh I can’t believe I did that,” or how’s that going for you?

26:02 Jaqueline: Yeah, that’s a really good way of putting it. Because I think we had that mindset, right? You don’t want to push things on people. I, for a long time, wasn’t growing our email list because I didn’t want to bother people.

26:13 CJ: Yeah.

26:14 Jaqueline: All these same things you hear all the time, I’m sure. It is then kind of flipped on its head when it becomes, I am talking to one person and I know who that person is now and I’m having a conversation with them. And so it’s sort of a litmus test when I’m writing an email or a post when we’re working, I mean we work together on pretty much everything because our voice together is the voice that we converse with that if I’m reading it back to myself or we’re reviewing something that we want to post and it doesn’t feel personal or it doesn’t feel like something we would talk to a friend about or the way we would talk to them. It’s so obvious now and it doesn’t work.

27:03 CJ: Yeah.

27:04 Augustus: Yeah. If one slips through, it’ll be real obvious that we messed up on that one.

27:10 Jaqueline: It doesn’t work. We want to be talked to. So…

27:15 CJ: Yeah, there’s only one way to learn, right? And it’s funny because it’s not the same for everybody in every genre, in every…

27:24 Jaqueline: Right.

27:24 CJ: Like I’ve got a podcast I co-host with a super commando elite delta force guy, and he’s super popular on YouTube and he’s been on Joe Rogan’s show and he’s got 300 plus thousand people follow him on Instagram and all that. So we have the, it’s called the university of badassery. And well, the premise being about just kind of kicking your own butt so to speak. And so it’s kind of self-improvement kind of thing. But even on the, how you have a little pop-up opt-ins when people come to the website and click on anything, it pulls up the popup for the email list and it just says get your ass on our list. And people hit that thing constantly. We don’t give anything away, it’s not…

But because of that culture and they love the show so much and the whole attitude thing, you can say that. You can’t take that into necessarily what you guys are doing or what Leah is doing and say the very same thing because it would go over terrible. So it really does. I mean it, there’s so much you do have to learn and again, labels used to handle this, but even then they weren’t, it wasn’t to this level. They were just, they would prepare press releases and throw up some billboards and maybe you do signings in some record stores and you are relying upon radio airplay to get things done. Well, Galaxy Electric is good luck with that scenario, right? But under this new model with taking advantage of the technologies and the fact that people are connected.

And I do appreciate that you guys acknowledge that it’s, you’re just talking to a person. And that is so different for artists. I mean, I love the fact that I can follow guys from the bands I grew up with, Kiss and you name it, but there’s Paul Stanley posting his breakfast. So it’s just a strange time that we live that and sure that’s great. With the celebrities, they obviously can’t answer the 5,729 comments that are there, but you guys are. And so you’re building this super fans. You weren’t asking to play arena rock.

29:43 Jaqueline: Right.

29:43 CJ: Right. You weren’t asking to go on tour with whoever. It’s not that you’re opposed to it, but it’s like, “Listen, we want to write and play music and be creative. That’s what we’re here to do.” Right? That’s what, you came out of the womb that way. And I think it’s such a powerful thing now that you can now take advantage of this. So where do you see yourself and how long has it been you’ve been in the elite program?

30:06 Jaqueline: Oh gosh, it’s coming up on a year.

30:09 CJ: Okay. So I know you’ve done with the course, you got any of it-

30:12 Jaqueline: We have a little bit. We’re like right at the end with our move obviously that we were talking about.

30:17 CJ: Yeah, sure.

30:19 Jaqueline: It kind of took us out more than we were expecting. So we were right at the end and then we moved. And so we’re kind of getting back into finishing that. But there’s always so much that we keep going back through. So we’re kind of like, “Will we ever be done?”

30:35 CJ: You’re never done. You’ve never done. Because it’ll change and revise. I mean, just between you and me and the fence posts and everybody who’s listening. Leah’s been working on revising Tom, the Tom program, which is Tom 2.0 the online musician Tom for short. So Tom 3.0 will come out next year. We’re going to change the whole way it’s done. It’s going to be just available for like once or twice a year, that’s it. So not something that’s just evergreen, always available. And then also changes to the elite program. And also there is, it’s a constant need for growth because things are constantly changing and whatnot.

I said recently in one of these podcasts, I had read a short article, I forget what music magazine it was, but they were interviewing Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins and he said, “If I had 60 seconds to advise any musician today, I would say focus 100% on the internet.” He said, “Forget the bar down the street.” It’s just, he just, and that may be a bit extreme, but I think he’s right. I think you do have to look at it and you guys obviously took a huge step in investment to do this. Any regrets?

31:50 Jaqueline: Never.

31:53 CJ: It does pay for itself, doesn’t it? And I think that’s an important thing because I think people are reluctant to do what needs to be done and they feel like they can kind of piece… How would you, or did you even do this, where you felt like, “Okay, let’s try to piecemeal together something from the free YouTube videos and this podcast over here, this ebook, free ebook and [crosstalk 00:32:19]

32:18 Jaqueline: For years, yeah. We read every book and followed everybody who seems like they knew what was up. As we’re going through that tumultuous Napster timeframe.

32:33 Augustus: It’s not that we never received any good information. I mean, there’s tons of good info out there about making sure that you have, you focused on having fans at least. I mean that’s very basic [inaudible 00:32:47] but like making sure you have fans before you go pitch your stuff to some record label at least, even that information is pretty good. It’s like, “Hey, focus on having die-hard individuals that are willing to literally buy everything that you put out before you think you’re ready for anything else.”

33:07 CJ: Right.

33:07 Augustus: That was having a…

33:09 Jaqueline: That’s where the ego check happens. That’s phase one.

33:12 CJ: Yeah. I think what the beauty of what Leah did is that she was, she paid that price herself because she literally knew nothing when I first, because we’ve known each other since 2010, ’11 I think. And so I remember when she started. And I remember having a conversation with her and her and Steve was doing some construction work, her husband and they were facing bankruptcy. They didn’t have hardly anything and she didn’t know anything about marketing. Can you imagine Leah not knowing anything?

I talked to that Leah. I spoke to that Leah. And to see what she did and the price that she paid in time and she did all that. She was kind of trying to piecemeal it together from all of these things. And so she spent the thousands of hours and the thousands of dollars on coaches that weren’t, because there wasn’t anything in music that she could really follow. So she had to, it’s tough to be a pioneer. She had to be that pioneer. And so she kind of took from these things. It kind of chew the meat, spit out the bones. She got everything narrowed down to what will work for musicians.

And I think that was the breakthrough moment is it that get this is for musicians, this is not, we’re not taking a marketing course from somebody who talks to coaches or authors or what have you. It’s if this is specifically for musicians and proven. And so what I love about these opportunities, not just to do the coaching with one-on-one, but this interview format here is that it’s a reaffirmation and a confirmation that this is a workable path. We’re not there yet. We’re still early in the bell curve here and there’s still so many great things to happen. How do you guys feel about the upcoming year?

35:07 Jaqueline: We are like guns blazing. We’re very, very hopeful and we’ve got so many, like you said, like the deeper you get into this, the more ideas you get. Like you were talking about all the products we can have. And it’s like we have more ideas than there’s time in the day to really do them. And we still have so much of the course that we want to review, but we’re going to be launching new music and crowdfunding and testing out all of these principles and how they work with our niche and with our fans. And because I know at least for me, I have to be like pushed into the fire. I’m going to dance around it as long as I possibly can. And saying yes to the elite course was like throwing myself into the fire and we wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t have done and I wouldn’t have a shop. We wouldn’t have any of this if I hadn’t said yes to the course because it just pushes you.

36:06 Augustus: Kicks everything into overdrive.

36:08 Jaqueline: You think you can’t be pushed anymore. And it’s like, “No, no, you haven’t even started.”

36:15 CJ: Yeah, it’s, it really is amazing to watch. And like I said, I enjoy having this front-row seat to all of these very, very special and talented people like yourself working hard and everybody. And the, one of the great things about the elite program is that because of the price of entry you, it’s filled with just very serious people and everybody’s sweet, everybody’s humble, everybody’s mutually encouraging. You get so much support from… Have you had a lot of support from some of the other students and…?

36:43 Jaqueline: I would say that is one of the most invaluable aspects of the elite group is we know how serious we are about this and we know how hard we’ve worked. And to have that very small kind of private community that we know is moderated of other people who are just as serious, working as hard, sacrificing as much, caring and passionate about what they specifically do. And somehow, even though we’re all doing our own thing, we have so much in common and so much to share and so much support to give. I don’t think we would be able to do this without that sort of support group. It’s essential.

37:30 Augustus: Yeah, it’s so specific, the information that we’re digesting and so to be able to ask questions about extremely specific things. I mean like literally like, “Hey, what about this plugin on Shopify?” For someone to know exactly why we’d even care about that. It’s like, just so-

37:53 Jaqueline: Like how generous everyone is with their, you think people would be like, “Well, I figured this out. I’m not telling somebody else. I worked really hard to figure that out.” But everyone is so generous.

38:02 Augustus: Yeah, there’s no selfish attitude about-

38:05 Jaqueline: They’re like excited to share with each other.

38:07 CJ: Well, you guys are all, you’re kind of the first generation of what will be the norm.

38:14 Jaqueline: We hope so.

38:14 CJ: You really are on the ground floor of what will become the norm as more and more… This is where it expands beyond just the musicians. It gets into all from authors to filmmakers to you name it. As more and more people are doing things on their own, it’s DIY at a whole nother level. I mean, I stumbled on a vlog, just a young couple and they just have this little camper. I mean, that’s literally not much bigger than my little office space here, which is tiny. It’s a very, very, the smallest kind of camper I’ve ever seen. And they got it hooked up to a Subaru and they’ve got a little dog and they’re out stuck in the snow out somewhere in Washington or Oregon or whatever and it’s beautiful, but they’re covered in snow and they’re just kind of doing their thing to get by until the snow melts and they can get out.

But it’s just a young guy and a girl and she went to film school and so they’re just using a little DSR camera and, but I’m sitting there going, “Darn it, I can’t stop watching these guys.” And it’s only like, 17, 18 minutes long, but they’ve got me and they’ve got hundreds of thousands of subscribers and millions of views and all of that. Here we are watching two people in a little tiny camper that we would never give a crap about.

39:36 Jaqueline: Never even know about.

39:37 CJ: At any other time, but they’re sustaining themselves and they’re able to sell. She makes little jewelries and things and all, it’s all germane to her culture and all of that. And she does a great job of editing the video and you’re like, “Wow.” It’s, I’m as riveted by that as I am Mandalorian, you know what I mean?

There’s no baby Yoda in this, there’s a puppy, but not a baby Yoda. Yeah. It’s just, it’s wonderful to me because it shows me that Galaxy Electric can have that same sort of appeal because it’s going to appeal to an audience and so much so that you can have experienced even a crossover effect as more and more people get to know you guys. Other people who may be interested in the culture but not necessarily in the music, they get to know you guys and they’re like, “You know what? I don’t normally listen to this, but I love the vibe these guys have and I just want to listen to the music.” And that’s kind of how the organic way you become that human algorithm and you get around Facebook’s little wall of resistance.

40:42 Jaqueline: Yeah, yeah. Definitely have to have that attitude of where there’s a will, there’s a way.

40:48 CJ: Well we’re looking forward to some big things for you guys in 2020 as we recording this the end of the year, but how can people learn more about what you’re doing? Where do you want to direct them to? I’ll put it on the show notes of course afterwards, but some people will never see that. They’ll only hear it.

41:04 Jaqueline: Okay.

41:04 CJ: So where do you want to send people?

41:05 Jaqueline: So galaxyelectric.com is our website, which would be a place that you can find everything. You can kind of loop that direction to our Facebook and our Instagram and our YouTube or our shop. So the galaxyelectricshop.com is also where you’re going to find our music. We have vinyl, we have digital, we have fun things that we call oddities, which are always changing. We have, since it’s winter, we have just gotten new like hoodies and warm, cozy things in the shop. So that’s been a really fun way to be creative as well it to develop the shop.

41:46 Augustus: And a little bit of a spoiler, a new product idea. I actually am going to put up there that I will record like sounds or whole songs to tape. Like I have like four or five different tape machines. There’s going to be a product where you can actually get your stuff like tapeified-

42:05 CJ: Oh, wow.

42:05 Augustus: If you don’t want to have to go through the trouble of getting a reel to reel yourself.

42:09 Jaqueline: Oh, wow.

42:10 Augustus: So that’s kind of like-

42:11 Jaqueline: Not everybody wants to be like a tape machine mechanic.

42:14 Augustus: So that’ll be something that you can do from our shop as well coming up in the near future.

42:19 Jaqueline: Yes.

42:20 CJ: Isn’t that great? And that creative space is just absolutely fascinating. Yeah, I would encourage our listeners, please go check these guys out. I love them. They, I love their attitude. I love how much they’ve pushed forward this past year and again, so great to watch it up close. But we do, we’re believing for great things for you guys, upcoming. Listen guys, if you’re listening, please do us a favor. Leave a review of this podcast, your favorite player. If they offer stars, click all of them. Click all the stars, give us a review because we do read them in our team meetings and it means a great deal to us and also helps people to discover.

If you’re not a subscriber, I encourage you to subscribe to the inner circle which is our membership. It’s the lowest end product that we have with the most bang for the buck and it’s, you get a periodical newsletter as well as a free mini-course and you get an audio version of it, but it’s a great way to get your feet wet into the principles of music marketing that we teach here at the Savvy Musician Academy. You can learn more about that at savvymusicianacademy.com and we will see you guys soon.