Episode #051: Micro-Niche VS. Branding

OTHER WAYS TO ENJOY THIS EPISODE

On today’s show we are breaking down the difference between a micro-niche and a brand! Leah and CJ systematically look at each and how it relates to your own music career and especially how to use them to your advantage. They talk about how to differentiate and categorize yourself with these concepts and how they should not be confused with each other. Leah makes the point that using her audience’s own interests and ideas around genre has made a world of difference in her success. Owning a niche and taking charge of the conversation around topics can make impact how and audience responds to your content very meaningfully and really pursuing this path to the best of your abilities will have amazing rewards for you. The episode ends off with some reminders about the importance of support through these processes and why that is such a focus at the Savvy Musician Academy. For all this and more, join us today!

Key Points From This Episode:

  • A special message of thanks from Chad!
  • Defining micro-niches and sub-genres in the music world.
  • Differentiating brand from micro-niche and genre. 
  • Tying your brand to an audience’s interests and deeper desires. 
  • Owning your niche and the conversation and perceptions around it. 
  • The support that is offered inside of Savvy Musician Academy. 
  • Why Leah stays in the trenches of the music industry. 
  • Today’s simple action step to do with your branding. 
  • And much more! 

Tweetables:

“I am not concerned about being world famous. It always makes me laugh.” — @LEAHthemusic [0:05:24]

“I am blessed with a little bit of intuition before I understood the theory of any of this. I’m still learning so much.” — @LEAHthemusic [0:17:59]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

The Savvy Musician Academy on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/onlinemusician/ 

The Superfan System Elite Program — www.callsma.com

Leah on Twitter — https://twitter.com/leahthemusic 

CJ on Twitter — https://twitter.com/metalmotivation

Tony Robbins — https://www.tonyrobbins.com/

Chad Anderson (student spotlight) — https://www.fromtheseruins.com/

Click For Full Transcript

00:23 CJ: Hello and welcome once again to the Savvy Musician Show. This is CJ Ortiz. I am the branding and mindset coach here at the Savvy Musician Academy and grateful to serve alongside and be able to talk to, in this podcast, the lovely Leah McHenry. Good to see you.

00:42 Leah: Good to see you. Looking forward to this episode.

00:46 CJ: Yeah, this is pretty cool. Now, depending upon where you are in your knowledge of The Online Musician, this may or may not make sense to you but for those who are working at it in particularly, the students of the Savvy Musician Academy, this is something that is a point of confusion. Because terminology plays a role.

We’re going to be talking about micro-niche versus branding. It’s an important thing because for those of you who really understand the success that Leah has experienced, you have heard her talk about both of them and you might be wondering, which is it? Is it micro-niche, is it a brand or are they the same thing? Where do I need to place an emphasis on.

She’s one of the best examples that I’ve ever seen of how these two things work together and I think you’re really going to have some coins drop during this particular episode, you’re going to better understand this and so I’m excited for each one of our listeners. Leah, I would like to start with the student spotlight and I love it when you share these and she sends this to me to be able to share with you guys and this one’s pretty powerful. This one’s from Chad and this is one of our Elite students and he says #win. “I’m really excited about the revamp to our websites and even more excited to get feedback on it,” so we encourage students to do that in the group to get feedback.

He says, “Things that I have changed, I gave to my whole website a complete overhaul to fall in line with the high conversion theme or principles.” That’s something that Leah teaches. In other words, designing a site to be high converting and you can do that, there are principles to this. He says, “I was able to give this site a more uniformed look based on my branding board and based on the feedback I’ve gotten in the past. I also up the prices in my current shop. This has brought my LCV, what is that?

02:40 Leah: Actually, I’m not sure what LCV is, LTV would be like a lifetime value. I think he’s talking about his average order or something like that.

02:50 CJ: He says, “This has brought my LCV from 107 to 125 without adding any additional items.” That would be what the potential of a particular customer is for a year I would imagine, right?

03:03 Leah: Yeah. It’s probably an LTV.

03:06 CJ: Yeah, he was able to raise that based on – without adding any additional items. Again, these are all some of the techniques and things which we can’t go into today but these are the techniques and things you teach in that elite group, very amazing stuff.

But, he’s thinking through the impression that he’s giving his customer, his fan, you like to call it the customer journey. Because they’re coming to a site for the first time and so you do something with the students that you call the five-second test. You know, to see what the impression is that somebody gets within five seconds, where do their eyes go, you get them in, where do you put certain items on the page.

All of these things being always cognizant of the impression that you’re leaving on your customer and that does take us into the branding, that does take us into this whole aspect of who you’re targeting based on who you are as an artist, et cetera. Let’s start from the beginning so we can make it really simple for everybody Leah. 

First of all, define for the listener what is a micro-niche?

04:18 Leah: Yeah, I know, depending on where you live in the world, you might call it niche or niche, it doesn’t really matter. Basically, I don’t even know where I originally learned about niches. Somewhere in my studies of marketing, I came across this idea of niche marketing and how powerful it is and how businesses were able to succeed so much more.

Instead of trying to appeal to everybody, they just appealed to a certain small demographic and how becoming a specialist instead of a generalist would increase their sales and their profitability and their overall revenue, like crazy. So I started applying that in my music and going, hey, instead of me trying to appeal to the world and try to be famous around the world with my music. Why don’t I just stop trying to do that and just get really good at what I’m really good at and try to appeal to a smaller group of people who are probably diehard fans.

That introduced me to the whole concept of niching down and it also – what’s amazing about that is it really takes the pressure off of you to, when you look at what you’re trying to accomplish in your lifetime. I am not concerned about being world-famous. It always makes me laugh. Look, we’ve talked about this in the past when people see our ads and they say, “Leah, I’ve never heard of you,” and I’m always saying, “Yeah, of course, you haven’t because you’re probably not a fan of Celtic fantasy metal, are you?”

“Otherwise, why would you have heard of me? You’re not in my target market, you’re not seeing my ads, I only target people who like Celtic fantasy metal and I know all their interests and stuff. If you’re into country music, yeah, you won’t have heard of me, this is the internet age. I don’t need to be a household name to be successful. 

Until people understand that, they don’t get it. The whole concept of a micro-niche is just really going deeper into that niche. Now, you know, I see people all the time get really caught up in this and we have a little process, a little system for how you can discover yours and actually, we have a PDF download, we’ll put in the shownotes for you to work through this yourself.

The basics, the way it works is really, there’s an umbrella genre which we call just a big main category, it’s like rock, pop, country, blues. Very general, okay? It’s the stuff that on iTunes or Amazon, they kind of have these big categories. Below that, there’s a sub-genre. You know within, say, the rock category, there’s probably hundreds of maybe dozens of sub-genres of rock. Alt-rock, blues rock, you know, country rock, there’s all of that. Now, below that.

06:54 CJ: Heavy metal is the same, year.

06:56 Leah: yeah, heavy metal is like bazillions of these little niches. Umbrella genre, and then there’s a sub-genre and then I would say, the third level is your niche. This is like where we’re getting a little more granular here. It’s a smaller group of people. That’s the whole point, it’s a smaller group of people.

At this point, let’s say you’re in the rock genre, it could be like folk-rock at that point. Folk-rock or you know, I don’t know all the genres out there. It’s just an example. Then below that, if there’s room, if it even makes sense, you could get into a micro-niche and this is where I see people get caught up all the time.

Mine, guys is right now, it’s Celtic fantasy metal. My umbrella genre is metal, sub-genre for me is symphonic metal, niche is like female-fronted, symphonic metal because that’s like a thing or folk metal kind of a thing and then my niche is like Celtic fantasy metal. Now, there’s so much I could say about this but one thing I will say out of the gate is like, if you just get the first three, you’re good for so many things.

I don’t want people obsessing or getting hung up or stuck, the fact that they don’t know what their micro-niche is. This is not meant to cause you stress, all that exercise is meant to do is to help you just get a little more clear on your identity as an artist and for targeting purposes. 

So you can identify who your superfans are. If it happens to be language they’re already using, you can use it in your social media and in your advertising and stuff. That’s what I do. Actually, some of the words I’m using in my micro-niche are words that my fans already told me and so that gave me freedom to kind of use it back to them.

Kind of repeat it back to them, the thing they were already saying to me and so that ended up becoming a powerful thing. That doesn’t always work for every artist in every case, in every scenario. Listen, if you get your umbrella genre, your sub-genre and your niche, you are already miles ahead, you’re going to be already so much more clear than many other artists out there. Let’s start with that.

09:11 CJ: Yeah, I think that’s, A, that’s been a huge key to your success, is niching down and like you said, as you were talking, I stopped to write that down, I don’t need to be a household name to be successful. That’s such a great summary statement of your entire approach and it makes the point. It makes the point that yeah, a household name, we know all sorts of household names and we don’t pay any attention to who those household name —

We just know them because everybody says them. That’s the definition of a household name. But we’re interested in creating successful music businesses. When it comes to creating a successful music business, it’s not about ego, it’s not about everybody knowing you, it’s about the right people knowing you. It’s about having like what you say, super fans. Having people that you’re able to go directly to, who like your specific style of music. 

Granted, even if you’re an innovative player and maybe you believe you’re more innovative than you think you are, still, there are – everybody likes to think that, right? They’re completely original.

10:28 Leah: Yes.

10:28 CJ: I guarantee you, there are genres and niches that you can fit in and that you’re going to be able to identify with people who would absolutely love your music. That’s the first thing is understanding who you are musically. Now, this is still not the brand though. This is where people get their wires crossed. 

When I first came into Leah’s group, her Elite group as a coach. That was the first thing I saw was people were struggling with getting results and so because they were learning so much in-depth information about the tools that Leah uses and the technology and some of the ad copyrighting techniques and all these new software and emails and opt-ins and page, all this stuff. They kept thinking that it was something there that they were missing when there was a problem at the outset.

That problem was they didn’t understand that difference, A, between micro-niche and branding. But then B, branding was suffering because they were so focused on the micro-niche and so when I go to their page, I would see their artist name and right below would be this very descriptive, very long, very descriptive statement. Which is great for you to have hanging next to your computer or your keyboard to remind you of what you’re targeting.

But it’s not necessarily going to be the thing that people remember you for, it’s not necessarily going to be your strongest selling point, it’s not going to necessarily be what you want to create as that brand. That was a huge eye-opener for people once you and I started to talk about these things more in the group. We actually – we felt so strongly about it that Leah asked that I do a branding boot camp which is now a part of the actual curriculum now.

12:27 Leah: We have it in the modules now. Now, since we’ve added that, since you did the workshop and then since we’ve added that, people have had so many breakthroughs and just getting the results. I was so glad we did that, I’m so glad we had you – yeah.

12:41 CJ: For people, I think to get those two – it’s like a two-edged sword, you know? One edge of the sword is the micro-niche and then the other edge of the sword is the branding because you have to know who you’re targeting. You can’t target with a brand, you don’t know who you’re targeting.

You got to know your niche, you got to know comparable artists and the culture and all of that to be able to put into some of these powerful features in Facebook’s ad manager in order to run your ads. That’s where the niche is going to really help you targeting those audiences.

But then, what you become to those people, you know, that’s a whole different thing and of course, you know, you’re such an easy one, Leah, to use as an example and you know, I have a whole thing in that branding boot camp just focused on you because it’s just so many teachable lessons from your particular testimony. I remember when, because I was there when she first started this and she sent me her first album and I remember saying to myself because I had a good friend of mine who did a lot of work with.

He’s a total musician and totally knows what I’m into and so I shared it with him and we were talking about it and I said, “You know what she sounds like?” Because at that time, it was odd Leah, it’s very odd because at that time, prior to me hearing your music, something had gotten me into a lot of the Windham Hill ambient music stuff.

I heard a lot of Enya during all of that. The artist Enya. Then, I heard your first album and I said, “Dude, you know what she is, she’s a heavy metal version of Enya,” you know? It was just – in other words, now, if I was to share one of your CD’s with somebody. I would simply tell them what she’s like. “She’s like a heavy metal Enya,” and they’d be like, “Oh. I know exactly what that must sound like.”

They can picture it. It’s going to have a whole lot more guitar, it’s going to be more in the rhythm section of things like that and the themes will be a little bit different.

14:50 Leah: But they already know, it’s not going to have aggressive vocals.

14:53 CJ: Yeah, they know that, they know it’s not going to be country, right? That’s really cool. When she goes out into that now, she becomes literally a personage to people, she becomes now this – I love it because if you look at her album covers and I would challenge you to do that if you’ve got one close by you and if not, go to her Instagram page or her webpage and take a look at the album cover.

You’re going to see exactly what I mean here and this is really powerful, I almost want to charge people for this right now, Leah. But Leah, one of the real secrets to what she does is – and this is so creative. Her culture, the Celtic fantasy metal, you can see that somebody who listens to her music may be very interested in a show like Game of Thrones and when you get into that fantasy element in storytelling and myths and lore and legend.

There is no need for feminism there because women are exalted in these stories. Women are heroes in these stories, whether you’re watching something like The Hobbit or anything else, women are exalted figurines in a lot of these stories. The concept of the queen, the princess, you know, the warrior type thing. All of these – 

16:17 Leah: Xena.

16:18 CJ: Yeah. They are archetypes, right? Within these stories. When you look at Leah’s album covers. She’s got one called Kings and Queens. That’s what you literally see. It says if you’re looking at a promotional poster for something like a character from Game of Thrones. You could literally pass for a character on game of thrones in a sense.

For those who are listening to that music. She fits an archetype that they understand very well. Now we’re beyond just a particular musical style, we’re beyond a niche now. Now we’re into something that is much deeper, much more psychological that plays to the reasons why they listen to that music. The reasons why they love that music.

It’s a part of if somebody’s really into the Game of Thrones and they read Tolkien and they read all these fantasy type literatures. They’re probably not listening to pop-country, right?

17:17 Leah: Right.

17:18 CJ: They’re going to be listening to music that’s going to be germane to what their interest is. That’s the difference and that’s what you have to understand is that now, she becomes this figure, she becomes this archetype and her music fills that role but it’s targeted to – this is not Coca-Cola branding. This is not Coke is the real thing, you know what I mean?

No, this is so targeted to her micro-niche. The brand and the micro-niche are working together, they’re working hand in hand to create just – Leah, just probably one of the best examples of anything in terms of the new online space that I’ve ever seen.

17:56 Leah: That’s cool, yeah. Some of that stuff was – I am blessed with a little bit of intuition before I understood the theory of any of this. I’m still learning so much from you on it. Even now. It kind of blows my mind but I was blessed to have some just intuition as I created this career and I was learning on the way.

Yeah, I want people to understand that your micro-niche, it’s about targeting, it’s about identification and it’s about, really it’s like ad copy. When I know my micro-niche, I really know what kind of copy to write in my ads and you know, what kind of emojis are going to communicate and enhance my ad copy to be honest, right? 

People don’t even think about that but I know if I put a little green tree and a little bow and arrow and the little castle emoji and then I have my headline, that will make sense to the people in my micro niche who do follow, they’re obsessed with Game of Thrones and they read J.R. Tolkien and a whole bunch, all of the other targetings I know about my audience. It is going to make sense. So the micro-niche is meant for you. 

Again, don’t stress out about it. It is just going to help you clarify your brand as we teach in our academy and in past episodes. It is like owning a word. So I have in a way become owning, there is not a lot of Celtic fantasy artists out there with the combined metal. So I am trying to own something in the market. I am trying to own a feeling. I am trying to own a word. 

Like you always talk about Kleenex and BandAids how people refer to that as like the category when really it is a single brand and so I am trying to own Celtic fantasy metal or Celtic metal. I am trying to own that in the market place so when people think of it they think of me and they will think of some other band and so it is hard to do that if you are not in a niche. It is hard. 

19:59 CJ: Yeah. 

20:00 Leah: So understanding those two things and that branding like you’ve called positioning and I love that and so is there a word that you can own when people think of you and your band in the marketplace. So even though Celtic metal is a niche I am owning that and like you said, it is working alongside of my brand. The brand is the imagery, it’s everything. It’s the vibe, it’s really the consistent feeling I am trying to give my fans when I am not around. 

When they think of me and whatever impression comes to mind that’s the brand and I want to give an accurate – whatever I put out there is contributing to their perception and my positioning. So I want to be purposeful with it, so it doesn’t accidentally happen, right? I think that is the key in the academy and what you teach in the bootcamp is really being purposeful with it, identifying who you are, shifting your positioning a little bit for where you wanted to be and then how can we control people’s perceptions of our brand a little bit. So there’s a lot of meat and potatoes to dive into there. 

21:10 CJ: Yeah there is and let’s say that we can talk a lot about this. I want to give you guys the essence of what this is in the branding boot camp, I define branding to me is when you incarnate an idea. That’s what branding is, so whatever the big idea is behind your music like in Leah’s case these Celtic fantasy themes, she embodies that, which is why the imagery is so important and the more that she can do that, the more that she can embody that. 

That’s what incarnation means to become something that is abstract becomes flesh. It takes on a fleshly form that we know from religion for example, Jesus would be the incarnation, right? Incarnate meaning something from heaven took a physical form here on earth that we can interact with. So you become that brand. This is what I did with my personal motivational project being the Metal Motivator. Metal Motivation. You know Tony Robbins meets Metallica but I get it to where people. 

They’ll say oftentimes, they will write on a post, they will say to me, “Hey I was going through a hard time CJ and I thought to myself I was going to react the way I normally do but then I thought, What would CJ do?” Well, who knows what CJ would do. Maybe CJ would go and fly off the handle, right? But the point is that they think now when they think of Metal Up when they hear the phrases and things they think of me. They think of the person. They think of the individual. 

So anybody in their grandmother can try to join the space that I am in. They can call themselves rock and roll this or they can say whatever they want but alls that does is build my piece of the pie even bigger because I have already claimed that space because I claimed that niche. I claimed it when nobody else was claiming it and so there has been motivational speakers around forever. Plenty of them, male, female, young, old, all different kinds of sorts but still to this day 10 years removed there is still only one Metal Motivator, you know? 

23:17 Leah: You own it. You own the word.

23:20 CJ: Yep, so that is what we are talking about and it may not be to the degree or as simplistic maybe as in Leah’s case or my case. But it can still be done. It is not that complicated and I think what she just said is so important, relax about this, you know? Yes, there is a lot to learn but if you are doing what we are suggesting then you are going to get a lot of great feedback from your followers and the more intentional you are about this. 

And Leah, you know what the hard part is? The hard part is trying to be objective about yourself. That is the hard part. 

23:56 Leah: Yeah it is. 

23:57 CJ: You know – understand. 

23:58 Leah: Put some clothes to it. 

23:59 CJ: Yeah, it is and that is one of the great things about the group now because of the fact that we introduced the new branding aspect to the course. We didn’t leave it there, we did create an option for people to schedule coaching calls to talk more about the branding because we wanted to make it more specific to each individual person. So granted, you can obviously spend a lot of time on somebody’s particular case or what have you. 

But that takes you into a whole different – now you are talking about an advertising agency and all of that but all to say is that, you know it was a great example because Leah really let me lose to work with her students one on one beyond the actual just one bootcamp that I did and so it just goes I think to show Leah that they understand your heart in terms of the commitment that you have to making sure that people don’t fall through the cracks. 

We’re making every opportunity we can available, from the podcast to the one on one calls in the Elite Group. Everything that we can to make sure everybody fully understands these things and puts them into practice. Because we have seen the results. We have seen others experience the results and there’s a lot to be confused about. We are trying to clear that up. 

25:20 Leah: Yeah, absolutely and I think it is just good for everyone to hear that and just because I know we’ll probably get emails about it, we are not offering one on one stuff outside of our programs. This is something like you need to be all in, fully committed, going through the program to have that kind of access to our coaches. So just in case you are wondering, we don’t offer it. I don’t do one on one stuff. Our coaches don’t do one on one stuff outside of Savvy Musician Academy. 

We offer all the support we can possibly give you and feedback inside of this coaching program. So I mean we don’t want anybody falling through the cracks and I literary spent hours in my week thinking about how can I help these people be more successful. Really, I truly do spend time if I’m ever awake in the night this stuff is on my mind. You know I am not losing sleep about it but I am always actively thinking about what is — is there anything missing that I could communicate better? 

And we literally just had a conversation in our staff meeting yesterday about, is there anything we can streamline in this Elite Program? Is there anything we need to take away? Is there anything we can add? What can we do to help people get better results? You know what we actually came up within our coaching program? We actually talked to everybody on the phone. So one of our head coaches actually calls you every few weeks and you get check-in calls so you are not left on your own. 

You don’t sign up for this thing and then you are floundering around trying to figure it out. We actually call you, see how you are doing, are you struggling, are you hitting any walls? And one of the biggest things that we found where people aren’t getting results is just a lack of – they will fall off the wagon because of the lack of accountability. So we are actually putting in more effort into calling people more often, text messaging, emailing. 

I mean we are going to be – you are going to be attacked by us, you know? Because that is where we found where people just you know you can lose momentum when you sometimes have a steep learning curve. So I just want you guys to hear that we are really trying to help you guys. We are looking at all the different obstacles you might be having and accountability is unbelievably effective and so we are looking at ways we can even up our game to help you with that accountability. 

So I just want to put that out there that I don’t know too many other companies that go to that length to call you, check in on you, how are you doing? How can we help you? What can we improve? I mean we really want to know this stuff. So we got thick skin, if there is something that you didn’t like or you had a bad experience, we want to know about it because we will do everything we can to fix it and help you. 

27:58 CJ: Yeah, that is interesting. I’ve talked to a number of students in the group in my sessions with them and I always ask them questions about when they first discovered you, Leah, and when they finally decide how long was it before they decided to join the group and why did they join the Elite Program. And I could say I mean 99% of the answers because they have taken some other courses and things and they implemented those and they’ve really progressed. 

But they are like this is not the level I want to go to the next level. I want to get to Leah’s level and so you know, what was it that was the thing that made you say I am going to go all-in and they said support. That was it. You know it wasn’t not just getting some okay in the elite group, we are going to get some super-secret information, you know? Yeah, you are going to get a whole lot more in-depth information. Absolutely you are. But what’s the game-changer? Support. 

28:59 Leah: Yeah and we are looking to up our game on that in any way we can because we are committed to results. I mean that is the driving point of any business. You can’t actually survive on the internet with a business these days unless you are really helping people. You will go away very, very fast if you aren’t genuine and you aren’t actually delivering results for people. We are still around, we are thriving, we are growing and I am very proud of not just the company I’ve built. 

But just like the amazing people and the transformations and yeah, it’s incredible. It is what keeps getting up every day doing this and in case people have no idea and you wondering like how much is Leah even working on her music, my schedule right now, the way we’ve got it laid out is three days a week I am working on my music, my music business. The other two days, I am doing coaching. I am doing this podcasting, I am doing content, I am doing marketing, writing ad copy, all emails, things like that. 

So I am actually working on my music business more than I am in Savvy Musician Academy at the moment. It is really tight, it is really hard to make it happen but it is something that I told my husband, Steve, who is a huge part of the business and our whole company that listen guys, the whole reason SMA exists is because I experiment and I am in the trenches. I am in the trenches with our students and I am learning, I am experimenting and I love – 

I mean I am just a sucker for new information and trying the latest and greatest stuff and I’ve got to make sure that it is always a part of what I am doing for a number of reasons, personally I have to. I have to be an artist or I don’t feel happy in life at all. And then also, it is part of our USP, our unique selling proposition for Savvy Musician Academy. The bottom line is a lot of gurus and people out there aren’t doing it. They are teaching it but they are not doing it. 

And I think that I can speak with more of an authority, the fact that I am doing it and doing it well. Hey, sometimes I fail so not every ad works and I tell you guys about it. But the fact that I am in the trenches I am doing it with you, I am reporting results and I am also pretty darn good at teaching it and helping people and figure out where the holes in the bucket are. 

So just so you guys know, I am actively doing this stuff. Every time I release a new album, I am also having to think of my micro-niche. And the branding and positioning thing that doesn’t go away. It is not like you set it and forget it, you know? We evolve as artists, so I just want you guys to know I am working on this more that I am actually working on my academy because I want to build my music career to places, I have some big goals. So I just want to throw it out there. So hopefully you can appreciate it. 

31:55 CJ: No, I think it is great. I think again that is part of the element of why Savvy Musician Academy is as good as it is, Leah, because of what you are doing and how you have chosen to live. You didn’t stop making the music. I think I have said this before and you had a couple of successful albums and then you’re just devoting yourself to this because this is more profitable or something like that. No, you are very much in the trenches on every front. 

From recording, from marketing, from self-education and all of the above, always pushing the boundaries, there is a lot of stuff that we talked about offline that she’s considering doing. She’s never mentioned here, so I could tell you it is either more than hearing but that’s what creates greatness and I think for people to – if you really want to experience something at a higher level, you got to get around people that think like that. 

You got to get around people that have that next level kind of attitude and that is part of the Savvy Musician Academy. It is one of the great things I love being in that Elite Group is because I am surrounded with very, very serious people who have skin in the game, financially they have skin in the game. You know it is not an inexpensive thing but the results you are going to get are going to so far exceed anything that they are investing in right now. 

It’s mind-boggling but you got to take that step. You got to be fearless. You have one life to live. There is no do-over, you will not be able to come and do this over again and the clock is ticking. 

33:27 Leah: You won’t come back as a cow or a plant, sorry. 

33:30 CJ: No and the clock is ticking on the only life that you’ve got. So Leah, let us leave them with a simple action step. What can they do today? 

33:39 Leah: Yeah, I want to encourage you guys, I’ve got a little exercise for you to help you with your branding. It is not a micro-niche exercise, it is a little branding exercise. I want you post a photo that represents you or your music. Most of the time it will be a selfie but it could be a nice image from a photo session and I want you to post it on Instagram, do it on Facebook wherever you fans are and I want you to tell them, “Hey guys, in one word describe what comes to mind when you think about me or you hear my music.” 

And then pay attention to what they tell you. It will be so revealing and you are going to get all kinds of ideas and you’ll be shocked and you’ll be surprised and some of them will be like, yeah that is obvious and this is just a powerful exercise to show you what your current positioning is and it might also reveal ways in which you might want to shift it or tweak it a little bit as you go through this. 

So that is kind of a freebie exercise that you can go through. Outside of that, if you want more in-depth coaching and training accountability like we talked about, go to callsma.com and one of us are going to speak with you on the phone and actually help you figure out where you’re at and where you need to go. That’s callsma.com and we would love to talk to you. 

34:58 CJ: That is so awesome. Well guys, once again please be sure to rate and review this show. Give it stars on Spotify, Stitcher and iTunes and Google Play and help us raise up in the ranks and leave a sweet comment about how much this show is impacting your life because I know it is. 

How could it not? It has to be the most information-packed music marketing podcast out there. I have heard a few out there and I haven’t seen anything that touches this. And I know that sounds like bragging but I am late to the game like I said, we’re what? 51 episodes in now and I wasn’t on at all 51 of those. So I have seen growth. 

35:40 Leah: Absolutely and guys, if you leave us a really nice review send us a screenshot of it and email it to [email protected] and you will be put into a draw for a prize. So send us that screenshot.

35:55 CJ: Awesome. Leah, thank you once again. 

35:57 Leah: Thanks and we’ll see you guys next time.

Leah McHenry

It's become my absolute obsession to find out what will make musicians successful today. In the face of many obstacles, and in the vast sea of the internet, we have an opportunity that has NEVER been available to us in the history of the music business.