Episode #054: Growing Your Music Business With Less Stress

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Today on the Savvy Musician Show we’re talking about growing your music business with less stress by not doing everything yourself. At the start of your music career, you might have to fulfill multiple roles, which will give you the insight you need to delegate and oversee the tasks later on. But getting help will give you the freedom and breathing space to build out your business much faster, which in turn will provide the finances you need to further outsource and in this way, grow. We dive into the topic of delegation, advising you on the types of tasks that you should contract out and the ones that are important to do yourself because there are certain things that only you, the artist, can do successfully. Fortunately, there is loads of stuff that you should not be filling up your time with, things that you are no good at and that won’t do your reputation any favors. Household duties are also an easy one to delegate, getting someone to give you a hand with cleaning and cooking so that you can spend your time more productively on the things that you are passionate about. Be sure to tune in!

Key Points from This Episode:

  • A testimony from a student about his success with the help of SMA.  
  • Some of the problems Leah encountered when she tried to do it all herself. 
  • The importance of initially doing things yourself so that you understand the various dynamics. 
  • Two extremes: those who don’t delegate anything and those who delegate it all. 
  • Mixing and graphics – the first two things you should probably farm out. 
  • Considering unnecessary expenses and why you can afford to contract out some work. 
  • The importance of artists themselves doing the course and not their managers. 
  • Why you should not be delegating the marketing early on in your business. 
  • Decision fatigue and lightening your load by delegating home tasks and chores.
  • Giving others more decision-making power so that they can take things off your hands. 
  • Identifying the most important aspect that you need help with. 
  • And much more! 

Tweetables:

“In a lot of cases, it’s more expensive to do it yourself, all the time that you’re putting into it to not get it right and for it to not leave a good impression on somebody.” — @LEAHthemusic [0:10:02]

“That’s how delegation should happen, you need to know enough about it that you know if somebody is doing a good job or not for you.” — @LEAHthemusic [0:16:53]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Fiverr — https://www.fiverr.com/

Upwork — https://www.upwork.com/

99designs — https://99designs.com/

Rob Hulford (Student Spotlight) — https://www.robhulford.com/ 

Click For Full Transcript

00:22 CJ: Welcome once again to the Savvy Musician Show. This is CJ Ortiz and I am the branding and mindset coach at the Savvy Musician Academy. So thrilled once again to be joined with her eminence, Leah McHenry, how are you?

00:37 Leah: Good, thanks. I’m getting used to that eminence thing, yeah.

00:41 CJ: The queen, the admiral, all the things I said in the last episode. You’re in charge. She’s basically in charge of SMA, when we say SMA, that means the Savvy Musician Academy. We just tend to throw around some things, we can’t assume that everybody knows exactly what we’re talking about. We’re going to make it a point ladies and gentlemen to try and explain this thing and not use only the insider lingo.

Episode 54, thank you so much for joining us. Today, we’re going to talk about growing your music business with less stress by not doing everything yourself. Now, we’re going to have to break this down because there’s a lot to it and Leah will explain a whole lot more about what that means. I want to start just Leah, again, with the student spotlight, these are pretty awesome, all the great testimonies that you get inside some of the paid and free group.

Today’s spotlight is Rob Holford. I can’t his name without immediately thinking of Rob Halford, the singer.

01:39 Leah: I know, me too.

01:43 CJ: Rob Halford who also has a – an English accent or he’s from Australia, but anyway, he writes. A win, #win. He says this is officially bonkers, the first ad only went live last night, 12 hours ago, still very much in its learning phase but coming in at eight cents per like, OMG. This bleeping rocks.

The ad he’s talking about is a likes ad and he goes on, he says, this has been achieved directly as a result of the teaching in this course, hats off to Melissa her patients and attention to Megan, this is some of the other coaches in the group for her guidance, enthusiasm. Of course, to Leah, for setting all this up in the first place to help us make the greatest success of our talents and of course he says, here, I’m going to mention this one even though it’s bad to brag about yourself. 

He says, top prize today goes to CJ because to get that particular one down. Students were struggling to get the cost of advertisement. In this case, was a page likes ad down. For somebody to come right of the bat in this early phases with a page likes ad that inexpensive is pretty amazing. He’s right to be saying OMG but the part that I like about it is where he acknowledged that he had the help of A, this course and then B, the multiplicity of coaches and counsel. That’s pretty cool.

03:15 Leah: Yeah, it is a counsel of sorts, isn’t it?

03:17 CJ: Yup, there’s a wisdom in that, there’s wisdom in counsel, that’s one of the great things about that elite program Leah, is just all the information, not just you get initially in the program itself but the other coaches. I enjoy listening to what the other coaches have to say because they’re all experts in their particular area, whether it’s Facebook advertising, websites and what have you and of course, people like Melissa and Megan who take a more administrative role in thinks so huge with keeping this machine running.

You don’t realize all the people that are involved in this so very thankful to read that. That was pretty great.

03:55 Leah: Good job, Rob.

03:55 CJ: Good for Rob and he’ll have continued success but again, today Leah, we’re talking about growing your music business with less stress by not doing it all yourself. I get the feeling, this came out of your personal experience.

04:09 Leah: Yes, it did, you know? I’ve come a long way at this point in my music business. I have a full-time virtual assistant and I also have a full-time customer support person, that’s on my music business side of things, not Savvy Musician Academy, but it took me a long time to get there to where I am now where that’s even necessary and so I want to talk about that, a little bit about delegation, contracting certain things out, when should you do those sort of things and you know, how much should you take on yourself. There’s so much we could talk about it actually on this. 

04:42 CJ: Well, take us back then to the beginning for you? What were some of the problems that you initially experienced when you were trying to do it all?

04:53 Leah: Well, when you start doing everything yourself, when you’re doing it all, obviously, not everybody has eight to 12 hours a day to dedicate to that and I certainly didn’t especially getting started and having my own music business and then homeschooling the kids and single-income household for a very long time.

It was me doing it all myself and there’s actually some benefits to doing that when you’re first starting out and I think that in a lot of cases, actually, quite necessary, for you to learn the important lessons that you need to learn in order to even know when it is time to delegate is this person doing a good job, what are the things that I’m good at, what are the things I’m definitely not good at.

Those are all the things I had to figure out but I was doing everything myself. You know, aside from like my album covers, you know, I was doing all the administration side of things so everything from the distribution and uploading everything, fan emails, sorting through all of that, of course there’s the songwriting in the music side itself. I don’t do any of my own mixing or mastering so I’m hiring that sort of thing out. Just organizing, you know, project management to logistics of like paying session players.

There’s just so many different aspects. Yeah, legal, administrative, creative, man, there’s just a lot, there’s a lot to learn.

06:11 CJ: Yeah, the reality though is that someone’s starting out can only farm out as they say so many things. What can they do because they’re just getting started out just like you. If you had to do it over again, how would you approach it differently?

06:28 Leah: I think I actually did a pretty good job the way I went about things. If it’s a matter of like budget, you can only delegate so many things. First I want to address, I think there’s a couple of different kinds of people, there’s people that never delegate anything because they think nobody can do it better than them. Then there’s people who want to delegate everything because they don’t want the responsibility, they don’t want to think about it at all.

There’s issues with both of those scenarios, people who think that nobody can do it better than them, that’s just not the truth, there are other people who can do it far better than you other than you. Other than, let’s just take out the songwriting part of it, you’re the music creator, let’s take that out of the equation, only you can create your music but even then, you know, you get a producer and they get a hold of it and you know, that’s the spit and polish, they may get something better than it ever was.

I’m experiencing that right now with the stuff I’m doing. Yes, I’m composing all the music, I’m putting together a lot of the arrangements but then I hand it to my producer and I get it back a few days later, a week later and it’s like night and day difference, he improved on what I did. Even then, I can’t say that I could do what he did better, I can’t. But the essence of the song is coming from me.

On the one hand, people who have a hard time passing anything off, they have a hard time delegating anything, you are going to hit a ceiling very quickly because not only do you have the time constraints, but you have skill constraints as well. You can’t be an amazing top-notch musician who is like you know, your vocal skills are on par where they need to be.

Your musicianship, your live show, all of this and be an expert at you know, graphic design and be an expert massage therapist and like five other things, you know what I’m saying? You can’t do it all good all the time, you’re going to be mediocre, very mediocre, I promise you at most of the stuff you’re doing. 

I think the first important thing if I was starting over is identify the things that I definitely shouldn’t be doing. For me, I should not be doing graphic design, I shouldn’t be designing my own artwork and unless you have a background in that, you went to school for it or you have like a really good grasp on it.

You should not be doing your own graphics, we can all tell you did your own graphics, they look really bad. I’ll just tell you, I’ll be the bad cop for you, they look horrible and you should not do your own graphics. That would be the first thing I would farm out and find somebody to do. Aside from of course, you know, most people shouldn’t be doing their own mixing and mastering either, even if you think you’re pretty good.

If you don’t have real experience in that, it’s just worth the money to go get that stuff done properly. But outside of the music, right? Graphics for sure, I mean, that’s the easy thing. I don’t care who you are, you can find a graphic designer who can do a better job than you.

I would start there. Then after that, let’s see, t here’s so many different aspects to the music business, I have to think for a second about what would be the second thing I would do? I’ll have to think about that.

09:26 CJ: You felt like that you had a pretty good concept of delegation early on? Delegation is one thing, it’s what you’re doing more so now as the business has grown. Initially, it was more so farming certain things out.

09:40 Leah: That’s right.

09:41 CJ: You say farm out, in other words, you’re hiring somebody else to do. Some will think like you said, nobody can do it better than them. Others, maybe you don’t feel like they could ever afford it or so they have no idea that graphic designer, Leah has got to be super expensive, right? I mean, shouldn’t I do it myself and save that money?

10:01 Leah: Yeah I know, in a lot of cases, it’s more expensive to do it yourself, all the time that you’re putting into it to not get it right and for it to not leave a good impression on somebody. It’s much more affordable in so many ways. I mean, your time is worth something. To hire someone who knows what they’re doing, can get it done, 10 times faster than you, better than you and a better end result. Especially with graphics, you know?

You have a split second to make an impression on someone, someone’s going through Spotify, you know they type in an album name and they see 10 albums come up with the same name, which one is going to jump out at them, right? You have a split second for a tiny little thumbnail. It better be good. I mean, you can go to places like fiverr.com, freelancing sites, Upwork, there’s so many different places, there’s even sites like 99designs where you post a job and they all bid on it and they actually all do a sample of the work and you get to look at everybody’s samples and pick the best one that you like.

I mean, this Internet age is crazy amazing like that stuff did not exist even 10 years ago. It doesn’t have to be expensive but I would say even if it’s a bit of a stretch for you, make it work. We could do a whole other show on ways to make extra cash so you can afford to do the things that you need to do in your music business.

We can definitely do a show on that because I have a lot of ideas. In fact, I wrote a guide called The Quick Cash Generation Guide, that’s actually in our online musician program for this very reasons. Because people say I can’t afford this, I can’t afford that, I can’t afford a graphic designer. Well you can.

The truth is that you’re spending money on other stupid crap, you know? You are. Everybody has some room in their budget unless you live in a Third World country, you know? You are spending money on Netflix and cigarettes and booze and eating out and makeup and shoes and you do have a disposable budget. You can afford a graphic designer; you choose not to.

You choose to prioritize something that is not actually going to move you forward. Don’t talk to me that you don’t have the money, you do. That would be you know, contracting out, we’ll call them contractors, right? You can call it farming out or whatever but contracting is going to be the first step for you delegating, you know? Because these are going to be more one of jobs, right? It’s like, I need this thing for that specific purpose, you know? I do a crowdfunding campaign, I need this one video edited.

Yes, you can edit the videos yourself but if you want it to look really professional, there’s somebody on Fiverr who can do it way better than you and it will cost you 50 bucks or whatever, depending on how big the project is. Worth doing.

12:41 CJ: Yeah, I think the concept of time and money is a huge one and as you’ve noted before, everybody has to understand, even though they’re musicians and artists, when it comes to being an online musician, you have to see this as a business, you are in business. Think like a business person would think.

A business person, you know, opening up a little pizza place or a little floral store or something like that, they understand that they have to hire certain things out, right? They have to do these things because that’s what businesses do, there is a cost of doing business. Now, we certainly understand that you can be strapped financially and all of that, believe me, we get it. But what are you willing to do in other words, how important is your dream? How important is this goal because if it is, if you do want to do what you claim you want to do so bad, well then, it will show up in how you spend your time.

It will show up in how you spend your money, right?

13:44 Leah: Yup.

13:45 CJ: And like you said, they’re wasting a lot of money on other things, they’re wasting a lot of time on other things. They could be listening to podcasts like this instead of binge-watching on Netflix in order to learn principles and keys to raising extra money or what they should be looking for, for example in design. I had this question today. Now, it just so happens that my degrees are in design and advertising.

I’ve been designing logos and packaging and things my whole adult life. I could talk about that stuff but Leah’s right. What’s available now with sites like Fiverr and 99designs would have put me out of business years ago. Because it’s cheap and sure, you get what you pay for to some degree but you know, what we’re talking about is just give yourself this professional look or professional sound, whatever the need may be and it may cost you, you might get a little sticker shock when you realize that you do have to pay for these things, but you have to think of the value that you’re getting.

You exchange money to get something in return, you’re getting something in return. You’re getting a music career here potentially.

14:51 Leah: Yeah.

14:51 CJ: There’s an element of risk in it and you’ve got to invest in that. To think that you’re going to do all this yourself is just being unrealistic and so you end up setting yourself up for a lot of stress, a lack of sleep, it’s not good, it’s not a wise move in terms of creating a successful business and what I get from you Leah is you want to get a hold of these people early on in the stage so that they don’t have to start everything the hard way, right?

15:21 Leah: Yeah, I also want to speak to the other end of the pendulum which is people who want to delegate everything and they only want to focus on the music. Well, now you’re going back to a label model, you know? Where they do everything for you, you don’t’ think about the marketing, you don’t think about anything, you’re just going to be the creator and that is not also going to help you, you know?

When you start a business, at the beginning of Savvy Musician Academy. When I first started that. Started out as a little eBook that turned into a video course and I was first sharing it with my friends and then it turned into well, can we learn that from you? It turned into this course. Well, I was doing everything and then shortly after, my husband joined me.

We were doing the two of us, we’re doing everything ourselves, we were the customer service, we were the course provider, the teacher, the curator, we were the tech support, we were doing everything, absolutely everything ourselves.

You reach a ceiling very quickly when that happens. At that point you go, okay, we’re growing to this certain point, now it’s time to bring on somebody else. That’s the model that is natural and proper and everybody should go through that where you start out and you’re doing quite a bit, you’re learning the ropes, right?

Okay, this is how this works now. I understand enough about say advertising for example. I know everything about Facebook ads manager, but I know so much about it that now if I hire somebody to manage it for me, I know if they’re doing a good job or not. Because I know my stuff.

You know, when you get to that point, that’s how delegation should happen, you need to know enough about it that you know if somebody is doing a good job or not for you. The other side of that is people who want to delegate everything and so you need enough skin in the game. You need to be doing enough that you know when you are growing and when it is time to delegate and contract out certain jobs, you can be confident that they are actually doing a good job and you are getting a return on your investment there. So yeah, I just wanted to speak to that. 

17:22 CJ: Well then we’ve seen some examples of this, have we not? And with certain students who sign up for an elite program spend all of this money and they don’t even show up. They have somebody else learning all of this. 

17:36 Leah: I have seen this, yeah and it is never successful when someone else is going through it like managers going through it with their artists and artists aren’t the one logging in, it is the manager, the partner, whatever who is going through the program and they definitely don’t see the same results as when the students are the ones logging in and doing the work. As long as they are extremely involved and we actually speak to these people in the forum and we tell them: 

“Listen this will not work if you try to do this completely alone without the artist. It won’t work. You cannot be their voice. You know there is email sequences that need to be written and it needs to come from the artist. You cannot do that for them. This needs to come from their heart. It needs to be their voice and you can’t do that.” So that is why to this day, nobody writes our ad copy except for me, for even Savvy Musician Academy. 

We had other people in the past try and it never went over well because people can’t replicate my voice. A good copywriter should be able to do that. That is not impossible but unless you have mad skills, other people cannot replicate that for you. So what I don’t recommend, delegating is your marketing and not at this point. Not until you guys are making at least $10,000 a month regularly in your music business. You shouldn’t delegate your marketing. 

So I don’t want anybody else running your ads, nobody else should be writing your emails. Nobody should be setting up your funnels like you need to know that stuff. You need to do that. So I wanted to just draw that line in the sand so that people understand. When I say delegate, I am talking about the stuff that you don’t need to be doing. You actually probably shouldn’t be doing it and I have already brought up the graphic design that is one really big one. 

For other people it could be website design, we teach that stuff. We teach it but for people who don’t have our teaching, most of your websites are horrible. They are terrible. We did a whole podcast episode on that so you should go back and listen to it. We did a five-part series on why your music isn’t making money, we went really deep on that. That is another one where a lot of people should get extra help in either designing it or setting it up because it is just leading such a bad impression so that is another thing. 

19:42 CJ: Leah, how about this then. Let’s expand it outside of the actual music business itself, what about delegating other areas especially speaking from a mother and wife perspective. When it is like okay, it’s not just the music business I am dealing with. It is kids and yard and what about delegating there. 

20:07 Leah: Yeah, actually that is another fantastic area that can just lighten your load exponentially because as you are learning the music business and you are diving into all the ins and outs and Facebook ads and pixels and funnels and emails and all of these really important things, naturally your focus is not going to be on, “What should we have for dinner tonight?” It is very difficult to have enough creative juice at the end of the day to open a fridge and go, “What should I make?” 

So a lot of people ask me about my time management and how I do it all and the truth is that I don’t do it all. That’s my secret. The secret to doing it all is to don’t do it all and so like for one thing, I know that my time, I am worth more per hour than cleaning my house than I would pay somebody else to clean my house. My hourly worth is worth more than what it would cost for me to clean the toilets. So for that reason and it has nothing to do with the fact that I mean I enjoy cleaning. 

I like a clean house but that is not where my best time is spent. So I hire out once a week deep clean and the rest we do our self and our kids have chores and we do stuff around. We tidy up but the deep cleaning stuff I don’t do so we hire that out. It’s worth it for me to do that. There’s other things you can do too like meals or the service that we just got, we are trying it out right now called Daily Harvest and they’re basically just fruits and vegetables in a cup that go in the freezer. 

And you just dump it in a blender and you have a smoothie so the kids can have that anytime they want and it is in the freezer. It’s in this little cup called Daily Harvest or whatever so that’s great. So things like that makes your life simple and you don’t have to think so hard about there is a real decision fatigue that’s real. That is a real phenomenon that a lot of us are dealing with. Simplifying your wardrobe like I basically wear the same thing every single day. 

I don’t sit there and wonder what am I going to wear unless I have to go out somewhere. I am always in workout clothes so that if I have energy, I can go workout right now. So it is like yoga pants, t-shirt that’s it. I am not thinking about it and I’m sure you are not thinking of other things too but you know meals, household stuff, yard work, those are things worth delegating and hiring out. So that you can focus on your music business. 

22:25 CJ: You know that is the key. Yeah, the key is to protect your focus. You’ve got to protect your focus, people fail because of broken focus and these things it’s not just distraction so much but it is feeling like you have to do all of these things yourself and for a lot of you and this one may be tough for you and it may fall a little bit more on the side of females because they find themselves often in the wife and mother position but sometimes we can be really good at training people not to do things around us, who live with us, training people not to govern themselves, not to take care of things easily themselves and so they end up calling on mom and dad or whoever all the time for everything and so there may be some habits that some of you may need to break.

You may need to start training that 14-year-old who’s fully capable of throwing something in the oven or like you said, tidying up. They’ve got their chores or whatever. They might balk at it, they may not like the change. What’s up with the new version of mom? Well, mom’s got a new mission in life. Dad’s got a new vision in life. 

23:31 Leah: Right, the new sheriff in town. 

23:32 CJ: Yeah, exactly. So we’re changing things around here and don’t be afraid to change anything. You are not breaking any laws, you haven’t committed a sin. You are not suddenly a bad person now. No, what you are saying is I’ve got gifts, talents and abilities and I need to fulfill this calling in life. I now have the opportunity more than I ever had in my life because of where things are in the music industry and what Leah is teaching is now so readily available. 

These powerful tools, I can now fulfill this dream I have always had. I don’t want to forsake my family, I am not going to leave my kids, you guys are not going to starve but it’s time for you to start taking care of more things so that I can be more devoted and not worry about it and not feel bad about it. That is going to be tough for some people to get passed but you need to do it.

24:21 Leah: That’s actually a really important concept and it is something that we are implementing it personally in our family with the kids but also with our staff is giving people more responsibility and decision making responsibility and letting them know if you make a mistake you are not going to lose your job over it because we are giving you more decision making power and you are going to make mistakes that we all do and you will not lose your job. 

So the same with my kids like actually literally yesterday, my oldest son’s name is Ryder and we said, “Hey, I need you to cook those burgers” and it’s so funny because we don’t normally have him make dinner and I don’t know why we haven’t because he’s Mr. Chef Boy like making donuts. He’s really into baking. He is making donuts and pies and it’s like, “Why haven’t we’ve been getting him to make dinner too?” Like he is totally capable of doing this. 

So yeah, he fried them up and got all the burgers ready for everybody and we had a great dinner and he can do a salad like this is easy. So giving more responsibility to your family members and people around you and allowing them to be like, “Hey, if you mess this up nobody is going to die. You’ll be okay.” And just giving them that permission to breathe. So yeah, I think that is important. 

25:27 CJ: Yeah, you have to depersonalize this because I think what happens is like back in the 50’s when Betty Crocker first came out with instant cake mix, it did not sell well at all. Of course, everybody uses this stuff. Now Dunkin Hines, whatever just throw it in to make their chocolate cake, it did not sell at all because keep in mind this is the first time anything like TV dinners, that’s the first time anything like this have ever come about. 

Women prided themselves at that time of making things by hand. So to have an instant mix would not sell at all. So Dunkin Hines could not sell their instant cake mix, which was again common today, so they figured out one simple little change and it changed everything. They added on the back in the directions even though there was a pack of the powder and all of this stuff, they just said “Add one egg” and that one step of adding one egg was all it took for women to start buying because they felt like now they were – 

26:32 Leah: They could take some of the credit? 

26:34 CJ: There is a guilt issue, yeah. There is a guilt issue that comes with this and it’s don’t make this personal. This is not personal, this is practical. Just because you ask your kids to do this or ask your husband or wife or whatever to do something doesn’t mean you don’t love them or you’re doing something bad or whatever or that you are less than or you are not forsaking your role as a parent or spouse or what have you. No, it doesn’t mean that all. 

It’s just coming up with a brand new way to fulfill everybody’s thing and if your family loves you and you don’t have a bunch of spoiled brats then they should be interested in helping mom and dad achieve their dream. 

27:16 Leah: And a lot of people know that we home school our kids and we have the entire time. They have never set foot in a school and since we have been running Savvy Musician Academy, for me to do what I do at SMA and in my music career, I have help with the kids. I have a nanny that comes in every day and helps me for a certain amount of time per day with them and that’s how I am able to pull it off guys because they have needs. 

They do school every day and in order for me to do it, I am not superwoman. I don’t wear some cape. The only way I can do this is by getting help and at first, it was really weird for me. I was such a dedicated – I am still a dedicated home school mom but the way it looked had to change in order for me to do everything I do and so I found a way to not compromise for them. They still get the education that I want for them. I am still directing it. 

I still spend time every year figuring out what we are going to learn and now the kids are getting older we are doing a lot more of that together you know what they are going to focus on for the year, the courses they are going to do, when do we want it done by, trips we want to take that year. So I am still extremely involved in all of it but I have delegated out part of that role, I am overseeing it and I have somebody helping me do that because I am not the only person who can do that. So you know, you find ways of compromising without compromising if that makes any sense. 

28:44 CJ: Sure. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Again this is just wisdom ladies and gentlemen. I can almost hear Leah for those people who said, “Oh yeah she is hiring a nanny. Okay, nice for you Leah. You’ve got the money there to hire a nanny and have somebody come in and clean your house. Well, that’s not where I am right now.” Well, we understand that. We understand that is not where you’re right now but these are the principles. 

It’s all about the principles. Leah wasn’t where she is right now. I know, I talk to her back when you were struggling. 

29:16 Leah: When I first hired my nanny, I couldn’t afford them by the way. The first time I had it was just basically a babysitter come in for a couple of hours a day so that I could go and focus on building SMA, I couldn’t afford them. I had to figure out a way to make it work. It was a sacrifice so that I could pull any of this off. So you make it, you find a way, there’s what’s called bootstrapping. That’s what it’s called and you find out what is the most important thing. 

So I didn’t have someone clean my house and nannying and delivering food services, anything like that at first. That did not all happen at first. I picked what is the one thing if I could get help with, what is the one thing that would free up my time and my head and give me the ability to move the ball forward where we want it to go. That was the one thing so I chose out of all the things of cleaning the house or all the different things I could hire out, what is the one thing that will really move the needle for me. 

And it would be childcare, getting a little help with that a couple of hours a day so that I could focus uninterrupted and get the job done and guess what? That made me money of me doing that. You just have to prioritize. What is the one thing that you can do? What is the one thing that you can hire out that will move the ball forward for you? And then that’s how you prioritize it. 

30:32 CJ: Right, so you are making the adjustments necessary but you are not compromising your values by doing this because you are not breaking any law by doing this and as you said, this requires sacrifice and I did find sacrifices tossing something of value for something of even greater value and until you get it in your own head the true value of what your future would look like if your dream was fulfilled, if your music career was fulfilled, how valuable is that to you? 

And then compare that to whether or not you’re making all of your kids’ food or cleaning your house or whatever the thing even again going back to the stuff that you do inside the business to a delegation and a contracting out affects there. You have to always value these things. You are the only one who can and don’t put more value in something that doesn’t necessarily that could be easily handled by something else. So that is the point. 

31:35 Leah: Yeah, exactly. 

31:35 CJ: Leah, anything else you want to say about delegating? 

31:38 Leah: I don’t know. I covered quite a bit. 

31:41 CJ: You did cover a lot. 

31:42 Leah: Okay I think that about wraps it up actually. I think you have to know where you’re at in your music career on what do you absolutely need to learn first like we talked about marketing that whole online digital marketing thing. I would not contract that stuff out. I would contract out other things that will free you up to learn that stuff. That is the priority I want to leave you guys with. 

32:05 CJ: Awesome. Well listen, guys, do what you can for your business today and the most important thing is to start thinking of it like a business. All of this stuff, the principles that Leah is sharing is all based on a basic mindset that just says I am now in business. Yes, you are a musician. Yes you are an artist, yes you are super creative and all of this ad manager and this email and marketing stuff is going to take a single thing away from that. 

If anything is going to help you do more music, more creativity than you ever thought possible. That’s the power of the information that is being shared at the Savvy Musician Academy. Leah, what would you like our listener to do today? 

32:54 Leah: Yeah, today I just want you guys to either join the Facebook group if you are not in there and of course, leave us a review if you are finding this podcast helpful to you at all. 

33:06 CJ: Wonderful. Once again, such a pleasure to be with each and every one of you. Thank you for joining us on the Savvy Musician Show. Leah, as always it’s a pleasure. 

33:15 Leah: It’s a pleasure as well. 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.