00:21 CJ: Well, welcome to the Savvy Musician Show. This is CJ Ortiz. I am the branding and mindset coach here at the Savvy Musician Academy. So excited to be here and be joined with her eminence herself, the lovely Leah McHenry. So good to see you again. How’re you doing?

00:34 Leah: Great to see you too. I’m happy to be here.

00:37 CJ: Aren’t we both happy?

00:38 Leah: We are. Lots of energy.

00:40 CJ: Lots of energy. We love energy. I hope everybody’s enjoying the podcast. Remember, that you can always leave a review, help us out and give us some stars because we do read these things. Great way for people to keep up with the podcast. Great way for people to discover it. And so, we want to make this the go-to place for all things music marketing and you can help us do that.

So before we dive in today I want to share just a student spotlight. This is one of our elite students, Marcella Puppini, I think, or Papine don’t know quite how to say that name, but she says, “#Win. Or should I say big fat amazing win! After eight gruelling months of crowdfunding, we finally hit our 50,000 pounds yesterday. It’s been an absolute slog and I’ve made a ton of mistakes even though it was my second time, first time on my own platform though. I even got told off by Leah on the podcast. I did this with a 4,000 mailing list, 4,000 member mailing list, which is relatively small, and with limited ad spend, but admittedly we have a devoted core audience that we’ve been nurturing since the Myspace days.”

Wow. “My aim for the next one is to raise the full amount we need for the project, which is 70,000 pounds. Mainly with products that I can get manufactured, rather than with experiences or products I have to create. There’s definitely something not quite working there, as I’m working so hard on this, on top of making the album, that I can’t help feeling there’s a disconnect between the amount of work I put into it and the results. But hey, I made the goal and I’ve made a big band album, my first as a producer, as well as a performer. So today I celebrate, and then tomorrow I’ll make a plan for how to raise the remaining 20,000 pounds I still need for promotion.” Wow.

02:26 Leah: Yeah. And I mean this podcast, I know our students listen to it, as well as non-students, so sometimes I’m going to address things that come up or questions that people have, or if I see trends that are happening, it’s all coming out here. But you guys know that I say it all in love.

02:47 CJ: Mother’s love.

02:50 Leah: It’s a mother’s love, that’s right. And so people actually tell me that, that they view me as the loving mother, one hand is disciplined, the other hand is a hug and a kiss. So that’s fine. If you want to view me that way, I will embrace that.

03:07 CJ: No, I think it’s great. And it’s one of the benefits of the kind of coaching programs we have in the Savvy Musician Academy, in particular, the Elite program, which not everybody is necessarily ready for, but for those who are, the level of coaching is on a whole other level. And so we are very, very into the details of everybody’s particular music business, and all that they’re doing, so sometimes Leah will take some of what’s happening in the conversations and posts within the elite group and actually share some of those here. But again, it’s for benefit.

03:41 Leah: That’s right.

03:41 CJ: And it’s to help all of us to progress. And Marcella, her results are pretty good.

03:48 Leah: Absolutely. She’s worked so hard and I’ve had personal calls with her and she’s really done so well. I’m so impressed with what they’ve accomplished, her little group there. And it absolutely should be a testament to what’s possible. And I just know she works very hard at what she does. So it certainly hasn’t happened overnight, and it hasn’t happened without a lot of effort and steep learning curve. So she’ll be the first to tell you that.

04:15 CJ: Yep. Again, for those who are listening, this probably was… to think that she raised that much. 50,000 pounds. They’re like, “I can’t imagine raising $1,000. I can’t imagine anybody giving me a $100.”

04:26 Leah: Yeah. I think that’s close to 80,000 in US dollars or something.

04:30 CJ: Yeah, I’m not sure about that.

04:32 Leah: It’s going to be close, in that ballpark.

04:33 CJ: It’s a lot of money.

04:34 Leah: It really is. Yeah.

04:36 CJ: So good for her, and onward and upward from here because she’s learning a lot as you do. Well Leah, we had finished 2019 and you had some really great goals achieved last year. People can go back to the previous episodes to hear more about your album release and year-end holiday sales and all that you learn, but we’re into a new year and one of the main things that you particularly live and you teach in the Savvy Musician Academy is planning and how important planning is, and you really emphasize this a great deal. So to get into this, let’s talk a little bit about your agenda for 2020 because you put out an album last year. Are you going to do the same thing this year? What’s changing for you?

05:18 Leah: Yeah, a lot has changed. I just thought people would really enjoy hearing what I planned for 2020 and how that process looks. I have a few new things on the horizon for me and I just thought I would share that update every year. Usually, in December or January, I will do an annual planning session and whether it’s just all by myself, which I’ve done many times, or if I have… Now I have a little core team that I do this with, and this time we even had Steve come because he’s being more involved in my business, more on the financial side of it and the bookkeeping and doing kind of thing.

05:57 CJ: And that’s your husband, Steve, for those who don’t know.

05:59 Leah: That’s right. My husband, Steve. And he does the same thing in Savvy Musician Academy. So he’s being more involved in that. And that just helps because, as I’m growing, I’m having to recruit more, my creativity, and more of these other things so that means less energy going towards numbers and the logistic side of things. That’s how growth occurs. When you’re at the very beginning, you’re doing everything yourself. Totally normal because it’s on a small scale, and so you can do that as you grow and eventually, your first hire will probably be some kind of virtual assistant where they’re kind of a full-stack person that can do a little customer service, they can do process orders, they can, send the numbers to the bookkeeper. They can do a variety of things. Later on, as you grow, you’re going to add a few more people in. So these are going to be your employees or team members, however, you want to look at that.

So I now have this little core team and it’s awesome, I am loving it. With growing a team it becomes more complex instantaneously between really solidifying the roles, to the communication because we’re all virtual-based and achieving accountability.

07:17 CJ: Right.

07:17 Leah: Having accountability in that we’re meeting those goals week after week after week. We have a weekly meeting. These are all things I can actually talk about in another episode, but I just want to give the lay of the land for people to understand how I’m doing it right now.

So we had the annual planning meeting, I think it was the end of December, and it was great. Usually, when I do this I will block off four hours, and you really want to give yourself a long period of time to really think everything through. And I like to be able to dream. I like to be able to brain dump and then come back in that session and cross things off. “Hey, what’s all the things I’d like to do?”

And then you come back to reality and go, “Okay well now what’s possible? What’s realistic with these other things going on in my life?” So before we get too far, I just want to say that we actually have a PDF that walks you through this exact process that I’m talking about now, and it’s called Map Your Music Year, and I don’t care if you’re listening to this in August, this is something you should do and you should just do it now. Whatever time of year it is, just do it now.

Mapped out the rest of your music year and then the year to come so you can actually get that in the show notes. You can also go to mapyourmusicyear.com and get that, and it’s a full walkthrough of how to do this and how to reverse engineer those goals. The most important thing I think you could come away with is to ask yourself, “What do I want?”

08:46 CJ: Right.

08:47 Leah: “What do I want? What do I even want to do?” Most people don’t even ask that. They don’t think through their desires or what it is they even want to achieve. There’s what we think we should achieve but is it even what you want? It sounds so elementary and simplistic, but it’s something that has greatly affected my decision making because there are things we do because we think we should do them and they actually don’t bring us any joy.

So first of all, before I get into what all I planned, I want to talk about my theme word for the year that I have. Every year, usually in December, I am prompted to really start thinking about what is the focus going to be for the coming year? And I usually just get a word that comes to me.

I have a lot of friends, a lot of people doing this. I don’t know where I got the idea. Maybe this is not a new idea, but every year I’ve had one. I’ve had the word focus. I’ve had the word build. I’ve had different words and it really just sets the precedent for me. I like having one word because then I base everything I’m doing off of that.

Well, my word for 2020 is rest. And I joked that I made an acronym out of it. Resist Everything Shiny Today because as a visionary, creative person, I like shiny objects and musicians have horrible Shiny Object Syndrome. We get distracted so easily. And now with all the ads in our newsfeed, “Ooh, try this funnel and click funnels and blah, blah, blah and try these.” And you don’t need any of that. 99% of the stuff you see, you do not need to be successful. What you need is principals and you need coaching.

10:33 CJ: Right.

10:33 Leah: You just need these basic fundamentals, you need to understand these things, and then you need to go do and stop getting distracted by the shiny stuff. So I’m putting that out to myself, but also for me, the word rest, it doesn’t mean not doing anything, and it doesn’t mean taking a long vacation. It doesn’t mean being idle.

10:50 CJ: Right.

10:50 Leah: For me, the word rest is a few things. One: I’m taking a break from releasing a new album in 2020. I did an album two years in a row. That was plenty. That was plenty for me. So I’m taking a break from that so I’m not going to release anything new unless maybe it’s a spontaneous single or something like that. That’s fine. But I’m not doing a big album watch. I’m not doing a crowdfunding campaign. I’m not doing all these huge undertakings that take all my time and energy because when I do that, and which is totally fine, I really can’t do anything else. It is my full-time job. It makes it very difficult for me to be fully present anywhere else in terms of Savvy Musician Academy. It’s difficult for me to be fully in coaching mode and in launching mode for something else. You can’t be two places at the same time.

11:40 CJ: Right.

11:41 Leah: That’s a cyclical thing. That’s a seasonal thing. People have heard me say this before when they ask “Leah, how do you do it all?” I say, “I work in seasons. That’s how it works.” But I’ve had two cycles, two years of releasing albums in a row, almost a year apart from each other. That is enough. I’m taking a rest from that.

So 2020 will not be about launching anything musically. What I will be doing instead is really focusing. I actually have a tagline that is the focus for at least the first quarter of this year in my team, in my music business, and that is analyze, simplify, and optimize. There’s so much you can do on the on and off year if you’re not releasing any music, there is so much you can do if, especially if you have a Shopify store, you have an email list, you have all these things that you can make so much money that you’ve been leaving on the table because you’ve been distracted by launching, you’ve been distracted by the music, you’ve been distracted by those things and it’s not like we’re releasing music every single month. So when it’s an off year, that’s the time to dig through all your systems and processes, or lack thereof, and create them.

So the theme… well, I shouldn’t say the theme, the goal for my first quarter, and really it’ll be happening all year, is analyzing the stuff that means, “Hey, we’re looking at the conversion rate on my store. How many people actually bu, who go to my shop?” We’re looking at simplifying. I’m going to be deleting a ton of products that I currently offer my shop that either I had Shiny Object Syndrome and put a bunch of things out there just because I could. I don’t need to be a Sears catalog. I don’t need to have that many things. So I’m going to simplify.

And then optimization. Optimize. So finding ways to create less abandoned carts, for example. That’s huge. You don’t have to spend a penny more on Facebook ads and you could increase your revenue and your profits by 20 to 30% just by fixing stuff on your shop, by optimizing the layout, by helping people complete their purchase, and having abandoned cart emails. When someone adds stuff to their cart and then they don’t complete the purchase that you’re sending them emails afterwards. A series, not just one, but three to five, and then if they’re not converting well, changing it, optimizing.

Okay. So you could spend all year just doing that stuff and you will be so much more profitable in the end without spending a dollar more on Facebook ads or anywhere else. We’re even touring or doing anything. So my goal for this whole 2020 is really maintaining a baseline revenue month to month. That’s just kind of, “We’re just maintaining it.” It’s still a six-figure baseline for the year and that’s just Shopify alone. Not anything else. Not music publishing deals, not streaming revenue, not TuneCore, none of that. Just the shop.

And I’m basically leaving it to my team to run the promotions. So they’re coming up with giveaways. They’re coming up with little seasonal promotions, maybe a spring sale, maybe a summer sale, running those things. The only thing I’ll be doing is writing ad copy, writing the content. All that is coming from me and this in my social accounts, I always run those.

So that’s it. That’s all I’m doing in the music business, which is still a lot, but my time is going to be a bit more spent this year, in 2020, on Savvy Musician Academy. We are releasing the Online Musician 3.0 in the spring so I’m revamping that entire course right now. I’m focusing on all that content, re-recording it, updating all of that sort of thing, which is quite a bit of my focus and effort. And then I’m also launching a sister brand to my music and it’s a candle company called Mythology Candles. So we’re going to dig into that whole thing in the next couple episodes here. But that’s it. That’s all I’m doing. So baseline revenue, basically keeping my music business growing and running, optimizing it, Savvy Musician Academy, candle business. That’s it. That’s all.

15:58 CJ: Oh yeah, that’s it. So she’s resting everybody.

16:02 Leah: Yeah.

16:04 CJ: And I completely understand what you’re saying. In fact, in my coaching series, I taught a series called The Restful Warrior and it’s about striving without stressing. And I think that’s what we mean by rest. In other words…

16:16 Leah: Yeah.

16:17 CJ: … our inner posture is one of rest. We’re busy, but we’re not so driven by these…

16:23 Leah: We’re not stressing.

16:23 CJ: Yeah. Not stressing about it because you’re not driven by these big, huge deadlines of big huge projects. You’re happy to be analyzing, optimizing, fixing things, cleaning up. Bodybuilders have their off year where they bulk up and all that, then they get into the season and then they start to trim down. So we all need those times. And the takeaway here, you guys listening may not be to the level that Leah is, but the takeaway here is to think about that.

And I think having a theme or a word is a really, really great idea because I think it goes back to something you said often, Leah, which is “Don’t wing it.” Don’t wing your life. Get intentional about living. Start saying, “You know what? I realize it’s just a calendar date, but you know what? For 2020, this is going to be my focus. This is going to be my phrase that I’m working on this year. I’m going to pay off some debts. I’m going to get that album released. I’m going to build up my Facebook and Instagram audience. I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that. I’m going to get my store launched.” Whatever it may be, whatever is the next step for you… It may be, in fact, Leah, somebody needs to get involved in the TOM program. Somebody needs to get into Elite. Somebody needs to sign up for the Inner Circle membership right now.

There’s three places, ladies and gentlemen, that you can touch the Savvy Musician Academy. Level one would be the Inner Circle membership. Level two would be the TOM program, which we’ll have more to say in the next couple of months because all of that’s changing this year for Savvy Musician Academy, and then, of course, our ongoing Elite program, but they all involve different levels because we’re meeting people at so many different points, Leah, that I think it’s hard for them to get their head around all our terms and all the things that you’re doing. “She’s got staff. What? She’s got staff? what does that mean?”

They can’t still deal with Marcella’s results. So it’s a lot. But what’s your next step? What’s your next season? What’s your next level? And what’s going to be your plan for getting there in the upcoming year?

18:24 Leah: Yeah. So, in the Map Your Music Year Guide, you’re going to see there’s four different categories that I want you to brainstorm through, which is usually some kind of revenue goal and breaking down where that’s going to come from. That exercise alone is so groundbreaking for so many people because they don’t ever do that. They have some pie in the sky number like, “One day I want to make $50,000 for my music.” And they don’t actually think about where that’s going to come from. So break it down. And it’s going to come from multiple places. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, that’s a principle to live by.

Always diversify, especially as an artist. You have to be creative and think outside the box. So it could come from teaching piano lessons or guitar lessons, or whatever it is that you know. It could come from live shows. It could then also come from selling merch in person, and it could come from online. It could come from a fan club. It could come from streaming royalties. It could come from five or 10 different places.

Ultimately, what I’ve seen work really well is when people have two or three really solid things that have really gotten off the ground before trying to do everything at once. Some of them are Set it And Forget It so like once you have your Tune Core set up, you have streaming royalties coming in, you don’t really have to do anything, so that’s completely passive. So that’s wonderful.

But for our things that require more of your effort, you’re going to want to put more time and energy into those things to get off the ground. If you do Patreon or you’d have a fan club on band camp or something like that. Obviously, that’s an ongoing thing where you’re giving content or something like that in exchange for that membership. Those are things I want you to be thinking through.

So thinking through revenue and breaking it down, how you are going to achieve that. Having some kind of goals, whereby the end of the year you have accomplished these things. Thinking through projects, like a recording, a new album, that’s a massive project. You don’t want too many projects throughout the year because you won’t accomplish them. You’re going to feel overwhelmed and you will want to quit before you started.

And then also I like to have a personal category in there because sometimes the personal affects the business stuff. So for example, we know that sometime in 2020 we’re moving. We don’t know exactly when, but that’s going to affect everything else that we’re doing. So I would not want to be recording an album in the middle of a move.

20:50 CJ: Right.

20:50 Leah: So you do need to include those personal factors in your decision-making process as you are planning these things. So don’t be too hard on yourself. I want you to plan and think big enough that you’re slightly uncomfortable with what you’ve created, but not so big that… I think you know in your gut when it’s just totally out of the realm of what’s reachable. Somewhere in the middle there is good because I think you’ve got to be challenged. All those authors that have written about: what is the height of happiness for people? There was one book I read, I can’t remember the author or what it was called, but he basically concluded that people are happiest when they have a challenge that they are working through and working to overcome. And then when that’s done, they need a new one.

So people are most fulfilled when they are in the activity that brings them a challenge. That’s why we make crossword puzzles. Just for fun, right? Why do we have Sudoku or whatever that’s called? Why do we have all these games? Every single video game you can die in or lose. We need challenge to feel satisfied in life.

22:14 CJ: Right.

22:14 Leah: So don’t make it so easy that it’s not even going to be fulfilling for you. Make it challenging enough that you’re like, “I don’t know, that scares me a little bit.”

22:25 CJ: Yeah. For a lot of people, they just don’t live with that intentionality. And I think that’s a really big… if that’s all that you do is just get some semblance of an organized year in your mind and then you’ll stop flying by the seat of your pants. Just letting life happen. You’ll start making life happen. And the more you get involved in online and online music career, the more that becomes important. And so there’s tools involved and we talk about that. There’s methods involved, there’s so much to learn, et cetera. But once you get the basics down, when you learn to live more organized, live more in planning fashion, have these set goals and be intentional, you can create desired outcomes. This doesn’t happen by magic and it’s not fate. , We can’t say that Aaliyah or whoever else is just destined.

I covered this recently. In fact, last week in my coaching group where I said we look at somebody like an Einstein or a mother Theresa and we say, “Oh, they have purpose in life, but not us.” No. Maybe they just took their gifts and talents and interests seriously and put elbow grease behind it and created outcomes. See, I can work really, really hard and slave over something for years and years and do such a good job on it that you guys think I was born to do it, that you guys think it’s fate, that you guys think it’s just destiny because you’re just seeing the end result. And so you can live like that. You don’t have to. People I think, Leah, have got it mapped out in their head that there’s just no way. But there is a way and that’s half the battle. If you believe it, you can get it done. And so we’re behind you.

24:01 Leah: That’s right. So I just want to remind everyone, if you haven’t done an annual planning session, that is my challenge for you. And I would love to hear what your theme word is. If you are in our free Facebook group, I would love it if you started a thread on this. Maybe we’ll start a thread and you can jump in there and find it. What’s your theme word for the year? We’ve done it already in our Elite group. We’ve done it in our student group, our general student group. We also have the free group and this is my challenge for you. Come up with your theme word and do an annual planning session. Those two things are going to really set your focus for the entire year and you’re doing things already that most people never do, especially musicians. They just never do these things. They’re not intentional, they’re not living with purpose and because of that, they don’t see the results that they want.

These are really basic things. Something else I can just add to this that I do with my kids every morning right now. I have a non-negotiable morning time with them where we do whatever we want, but right now we’re journaling and we all have a notebook and right now we came up with some annual goals, they all have some annual goals, and we put it into quarters. We split the year up into quarters. So explaining to them, they’re like 8 and 10 and all the way down to 5 and 13, and they’re learning right now how to split their goals up into 90 day little achievable sprints, and to make them smaller so that they can actually get to the thing they want to do. And one thing we do is we write them out every single day. Like repetitively. We’re writing them out every day and we kind of have a few things we’re writing down in this journal, but that’s one thing.

So we have three or four things. Do not fill it up with 15 things. Three or four things tops. And we read them out to each other as well even though we’ve all heard it a hundred times, we’re still reading it out because there’s something about writing it out with your hand and then speaking it out with your mouth and saying it to each other. There’s something about the accountability of it, and it is bringing you closer to actually achieving that goal. There’s something about saying it out to the world. And this is not manifestation crap. That’s not what I’m talking about. You know what I mean, CJ. Right?

26:12 CJ: Sure. Yes. Absolutely.

26:14 Leah: Maybe you can explain the difference between manifestation and what I’m talking about because I don’t know if I can articulate it but…

26:21 CJ: It kind of works a similar fashion. The more you believe something and the more you are confessing it, so to speak, the more you are speaking it out, the more you are creating the dynamics internally, and even externally to a degree, that puts you on a path to actually creating that desired outcome yourself.

26:39 Leah: Yeah. I feel like it’s more like a brain synapse thing that’s happening. Like you’re creating the pathways in your brain for the behaviors that you need to do to actually accomplish that thing. And that’s why we’re writing it out every day. We didn’t write it down one time and then… You’ll forget it. I feel like the human brain works like, if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind. And so if you’re writing it out every day, that’s why I like the pen to paper. Something’s happening in your brain thereby writing it, and then talking about it and reminding yourself, saying it out loud, and then saying it to people who are hearing it. Maybe you guys all want to join in my homeschooling morning times so we can do this together, but.

27:17 CJ: So even little Archer does this? That’s your youngest.

27:21 Leah: No, he’s playing with bugs beside us. He’s 5. So no, he’s playing with Lego and jumping off the sofa with a cape as Batman or something.

27:32 CJ: My man. My man.

27:33 Leah: That’s right. But when he’s old enough, then he’ll join us. And I said to them this morning, I was like, “You guys, I hope that you continue in this habit.” They’re all excited to do this, by the way. It’s not drudgery. They actually love it. They look forward to it because this is helping them come closer to what they want. My 8-year-old, she wants a corn snake. So she’s writing out… It’s all on their level, right? We’re not reaching for the stars or something here. It’s just she really wants a corn snake so her quarterly goal is to become an expert on… she wants to know everything about it, she wants to save $100, that kind of thing.

And so I said, “You guys, I really hope this becomes a habit for you, for the rest of your life because if you do this, I’m saying this as I’m making my coffee, you will really accomplish so much in their life.” They said, “Us too, Mom. We really like this. We want to keep doing this.” So that is awesome. So you don’t have an excuse if my 8-year-old and 10-year-olds and 13-year-olds doing it, you have to do it.

28:42 CJ: I’ll tell you what, very inspiring, Leah. I think that’s great. I think, obviously as a homeschooling mom, it’s a whole different… because you realize that you’re responsible for the upbringing of your kids. Same thing guys when it comes to your businesses, this is your kid, what you put into this is what you’re going to get once it all grows up. So we want everybody to, obviously, raise something great and significant and live the dream that you really want, which is a full-time music career and it is very, very possible.

So again, take advantage of that freebie that Leah’s offered today called a Map Your Music Year. You can get it at mapyourmusicyear.com. And if you’re interested again, go to the website today, learn more about… I’d love to have you in the Inner Circle membership. If you’re not a member of that yet, just $19.97 a month and you get a big old cool newsletter slash magazine, whatever we call it, you get a free mini-course, you get an audio version of the Inner Circle as well, and it is a great way to get yourself learning the ins and outs of music marketing.

29:52 Leah: And by the way, some of our Elite students are in the Inner Circle and they love it. So even our advanced students are loving it.

30:00 CJ: Yeah, so check that out today. That’s at savvymusicianacademy.com/innercircle. But Leah, a pleasure again. We’ll see you next time.

30:12 Leah: See you next time, guys.