00:18 CJ: Welcome to the Savvy Musician Show. This is C.J. Ortiz I’m the branding and mindset coach here at the Savvy Musician Academy. Delighted once again to be with my lovely counterpart, Leah McHenry. Always a pleasure. How are you doing today?

00:37 Leah: Just doing fine and dandy.

00:41 CJ: Always a delight. We get excited about talking about this sort of stuff because we know that it’s creating value and it’s obviously welcomed by the audience, but also it gives us both a little chance to, you know the old saying iron sharpens iron, or I like to say strike and ignite. You throw a match in my lantern, I throw a match in your lantern it kind of flames things up. It’s always a pleasure for us to do these things because we get so much time to talk because we’re both very, very busy people, don’t have a lot of time to do that. So the podcast is a great opportunity.

But we get to share this with you guys and you guys are so awesome and special. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. If you’d like, we would love to hear back from you. You can leave a review with whatever podcast player you’re using, you know if it’s Spotify or Stitcher or iTunes or whatever you use, please feel free, leave a comment, give us some stars, go to our Facebook group pages, wherever you are, and you can also leave a comment there and tell us your thoughts and what you’re getting out of this show or something you’d like for us to cover in the future. We would love to hear from you.

Before we get started today, let me share a student spotlight. This is one of our Elite students, David Williams. He has a band called Welter. I had a branding coaching session with him last year, a very talented three-piece band out of Australia with a very unique niche. He writes #win. Two years ago Welters year turnover was around $3,000, most being from gigs and the odd sales. By the end of this financial year from July, 2019 to June, 2020… what he means by… Oh well, okay, by the time this year ends for him in June, 2020. He said, “Our turnover will be just over $30,000. Thanks to this course, Leah, CJ and all the coaches plus students. It’s taught me to think outside of the box. Through the help of CJ with branding, what a game-changer that was, I’ve also ended up with this no-fear attitude thanks to Steve and Leah, which has led me to making a deal with the CEO of a company to do exclusive house concerts with a wine tasting that the company was paying us to do.”

This has been a huge success for both parties so far and I will be expanding this with them for the next year and onwards. Two years ago, even if I’d had the idea, there’s no way I would have walked into a CEO’s office and said, “You need this,” which is pretty much what I said. This is the fifth income stream I wanted. Sales are picking up and our ad costs are coming down and our email list is building.

03:28 Leah: That’s fantastic.

03:28 CJ: Isn’t that great?

03:28 Leah: I love it.

03:31 CJ: What’s funny about this is that, that’s actually what he and I talked about because when we had our branding session, again the music you hear is music, it’s the kind of stuff you would hear on the radio. Very, very radio-friendly, very, very encouraging. So I was asking him, “Just where is he seeing some results?” And he started to mention to me and he said, “Well, it’s all in these wine things, wine events and wine, this and wine that.” And I said, “Why all the wining? Where does all this wine thing coming from?” Because, oh, I forgot to mention all of the band members work in the wine industry. So I said, tell me about your live events. And he said, “Well, we’ve played some of these live wine type event.” And I said, “That’s perfect. Target that market.”

They had a song, a very top 40 like song called, The Good Life. And I said, “Hey man, you know something, nothing symbolizes the good life, like a glass of wine. You could be a billionaire or you could be just middle-class and the same glass of wine signifies the same thing. And there’s a whole lot of people who love wine and fine food. And for them, the good life is not offensive. It’s something they want to hear, somebody else of a different class or whatever you say the good life and they think, “Oh, I’ll get that crap out of here.” But no, for that kind of audience, the good life is symbolized by the glass of wine. So I said, “You should be targeting these wine events, you should be doing this sort of thing.”

04:59 Leah: Totally.

05:00 CJ: And so just to hear him have that confidence to walk into a CEO’s office and say, “You need Welter to play at your events.” That’s amazing. So here again, is somebody taking a market, a music market, which is very competitive if you’re competing for radio space. But he divided the market into a particular subculture that’s just into fine food and fine wine. Isn’t that awesome?

05:24 Leah: That is splendid. It’s smart and sustainable too. They can just keep doing this.

05:31 CJ: Yep, I don’t see wine going out of style anytime soon.

05:35 Leah: No, nope.

05:36 CJ: So good for you, my friend. Good for you. Okay, so today this is an interesting topic because it was brought on by the last podcast episode we did because we were talking about Leah’s building the sister brand, her Mythologie Candles. And she had an experience we’re going to talk about here in a little bit. But it highlighted something I think will affect anybody who puts themselves out there online, Leah. And that is being discouraged, being discouraged by the feedback that you get, being discouraged when people don’t value you, being discouraged when people are overly critical, as they say, hate on you. You prepare things, you do so much with the right intent and then people question you, right? People criticize you, and you know how it is online, the speech is so harsh, the things that people would never say to your face, right? They’re more than happy to say online because what are you going to do? Get on a plane, fly 2,000 miles a slap their face? No.

So they are so free to do that, but with our little tender souls, it can discourage us. And even though it’s something that you’ve experienced, obviously umpteen times selling your own music and of course marketing, even the Savvy Musician Academy being questioned, being criticized, all of that, this appeared or raise its ugly head again. And tell me a little bit about that. What happened?

07:06 Leah: Yeah, so I’ll just say from the outset, I was not prepared when we launched Savvy Musician Academy, I really hadn’t had a lot of negative feedback yet because just thinking, this is also five years ago in my music career. I’ve come a long way since then as well. But it’s always a vulnerable feeling to put your soul out there to the internet, even just with your music. That’s bad enough. Some of you guys too have other businesses outside of your music and you’re guitar teachers or you run some other business and you’re learning how to promote it online. In fact, so many people who go through our programs now have the skill sets to promote online. They know how to do advertising, they know how to do funnels, they know how to get email addresses and all of that stuff.

It allows them to put themselves out more as well. So that’s what I did with Savvy Musician Academy. I thought, “Hey, maybe I’ll market this little e-book and maybe it will provide another little income for us since I think it could help some people.” And then that turned into the full-fledge academy. At the time I was not prepared for the onslaught of criticism that I was going to get. Here’s some red-headed chick coming out of nowhere saying she’s making money from her music and doing it without touring and she’s got five kids and blah, blah blah. That’s my story. I led with my story and, of course, we were successful right away. Actually the first month that we launched blew us out of the wire. I was like what? Like it was a pinch me, I had no idea that it was going to do what it did.

We were having to hire people in month two of the business because it grew so fast. It exploded so fast, we weren’t prepared. But at the same time, for just as many students as we got enrolled and the business was booming, exploding, at the same rate, I was being criticized, my name dragged through the mud being called every name under the sun liar, I don’t have integrity, I’m a scam artist, snake oil salesman, every name you can think of, daily, and I wasn’t prepared for that. And at the time before we were hiring people, it was me reading every single comment to address the skepticism or the insults, ban people. We didn’t have systems and processes for that kind of thing yet either. And these are all new objections.

Every time I saw one of these objections slash insults, I had to quickly learn the difference between, okay, what’s an objection in a rude way and what’s a flat out insult? Because there’s a difference between the two, people who have an objection, it’s actually addressing in a question they have for themselves. And if I can develop a thicker skin and get over my ego for a second and not take offence, I can probe a little deeper and ask them what is their true question. And it also informed me that I could do a better job in my copy in the ads. Because if people are having objections it means I haven’t addressed the questions that would kind of shut that up.

I started addressing their objections right in our ad copy. And that helped a lot. So, for example, the number one question people would blurt out in the comment is, you make all your money from selling these courses, not from music. Oh, I know if I’m going to make money, I’ll just tell people how to make money. I won’t actually go and do the thing. So that was the number one thing that came up and I started addressing it in the ad copy saying, “By the way, no, that’s not where I make all my money from. Did you know you can have more than one passion in life, people? That I really am a musician, I really am doing this and I also teach this. Isn’t that cool?” And I would also say to them, so people can’t make money off of teaching other people? Do you also get angry and upset and tell every piano and guitar teacher that they’re also a fraud because they make money off of teaching other people?

You better go down the street and tell them that they’re all snake oil salesman too. Anyway, as you can see, I learned how to address it and I would hit the nail on the head. I would address the elephant in the room right in the ad copy. A lot of times it would shut people up, but a lot of people don’t read either and they just blurt out whatever. I’ve been facing that for five years now. You’d think I have a really thick skin by now. Guess what? I don’t. I do, I do, and a lot of times I’ll read it and it doesn’t affect me at all. Every once in a while something will get under my skin and I don’t know why. All I can say is that at the end of the day, I’m an artist. At the end of the day, I really am sensitive. I really care about people so much.

And that also can make you weary when your name is tarnished. It’s my face on the cover of this, SMA. It’s my story. It’s me. And that’s something that… my staff, sure, they all take it on to. But at the end of the day, it’s my face at the moment. And so that can really make one very weary. There’s forum threads, there’s probably hate groups on Facebook against that music. I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t go looking for this stuff and I don’t want to, not for my mental health, it’s not good. But because I understand if somebody isn’t hating on you, if you don’t have trolls, if you don’t have people who are flat out insulted that you’re out in the world doing something, you probably don’t stand for anything.

12:44 CJ: Right, right.

12:45 Leah: I should expect the fact that if I’m standing for something if I’m helping people if I’m making a mark on this world, I will have haters. I will have people who don’t value me and, in fact, think I’m scum of the earth. Unfortunately, there’s just that many idiots out there who really associate that. And so I’m being vulnerable on this podcast, sharing all of this because I want to set an example for everybody else that, A, it’s part and parcel is that the expression?

13:16 CJ: Yeah.

13:17 Leah: With putting yourself on the internet with success comes also, there’s this other ugly side where people don’t value you. They don’t see all the hard work you’ve put into it. They assume the worst, they will critique and they will try to invalidate you in any way, shape or possible. They’ll dig dirt on you. They try to find stuff on you to try and invalidate you and make you completely, they want you to go away. They want to discourage you to the point where you never do this ever again. That’s the goal. Steal your joy, rob you and shut you up.

13:54 CJ: Yeah, and that can be… if you’re doing this, for example, just in music, it can be other bands. There is that level of competition and when you first told me about this, the first thing that hit me was this is envy.

14:09 Leah: Oh and haven’t even shared what actually happened recently yet.

14:12 CJ: Yeah. And the difference between jealousy and envy, envy is just a very intense form of jealousy to the degree that you actually take action on it, and you try to equalize the balance. And so that old illustration of, you have the one girl who is jealous of the cheerleader. And so it’s one thing to talk behind their back that’s jealousy and action, but then when you pour acid over the face of the cheerleader to try and destroy what she has or what she does or her strength or anything like that, that’s the end result of envy. Envy in society is a very damaging thing. We’re watching that politically, socially, we’re seeing envy, envy between classes, conflict, racial conflict, but not necessarily, people aren’t necessarily engaged in it, there’s the social controllers that are instigating these things because it obviously it empowers government, these kinds of stuff.

But envy is such a powerful drive in people because they can’t figure it out for them and it’s so more or less becomes just a reflection. They want to project obviously on you, what they struggle with themselves. But what again, these experiences with Savvy, what in the world… You’re just making candles now, Leah, you’re making little nice innocent candles. You’re not hurting anybody. You’re not breaking any law. What could anybody possibly have to say about somebody making candles?

15:46 Leah: Oh my gosh. I’ll say this from the outset, I did this to myself because I thought for some reason that this raging criticism is just for some reason musicians and it’s not, I find out. Okay. So what happened was after the initial launch of Mythologie Candles, if you didn’t hear the episode, go back one episode and listen to it. So it’s my sister brand, a fantasy inspired candle company, for fun. Anyway, of course, for months and months, I’ve been members of all these different handmade products groups out there, candle making groups and stuff because there’s a great resource where I can search, and, oh they’re troubleshooting this and the wick size, and I’m having trouble with my wax is doing something weird. I’ve been quietly learning from people for months now.

So, I’ve gotten a tremendous amount of value out of it and just getting little answers and stuff and I think, “Hey, I don’t need to reinvent the wheel. People have solved these problems, searching it up and blah, blah, blah.” And that’s always the value of groups. So after this little launch, and of course anytime people would launch their new brand, they will post about it and everybody celebrates with them. So I’m like, “Cool, I’m going to post and celebrate too because I’ve worked so hard on this. These people will understand what kind of work I put into it and they will appreciate it.” And while I’m doing it, I know I’m probably one of the top, $3,500 a day. Some of them don’t make that an entire month. Somebody is going to ask me how I did it. So what I’ll do is just share a few tips of what I did not sell anything, there’s no links there. No, nothing like that. I’m just adding value because I want to be nice and because I have value to offer and I’ve gotten so much from them, so why don’t I just give some value back?

So that’s what I did. I posted about my successful candle launch. I actually gave them a quick breakdown of what I did, a short version of the podcast previous to this, a short version of what I did, because they can do it too. And I thought, “Hey, and at the end of the day, the takeaway was in the post, learn online marketing, guys, that will really help you in your businesses.” So, I post that and thread went nuts, it went bananas. Of course, everybody’s super positive and we’re like, “Wow, this is amazing.” And the next thing you know, everybody’s asking me, “Can I hire you to do that? Can you teach me how to do that? Oh, I wish I had online marketing skills. Oh, I never thought of having an email list. How do I get emails?” And I’m going, “Oh, my goodness, this is not what I was trying to do here. But it started,

We’re talking hundreds of comments of people being flabbergasted that I could do $3,500 a day, which is amazing to me. But it’s also like, “Okay, it’s 3,500 bucks and they’re just blown away.” Then people start asking how they can do it too. Like I said, “Can I hire you? Can you do a webinar? Do you have a course?” They’re asking me, begging me for this. After a while, I finally posted a comment and I said, “Hey guys, thank you so much for the support, again, I was just here to share something because I’ve learned so much from you. I’m not here to sell anything. I don’t even have a link. I got nothing for you. However, there’s so much interest here. If there’s enough interest, I could maybe consider doing like a one-off webinar, like a power webinar where I just show you what I did. But I really don’t have time for this, to be honest. I don’t, I have too many things that are going on right now.”

So there would have to be so much demand that I couldn’t say no, basically. Then from that point on, it went sideways. People then, suddenly, I’m a snake oil salesman. I’m selling some kind of MLM. I’m dishonest. I’m advertising in a gross way. Someone’s like, “Eew, gross advertising, I lack integrity, this is just a scam. Oh, this is why marketers, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And it all started with one little, I call it a goblin comment, just like from a goblin, a little goblin just reared its little ugly head. And it was like one drop of poison. One drop of poison and the whole thread then attracted more poison and more goblins and they started going on and on and on. It got to the point I was beside myself. I was mortified that it had even happened.

This is going to sound hilarious coming from me, someone with an online business, I’m going to say they were really mean. You won’t normally hear me saying stuff like that, but they were really mean. I saw that and I was like, I fricking hate people and I quit. I hate people, I quit. I’m never teaching anybody ever again. And there was other people going, “What are you talking about? There’s nothing wrong with this post. So like blah, blah blah.” And I ended up deleting my whole post at the end of the day, even though it would have helped more people to want to read it and just give them some tips, I deleted it.

I was so upset from that and I think I was shocked because I had assumed that, “Oh, there’s only those kinds of trolls and skeptics in the music industry. Other people are more reasonable.” No they’re not. There’s a percentage of the entire population that are freaking idiots. Okay, let’s just say, are there people out there scamming who are just trying to profit off of other people and don’t actually offer value? Yes, there are. They exist. And maybe that’s why people are skeptical, but it taught me a few things. Number one, I realized that they didn’t know my value. They didn’t know. They had no context to know. Leah knows what she’s talking about because she has these other successful businesses. She’s done this and she spent a boatload of money for mentors and coaching and programs to get to the point where she was able to give us succinct steps in a valuable post and they could have taken that and run with it and actually made way more profit in their little candle businesses.

They didn’t know my value. They didn’t appreciate where I was coming from. So in that sense, I did it to myself because… But the other thing is if I came off and said, “Hey, I’ve made millions of dollars and I blah, blah, blah.” Then I’d be bragging and they would also jump down my throat, you know what I’m saying? Like you lose in any scenario in this format. They didn’t value me and therefore they didn’t value the content. They couldn’t see the value in the advice. There were a lot of people who did, right? There were so many people who are grateful, but those trolls that all of a sudden came and ruined the whole thing, they assumed the worst and it just showed me that sometimes it’s amazing when people do value you, but for some reason, the negative always seems to stick out more.

I think that’s just human nature. I just want people to know that there’s nothing wrong with you if that happens to you. If you have for every 10, 20, 100 fans who say they love your music and you get one person saying that’s a piece of crap and for some reason, that’ll ruin our day. We try not to let it ruin our day, and we try to go back and go, okay, well there’s a hundred other people who love my music. That’s what I’m supposed to be focusing on. Why does that one stick out and discourage us so much?

23:13 CJ: Yeah. I think one of the things that we do, words obviously only have as much authority over us as we grant them. If somebody were to criticize you, say the worst things to you in person, it would obviously affect you, right? There’s no way it doesn’t affect you. But if the same words were said by someone who knows you very well, the words would have so much more power than if those words were uttered by a stranger to you. So what’s the difference? They’re the exact same critical words. Why does the one from somebody who knows you differ from somebody who’s a stranger? Simply because you grant, you, not them, you grant more authority to the words of the person who knows you.

The power of a word over you has as much power as you grant it… So we have to find out why does this negative comment, why do the few that say, you know, the bad things, the mean things, why do they have more authority than the people who say the good thing? It’s because we want it to be comprehensive. We want it to be total because in our hearts it’s total.

24:28 Leah: Yeah, and you know what? On that note too, I found myself not appreciating my fans’ appreciation, because it’s like a mode you have to go into it. It’s hard to let the good comments touch your heart and not also the bad ones. You go into a defensive… Where you kind of desensitize yourself, but then you’re desensitized to all of it. So that’s the hard part is like I’m very touched by every Elite and SMA testimonial that comes in. They mean a lot to me, but it’s difficult for me to let it sink in because I’m also having to shut out all these other and filter all the negative stuff that happens. I’m also having to have a thick skin and not let those ones get to me, but let other ones get to me. It’s difficult to do that emotionally.

25:20 CJ: Yeah. Yeah. I think you can harden yourself to the positive comments and then you’re still sensitive to the negative ones. But the other thing is that we, especially people like you and I who have followings, sizable ones that because you’re always available, you’re always posting. So you hear from so many people every day and there’s only so many times you can write, thank you, my pleasure, or, Hey, that’s great. I’m glad you got value out of that. I mean, it just over and over, and over, and over and over again. I used to say if I never heard another compliment for the rest of my life, I think I’d be good.

26:03 Leah: Yeah. Because there’s a lot of them.

26:05 CJ: I saw this meme the other day, somebody had written, it says, you just got 15 likes for the first time on your Facebook posts. Then it shows a Google search engine where the person wrote in on the search, how to handle fame. And I forget, I honestly do. I forget that most people don’t do what you and I do. So they only deal with things, for the most part, on their personal page. So they’re not used to a torrent of constant feedback, constant results. When people say to me, when they asked me about what I do and where do I get my gratification from and all this sort of stuff, I said, “It’s hard not to like the gig” I said because every morning you wake up to people telling you how wonderful you are.

There’s not a lot of things you can do that, but you get too used to that. And it can come sometimes as a shock to your system, especially if you’re sensitive that somebody doesn’t like what you’re doing and they’re being actually mean spirit about it. For me, prior to social media, I spent so many years in more academic circles around philosophical and theological discussions and we would have them in these forums and on blogs and that sort of thing. And you want to talk about ruthless. This is before the age of trolls. So it was just very, very intelligent people, not afraid to go after your particular position.

So it wasn’t just insults, it was literal criticism of ideas. But the advantage of that is that now coming into the online space, it’s a whole lot easier now to deal with run of the mill troll, run of the mill hater, who’s only been on the internet since 2009 and they’re just venting themselves emotionally and did not take it seriously. So for those, Leah, again, this is… The negative stuff still stands out to me and I don’t want to pretend that it doesn’t, believe me, it does. The issue is going to be, how long it takes to recover from when somebody does this to you? For you, about a day, right?

28:22 Leah: Well, I was a lot more flustered over that than I normally get. Like, if I see negative Facebook comments, whatever, it’s like I’m always rolling my eyes most of the time it’s like, oh, gosh, oh, so original.

28:35 CJ: Haven’t heard that before?

28:37 Leah: Yeah, are you accusing me of making all my money from courses? No one’s ever accused me of that. It’s just like yawn, right? A lot of it’s yawn. But then this took me by surprise, I wasn’t expecting it to go that haywire. And I think for me and why I had the reaction like, I hate people and I want to quit, is because it goes so far beyond just like they don’t value me, which would be just neutral, right? Like they don’t care. If someone didn’t care that’s one thing. But then swinging to the other end of the spectrum where it’s no, I’m trying to take advantage of people, I’m malicious or, especially saying that I’m disingenuous or that I have some other… that I don’t have integrity. That one got to me because that’s my life. You asked Steve, you ask anybody my greatest… not even a pet peeve, it’s bigger than that.

Let’s just say I cannot handle feeling inauthentic or being inauthentic. It hurts my feelings living in a rental house because the walls are different color and that’s not authentic to who I am. It’s like not the color that represents me. I have to have it represent me to feel authentic. And so if anyone accuses me of being not genuine or anything, that one really gets under my skin. Anyway, it ruffled my feathers way more than it should have, but it did teach me a few things. And that’s also why guys, you’ve got to know when you leave reviews for us on this podcast, you write your wins in the groups, it really carries a lot of weight. Especially for me being the face of all of this, having to put up with so much crap, you don’t even know half of it.

Also, I get discouraged sometimes from students’ lack of results. I take it on myself as though it was my responsibility. Like if I’m just laying all the cards out here, I have a hard time with that. It bums me out when I’ve seen that people have paid money and they don’t log in, and they don’t finish their lessons and they’re not really trying very hard. I take it personal and I sometimes feel a responsibility that was my fault. And then if they say, it was my fault and, “Well, I’m not getting any results because blah, blah, blah.” It hurts.

And I know in my head, I know logically that’s not true. I know logically it’s not my responsibility, that’s them. And I try to make it very clear in all of our coaching and courses that it is on them. But that doesn’t mean at the end of the day that I don’t care very deeply that they aren’t getting what they were looking for and that I feel somehow like it was my fault. And I know it’s not true, but I feel it, and I am just saying it, I’m just saying it so everybody knows, I’m human. Don’t for a second think that I’m some kind of superwoman. People tell me that and that’s not true. I’m very, very mortal.

31:47 CJ: Well, I can imagine, come on guys. This is a mother of five kids. She homeschools her kids, how much of a criminal can she be? Be serious now. It’s just a ridiculous statement. It’s so easy for people to throw around, pejoratives like that, and name call and all of that. Of course, they don’t want a microscope coming up their backside. They don’t want to be judged like that. And so it’s the old, he who is without sin cast the first stone. And I think that’s, for our listeners as we wrap this up, I think that’s what they have to remember. Is number one, you got to get used to it. You got to get used to the fact that you’re going to get people who don’t value what you do and they’ve got very harsh things to say about your music.

It doesn’t matter. You have an obligation to honor the gifts and talents and abilities that are inside of you. That’s your commitment. You’re not doing things for reciprocity. You’re not doing things for what you get back. You’re doing things because it’s your responsibility to the gifts that you have. You have a love for music because you’re wired that way. And the best way to honor those precious gifts and talents that you have, those are precious man. Those are pure, those are pure. The only way you can honor those is to make them the most that they could ever be. Just to develop them to the absolute max. That’s your only obligation. The fact that people get off on it and have a great time with it and enjoy it. Man, that’s icing on the cake. But you’ve got to honor your gifts.

You have to be able to say, I must do this because I can’t do otherwise. I have to play music, I have to create, I have to fulfill that artist’s calling. And if that calling’s eating a hole on the inside of you, you have to answer that. And so, think of it as enemies, as Leah alluded to that one person as the goblin, little leprechaun, evil leprechauns and evil little goblins, I don’t mean to slander all the leprechauns out there, if you’re listening. And all of these evil little urchins that are out there that they’re more bark than they are bite. Right? And that’s all they are. And you have the power to give them authority in their words and give their words power over you. And here’s the good part about it, because you can grant power to their words over you, grant authority to their words over you, that means you can also revoke it.

You can take it back. You can take that authority back. And so having some downtime after a surprising, challenging session like Leah had in that particular group, you may need to take a little time just to regroup, but you’re going to get past it. It’s going to go out of your mind. You don’t want to quit. Because I understand I’ve been in that play. I can’t tell you how many times Leah, I have been in that place because people feel like, the old verse, it says you’re casting pearls before swine.

34:56 Leah: That’s exactly it. And to be honest, sometimes guys, you have to know, we really don’t have to do any of this. That, that one instance I said to myself, fine.

35:07 CJ: I don’t have to do it.

35:08 Leah: I don’t have to do this. I won’t share anything. I’ll go ahead and make another successful business and I won’t share one single thing about how I did it or help one single person, fine. And you guys can continue to struggle, do it on your own and I won’t even help you. That’s how it can make us feel, as creators and coaches and teachers where we’re just like, that’s it. There are the people who are so amazing and beautiful and they are sharing all that. So I don’t want to discredit them for all the encouragement they do give us, but we do get to the point where it can be really tough to just say, fine, that’s it. I’ll keep it to myself.

And so, anyways, but we’re here on this podcast sharing all of this because I think it’s important to talk about it. I think it’s important for students to understand that their coaches, their mental health is important too. It’s not all about them. So this is a give and take scenario. There’s a win-win scenario. And so I think it is very healthy to have this discussion and just let people know. And yeah, at the end of the day, this is I think the number one thing, I feel like it’s an attack on your joy. Those comments are meant to steal your joy and taint the process of your journey and of the music itself. And the idea is to get you to stop altogether. And so that’s where I think CJ, you’re right, you can’t grant them that much authority. If it gets you down, okay, give yourself a couple of hours and then regroup, like you said, regroup.

Get back to that feeling, that place a feeling good and inspired and happy. Stop thinking about the thing again. Stop thinking about the person in the comment and move on. And we’re in the age where people never had to do this at this level or deal with this sort of thing at this level with the internet. This is all new stuff, but it’s not going away. So I think we have to learn how to roll with it. And also want to say, especially as musicians becoming entrepreneurs and marketers, we do have an advantage over so many other marketers. And the fact is that we are highly sensitive people. We are so in touch with people and psychology and feelings and emotions that we really are unstoppable when you combine that with marketing knowledge and knowhow, you put those two things together and you are such a powerhouse.

And it means that we have, an Achilles heel. We have vulnerabilities because of it. But if you know it, it makes it easier. I know that I’m triggered when I don’t feel valued. When people don’t value me, that makes me want to quit. And I know that’s my trigger. And it’s probably your trigger too, when your fans don’t value you, you don’t feel valued. It makes you want to quit.

37:52 CJ: Right? Yep. That’s exactly right, exactly right.

37:56 Leah: So now that you know…

37:58 CJ: Yeah, now that you know you can do something about it, you may fall prey to it, but at least now that you know, you can do something about it. I’ll leave everybody with the two secrets of the ages when it comes to this, the greatest wisdom that you’ll ever be taught. I know I was taught it and practice it as a little kid in the schoolyard. And again, this is like beyond Buddha stuff. Okay? So this is really, really deep. But I learned it as a kid. These two things. Number one, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. And number two, I’m rubber you’re glue, right? Or you’re rubber, I’m glue. What is it with, I’m rubber you’re glue, whatever you say, bounces off of me. I’m rubber you’re glue, whatever you say, bounces off of me and sticks to you.

Even in those schoolyard days, you were prepared for trolls, right? Because there was always going to be a war of words. Whether you’re a kid or now that you’re online is the same stupid elementary school stuff. Nobody’s grown up.

39:11 Leah: Just on a mass scale.

39:13 CJ: Just on a mass scale. So, don’t take it seriously guys, don’t give it any credence. As we all like to say, I will give it all, I tell somebody in the comments, somebody will write something and they’ll go real wordy and it’s really hateful. But they’re kind of, they’re not just trying to troll, they’re being kind of serious, but they’re mean. And I just tell them, I’m going to give your comment all the attention it deserves.

39:35 Leah: Silence.

39:36 CJ: That’s all I write. And they’re like, okay, I’m waiting. I’m waiting, I’m waiting. I’m waiting. And nothing ever comes in like, oh shoot. It deserves nothing.

39:46 Leah: That’s a good one. I’m going to steal that.

39:47 CJ: Yeah, please do. Anyway, okay guys, listen. Please, again, as we said at the outset, please leave a review for the podcast and-

39:56 Leah: So we don’t quit.

39:57 CJ: So we don’t quit and get all hurt and discouraged. And listen, if you’re just getting started out with the Savvy Musician Academy, this podcast, I want to encourage you, you might be interested in… Even if you’re not, our Elite students love what I’m about to tell you about the Inner Circle membership. But this is an awesome program. It’s just $19.99 a month and you get a free just full-on newsletter/ magazine that’s downloadable with articles on the latest news and marketing and social media articles on how-tos, you get mindset, motivation stuff. You get tips, you get tools, you get recommended books of the month, you get special student spotlights.

Awesome to get introduced to marketing and reinforce your marketing knowledge and skills and keep you up to date if you’re more Elite. And then also you get a free bonus, a video mini-course each month on a particular topic. It’s really, really awesome. And this also a downloadable audio version, which I read myself if you’d like that.

40:59 Leah: Beautiful, sexy voice.

41:00 CJ: With a beautiful, sexy voice. And so you get all of that for just $19.99 a month. You can sign up today at savvymusicianacademy.com/innercircle. Leah, always a pleasure.

41:13 Leah: I hope this was helpful for you guys.

41:15 CJ: It was helpful.

41:16 Leah: Yeah. See you in the next one.