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Set
Goals...
Your Rockstardom
Wasn't Built in a Day
by Sheena
Metal,
Added June 2007
Back to The
Academy
Every musician currently
living on the Planet Earth would love nothing more than to wake up tomorrow in
the midst of their glorious peak of superstardom. But, as Rome
wasn’t built in a day, neither is the career of any
one musician. A musical career is a
long, sometimes arduous journey of tiny advances and minor setbacks filling the
fragile shell of big breaks and huge disappointments. It’s up, it’s down, it’s all around and
hopefully, as time passes, you can see the course of your career building up
slowly through weeks and months and years of steady progress.But how can you tell if your
career is actually going somewhere? How
do you know if you’re really getting closer to your musical dreams? How can you determine whether or not you’re
on the right path? How do you know what
to focus on in the immediacy and what paths can be left for another time when
you are better equipped to tackle them creatively and concretely? While there is no one set way achieve rock
superstardom, the clearest way to realize musical success is to simply set
goals.
As mundane as it may seem,
setting goals, both long and short-term, for your musical project lends the
same kind of structure and discipline to your career that an athlete would use
to train for the Olympics. Realistic
goals enable you to build your band’s list of accomplishments the way a runner
builds his muscles… pumping up your musical achievements as you lift off the
weight of each entertainment roadblock.
And the good news is that you can start today. At any time you may put into effect a list of
goals, large or small, aimed at boosting your career in any given area.
The following are a few tips
that will help you to set some goals so that you may get on your way to
achieving all that you want from your music and the entertainment industry in
general:
Set Goals You Can Achieve
Nothing is more
depressing for an artist than setting lofty goals for yourself and your music
only to bottom out with hopelessness when none of the goals are achieved by the
deadline. So, much of what keeps artists
plugging away in the industry, against all odds, is the positive re-enforcement
of feelings of accomplishment. Keep that
upbeat mojo going by setting goals for your band that you can absolutely
actualize with lots of elbow grease and some good creative flow. Take a minute to assess each potential
achievement and put a realistic time allotment on it so that you’re setting
yourself up to succeed and move onto the next musical goal.
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
It’s all well and good
to set goals just to see if you can do them, but if you’re ultimate goal is to
be a big ole humongous rockstar, then try and set goals that will help you on
your way to a Rolls Royce, a Bentley and a 2,000 square foot infinity swimming
pool. Set a goal to get one article of
press each month, to book a decent gig every two weeks, or to update your
website daily. Give yourself six months
to finish your full-length album, three months to raise the money for your
band’s t-shirts or a year to find a good manager to pitch you to labels. Each one of these goals is a great
achievement on its own but also an important piece in getting your band where
you eventually want it to be. So it’s a
win/win for your career, any way you slice it, and the feelings of
accomplishment will certainly empower you to keep pushing on in the
ever-frustrating music business.
One Goal At A Time
It’s okay to have twenty goals
on the table but they should be lined up in order of immediacy and priority so
that each one is given their own individual time. Trying to work too many angles at one time
may jumble your ability and focus, and leave you at your deadline with six or
seven goals only partially achieved. In
an industry so dependant on “what have you done lately,” it’s always a good
thing to get a goal completed in a timely manner and move onto the next so that
the outside world sees a band that is always accomplishing things, always
achieving, and always succeeding.
If At First You Don’t Succeed
No matter how hard
you try, there will always be goals that elude you past your self-imposed
deadline. While it’s good to discipline
yourself into a regiment of goal-setting/achieving, don’t beat yourself up if
circumstances beyond your control lead you to fall short on a deadline or
two. The most important thing is that
you realize your goal. Secondary to
this, is for you to accomplish your goal in a timely fashion. So, put your emphasis on the success and the positive
achievement and don’t give up on your music and your goal if the deadline rolls
around prematurely.
Once
you set a line of goals in front of you, it’s easy to focus on achieving rather
than worrying about failing. As you
begin to achieve goals, you can rely on the confidence of all you’ve done and
dismiss the angst of worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. You’ll never be able to accomplish everything
all at once, so why not relish the successes that you can manifest immediately
whilst dreaming of the goals you still have yet to achieve. Don’t waste time. Sit down after you read this and scratch out a
list of goals, each with its own timeline.
Find something you can accomplish today for your music, something you
can get done by tomorrow and something terrific you can nail down by the end of
the week. Your band will look better to
industry and fans alike and, most importantly, you’ll look and feel great to
yourself and your music.
RockSuperstardom awaits! Start
knocking back those goals and kick the music biz in the butt, one positive
achievement at a time!
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Sheena Metal is a radio host, producer,
promoter, music supervisor, consultant, columnist, journalist and
musician. Her syndicated radio program, Music Highway
Radio, airs on over 700 affiliates to more than 126
million listeners. Her musicians’
assistance program, Music Highway, boasts over 10,000 members. She currently promotes numerous live shows
weekly in the Los
AngelesArea, where she resides. For more info: http://www.sheena-metal.com.
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