5 Business Mindset Basics They Don’t Teach You (For Musicians)

Business begins with mindset.

If your mentality isn’t right, it doesn’t matter how good your strategies are. People will try to pull you down and steal your dream if you let them. You’ll be dead in the water before you ever get started if you aren’t careful.

Strange then that it’s a subject that schools don’t seem terribly interested in addressing.

Not to worry — I’m going to cover the basics here.

1. Consistency

What does consistency mean in business? Showing up every single day to do the work you need to do.

You must develop a seven day per week mindset.

What you focus on grows. Putting energy daily into developing your vision will help you catch momentum.

Read The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and understand how the compound effect works. Doing the right things today may not make much of a difference today or even tomorrow. But doing them consistently over time will result in monumental progress.

2. Commitment

Whether you’re looking to build a business or career, your absolute commitment to your objective is essential to your success.

You must be persistent. But we must be careful with that word.

Some people take that to mean they should never adjust their strategy. That’s just wrong.

The plan that you start with probably isn’t the plan that will get you there. So, ongoing adjustments are a necessary part of your success.

But above all, stay committed to the process of building your business and realizing your vision.

3. Sacrifice

Not many people talk about the sacrifice it requires to build a business.

I’ve sacrificed many things at different times in my career — TV, social gatherings and events, sleep, money, and so on. Other entrepreneurs I’ve talked to have told me the same thing.

Are you prepared to give up some things to move up, or do you just like to talk a big game?

Those who are willing to sacrifice may never need to. The willingness is the key part.

If you are unwilling, you are not yet open to the possibilities. You aren’t fully committed to your future success yet.

4. Long-Term Thinking

Short-term thinking is what causes people to make bad decisions. They spend money they don’t have. They go into debt. They look for ways to treat symptoms instead of digging deeper into the root cause of their troubles.

Long-term thinking is how bands like Metallica, Billy Talent, and The Beatles rose to the top. They had a vision and they stuck with it. The saw what they had and what it had the potential to be. What do these bands all have in common? Their success was 10 years in the making.

It can be hard to imagine where you will be 10 years from now let alone one year, especially since we all deal with troubles in the immediate. But if you stay true to the vision, you increase your chances of breaking through. It may take two years. It may take 20. You must keep going and never give up!

5. Focus

Keep your vision at the forefront. Think about what you’re trying to achieve and always remind yourself of what it is and why you want it. Without a big “why”, most of us will quit before even getting started.

If you have 20 projects on the go, think about how you can cut that down to five. If you can, take that five down to three, and even one. Prioritize only the most important goals in your life and keep plugging away at them.

Ask yourself constantly if your actions match up with your words. If you find yourself saying one thing and doing another, you aren’t prioritizing what you said you were going to do.

Conclusion

There’s nothing magical about these principles. But when I learned them, my eyes opened to a whole new world and way of doing things.

We as artists and creatives tend to be good at spontaneity and flying by the seat of our pants. We’re less good at remaining organized and developing a long-term view of how things could pan out. You will benefit immensely from working on that within yourself.

P.S. Did you get something from this? There will be more great information like this in my forthcoming course, Music Domination Formula. Click here to start your pre-order.