Extreme Ownership of Your Music Career

What's up musicians? It's Jared and welcome back to the Gigging Musician Podcast. It's been a little while because I've been recording a bunch of really cool interviews that will be coming out super soon, with some very high profile musicians and people who run music companies. So look forward to those soon. But today, I wanted to chat a little bit about responsibility. And this is a little bit of a deviation from actual, like gig business advice. But actually, I think I think it has everything to do with gigging and music advice. Because the age old question is, well, whose responsibility is anything, really? And when you're running a band, you know, there's so many issues that could come up, like, you know, whose responsibility is the marketing, which I think I did a podcast on that a couple months ago, whose responsibility is the booking, even as far as like, you know, when mistakes happen? Who is at fault? And so many people, you know, it's just kind of human instincts to want to try to blame others for this. You know, like, if somebody doesn't sound good in the band? Well, it's that person's fault. But if you're the bandleader and if you're a musician who really wants to take ownership of your music career, then we have to start thinking about that question differently. And I was privileged enough to take, you know, in music school, I had an amazing professor, Dr. Christopher Carver, he was the professor of choral conducting at Penn State University. But he taught the intro to conducting class, which was how I actually fell in love with conducting was just because he ran that class so well. And one of the things that he taught me was that if, and when you're conducting a group, which is very similar to being a band leader, or even being the CEO of your own music, career, when you're leading something, anything that happens that could go wrong, and possibly does go wrong, ultimately, is your fault. And this is really hard to hear and grapple with, because, as I mentioned, before, instinct is to blame others. But he was so adamant that as the leader of the group, anything that happens, that goes against what anyone was hoping for, in the context of your musical group, is your fault. And it could be prevented for and accounted for. And at first, I was a little resistant to that idea. I was like, well, I can't control everything. But then when you think about it, you actually do have control over everything. And the minute you realize that you can have control and decide to take control and ownership. That's when everything starts to change. And when you start to your mindset starts to shift from being somebody who lets others determine their fate. And ultimately, like, puts the, the accomplishment of their goals in the hands of others, switches that to being in complete control of their fate, and in control of your own goals. So I, like two weeks ago, my group played a gig that was down in Illinois, it was a long gig. And the client was a little bit disorganized, to say the least. But eventually, we got it together, we got the schedule together. And I had scheduled the musicians to play. And it was a long gig like 430 to eight. But because the client was incredibly disorganized, there was some miscommunication with one of the musicians in that group. And this musician thought, well, we were actually only scheduled to 730. And so, but the gig was actually booked until eight. The gig happens. And then at the gig. The couple wanted the musicians to stay tonight, which was an extra hour past the original time. And there was some back and forth amongst the ensemble amongst the group of like, should we stay like we don't have to? And then Yes, we will. And we think that this is what the overtime rate will be. And they agreed to stay. And so I wasn't playing this game. So this all comes back to me later. And I hear here's what we agreed upon. Here's what the overtime should be. And they said, awesome. I'll charge the client, and I'll pay it out. And I did. And then I start getting messages from one of the members of the group just saying how that was wrong. And my first thought was like to blame others because I'm I'm human. It was like, Well, what, what went wrong? Where did this breakdown in communication happen? You know, I got very frustrated because I thought I was doing the right thing by providing them with the overtime pay that supposedly was agreed upon. And, as it turns out, it was, there was the original miscommunication where he thought they were supposed to play till 730. So it's like, well, that's an extra hour and a half of overtime. Plus the rate that we discussed in the gig was different than what was paid out, which I didn't know about. And had that been the case, I would have charged the client differently, and, and everything. And so it took me a little bit, which I'm kind of embarrassed about. But I'm glad I'm I finally did when I realized like, ultimately, the miscommunication was my fault. Because as the guy who creates book live, the software developer, and the guy who works with all these 1000s of musicians, I need to create and keep improving the system to make it 100% bulletproof, even for these tiny little details, which you can't really anticipate everything, but you do enough gigs, where you start to realize, here are the hidden pitfalls. And so this whole this whole concept, there's a whole book written about it, which I have not read yet, but I would really love to, it's called Extreme Ownership, where you are taking ownership over everything that happens. And you're taking ultimate responsibility. And deciding that you are going to create the perfect conditions for both the people who hire you, and for the people that you hire, to play your gigs. And if there's any problem in your system, it's not somebody else's fault. It's your fault. And so if it's your fault, then it's your responsibility to fix it. And this is my kind of vow to you listening to this podcast, and to the universe, that I vow to always take responsibility for it. And issue apologies where I need to, and then make the changes solve the problems that you know, might not feel like my problems, but they are. So it's my responsibility to solve them. And I will continue to do that. I will continue to keep building book live the software tool into the perfect gigging tool, so that none of these miscommunications could happen. I just actually added a new feature last weekend, which is auto pay, because another thing that I wasn't taking as, as good responsibility as I should have was, you know, issuing payments in a very timely manner. I my gold standard is to pay musicians either at the gig or at latest 24 hours after. And there would be some times where I'd to log in to book live and click the Pay button. And I would do that two days after. And this is me taking Extreme Ownership by saying no, I'm going to make the system automatically pay out 24 hours after that's the default. So everybody gets paid on time. And the benefit is that by taking Extreme Ownership, putting in the work to make this AutoPay happen, they actually have to do less work now. Because I no longer have to log in after every gig and go down the list and click pay pay pay pay. Not that it was much work in the first place. But now you don't even have to remember to do it. So, anyway, that's my long rant about Extreme Ownership and taking responsibility of your music career of your gigging act. And I hope that this helps and inspire some of you. Because if you are able to get past the idea that bad things that happen are other people's fault. Then you're able to get over that and start to actually make changes in your life in your gigging act in your music career. That will give you ultimate control over your destiny. So that's me, I'll step off my soapbox right now. If you haven't, at this point, gotten a chance to get a copy of the Gigging Secrets ook. You got to do it. I just got off a podcast episode with the her name is Christine Smith, host of The Musicians versus The World Podcast. I gave her an advanced copy of the book and she loved it. So I wrote this book for gigging musicians like you get your copy online at GiggingSecrets.com and look forward to the next episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. May all your performances be spectacular!