Hey, what's up gigging pros. It's Jared and welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast, I want to tell you a quick story about feedback. Now, if you're a musician, you've gotten feedback your entire life ever since you started picking up your instrument or started singing, you got feedback from your teachers, from your family that you played for from your friends. And all of this feedback, you decided to pick and choose which to take, hopefully, you listened to your teachers, and hopefully the feedback that your teachers gave you was good and helped you improve. But regardless, we still get feedback from so many different people. And so the story I want to tell you quickly is that a musician recently reached out to me who is starting her own live music career, she's launching as more like a private events music company. And she was debating what name to use for her company. So she let me know that she had this idea of one that she really loved, it had like kind of an Italian sound to it actually was some Italian words, I'm not gonna let you know what it is right here, because I want to respect her privacy, but she really loved this name. And then she was telling other people about it. Mainly, she was telling other musicians and maybe some friends, hey, I'm thinking about using this name for my company. And she got feedback from one person that said that that name was no good, it reminded them too much of a like foster care facility. Everyone else thought the name was great. But for some reason, this one person's feedback, you know, got in good. She was having with a different name, because she loved that name, and was a good name. And it still is a good name. So her and I chatted over Facebook Messenger. She is a part of my Book More Weddings Challenge right now. And that's going on right now. So that's why she reached out to me, and I let her know, you know, I've been running my private events, music business for five, six years now. Oh, gosh, it's almost seven years. And you know, I get feedback all the time, I get feedback from people who booked me I get feedback from the people who run these event venues that I play at, I get feedback from friends and family and even other musicians, sometimes the musicians who play for me, and sometimes musicians who don't play for me. And when it comes down to it, what is the feedback that matters. And truth be told, the only feedback that matters is feedback from people who are actually in a position to hire you, or recommend you. If you ask for feedback about a business related aspect of your music career. And you ask it from a musician who has no experience with the business aspect of running a music career similar to yours? Well, you're really just asking for an opinion of somebody who isn't qualified to give you that opinion. So it's kind of like asking a percussion teacher, if they could give you feedback on how well you're playing this melody on violin, they might be able to give you some feedback about the rhythm of it, and maybe tone quality. But ultimately, they don't understand the mechanics of playing violin, they don't understand the approach that you need to have going into it, you know, the posture that your body needs to have. And ultimately, they're the wrong person to solicit that specific feedback from. most of whom are unqualified to give us feedback. If we listen to their feedback, essentially, that's very potentially damaging, because if they give you wrong feedback, for example, if this person I was chatting with took the feedback of that's a bad name. Well, she had to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new name that she was just as much in love with. And if she went with a name that she wasn't as in love with as the first one she came up with, well, then that impacts her entire approach to her music business, that like several years down the road, she could still have in the back of her mind, this one piece of feedback that somebody gave her that caused her to choose a name she didn't love. And as a result, maybe she wouldn't put as much effort into growing her music career. And because she's not putting enough effort into it, then the business doesn't grow, she starts to lose money starts to lose faith that she's able to make a living, doing what she loves, and then gives up. Now I know that's like taking that to the extreme. But in our lives, we get so many pieces of feedback like this. And if we listen to them, we run the risk of those similar things happening to us too. I heard there's a phrase for this. I believe it's tall poppy syndrome. And I heard this from another musician who runs kind of a coaching program more for classical musicians. And she was saying, you know, in music school, it's rampant that people have tall poppy syndrome because if you start to stand out and you start to do a great job at something, then you might get a piece of feedback or just self doubt in the back of your mind. It makes you want to shrink down and fit back in with the rest of the crowd, which completely limits your opportunities in life and in your music career. And so what I would say is, listen to your heart, but also listen to the people who are actually giving you valuable feedback. And the most valuable piece of feedback, as I mentioned before, is from people who can actually hire you. You know what if you're say you're like a wedding band? What better person to ask? Does my website resonate with potential brides and grooms? What better person to ask than an actual bride or groom? Like, Hey, you are considering options for your wedding band? Could you take a look at my website and provide me some honest feedback. I'm not just looking for things that are good about it. I want the good and the bad and the ugly, because they're there. They're in that buying mindset. And they're in a position to make a hiring decision for you. One of my mentors, his name is Russell Brunson. I learned a lot of marketing from him. And I've mentioned him before on this podcast. And he says, like when you're putting out marketing into the market, it doesn't matter what his opinion is, doesn't matter what your opinion is, it doesn't matter what the musician's opinion is, because ultimately, it's the market that makes a vote with their wallet. So the best way to get feedback on something is by actually asking people to consume what you're putting out there. Whether if you're trying to get booked, then send them to your website, that's your booking website. If you're trying to grow your streams on Spotify, well put it out on Spotify and get the data. If you're trying to grow a YouTube channel, put out YouTube videos. And you know, don't let your don't let opinions get in the way of you putting stuff out there. Because only once you put it out there, do you get the feedback that actually matters. Alright, so I hope that helps you think about feedback in a different way. And yes, it does get a little uncomfortable, but it's so worth it. Because if you're able to get real true feedback from people whose opinions actually matter, you're gonna grow exponentially faster than if you were to not get started because he listened to a wrong piece of feedback. So thanks for listening and tuning out of The Gigging Musician Podcast. It's been a pleasure being your host today. And remember, "You are just one gig!".