Cultivating A Growth Mindset
After understanding that the right mindset can change your perspective from a “Starving Artist” to someone who sees all the opportunities laid before them. You need to discover your strengths, develop skills, and learn disciplines that will enable you to reach your goals.
Part of having the right mindset is adopting what is known as a growth mindset.
Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. – Graphic by Nigel Holmes
As a musician and creative entrepreneur, when you adopt a growth mindset, you will be willing to take calculated risks, focus on self-development and personal growth, better understand how the music business operates, and know when to delegate work to experts and professionals.
Once you’ve begun to master your mind, you can begin to focus on what your strengths are related to the skills involved in becoming a successful artist.
Review Your Skills
Whether you learn these skills yourself, already know how to do them, or find others who can help you; they are key for a thriving music career in a digital age. Many of these skills are also transferable and can apply to other industries and jobs.
I have identified 25 different types of hard skills.
(skills that are acquired through formal education and training programs, including college, apprenticeships, short-term training classes, online courses, and certification programs, as well as through hands-on experience.)
Plus, 12 types of soft skills.
(skills that include people skills, communication skills, listening skills, time management, and empathy, among others.)
These skills are what is required if you wish to have any success in the music business.
They vary from knowing how to create your products, content, and platforms, as well as understanding how to inspire, problem-solve, manage projects, and communicate your brand. I’ve listed them below.
Soft Skills
- Adaptability
- Communication
- Creative thinking
- Dependability
- Work ethic
- Teamwork
- Positivity
- Time management
- Motivation
- Problem-solving
- Critical thinking
- Conflict resolution
Hard Skills
- Project Management
- Budgeting
- Market Research
- Legal
- Administrative
- Bookkeeping
- Accounting
- Musicianship
- Performance
- Music Production
- Digital Media Production
- Recording
- Editing
- Songwriting
- Music Arrangement
- Graphic Design
- Photography
- Videography
- Copywriting (not copyright)
- Sales
- Marketing
- Web Design
- Database Management
- Software Development
- Analytics
As some who has launched and managed multiple music businesses, bands, and artist careers. I can say in my experience you will need to be – at least to a basic level – able to understand and implement all of these skills.
Seeing all those different skill sets can be daunting, especially if you are starting out. But, in order to succeed you need to have an awareness of your strengths and weaknesses.
Discover Your Strengths
There are many ways to assess what you are and aren’t good at. Taking a look at the list of skills and getting a feeling for what you’re good at is a place to start. You will naturally be drawn to certain things, and as musicians, it tends to be the creative skills.
I imagine if you’re reading this you already have some skill in musicianship, being a Bizy musician. 😉
Beyond your initial feeling for what you enjoy or already have some skill in, you can apply tools such as SWOT analysis to your skillset.
For those that wish to work directly with me, I have a method of SWOT analysis that I help my clients work through when developing strategies and tactics for their business models.
The concept is based on applying the following criteria to the listed skills.
- For a skill to be a strength you must have sufficient resources and/or the ability to do it competently.
- A skill is a weakness if you have the basic resources and/or a fundamental understanding but can improve.
- Leveraging an opportunity for a skill depends if you have access to special resources and/or can act on a specific circumstance.
- A skill is a threat to your success if you lack the resources and/or ability to do it competently.
Using this way of thinking and having an awareness of your strengths will help with the next stage of planning and deciding what tasks and disciplines you should focus on.
Eliminate, Delegate, and Automate
If you’ve heard of Tim Ferriss (Find and follow him on socials if you haven’t) then you’re aware of his book and blog “The 4 Hour Work Week”.
Amongst many great concepts, Tim lives and preaches his mantra of eliminating unnecessary tasks from our daily lives and then outsourcing and automating as much of the rest. This frees up time (our most precious resource) to focus on what truly matters in our lives.
It is this basic principle that I continue to apply in the process of creating and releasing music as an artist.
Once you know your strengths, this is a highly useful approach to adopt as creative content creators.
By being ruthless with what tasks and activities we personally do, we can optimize our creative output, and therefore potential success, without the burnout and disappointment that many musicians face.
You can also take this idea a step further and apply the concept to your whole life.
From the moment you wake, are you doing things on autopilot without much thought?
Or, are you making conscientious actions towards your goals each day?
It’s ok to have downtime, do fun things, and be “unproductive”. As long as you’re not thoughtlessly wasting resources (i.e. time & money) or using entertainment to escape from the drudgery of your existence.
Each choice we make in life takes our attention and comes at the cost of not being able to do something else. We only have a finite amount of time and energy each day; use it wisely.