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S2E32 – Music is a Long-Term Game

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In this episode, I talk to you about preparing yourself for the long-term as a music producer.

This music industry requires A LOT OF TIME and patience, which lately, many students of my platform have been trying to rush.

I break down three unique concepts in order to succeed and see results (in addition to my own personal story, which I shared in S1E1 [#001] of Music Production Made Simple):

  • Money
  • Time
  • Skillset

Money is the FUEL that buys us the time to make beats and practice.. Time is the ability to work without distraction and enjoyment while making music in our home studios, and Skillset is actually being able to make good music that you’re proud of.

My highest recommendation is to slow it down, and set your goals.. If you want to learn faster, then listen to S2E16 – See Results FAST While Learning Music Proudction.

Slow it Down!

My COURSE PATHWAYS is a proven strategy to learn the basics of music production in as little at 3 months! However, it’s impossible to truly learn all the secrets of beatmaking, arrangement, mixing, mastering, and sound design.. it literally takes a lifetime of learning.

As you start to learn beatmaking from scratch, you will see huge improvement over your time, but slow it down and I promise you will see much better results, with a much healthier mindset.

A goal to set is in 5 years you can start being pretty happy with your music.. for many of you that’s too long, you want it now, but truly look at your skills, listen to your music, and ask yourself… “Am I Ready?”..

The thing is, I’m being REAL WITH YOU.. but your goals and desires are driving you in a direction that is not normal or even obtainable.

You can reach your goals, but it will take time, patience, practice, and A LOT OF READING… (or hiring a team to work with you).

I hope you enjoyed this episode..

You can contact me directly to learn beatmaking, or watch my Premium FL Studio Courses today!

Oh yes, here’s ALL MY FREE BEATMAKING RESOURCES!

Beatmaking Course Pathways FL Studio Help Guide Workflow

Community

Questions about this episode

Transcript

S2E32 – Music is a Long-Term Game

  1. Season two, episode 32. Music is a long term
  2. game. All right. So we all go through this and it's really really stressful.
  3. Okay. So you know, as soon as you learn about music production, you want to do it
  4. full time. But here's the problem like your skills, they're not there yet.
  5. You don't have enough time to learn to get your skills better.
  6. And if you do enter in the music industry, you really have no idea how you'll
  7. support yourself financially with music.
  8. So in this episode, I want to discuss some important things to remain healthy, to
  9. see results, and most importantly, keep it fun as a beatmaker.
  10. That's what I always tell you guys.
  11. If you're not having fun, it's just not going to be enjoyable.
  12. You're gonna get burnt out, okay?
  13. So before we get into this episode, here is some free resources for you guys.
  14. So just visit it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  15. You can get my books on there.
  16. So I have my free five keys book.
  17. I also have another free book.
  18. It's called Before You Launch Your Music Career.
  19. There's some free sounds and be on the lookout for some free trainings coming soon.
  20. Again, just visit it's gratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  21. You'll have to sign up with your name and email, and then I'll send you some
  22. marketing emails. But you can unsubscribe whenever you want, and I try to keep
  23. things pretty high quality, okay.
  24. Also be on the lookout for the melody minute and the drum corner coming very soon.
  25. this is something I was planning almost two years ago, but I am almost completed the
  26. melody minute, which is really exciting.
  27. The melody minute is gonna be all about learning the piano.
  28. And if you've taken my piano lessons for producer's course, the melody minute is
  29. gonna help you accelerate even faster.
  30. And if you haven't taken the course, there will be an option for you to see the
  31. product and you can save a little bit of money.
  32. The drum corner is gonna be all about creating drum loops from scratch based off of
  33. my safe spots training curriculum.
  34. So safe spots is all about creating custom drum loops.
  35. It doesn't matter what music program you're using, but it typically it's all based
  36. off of a step sequencer and MIDI.
  37. Okay, so that's called the drum corner.
  38. It's going to be teaching safe spots.
  39. Safe spots has a book and a course.
  40. It's on my website, it's gratuitous.com forward slash safe spots.
  41. And I highly suggest you grab the sounds.
  42. It's called the drum bundle trio by exclusive audio because everything kind of goes
  43. together inside of the course, the book and the sounds.
  44. Okay. So in this episode, I'm actually going to be breaking down my own story of how
  45. I entered the quote unquote music industry and started making a bit of a name for
  46. myself and making some money along the way.
  47. Because I was just like many of you.
  48. I worked a full-time job, I was an electrician, and music was always on my mind.
  49. I wasn't happy because I was at work doing something that wasn't music.
  50. But before we get into my story, I want to talk about a couple of things that you
  51. need to succeed with music. And essentially, this is when it comes to like the
  52. entrepreneurial lifestyle, these are like the three main things that you need to
  53. succeed, right? You need money, you need time, and you need a skill set.
  54. So money is kind of like the fuel.
  55. Time is being able to work without distraction.
  56. As a music producer, there's been times where I'm working at five in the morning
  57. just because you know, at that moment, I'm excited, I'm you know, being creative,
  58. I'm having fun, and I'm working, and there's no time limit.
  59. Now, when you do have so much time, it's very important that you have control of
  60. your time and that you are on a good schedule.
  61. But from time to time, there might be that odd time where I am working extra late or
  62. extra early, or maybe I go to bed early and I wake up early.
  63. But it's the fact of that time is not an issue to create.
  64. Okay. So money is like the fuel, which I'll talk about in just a second.
  65. Time is being able to work without distraction.
  66. When you work a full-time job, you come home, you only have that certain amount of
  67. time. And then what happens? Well, then you have to go to work the next day.
  68. So which means you kind of have to shut things down.
  69. You have to go make your lunch, you have to go to bed early so that you can wake up
  70. and then have a good day. And then now the skill set, okay.
  71. So this is this is what you're actually using from what you've learned creatively.
  72. So the time is how you're building that skill set.
  73. And the skill set takes years, right?
  74. Many people jump too early. They think that, oh, I've been making beats for one year
  75. or two years or three years, and they start thinking, well, I want the money and I
  76. want my time and I want to be able to do my own thing.
  77. My biggest advice to you is make sure you're ready.
  78. Get that skill set where you want, and then you will start to see results.
  79. Okay. So here is a little background story of this money, time, and skill set, and
  80. then we're gonna get into my own little background story, okay?
  81. So we all have like a little fire, and like that's our passion and what we want to
  82. really work on. Imagine it's Friday, you're done work and you're driving home, and
  83. then everyone's excited. Everyone's like, oh wow.
  84. Well, especially when you worked in trades, you had so as soon as you were done work
  85. on Friday, you had Saturday and Sunday typically off, you know, if you're working
  86. for a company, okay. And so that was just like the freedom that was like the fire,
  87. whatever you wanted to do in terms of your passion with the beat making with the
  88. music, you had all the time. And then money wasn't an issue because now you just
  89. worked the full week. So you're gonna have your paycheck coming in, and now you're
  90. gonna be trying to build that skill set.
  91. Okay. So I told you there's money, which is like the fuel, there's the time, which
  92. is being able to work without distraction, and then the skill set is using what
  93. you've learned creatively. So if it's the weekend now, again, you're not worried
  94. about the money. Now you have the time.
  95. Now you're trying to build that skill set.
  96. Okay, so after work, this fire is fully burning.
  97. Okay, you know, we're on our own schedule, we can make music, we can have fun.
  98. But during the week, it could be eight or nine o'clock, and you have to put that
  99. fire out, you have to go make your lunch, you have to wake up early for the next
  100. day, and then the next morning, it's like, oh, you know, it's kind of hard to get
  101. up, you have to go to work, but that's okay because you know it's allowing you to
  102. make your money. But around the first break, usually for myself, when I was an
  103. electrician at work, I always kind of started thinking about my passion again, which
  104. was you know, making beats, and that little fire gets ignited again.
  105. I started to think about you know, when I get home, what am I gonna work on?
  106. Or, you know, what am I gonna practice?
  107. Or how am I going to reach my goal regarding music production?
  108. That was always in my mind when I was at work, and
  109. so this little fire around your first break, it's starting to build up again because
  110. you had to put out the fire last night when you had to go make your lunch.
  111. So now work is done, so you get home, and now that fire can freely burn and you can
  112. start creating, but this cycle keeps repeating, right?
  113. So around eight or nine o'clock, you have to get ready for work and all your
  114. creative fire again, it gets put out, and then you have to wake up, go to work, and
  115. it's just the fact that you are on someone else's schedule.
  116. And so you just have to understand this mindset in order for you to
  117. approach this music stuff with a healthy mindset.
  118. Okay. So again, so here's how it works.
  119. Okay. So essentially, your money is like the fuel.
  120. So your money essentially gives you the time.
  121. And because you have the time, you're able to build that skill set even more.
  122. But the thing is, how are you gonna make this money?
  123. And I'll talk to you more about this later in my story.
  124. My advice to you is don't make all your money within the music industry.
  125. Don't be trying to make all your money in the music industry because it's a very
  126. competitive industry, and you're dealing with some of the world's best marketers.
  127. Okay. I'm talking about if you're trying to sell your music or if you're trying to
  128. create sounds, or if you're trying to create courses or books or anything regarding
  129. like music, I find music like the hardest industry to sell in.
  130. And I've been involved with a couple, you know, quite a few industries in my time
  131. working online over the past 10 years.
  132. Okay, because you guys will learn, you know, I learned about WordPress, I learned
  133. how to code, all that stuff, but really it's music production, which I'm most
  134. passionate about. But I've learned about all that stuff because of music production.
  135. Okay. So you have to think about money.
  136. And I'm gonna talk to you a little bit in this episode about you know how I
  137. approached it. And essentially it was I used my real job to save up.
  138. I purchased a home, used it as a rental property, okay, but I still worked
  139. a full-time job, and I was starting to continue to create courses. and stuff online
  140. So I started to be able to generate multiple streams of income to help me work
  141. towards my goal. And I remember when I was at work, you know, a lot of people, you
  142. know, they'd always ask, Oh, well, what did you do on your weekend?
  143. And like from for me, like I never wanted to talk about what I did on my weekend
  144. because it was always like, oh, I created a course or oh, I was working on a new
  145. book. But I will tell you that the mindset is not healthy.
  146. You're always thinking about money, you're always thinking about you know, trying to
  147. move ahead. But I will tell you that I worked very hard and I got to the point where
  148. now it's not that I can sit back, but it's that my work is working for me.
  149. Okay, like I I worked very hard and I planned for this.
  150. This is what I wanted. And so let me just talk about my story because hopefully
  151. it'll help, you know, kind of inspire you and give you a proper mindset.
  152. Okay. So the first thing I want to talk about is that school doesn't really educate
  153. us properly. You know, school teaches us that math, science, English, social
  154. studies, gym, you know, such as looking at your at yourself in terms of being
  155. healthy, going going for a run, going for a bike ride, but they don't talk about the
  156. real world things that you really need to survive, which is like your residence.
  157. So, for example, where you live, how does a mortgage work, how do credit cards work,
  158. right? Like that's the real stuff.
  159. And school does not teach you that stuff.
  160. Your relationships, such as like knowing about a good versus a bad relationship,
  161. right? Like, you know, when has someone crossed the line?
  162. And, you know, so school does not teach us those things, and then also your faith,
  163. right? So a big thing that people don't think about is what happens when you die..
  164. Everyone's so focused on the now
  165. But right now, I want you to think about your favorite kind of famous person.
  166. Whoever it is, they all get older, but then just like me and you, they
  167. eventually pass away. And so a lot of people don't think about this.
  168. That in your life, you have to think about, you know, what is your purpose, the
  169. people that you're around, the people that you're affecting.
  170. That's what you have to focus on in your life.
  171. Okay. So again, that's the real world.
  172. Okay, so let's hop into my story here.
  173. Okay. So I was an electrician for about a year.
  174. I was an apprentice. And randomly, a friend one time introduced me to FL Studio
  175. around 2009. I downloaded the trial version.
  176. I bought it about after three months, and it was a huge purchase for me, right?
  177. I thought to myself, like, am I really gonna try to do music?
  178. Because you always hear of the jokes.
  179. They think, oh, they're gonna quote unquote make it in the music industry.
  180. And people would always laugh and tease, right?
  181. And even for myself, right? That's why I never really wanted to talk about what I
  182. was doing on the weekend or whatever, you know, to people at work, because they
  183. didn't understand. But I was super passionate about music production and making
  184. beats, you know, I really, really liked it.
  185. And I kept juggling electrical and music production, but I was so unhappy because I
  186. was young. And that is because, first of all, I didn't have knowledge in electrical,
  187. and it was a bit intimidating.
  188. And, you know, I was learning so much with music production that it was just kind of
  189. like one day I just quit my job.
  190. Okay. I came home to my dad and I told him I quit my electrical job.
  191. And he was shocked and super unhappy.
  192. But I knew that this was something that I wanted to pursue.
  193. And I had a little extra money that I did save up from electrical.
  194. I was living at home. It allowed me to quit and just do this.
  195. Now I didn't make it though. Okay.
  196. So let me just continue. So I remember the first thing that I did when I quit was I
  197. started to learn about mixing because I knew I could make okay beats, but I knew
  198. that this time that I personally took off work by quitting, I needed to spend time
  199. reading and practicing the things that I was weak at.
  200. I knew that that was how I was gonna get to the next level.
  201. And after a couple of months, I started thinking, okay, well, now I need to, you
  202. know, I need to start making some money to keep this going.
  203. And so I reached out to a friend, and that's when I first started getting into
  204. WordPress. So I've been using WordPress for pretty much almost just as long as I've
  205. as I have been making beats. And WordPress has come a long way now as well.
  206. but that's when I started BeatStruggles.com.
  207. Okay. So I had no idea what I was doing, but I had my own website and I started
  208. writing articles and adding pictures into them.
  209. Then I started creating YouTube videos, and it was, you know, it was really cool
  210. because like people were starting to visit my website, they were commenting, but it
  211. was making me very little money because I didn't understand about business.
  212. I was too young, I didn't have business skills, and I got burnt out.
  213. By the end of Beat Struggles, I had over 150 videos and tutorials about, you know,
  214. FL Studio and beat making, but I didn't really have any products and in a sense of
  215. courses and books. and I didn't really know how to support myself with my
  216. efforts. All right. So what I did was I ended up going back to electrical and I
  217. continued learning beat making on the side with still some activity on YouTube.
  218. You know, I'd create just some odd videos just to remain active and keep the site,
  219. you know, kind of running stuff.
  220. But the reason I went back to electrical was first of all to make money, but my
  221. personal goal was to purchase a home as a rental property to help supplement my
  222. income. Okay. So this is what I wanted to tell you.
  223. So you have to be very careful using the music industry as your main source of
  224. income because, in my experience, it's been the hardest industry I've been involved
  225. in. The music industry has the world's best marketers, self-promoters, and they
  226. really know how to sell people well.
  227. So if you're entering this industry, first of all, not really knowing how to make
  228. beats very well, not knowing how to run a website very well, not knowing marketing
  229. and advertising very well, then you are competing with the world's best.
  230. Okay. And if you don't have a team, again, you're fighting a very hard battle.
  231. But that's not to say that you can't do it.
  232. You just have to understand what you're getting into.
  233. So again, I always tell you guys that I highly, highly recommend keeping your real
  234. full-time career and then use that money to fuel your
  235. music, you know, whatever you're trying to do with music.
  236. Now, here's something that's unique to me.
  237. It may not apply to you because again, if you've been following me for a while, you
  238. know that you know, my faith was Jesus.
  239. So I learned that selling music with the name of the Lord on it is not proper.
  240. And so let me just break this down for you.
  241. So, for example, there is a scripture where Jesus went into the temple and kicked
  242. over like the money changers, like merchandise tables.
  243. And essentially, that's what's happening today in the churches is that the Christian
  244. artists are essentially going from church to church.
  245. They set up a merchandise table and they're selling like t shirts, coffee mugs, CDs,
  246. but really it's for the artist's benefit, right?.
  247. They always say it's for God or for the Lord, but it's for the artist's benefit
  248. And so for me, that was like it made it even harder for me to make money in the
  249. music industry because you know, at first I did try to sell my music, and but this
  250. is something I learned later. and then I was just like, Okay, well, I really love
  251. music and I like educating, and I had the beat struggles website and all this stuff,
  252. and so that's where I decided to continue with beat making education.
  253. I started to create courses, and they started to really take off.
  254. And what's been really awesome for that for me is that it's been really relieving
  255. because even though there's a pretty competitive market when it comes to course
  256. creators, it's not the same kind of competition when it comes to selling your music
  257. and trying to get people to like you.
  258. So if you want some more information on Jesus and the temple and kicking over you
  259. know the money changers tables and stuff like that, there's a couple scriptures I
  260. will leave them in the description, and again, I highly highly advise always read
  261. the King James version. It is the old school with the and thou, and again, I was
  262. just shown that you don't sell in the house of the Lord, right?
  263. For your benefit, okay. Okay, so anyway, so be wise, get a good
  264. career and work around that schedule to learn music production.
  265. Construction trades is a great choice because you usually get the weekends off.
  266. You do start early, okay, but you also get off work early compared to like the nine
  267. to fivers. So the benefit of this is yes, you start early, but many times there's
  268. not as much traffic in the morning, and then when you get off work, sometimes
  269. there's not as much traffic as again the nine to fivers.
  270. So, for example, if you work in a a bank or something like that, usually like bank
  271. would be nine to five. But in construction, usually it's like seven to three thirty.
  272. Again, depending on your company, that can always vary a little bit.
  273. And where I'm from, also a huge benefit of construction trades is there's even
  274. government grants that are paying for your schooling.
  275. And when you go to school, you even get unemployment.
  276. So if you're putting together all the pieces of the puzzle, let's say you want to be
  277. like a plumber, and a plumber is actually a very good trade here.
  278. you also do have the choice when you go into plumbing, you can be new construction
  279. only, so that you're not doing like renovation work.
  280. So again, I was a I was an electrician, and whenever I saw the plumbers do new
  281. construction, they always kind of had a little bit more freedom, a little bit more
  282. fun. Electrical is very, very repetitive, but it's still a good job.
  283. But what I'm trying to say is depending what trade that you select, at least here in
  284. Canada, there's government grants that pay for the actual schooling.
  285. And the schooling isn't too expensive, but it is an expense, it's like a thousand or
  286. like fifteen hundred dollars, and then you also have to pay for your books, but you
  287. also get unemployment, and that's the power of an apprenticeship program.
  288. So you would start off working, you work for about nine months, then you go to
  289. school for about three months.
  290. When you're going to school, the government pays you unemployment.
  291. It isn't your full wage, it's just like a percentage of the wage, but it's still
  292. you're still getting paid to go to school.
  293. And if you pass school, then you can get a government grant that covers the
  294. schooling costs, or at least most of it.
  295. Then you go back to work, and then typically you get your raise.
  296. So which means that every time you go to school and you come out, you get a little
  297. bit more money. So is it the best job in the world?
  298. You know, maybe not. It's it's tiring, it's hard work, it's labor-intensive, you get
  299. dirty, but you do make half decent money, and all along the way, typically, again
  300. here in Canada, the government is helping you along.
  301. So it is something to think about.
  302. And the schedule was pretty good to balance music around, right?
  303. You get your weekends off. And I just want to tell you that because that was my
  304. experience, and I was able to juggle music all throughout, like when I was working
  305. as electrician when I wasn't, and if I took holidays or whatever, I was always able
  306. to juggle music and work and make a half-decent income.
  307. So just remember, music is a long-term game.
  308. You yourself have to set a healthy schedule.
  309. You have to make time to make music.
  310. And if you want to see results, I always tell you guys, write down a list of things
  311. to read that was covered in season two, episode 16 of music production made simple
  312. here, so that when you're on break or when you have free time, you can quickly read
  313. whatever's on the list for these certain topics and accelerate your learning fast.
  314. So if you're wanting to rapidly decrease the amount of time it takes to learn music
  315. production and beat making, then I highly encourage you to check out my beat making
  316. training platform by visiting it's gratuitous.com forward slash courses.
  317. There's 30 beat making courses, you know, for beginners to advanced.
  318. The courses are based on FL Studio, but you can learn with any DAW.
  319. Okay. A lot of the courses teach you the fundamentals of music production for you to
  320. get up and running and you're on your way.
  321. So, for example, there is the piano lessons for producers.
  322. Once you learn how a piano works, it doesn't matter how you know where you're making
  323. beats, you can apply that knowledge.
  324. Okay., you Now the best experience that you're gonna get inside the platform is if
  325. follow my course pathways. All right.
  326. I already talked to you about this in season two, episode 29.
  327. I highly encourage you to again start this podcast from the very first
  328. season, episode one, and work your way through it.
  329. And I've designed them in such a way for you to get the best learning experience,
  330. okay. But anyway, so the course pathways is a proving curriculum to learn music
  331. production by watching the courses in order.
  332. Again, season two, episode 29 talks about the course pathways.
  333. And if you want to stay updated, you guys can subscribe to this podcast wherever
  334. you're listening. And if you can leave a review, it means a lot to me.
  335. And if you want to stay updated with the website, you can download some of my free
  336. beat making tools by visiting it'sgratuitous.com forward slash resources.
  337. I have some free books on there, free sounds.
  338. there will be more free stuff coming soon.
  339. when you do sign up with your name and email, it puts you onto my email list to be
  340. notified of what's going on with the website, such as new podcasts, courses,
  341. tutorials, books, and upcoming stuff.
  342. if you don't like the content, you can unsubscribe, no problem.
  343. I don't sell your privacy or anything like that, it's just between me and you.
  344. Okay, so thanks for listening and members and customers for your business.
  345. Just remember, music is a long-term
  346. game.
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