How To Build Your Music Business | Avoid This Common Mistake

Now this video is going to address something that could kill your career before it even gets started. Now I've said that in other videos, which is absolutely true, but there's a lot of elements when it comes to building a business and a brand around your music. Now when I first got started, I almost made this mistake. Actually, I did make this mistake. All right, so I got to start this video off with a quick disclaimer. I am under the weather. Just straightforward. I'm dealing with a sinus infection, maybe a cold. Ever since I flew back from Boston a few days ago, I've had headache behind my left eye and some sinus pressure. I'm raspy and I can't breathe out of my nose. So this video is going to be a little shorter than usual, but I'm not going to withhold any value. I'm just going to get to it a little bit quicker than I have in the past, which might be a good thing. You guys might enjoy it. Now this video is going to address something that could kill your career before it even gets started. Now I've said that in other videos, which is absolutely true, but there's a lot of elements when it comes to building a business and a brand around your music. Now when I first got started, I almost made this mistake. Actually, I did make this mistake. It's coming out with a brand, coming out with your persona online, putting your music out there, putting your image out there, putting your personality out there without truly embracing and identifying who you really are. See, I started in 2009 on YouTube. I've been producing since 2006, but in 2009, I decided to come on YouTube and give it my go. Wisconsin really came out on that go and do beat making videos. Well, I'm a white kid from central Wisconsin with about that much swag, and so I didn't know really who I needed to be, who I wanted to be. It was a blank canvas. I was a hip hop music producer, R&B was my jam. I've been listening to hip hop and rap and everything in between since I was a very young boy. My dad was a DJ. He DJ'd at weddings, DJ'd at bars, DJ'd at parties, and everything from classic rock to hip hop to polka. True story. I'm from Wisconsin, like I said. So identifying myself, identifying who I was at a young age, getting out there on the internet, I was lost. Just being completely vulnerable with you guys. This is something I've never talked about before, but I'm glad I get to share it with you in this video. See, when I started coming out with beat making videos, I wore a fitted cap. I wore a certain type of clothes. I said, what's good, people? I never said what's good in real life. Hey, guys. Hey, dude. That's really how I talk, but I felt like not understanding really who I wanted to be, or thinking, rather, that my customers needed me to be someone I wasn't, had my own self-identity and self-perception all wonky when it came to YouTube. Then, a couple of years later, I decided, you know what, Adam? This isn't you. You never really wear a fitted cap when you're out and about. I do once in a great while, but it's typically with a head of hair like this. Would you cover it? Oh, God. When I laugh, it really hurts. That's not a good thing, and that's why I didn't do the what's up, guys, because that's motion that I just cannot handle right now. But let's get back to what I'm talking about. When you, as a producer, when you, as a rapper, when you, as any type of musician in a band, in an online personality, you even do marketing, or you have a YouTube channel vlogging, you got to be authentic. Now, that's not as easy as it sounds sometimes. You really want to identify with your customer. You really want to identify with how you can fit in, how you can be cool, because cool sells. Cool engages. Cool, it just, it just encompasses, to a lot of us introverts especially, it encompasses what we want to be. We want to be cool, but you know what's cool? Being yourself, finding out what your strengths are, finding out what your weaknesses are. I'm a nerdy, I'm a nerdy dude from Wisconsin that's living in Florida, living my best life, and I've been doing music now for 12 years. I've been, I've been making a great career at music, and marketing, and being creative. I can make a very comfortable income being creative for myself, and putting it out to the world, and having the world embrace it. You know why? Because I am who I am. Now, if you guys only get one takeaway from this video, I hope it's this. It's something that I need you to implement in your life. I need you to inject it in the development of your brand, and your marketing, and your personal persona online, and in the real world. Don't play the middle. Middle is mediocre. Embrace who you are. Embrace the people that love you. Embrace the people that hate you. Think of some of the biggest brands, some of the biggest personalities, some of the biggest celebrities in the world. They're either loved or they're hated, sometimes both. You don't have too many A-list celebrities that float in the middle. Guess why? They're mediocre. They're forgetables. How many people have you seen, oh, that's that guy from that one thing in the movie, or that's that guy that played in that other movie, or oh, that's that artist that was on that one song. They're forgetables. I don't want to be a forgetable. I don't want you guys to be a forgetable. Back when I was making YouTube videos years ago, I was trying to please everyone. I wasn't saying any swear words because I was afraid I would offend someone, until some of my friends were saying, Adam, your videos are great, because my friends think my videos are great, some of them. Anyway, but you know what else they told me? They said that the Adam Ivey Online wasn't the Adam Ivey in the real world, that I wasn't being myself, and that bothered me more than anything. Because if I met one of you guys out in public, if I went to a studio session, if I went to speak on a panel, and I was to interact with people in the real world, which sometimes my introverted side is very afraid of, it wouldn't be me. Now, I say that I'm afraid of it, and that's something that social awkwardness or social anxiety is something that I dealt with at a younger age. It's something that I continue to deal with, but it's something that I've embraced. And in social environments, I'm cool. If you see me kind of quiet and kind of just chilling, come say hi. But what I'm getting at is I never wanted this persona to be someone that I wasn't. So I stopped wearing the fitted caps. I stopped worrying about swearing on camera. I figured, you know what? My content's not for everyone. There's going to be people on my videos that talk a bunch of shit. They're going to talk shit on your videos. They're going to talk shit on your music. There's going to be haters. There's going to be ignorant people. It's going to be total dipshits that are know-it-alls, and they just want to be heard. They want to feel like they have a voice, so they leave some type of comment. You can go on my videos. I'm not going to highlight them here, but you can go on some of my videos and see these guys that have zero content. They don't have any social media. They don't even have a profile picture, leaving three to four paragraph responses to my videos telling me that I'm wrong, telling me that I'm giving misinformation from someone who's never done it themselves. If you play the middle, you're bound to get cold. You're bound to get discouraged. You're bound to give up. You would rather be loved and hated, and I mean hated seriously. Look at a guy such as Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone, Andy Frisella. Who else? Even guys like Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey is so lovable, but there's so many people that think he's a nut for voicing his truths, for voicing his opinions. There's not going to ever be a world where you please everyone, and if you are, you're lying to yourself. You got to embrace who you are, identify your weaknesses, and be vulnerable. Be to show them to the world, because guess what? I can tell you right now. My vulnerabilities are what make me, me. What gets you guys to come watch my videos. What gets you guys to support what I'm doing, and interact with me, and reach out to me, to talk to me. If you have a brother or sister, your mom, your dad, your uncle, somebody you work with that you're real close with, a childhood friend, we could rip them apart, right? We could just roast them when we're having fun, and that's because they have imperfections, but you know what? It's because we love them. There's nobody out there that's perfect, and those who try to be perfect, that facade cracks eventually. You see it in the media all the time. So that's what I want to hear about in the comments below. I want to hear about if you've been right in the middle, and it's something that you identify, and if it's been bothering you. I want to know if you do understand who you are, if you embrace the shit out of who you are. I want to hear about it in the comments below. Let me know when you realized who you were, what your strengths and weaknesses are maybe, what you've done. It makes me happy. That's why I'm smiling, because I love when I see people that have really come into who they are, and I see it so often with my friends. We all started as a bunch of dipshits that didn't know better, a bunch of guys that were kind of just faking it till we make it, and then we made it. Well, I don't think any of us will ever say that we made it, but... And as always, guys, if you found any value in this video whatsoever, which I genuinely hope you have, all that I ask for is that you smash the thumbs up button, let me know that you liked it, let me know that you watched the video, let me know that you got this far. I apologize, I can't breathe. In the comments below, I want to hear about when you discovered who you were, when you really started to embrace yourself, when you started understanding the power of being authentic with yourself and your audience. I want to hear about in the comments below any other comments that you could help the community with too. It's always an open discussion with these videos, so I appreciate everybody who's engaged in the videos in the comments section below. Now, I have all my links, because some of you guys still don't know how to contact me. I have all my links in the description box of this video, including my Instagram, which I'll put up on the screen right now. You can find all the camera gear that I use to make these videos. I'm planning on making a full-fledged video showing you the process, showing you the different pieces of gear, and showing you cheaper alternatives to do that, which all those links are going to be in the description box below. And that video will be coming out very shortly. I have a really exciting video that I'm going to be releasing later this week that I hope you check out when I upload it. If I can remember, I'm going to put a card on this video sending you right to it. Anyway, guys, I appreciate you joining me yet again for another video. And thank you so much for sticking with me, even though I'm sick. You guys mean the world to me. You're my channel family. If you haven't yet, I invite you to subscribe to the channel by clicking that little button over there. And if you want to become a BFF, if you want to become an official member of the channel family here, just click that little bell icon so you'll be the first to be notified anytime I upload a new video like this. But my new videos will be better because I won't be sick, and I'll have a clear voice, and I'll have more charisma. I'll have more gusto. I never use the word gusto. If you haven't used the word gusto, use it today, just in a general sentence. You're going to wow the socks off somebody. And until next time, guys, you can find me at adamivy.com.