It’s Time To Build The Team – Part 3

Absolutely nothing happens in the music business, or any business for that matter, without another person affecting the outcome in some way. Over the course of your musical career, no matter how long it lasts, your achievements will all be linked to your relationships! Throughout history, not one individual has accomplished any great thing without the assistance of at least one other person.

I am now going to offer an approach to developing the team that will help you win. Within this context, I define winning as achieving clearly established goals and positioning yourself for opportunities that dreams are made of. I will be presenting this information in three parts.

A brief recap

Your top three or four strengths / skills from the exercise in part one brought us closer to clarity. In part two, I posed two questions:

What do you do best on your list from part one? This is about prioritizing your strengths / skills in the order of which each should be presented for the purpose of maximum benefit.

What do you want to do? Hopefully, what you want to do and what you do best are in harmony. For example, you consider yourself an excellent songwriter, and even though you perform from time to time and can sing / rap / speak, you would prefer to just write songs for other artists.

If both questions aren’t in harmony then this clarity is valuable too, because you can focus on your primary skill to get you paid while developing what you really want to do.

In order to get team members to help you, you must be able to clearly define what you need them for; this will also help them to see potential benefits for themselves. Your first team members will likely be close friends and family; however, when you reach the semi-pro level where most, if not all, activities are about dollars. Your clarity will have to show how being on your team can help them.

Understand that, the clearer you are about what you do best and what you want to do, the simpler the next step becomes; assembling and developing the right team. This doesn’t happen all at once; most often a team is put together one person at a time, so you don’t need to be aware of all of the necessary people right now. Often, we want results before the work is done determining and then executing the next move.

In the exercise from part two, I asked you to take your top three or four strengths / skills and prioritize them according to what you do best. Next, I asked you to write down what you want to do as if you were writing it for someone else to read so they could act on it without asking a lot of questions.

Example: “I am a songwriter and I have five finished songs that I want to sell.” Someone may ask, “To whom?” This type of question is good because it’s not about what you do best, nor is it about what you’re trying to do (you want to sell your five songs,) it’s part of the process of clarification and will begin to expose who you need!

Once completed, you should have been able to identify who you need. Now let’s target and recruit the first or next member of your team!

Part 3: How To Recruit Them

Unleash the dog!

Part three is about action, action and more action. You already have two outstanding resources on your side; the internet and your current relationships.

The Internet. Get online! When you know who you want to target, you can find them as well as information about them online. For example, if you are seeking a manager to guide your career, then you can find not only information about what it is managers do, you can also find individual managers and management companies online. You can find their contact information as well as insight into what areas they specialize in. Your search can be local, national and international. You will likely have to contact a number of potential managers before you find the one who will join your team, but at least you know you’re getting closer to the target.

Relationships. Everyone you know should be aware of what you are looking for. Everyone! You don’t always know who you know that might be connected to someone you are looking for. You have to tell people what you are seeking and ask for assistance. Use social networks like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. These sites are free and can expose you to your new global next door neighbors. With persistence, you can get to anyone, anywhere!

Focus. Devote time every day to work on finding what you are looking for. If building your team is important then the process should be handled daily. Do it now and do it often!

Confidence. Confidence can be honed and strengthened and must be your way of operating when going after a target. Confidence is an all-important part of presenting yourself to the target you seek for your team as well as being necessary for protecting yourself from the negativity and rejection all of us experience in the pursuit of our dreams. You may be challenged by fear, worry and uncertainty but your attitude and willingness to keep pursuing the target will ultimately determine your success. You must believe there is value in what you are trying to do and share that value with the target.

The Wrap Up

There is no magic formula and no secret ingredients. Nothing is required that you don’t already have within you, and, through the information you acquired doing the exercises, all that is left to do is to “Go get what you want!”

Finding candidates for your team is the easy part. Once you have the attention of the target you were seeking, present who you are and what you are trying to do. You will likely have to contact a number of potential targets before you can recruit one, but that’s the way of the grind.

During the NBA playoffs every year, you will often hear this; “Win or go home!” Rapper 50 Cent said it this way; “Get rich or die trying!” Both statements are about intention and action; it’s unlikely that anyone will ever come looking for you, you have to have intent and be ready to take action.

It’s all about what you do! Unleash the dog and go get what you want! A winning team built one team member at a time!

Wisdom from the grind: Build a team to help you win by knowing your own strengths and skills so you can determine who you need on your team and then go recruit them!