It’s Time To Build The Team – Part 1

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.

Part 1: Know Your Strengths / Skills
Many of the things we do as artists, producers, songwriters, etc. are done alone; just us and the art.

Writing, rehearsing, refining and motivating ourselves are all part of what we must do to prepare for presentation to others. However, let me state redundantly what you already know, or at least should know: being ready and having phenomenal skill won’t necessarily get you noticed. Countless others throughout history have gone unnoticed, not because they lacked skill or talent, but because they didn’t have the right connect, or in other words, relationships!

Every person who has reached the highest point in their field had a team supporting them. Choose any giant in any game: Jordan playing ball, Tiger golfing, Jay Z rockin mics, or T Pain producing tracks. They all had a team supporting them.

Let’s look at this another way. Consider again, any player in any game that caused you to ask: how did they get there? He can’t hoop, she can’t sing, or whatever. They all got there for the same reason: their team!

Look Closer
Have you ever really noticed the credits at the end of a movie? I don’t mean can you recall that you have seen them, I mean have you ever read the names and titles in the credits and noticed how many individuals and companies are involved in making your two hour piece of entertainment? Within the packaging of many products like video games and computer software, magazines, etc., you will see many names associated with bringing that product to market.

Each person is necessary, and, in an ideal situation, all serve to efficiently and effectively synergize for the purpose of delivering a product consumers want. Remove any individual from the equation and one of two things, or both, happen: overall quality decreases; multitasking takes place.

Most, if not all, of us are multitasking in some areas whether we like it or not and this is true about our situation whether we like it or not: quality suffers. Quality is not just about the product itself, it’s also about having adequate development time as well as meeting delivery to market deadlines without repeatedly adjusting release dates.

Case in point; recently I was reading an article in Sound On Sound magazine (June 2009) where Raphael Saadiq (Google him if you don’t know who he is) was talking about the old Motown days when you had a room full of song writers, musicians, singers, a producer and an engineer all working to bring great music to music lovers. The Team!

His point was if he had that type of team working with him today he could release new songs every week. Given that he garnered five Grammy nominations for his first solo album, where he largely did all the production and writing himself, demonstrates that product and presentation quality didn’t suffer but he still desires a situation in which he can produce and release great music similar to the frequency established by the Motown team. The frequency of music release for him is yearly, not weekly or even monthly.

Opinions vary on this point, however, I accept this as my truth: whatever you’re particular set of skills, focus on your area of strength and seek the team to bring their strength to your areas of weakness. Notice that I said areas in the plural; we all have a set of skills that are strong as well as areas of weakness.

You will need to understand what your strengths are because at the beginning of your career, and even along the way, you will have to sell the value of your skill set to the support (teammates) you seek. Also, if you’re not clear on your strengths, which will also expose some areas of weakness as well as areas of need, you won’t be able to effectively focus your energies on the next step: determining who you need.

Excersice:
Determine your top three or four strengths / skills. This is about knowing what makes you relevant. These are the things you do and will be known for. Don’t just think about it, write them down.

Know your strengths / skills, this will prepare you for part two: determining who you need.

Wisdom from the grind: Know your strengths / skills