No Sleep

I never sleep cause sleep is the cousin of death

– Nas, “New York State Of Mind”

Nas has long been on of my favorite lyricists and I’ve always loved this line.

Alot of people brag about not sleeping.

Speaker Eric Thomas talks about how if you want success you have to want it as much as your next breath.  You have to be willing to work extremely hard, often meaning you can’t sleep.

I love Nas, and I’m a fan of Eric Thomas, but I completely disagree.

I think sleep is essential.

I think balance is essential.

There are times when I will have little sleep, I’ll power through a tough project or a busy time, but at the end I always end up recouping on my sleep.

If I didn’t I wouldn’t be effective.

I couldn’t always find time to sleep.  Back when we my son was born, and then my daughter,  I remember waking up at all hours of the night to change a diaper and then rock them back to sleep.  I’d wake up feeling like a zombie.

But that didn’t mean I didn’t sleep.

I’ve become a master of the power nap.  Give me twenty minutes and I can be out like light.  Wake up fully rested and recuperated.

I’ve learned the key is knowing and trusting your need for rest.

There is no point bragging about not sleeping when the result is that you become less efficient.

Take time to get the rest you need.

Who Likes Chili?

As a musician there are a few things as dangerous as comparing your success – or lack of it – to another musician.  It can happen when you view another artists latest release.  In addition to viewing the new video on Youtube or single on Spotify you can’t help but look at the numbers.  Suddenly you aren’t thinking of the music, you speculate what those numbers mean.

If they are impressive stats you wonder what they are doing that you aren’t.  Or, you wonder you dismiss it thinking that they must have paid for the views.

If they aren’t as good, you also wonder why.  You know its good music.

It’s easy to get caught up in numbers.  The fans, followers and likes.

It’s human nature for us to look at stats and make a correlation.

But these numbers don’t tell the whole story.

I think the most important stat isn’t how big the number is, but the quality of engagement.

Is your audience engaging with your posts?

Are they commenting and sharing?

But in this digital world where we can be manipulated by targeted ads and fake views, there is one thing that remains authentic – real world connections.  You can’t fake that funk.

Effective social media is a conversation.

When posting, we need to ask ourselves – is this engaging?  How can I make it engaging.

How do you do this?

Sometimes its by asking questions.

Recently I posted a picture on Instagram of a pot of chili I was making.

I could have just posted the image and hashtagged #chili , instead I wrote:

“Who likes chili?”  By asking this question it prompted people to take a second to engage.

I was surprised at the responses I received.  Some people commented on their favorite ingredient in chili.  Some people complimented my cooking skills.  I was surprised to see names of people that I hadn’t talked to in a while.  I didn’t realize that some of these friends were seeing my posts.  Just because they didn’t comment on my music posts, didn’t mean that they were paying attention.

Getting a response to what you post is great, but that doesn’t mean that it was successful and that your job was done.

Make it a conversation by responding to your comments.

That’s the way to convert a passive follower into a dedicated fan.

If Time Flies…

If time flies… then chose to be the pilot.

We live hectic lives.  Sometimes we feel like there isn’t enough hours in the day.

But we all have the same amount.  It’s about how you choose to use them.

I like this saying because it shows how we can be in control.

Time flying by can be a good thing.  It means you are immersed in an activity.  You are in the zone.  You are working at your best.

But it can also mean you are spending hours on an activity that isn’t beneficial.  You could be playing video games for eight hours straight.  You could be binging the newest series on Netflix.  Sometimes its okay to chill, but not all the time.

When you are the pilot it means you are in control.

Find what you want to spend your time on and then lock in.

 

Jordan Played For The Wizards

Sometimes I have trouble believing it even though I know it happened –  Michael Jordan played for the Wizards.

He emerged out of retirement for the second time and instead of playing with the Bulls – the team he built his legacy with – he laced up for the Washington professional basketball team formally known as the Bullets.  A team that didn’t have a storied history, a team that wasn’t poised to win a championship, a team whose building block was Kwame Brown – drafted straight out of high school that would later turn out to be a bust.

Of course there was a reason.  He was president of basketball operations and minority owner.  He wanted to make money off of his investment.  But still… the Wizards?

Michael will always be known for the last second shot.  I can hear the Jay-Z lyric from N*ggas in Paris as I write this.

Jordan, Game Six.

The game clinching shot over a frustrated Byron Russell.  The perfect way to go out.  On top.  A  champion.

But that isn’t how the story ended.

It ended like it does for 99% of athletes – his skills eroded while playing on a poor team looking a shadow of his former dominant self.

Happened to Willie Mays.  Happened to Muhammad Ali.  Most recently it happened to Peyton Manning.  While he went out on a top with a championship, it was painful to watch him struggle throughout the season.

Enjoy your time in the game – it isn’t going to last.

We all want to go out on our own terms, but even the greatest don’t always get that chance.

 

 

Coolness of an entrepreneur

Gary Vee just came out with a shoe.  Used to be shoes were only for athlete’s.  It was that way through the 80’s and 90’s.  Then the 2000’s struck and Jay-Z came out with a shoe.  50 cent did the same.  They were hits, but the trend didn’t continue.  Recently Drake has helped collaborate on Air Jordan shoes.

But Gary Vee has changed the game.  He recently released a new shoe with K Swiss.  He sees it as a move that has a huge upside and limited downside.  If the shoe is successful he is the first entrepreneur to have a signature shoe.  If he fails, he will have a good story to tell his grand children and it will be something that his friends will tease him for – which he is cool with.

That’s something I like about Gary Vee – something I think that we all envy in successful people – the ability to laugh at yourself.  If you fail, don’t dwell on it, but laugh at yourself.

How can Gary Vee get a signature shoe?

Nowadays being an entrepreneur is a cool thing.

This is only a recent phenomenon.  Shows like Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank and the rise of apps that have disrupted huge corporations such as Uber and Airbnb have changed the game.  Entrepreneurship is now a seen as something desirable and an option for high school and college kids.

I’m fortunate that they had an entrepreneurship class in highschool.  I took it in grade 12.  Its where I discovered people like Stephen Covey and his 7 habits of highly successful people.  I devoured success literature.  I started looking at music as a business.  It’s a big reason why I was able to carve out a path to success.

Entrepreneurship may look cool, but entrepreneurs know its about hard work.  Long hours.  Demanding work.  I think one of the hardest things is self discipline.  Being your own boss also means you don’t have someone telling you what to do.  You need to motivate yourself.

It’s easy when the product is selling and you are on regular hours like others.

It’s a lot more challenging when boring business work comes up when your partner wants you to go on a date, or be with the kids, or your friends invite you out to a party.

Cool or not, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Gone

I was working on a report when all of a sudden I the beachball wouldn’t stop spinning.

Mac owners know what I’m talking about.  The beachball means that the computer is thinking.  Mac owners love to brag about how much better their system is than a PC but there are still problems on a Mac – like the ones I experienced today when writing this business report.  I hoped it would snap out of it.  I hadn’t saved the document.  But after waiting a couple of minutes I came to the realization it wasn’t going to stop.  I had to shut the program down.  I was hoping it would start back up with the recovered file.  It did that for another file I had open.  But no.  Nothing.

I would have to start from scratch.

At first I was really frustrated.  Almost defeated.  I’d spent so long and now this!

But then I thought to myself – I’d really only spent 10 minutes.  I had some of the info from an email that I could import.  For me to start the report again would probably only mean losing five to ten minutes of time.

Then I also had a more powerful thought… I remembered how much this used to happen.

People who grew up using computers in the 80’s and 90’s know what I’m talking about.

Back then this would happen all the time.  Except it would be higher stakes.  You could work on a school project, a ten page paper, or major assignment and when you went to load it up the file wouldn’t work.  For some reason the floppy disk didn’t want to load.

This would happen in music too.  I would work on a song for a couple of hours and then the program would crash.

Or a whole hard drive would crash and you would lose months of info.

Now there is the cloud.  Its automatically saved.  Its so good that even if you delete something it keeps a copy.

I run multiple backups.  I have two cloud accounts, but then I also have a time capsule which automatically backs up my files.

Ain’t technology great.

 

 

 

Defense to Offense

In one of my old raps I say that D.O. stands for “Defense to Offense.”

This was before I came up with Defy the Odds standing for D.O.

It started from video games.  It’s what I would say when I’d steal the ball and go in for a dunk while playing NBA Live back in the day on Playstation.  A good defense can lead to scoring opportunities – not only in a basketball video game but life as well.

The problem is a lot of people only play defense.

They are cautious, on the fence, and even worse, they guard what they have because they are scared that someone will take it.

Gary Vee talks about this a lot on his daily podcasts.  They are all defense, I’m all offense he often says.

The point is – you need to be on the attack, you need to be trying, doing, and implementing.

When you are on offense you aren’t always going to score.  You will get blocked.  You will miss the shot.  You will fail.

But you have to keep shooting.

It reminds me of how Mike D’Antoni has changed the NBA.  In the late 90’s basketball scores were 80-68 – lowest they’d ever been.  Then he was hired as a coach and instructed his players to shoot every chance they had.  Don’t let the shot clock get to the last few seconds, put the shot up.  Players like Steve Nash thrived as he became a two time MVP.  Their team, the Phoenix Suns started putting up high scores every night.

But it won’t work in the playoffs naysayers said.

While the Suns never won a championship, the Warriors have won two of the last three and have continued to revolutionize basketball with their approach.

Basketball scoring has gone up across the league as teams look to duplicate the success the Warriors have had.

Fan interest has gone up as well.  People want to see offense.

Music wise its the same thing.  Some artists play defense and want to protect their music.

Don’t let it leak, I want it to roll it out when everything is in place.

Don’t let it leak, its not polished.

I want to release my album and that’s it I don’t want to do more releases.

That was the old way.  Work on an album for years, spend big bucks to get it mixed and mastered and push it for a few years.

Look at the new way.

I recently read about how an unexpected event led to Lil Uzi Vert’s popularity.

He was stage diving at a show.  He lost his phone.  It contained his new album.

If you played defense you’d think – how do I erase the phone or how do I pay the person off so that the music doesn’t leak.  You’d be in a panic.  The label would be especially worried.

But if you are on offense? You are proactive.  Lets get ahead of it.  Lets just put it out.  Lil Uzi Vert released the music on his Soundcloud.  It was rough.  It was unfinished.  But it connected.

XO Tour Life became one of the biggest songs of the year.

Offense.

Don’t worry about the L’s.  Keep attacking.

 

Not So Fast

It’s always great to get a quick response.  At least that’s how I usually think of it.

When you send someone a message and hear back right away, it is great.  Your question has been answered.  You feel important that the person took the time to drop everything and respond right away.

But then I started thinking – maybe it’s not so great.   When you are responding to someone instantly, you were switching from what you are currently focused on.  It can break up your concentration.

I think that happens a lot nowadays in this phone connected culture.

When I’m in the studio working on music I don’t want to drop my concentration to respond to a non urgent text.

When I’m at the gym, I don’t want to take a longer time in between sets to send an email response.

When I’m working on business accounting, I do want to take a break to respond to an email but I know that I shouldn’t.

By the time that I jump back in to the task – whether the studio, the gym, or the accounting, I have to get back into the groove.  It’s broken my concentration.

I can imagine it is like this for others as well.

I try to take a break from email on Sundays.  Its rare that I will respond to messages.  I want to spend time with the fam, or watch football, or hit the gym, and I come back refreshed on Monday morning.

Maybe your sweet spot is responding to messages at 1 am.  I think its important to find a time that works best, but I also think its about finding the right time.

Sometimes its good not being so fast.

 

Sweat of Your Brow

Jully Black is a Canadian music icon.  I first remember her in the mid 90’s when she sung the hook to Choclair’s breakout track “What It Takes.”  Since then, she’s enjoyed a great career spanning over 25 years.  It was great to be part of the bill opening for her in Hong Kong and London, England back in the day.

Aside from her incredible vocal talent, what I also admire about Jully is her perseverance.  It isn’t easy to make it as an artist… let alone to make it in the Canadian music industry… in the field of R&B… as a Woman… as a Black Woman.  Jully Blacks career is a product of grit and determination.

One of my favorite songs from her is “Sweat By Your Brow.”

I still remember when the song came out.  I was sitting in my parents basement watching Muchvibe when I saw the video.  I had quit my day job and trying to make the music thing work.  It felt like she was singing directly to me…

 “We have food in our bellies… Even when the phone don’t ring”

Her message – be grateful for what you do have, even in when new opportunities aren’t coming in.

I could relate.  I was living off of my parents food and sometimes I’d catch myself staring at the phone as if I could hypnotize it into ringing.

“And even when it ain’t going on
You gotta still keep being strong…”

The words were motivating.  But it was the hook that got me:

By the sweat of your brow…

After the video was done, I hit the gym.

It’s tough when you are working hard and not seeing results.

It’s even tougher when you know you are good.

It can mess with your mind because it doesn’t make rational sense.

You might even say to yourself:

I don’t get it.  I’m doing everything right, I’m killing every opportunity, why isn’t the phone ringing more?

At least, that’s how I felt.

Jully’s song is encouraging us to focus on the process.   When you aren’t getting back what you are putting in and it doesn’t seem to make sense, don’t dwell on that, instead work hard and focus on what you can control.

Want the calls and emails to come in?  Start making more calls and sending more emails.

At the time, I was getting my speaking business off of the ground.  Each time I performed I loved the response I got from students and teachers.  But yet, I still wasn’t getting more bookings.  I would visit schools giving a personal pitch to principals.  Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t.  I decided to put the odds in my favour by visiting more schools and getting in front of more principals.  It worked.

One of my favorite movies is “The Comedian” which focuses on Jerry Seinfeld and an up and coming comedian.  At one point in the movie, Seinfeld retells a story of when he was feeling down on himself.  He was in his apartment working but struggling to come up with jokes.  He went for a walk to clear his head.  He saw construction workers as he walked by and had a revelation.  They didn’t need inspiration, they were just working.  They had to work hard to get the job done.  He started approaching comedy with the same blue-collar, lunch pail mentality.

Just like exercising, you aren’t working hard if you aren’t working up a sweat.

Laptop Speakers

I was in the Nike store the other day and overheard someone saying how they were buying a full set of gear and new shoes because they were going to start jogging.

Jogging is one of the most inexpensive forms of exercise.  You just need a pair of shoes.  Most people already have some kind of shorts or jogging pants.  It certainly isn’t like playing goalie in hockey where you have to buy skates, pads, helmet and more.

But people, such as this guy in the Nike store will spend a few hundred bucks on jogging gear even though he isn’t a jogger.

I see this all the time in the music business.

People will spend thousands of dollars on studio equipment.  If you have the money – great, it will certainly make the music sound better if you know what you are doing with it.  Because if you don’t know how to use or maximize the use of the equipment it may not make that significant of a change.

But the biggest tragedy comes when you don’t start something because you don’t have the equipment.

The jogger doesn’t start running because he doesn’t have $200 Nikes.

The musician doesn’t start making music because he doesn’t have the right microphone or mixing software.

Musicians pride themselves on getting the best mix they can get.

We wish that consumers would listen to music in ideal settings.  With great speakers or monitors, with top of the line headphones, and course without distractions.

But this rarely happens.

Most people listen to music on there laptop speakers.

Or their phone speaker.

That’s why when I’m listening to a mix of a song that a producer has sent me I won’t only listen to it on my studio monitors I’ll play it on my laptop speakers.  If it doesn’t sound right there, then I know it needs more work.

In the early 2000’s I remember thinking I needed 20,000 to record an album.  However, I had recorded an album for nothing in 1999.  Before home computer studios became trendy I recorded an album on a cheap mic on a old laptop using Cool Edit Pro.

My friends couldn’t tell the difference.

Equipment is meant to enhance, it isn’t meant to do the job.

Sometimes when we think we need better equipment its just an excuse.

It’s about the art, not the tools.