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50% return on your investment, then you can’t spend more than $9750 recording and manufacturing the album. This means that has to cover CD replication, graphic design, mastering, etc. Roughly, those things could eat up $2500, leaving you roughly $7250 to burn on studio time. And there you go: now you and/or your client have a budget. Why is all of this important? It’s not—if money is no object. But, if you’re like most artists and are scraping together money from multiple sources and borrowing money from your friends and family, then it’s important to be able to show a formula, a process, or a business plan for what you’re doing with the money—not only for them, but for yourselves. Does everyone plan this way? No. Do successful bands/artists plan this way? If they don’t themselves, someone on their team most certainly does. Should everyone plan exactly like this? Not necessarily, every situation is different. The above example simply illustrates that you can be a lot more effective and accountable by starting with the end goal and working backwards from there... which is certainly a preferable option to just spending money with no end in sight. Maximizing relationships I’m sure some of us are familiar with the movie Jerry Maguire. Throughout the film, Tom Cruise’s character has a mentor named Dicky Fox, who periodically shows up with

Back to social networking. The movie Jerry Maguire likes to focus on quality over quantity, which is not a bad thing. If you have several thousand friends in your online social network, how many of them do you actually know? How many of them are you taking the time to get to know? Just having them as a “friend” means nothing. Reach out, connect, strike up a conversation, find out what they have going on. Sure, it takes time! But guess what, if you can’t commit to doing at least a little bit of this on a regular basis, they might as well not even be there. If you don’t take the time to focus on the relationships you already have in your life and then build from there, then how will you ever get in the habit of doing this? Critical Success Factors Remember those things called Critical Success Factors? When you make long-range plans, you need to know your Critical Success Factors (CSF) and their associated measures. Measures should tell you priorities. If a measure is not where it is supposed to be, then it is a priority. Let’s say a CSF is to have 1000 meaningful contacts in your online social network, and a measure may be the number of people you interact with on a somewhat regular basis. If the number of people you are currently in contact with is 200, but the Goal is 1000, then obviously this is a priority. As you can see, the whole process directly relates to priorities and organization.

If you’re not out there shaking hands and kissing babies, how do you ever expect to move ahead in your career?
some motivating words of wisdom. One of those is: “The key to this business is personal relationships.” And it couldn’t be truer, especially in the music business. But how do we cultivate business relationships on a personal level? Networking is and always will be an important thing. If you’re not out there shaking hands and kissing babies, how do you ever expect to move ahead in your career? However, since the advent of social media, there has been an assumption that if you have a lot of friends, fans, or contacts on your favorite networking site, then you’re “networking”. I hate to break it to you, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Hold that thought... Okay, forget the Internet for a minute and look around you. Who do you already personally know? Some of you might be thinking: “I don’t know anybody that can really help my career.” Okay—you have goals, right? Is there a studio you want to record at but don’t have the money? Is there a club you want to play at that won’t give you the time of day? Then my question is: What have you done for them lately? If you’re in a working band (and by working I mean working the scene, playing out, etc.) then chances are good you know a lot of musicians. Ever think about cutting a deal with the local studio or club that if you bring them “XYZ” in business then they will give you some of their time and/or facilities? If you’re going to build relationships, put the best foot forward and help someone else first with their goals or needs. I guarantee you’ll see results. Now, those results might be a mutually beneficial relationship, or they could be that you realize you really don’t want to work with that person or company. But it’s all results, and you’re building forward momentum.
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According to Stephen Covey (author of, among others, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), you divide a circle into four equal parts and make what’s called four quadrants, each containing two factors, where one factor is Important and the other is Urgent. Something is truly Important if it relates directly to your Mission. Something being Urgent, however, simply means that you believe it needs to be done right away. So, Quadrant One contains those things that are both Important and Urgent. In Quadrant Two are those things that are Important but Not Urgent. Quadrant Three has those things that are not Important but Urgent. Finally, in Quadrant Four are those things that are Not Important and Not Urgent. Unfortunately, people spend a lot of time in all four quadrants. The true secret to time management is to spend most of the time in Quadrant Two, on those things that are Important but Not Urgent. This relates to things such as personal development, empowerment, and effectiveness within your creative team. I know, I know—deep stuff if you happen to be reading this on a Monday morning.... So, now that we have addressed some of what I call the “personal skill set”, next time we’ll look at some of the professional resources we can use to go out and conquer the world... or at least take our music to the next level. See you then. Mark Hornsby (hornsby@recordingmag.com) is a music producer, audio engineer, musician and marketing consultant based out of Nashville, TN. For more information, check out: www.markhornsby.com.

http://www.markhornsby.com

Recording - November 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2011