Do This Once A Week To Level Up Your Music Game 🚀

In case you missed it, I published the 9th episode of The Racket House podcast last week, featuring my friend Kay Cote from Austin, TX. She's an event curation queen, a podcaster, an artist coach, and an artist herself. So naturally she was a great person to have on my podcast which is dedicated to helping artists learn and grow through inspiration, education, tips, tricks, and storytelling.

One of the things that we discussed on the 'cast is the concept of networking. The importance of going out and being a face in the place.

We get so caught up in our online presence and our social media content that sometimes we forget the most powerful way to make connections and build our brand is by in-person relationships.

And, not only going out and shaking hands, but also being a likable human being. The temptation to want to talk shop immediately is strong, especially when you see that person you've been trying to get in touch with for so long. But if you can resist that temptation, and build relationships from one human to another, you're going to have way more luck.

I'll never forget when I saw someone I'd been doing business with at a ski mountain. He's a major talent buyer and we'd been throwing events together, but it was always transactional. When we saw each other in line to grab a beer at the mountain, we started shooting the shit. Turns out he grew up in the town next to me, we're similar ages and had similar life experiences. And the fact that we both skied and snowboarded helped too. From there on out, we were on more of a friendship-based relationship than a business relationship - and that's important. Now he wants to fly me out for shows in LA.

What's the TL;DR? If you're an artist trying to grow your career, get out in person as much as humanly possible. And when you do, be a real ass human and not some robot trying to climb the ladder. You'll thank me for this advice.