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Refine Your Offering

I have a number of things going on, some are much clearer than others. I'm having some trouble understanding my offering is a musician, I do teach and that's clear enough, but I'm not really sure on what the offering looks like as a whole for my creative production. Well, of course, this is so great to have this kind of dialogue, but just to throw it back in one way. Um, if there's some patterns here, which is teaching, is obviously a an offering, uh, that many of us have in parallel with what we actually love doing, like, I know many musicians who teach on the side, you know, and they play gigs and whatever, but they don't want the full pressure of that and teaching, you see, they're a drag for them or nice thing to do, but the question, you know, since there's, some confusion in your question, so wanting, first of all, hello and welcome to creative live good to see you out there. Um, the only thing in your question that bears noting is, um, there's, some confusion or lack of clarity ...

and your part about whether you want to keep teaching or not, and whether that's full producing a sense of fulfillment if it is uh then there's no particular problem but if you're not sure that you'd rather be doing something else and just walk yourself through it what's the obstacle let's say you want to be doing more playing or something like that what's the obstacle I'm sure his little baby in there somewhere probably um but in any case um you know um sift through it another batch you know and if you can write us back I don't know that hasn't been working so well to have ongoing conversation but just for your own sake sift through it a little bit more see if you can isolate some of the issues that are bundling together to make up the confused feeling that you have like break it apart okay well there's one more comment centered around the teaching train of conversation olek says I'm going to teach people to speak english but my confusion comes where I don't know what my market should be should I teach russians or israelis I speak and am literate and three languages english, russian and hebrew but I don't know if I should focus on a specific group or appeal to both both yeah good great question so that's going to come what so ever uh bowling like so greetings oleg and where is that person to say we're there it didn't but I'm somewhere in the east perhaps yeah that's amazing that you could be um anywhere anywhere in the world so I think what we're going to look at that what is next in terms of, uh, uh, kind of understanding your market, doing your homework and, uh, identify because once we identify are offering, we need to identify the marketplace and how we're going to approach it and that's where the, you know, you can really, when you have traction and both defining you're offering and identifying your market and communicating with the market, and if you get good at sales, which is the thing we're gonna get into tomorrow uh, kelly's eyes are rolling back in her head. I've seen on ly whites over there. Um, you know, if you get good at all those things it's kind of it's going to start trains going start moving along the tracks, so all ex question is more about marketing so let's, let's keep sticking with the idea of defining you're offering, um, anymore? Sure, quite a few and and actually, lisa renee wants to know about making concrete offerings out of intellectual property as an awareness artist, much of what I want to offer has value, which is the awareness and mundane life, but I don't know how to translate this into something to offer besides my my my art products, well, a little abstract. I needed to go sure um let's see here how to make concrete offerings out of intellectual property as an awareness artist, much of what I want to offer has value, which is the awareness in mundane life but I don't know how to translate this into something to offer beyond my art art product ask andy warhol you know who painted a can of soup? What is that worth like a million dollars three million dollars you know, that's kind of I think would be good if that person could focus their way they're describing it just a little bit more and if you can send it and we'll try it, we'll try to deal with it but um it strikes me as a little bit vague, you know, honestly to know exactly what you're referring to there um there's a lot of general terms the heaven issue there again it's like there's a lot of general descriptions, but I don't know really what you're trying to do, so if you could bring make that more tangible, more earth would be good well, when he came back with the way we're talking like I'm assuming that he apologized for not saying I love teaching on just love to do more playing and would like to understand how the offering looks like is it a clear idea of what my style is? You define your creative offering other than a jury generic I play music mmm that's great um and I would like is in israel oh, great. Ok, well, what time is it? There must be a eleven or something at night. Yeah, well, first of all um it's great that what's the guitar players wanted it's great that you enjoy teaching, you know, that's uh sometimes that's a sort of bad stepsister evil lesser stepsister for musicians you know, they're just kind of like slugging it out to pay the bills so playing live yeah. What is your offering? I think again that's going to marketing issue because let's say you're a jazz musician you know um nobody's going to hire you to play with the local singer songwriter you know it's not gonna happen so sure knowing what kind of music you play well, I would be your offering what kind of music you play well and then being aware of who else in town place the same instrument in the same genre and kicking their ass comes down to that just get your chops to another level and uh and get to know the people who hire somebody who does what you do andi uh that's networking that's people skills so I think you have focusing what it is exactly that you do within that some people are like studio type of guitar uh musicians you know are not garbage is musicians and they could play a lot of styles um, they mean get hired by everybody there, they make it hired by nobody because they do everything. What kind of? Okay, but now I'm looking for a great jazz solo. I get the great jazz guitar player, so if you're too spread out, we're going to get to that point, you'll confuse everybody basically, and maybe don't not do anything well enough to get to get noticed. So, um, anybody else here want to take a shot and make a recommendation? I don't know where that musician is located, but there's a resource called here it's local so musicians khun book private house concerts and you can their commission they take is really not that much. And even for musicians who are touring waken book house concerts along the way longer tour and and often make more with your house concerts than you are with your tour dates. Amazing it's called here local it was started by my friend matt lombardy. If I could give a plush, you're great it's really a good resource. It's amazing how much? Um, uh, how open the world is right now more than ever before to just like nudging something out on the internet and turning into a big big thing or medium thing or a small thing, and I think I'll just give an example of that um I had this when I had my record label, the last artist that we signed was named lana del rey who you may have heard or not, but she's quite a successful artist now and the thing that broker was not people listening to the music but cause she made homemade videos and she was really talented at it. She just found find found footage online, assemble it herself, put a little laptop up and shoot herself singing along to some things and one of those went viral and maybe sold, you know, maybe got ten million hits boom. So in this day and age, the offering there may be other ways to just float out our offering that we don't know a lot of comedians get well known online uh, the internet is a big topic here, but I think we're now into sort of the marketing here I want us to know who are we and what are we doing and what do we want to be doing and do we wake up every day frustrated going to the job that we have are we happen to be there on duh that's ah, very important thing if we don't define our offering, the tenancy is going to be to just kind of ramble around and just find ourselves at other people's mercy, innocence, so uh, next topic refine your offering okay you defined it right here a guitar player your ah digital designer you have an entrepreneurial adventure your director um let's say you're martin scorsese he could say he's a doctor don't you think do you think he's still working his craft you bet your boots you bet your boots keeping up with the latest technology developing your ideas about it looking at other people's work so at our stage we should absolutely have a fire under abut to refine and develop our offering that takes effort and energy um and some of the things I kind of notated is what's the biggest obstacle laziness is the biggest obstacle to developing your talent further uh laziness comes from a lot of different places but just take it on its merit and their sha you know, people get stuck like you are doing this because I'm used to doing it it's like that's okay, but don't complain that's all nobody wants to hear you complain I can't get that idea cross anymore um if you come to somebody like me or somebody else the first thing I'm gonna tell you stop complaining and stop playing the other people what's going on um if you're okay with what it is it's fine who cares? You know what I mean it's your life right? But if you're saying I can't get from here to there just take a look and see if there's a sort of nurse sha or kind of low self esteem issue or outright laziness and um just recognize that we live in a world at least sort of from a buddhist point of view that's the law of cause and effect is ironclad it's called the law of karma things are not happening here by accident I know it's tempting to look at it that way everything is related to causes and effects so energy and energy out on uh not always a direct easy to see situation you might but I remember it south by southwest somebody getting up and saying you know in the indie record label he said I get up early in the morning I'll go to bed later tonight that's why my label is successful so that's something that we can't quite just brush aside the positive dimension of ambition you know ambition could be poisoned we all know that right? You see somebody I like insanely ambitious, jealous, aggressive but there's a positive dimension to it of just having some drive and some desire to move to move your equation forward uh the idea of effort a light touch that somehow again this sort of middle way notion that we keep coming back to us like not too tight and not to lose exerting yourself uh but but having a light touch in a sense of humor can be a long, long way uh so that you don't grind yourself up into powder which happens that people along the way and then the other quality is sort of perpetual uh endless primordial curiosity like most innocent part of your mind. How does that work? You know what would happen if I to the low string and a good tar down? What would happen if I shot this shot and you know, with a different lens what would happen if I used a different font here? You just watch people to settle in and go, okay? This is this is what it is and take the path of least resistance. But curiosity keeps you always very awake. One of things that I noticed with some of these great teachers that I've had the good fortunate study with their intensely curious all my buddhist teachers were unbelievably curious what's that how are you holding that? You know, where you're going with that? Um and it keeps the situation very percolating and kind of awake now, as we go forward here, we're moving into, um, marketing are you ready? Change gears, friends. Shall we rest for a minute before we do? They're ready. They want to market it, huh? Well, we already have a comment about marketing. Okay, linda has a stuck point avoidance excuses not to get around to the marketing, but they had a breakthrough about what the fear was and is their fear is if I risk my creation into the marketplace and it is rejected holy and it's not worthy than what they're sixty five, there isn't enough time left to reinvent their creativity or or may not desire. Yeah, but I thought when I was reading that, you gotta listen and then go oh, you know what? Why are you suing that? Well, right, so I guess they're and they followed up and say that so it became easier to become distracted. Yeah, tell us she should talk to tony bennett. Probably the biggest phase of his career was, like in the seventies, he's in his eighties now making records with, uh, every major super star on the planet. Yeah, I mean, we that again now, let's, sort of, like, just kind of slow it down and see what the elements of that are own it down stuck point avoidance excuses to not get around to the marketing. I had a breakthrough about what the fear was and is if I risk my creation into the marketplace and it is rejected holy as not worthy than what I'm sixty five, there isn't enough time left to reinvent my creativity to suit others, nor is there a desire, so it became easier to become distracted, okay? You know, uh there's people who are thirty you have come to that same conclusion interestingly enough like they've kind of settled for whatever it is um I think there's a lot of self awareness in that in that comment the person is actually sort of seeing another thing that my teacher used to say is the question is the answer you know, sometimes the way you frame the question has a lot of information in it um but you know, it's a funny thing I just got I think I'm going to address the age issue here right on the nose here because, you know, seth and I have been talking about this on like the tony bennett thing where the guy sends literally a sense in the seventies and the eighties this this world is changing and there's one particular way on dh for exam my parent's generation they would have like it's sixty five she wouldn't be having this issue should be retiring and she would've stocked away some money and actually probably moving to miami and living on one of those condos near the golf course and playing canasta you know, which is not living in that world anymore you can be if you've lived your life that when you can and you have if she has the resources and she's content just buy that condo move in to a little painting you know, who's, why not but if there's still a feeling of vitality and energy coming out, I think the example now is I think you have to push sixty five to eighty five, but to make the simplest math thing and you guys should put push it to one hundred five that's. What you should be thinking, that's how long you're gonna live? One hundred five, because a lot of technological stuff's coming on board and the old logic is not gonna cover it. So I think, you know, um, I understand that that whole holes sensation, and maybe it is you get older, you want teo teo, slow it down a little bit and not push is hard on. You have to make that decision. But I think at that point, you're also ready to play smarter rather than play harder. Uh, and smarter would be test market your offering rather than just taking the whole thing to spend two or three years creating it, do a big spread on it and dump it out in the marketplace, and nobody buys it. Test the market a little bit better for what it is you think you want to put out there. So this is really weird getting into marketing now, so that was the prelude to it, right?