I know it’s not easy figuring out where your focus should truly go when you’re in the process of also figuring out your business. So, today we’re going to talk about the 5 skills needed to have a successful music business. 

#1 Learning how to create the mental bandwidth by removing the nonessential. 

As musicians, we can oftentimes be completely overwhelmed by doing so multiple different things. So, you’re going to need to work on improving your ability to determine what is essential, and what is not. 

It’s about learning what you need to focus on and what you really need to be doing to get your business off the ground, to scale it, or to grow it. Doing small tasks may seem interesting, important, or even urgent, but in reality, are nonessential. You have to have the ability to define what truly matters.

Most importantly, you have to make sure that you’re always protecting your mental bandwidth. Oftentimes, it’s not the lack of time that gets to us and makes us feel overwhelmed, it’s the lack of focus. 

You have to develop the ability to distinguish what is essential in any given moment, versus what does not need to take your mental bandwidth.

Protecting your mental bandwidth is the number one thing you’re going to need to focus on. 

#2 Be a fast action taker

You’re going to need to learn to implement things fast and not overthink things. 

Although planning and strategizing is important in order to determine what’s essential, we can also get caught up in overthinking it to the point of paralyzing our productivity.

You have to have the ability to strategize quickly, but then rapidly shift into action. This is going to be essential for you to be able to create a successful music business and feel that you are being productive in a way that flows with your natural rhythm. 

#3 Focus on creating a strategic communication platform

It’s important to build a way to communicate your vision and perspective regularly. You need to remember that the reason people are going to come to you and are going to be drawn to your business whether it’s a service, program, or product, is because of you. 

You are the main gatekeeper. You are the main person that is building this business. 

Your number one job is to be a clear and effective communicator. 

Your willingness to be visible and to be a clear and effective communicator is a really important skill that is going to help you succeed in building a music business. 

You need to be your biggest ambassador, your greatest advocate. 

#4 The ability to switch back and forth between working on your craft and working on your business effectively. 

This will help you so that you can feel that you’re able to switch from your creative side to your business side and not feel that you’re sacrificing one for the other. You need to give each one its own mental space, its own due diligence. 

For example, when you’re practicing your craft and working on your performance you’re doing that on the creative side, then you can then switch and put as much focus to working on your business. 

I say this because if you get too caught up on only working on your craft, only working on your site and you let go of working on the business, you’re going to get out of balance.

You have to be able to respect both worlds equally, you can’t have one without the other. It’s about preserving that balance. 

#5 Flexibility

We can be perfectionists when we’re trying to work on our crafts. As musicians, we’re used to trying to always get better and better. It’s part of our nature. 

Sometimes when we’re working on our business, we can fall into that perfectionist mode and want to do things in many different ways before we really release them to the world or we announce them.  

It’s your willingness to say I’m going to be flexible with myself and I’m going to test things out. It’s your willingness to be okay with not overthinking things so much and to embrace flexibility over perfection.

Flexibility will always beat your sense of perfection, and being in a way forgiving to your own nature of wanting to do things right now and just being okay with going back and tweaking things as you go.

I hope this gives you some things to think about as you continue working on your business.