If you’re an indie musician trying to make a living from your craft you are in fact an entrepreneur.  As a creative professional having business processes can help you do the hard work once while simply working your plan the rest of the time – enjoying more of what made you pursue music in the first place.

What I mean is, with some forethought about how you handle particular aspects of running your music business you can maximize your strengths, which is likely writing and performing your music, rather than thinking too hard about how to handle the business side of your endeavor.

It’s always helpful to write out your goals so you have a tangible written reminder of where you’re going.  Mainly, I suggest writing out your answers to the follow two questions:  ‘Why am I pursuing this dream?’ And, ‘What do I want to get out of my music career?’ The answers to these questions will serve as a reference point for all other decisions you make as your music journey unfolds.

Once you have your end result written down think through and write out a few of the steps you’ll need to take to get there.  Make a concerted effort to try and do at least one thing everyday toward your goals. The one thing you actually do each day can be as subtle as replying to a fan who wrote a nice comment on your blog. You do have to take action on a daily basis to begin really seeing results, but you will start to see results in a month’s time, after six months, after a year and so on. As you complete action steps you will become more confident in yourself and what you’re doing allowing the next step or steps to feel a bit easier to approach and accomplish.

By breaking down your end result into smaller steps, and further breaking those steps down into manageable single actions that you can complete each day, over time real results will begin to take shape. A word of wisdom, and something I picked up from a book called, How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul, by Adrian Shaughnessy. Because being a music professional means you’re in business, just like any other arts professional, there are a few key organizational business processes to think about from the beginning that can help your operations run more efficiently.  They are:

A system for booking performances/work (your process for doing this) – Are you going to get a list of venues in each city you plan to visit on your tour, call them, pitch your band, email as a follow up with links to your website and music, reach out again by phone, etc…What’s your plan of attack?  Think through it then work your plan.

A way to determine the gigs you take are covering your expenses (I recommend shooting for a 40% profit margin or more) – How are you going to determine which gigs to take as you plan a tour?  You need to understand the travel, lodging and meal expenses it takes to go on tour, so it’s helpful if you can at least have a realistic estimate of how much money you need to make to recoup your expenses, and hopefully gain a profit.  Click here for a great free gig calculator from Kathode Ray Music.

A process for marketing each performance – How will you use your e-mail list, your websites, social networking sites, hardcopy fliers, posters, a street team, and constant networking with other industry professionals in a systematic way to promote what you do?  If you have a system in place you can tweak and repeat that process without having to reinvent the wheel each time.

An accounting system to track all your income and expenses (it doesn’t have to be overly fancy to be accurate) – This kind of system allows you to track your financial progress over time, which can help you see various trends like what gigs typically have the biggest payout, what times of the year tend to be busier than others, or what merchandise is selling well.  At the very least I suggest you write down all of your expenses related to your music business as they come up throughout the year, write down the reason for the expense and who or what company the expense came from (in other words, write down from whom you bought what you needed).  Likewise, write down all of your income from gigs and merchandise sales when it happens with the date what was purchased and price (income).  That way at tax time you’ll have a record of your income and expenses for your business.  Trust me, this makes tax time a little less painful.

I also advise to periodically re-examine your written goals, and the action steps you’ve defined to achieve them. As time passes you will grow and so will your goals, and their action steps may evolve and change. It is helpful to make any necessary changes to your goals so you can adapt as your life changes. I recommend examining your goals every six months or at least once-a-year to capture where you are currently, how far you’ve come, and how to get to where you want to be in the future even if that’s different than your original goal.

About the Author: Nick Venturella is a veteran indie musician (www.nickvmusic.net), author of The Local Music Journey – a music business resource for indie musicians with over half the book filled with musician interviews (www.localmusicjourney.com) and he is an entrepreneur success coach helping solopreneurs and creative professionals (like writers, designers, artists and musicians) work through the many challenging facets of reaching their creative business goals (www.growloop.com).

Posted by Broadjam on Aug 22, 2011 in Broadjam Blog