Follow the Plan

I'm not the only one who thinks that a career in the music industry requires a plan. It is a business - to succeed you need to make a plan and follow the plan. I could blog about how to make a plan for yourself - but I didn't need to. Someone else did that for me so I linked you to a great blog on career planning in the music industry complete with a template. And now, if you wondered whether it was just that guy and me who thought you need a plan ... here's a link to a blog entry called "Keeping with a Plan and When it is the Right Time to Change" http://www.musicthinktank.com/blog/keeping-with-a-plan-and-when-it-is-the-right-time-to-change.html

As Loren Weisman says in it:

"It takes a lot of patience, professionalism and effort to put together a good plan of action, whether it’s a business plan or an attack plan when it comes to your career. It takes tens times as much when it comes to following through with that plan. All too often artists, and even business people, will set up a great plan, but then slack on it, cut corners, change it without a solid reason or just go in an entirely different direction. Much of the time, this results in failure because a hodge podge of unorganized and erratic work leads to problems". As Loren points out, there are good reasons to change the plan and bad reasons. "Just changing something because you are tired of doing it, feeling frustrated or just lazy is not a good way to go". Couldn't have said it better myself!

There are tons of resources out there for you. Through this blog, I am simply going to link you to some of them. I know that you want to believe a career in the arts is different and that it is not like business. I disagree, if you want a career in music you are in business. So find the resources to help you build that career and use them. But most of all, make a plan for your career. Follow the plan. Adjust the plan as needed, but keep working toward your career goals. Otherwise ... as Loren says, you end up in failure.