Over the years, I have become known for helping musicians become more focused, more productive, use time more wisely, deal with distractions and get rid of stuff that don't serve you. I love talking about this kind of stuff especially since the year is ending and we're looking forward to the new year. I have a very popular mini-course called "Get More Done in Less Time" and I'm going to talk about that in our boot camp. You femusician.com/bootcamp. Get signed up ASAP since it starts on December 7th. Do you pride yourself on being a highly-creative musician with tons of great ideas? For musicians, having too many good ideas can steal your time, divide your focus and keep your stuck and broke. You may actually end up with unfinished projects and half-baked plans. I'm going to show you how the plethora of ideas you have is actually your worst enemy and how it's putting the breaks in your career momentum, and what to do about it. This process has been incredibly helpful for my Female Musician Academy members. It's helped them maintain focus, create clarity and actually build momentum in their music career. As creatives, we are often praised for our ingenuity and imagination and I know we mostly consider this our greatest strength, but some of time, it becomes our greatest weakness. We have a limited amount of resources to work with, especially our time. We only have so much time to spend so we need to be very intentional on what we choose to spend our time on. When ideas creep in, it can take us off course. We need to figure out a way to harness them. The other thing that can happen is you can get ideas by watching other artists and you want to add those things to your plate, which actually dooms what you're currently doing to the unfinished pile. The biggest problem with this is not just the time management issue, or not just that it is dooming what you currently do, but also that you are adapting something that you don't know if will work for you. The artist may be in a different stage than you. You need to assess anything you add in your plate in that way but decide if it fits to your current plan and goals. If it doesn't fit, you need to put it in a place, where you can come back to it when it's already applicable for you. What to do with your ideas: Create an inspiration vault. Keep the ideas for safekeeping so you can access them at anytime when it's the right time. You can use a notebook, your phone, or anything else where you can write it down and not forget it. When to access those ideas: When you are ready to do your next 90-day goals, you pull out your ideas and put them on your brainstorming document and decide if they fit in to what you want your goals to be in the next 90 days. If you ever felt pulled in a million different directions by your goals and end up accomplishing nothing, the bootcamp can definitely help you. Go check it out at femusician.com/bootcamp. Link mentioned in this episode: https://musiciansprofitpath.com/get-more-done-in-less-time-bootcamp/ (femusician.com/bootcamp)

This is the kind of subject that is not necessarily business-oriented but has so much impact on your business. Gratitude is so important to be able to approach business in a healthy way. You cannot avoid experiencing huge highs and huge lows in your business. Gratitude allows you to balance out the mistakes you learn with the great things that are also happening. This allows you to create longevity for your business. I try to have some kind of gratitude practice on my walks everyday. When I fail to do that, I noticed that little things start to annoy me. My two Community Managers in our Female Indie Musician Community, Cayla Brooke and Beth Matthew, will discuss this on today's podcast. If you're not in our Facebook group, go to Female Indie Musician Community or to woscommunity.com Gratefulness has a lot to do with our mindset. When someone is grateful, their mindset is different. If we come from a state of gratitude, it makes our music better. When we're positive about things, that makes life worth living. We become more solution-oriented than problem-oriented. It's a really important subject that changes a lot of things in our lives. We can choose to focus on the good things going on instead of the bad. Imagine going through this pandemic without technology, we would not be able to do Facebook lives or access courses at a price next to nothing. Depending on our mindset, we can either sit at home and whine or look for something to be grateful for. Even if you don't have support at home, you can actually find support online. We are so fortunate. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful, the readiness to show appreciation and return kindness. When we're grateful, we tend to look for the positive and attract more opportunities. We can help train our minds to be grateful. We can also do small routines like sending thank you cards to people weekly or thinking of three things to be grateful about each day. People who are more grateful are less-stressed, less-depressed and more satisfied. It lifts our wellbeing mentally and physically. Even if we don't feel grateful, we can cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Practicing gratitude makes us happier. If we can start being grateful even in really tough situations, it can help us process things and lessons we've learned. Why don't we start practicing gratitude everyday? Link mentioned in this episode: http://www.woscommunity.com (woscommunity.com)

Today, we're talking about Performance Anxiety or commonly known as Stage Fright. I've had a lot of people wanting me to discuss this particular topic. Although I've had some bad experiences onstage, I've never had stage fright from the beginning. I know there are a lot of you out there who have a lot of talents to share and a lot of things to say but are afraid to get out there. So I have invited Academy member Allison Anderson to talk about this with us today. Allison is a musician and licensed therapist from Alberta, Canada. She started playing the piano at 6 years old and singing at 7. After she did music school, she suffered performance anxiety and it lasted for three decades. During a certain performance around seven years ago, she was off-key and everything was going wrong, then she found herself laughing it off during the performance and letting it go. That was when she heard the most beautiful tone come out of her. She eventually learned that her stage fright came from bad experiences in music school that were enough to shake her confidence. Performance anxiety is classified as a social phobia. It can be caused by different origins of thoughts such as a previous bad performance, trauma in childhood, learned behavior patterns, some strong personality traits or anything else that could have caused that impact in a person's deep self-esteem. A person may have tendencies but it could be developed by biological or environmental causes. Whatever the origin is, the result is the same onstage, which is stage fright or performance anxiety. No matter what the cause is, this is more about how you respond to a situation. To prevent having stage fright, you can do practices outside of the time so you can apply it when you're onstage onstage such as mindfulness, breathing, or being in the moment. Mindfulness is a practice about being in the moment using your five senses. We have to be in our bodies to get grounded in the moment and not live in our heads. When we have stage fright, we're activating our fight or flight response and we need to be aware of the present reality so we can allow our body to be mindful of the true situation and not of our fears or thoughts. As human beings, we always have the right to create. Nurturing your muse is giving yourself the freedom and fertile ground for creativity. It helps if you allow yourself to respond in the moment as an improvisation. The skill of mindfulness is being able to return to the moment. You also have to let yourself go and accept that your creativity is limited if you keep on thinking of being perfect. Developing this skill allows you to deal with Performance Anxiety and control your body's reactions. If there is one step you can take to move out of your stage fright, Allison advises it is allowing yourself to be horrible or to be the weirdest in your own space. Letting go and being free allows you to get rid of stage fright and discovering your best voice. You can find more about Allison at andersonarts.ca. Link mentioned in this episode: https://memberspace.andersonarts.ca/wp/register-for-the-challenge/?wpam_id=3 (andersonarts.ca)

This episode focuses on marketing your music. We're going to talk about how you are going to find the perfect people, how you're going to connect with them using tools online and further that relationship, and how to use data to figure out ways to convert them into raving and paying fans to support your career. We're going to discuss a lot of information about data and it may feel overwhelming at first but if you know what your data can tell you, you will love it and will turn you into a fan of knowing your data. If you want to learn more about what we talk about here, go to femusician.com/modernmusician and sign up for the free workshop that Michael Walker will be doing for my community on November 11th. Michael Walker from Modern Musician is a fellow summit host. Through his brand, he teaches musicians how to build their fanbase and make money from doing what they love. He started from being in a band in South Dakota and he grew his fanbase through grassroots. What they did was approach people who were fans of the bands they have similar music with. Michael shares the following steps they use in building fanbase: 1. Find out where the people who will benefit from what you offer hang out 2. Find out the best way to introduce yourself 3. Build a real relationship with them 4. Generate value for them 5. Provide more value over time How do you use online tools to connect with people and have that deep relationship with them? We need to make sure that even while using automation, you will still have traction and real connection. What is important either with personal or online connection is to make sure that you are getting on the same page and reaching out to your fanbase where they can really get in touch and resonate with you. Being in tune with them is very important. Michael will be doing a workshop with us and he's going to teach you his system that will help you figure out about your artist identity, nailing that down into creating a passionate fan base and revenue multiplier. This is mainly based on a marketing funnel and his system will help musicians develop the skillset of using the right online marketing tools. They have a 3-month program that will equip musicians to develop that skillset and get comfortable enough to run it, keep optimizing it and create their own funnels. They also have a team of 18 trained coaches that will do a lot of heavy-lifting for the artist and do one-on-one sessions every week. When you start building something, you emulate then you innovate. Once the foundation is built, the last step is the revenue multiplier. They will teach you about a funnel accelerator which allows you to track your metrics weekly. The spreadsheet may be overwhelming but it it best to not know what to track and how to do it. Data also allows you to understand what's happening to help you get motivated about what you do. You will also be taught how to segment people into different categories based on how they answer sets of questions. Then you offer value based on their answers. You also have to analyze the Cost per Acquisition vs Value per Acquisition. The Fanbase Growth Workshop allows musicians to have clarity on what they have to offer. One requirement is to have at least one song that has high quality on it. How do you put it in front of people, create traffic with it and put it in front of the right people. The workshop will teach you how to go from scratch to your first $5000/month. Michael is going to break it up for you so it would be simpler and easier to understand. To join Michael Walker's workshop, sign up at femusician.com/modernmusician Link mentioned in this episode: http://femusician.com/modernmusician (femusician.com/modernmusician)

This week, I'm bringing back in my two Community Managers from our free Facebook Group, the Female Indie Musician Community. What we will talk about is something that is so poignant right now because of the pandemic. We need to feel realigned with our purpose and our passion for our music career. With what I am doing for musicians, I wouldn't have stayed this long if I didn't love what I do and if I'm not that passionate about what I am doing. I've always encouraged my Academy members to keep a reminder of wonderful testimonials that fans have given them about themselves or their music so they can use that as a reminder if they're not feeling motivated enough. But the key is really to have your passion for music deep in your soul, deep in your heart and deep in your belly because pursuing music is not that easy. Beth has been singing and playing the piano since she was a child but she has tried to push it to the side. She kept having this urge to pursue it and later in her life she eventually decided to listen to it and pursue her music. Knowing your passion is really about knowing what you love, what you're good at and what the world needs. After figuring that out, you need to find out what you can do that people can get you paid for if that's what you like. It would be wonderful to have our passion, profession, vocation, and mission all rolled into one. In pursuing it, there will always be some aspect that you need to learn and get help with but whatever it is, there's always hope to do what you're created to do which is your purpose. Cayla wanted to perform since the age of three. For her it's like a curse and a blessing at the same time. If you don't follow it, that nagging feeling stays with you and you know that you are on the wrong path. When she started her career, she just wanted to sing and take every opportunity to do it. Later on, she discovered that she didn't like the performances she did at restaurants and bars during that time and that she was looking for something else. For a long time, she toured the show about Eva Cassidy. When she gets off the stage, she felt great and happy and she knew she was doing what she wanted. One night she just realized that she was done with that part of her life and it was time to write and sing her own music. Then afterwards, she found herself needing to speak infront of people. As we grow, we need to rediscover ourselves, rediscover our purposes, learn something new towards our new purpose and following the opportunity when it arrives. We should learn to not be afraid to pivot when needed. We should not regret what we did in the past because you learn from them. Some experiences would help you figure out that that's not you. Some would make you feel alive. Following your intuition since it's usually good and usually right. Before Beth turned 50, she knew she wanted to do more with her music. She didn't have fans or a website. She had an opportunity to record her album in Nashville and she did. She had the time of her life, she felt good about herself and learned a lot. Another thing is she had a desire to move to Connecticut from North Carolina. That's when she had the chance to be seated next to her now-husband and they eventually got married. Understanding what your values are, what makes you alive and what makes a difference in our lives to is really important. We might let what other people think prevent us from living our purpose and passion but living through what's feeding our soul is what will really make us happy. Your passion should also be aligned to what's really core important to you just as being a voice to people who are voiceless. Your core message comes out in your music because you can't help it and that's who you are. Our Music With A Conscience has a lot of songs that were written by people about really amazing themes. You will hear a lot of different viewpoints from those songs. It's so important to hear different point of views instead of...

I've been doing a lot of work lately on productivity and I'm really getting a lot more done in my business because I'm splitting my time. Working hard, taking care of my family and having a lot on my plate, I've really been working hard to make sure I get stuff done in each aspect of what I need to do. I've come across something lately that has really helped me manage my tasks. So today we're talking about gamifying your to-do list. In the past, I've talked about breaking your to-do list, knowing how to prioritize and keeping 5 goals within 90 days. Even then there are certain things that keep falling to the bottom because I don't really want to do them. I've been working with a book called "Free to Focus" by Michael Hyatt and it has helped make things clearer to me on how I can run my business and make sure I get everything done. How do you get rid of that overwhelming feeling that you have endless things on your to-do list? I learned from the book that we can choose 3 big things for the week and around those big things, choose 3 smaller things per day. Before I start my work during Sunday or Monday morning, I organize them into first priority, check the deadlines then I fill in the rest. The gamification comes in here. Usually I procrastinate stuff that I don't like doing so I put them off. Since I started this 3 big things, I only focus on 3 things a day and 1 of those 3 things is something I don't like, and the other 2 are things I like. It's reality that there are things we procrastinate but with this gamification, we focus on only 3 things a day and 1 of those things is something we don't like. But that's how we go forward. The other 2 things that you like get to be a reward or a motivation that you only need to do 1 thing you don't like and you usually do it first. Gamifying your to-do list makes you feel more in control of things you need to get done. Doing this makes you feel better and so accomplished. If you want some help about figuring out your priorities, grab my Smart Goals Workbook at femusician.com/goals Link mentioned in this episode: https://breenoble045.lpages.co/smart-goals/ (femusician.com/goals)

I rarely talk about products on this podcast and today I am going to talk about UniqCube. It's a great product that can really be used by musicians offline or online and will make us stand-out. CEO Anna Sedleniece will talk about its benefits and how it has helped musicians stand out during their gigs. I heard about UniqCube from Wade Hutton on the Six Minute Music Podcast, went to their website and I thought this is really cool! This is a product that is great to use for your branding, can be used for gifts to family members or friends and other applications for various events and purposes. You can check how this product looks like on our website, femusician.com and search for Episode 214 or on femusician.com/cube. If you decide to purchase it, you can also use my discount code "BREE". UniqCube was founded in 2016 and the product itself was originally created as a home decor. It's basically a cube with a light inside. Since it's a cube, it has six sides which you can personalize and DIY online. Originally, it was not really intended for musicians until record companies started ordering them for marketing purposes. The product design is minimalist so your DIY design really stands out. You can choose to put your photos, logos, website address, social media handle, upcoming albums or releases and so on -- the design ideas are limitless! This is a great way to use offline to promote your merch and also for online promotion. One way to use it is when you're live streaming. It's a great way to catch people's attention so that when they are scrolling on their phones, they will get visually attracted by the cube and will notice your live. Also, because of its size, the cube is easy to bring from one gig to another. The price is affordable as well for start-up musicians. Benefits of UniqCubeGreat way to market yourself and your brand Helps you stand out in a livestream or offline event Each of the six sides of the cube can be personalized Affordable Minimalist so your own design really stands out Small enough to be conveniently brought from one event to another Can be used as a unique gift idea for holidays and events You can check them out at femusician.com/cube and use code "BREE" to get 10% off. Link mentioned in this episode: http://femusician.com/cube (femusician.com/cube)

My friend, Chris SD, from Sync Songwriter will talk all about sync licensing -- all the ins and outs, all you need to know, all the different ways you can get licensed, how you can build relationships in the business and how to get more of your music licensed. Be ready to get excited about sync placements just like how Chris is so passionate about it. He is bringing 5 of his music supervisor friends on a virtual panel this October 11th so you can learn inside tips directly from them. Join us on this free workshop at femusician.com/chris. Chris started as a touring indie musician in Canada. The band parted ways then he got into music production and working in different roles with bigger artists and won some awards. He was then given the opportunity to move to LA for work. After his wife got pregnant, he yearned to spend more time with his daughter instead of being in the studio for 12-14 hours a day. He thought about moving his work online which he did, then he started getting inquiries about sync licensing. He previously had a similar job in Canada and so he started connecting with music supervisors in the US. So now his job is connecting indie artists with music supervisors for television and film. There is so much great music from indie artists but they lack relationship with the right people in the industry. When Chris was working with indie artists in Canada, he did notice that the indie artists were just as good as the bigger artists except that they do not have the managers and labels to push them. When Chris started doing sync licensing, he didn't know anything about it. He thought having the connections was enough so he did all the mistakes. He sent the wrong music or sent it at the wrong time and did the wrong approach. By talking with music supervisors and learning more about the behind the scenes, he cracked the code about sync licensing and helped people do that. After teaching people, he brought them infront of the music supervisors and let them build that relationship themselves. Here are other important things Chris shared: Types of Payments from Sync LicensingWhen your music if played on TV or film, you got performance fees from your PRO. Sync Fee - lump of cash to license your music from the production Royalties - Everytime that show airs, you get royalties for that. You can have one song playing in more than one show and you can get a lot of royalties for that. Typical Ways to Submit Your Music for Sync LicensingPay-to-submit sites (ex. Songtradr, Broadjam, TAXI) Non-exclusive Music Libraries Exclusive Music Libraries Licensing Agents Tips on Sync LicensingMusic supervisors prefer songs that was written from the heart rathen that music written specifically for sync. There's no way to submit a demo. Whatever you submit has to be the final mix that is played. Your songs also need to be cleared ahead of time and fully and legally authorized to be used in the show. When you get yourself a placement, you have to be ready. You will get a lot of attention but that is fleeting. You need to capitalize that moment. You need to make sure your music is out there and people can find your music and find out who you are. Having your lyrics on your website also helps in a big way so people can search you just by your lyrics. The ultimate way of getting your music into TV and film is developing relationships and your reputation with the actual people who play the music. Chris will be having an amazing event on October 11th at 11 AM Pacific Time where he brings 5 music supervisors and hear all the behind the scenes of sync licensing so you can see a road map on how you can get your music into TV and film. To join, go to femusician.com/chris and register for free. Link mentioned in this episode: http://femusician.com/chris (femusician.com/chris)

Cristina Ibarra from Women's Audio Mission is going to share with us how they are getting women and girls more involved in the areas of creative technology, audio and STEM. Right now, less than 5% of the audio and music we have is created by women. WAM has been able to help over 2000 women per year to be involved in the Creative Audio Arts. They were able to help more women during this pandemic through doing virtual conferences. Go to womensaudiomission.org and check how you can get involved. Women's Audio Mission (WAM) is based in San Francisco and Oakland, CA. They are a non-profit organization that use music and media to attract over 4000 women, gender non-conforming folks and girls for music, audio and STEM studies. They have the only built-in studio entirely built and run by women and gender non-conforming folks. Audio is a critically underrepresented field and their mission is to amplify voices of women and gender non-conforming folks in this field. My friend, Fett, has been sharing to me how women have been producing but their work is not being highlighted and how girls are not realizing that this is a field they can go into. Through WAM, when they see themselves represented in the studio, in the instructors, on stage and behind the board, they begin to realize that this is a road they can choose to take. The 8th WAMCon is coming up and this has been an iconic way for Women's Audio Mission to take their mission and community to tap into existing communities. There is such a need for this and this is why they are figuring out how to push it further and reach out to more people in 10 countries using virtual. They offer a membership program for $40/year for professionals and $30/year for students. With that, you get access to courses, access to the job board and get to work with our great community. The gap between equity inclusion and the challenge is now moving from conversations about that gap to actual change. WAM's mission is being part of the conversation. We have to keep going to push that change and make a difference. If you'd like to know more about membership or events of WAM, find us at womensaudiomission.org. They are also on social media such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. WAMCon is coming on October 23rd and 24th and it's a fantastic way to drop in and get some fantastic workshops. They'll also have 3 top engineers talk about their journeys followed by a whole day of workshops. Link mentioned in this episode: http://www.womensaudiomission.org (womensaudiomission.org)

We love to compare ourselves and the things we have with others. Feelings that we don't like what we have or what we achieved and we prefer what others have instead can be crippling. These thoughts can hold us back from fulfilling our purpose. We have to overcome this and it's not at all easy. In our free Facebook group, Female Indie Musicians Community, Community Managers Beth Matthew and Cayla Brooke did a live about this. If you need a place where people understand you and will support you, go to woscommunity.com and join our group. Comparing ourselves with others is a learned behavior that has been passed on from generation to generation. Everybody deals with comparison and is an unfortunate part of life. With the pandemic, it's more difficult more than ever. It's easier to compare ourselves with other women who we might think are doing better than us. It all comes down to authenticity and the power that we have as women. We must understand our power as individuals. We all have our individual strengths and individual power. Mary Ann Williamson says that we serve no one by hiding our light. We need to start hearing our own voice and understanding our inner strength as women. Our thoughts that we are not good as others affect our actions and our lives. We should accept ourselves. For Cayla, her trauma came from abuse and abandonment from her family. This translated to her comparing herself to those people who have families. She found herself looking longingly at other people with families and asking herself why nobody loves her. She felt abandoned and worthless. She was in that spiral of negative thoughts and emotions for ten years. She lost the prime of her life because of that. When she came out of it, she no longer chose to allow her circumstances to steal away her joy, her power, her life, her strength and her purpose. It is normal to feel those feelings but we should not allow ourselves to stay in them and be controlled by them. We cannot compare our beginnings with somebody else's end game. Comparing should be something that propels us to become better. We should stop it whenever we have negative comparisons in our heads. Becoming aware of our triggers help us avoid that inner critic. Beth grew up in a loving family but she also experienced some emotional and verbal abuse. It affected her in a way that she became more compassionate. However, it allowed her to put up with more than what she should have and did not allow her to have firm boundaries. When she pursued her music career, battling that inner critic showed its ugly head and gave her thoughts like, "Who do you think you are?, Why were you qualified?" There were a lot of hard things in her family and she learned to hide her authentic self. She remembers being bullied during childhood and that has really affected her. She also experienced infertility in her marriage and she battled with that before too. She compared herself with others but eventually realized that there was a different plan for her which is adoption. Social media also triggers that inner critic. We should set healthy boundaries in our lives and in our minds. As you continue to grow, aim to be the best version of yourself. Don't beat yourself up when you sometimes fall back into that inner critic and into that spiral. Be aware that your happiness does not come from others but from yourself. Sometimes, we put too much pressure on our loved ones to give us happiness but that is not fair to them. We should accept that our happiness should come from ourselves. Even in social media, people can tell if we are authentic. They care less about what we look like than what we are truly about. We should learn to accept and love ourselves. Do not mind how others might react to you, shine your own light, feed your soul and continue to grow as a person. When thoughts of the inner critic show up, remember the little light. What's most important is you let your light shine, not the thoughts that get into