Hi,

This week’s newsletter is similiar to last week’s in that it’s more mindset related as opposed to tactical strategy. It covers a common theme I’ve been seeing in the personal and professional lives of my friends, peers, and colleagues and thought it was worth talking about.

Let’s explore below.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

About a week ago I was talking to a friend of mine who recently became a licensed real estate agent. When I asked them how things were going, they told me they were struggling to land clients and were already re-thinking their cold outreach approach.

When I asked them how long they had been at it, they told me “about a month”.

In my head, I thought to myself “that’s not a long time at all” and that it seemed pretty quick to already be adjusting strategies.

This concept of pivoting, adjusting, or even sometimes quitting something too early is super common amongst people in their professional and personal lives.

I know so many artists who put out 5 songs, don’t see the immediate success they’re looking for, and think they’re doing something wrong.

“Maybe it’s just not working or I need to make different kind of music.”

Content creators who post 10 videos that don’t have the impact they want and quit.

Even colleagues in music marketing who try a campaign once, it doesn’t generate the impact they want, they chalk it up to “not working” and then just move on to something else (I’m guilty of this sometimes too).

I even see this in people’s personal lives with trying a new hobby, learning a new skill, etc. Trying to learn piano for a month, not becoming an expert, and then quitting.

While it’s important to always assess what’s working and at some point pivot if something is not working, I generally think people reasess too early.

Most people don’t even give themselves enough evidence to know if something is working or not because they quit too early.

It’s kind of similiar to this meme:

To be clear, this newsletter isn’t a motivational piece about not quitting and trying your best. It’s about when to re-asses.

If we’re being honest, success at most things requires at least 6 months of doing it consistently (some longer, some are 12 months minimum) to even give yourself enough evidence to know if it’s working or not.

The artist who puts out 10 songs and quits literally isn’t even giving themselves enough evidence to know what’s working and not working.

People don’t do things long enough to actually recognize patterns, see what works, identify opportunities, etc. Maybe that’s partially because of social media and the instant gratification world we’re in but generally speaking, most people, especially creatives, try to pivot too early.

It could take 6-12 months of consistently putting out music to know if you’re headed in the right direction.

It could take posting 2x per day for 8 months straight to know if your niche as a content creator is working.

It could take 6 months of working out and sticking to a diet to know if that diet is working or not.

It could take 4 months straight of cold calling every single day for a real estate agent to see any sort of success before their breakthrough happens.

Most people hit the Valley of Despair, think it’s not working, and change strategies or quit.

Before pivoting, it’s important to ask the question “have I been doing this long enough to actually be able to see any results?”

A lot of times the answer is no.

Keep releasing music.

Keep sharing content.

Keep practicing that skill or that hobby.

Truly give yourself enough evidence to know if it’s working by sticking to it for a long period of time.

It can years of doing something consistently to see results sometimes!

Years!

Most people think in terms of days or weeks.

People who are truly committed to long term success think longer.

Hopefully this was helpful on your journey.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

_{NYC Meetup}

I’m super excited to be teaming up with The Digilogue to present this End of Summer mixer on Friday September 19th. If you’re in NYC and want to meet other like minded people in music, entertainment, and tech - feel free to pull up!

_{The Vault}

 1) Claude - last week’s newsletter featured Claude Code, a coding tool that is part of the Claude family. Claude itself is an LLM similiar to ChatGPT. While I still use ChatGPT, I’ve found it helpful to prompt in multiple places and saw that Claude can actually provide different kinds of responses than GPT - my responses (with the same prompts), have been interesting perspectives. More info HERE

2) The Artist Marketing Playbook - I teamed up with my good friend and fellow music marketing expert Drew De Leon to present The Artist Marketing Playbook. An in-depth look at what an artist can do to set themselves up for success in 2025. More info HERE.