Welcome back to The Club List, a newsletter about making a business out of what you love.

What a week it’s been! I guested on the YouTube series SPOTlight on Wednesday, discussing the “buyer’s journey” that artists have to consider with their fans - which was fascinating, because we don’t usually couch creators in that kind of marketing-speak. It’s inherently important to be aware of this sort of thing though, and if you want the quick dirt on it, the full clip is much shorter than some of the big honkin’ podcasts I’ve done recently. Watch that here.

I also rolled out the Vision Package from Me In The Club this week, and it bears some explaining. In the startup sphere, it’s becoming popular to hire a fractional executive (i.e., a chief executive in any one discipline that’s part-time). How does that work?

Instead of paying to have a high-salary employee for 40 hours a week, the startup gets a chief executive on retainer (CEO, CMO, COO, etc) who is on for less time and money, but is still shaping the direction of the company at a high level and being efficient with the time they have. Imagine getting a deep internal growth plan and then executing it within 90 days, driven by someone who may be spending 10 hours a week on your business or less but is making it their focus for every one of those hours. It’s a “same focus, fewer coffee breaks” approach to executive hiring. The exec can have other clients, you make internal and external hires together where appropriate, and your business keeps capital at a time when it really matters.

Does that make sense? Well, that’s why the Vision Package exists - to explain what I do in the first 90 days, when I become a company’s Fractional CMO. It’s a new concept to the entertainment industry but already popular in other fields, and it’s one it very obviously needs. Read all about it here. And if you have a company and want to be sure you crush goals in Q4, let’s talk.

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Let’s talk about something that’s easy to discuss, but hard to internalize and master. It’s a huge key to any form of creative success, in the boardroom or in the studio.

The Value of Confidence

There is a key trait in people that you have to understand:

Most people need to be told something is good.

And the somewhat darker point, which is exploited by con men and bad actors:

If someone a person trusts says something is good, that person will often overwrite their own opinions.

This holds true for music, for art, for politics (disturbingly), and for most other aspects of daily life involving the human condition. People often trust others far more than themselves. 

This also gets exploited by people who aren’t necessarily bad actors, but use a loophole in human psychology. That loophole works off of a tenet of capitalism. Capitalism shows us you can get paid for creating solutions to problems. Well…if you can convince someone they have a problem they didn’t realize and then show yourself to have the solution, they will likely be willing to pay you to fix it. (Consider this the next time you see an e-book advertised to you.)

And this, right here, is one of the single biggest psychological issues you have to deal with if you’re in a creative business. You will have savvy folks, and skeptics, who question whether you’re really the best fit for the task at hand.

I’ve seen a variant of this in business meetings countless times. I’ve referred to it as “bro-dogging” over the years because it’s almost universally something that a certain type of male executive will do, and resembles dealing with a large junkyard dog that’s barely staying on its leash. The meeting will get abrupt out of seemingly nowhere:

“What makes you think that what you’re suggesting I do is worth my time?”

There are many variants of this; it’s a cousin of The Culture of No, and it’s usually brought out by people who need to see if you’ll blink. I find it to be distasteful and a tell that they are insecure about not being an expert in your field themselves, but I’ll say this: I’m good at not blinking. And in these situations, if I didn’t blink, I got hired every single time.

And that’s the good news.

The good news is that if you can teach yourself to be confident in what you know and what you like, you can turn this on its head and reconfigure your reality as people start believing in you. You’ll get affirmative answers on big asks you might not have previously made.

If you’re an artist, this can manifest as amplifying your charisma and getting more devoted fandom, but it also does some key shadow work for you: it eventually makes any negative self-talk you have get a lot quieter.

You don’t want to be arrogant - that’s the fake version. There’s no center to that, and people will see through you eventually. But being confident pays.

How do you ground confidence in reality?

I’ll mention something here that one of the better content writers and YouTube influencers I follow, Finn McKenty, said the other day about running his businesses. “My default assumption is that things won’t be OK unless I do something to make them OK.”

I actually agree with this. It’s pessimistic only at face value. Every time I’ve worked with that assumption in mind, I’ve gotten somewhere better.

And this is the thing I hope you keep in mind if you’re the sort of perfectionist that has a way of working on projects forever and not releasing them (which is far too many creatives I’ve met):

If your projects sound good to you, that means you did something to make them OK. And getting people to buy into them is a matter of consistency, confidence, and persistence. Making something OK to yourself first is the most important thing.

If you’re OK with yourself, you will get far.

I’ve said for some years that there are two types of people who get through the music industry past the age of 30: those with great coping mechanisms, and sociopaths. It’s a funny thing to say, but this is what I mean.

Great coping mechanism #1: to beat the sociopaths at their own game, you’ve got to have conviction. I won’t likely be the place you first learn to have it, but I can tell you right now that it’s what everything I’ve succeeded at has flowed from.

One Thing You Can Use Today

Not everything is urgent.

Say it with me.

Not everything is urgent.

The Eisenhower Matrix is a tool used in some business literature to help make better decisions. It’s best described with an illustration, which you can find HERE (scroll down).

If you’re having executive dysfunction, put all of your to-do list in this and watch as things get much, much easier.

Notice that it follows a key pattern:

• Do urgent and important tasks first.

• Not urgent? Schedule it.

• Not important? Delegate it.

• Not urgent or important? Skip it, or do it after everything else.

If you’re an artist or a workaholic, this will be especially useful.

Track of the Week

Kean Kavanagh - “Feel It Coming”

I spend a lot of time paying attention to artists who are starting to pop up on the showcase festival circuit internationally. I’m glad that I do, because I wouldn’t have found Kean Kavanagh otherwise and he’s amazing. His EP Wrestling Music is solid from top to bottom and has an off-kilter sensibility that wouldn’t be out of place on a Beck record. But the parts where he takes a look at early Tame Impala-type psych-pop, dusts them off with an extra coating of soul, and lets it rip are what I come back to. “Feel It Coming” is the perfect exhibit of this, with that little extra warbliness in his voice that is guaranteed to make you feel a little crazy. He’s currently based in London by way of Ireland, and I sincerely hope we get to see him live on US shores in the not-distant future.

Spotify | Apple Music | Bandcamp

List of Clubs

These are the kinds of clubs I’d like to be in around NYC! Wherever you might find music, art, or a compelling experience under one roof, that’s a club to me. I only list clubs I’d enjoy going to. If I list a client, you’ll know.

Friday, September 20 - The Sisters of Mercy @ Brooklyn Paramount
Arguably the most infamous goth band ever, at the most gothic-feeling venue we’ve had in ages. Say less.

Friday, September 20 - Sissies of Mercy + Pictureplane @ Xanadu
Goth Skate Night returns, and it’s a lot more affordable than that Sisters gig, but you could probably squeeze both in if you’re extra-aggressive with Uber usage. I am always, and I mean always, down to see either of these names on a lineup, let alone together.

Sunday, September 22 - Public Service @ Maria Hernandez Park (free!)
No RSVP, just show up. It’s the season closer for Toribio and Mickey Perez’s amazing community dance party, and you're goofing if you miss it. 2-8pm.

Thanks for reading! And now, an image of me in the club…

The Club List is a newsletter from MeInTheClub.com. All issues are available at TheClubList.net. To inquire about marketing services for your work, contact [email protected] and include "Services” in the subject line.