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- The Club List, Issue #25: Finding Your "You"
The Club List, Issue #25: Finding Your "You"
Kodi McKinney
November 18, 2024
Welcome back to The Club List, a newsletter about making a business out of what you love.
Last week’s edition was so resoundingly received that I’m switching to Monday publishing going forward! That said, this one is a milestone in itself (25 issues! That’s almost half a year’s worth of weekly newsletters!). So, this is a good time to ask:
Do you have a day when you find yourself having the most enjoyment for reading this? So far, I’ve published on Thursdays, Fridays, and now Mondays.
Are there any creative spaces or gatherings around NYC that you feel aren’t talked about enough? Any type of creativity welcome!
Where are you planning to travel in 2025? That’s a work question, and a life question.
If you find yourself looking at the impending holidays and SXSW season and thinking, “I don’t feel prepared enough for what I want to accomplish,” let's talk and start working together before the end of this year. It's exceedingly easy to do for what you get, and we’ll be in a better position talking now before US Thanksgiving than we will be in January. You’re inquisitive enough about your work to be reading, so you deserve good things.
For today’s issue, we’re deconstructing a marketing acronym to find better ways forward for your art. Hop in.
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Finding Your “You”
There are some key differences between marketing in the corporate world and artist marketing. (Only some, mind you.) One of those differences is the proliferation of endless acronyms, which, on paper, is profoundly cursed.
CPM? GTM? Who’s the audience, when we’re just using jargon? When you describe “top of the funnel” as TOFU in a world where we’re literally mid-update on what a marketing funnel even is, does the ad agency automatically give you a promotion, or is that just a weird flex for LinkedIn? All of this is a mess, and to make matters worse, most marketing acronyms change meaning entirely when used by other industries. The end result is too often something that sounds smart only to other marketers, and the underlying concepts are strong enough that they deserve better.
This is important, because some acronyms from the corporate level of marketing hide concepts that aren’t really applied enough to how all creative businesses operate, all the way down to solo operators. One is the go-to-market strategy (hi GTM), which I am on a mission to normalize building for creators at every level. But I’d argue that the most critical of them is the USP - or, the unique selling proposition.
Whether you’re a company or a creator, this can be summed up in one question:
“What is different about you?”
And the process of answering this question is about finding your “you.”
There are three important layers to the question:
Why are you doing this? (If you’ve never watched Simon Sinek’s famous TED talk on this, you can go far when you “start with why.” Open that in a tab and watch it after you read through this.)
What do you know is different about what you’re doing, as someone steeped in what you offer?
What do people expect you to be, knowing about others like you - and how might you conform to or confound those expectations?
The first layer has to be answered by you and you alone, on some reflection. The answer can be, “I am doing my work to make money,” but that’s deeply boring. I’d argue that a creative business of any kind is not the fast track for raw capitalism. You might as well take up stock trading, or start one of the myriad drop-shipping businesses that I constantly see portrayed as easy to do. But I suspect you have a deeper purpose to your work if you’re here, and you should pin it down, if you haven’t.
The second layer requires some research, both of others who are doing similar things to you and - intriguingly - of yourself. When looking at yourself, one time-honored way of doing this is a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Most would say that “threats” should include competitors. I tend to argue that if you have competitors in “threats,” your USP isn’t strong enough yet, and you should either dial in your niche further or shift the way your business is presented until competitors either are not threats, or are not real competitors.
The third layer also requires research, but often, it’s field research as you go along. If someone who knows your work says to you, “So, wait…what does your business actually do?” then that may signal that you’ve confounded expectations too far. But conversely, if someone introduces you to another person by saying, “Oh, your business is this” and then gets it wrong or identifies competitors that you know aren’t competitors, you may then have a narrative problem and need to talk about things differently. And as you should remember, a polarized reception is often a sign that you’re getting the reaction you want.
It’s rare that you are ultimately like no one else. That’s true in the corporate world, and in being any kind of artist. Everyone’s got influences.
But you tend to make your work more unique as you identify what your unique selling proposition is. The investigation tells the story.
How does that work if you’re an artist?
Let’s say you play folk music. Some people who play folk are traditionalists; give them an acoustic guitar or a banjo, and they can tell a whole story while adding their own nuance. Others might fuse other styles of music in, or use electric instruments, or even take left turns into other genres and try to redefine what folk is as a conscious decision.
That’s a broad spectrum. Where might you put yourself in that? Any part of it can work. What’s your part?
As you see with many of the most acclaimed records that come out each year, the most memorable music and art is purposefully challenging. It’s a constant dance between knowing the audience you want, communicating with it, and confronting it. Even great pop albums can do this. It’s also doable by making a very traditionalist (or even retro) record, with focused intent and purpose. You don’t have to be a futurist to pull it off.
But that’s scary to some, and we all suffer for it when artists lose track. I often see a concerning number of artists who are content to say, “I want to sound like [insert a couple of bands],” and that’s as far as they go. Even worse: the artist who says, “I love [insert records from a specific genre or time period], and I don’t want to water down my work by listening to anything else.” No, that’s how you lose track of who you are.
Case in point: My Bloody Valentine already made Loveless. I’ve already heard that album. It’s great! It’s a classic for a reason. And yet, there was a point where I knew too many bands around Brooklyn who were shoegaze acts (like MBV) and openly stated they avoided listening to anything post- that record. Their shows always lost me. They’d invariably sound like a knockoff of Loveless. Well, I already knew Loveless, and they couldn’t give that experience to me.
“Ripping off” a band is one thing - that’s an influence worn on the sleeve. Nirvana “ripped off” Pixies, but they still had their own sound. What you don’t want is to just impersonate another band, if you’re a band making original music. The copy doesn’t come out like the original, ever.
What mark do you want to leave, that is your own?
Did you hear something others made that you loved and then gave you an idea, which you can build upon in your own way?
You’ll notice that when I talk about a USP in a creative context, I’m not offering many answers. I’m mainly asking questions.
And that’s because the answers are yours to give.
If your answer is unique enough, I bet people will want to wear your name on a shirt.
But if not everyone does, that’s okay too. Because part of the power of figuring out your unique selling proposition as an artist is its ability to insulate you from the opinions of people who don’t get it. Taste is totally subjective.
Think back to that third layer, the one that requires field research. “So…what kind of music is this?” “I think this is like [names an artist you don’t listen to].” “Your show was good, but I really love [names song you played that’s different from the others on purpose] the most.”
If you don’t know your USP, you might go along with any feedback these people offer. That is a perilous position, the one those Loveless fundamentalists thought they were avoiding. If you stand for nothing artistically, it’s over before you started.
If you do know your USP, you can smile, thank them for being there, and then keep doubling down on finding your “you.” You do that by writing more stuff that says what you intended to say, more clearly as you go along, until everyone else knows exactly what kind of music that is.
One Thing You Can Use Today
Get an air fryer.
I’m totally serious about this. I’m not your dad, but that’s the big tip this week.
In this inflation-heavy era, I don’t know too many people who have been able to avoid rising grocery bills. I also know that a lot of creative types tend to burn the proverbial candle at both ends, and that means not much time to cook, or bad choices with junky food on the go.
I didn’t exactly know what an “air fryer” actually did until I had one for a good while. The short version: you don’t have to use oil with them, they’re generally faster than conventional ovens, and they can both cook and reheat using nothing but hot air. Anything a microwave does, an air fryer probably does much, much better, in not much more time. They’re surprisingly great with frozen food, for example.
But the reason I’m mentioning this here is because if you live in a major city (or near a bakery) and can easily get large quantities of day-old bread or bagels for small change, air fryers are the best thing to happen to bread since slicing. They can either toast with more evenness and less dryness than a toaster, or they can add the tiniest bit of crunch and freshen everything up. I’ve experimented with week-old bagels that were almost completely stale, and 3 minutes in an air fryer on 400 F (or 5-6 minutes on 370 F) consistently brought them back from the dead as if they were just served toasted in-store. It’s wild.
This can potentially save you hundreds of dollars a month. Imagine how you could reinvest that money into what you’re building. It’s one of a very few modern life hacks that I genuinely see as game-changing, without a lot of ink spilled about it yet.
Track of the Week
Hayes & Y - “EGO”
The self-described “best Bulgarian-Finnish band in the world,” Hayes & Y is a Manchester band that makes a uniquely glossy kind of synth pop, owing as much to disco as it does to Depeche Mode. Take Foals, dial the kitsch up a little further, add melancholy, and you’re not far off. I’ve been frankly floored by all of their recent singles, but “EGO” stands on its own as a compelling taste of what their upcoming second album Departures will sound like. There’s a rare combo of quirk and catchiness here that stands firmly on its own.
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.
Wednesday, Nov 20 - Clone, Cuneiform, Admin, Ghost Cop @ Our Wicked Lady
Once in a while, Our Wicked Lady will have a Wednesday night show that is outlandishly stacked with bands you may know and bands you should know. This is one of those nights.
Friday, Nov 22 - Kontravoid, Mvtant, Normal Bias @ TV Eye
This bill is packed even by Synthicide standards, and it’s worth getting on the waitlist if you still need a ticket. I’ve seen all three of these acts on other lineups and loved every second of them.
Saturday, Nov 23 - Balkans, TVOD, Eve Swords @ Baby’s All Right (free w/ RSVP!)
The newest entry in Estrella Galica’s free show series. It’s going to be packed, and you’re going to have a blast. I’m a firm believer that everyone should see TVOD at least once.
Thanks for reading! And now, an image of me in the club…
