Music Management Skills: Stop Procrastinating

It took me six weeks to get to work on this series, even though it had been percolating for months. When I first started working on a live mastermind group for the spring, I knew that I wanted to go beyond the usual conversations about how to make it as a music management professional, so I dug deeper into the common patterns of success among some of the industry’s biggest hitmakers.

Seven core areas of expertise stood out, and none of them necessarily required very much specific insight into the entertainment industry. In fact, the same traits that make for excellent music management professionals can lead to success in just about any field.

So, why is it that artists tolerate disorganized, unfaithful, crude, and ineffective managers? Usually, because they feel that bad representation is better than no representation. If having a manager is a huge status symbol in the music business, having no manager means being lumped in with everyone else who’s slugging it out on their own.

It’s easy to procrastinate, and you’ll understand why when you read Seth Godin’s book, Linchpin. Procrastination protects us from the kind of risks we really should get comfortable with. Stalling for time allows us to hope that the universe will come up with a better strategy for solving our problems than we can.

Whether you force yourself into a routine, set a new habit of using a GTD system, or even get a virtual assistant to help take things off your plate, it’s time to stop procrastinating and stop hiding if you’re really ready to start making things happen for your artists’ careers.

(I finally stopped procrastinating about getting new content onto the site. If I can do it, you can.)