If you're like me, you probably get a lot of unsolicited advice about your how to run your career. Musicians seem to get a lot of it, probably because our lifestyle is so weird. 

I was at a dog park last week with my wife. Which would have been pretty socially acceptable except I was on my iPhone. 

I stumbled across this insightful (and hilariously dark) talk from Adam Fletcher about how to shrink your job, and basically rock at being a creative entrepreneur. It’s only about 20 minutes, and totally worth your time. I watched it while eating shrimp in between recording sessions today, so I know you can find time. Enjoy! 

I recently had a great conversation with a colleague about business models and the music life. He’s old school, and he has a firm policy of not giving away anything he does for free. It’s not that he’s not generous. He just doesn’t believe giving away stuff is a good business model.  

I was cradling my broken iPad. The screen had been shattered by flying off the roof of my car going 45 mph. 

I just realized I haven't added any new blogs to my Feedly feed in quite awhile. What are you all reading? Leave a link below. Thanks! 

Musicians and artists are asked to do a lot these days. You’re expected to book yourself, market, raise money for albums, manage social media and a million and one small things. And oh yeah, write the best freaking songs you can possibly write. Here are some techniques I use to manage my time so I can stay creative: 

I recently started watching Pensado’s Place, a youtube show about audio engineering and creating music. The show started small about 5 years ago, and has grown to a following of over 135,000 subscribers and millions of plays. It amazing to see a show that caters only to professional audio engineers get so many views each month.

7. I’m not that talented.

In my experience, most musicians I met have enough talent to do what they want to do musically (There are a few exceptions: classical orchestral pianist comes to mind). The problem is we have a hard time seeing the talent in ourselves, and easily recognize it in others. 

The challenge for me as musician is to put aside the question of talent altogether, and instead focus on using what I have to maximum capacity. I can’t change my talent level. I can change my work ethic.