The Limitations of Identifying As An Artist

--- Full Raw Transcription Below ---

One of the biggest tragedies I see in our field and our music making world is this limitation that people have to identify as an artist. To make their whole identity about being a musical artist.

Now, I'm not saying that can't work. I just think that there is you're tapping into what I call the caged life. You're limiting yourself to a very small part of being of the human experience and not opening yourself up to so many more opportunities, so much more joy and so much more money. Today I want to talk just about that.

My name is Zion and I'm the founder of The Triple Threat Artist online producer course. My friend, Josh Doyle and I love to teach students how to become a singer songwriter producer. Actually, we just focus on the producer and we call that being a Triple Threat Artist. If you're interested, check out the links below, we also have some free guides and tools for beginning producers.

So let's dive into this. Why am I talking about this today? Now I know this video is a little bit different. I'm not teaching you reverb. I'm not teaching, you know how to produce a bass or saturation or whatever. Today, I want to focus on the philosophy of being a music maker.

Now I come from the world of… I went through college and I went through this engineering school. I became an engineer. I worked on airplanes for awhile and absolutely hated it because I wasn't being able to be creative and express the talents and the superpowers that I have. And when I say superpowers, I mean just the God-given skills that I've been given, just like you have been given. And I felt very limited and just completely confined. So I broke away and I became, and I wanted to become an artist.

I wanted to become a musician and find success in that. Now I personally don't sing. I'm not really a singer. I thought I was at one time, I took a lot of music singing classes and realized really quickly that that's not my gift. But my gift is in the writing and producing side. So I really went after that and I really wrapped my whole identity around that too. And I found that I didn't have a lot of joy in that really quickly.

I felt very confined. And when I finally broke away from that, after reading some really great books I found a lot of joy. I found a lot of, a lot more money. I found a lot more experience. I found, I found I got my life back basically because I got out of this identity. So the old way of thinking and the past was everybody has these sort of segmented roles and the songwriter creates the song and then they give it to the producer and the producer puts it together with the artist and then they give it to the mixer and then they give it to the mastering engineer.

That was the very old way of doing music. But those lines have all blurred. And now it's just a big blob. You can be great at all of those. You can be great at three of those, you can be good at one of them. You can be good at none of them and just manage artists and maybe that's your super power just managing or the business side of music.

But the point of all that is we live in this world that is trying to constantly put us in these categories. It's black or white, it's Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, and there's no subtlety in anything anymore. There's no complexity. And actually, most truths are found in a lot of complexity and not these segments of this or that.

The first point I want to make is that if you are trying to identify as an artist all the time, because you are, you feel this trapped feeling of, hey, I've told my friends and family that I'm going to go into music and this is what I'm going to do. And this is my identity there. They're looking for me to prove myself.

The very first point I want to make is that you are missing out on a ton of fulfilling experiences. There's so much more to life than just doing, making music. Perhaps your creativity is your superpower, and that could be harnessed in all kinds of other ways. Perhaps your creativity is looking at the big picture or knowing how to communicate to people and you do it really well through song. But there's other mediums and what you can communicate to people. Maybe you could be a great blogger or a YouTuber. If you could be a podcaster.

I truly believe that one of the greatest reasons we are here on earth and one of our purposes on earth is just to experience this life.

Now I'm not going to get all religious or woo - woo or anything. I'm just saying from a very general standpoint, to experience life, everything from creating, from learning new skills, from experiencing new places and smells and tastes and feelings and meeting new people and cultures and just experience is so important. And by limiting yourself to being just an artist in that way of thinking, you're caging yourself off to a lot of experiences.

Experience often comes through doing things through actually creating new things, through trying new things, through taking risks. In the last two years, I created a business on, besides my music stuff. I created a business called Get Known and its whole purpose is to help small entrepreneurs get known through social media, blogging content, creating just like what I'm doing here. And it's none of is rocket science. I just created it into a package and it's expanded into producing people's podcasts and it's extremely fulfilling. I really enjoy that.

And I've really found that I discovered that I enjoy creating things, whether it is music or it's a painting, or if it's something out in the garage or it's a business. I mean, all of those things are creating and it taps into a part of me that is, that just loves to create.

And if I had trapped myself, if I had limited myself to no, I'm just an artist, I don't do that. I don't do spreadsheets. I don't do business. I can't figure that out. I can't handle money. I'm just an artist. I make music and express myself. I think that would be the stupidest way to live life. And I bet you probably resonate with that. And I'm not trying to take away at all from being an artist from, if you have something to express or you just really know how to make music that resonates with people.

And you're really enjoying that. I'm not taking anything away from that. I'm just saying if you're feeling confined or bored or limited by that, I give you full permission to get out of that head space completely and go do other things. It'll actually make your music probably better.

I started painting and doing acrylic and watercolor about year and a half ago. And it has just blown up for some reason in my life. And I've taken a few classes. I was never an artist like a pencil artist growing up. I never did this kind of stuff. I wasn't the kid that drew in class and made all kinds of amazing drawings. I just never thought it was good at that. And so in the last couple of years I just started doing it. I was watching some Bob Ross videos and I started messing around with painting and bought some supplies.

Didn't even know what to buy and bought the wrong things at first. But I fell in love with the process of creating in that headspace. It's still in the creating headspace, but it's on a different medium. And I love to put on some music and find a quiet place in the house and just paint. And I can get lost in that for three, four hours. That isn't one of the most meditative things I've ever done in my life, but I wouldn't have opened myself up to that if I had stuck to just being a musician.

And here's the amazing thing about that that has really, really helped me in my music. I can see songs in more of a painting - in a visualization that I never could before. I can look at songs in from a more of an overview standpoint where I can see the big picture and where things need to be without getting lost in detail like I used to. So it's helped me.

So now when I go back to writing music and producing music, I feel a little better at it! Without even practicing that, I was doing this and it's helping. So there's a lot of cross contamination with our creativity. Again, if you are limiting your mindset to just being an artist, you're going to miss out on so many other opportunities and experiences.

The second point I want to make is that you're probably missing out on a lot of money.

There's a lot of opportunity. Entrepreneurs, they see the world as opportunity everywhere. It is raining opportunity and money. And the entrepreneur, a smart entrepreneur is the smart one that knows how to grab a bucket and go out and grab some of it. And most people don't even see that it's raining. They don't even see opportunity. And that is a mindset that has really shifted in me. And I see opportunity everywhere.

I don't have enough time to capitalize on the opportunity if you're not looking for other ways of making money through being hired out as a musician, a synch artist, a mixing engineer, a mastering engineer, looking for ways to make music for different things. Instead of just, you know, selling a CD, maybe you find a ways of creating music for a kid's album, or a podcast, or YouTube channel. Those things.

There's so many other opportunities out there. And if you're just motivated on being your artist and being the next Taylor Swift or whatever it is you want to be that is such a difficult road to hoe. You're probably missing out on a lot of money out there. And so I give you permission to stop limiting your thinking, to just making your own artistry, but looking for other opportunities.

There's no shame in that and it'll make you a better artist in the long run. And the last thing I want to say is if you're limiting your thinking to just being an artist, you're missing out on a ton of fun and joy. When you can express yourself in other ways, maybe it's clothing design, maybe it's landscaping or interior design, there's so many other ways to be creative, that your creativity, that you've practiced in, harnessed as a musician, will overflow into these other areas.

And if you're not looking at those, if you're not taking the opportunity to inject yourself in other areas, you're missing out on a ton of joy and that joy compounds itself, joy produces more joy, and then suddenly you're having a better life and you're better to be around and you're more happy and your music takes a turn and you find more opportunity. Everything builds on itself.

Again, I think there's so much pressure artists put on themselves because they feel as if they have promised their friends and family, that they're going to be an artist in this specific way. And they feel as if they have to prove themselves and they end up limiting themselves.

Listen, guys, life is about change. Life is about failing and getting back up over and over and over again, every great, great entrepreneur has failed and has gone bankrupt, and they've got back on their feet and they do that over and over again. In fact, a lot of venture capitalists that are looking to invest money. They're looking for entrepreneurs that have had a lot of failures because it's in those failures that we change and we morph. They're not ashamed to say, you know what, that didn't work out. And they have to look their wife in the eye and say, I tried this.

It didn't work out and we have to file bankruptcy, but they get back on their feet and they are actually more qualified to be the next entrepreneur to be the next person that's going to actually be in line to make a lot of money and have a lot more opportunity.

One of the podcasters, I love a lot. His name is Tom Bilyeu, and he's the co-founder of Quest Nutrition. That makes those really good protein bars. And I love his podcast because he interviews great people. But one of the things he really… Has really impressed me, this idea that human beings are set apart from all the other animals in the kingdom because of their ability to be resilient, to change, to morph, to adapt. We're not the fastest being on earth. We're not the strongest. We're not the most immune to diseases. We've got a lot of limitations, human beings do, but we have a brain that can evolve and adapt and change and morph.

Leonardo da Vinci is one of my favorite people in history. It was the fact that he didn't ever identify as one thing. Now we know him as an architect and a painter and a sculptor, but he, he, he invented things. He invented a business. He invented tools and weapons, and he was a man of multiple, multiple, multiple talents. And I love the fact that he never limited himself. He understood that the brain could evolve and that the cue, his human potential was limitless. And he pursued that. He's actually seriously one of my heroes. I love that.

And it gives me permission - and it should give you permission to know that you can do anything you want! You don't have to be 'stuck' trying to make it as an artist. I guarantee you, if you go out and do other things and you take on other projects, when you come back to doing music, you will be better at it.

If any of this resonated with you, I would love to hear from you. I think this actually could be a conversation that we have more in depth, but I wanted to touch on this today. So I'd love to hear from your experiences. I always love hearing people that reply. If you haven't done so, please follow us on YouTube and hit the like button. That always helps us out.

My name is Zion and I will talk to you next week!

- Zion

Link to The Triple Threat Artist

Link to Get Known Strategy

This episode was produced and marketed by the Get Known Service