Speaker 1: Look, I know for a fact that this video will turn some of you into full-time music producers. I don't care if you just started making music or you've been making music forever. These three habits I'm about to share with you guys over the last five years have helped me buy my own place, move out of my parents' place, make a little under six figures my first full year out of school, and ultimately put me on the fastest path to get what I wanted, which was all those things. Some of these habits might make you mad, some of them might trigger you, some of them might be cringe to you. Either way, over the last five years, I've been able to look back and be like, okay, what were the deciding things that really got me to where I wanted to be? These are what they are. Let's get into them. Number one, time management. Building any business requires time, and if your time is somewhere else that doesn't help you towards your goals, that's going to affect your business. I personally started my music producer career in my college dorm room. During that time, I was playing a sport, I played basketball in college, I was working three jobs during the summer, and I was going to school. As you could probably guess, my time was very limited, but what I found that really helped was maybe waking up early, getting my workout in before, or making a video to post on social media before, or not spending time going out to parties, or maybe if I went out, I went home early and then got up the next day and went to a studio or tried to work on music or make beats, whatever. I think there's this massive misconception that you need to quit your job in order to have enough time to make it as a music producer or any kind of musician. I personally would rather be making money from a job if I was making nothing as a music producer than trying to scrape together money as a music producer. That is not very good for your creative brain. All you really need is some time management. What I'm currently struggling managing my time with is getting on my phone. I don't shut the phone off enough. I always have it on. I've been trying to do better with that. Sometimes I'll notice myself aimlessly scrolling through stories while I'm sitting at my desk trying to make music. Turn your phone on airplane mode, shut it off, get away from it, set time limits on your apps. I've been doing that. I've been doing that for Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, all of that helps. This is not me saying don't go have fun. There are tons of things that you still need to do. You need to have fun. You need to enjoy your life, spend time with your family and spiritually. All of those things will help you be creative, but we all know there are those little things that do not benefit you whatsoever. To give yourself more time, the best thing you can do is cut those things out completely. I also think it's super important to note how are you spending your time within the time that you're spending on your business and on your music. If you are constantly only making beats and that's all you do, you don't post on social media, you aren't reaching out to people, you aren't collaborating, then you don't really have a business there. All you have is a bunch of beats that are finished sitting on your hard drive. There's quite a few days of the week where I wake up and all I do is make videos, edit, maybe make a little bit of music, but it's not like I'm waking up every single day and be like, all right, let's make a ton of music because that's not all that goes into becoming a full time producer. Habit number two, posting consistently on social media. This one might really make some of you mad because a lot of you have probably tried it. Maybe some of you have failed, maybe some of you are seeing a little bit of success with it. For myself, I didn't see any kind of growth on social media until I actually started posting consistently, getting my music out there, posting my beats, giving some sort of value. I post a short content video every day and I post a YouTube video every week. I've been doing that pretty consistently for the last five years and extremely consistently for the last two years. I think I can confidently say I have never not posted on Instagram for the last two years. Every single day. If you see videos that are missing within my feed, it's because I deleted them because I hated the videos that I posted. But either way, I still posted every single day. I can say that confidently. I will say this, being able to post consistently on social media does not come out of thin air. I basically had to train myself to become a machine. Okay, this is our standard. This is what we do every day. This is how I do it. Once you become familiar with your flow and your workflow, you can put out more content and it becomes easy to get a video out every day. And to be completely honest, social media has brought me every single opportunity, every brand deal. Honestly, every dollar I've ever made as a music producer was a product of social media and because of the content I was posting. I'll be the first to tell you, I was not comfortable at all posting on social media. I didn't tell any of my friends I was making music. I never showed my face when I first started. All of these little things prevented me from really getting myself out there, but I had to build up the habit. Once I built up the habit of getting myself out there, things started to fall into place. The habit is the important part. My third and final habit is continuing to push forward through my lowest points. Some of you might not even consider this a habit, but I personally do. Whenever I get down, whenever things aren't going well, I do stay down for maybe a day. I'm upset for maybe five hours. Maybe I go and complain to somebody, my family members and be like, Oh, this sucks. Things aren't going well, but I have noticed that I have a great ability to flip a switch and be like, screw it. Let's go. You have no other choice but to continue to work. Those have brought me out of so many days that I was like ready to quit, especially when I first started or days now when things aren't going how exactly I want them to go. Because believe me, there are tons of times on your journey to becoming a full time music producer where things seem impossible. You're like, how will I ever get to this point? Mostly because it takes so long to get to this point over the course of a couple of years. And depending on the day to day, the micro, it's very hard to see the macro, the big picture of where you're going to be. And some of the things that I think have really helped me push through these low times are one having friends that do the exact same thing as you. I have a lot of friends outside music that can help me with anything else in my life. But if you don't have friends that make music, maybe even make content or people that are just doing the exact same thing as you, it's hard for other people to relate to you. So remember that. Have friends in your niche doing the same thing as you. Another thing I'd say is extremely important is staying healthy. If you're having a bad day and your mental health is off or your physical health is off, or maybe you're abusing other things like it's going to be 10 times harder to lift yourself up out of those bad times. Remember that you have to be physically active, you have to be healthy. If all you're doing is sitting in one room all day, you're going to drive yourself nuts. You got to go out, you got to be healthy. That is massive. If you're not healthy, it's going to be super hard to get yourself out of those low times. So to recap, time management, time management within the time you spend on your business and outside of your business. Shut the phone off as much as you can. Don't aimlessly look at stories. A balanced life is super important, especially when you're your own boss. Two, get yourself out there on social media and do it consistently. I don't care who you are. That's the world we live in. You are limiting yourself so much if you don't get yourself out there on social media. You have to. I'm sorry. And then like I said, lastly, continue to push forward through low points. The second you quit, it's all over. But if you continue to push forward, you have more hope, you have more chances, you have a future. Keep that in mind. Hopefully this video helps. Love you guys. I'll see you next week. Peace.