My friend quit music... so I went home and made a plan

Last night I had a conversation with a musician friend who’s stepping away from pursuing music as a career. 

I didn’t try to talk him out of it. 

Honestly… I understood. 

He’s been at this a long time. He’s getting older. His priorities are changing. He wants more stability in his life and wants to be able to provide for the people he cares about without constantly wondering when the next opportunity is coming. 

And he was pretty self-aware about it too. 

He admitted there were probably things he could have done differently. Choices he could have made. Ways he could have pushed harder or approached the career differently. 

But ultimately, he was just tired of the grind. 

He’s not going to stop making music. He loves music. He’s just starting to believe he might be happier if music wasn’t responsible for carrying the weight of his livelihood anymore. 

And I couldn’t really argue with that. In fact, I respected it. 

But I walked away from the conversation not discouraged, exactly… 

Just sober. 

Because every time I have one of these conversations -- particularly now that I’m getting older too -- it reminds me that passion alone does not make a career sustainable. 

And I’m not interested in responding to that reality by saying, “Well, I just want it more.” 

Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. 

What I can do is make sure I’m paying attention to whether all this work is actually building something. 

Because I -- we -- need to make sure there’s an actual business growing underneath all of this. 

Artists (often myself included) can become absolutely obsessed with attention: 

More followers. More views. More people at the show. More press. More comments. More industry people knowing our name. 

And look, when you’re trying to build something from nothing, attention matters… 

But attention can also create the illusion that something is working.

You can be busier than ever, more visible than ever, getting more opportunities than ever… and STILL not actually be building a sustainable career. 

So after that conversation last night, I went home and started looking at my artist project much more like a business. 

Particularly in one sense: 

I’m gonna start measuring things more closely. 

And not so much streams, followers, likes and views. 

Things like: 

Are my show guarantees increasing? 

Are more promoters reaching out to me inbound? 

Are people actually buying tickets and merchandise? 

Is my email list growing? 

Are people coming back? 

Are the relationships I’m building creating new opportunities? 

Are my workshops, scoring work, performances and other revenue streams growing? 

Is the ecosystem becoming more VALUABLE year over year? 

In other words: 

Is all this attention actually converting into something?? 

Because I think there’s a point in an artist’s career where “just keep going” is no longer enough. 

You gotta look at the machine you’re building and ask whether it’s actually working. 

That doesn’t mean every decision needs to make money. Art shouldn’t work that way. 

Some things are worth doing because they’re creatively important. Some things take years to compound. Some opportunities are valuable precisely because you can’t measure their return immediately. 

But zoom out far enough and there should be EVIDENCE that the ecosystem is strengthening. 

Otherwise you may not be building a career… 

You may just be getting better at generating attention. 

And dude… Those are NOT the same thing. 

SO HERE’S THE ZAG:

Stop only measuring whether people are paying attention to you. Start measuring whether your career is actually getting… stronger. 

Pick five or so things that would demonstrate real progress in your career over the next 12 months. 

Maybe it’s your average show guarantee. Maybe it’s ticket buyers. Maybe it’s inbound opportunities. Maybe it’s merchandise revenue. Maybe it’s repeat customers. Maybe it’s the percentage of your income coming from music. Maybe it’s how many opportunities now come to YOU instead of you chasing them.

Whatever they are, write ‘em down. Get the baseline.

And check in with them every month. 

Because if your IG grows 40% this year but your income, opportunities, audience ownership, ticket sales and leverage stay exactly where they are… 

…did your career actually grow 40%??? 

Ya know? That’s the question I’m starting to ask myself. 

I’m actually building a little dashboard for my own project now… something I can look at regularly and know whether this whole ecosystem is genuinely getting stronger or whether I’m just FEELING busier lol. 

Because I think artists spend an enormous amount of time learning how to get attention. 

But… maybe we need to spend a little more time learning how to AUDIT whether that attention is actually building us a future.