CAREER KEROSENE

Put on your marketing hat for a moment.

As any serious business owner knows, a key element of their strategy will be the positioning statement. Popularized by Al Ries and Jack Trout’s seminal work, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, “positioning” refers to how your offering is differentiated among similar ones.

As the Ries/Trout title suggests, positioning isn’t just a position in the marketplace, it’s a position in peoples’ minds. That’s where you want to position your self, your company, your brand, your specialness.

Market position is often related to niche. The “mass market” has given way to a market of niches. The music market in particular continues to segment and each segment has beome a “world”, a cultural/economic portal, through which niche companies can create value and success.

Maybe your specialty is tube amps, or Latin jazz arrangements, or songs with a nautical theme. Whatever it is you can create a niche from it, a distinctive offering that stands out in the marketplace of useful things. As the saying goes, ‘Dig a hole an inch wide and a mile deep,’ and work it.

You’re an entrepreneur of your own talent. What is entrepreneurship? It’s seeing an economic/social/spiritual need and then creating business forms to meet that need. It’s finding a gap in a seemingly saturated market and creatively filling it in with your unique offering.

In order to help you strengthen your distinction, here are ten questions you should ask of your market positioning strategy:

• Is it relevant? Relevant means applicable, connected, germane. The distinctions you create must be valued by a sufficient number of fans and customers.  Your distinction needs to connect.
• Is it different? Being different for the sake of being different isn’t enough. Offerings must be genuinely different. What compelling reason is there for customers to switch their attention from existing brands to yours?
• Will they care? Your point of difference must be truthful, authentic. Truth cuts through the clutter. Claims must not be empty, otherwise your audience will see through your ‘spin’.
• Get emotional? Customers and fans must make a lasting emotional connection with your brand.
• Are you the best? Superior quality alone is not enough to ensure market distinction, but it’s crucial. Quality is relative to consumer expectations. Raise expectations by delivering the best.
• Can you say it? Every aspect of promotion should contain your differentiating idea presented in an easily digestible form. Creative concision is challenging but always effective.
• Who are you? You are ultimately offering a human experience to fans and customers. Define your brand’s values, identity and personality in light of the experience you want them to have.
• Are you innovative? Competitors will think nothing of stealing your ideas and calling them their own. Pre-emptive positioning based on innovation cannot be easily copied.
• Can they afford it? Can buyers afford to pay for the difference? Improvements to products and services can be costly, but value is what you’re after and value transcends mere “price”. People pay for uniqueness.
• Can you make a profit? The reverse of affordable—there must be sufficient profit margin once you have created your differences. After all, this isn’t a hobby you’re involved in – it’s your bread and butter!

Run your own positioning strategy through these ten questions and see it get stronger.

For more great food on this topic see, The Collapse of Distinction by Scott McKains (2009) and Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand by William Arruda and Kristen Dixon (2007).

First of all, let’s define ‘value’. In this context, value is the full-spectrum impact your product or service has on your customer or audience. Value should not be equated with price. Price is merely one aspect of the total value you deliver.

Value is essentially what your company (i.e., your brand) promises and the emotional connection and trust your customers and audience feel in relation to that promise.

That’s the basic value you deliver. But you can also add to it.

Adding value boosts your offering, making it more visible, more desirable and, ultimately, more sellable.

Adding value can also create distinction and differentiation for your offering in the marketplace.

You add value when you take the product or service you’ve created and then add materials, processing or services to create an even more valuable end product. You then offer the product in its value-enhanced form.

Value can be added by:

• putting the product through an additional process
• combining the product with other products
• offering the product as part of a larger package of services
• removing something to change the use of the product or
• increasing levels of service.

Some examples of adding value:

1.  A student who operated a demo recording business expanded the operation by offering half-day recording seminars and special discounts to clients. Added value to recording services.

2.  A businessman bought large plastic cup lids, licensed CDs, attached them to the lids and marketed them as “LidRocks” at concerts. Extra value to concert drinks.

3.  A music instruction center for kids calls every client’s parent to check on the quality of recent lessons (and to promote additional services). Extra value to private instruction.

4. A record company creates an appropriate recording or compilation for a tie-in with an environmental organization’s benefit project. Extra value to recorded music sales.

5. Here’s one from the recent music press: The Marlin Hotel in Miami’s South Beach combines a luxury hotel with a state-of-the-art recording studio. Extra value to a hotel stay.

Here are some strategies for adding value to your current offerings:

1. Enhance: Take an existing product or service and think of an additional process, material or service that could be added to create a new product. For example, adding contact directories to a regional monthly music magazine.

2. Hitch-Hike: Identify a process or service which you could provide, then look for types of existing products or services which could be used as a base for your desired operation. For example, provide a compilation CD to an auto dealer to include with all new car sales in a month.

3. Add/Subtract: Find an existing product which could be changed into a different or improved product by adding or subtracting one or more elements. If additional elements are required, locate a source for these and develop a method of adding them. Conversely, if elements must be subtracted, find a workable way of doing so.

4. Gap-Filler: Find a customer group which has needs that are not being met by existing products and services.  For example, providing iPod owners with a service that loads their CD collections into their players so they don’t have to spend the time doing it themselves.

Get loads more marketing insights from the latest edition of Indie Marketing Power (2011) by Peter Spellman.

In my twenty years as a hiring manager, I have probably reviewed several hundred cover letters and resumes while hiring people for various positions.

I don’t have that much to say about the resume. I see the resume as a basic ‘catalog’ of your experience and achievements. Formats and styles vary, and there will be certain emphases and orderings of content depending on the target, but resumes essentially are the same inventory from one to another. An essential document but pretty basic.

(Of course there is a way to make your resume stand out too, but that will have to wait for another post).

The thing that always grabs my attention, however, is the cover letter and, more accurately, a certain feature of the cover letter. I call this feature ‘resonance’.

Resonance means ‘prolonged sound’ and what these letters do is prolong the sound of your name in the hiring manager’s mind.

How do you do it? Through a simple device.

Are you ready?

You communicate WITH ME.

Resonance is created when I get a sense the you paused to sit in my chair, walk in my shoes, and took a good look at the world from my perspective.

Resonance is created when you reflect back to me the language of my mission statement, the current goals of my company, and the values that suffuse my work.

Resonance is created when you articulate a match between what you have to offer and what I really need.

Creating resonance assumes you have gone beyond the job posting, beyond the words on my web site, beyond the “standard” understanding of the job position, to the ‘inner baseball’ about me and my company, and to a deeper level of understanding of my needs.

How do you get to that level of understanding?

1. Connect. Use your network of contacts to speak to people who have either worked at the target company or know others who have.

2. Research. Google the company name and the hiring manager’s name to see how they show up in third-party news reports, etc. Go even deeper by tapping into services like Hoovers.com and InsideView.com. Also, look for a discussion forum on the company you’re targeting. Although gossipy, these boards offer insights into a firm’s hiring policies and culture.

3. Reflect. Take a good look at your own list of assets (work experience, personality traits, values and interests) and think long and hard about how these match to the needs of the company. Write them down. Articulate them. Rehearse them. This is the essential value you can bring to the company and the position. Weave this into all your letters and job target communications.

I can tell you from experience that candidates who have done this have also gotten the interview.

That level of understanding shows distinction.   It shows differentiation.

It creates resonance.

Prolong your sound.

Artists tend to be slow starters but good finishers if they take the long view and stick to their knitting. A musician confident in her skills, creativity, contact network and personal drive might sometimes wonder, “Why am I not yet famous?” All the pieces seem to be in place, but fame still eludes.

Even if  “fame” be defined as “simply supporting my life and paying my bills solely though musical work,” this more humble end prize is still a distance off.

Or is it?

How we define “success” for ourselves will often influence our view of the “prize”. I personally view “success” as the successive realization of a worthwhile goal. If I am reflecting my long range goal in my day, even in the smallest of ways, then I am “successful,” according to that definition.

When asked about her “success”, musician Zoe Keating described it as “the sum of many tiny moments.” Success is not someday; success is every day. The key is to knit your success to conscious goals.

We consider 5% GDP growth pretty good; 10% awesome. How might this apply to the tempo of music career development? Well, say you play 20 shows this year and your combined revenue for performances and music sales total $2000. Now, let’s say next year you play 30 shows and generate $3000 total sales. While it might not seem that much, it’s actually 50% growth! Project 50% growth per year out ten years and you’ve got a sustainable music career. Even 40, 30 and 20% growth are admirable business benchmarks.

Claude Monet didn’t even start his water lily series until he was in his seventies; Goethe finished Faust in his eighties; Pablo Casals was still performing in his nineties. Mozart didn’t complete a masterpiece until about ten years after he began composing.

The point is we should give ourselves permission to grow our careers at a tempo that makes sense to us rather than to over-strive and burn out too soon.

Slow starter, good finisher.

Every business is becoming a music business.

Toyota started a record label. So have Artois Brewery, Proctor & Gamble, and Levi’s Jeans.

Apple Computer, Red Bull and Nike, three companies outside the orbit of the traditional music business, have spearheaded successful initiatives in the music space that record companies themselves seem constitutionally incapable of carrying out.

As a result, you are no longer beholden to traditional “music industry companies” to achieve success.

It’s no mere coincidence that other industries try to model the way the entertainment industry is organized. As Jeremy Rifkin notes in his book, The Age of Access:

The cultural industries – including the recording industry, the arts, television, and radio – commodify, package, and market experiences as opposed to physical products or services. Their stock and trade is selling short-term access to simulated worlds and altered states of consciousness. The fact is, they are an ideal organizational model for a global economy that is metamorphosing from commodifying goods and services to commodifying cultural experience itself.

Companies of all shapes and sizes are waking up to this all around the planet. Bacardi, for instance, announced that it would help the English electronic duo Groove Armada pay for and promote its next release. Caress, the body-care line owned by Unilever, commissioned the Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger to record a version of Duran Duran’s “Rio” that it gave away on its web site to promote its “Brazilian body wash” product.

It’s no secret that music “sells”. Music is an emotional connector and it has accompanied just about every product that’s come to market since the 1930s. In fact, some of the most interesting music today is heard more readily on TV commercials than on the radio. Wherever we go we hear music. Why? Because we love it and we want it. We want it when we drive, eat breakfast, shower, work, make love, shop for stuff – it’s the aural landscape of our lives.

Because music is a universally loved value and activity companies across the board are looking to associate themselves with music and its fans.

Here are some more recent examples of creative alliances in the music space.

Aloft Hotels Part of the Starwood Hotels family, every hotel features a WXYZ Bar, DJ nights, trying to appeal not only to guest but to locals as well, lobby shows featuring acoustic performers, a web site where travelers can plan their vacations based on who’s booked to perform at a hotel, talent search contests, and  at Aloft-sponsored Live in the Vineyard festival in Napa, CA.

Holiday Inn This hotel chain launched its own music label, with its first “signing’ being Nashville singer/songwriter Kyle Andrews. Holiday Inn used his song as part if campaigns in markets around the globe. Piped it into lobbies and used it as hold music on the reservation line.

Kia Launched a series of 10 concerts across the US to promote its Soul marquee: dubbed the “Soul Collective,” featuring acts like MBMT and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Fans didn’t just line up for tickets, either – the only way to see the show was to test drive a Kia.

Sailor Jerry While Sailor Jerry partners with artists from various genres, they all share a common thread: “a commitment to the Sailor Jerry lifestyle which pays homage to the company’s heavily tattooed patron saint”. The brand has produced parties at SXSW, Coachella and other festivals, and has produced four compilation CDs.

Southwest Airlines Let the uber-hip carriers like Virgin and Jet Blue have their minimalist trance mixes – SW is focused on being the airline for the family-friendly, hardworking artist or music fan. The carrier recently partnered with independent world music act Gaelic Storm to give away tickets to see the band headline an Irish music festival in Milwaukee, and it promoted the act on its web site and in its newsletter. GS’s manager, Matt Maher says the band’s demo “aligns with SW’s customer base. You go to their shows, and the crowd is made up of firefighters and police officers and plumbers.”

The lesson: We need a new way of thinking about the “music business”. It’s time to stretch our minds and get outside the box of traditional music business models. The “digital common” brings all kinds of non-music businesses into a space where creative partnerships can develop. Non-music partners tend to be  fresh, unjaded, and excited about associating with musical and entertainment arts as a way of adding value to what they’re offering.

Try reflecting on where musical products and services are used rather than on where they have traditionally been sold. For example, think of companies you personally resonate with and then focus on those that may have an affinity with the kind of music product you offer. Make an alliance and use that alliance to market your music. Don’t fall for the myth that your music is too precious for such associations.

Remember, the economic structures of the last century are being torn apart. The rules are being rewritten. Anything goes in the business world today.

Find your opportunity.

If you are on the job search, you’ve probably encountered this phrase: hidden job market. Oooo…sounds pretty mysterious, huh? Sort of like an impenetrable curtain only the select few can get behind.

Are you feeling left out of this secret land?

First, let’s demystify the hidden job market; then look at some practical strategies for conquering it.

The hidden job market is all the jobs that change hands without being advertised, and jobs that may be advertised but go to insiders. The hidden job market also includes all the jobs that are filled by temporary or contract workers who are asked to join the organization on a permanent, full-time basis.

Why are up to 70% of open positions never advertised? Because the company will first look within (that is, within its own network of active relationships) and then, only when it has exhausted this method of candidate hunting, will it turn to the general candidate pool.

This, of course, doesn’t apply to all open positions. For example, the search for a CEO, CFO, or other executive, will usually expand beyond the company’s walls. But those are exceptions. The fact is most jobs fall into this “insider” market.

So here are the facts:

70% of open positions never get posted

80% of all jobs are found through networking

Therefore…

Put 20% of your time into job postings, and,

Put 80% of your time into networking

It’s that simple.

Your main goal when looking for a job is to use your vast network of contacts to try and get close to people in companies you want to work for.

Don’t feel like you have a network? Well, even the shyest person has access to myriad contacts. Your old teachers or professors, colleagues at places where you used to work, friends from all phases of your life, acquaintances, members of your church or synagogue, neighbors, contacts on your friends list at Facebook or LinkedIn and similar social networking sites, and people that you run into in your regular daily life are all networking contacts. These people are not really strangers.

Here’s a relationship point for you: hiring mangers don’t need to know you very much. If they know you at all, you go to the top of the pile. A friend of an ex-girlfriend’s golf buddy’s dog walker’s dentist is a close enough connection.

So stop looking for powerful connections and start viewing everyone you can come into contact with as a potential referral source.

Write them all down on your contact list.

When you want to gain access to a particular employer, ask everyone you know:
“Who do you know at ________ organization?”

When you want to get advice and counsel, ask for it!
“Who do you know who would know anything about _________?”

Assume all companies are hiring at all times, because they are. Ask for referrals to people at any level in the industries that are of interest to you. Ask for permission before using someone’s name. “May I use your name when I contact that person?” If you’ve been polite and to the point, and you didn’t ask for a job, in your communiqués with Person A, she’ll be much more comfortable giving you an email for Person B.

Your goal is to eventually ask this question: “After what I’ve learned from you, and my other research, I’d be very interested in applying for a job with your company in _______. Who would I talk to about that?”

That’s how to penetrate the hidden job market. That’s the pro-active job search.

That’s a recipe for success.

Information and ideas come at us fast and furious. So it’s smart to jot down ideas and insights when they pop up.  Book them before they flee.

You’ll be in good company.

• Leonardo da Vinci is one of history’s most famous note takers.  His notebooks overflowed with observations on nature, art, and architecture.
• Thomas Edison loaded thousands of notebooks with insights and diagrams.

Create your own Career Notebook to capture words, ideas, and resources.

It doesn’t have to be a physical notebook, of course, but often the more tangible (materialized) the ideas, the more real they becomes (we’ll leave the metaphysics of that assertion for future posts).

Include any and all of the following in your notebook:

• Illuminating insights you come upon
• Pictures and photos that inspire you
• Job and internship descriptions you discover
• Details about jobs you have held and the skills you demonstrated in each
• Success stories you hear about
• Clippings about companies you admire
• Creative leads
• Courses you want to take
• Lists of conferences and workshops you’ve attended
• Career-building events you hear about
• Copies of your resume and cover letters
• Career-building resources that cross your path, etc.

You can also include a variety of additional information “as is” for your portfolio or job application. This info may include:

• Transcripts from all academic institutions attended
• Professional testing results, such as GRE, ACT, LSAT, GMAT, etc.
• Samples of work (clean copies of a variety of writing samples and/or reports, papers, projects, etc.)
• Evidence of creative experience (marketing fliers, presentations, artistic pieces or photos)
• Certification or licensure documents
• Certificates of awards and honors; letters of nomination
• Commendations or letters of appreciation from employers or others regarding work, internships, co-ops or volunteer work including copies of e-mails, memos and articles that mention your efforts)
• Newspaper or media clippings (especially those that address your achievements)

Finally, keep a section for reflection and brainstorming – taking these various mosaic tiles and arranging them together into some kind of coherent picture.

Keeping all of this organized is the key, so get a 3-ring binder and dividers. Then have fun. Decorate the cover with images that resonate with you and that pull you towards your goals. Your notebook can become a powerful tool that provides continuous fuel for your growing career.

If you’d like to delve deeper into this Career Notebook idea check out, The Career Guide for Creative & Unconventional People by Carol Eikleberry – a great read. Also, her web site has a whole section on creating a career notebook, along with lists and worksheets to help get you started.

Greetings Career Voyagers! Welcome to a place you can get quality fuel for your music career.  My name is Peter Spellman and my primary gig is as Director of Berklee’s Career Development Center in Boston. But my larger passion is Artist Development in all its dimensions.

I (and occasional guest authors) will share thoughts and ideas in this space to help you grow and manage your career successfully. After all, you don’t just want to be a great musician; you want to be a working musician too, right?

Please share your insight and feedback on anything said in this forum. None of us knows what all of us know, so don’t hold back. We want to hear about what’s working and what’s not working for you in your own music career development. Such sharing lifts us all.

To help set the table for what’s to come over the next several months, let me share with you what I consider the 5 essentials for music career success. These can serve as dynamic organizers for what’s to come.

Music is too big a world for a one-size-fits-all model of music career success. Musicians’ career paths are as unique as their individual fingerprints. Nevertheless, there are a few guidelines that I believe apply to anyone trying to make a living career out of their love of music. Here are five:

1. Hone your talent and realize there is a place for you. Not everyone is a Quincy Jones, a Beatles, or a Bruce Springsteen, but if an artist like Tom Waits is a vocalist, then there is definitely room for you too. Do the work necessary to excel in your niche, whether it’s writing a chart, engineering a session, providing backup vocals, or teaching kids the basics of music.
Your goal, to use marketing lingo, is to “position” yourself in your “market” as the go-to person for that particular skill or talent. Don’t worry too much about industry rejection. Every record label in Britain initially passed on the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. The key is believing in yourself and persevering beyond others’ opinions (even those of “the industry”).

2. Connect with as many people as you can because relationships drive music careers more that anything else, even talent. Music is a “who-you-know/who-knows-you” kind of business. The quality and quantity of your relationships will be the primary engines of your progress. Try developing creative projects with fellow-musicians. Perhaps you can combine your live show with two other acts and present the package to a local promoter. There is strength in numbers. Finding the right combinations takes experimentation.

If you’re interested in working in the business side of music, then interning at a music company is the best way to both learn how the biz works and connect with those who can help move your career along.

3. Accept the new powers in your corner and take responsibility for creating your own success. The last twenty years has given you the means to both produce and distribute your own music on a global scale. New models of business are emerging in the world of music. A “record deal” is not necessarily the goal any longer. The Internet has clearly become your “open mic” to the world, and desktop technologies provide you with ways to have the look, reach and efficiency of larger companies. Dare to be different.

Remember, new power also means new responsibilities. Global reach means a potentially far-flung audience. You need to be ready for the incoming messages and questions from this new market. Have you created the best business structures to hold and express your work? Are you setting up effective systems to communicate with your audience? It’s up to you to create your own success and not merely rely on a record company or agent to do the work of making you visible in the marketplace.

4. Understand that every business is becoming a “music business” and so musical opportunities are multiplying. It took a coffee company and a computer manufacturer to teach the music industry how to sell music in the digital age! Non-music businesses everywhere are seeking creative ways to add music-related services to their mix. This means that you needn’t be dependent on the traditional “music industrial complex” for music career success.
Think of companies you already resonate with and try brainstorming ways you can link up. Start on a local scale. It might be a gift shop, bookstore or arts organization. It may even evolve into a full-fledged sponsorship for a tour or recording project. Find ways to add value to what these businesses are doing with what you have to offer. Forging creative alliances is key to building a multi-dimensional music career.

5. Prepare to be versatile and to wear several hats initially, until your “brand” is established. Most musicians I know have had to cobble together several revenue streams in the early stages of their careers in order to make enough money to support themselves. Many have also had to take on a non-music “lifeline careers” just to make ends meet, pay down debt, or supplement what they earn from music.

I tell musicians to not so much look for “a job,” but to seek out the work that needs to be done. It might be arranging a song, playing a wedding gig, helping organize a concert series, doing a jingle session, offering private music instruction, or writing a review of your favorite band’s new CD. Eventually, all the different experiences merge together into the roaring river that will be your music career. At that point you’ll be visible, in demand and able to name your price. And that’s career success.