Do These 3 Things to Start 2021 Right!
So What's up, everybody? It's 2021. How are you doing? My name is Sweet Deat.
So listen, everybody's thinking about New Year's resolutions, it's just after the first of the year, you're probably thinking about going to the gym because of all the pounds you've added over the course of this whole pandemic, or maybe you're just trying to think about things that will make your life better moving forward, and I was kind of thinking about that over the course of this past weekend, and even over New Years itself, and I just kind of thought that I would do something at the top of the year, that could really add value to you and sort of give you some inspiration to really adjust how you do business and start really thinking about the times that we're living in.
So we're gonna talk about three things, and here's the first one.
Let's talk about auditing your time, this is a really simple one to understand, we waste time every single day... That's right, you and I both waste time every day, whether it's just unintentionally, fumbling around on your favorite social media platform, or maybe you like to watch a Netflix show, whatever it is, we're always wasting time. So on the other side of that is really simply, how many hours a day are we really, truly productive as in we're really moving... Moving things forward, right?
I started doing this at the top of every year to sort of recalibrate my brain and to make myself a lot more efficient, and since I've been doing this over the last few years, it's really gradually up to my productivity time to where I can get things done in a day that maybe not a lot of people can... And maybe that's because I kinda have a high motor and I'm always kind of a gogetter type of a person, but I think it sort of started from this very point that I'm making is that you really have to have just a real conscious top of mind understanding of how you're spending time. So what I want you to do is I want you to sit down and I want you to monitor your day tomorrow, so when you wake up, just think about the exact amount of time, whether it's like from say 8:00 AM to 8:20, and that you actually were working on something and then at 8:20, maybe you got a phone call, maybe were interrupted in the kind of way, and just actually log the amount of time that you're actually working in a day.
As self employed people like we are... Most of the people who find this channel are, I would say that are musicians and people of that sort, it's easy for us to just be off the schedule all the time and get lost in daily activities because we get pulled in one direction or another, audit your time, see how much time you're really working in the day and then work backwards and trying to figure out how to make each day more productive, you'll get closer to your goals and your dreams a lot faster.
Anyway, point number two.
Yes, creative and musician type. It is time to embrace the digital revolution, that is 2020 and 2021. I've had this conversation about six different times with six different musicians, so I figured it was kind of time for me to actually talk about it right here, specifically in this way, that being that I was speaking with one particular musician about how fast everything has sped up, live streaming and the idea of just marketing yourself in a digital way as opposed to going to jam sessions traditionally, like if you're a musician or maybe poetry reads, If you're a poet, acting seminars and classes and stuff like that, all this stuff was things that you just always did. And that's the way things have always been. And all of a sudden, in the year 2020, everything changed and everything went digital because we couldn't leave our house to do our job, it's never been more important now for you to embrace this digital age, if you're a sideman, musician and artist, whatever you are in the creative world, or if you're not in the creative world and you're watching this and you're a banker, it's time for you to figure out how to be relevant over a camera, like the one that I have here that I'm speaking into. And good news is, you don't need a fancy camera like I have, you can use your phone or you can use anything.
Really, anything that gets your material out into the digital world. The internet as we know it, it's really important that you start thinking about how to do it and how to do it consistently. Now, I can hear all of you crying right now saying, Oh my God, I don't wanna be on social media, I get it. It's not my favorite thing to do either. Honestly, it's not... If I could spend my day doing what I wanted to do, it would just be playing guitar behind closed doors, which I still do a lot, and I would probably just be reading a book from Jay Kris,, and not really being all that social but the truth is, this is how people find other musicians now and validate them in order for them to get called for the gig, think about it, you've already been doing this for years, you're hanging out with someone and they need a guitar player or a drummer or a bass player for a gig, and then what do they do? They go and they find their social media profile, and they find a recent clip of them playing, and they look at it and they say, Oh, this guy is pretty killer, I think I'm gonna call him for my gig. It's just a nobrainer. So it's time for you to come up with a marketing plan for your instrument, figure out ways to be creative and sit down and record yourself doing whatever it is you do, and put it up online consistently every single week. You may not like it, but this is the world that we're in now, and if you're a musician that's maybe in, say your sixties and beyond, you might be able to just ride off into the sunset here and not really embrace this, because maybe you have a really strong reputation in your hometown, or maybe you've got a legacy type of gig that you've been working for 20 years and you don't intend on changing that arrangement... Yeah, you could probably slip by with this, but for the rest of us, this is the way people are going to find you, and this is the way people are going to choose you in the future, and really the future is now also too, it's... A lot more important than just playing a lick of the day and putting it out online, this is your legacy, like we now in 2021, have an unbelievable opportunity to document our legacy in a way that our forefathers in the music world have not...
It's almost like you have a responsibility to do it. And the truth is, if you work really hard at what you do and you honestly put things out with great intention, and that intention being to be the best musician that you can, it's likely that music is gonna find a way to reward you. And honestly, you may be inspirational to someone for a very long time in the future, so… Just do it.
Side note, if you're listening to this and you're like, I have no idea what to do, slide into my DMs and send me an email, and I would love the opportunity to consult with you and to help you achieve some sort of success. I could build a social media strategy plan for you and give it to you for a super, super, super affordable price. Why? Because you need it. And I'm here for you, that's what this channel is all about.
And the third thing that you're going to do immediately, like as soon as you get off of this video, is you're going to figure out how you're going to start contributing to retirement plan.
I can't tell you how many musicians I know that have not taken this seriously, and it drives me crazy, it's never been easier to save for your retirement. I'm not kidding. There are some very traditional things like a Roth IRA that has higher buy-in and if you don't have that money or laying around, and covid is really been really hard on you. It's very easy to get started with something like Acorn.
If you don't know what Acorn is, it's like something that just rounds up all of your transactions from your bank account or your ATM card or maybe your credit card, and say you buy something and it's $2.50, it rounds it up to $3 and takes that extra 50 cents, puts it into an investment account or a retirement account. So it's never been easier for people like you and me to figure out ways to save money. And that's a way that you can do it, and you don't even have to think about it, and you'll be surprised how much money you'll save over a course of a year, because how many transactions do you do a day... I did a little research for this one, and it turns out that around every person in America routinely does at minimum two transactions per day, let's say each one of those transactions rounded up in 99 cents, so maybe it was like $1 was your total or something like that, that would get you to the grand total of $1.98 cents per day, if you multiply that times 365, that's an easy $722. And I think 70 cents. So there, you just saved $722, roughly, just from starting an app, of course, this doesn't account for market increase or decrease, so if the market has a really good year, you might make even more, the quicker you take this seriously is the quicker you get to financial freedom, so this is just one small way that you can do it every day and not think about it, if you'd like to take it in even into even a larger step, hit me up, I have a financial planner that I wanna introduce you to, he's amazing and he will take great care of you.