Why are You Afraid of No?

Hey everybody, it's Sweet Deat. I'm back again with another topic that no one likes to talk about, so let's not waste any time, and let's get right to it.

No, think about that, just for one moment. The word... No, we've been hearing this word our entire lives for our parents, friends, people that were not friends with... And obviously, there are times when No means no, but as it pertains to a career in the arts, specifically through the lens of music, because that's where I'm coming from, no, to me doesn't have the same meaning as it does to other people. So let's talk about now for just a second, how many times have you heard the word No in your music career and it stopped you dead in your tracks, and you just moved on to another idea, maybe you asked a friend to play music with you in a band or something, and he said No. Or maybe just the thought of the word no, coming out of someone else's mouth, totally stopped you from even giving your idea a try?

So now I'm gonna tell you a quick story about now and how I learned to overcome it in my own personal life. So once upon a time here in Atlanta, Georgia, I graduated music school, I had an amazing time and I learned so much, but unfortunately upon graduation, I still was not hireable... Sure, I knew chords and I knew scales and I could improve a little bit. I could even sing a little bit too, but I didn't have the confidence that I needed to succeed in the marketplace, and I also didn't have any connections, I wanted to interact with other musicians and play music with them, but I just didn't have a lot together quite yet, and I was practicing really hard, hours and hours a day trying to up my game and make it attractive for somebody to want to play music with me, it was in this moment that I had to make a decision, I was going to have to take control of my own career and not wait for somebody else to give me an opportunity, so without having a clue as to how to do this, I blindly started walking into places and asking if they wanted to have music. So what kind of places were they? They were bars, restaurants, clubs, everything in between, if there was a space in the corner and there was some sort of service being given, I was asking if I could play in it, and I was asking for a certain amount of money in exchange for my services.

I'll never forget the first time I walked into a restaurant and I asked the general manager if there was an opportunity for me to potentially play here; the manager looked at me with his furry eyebrows and said, no, so being the general positive spirit that I am as a person, I just thanked them for his time, and I walked out, sat in the car with my hands on the steering wheel, and I thought to myself, How am I going to make a music career happen? It just doesn't seem like it's going to work. And then I looked across the parking lot and there was another restaurant, and so I went into this restaurant and asked the same question again, and guess what they said no to across the street. There was another restaurant. I walked into that restaurant and asked the same question a third time, what do they say? No. This process continued for over a week, I can't tell you how many bars and restaurants and clubs I walked into just trying to find someone that was willing to pay me to play music, I could have stopped right there. I could have given up hope, I could have said, You know what, forget it, I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I should go back into the military from where I came, maybe I should just play music for fun and not think of it as a career, I had all of these doubts just swirling around in my head, and I could have accepted no as the final answer but I didn't.

Finally, after a week of going around and asking countless restaurants, fine-tuning my pitch, someone said Yes.

I almost didn't know how to take it at first, I was like, Wait. Oh, okay. I walked out of that meeting with my head held high, and I realized that I could do this, so fast forward about a month or so, I had eight gigs every week, regular happening on a schedule, working three hours a night, playing the music that I wanted... The truth is, if I can do it, anyone can. I didn't have a lot of skill. I wasn't somebody that was special or someone that had a unique sound, I was a brand new guitar player in the career field, they just wanted to work and play guitar and get better at it and get paid to do it, so if that story is inspired to you at all, let's look inward and figure out the three reasons why maybe you haven't done your part yet. One of the first things that I hear come out of people's mouth is, it's not in my personality, or it's out of my comfort zone. Listen, I get it. A lot of people are not social, they're not people that inherently are extroverted like me, but I'm here to tell you that even introverts can do this and succeed. It was out of my comfort zone. The first time I got behind the wheel of a car and try to figure out how to parallel park... But guess what? I learned it and I did it.

So why is learning how to walk into a restaurant and talk to somebody about maybe hiring you any different?

Stop being afraid of the word, no. It's not a scary word, the truth is, you have to figure out your match, some people are a match for you, some people are not, don't take offense that somebody says that they're not a match for what you do, there's hundreds and thousands of other places that you can play, that will be a match for you, so let go of these inner feelings that you don't have a good personality to talk to people about trying to broker a deal. It's insane. You can do it, just try, your delivery will get better over time, and eventually someone is going to say yes. And why are they going to say, yes, it's because they probably like you. People hire people because they like the person, so work on being able to communicate who you are to that person, so they can make that decision as to whether they like you or not, if they like you, they're probably going to hire you, reason number two, you haven't done your part yet is you are still waiting for perfect, and what I mean by that is you're still waiting to think that the skills that you have are good enough.

Now this is a subjective one, obviously, I don't know who you are, and I don't know how well you play an instrument or how well you do, your art, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and just simply say that if you even think that you're decent or just mediocre, you are good enough musician. Art is a constant pursuit of perfection of which we never achieve, so being comfortable with where you are on your journey, makes you more comfortable and being able to deliver yourself to the circumstance that you're trying to get a gig for, so have some realistic expectations, if you just know how to strum a few chords on a guitar and you can sing... You might not wanna go to the biggest theater in town and ask for a gig, that's probably not a winning scenario for you, but if you're just getting started and there's a corner pub down the street that might have 100 or 150 bucks to pay you for a couple of hours of music that could be a winning scenario from you and the skills that you learn on that gig will probably increase as long as you push yourself to learn more than what you know in the previous time you played there, and that could grow into something...

And finally, if you're afraid of judgment, I could boil this down into three words, get over it.

There are so many people out there in the world trying to do their thing, you're just one of them. Who cares what somebody thinks online, who cares what somebody thinks down the street, it doesn't matter because this is about you and what you want to achieve and what you want to do, who cares whether somebody down the street thinks you're good enough to have something else, doesn't matter. The only way you get to it is by asking, and if you fail, you fail, you take that circumstance and you look at why you failed, and you figure out how not to fail next time, the amount of nose that I've gotten in my life from just asking far outweighs the yeses. But the yeses have gotten me to this point. So don't worry about what other people think. It's just not that important.

Now, I'm gonna give you three tips to help you change your game.

Tip number one, get your brand in order, whatever it is you're chasing after, whether it's a gig or otherwise, you need to have your brand in order. How does your website look? How does your video look... Are you on all the social media platforms? It sounds so silly to say these three things, but it's really true, so many people I know don't have just those basic three things in order, and that's prohibiting them from really taking a step forward with their career,

Number two, if you're not asking, they'll never know you want it... I've told this to, I can't tell you how many different people, but if you're not emailing or phone calling or texting 10 or more people per day about your career and advancing it, you are not doing your part, this ideology of you being able to sit back and let the world just come to you. Drives me crazy and yes, for some people that works. That is a very small group of people. So no matter how good you are, don't just sit back, hope for the best, take control over what is yours, this is your career. Own it.

Okay, and the third and final thing I'm gonna give you today is probably one of my most favorite things to talk about, and that is, what kind of relationships are you building? Relationships with people within the industry don't happen overnight, it takes time, effort and work. You shouldn't be thinking about any of this as a quick fix, but it's something that is a longterm investment, relationships go beyond any gig that you ever have, so if you make solid relationships with people, you'd be surprised how many places you may get to work with them, the world is ever changing. So no one's ever going to stay in one place forever, I'm still working with people that has worked in four or five different places, and I've worked at every single one of those places as you take control of your career, value those relationships like gold. Alright, everybody. That's it for today, thank you so much for tuning in.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments below and I'll get right back to you. If there's someone out there in your life that needs to hear this, share it with them, I offer all this information for free because I want people to be encouraged to take control over their career and really take it to the next level.

So again, my name is Sweet Deat, and I will see you next time!