Are you struggling with forming a deep connection with your audience? Social media can be a fun and creative way to achieve that! Our guest for today’s episode works with musician, encourage them, and help them with the things they struggle with. Alex Love, a musician, turned to “coach-sultant” for artists, discusses social media for musicians. He focuses on branding, content, and psychology to help musicians achieve their music career goals. Tread down the harmonic path to your music goals and tune in to this episode of The Profitable Musician Show with Alex Love.

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The Awakened Creative: How Social Media For Musicians Can Be More Fun & Creative With Alex Love

I am excited to be here with my new friend, Alex Love, from The Awakened Creative. Here’s the thing, we didn’t know each other until probably a month or so ago. I started seeing his posts on social media and was like, “These are thoughtful, interesting, different perspective kinds of posts that I’m not usually seeing from other musician coaches.” It caught my eye, and then I kept seeing them and interacting.

I reached out to him. I’m like, “I would love to have you on the show,” because I feel like we have a lot of the same ways of thinking about how we work with musicians, how we encourage them, the things that they struggle with, all of that. That’s why he’s here. We are going to talk a lot about social media because he does such a good job with that. I want to start out with your journey. I know you are also a musician. How did you get started in music? What have you been doing in music over the years? How did you transition into being a coach for musicians?

Thank you so much for having me. That’s nice. I appreciate the kind words. I started playing piano when I was about ten. I have been a musician for my whole life or since then. I started because my younger sister was playing, and she was getting all of this attention from my mom. I wanted some attention. It didn’t even come from a place of, “I’ve got music in my blood. I have to do it.” It was in there. When I started playing, and I turned out to be okay at it. I did piano lessons for about four years. I did my grade seven AMEB. I don’t know if you guys have that over there, AMEB piano exams.

I don’t think we do.

It’s a standard exam thing in Australia, anyway. As I grew into more of a teenager, I started getting into heavy metal and rock and roll. I learned the drums. I learned a bit of guitar. I played the trumpet for six months. I did that for probably about ten years before I got into electronic music. When I was 24, which was about 2014, I moved to Melbourne, which is where I am now. I originally come from this tiny country town called Benzel, which no one has ever heard of.

Especially me because I don’t know Australian geography at all.

That’s totally fine. I barely do it myself. When I moved to Melbourne, I started studying Music. I studied Bachelor of Music Composition. I started working with one of my lecturers in production, music sequencing, backstage backing tracks, and live concerts. I was probably about 25 when this started happening. I was doing that up until a couple of years ago, to be honest. The way that I went from doing that to what I’m doing now is kind of a blur. When you study music, you learn a bit about branding and marketing. It was always interesting.

 

Over the years, I became more and more interested in social media and marketing in general because it’s unbelievably interesting and fun and creative, branding and all that sort of thing. I started helping artists with stuff. Things were working, and then I naturally gravitated towards doing what I do now, which is mostly helping musicians and artists with social media or making money on social media or general career support and coaching type of thing.

First of all, you said marketing is fun and interesting. That is not something that most musicians say, at least not the ones that I work with. For them, it’s scary and tedious.

When I was younger, I hated the idea of it. I thought it was gross, manipulative, and corporate. It turns out it’s all about empathy, helping people solve problems, understanding them, and providing solutions. It’s unbelievably creative in many different ways. Even more so, branding is unbelievably creative and fun. If you are someone who likes to build worlds with music or if you are a writer or if you write a screenplay or something like that, you create these characters and stories.

Branding and marketing, in a big way, that’s what is. That’s fun because you can lead people down this path and connect with people in a different way when you are writing music, and you have that connection with the music, and people connect to the music. Marketing and branding are the same things but it’s different. I don’t know how to explain it but it’s fun. It’s creative. Every musician should give it a proper go and see if they can find the fun in it.

 

I love that you said that because I always like to say that a lot of marketing is telling stories. Telling stories is fun. We all love to tell stories when we write music, at least the singer-songwriters I work with. A big thing they want to do is tell a story through a song. Marketing is also telling stories. It’s doing it in different ways.

I know this is going to sound horrible but I’m finding it more fun than music in a lot of ways. It’s a big thing to say. I had a bit of a grief moment when I decided to make the official transition from a working musician, which was a lot of work, to an artist consultant because I thought I was giving up my creativity. I had a legitimate moment of grief where I was saying goodbye to this thing. It was a bit overblown because I can make music whenever I wanted.

It felt like I was severing a relationship with this creative identity, and that was my whole life. It turns out that every single day, I have fun with designs. I learned how to design stuff. I learned how to tell stories. You get to explore human psychology and the human experience and talk to people and figure out how they are feeling. I suppose it enriches understanding of the world. It feels creative to me.

I can see why I enjoy your social media and your marketing because you clearly enjoy it. That’s why you are creative, and what you have there is different. I love that perspective. I get it. I gave up music for a while, I would say, with the first almost seven years of working with artists but I got called back to a church job. I’m loving getting back into music and doing music regularly. I feel like there are seasons. Maybe you will go back to music eventually. You can always make it if you want to.

I’m sure you will understand this. It’s always there. Maybe this is a personal thing but there are many good musicians out there now. It’s amazing. Those musicians who are top-tier amazing. They are doing a lot of work. I feel like you need to be a certain kind of musician to fully immerse yourself in that level of dedication. It’s a different world. Maybe we can talk about this at some point but I worked in music and loved it but didn’t love it as much as I thought. I enjoy it a lot more now. I’m less analytical when I listen to music. I enjoy messing around with sounds. I’m still working in the music industry. I love being a part of the music world. This is fun. Some of those musicians make you question your abilities sometimes. It’s inspiring. Pretty amazing that some of the people are out there now.

You need to be a certain kind of person or a certain kind of musician to immerse yourself in that level of dedication fully. It's just a different world. Click To Tweet

Sometimes when we are deep in a study, especially in college or whatever, we can get analytical about music that we lose a lot of the playfulness, the fun, and the joy around it. I was there in college, for sure. I love that you said you learned some marketing and branding in college. I learned none of that. It was a liberal arts school but the music part was conservatory-ish. We didn’t learn anything about the marketing side. I had to figure that out on my own.

That’s totally understandable. When I say we learned a bit, I mean we learned a bit. I almost don’t want to say this because I had the best time when I was studying but they are a little behind sometimes.

Let’s be honest. They are at least several years behind.

I was lucky enough to have a lecturer who was involved in the modern music industry. He was a performer and a producer. He did a bit of everything. He was a teacher and stuff as well. Maybe we learned how to write a press release and put together a rough marketing plan or idea that you can’t do anything with, and that was it. You have to figure it out yourself. There’s so much information out there now, which is great.

I don’t know if you can explain this but I’m curious, what inspires you to put the things that you do on social media? From a coach’s perspective, the things that you are putting out there are a little bit different than the average. Maybe it’s because you are having so much fun and being creative. Also, in your posts, you do some but you don’t do a lot of videos. They are either voice-over or text on the screen, and they are still super valuable.

They were like carousel posts that had multiple tiles where you can have five of them. What I get a little annoyed with on social media, especially on TikTok, is everything is like, “Five ways to blah, blah, blah. Five reasons.” It starts to get super stale. What I love about yours is they are not the same 5 this or 5 that, that I’ve seen around.

I appreciate that. That’s nice. Thank you. I’m trying to half play the social media game, and a half speak from the heart and the head, I suppose. Most people respond, unfortunately. I’m not saying this is a good thing but respond to the five ways to blah, blah, blah. People are saying the same thing over and over again, myself included in that way. The thing is, you need a way on social media. You need a way to drive traffic. You also need a way to speak to your people. The carousels, because they get on the explore page and stuff like that. They are usually practical, actionable things because they perform well.

They bring a lot of people in, hopefully, with all of those people that come in start to see the other stuff, which is, I suppose, things that I’ve learned from my own experience. I am introverted. I think about myself a lot, not in a selfish way but an exploring myself way. I talk to a lot of artists about how they are feeling and how they see the world.

What I’ve derived from that is that there needs to be a big perspective shift in general around music careers and social media and marketing. Also, the mindset work and the journey itself. This stuff comes from me. These are my thoughts. I have a lot of fun with it. I try to be half creative and half exploring my own thoughts and my relationship with how I understand my audience, and then half actionable playing the game.

What works well is that it’s almost like you are hitting them over the head but with a piece of Styrofoam. It’s getting their attention but it’s not crushing them. Sometimes I go a little overboard with the, “Come on, artists. Snap out of it. Stop your scarcity mindset.” You are clearly a deep thinker. It’s not turning people off, especially the artists that are a little more sensitive or maybe wouldn’t respond to the whole tough love that I do occasionally. I see that sometimes you get out there and say, “Stop doing this, artists.”

First of all, you have a nice vibe on social media. I don’t get that harshness from you. I like the tough love thing. That’s important. This is one thing that I would encourage musicians to do when they are on social media as well. I try and pay attention to how people respond to things. You will make a post, and maybe they will come back at you. They have a good point sometimes. A lot of musicians are unbelievably sensitive. I’m sensitive as well. I’m sensitive to this stuff. Sometimes life feels hard.

I listen to these comments. Sometimes I might dish out some tough love in a way that’s coming from a place of empathy. They will say something and will have a good point. Some people have four kids and have lots of people to look after. They have all of this stuff going on in their lives. They are getting beaten over their head with, “You have to suck it up. You have to figure it out.” It’s hard when you are trying to and not getting somewhere. It’s hard to keep hearing this.

People will say, “We need more than just try harder, do better, do more.” I try to keep it real because it is incredibly hard work to do anything well, especially in the music world itself is difficult in my opinion. Also, I don’t believe that the constant attacking and, “Come on, do better.” You need some of that but negative reinforcement isn’t always the most effective way to go, I suppose. It’s trying to find a balance with that and be understanding.

Negative reinforcement isn't always the most effective way to go. Click To Tweet

As a quick side note, for some of the artists that I work with, the work that they have to do before they even get to the point where they are making good progress is unbelievable. I’m not saying that in a bad way. They have a lot of mental blocks and stuff like that. They need to change their perspective on social media. They need to get over their fears and their self-sabotaging behaviors. We should pay attention to that because it’s many musicians.

Let’s talk about that. What is a healthy perspective that an artist should have about social media? I had someone say to me that they are honestly afraid to get too many fans because they are afraid it’s going to make them spend all their time on social media responding to people and engaging. I did remind them, like, “If you have that many fans, then hopefully you are monetizing that. You can hire an assistant to help you. Your assistant can flag certain posts that would be beneficial for you to respond to. You won’t have to spend your day on social media.” I get that. Sometimes artists have that fear of success, like, “If this does start taking off, it’s going to take over my life, and I’m going to get burnt out.” How do you help your artists get a good balance?

First of all, that’s understandable, that fear of success. Also, the more you are out there, the more you are exposed to potentially getting hurt. There are people out there who say horrible things. What is a healthy perspective? The reality is that if you want it to be a major part of how you build your music career, which it needs to be, you can do it without it but it’s probably difficult. You are going to need to spend quite a lot of time on it. I don’t mean hours a day but you are going to need to show up at least a few times a week.

It depends on where you are at but I would say a healthy relationship is focusing on why you are on it and what you are doing this for. Trying your best not to get caught up in the numbers. My thing is to help musicians build a meaningful presence online. I have that as my computer background, “A meaningful presence online. It’s not about the numbers.” I have to remind myself as well. A healthy relationship would be being on social media for the reason that you are supposed to be on it.

Not just mindlessly scrolling.

Please, don’t do that. Especially TikTok, it’s such an endless black hole thing. That and being on social media with the intention to connect with people, build relationships with people, and not see it as this thing where you are disconnected from people. A lot of musicians get on there and think, “I need to post on this little machine, and then my stuff will go out, and then people will love it, and I don’t have to do anything.”

 

You do need to be involved in it, especially in the beginning. It’s hard to not get caught up in the numbers. It feels uncomfortable sometimes. One thing that I do with artists who struggle with this is we spend a lot of time working on perspective and making sure that they are seeing that what they are doing on there is focused on people rather than a machine reminding people, “That person who commented on your post, reply to them. They are a person. That’s not a little robot that’s saying, ‘DM for promotion or whatever.’ It’s a real person.”

Sometimes it is.

There are plenty of those. It’s different for everyone. This is why I’m struggling to answer it a bit but it is about helping them shift their perspective and keep the focus on people, connection, and why they are on it and not focusing on the numbers. That’s incredibly hard to do. I can’t avoid that. I will try not to drag this on too long but it’s the thing where the more you do it and the more you work on this mindset, the tougher you become and the easier it is not to let the numbers get to you and start to see how it is beneficial.

You start making friends, and it gradually becomes less about these numbers and more about the people and the depth of the relationships. Another thing about this is that if you make one post and it doesn’t do well, that’s a bad experience but if you make 100 posts and 30 of them don’t do well, you get this bigger picture, and you realize that there are a lot of fluctuations. It’s this ever-moving, ever-changing thing instead of this, “I made a post, and it’s bad. Now my self-worth is down on the ground.” It’s a good question. It’s a difficult one to answer because it’s different for everyone but I would say people and relationships and focusing on your why.

I always encourage people to have two main platforms, not go crazy and try to be on all of them, and I repost some of it on Facebook because I have been there forever. If one doesn’t do well on one, it does tend to still do well on another. At this one post for whatever reason, it has been up for 3 days on TikTok, and it’s got 40 views. I’m like, “What in the heck? Why does TikTok hate this post? Every other one is usually getting 300 to 600, or more than that. Forty views, are you kidding me?”

I look at that post on Instagram, and it did average. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with that post. It might be that people are in different places or there are different audiences that like different things on different platforms. That can help, too, so you are not putting all your eggs in one basket for each post that you make. Do you do that, too? Do you put yours on both?

I can’t put the carousel on TikTok but all the videos.

Technically, you could make a video out of them. Upload them all as photos. You could even do a little voiceover. The reason I know this is because I do it for our Women of Substance track of the week. I do little screenshots of the artist on different platforms, and I say something with a voiceover. You could totally do that with a Carousell.

That’s a good point. You totally could do that. When I started out on TikTok, I was posting twice a day. I did that for a month as an experiment or about 40 days or something. It’s an interesting point because there are many contributing factors to why things do well and don’t do well. Having two platforms helps you see that. I worked with an artist. We just finished. She made a post on Instagram, and it got about 20,000 views. For her account size, which was about 500 followers, that’s great.

That’s huge. I’ve never had anything get 20,000 views before.

It’s unbelievable, the fluctuations. People say Instagram’s dead. I have a friend who’s a vocal coach, and she went viral on Instagram. She gained 150,000 followers in a week. It’s not dead. For example, TikTok has many rules around words. There are words that you wouldn’t even think are bad words that TikTok will suppress your post because of. If you say, “Link in bio,” for example, it doesn’t like that. Even if you say, “Spotify,” now. I don’t know if that’s a fact. I haven’t seen any official documentation but it’s incredibly strict because they are trying to keep you on the platform by whatever means necessary.

Now I’m thinking about it, and this post that I’m thinking of, I say both pandemic and recession in it. I wonder if any of those are banned somehow.

I would say almost definitely.

I didn’t even think of that. On Instagram, it’s not an issue.

You can say what you want on Instagram for the most part. There are many other factors as well. There are different people on there, different times, and different contexts. A guy commented on one of my TikTok posts, saying, “I like your stuff but you are beginning to repeat yourself.” I went, “I have to repeat myself because it needs to be said.” On Instagram, I got a different response. It was like I had never said it before.

There are a lot of the same people on there but also there are different people. There are many factors that contribute to what’s good and what’s bad and how well something does. You have to do it enough to be able to see that bigger picture because then it doesn’t affect you. It’s like haters. If you get one hater comment, it’s going to sting. I get a lot. I don’t know why but I have been getting so many. They just roll off me now.

I get a lot, too. I’m like, “Whatever. You guys are nuts.” Especially when you are totally nuts. Every once in a while, they do have a good point. Maybe I didn’t clarify myself quite enough in my post. That was a good point that I should have maybe clarified that one thing. It is good to be able to look at it and go, “Maybe next time I talk about this. I can be a little clearer.” Sometimes they are crazy people.

Most of the time, they are crazy people.

We were talking about musicians being sensitive. For those of us who work with musicians, we get the brunt of that. Sometimes they are super sensitive about something that we said and go off on us because they think that we don’t understand them or we are trying to make them something that they are not. For me, I get a lot of like, “Why are you trying to bring capitalism into music? It should be all about the music and the art.” My brand is Profitable Musician. I get that people have that perspective. That’s fine. Don’t follow my brand, then because I’m going to talk about musicians making money.

That’s a difficult conversation to have. I’ve had some conversations with some nice people. They have a problem with monetizing art. There are the full business-minded musicians who generally tend to do better, and there’s a reason for that. It’s a tough conversation but at the end of the day, if you can make money doing something that you love, I don’t see anything wrong with that. There are all of these invisible rules for making money from your artist selling out. It’s like, “Why?”

They changed their style to make more money. Maybe they are having fun with it. Maybe it’s creative. Maybe they are trying something new. I personally don’t. I’ve always loved to try something different. I’ve made music for fun and money. They have both been good. They have both been terrible. If you are someone who wants to do music, that’s the most important thing.

If you want to make a living doing it, you are going to have to make a compromise somewhere. That compromise is that you are probably going to have to do it for money at some point. To be clear, I don’t mean only doing it for the money. If you care about music and if you want to make a living as a musician, you’ve got to make money as a musician. It’s a matter of finding out the way that you can do that without feeling like it’s horrible.

These are the conversations that I got into on some of these posts about playing free gigs and stuff like that. It is all the perspective. If you want to play music full-time or part-time and you need to make money in order to do that, then you eventually need to get away from these free gigs because they are not getting you anywhere. If that’s not your goal and you want to play music because you just want to play music, that’s fine.

You can play free gigs. I do think there’s a line of people that want to play for free, stop trying to take all the gigs away from the artists that should be paid because they are good and doing this full-time. That’s a hard one. I don’t want to tell these musicians, “You can’t not play for free but you also need to think about the people that are trying to do this for a living.”

It’s tough to have this conversation. A lot of the time, this is where I get stuck. Sometimes you can’t help everyone. A lot of the problem with this stuff comes from musicians having they want this thing. In order to have this thing, which is let’s say, a music career, they have to do X, which is marketing, promotion, paid gigs, and things like that. They say, “I don’t want to do that.” It’s like, “You don’t have to do that but you don’t get to have this kind of music career that you want.” There’s a real disconnect there.

Often, the people that are struggling with this concept of making money with music or even doing social media, in general, are also the people who want to be like a rock star or a pop star. It’s tricky. What do you do with people like that when you either have to see if you can help them see things in a way that’s going to benefit them and then change their perspective a bit or you can’t help them, and they can continue to stay in their bubble, I suppose? It’s a tough thing.

It is a tough thing because you have to be like, “How badly do you want to do music? Are you willing to do music in a way that you aren’t a rock star or not? If not, then you can keep pursuing this rock star dream, and the likelihood of it happening is pretty low but you can keep pursuing that. You probably need to have a day job. For me, when I got to my 30s, I was like, “I don’t care about the rockstar thing anymore. I want to do music.” That’s what I want my life to be, filled with music. My career looked different than what I thought it was in my twenties but it was awesome because I was doing music all the time.

You found your thing, and that’s amazing. The rock star lifestyle, the artists that I work with, some of them are starting out. Some of them are established. Not one of these established artists has the same attitude as the, let’s call them, the complainers, for example. They are hyper-driven and incredibly hard-working. They always find a way to make things work. They make compromises but it’s for the greater good. They are always going for it. It’s incredibly hard work, and it’s admirable. I appreciate hard work. I’m that kind of person. I can’t switch off.

I’m not saying that’s a good thing. You can’t be someone who wants to dabble essentially and get to that level. You have to become a new person. Some people want the rock star life and can’t have it. They are not cut out for it. That’s okay. This is, in large part, what I try and talk about in some of my content is that you don’t have to be that. You can have a comfortable life doing something that you love but there are still compromises and sacrifices that you have to make, and it’s still going to be hard work. It’s a different thing.

You can have a very comfortable life doing something you love, but there are still compromises and sacrifices that you have to make, and it's still going to be hard work. Click To Tweet

Again, it’s a hard conversation to have because these musicians are feelers. We feel things quite deeply, and we see the world this certain way. I don’t know how to explain it but I’m sure you understand. It can be hard to let go of the idea that music is this thing. I get this comment all the time, “Good music is the only promotion that you need.” I don’t even know how to respond to it anymore. It’s simply not true. It helps to have good music. In a big way, it helps but it doesn’t work.

If you look at that in any industry or any business, you might be the best lawyer in the world or the best doctor but if no one ever heard of you, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know why musicians don’t see it in relation to all the other industries out there and how it’s pretty much the same.

It’s a blind spot, for sure. It’s tough. I have worked with some artists who had this perspective, and then they decided, “I’m going to give social media a go. I’m going to try this out.” When I’m working with people like this, it’s small steps. It’s like, “First, let’s figure out what you like and what you would want to do. How do you spend your time with music? Let’s record that. Let’s document that. Let’s put that up. Let’s get you into the habit of doing this.” Almost all of them end up saying, “This is fun.” It’s fun to record yourself because you are doing music. You are doing stuff that’s related to music.

You are extending your artistic expression or this is how I like to see it anyway. Once you get your foot in the door with social media and you find that you can do it, you can show up and start posting stuff that you like as well. That’s when you can start packaging it for social media and trying to make it effective because there’s a difference between just posting stuff and posting stuff that works. That’s a whole other story.

Once you get your foot in the door with social media and you find that you can do it, you can show up and start posting stuff that you like. That's when you can start packaging it for social media and trying to make it effective. Click To Tweet

Let’s dive into that for our last subject here. How do we monetize social media? This is like a huge can of worms. Number 1) How can musicians, and then number 2) You and I, we are obviously monetizing it in a bit of a roundabout way or maybe you are monetizing a little more directly than I am. If musicians are looking to do something where they are providing even a service or something, then it’s similar to what we are doing. Why don’t you approach it from both the musician’s side and then someone who’s offering a service?

Most of the musicians and artists that I work with who are monetizing social media in a big way. It is some sort of offer or service-based thing in large part. That’s because it’s pretty difficult, and you can do it. Let’s say that you want to start at Patreon or something like that. That could be an option. Let’s say you’ve got 100 people joining your Patreon, and it’s $20 a month. That’s $2,000 a month. That’s a pretty good start. Let’s say that you’ve got that, and maybe you’ve got some income from a couple of other things as well. That’s not a bad start to a monthly income but the problem is that getting 100 people to your Patreon, even when you’ve got quite a decent following, is difficult.

It’s also a lot of extra work. A lot of musicians don’t want to do that because if they are at this point where they’ve got a decent audience, they are probably already doing quite a lot of work. With that said, you can do that. The key to being a musician, an artist or a musician who wants to monetize in a fan way with their fan base is if you have an engaged audience and they love you, and they are into you, and you can figure out a way to do something like Patreon or some closed community, that’s a great way to go.

You could do a merch strategy where you don’t just have T-shirts available. You turn it into a story. You use milestones for merch. You keep creating merch. You come up with a plan to increase customer lifetime value. Some people still want to monetize with streams. I advise against that being something that you take too seriously unless you’ve got lots of streams but that’s quite difficult.

 

With musicians who don’t want to offer a service, it’s quite difficult. If you don’t want to do songwriting or some coaching, production work, session work or offer a merch strategy, some closed community is a good start. You want to do gigs and stuff like that. In my experience, it’s quite a struggle if I’m being totally transparent.

I agree with you. That is why I encourage musicians to have a three-pronged income strategy and one of which is some service, teaching, coaching, writing custom songs, engineering, things that you can do where you can get money in much faster. It’s not so much of a barrier to getting people to say yes to you.

I feel like it’s much more sustainable. I almost don’t want to say it. It’s less work for more money. I’m not saying it’s not much work. It’s just less work for more money.

We are not saying it’s less valuable. Your music is super valuable but it’s harder to monetize.

It’s because we are used to taking it for essentially free or whatever. If you want to monetize with a service or some offer, that’s a different story. Social media can be incredibly powerful. I make a full-time living from social media. It’s all in the content, honestly. It’s 90% content and then the relationships with people. If you’ve got a solid brand strategy and a solid content strategy that’s directed or centered around this service, you can make great money and be happy. You will still work hard but you will be doing something that you enjoy. You will be living in music. You can be your own boss. It’s amazing.

If you have a solid brand strategy, you can make great money. Click To Tweet

How are you driving them to take your service? Are you encouraging them to DM you or are you sending them to a page?

I used to do the DM this word and then have a conversation about it. Now, fortunately, at the moment, I don’t need to do that. I have been working on my content, and people will click the link and bio. They will check the offers out or whatever. They will book a call, and then we will have a Zoom call and talk about whether it’s a good fit and whether or not I can help, and then we will go from there.

I can’t stress enough that it is the content. I would say that 90% of the time, when I get on a Zoom call to talk about potentially working with someone, they are already sold because the content has done it. It’s showing that I’m understanding and I’m hearing them. I can help them with their specific things. It’s not a cookie-cutter thing where they go through this process that won’t work for them like everything else. It’s a personalized thing. By the time they get on the call, it’s almost as if they’ve made their mind up already.

If you are doing your marketing right, that is getting the sale for you. You don’t even have to even have a sales conversation because they are already ready.

Maybe this is a conversation for another time but it’s that same approach that musicians can think about with their marketing and promotion. None of it’s about me unless I’m telling a story that’s relevant to them.

Honestly, it’s all still about them because they need to see themselves in your story.

It’s all about giving and providing. I almost don’t want to say providing value because it has been said to death.

It’s cliché but it’s true. We need to plan another interview for 2023 because I feel like there’s so much more we could talk about but we are almost hitting an hour here. I’m probably going to have to cut this short, unfortunately. It’s good. We have a lot of shared perspectives here.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me on as well.

Let everybody know where they can find you on social media, as we were talking about.

I’m on TikTok and Instagram @The.Awakened.Creative. I wish I didn’t have those dots but it’s how I set it up. I also have a website, which is TheAwakenedCreative.co.

You guys, find him and follow him. You are going to like his content. If you’ve read everything we said, you are going to know whether it’s going to hit home for you or not. I follow him. He’s one of a small group of people that do what I do and that I follow. I look at his content every day. Check him out. Thank you so much, Alex. This has been so much fun. I’m glad that we connected here. I see a part two in our future.

I would love that. Thank you so much again.

You are welcome.

 

Important Links

• The Awakened Creative
• Women of Substance
• TikTok – The Awakened Creative
• @The.Awakened.Creative – Instagram

 

About Alex Love

Alex is musician turned coach-sultant for artists and service-based musicians based in Melbourne, Australia.

His focus is on helping musicians form deep connections with their audience through the power of branding, content, and psychology so they can achieve their music career goals.

Alex has worked with and on projects for names like Kraddy (Glitch Mob founder), Nadia Struiwigh, Blake Bowden (The Book of Mormon), Shey Baba, Kylie Auldist, Kristy Jinks, Nik Pringadi, and Joe Accaria.