Pursuing success is a universal experience, but what does “making it” mean in today’s world? In this insightful episode, Bree Noble and Travis Marc share their journey of redefining “making it” in the music industry. Travis emphasizes the importance of setting clear goals, finding balance, and building a sustainable career. He reflects on his early experiences in Johannesburg, the highs and lows of band life, and the lessons learned from success and failure. Discover why “making it” is less about fame and more about finding fulfillment and sustainability in your passion for music, empowering you to define success on your terms.

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Watch the episode here

 

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The Many Faces Of Success: What “Making It” Really Means With Travis Marc

Travis’ Music Journey

My name is Bree Noble, and I’m so happy to be here with Travis Marc. We actually met because we both have podcasts, and we discovered each other’s podcasts. It’s fun because we don’t know each other too well yet, but we’re in the same space. We’re going to just give a little bit of our own experience and past, and then we’re going to talk about what it is like working with musicians, how we help them, and some of the common themes that we’ve seen. Maybe we can share some insights with each other that will then help you as you listen.

He is a musician’s mentor, and that’s his brand. He’s also a working musician. I think he said he does like over 250 dates a year or something crazy like that. I cannot claim that, although I am a worship leader at a church, so I’m busy every week with that. I actually have a whole day event coming up too, so it’s not just Sundays. We stay busy, but we also love doing this. We love helping musicians. I’m going to just start out by asking Travis to give me some background on your music journey and then how you ended up starting to help musicians as a consultant.

I will keep this as short as possible so that we can get you to answer the same question. At quite a young age, I discovered music, fell in love with it, as I’m sure most people do, but I wasn’t sure if that was the path I was going to go down because I didn’t have musicians in my family and nobody there to guide me. I grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa, and then when I hit my early teens, I really dove into it. I will end up winning some money on the radio, which is pretty cool, and bought a drum kit. Basically, I did everything and anything I could to just try to craft my musicianship.

It got to a point where I was playing in bands, and some of those bands did very well, some of them didn’t do so well. Just like anybody, the journey led to so many different things, like experiences with management, experiences with record labels, experiences just trying to keep a band together, being on the road, crafting music, writing, recording, pre-production, production, whatever it seemed to need, I was all in. There was no way that I was not going to try and learn everything I could. As things seemed to happen and as we get older, I realized that it’s such an interesting path because there are so many people who claim to give guidance and direction, saying, “If you do A, B, and C, you’re going to get here,” or “If you do this, you’re going to get to all these places.”

It’s all reasonable, but what I’ve learned is that there is no clear path. However, as a career musician, I’ve understood that there are certain things, certain assets, if you want to use that word, that, if you have them taken care of, make it easier to get to that next goal. Having a plan to release your music in a certain way versus just putting it out there is easier. We were talking for a couple of minutes about podcasting before this, and it’s much the same game. If you go blindly, there is that chance of luck that maybe someone discovers your podcast, and that’s cool.

 

I’m not trying to say that that’s not a cool experience to have. I’m very much in the mindset of trying to have your ducks in a row, trying to be ready, trying to be prepared. I know it doesn’t sound very rock and roll, but it’s served me well. How I try to take my years of experience and use that to try and help and maybe guide others is, listen, I’ve been down and around the block a thousand times at this point. I’ve been in too many bands to even remember. I’ve traveled the world, I’ve been signed numerous times, I’ve been dropped numerous times, I’ve had songs chart, and I’ve had songs that I thought should have charted and never did. I feel like I’ve got the experience to help when some people don’t know what to do. I feel like I can help, and that’s why I started my podcast. Why did you start yours?

First of all, I just want to comment on a couple of those things. I call that stacking the deck in your favor. You are learning from people that have done the thing already. You said you’ve had songs that have charted, you have songs that didn’t chart. It’s even helpful just to hear from somebody who’s not only had the successes but had the failures. When you have the failure, that you’re not the only one or that this doesn’t mean your career is over or that kind of thing. I think that’s where mentorship is so great. We can, number one, cut the learning curve and stack the deck in our favor. Also, know that if something goes wrong, it doesn’t mean we should hang it up and go home because something has gone wrong for all the people that we look up to. We just don’t necessarily see that in public. Sometimes we do, but if they’re lucky, we’re not seeing that in public.

I always tell people, when they’re releasing a course or anything like an album, nobody knows if nobody listens. You can’t tell if nobody bought your course or your lesson package or whatever it is. You’re the only one that knows that. Just move on. That didn’t work. That test didn’t work. Let’s try something else. I think that’s really why we need mentors. Whenever I’m going to do something new, like I released a Shopify shop for a lot of my digital stuff, I knew nothing about Shopify. I went out and found someone that I knew had a really great Shopify shop that I liked.

They knew how to use everything, and they could really maximize the benefit. I just went ahead and paid them to learn from them. I think there’s definitely a reason to do that, a reason to shortcut it. Why would you spend all this time trying to do something, having all these failures? It takes a lot longer when you can just pay for the shortcut. I just wanted to comment on that.

It’s totally true. Paying for stuff, if you’re in a position that you can, can be extremely helpful. Where I feel, and again, I’m talking purely from my experience, I find that a lot of people also don’t want to learn. That blows my mind sometimes, and it took me a long time to get to a point where I’ve always been very self-motivated. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, I guess you would have to ask the people around me. I could never understand, especially when it comes to musicians, why so many musicians were so up in the air and just comfortable with certain situations they found themselves in.

For years, I would always be like, “You could be doing this,” or “You could try that,” or “You sold out that venue tonight. Do you know if you did this, you could have made 30% more money? If you maybe had two shirt designs, you could have sold 50% more shirts,” or whatever the case may be. Things like that just always got my wheels spinning. I also learned along the way that not everybody wants to learn. Not everybody wants to take the maximum potential out of every opportunity, and that’s totally okay. For me, at least since I started this particular podcast, I’ve noticed that the few people who had consultations or helped me develop a timeline for certain things they’re trying to achieve have definitely achieved those way quicker than they seemed to when they were just wandering around and throwing mud at the wall, hoping it would stick.

 

It is true that some people don’t want to learn. I think they don’t want to learn because then they have to do, because if they learn and then they don’t do it, they’re going to feel bad. It’s better for them just not to learn. That’s true with some people. Some people really want to learn, but what they really want is the shortcut. When they find out that there is no such thing as this super shortcut, they’re like, “It’s only going to take me ten minutes to do this thing,” then they don’t do it, and they’re like, “That was worthless,” or whatever.

Bree’s Music Journey

There are different people, and then there’s the people like you and me, where we’re just predisposed to curiosity. We want to know, how can we make this better? How can we do this better? How could we raise the amount that we make on our merch table by 30%? What are the levers that we can pull? That kind of thing. Those are the kind of people that you and I love working with because we think they’re thinking like that. I’m going to get to my story, just so you know. I lived a very different life from you. I was really 31 before I ever really got anywhere with my music career. I went to school, I got a double degree in music and business, and started working as a director of finance at a top-15 opera company in the US, which was great experience.

It was interesting working around all these artsy people. I was still wanting to do something with my own music and watching all these opera stars getting paid doing what they love, touring the country, all that stuff. I was writing their paychecks. That was somewhat depressing. That pushed me into, “I really need to do something with my music and my talent and my songwriting and all that.” I dabbled a lot while I was working there with a bunch of bands that were kind of a disaster, most of them. We’ve all been there. I had a health crisis that really pushed me out of working at the opera. It was a great job, but it was very stressful because it’s a nonprofit.

There were certain times of the year where we were flush with money and other times that we had less than zero money. I was always the final defense against that. I was having to tell the vendors, “Can we pay you next week?” and making sure we had enough money in the account for payroll and things like that. It was very stressful. It caused some issues with my health. I ended up getting really sick, having an autoimmune disease, and having to leave the opera. That ended up being a catalyst for my music career because we figured out how we could sell our house and make enough money to make up for a while for what I was making. It was that boom in Orange County, California, back in the 2000s. Then I had a baby.

I was trying to figure out how to juggle all these things. It gave me the space I needed to figure out how to stop trying to fit myself into all these bands that ended up as a disaster and really put myself out there as a solo artist, using the network that I had built up with my church and people that I knew in my area. I built my music career around going to churches, women’s events, mom’s events, business networking events, and performing and also speaking. That’s how I built my career during that time. I would drag my kids on tour with me. It was a very different way of being in a music career, but it worked for me. When my kids got to the age where they didn’t want to be dragged on tour anymore or they really needed to stay home and go to school, I had to be like, “I think I need to pull back on this for now. What am I going to do now?”

In the meantime, I’d met a lot of musicians, I had built up this side thing called Women of Substance, which was an online radio station that became a podcast that’s still going, where we promoted music by female artists in all genres. I’m like, why couldn’t I build this? I started building that even more turned it into a podcast selling ads, that kind of stuff. The trajectory that happens to a lot of people, when you build a platform like that, musicians kept coming to me going, how did you build your music career? I would see that when I would go to look at the people that were applying to be on Women of Substance, I hear their song, I’m like, this is a really great song. Why can’t I find you online, I can find zero things. They’d say, I’m waiting for a label to pick me up and then they’ll do all of my promotion for me. I’m like, no.

I started giving out some advice around that and then started my Female Entrepreneur Musician podcast to help people like that. It just moved forward from there. I started my Female Musician Academy, created a bunch of courses, transitioned that into the Profitable Musician brand, where I held a bunch of summits. During the pandemic, I really helped musicians find alternate sources of income and helped them have a release plan for their music because they were all writing so much and wanted to release it. We’re still going strong. It’s been almost ten years that I’ve been doing that side of my business.

Amazing.

We have a whole brand around Profitable Musician. We have a weekday newsletter that helps musicians become more profitable, basically grow their fan base and diversify their income. The podcast and Women of Substance are still going. I still support women in the industry as well. I’m also a church leader. I ended up working at the church after COVID. I really needed to be in person again for a while, and I needed to get back into singing and stuff. I started working as a worship director at a church. I had all this finance experience, so I took on the business side at the church after I’d been there for almost a year, and I do that as well. It’s like a second full-time job.

Challenges And Opportunities

Many hats for you. Which, you know, that’s a topic in itself as well. If you think about the average independent musician now, it’s not like it was, and that sounds so old-fashioned. It could really be as early as 15 to 20 years ago. Musicians now need to have, or, again, be in a position that they can pay for, multiple hats. You’ve got to know how to work your finances, especially if you’ve got bills to pay and children and a house and all these things. You’ve got to know how to release your music. I find that an interesting subject, the releases of music in general. There’s so much stuff online, and again, everything is good to a point, or completely depending on the person’s needs. Just seeing how many people don’t even know how to release their music is quite mind-blowing.

There is a lot of stuff online. I found that when I worked with musicians on this, it was about establishing a timeline for them because they were just so overwhelmed. There is a lot of great information online, like, when do I do this? There are so many pieces to it because you’re setting up your distribution. First of all, you’re doing the recording and all that. Some of them are doing it at home, some of them need a studio, they need to get side musicians, they basically need to know how to manage their project and so many different things.

There are other things, like if you want to tour after you release, you can’t wait until you’ve released to start booking, or you’ll have to wait another six months to get the gigs that you want. You also have to think about the booking of the tour, and do you want to do a release party? There’s a lot. It’s all really good stuff and important stuff to do, but knowing how to put it all together into a timeline where you can keep up with it, that’s what I focused on.

I have to agree.

We were talking about the multiple streams of income, which I definitely want to get back to. Like you said, 15 to 20 years ago, maybe you could just focus on performing, or back then you could sell downloads on iTunes, or even you were selling a lot of CDs. I know when I was touring a lot, late 2000s, early 2010s, I was still selling a ton of CDs. It’s not as much a thing, while you can still sell plenty of merch if you’re really thinking about it and how to do it well.

If you think before the 2000s, there were not many opportunities to actually have a career as an indie artist because it was like, you didn’t have the tools where you could even release on your own. If you didn’t get a record deal, then you were out of luck, or you were just having to do it so DIY. There were some people that did the whole out of the back of the car kind of thing, but they didn’t even have the technology to be able to record very well from home back then.

It’s interesting because I was in a band, again, we’re talking over twenty years ago, that got signed. We were signed with Sony BMG. The band had a really good album, but anytime we wanted to sell those albums at gigs, we had to purchase them from Sony at a discounted cost so that we could sell them at our gigs as merch. The CD thing is interesting as well, because most people don’t seem to buy CDs anymore. What I do see, and I’ve heard some people talk about this, which makes a valid point, is that vinyl is very popular. I see you’ve got a Michael Jackson Thriller vinyl behind you, super cool.

Vinyl is expensive to make as an independent artist. You can still make CDs pretty cheap, even though the average person doesn’t seem to have a platform to play them. What I’ve noticed at gigs, and I’m just speaking from my own experience here, is, do you know how many people will still buy CDs just to get you to sign them? Which sounds weird and like, why would you make CDs just to sign? It’s a lot easier to sign a CD for a superfan than it is to try and sign a shirt. You can still get decent CD prices made from platforms like CD Baby and some of these other kinds of things. You don’t spend the thousands that you do to get vinyl made.

The only irony is most people don’t have a CD player to actually play the platform anymore. It bums me out because I really miss the days, especially in your car on these long journeys, you buy a CD from the other band at the gig, and you travel to the next town or whatever it was, and you could listen to the CD in the car. Now you can’t do that. There are obviously the streaming platforms, which is great, to a degree, I suppose.

It’s more of a barrier to entry. You have to think, before leaving the car, I need to find them on Spotify and then pick a playlist or something they have. Hopefully, they’ve made a playlist. It’s not so easy and user-friendly to discover new music. Actually, there are a lot of ways to discover new music because of streaming, but if you want to listen to a particular person that you just discovered, it’s a little harder, I think.

Especially if they are new and independent. Sometimes I’ve come across it over the last few months where it’s like, I don’t know if this is an AI problem or if maybe bands just aren’t doing the research. I’m noticing a lot of bands with the same names, artists with the same names. I was even in a situation when I was still living in England. There was a situation where the band I was in at the time, before I left that country, we’re sitting there one day, and a notification pops up on Spotify about our new release. We’re like, “We don’t have a new release.” We were diligent. We had done our research, etc., and we’d been around for a few years.

Some band in Canada decided to call themselves the same thing. It’s like, it doesn’t matter. That’s a real long-winded story, but it’s interesting because you don’t want to put music out under the same name as somebody. Obviously, there are circumstances where that is your real name. You want to use your real name, but if someone beat you to it, and if there’s a trademark involved, you might want to just do your due diligence.

I totally agree. It is probably just such a crowded landscape. I haven’t really seen if there’s anybody else with my name on Spotify. I don’t think so, but it’s funny, my podcast outranks my music, which annoys me.

I can understand that because I’ve been in certain situations where it’s like, I’ll look at the stats on an episode of my podcast. For example, my band put out a new single like three weeks ago, and same thing, the podcast had all these numbers. I was like, maybe I should just start putting my music into the podcast, but then it blurs the lines. I’ve never wanted it to be like, “Look at me.” It’s like, that’s not the purpose of the podcast. I’m sure it’s the same for you. The purpose is to have real conversations about real-life situations in music and how certain things might save the next person some time, money, or heartache because there is a lot of heartache in this industry.

There is a lot of heartache in the music industry. Share on X

It’s like, even in your story there. I know that you had the financial job at the opera place and stuff like that. There’s heartbreak there because life pushes you into certain places, and you’re forced to make decisions. Music’s no different. It’s like, you might love your band and love the music you put out and maybe have never made a cent from it. Depending on your financial situation, that could force you to give it up, and that in itself is heartbreaking.

I work with a lot of people that are, it’s like their second act. They raised their children, or especially because I run the Female Musician Academy. A lot of women had a full-on corporate career, and they were finally able to retire. Then they just wanted to focus on music full-time because they’ve been wanting to all this time, or they discovered that something was missing. They gave up music when they were in their early twenties and went to work or whatever.

They’re like, now that I’m retired, I feel like something’s missing, or they even discovered during their career that they felt like something was missing. I think that there’s so many life situations that can get in the way. Sometimes we can make the best of that and continue, and sometimes you do have to take a break. I’ve seen people come back with a vengeance, just prolific songwriting and recording in their fifties.

People count you out at a certain age, especially in music. When I was younger, I thought that was a real thing. I was told, “If you haven’t made it by the time you’re 26, it’s never going to happen.” I said it earlier, I was extremely self-motivated. I would do whatever it took. I would stay up all night. I would practice all day. I would do whatever needed to happen to try and get to these places that I thought you needed to be. The beauty of getting older, at least in my experience, is it’s taught me that you can still be self-disciplined and have drive and all those kinds of things. You start to realize that certain things that you thought were important maybe aren’t so important.

For me, it allowed me, at least with my own journeys, to really look ahead and think about what I wanted, to visualize what I wanted. Nowadays, everyone uses the word manifest so much. I wouldn’t say that that’s what I was trying to do or did or anything like that, but I think it’s so important for anybody, because we’re trying to relate this to music, I think it’s so important to just have a clear vision of what you’re trying to achieve. How can you try and work towards something if you don’t know what it is you want? Saying, “I want people to listen to my music,” is very broad.

We all want people to listen to our music, otherwise, we probably wouldn’t be playing music. It’s like, I don’t know for yourself as a writer. For me, I’ve always looked at writing as a therapeutic kind of thing. I genuinely feel like I write for myself, as selfish as that sounds. I feel like I write for myself because when I listen back sometimes, I’m like, “I’m really quite a happy person.” It doesn’t sound like I’m happy, but then I think about it, and I go, I obviously use that source as an escape. To bring it back around to what I’m trying to say here is, as much as I feel like I write for myself, when I put music out, it still makes me very happy knowing that people are listening to it.

It still makes me very happy knowing some people still buy it, and so on and so on and so on. It’s like, I just think, and I’m sure your experiences are similar, I just find that to say, “I want people to hear my music,” is too broad. You’ve got to really hone it in. You’ve got to have a goal and figure out the steps to your goal. Some people are so clear about it. They know that they need to do A, B, and C to try and get to whatever that goal is. Other people have to work backwards. It’s like, I always found that that was my approach because I couldn’t quite see the clear path to what I was trying to achieve. Working backwards is a great way to do it. You think, “I want a podcast,” or “I want to do this,” or “I want to play at such-and-such festival,” whatever. How do you get there?

Sometimes looking at the end result and rewinding is a bit easier than going, “I’m going to put out my music, and I hope people listen to it. Maybe those guys at that festival will book me.” Maybe you’ll also win the lottery by playing. It’s like, there is a chance, but I don’t know. It’s like you said earlier, put everything in your favor, and there’s a chance that it might still not work. You’ve got to be okay with that. It’s a brutal career, but you’ve got to at least know that you did what you could. I remember reading an interview with this drummer, Eric Singer, who was probably most famously known for being in Kiss, and he played with Alice Cooper for a while. He was a real big session guy for a period of time until he basically put everything into Kiss when they replaced Peter Criss back in the day.

I remember reading an interview of his, and I couldn’t have been older than maybe 16 or 17. I can’t remember the question that was necessarily asked towards him, but he answered, saying, “The last thing you want to do is get that call and not be prepared.” Obviously, that applies more to a playing perspective, but it can apply to a career perspective. You don’t want to finally be in that position, that you get that break that you’ve been dreaming of or wanting or wishing for, and be like, “I don’t know what to do,” and fall on your face. Because I think that would mentally really affect you. I would think.

 

That’s why I think we need, in this landscape, we are expected to build our career to a certain extent before we’re even going to be considered by anyone, like festivals, indie labels, regular labels, like any of them. We have to show that we’ve taken initiative. That goes to what you just said of being ready, showing that you have taken the initiative.

Defining “Making It”

I’m curious, when you were saying before, people told you if you didn’t make it or whatever, and before you were 26, then you were done. At that time, what did you consider making it? Because obviously you’ve done so much. You’ve been in all these different bands, you’ve toured, you’ve been on a label. Did any of those things say to you, “I’ve made it,” or was it always like the next thing then?

Not once did any of those things tell me that. I wasn’t even sure what making it meant. So young, innocent, and naive. I play multiple instruments. I did start dabbling young. I grew up in South Africa and then eventually I moved to London, and I stayed in London for almost twenty years. I look at both of those countries as home. Now I live in America. This is slowly becoming home. My first goal when I was in South Africa was like, if I could get to like 24 or 25 and be regarded as an Intermont drummer and get calls for good gigs and stuff, that’ll be the dream. You always think, that’s the dream. I worked my butt off. I did every gig I could do. I played for everybody I could. I would play on anybody’s recordings who would have me. I would do any tour that would have me. I would do anything.

By the time I got to 24, thankfully, I’d been in a few bands that had already toured internationally. The one band had done this really interesting concept called Global Battle of the Bands. Nowadays, I look at Battles of the Bands as very interesting concepts. I don’t have the same love for them now that I know really how they work as what I did as a kid. As a kid, this seemed like such a big deal. The band that I was in, we got flown to London. It was like maybe my second or third time there. We played at this venue called the Astoria. It’s no longer there, but it was beautiful. You can find old videos of The Who playing at the Astoria and really cool, just massive bands of the ’60s and ’70s.

Anyway, we were representing South Africa as the Global Battle of the Bands winner for our country. We went up against 31 other countries. There were 32 countries involved, each with a band from their country representing. I didn’t know that particular day that they were going to announce other things on the evening of the final besides who the winning band was. The band I was in didn’t win. They announced the winner, they announced second place, and then they started to go, “The best guitarist, such and such guy from such and such a band from whatever country,” and “Best singer,” and then they announced “Best drummer,” and I won best drummer. I was like, “What?” Not a big deal because who cares?

I was trying to hope that my band won. I didn’t even know that this was a thing, but I ended up going back to South Africa. Everyone was a bit deflated because we didn’t win. You’re young, and you think that those things actually matter, but they don’t really matter. I went back, and those particular little attributes, award flex that all the kids say, whatever you want to call it, really helped me. Suddenly I started getting better gigs, bigger gigs. I ended up getting a Zildjian endorsement, which Zildjian is a cymbal brand, which is like one of the biggest cymbal drum manufacturers in the world. They don’t make drums, but they make cymbals. They’re just known in the drum world.

At the time, I was one of five guys in the entire country to have a Zildjian endorsement. It dawned on me that I was like, my first goal, that I remember once I started playing drums, was like, if I could get there, that’s the dream. That means I’ve made it. Then I got there because suddenly I was looked at as like this hot, up-and-coming drummer in the country. I was getting all these opportunities, but I quickly realized that that wasn’t making it. You set the next goal and all these things. Long story short, because I know I’m blabbering on a bit here, the thing that made me realize that everyone’s definition is probably different was, so fast forward many years, and I’m eventually living in London. I’m playing in bands, and I happen to do quite well.

I get involved with this band. We get a couple of singles on the Billboard charts. We tour in the country up and down most weeks or weekends, and it’s going quite well. Things also fell apart. I start working as a musician. I’ve already been working as a musician all these years, but I decided maybe I’ll give that aspect of it a break for a while. I’ll just go play with friends, and I’ll go play some bars and pubs and coffee shops and whatever. Same mentality, whatever I can do to try and figure out what I want to do as the next thing. I remember this really prominent drummer named Craig Blundell. He famously plays for a guy named Steve Wilson. At the time, he was in a band called Frost, very progressive music. He didn’t live too far from me, and he put up this thing online. He was going to take a handful of students for private lessons if they wanted.

It wasn’t cheap, but something I’ve always tried to do, even now, is every few months I try and book some lessons with somebody more experienced, or possibly more experienced, just to try and get a different mindset, like we were talking about earlier. You pay for something to try and get some more information. I went there, and I sat down, as most lessons were. He said, “Play me something.” I played him a bunch of stuff, and he said, “What do you want to do here?” I was like, “I don’t really know. I wanted to book a lesson and have a chat, see what happened.” We got talking, and I keep this little diary. I know that most people keep their schedules on their phones now, but I seem to be a little accident-prone, and I break too many phones.

I keep an actual written diary. It’s no bigger than my phone, and I write all my gigs in it. I keep two. I keep one with me at all times because I seem to always get calls about gigs, thankfully. Then I keep a big one at home that I write all my scheduling, podcast interviews, gigs, all those kinds of things. He goes, “What’s that?” I’m like, “That’s my gig diary.” He goes, “Do you mind if I have a look?” I said, “By all means.” He took it. Again, it’s small. He’s paging through it, sitting next to me. He goes, “You’re quite busy.” I said, “Yeah, man, I’m busy.” He goes, “Is this all you do?” I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “You’ve made it.” I smirked, and I said, “No, dude, you’ve made it. You’re playing with these huge bands, and you’ve got all this stuff, and you’re doing all these things.” He said to me, “You’re paying your bills?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You’ve made it.” The penny dropped. I was just like, yeah.

Obviously, we would all love to have careers of the Michael Jacksons, the Elvis Presleys, the Beatles, and all these huge stars. Again, in hindsight, especially as I get older, I go, I wonder if they were really happy, being mobbed all over the place. The paycheck must’ve been nice, but I’m not broke, and I don’t have debts, and I have a pretty good life. I get to play music with my friends. I get to travel. I get to play nice gear. I get to talk to people like you about music. Does it get better? To really be long-winded here, I think that’s what making it is now. Obviously, there are caveats to it, depending on what your main goal is. If you can pay your bills and feel good about yourself when you’re getting into bed at night, I think you can count your blessings.

 

I think for me, I went through the whole phase of like, I wanted to be famous or in a famous band or whatever. I got over that. I wanted to tour, and I wanted to be on stage and all that. Then once I had kids and life got crazy, I got over that. I wanted to build this big online platform, and I did that. During COVID, it was a lot because I was online all the time, and it was great. I helped so many people and built a great business. I wasn’t happy with that because I felt like I needed to connect with people in person again. I think making it is not feeling like there’s something missing.

For me, I’m not feeling like something’s missing because I am scratching that itch to be able to perform once a week or lead people in music and bring joy to people with music and keep up my vocal chops and my piano playing and all that. It’s built into my schedule. I’m not feeling like I’m neglecting this or something’s missing. I’m still able to do the business stuff. If I had to give that up, then I would feel like that was missing. It’s figuring out what balance you need in your life to feel like nothing major is missing, as maybe what I’ve come to with what making it means.

You just said the word balance, and I think it is everything. On the performance side, my wife will be the first to tell you, I sometimes personally struggle finding balance because, again, thankfully, and this is not me trying to sound egotistical in any way, I’m in a position where I’m really busy. Thanks to my parents, both in a good and a bad way, I’m a workaholic. I love working. I don’t like taking time off. I even struggle to just sit down and watch a movie. I’m not into it. There’s something in me that doesn’t like to switch off, but I’ve learned to use that to my advantage. However, balance is everything.

To again hone it all in and make this maybe for musicians, I’m going to ask you the same question here, I would say, from my side, when I’m talking to people, I’m busy helping this particular guy. I’m not going to mention his name, but I’m busy helping this one guy strategize a lot of his career. We’re talking about timelines for first release, second, third album, videos, branding, etc. It’s interesting because sometimes people ask me, what do you need? What do you have to do? How do you make money? What do you have to do? We just use the phrase make it, what do you have to do to make it? I can’t answer that for every individual, but I think really, if you can identify three things, I think you probably have a clearer path to making it on whatever terms those are that you want.

I would say, 1) identify your goals, 2) refine your branding, and 3) I’m putting this one purely because we were just talking about it, I cannot state enough that this has always been my weakness on a personal level, but find balance. If you can find ways to work towards those goals and then find balance to be happy, you’ve made it.

I agree. That’s why my platform is The Profitable Musician, but I try to explain to people that it’s not just about money because you can be profitable with your time. It’s using the thing that you have wisely and getting more out of it than you put in. That’s why I teach productivity. That’s why I teach how to build a team to help you out. That’s why I teach time management from a musician perspective because a lot of times we’re cobbling things together. We have a part-time job, or, if you’re like me, you have  basically two full-time jobs plus a family.

You’ve got to figure out how to make that work and not get burnt out, not hate your life, and also make sure that you don’t have any major pieces missing. Because I remember that feeling when I worked at the opera, and that feeling, it was like in my gut, just this discomfort of, I am not fulfilling my purpose because I am not out there performing in some way. I’m not doing music. I’m not using the talent that God gave me, and that bothered me 24/7. If you’ve got something like that, you’ve got to figure out how to work that out, how to figure out how you’re going to fill that hole.

Essential Attributes For Musicians

Trust your instincts. What three attributes or characteristics do you think musicians should try and learn if they don’t have them naturally?

I definitely think the productivity side, I call it learning how to be your own boss. Because when we work at companies, someone’s telling us what to do, when it needs to be done, the hours in which we need to work, those kinds of things. When you’re a musician, even if you’re doing it on the side, like I say, these are your musician hours, put those on your calendar, but then you have to figure out how to organize those hours, what you’re going to do within them, and no one’s going to tell you what to do. It’s basically being your own boss. I used to say, like, the CEO of your musician business, but a lot of musicians don’t identify with that.

I would say learning to be your own boss and learning how to check in with yourself and be honest with yourself. Are you really doing what you told yourself to do that week? Are there better ways you can do it? That kind of thing. That’s one big thing. Figuring out what income streams fit well for you, I have this free guide called the 39 Little-Known Income Streams for Musicians. That’s really to get your mind thinking. My fear is that some people get that, and they try to do all of them, and you can’t do that. First of all, you have to pick a few and go all in on those, but also knowing which ones work best for you because some of them will not fit with your personality.

Some of them will not fit with the lifestyle that you have. Just figuring out, like for me, I learned over time, I don’t like doing one-on-one coaching because I don’t like someone else being in control of my calendar. You got to learn those things for yourself. Sometimes you have to try them and go, “Nope, this is not for me,” or when I think about having to do this thing, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach, the stress feeling. That means it’s figuring out between that and doing something uncomfortable. There’s, “I need to do this uncomfortable thing, and I’m feeling this stress feeling, but I need to learn how to overcome that because this uncomfortable thing is going to get me to the next level where I want to be,” versus, “I’m taking on this thing as part of my business model, but I really don’t like it.

I’ve got to be honest with myself. I’m never going to like it. I’m just going to resist it every time.” The second thing is just figuring out what income pursuits make the most sense for you, and then the third thing is figuring out a way to bring more people into your ecosystem without hating it. Everything I say is about “without hating it” because if you hate it, you won’t do it. You do need to bring more people into your ecosystem. You need to find the people that are the right fit fans for you and your music and whatever it is you’re doing. If that’s not social media, that’s okay. I used to have a lot of people that’d be like, “I know you’re going to tell me I have to do social media.” I’m like, “You don’t have to, but if you don’t, you’ve got to do something else.

You better be out there performing three times a week and getting a bunch of email addresses when you’re in front of the people.” I don’t care how you get your connection with them, but you need to find a way to connect with new people and build a bridge so they stay connected with you. Figuring out how to know who the right people are for you, and a lot of times, they are people that are like you. Like you said about branding, thinking about what’s important to you, what you like to do, and thinking about the people that would make sense, that would be drawn to you automatically because you have things in common.

How can you get in front of those people? It could be social media. It could be performing live. It could be, who knows what? Sometimes I had some people that I’ve worked with that are streamers, they do Twitch and stuff like that. That’s how they meet their people, or they have other things that they do besides music, and that’s how they connect. They write comic books or just different things that they do, they make independent movies or whatever it is, things that connect them with people that are going to also like their music. I guess those are the three things. Very long-winded.

Not at all. It’s funny because there’s so many similarities. Obviously, we met today, or we’ve seen each other in person today. We were in certain things in different ways, but there are similarities. Because the thing that you mentioned there with the time for your music career, the CEO for his career, it’s no different to what I tell the people that I work with. It’s self-discipline.

It’s like, everyone seems to have this idea, especially there’s so many different personalities, which is brilliant, some people seem to think that if they’re not doing something every minute of every hour, every day, they’re not really pushing for their career. This and that, that’s not true.

If you can only dedicate an hour, dedicate that hour, but just know what you’re going to be doing in that hour. I find that these things have become the devil because, “I’ve got two hours to do some work this morning. I don’t have any consultations, I don’t have to practice, I don’t have to get to a gig till tonight. Cool. I’ll sit down in my studio. Let me just check this real quick.” A reel. Awesome. Next reel. Awesome. Look, a funny dog. Cool. I love dogs. Next one. Next thing you go, “Damn, I’ve been on this thing for 40 minutes. I only put an hour aside for the music stuff.” Panic sets in. Once you’ve panicked and stressed, your brain’s all cluttered.

To get the initial goal done is almost impossible. It was impossible because you’ve already got rid of most of your time, but you’ve got to have clear definition. As boring as it is, as much of the creative mind is, we don’t want to be dictated and structured. If you know that you’re going to be putting a certain amount of hours aside each day for your music development or your career, whether that’s a playing point of view or a career point of view, a useful tip that I’ve found helps, and again, it sounds so boring and structured, but just like a business or a CEO person or a finance person will sometimes do, they will have their agenda for the next day the night before.

If you do the same thing, but maybe don’t think in terms of days and nights, think in terms of weeks or months, this becomes so much easier. If you go to bed tonight going, “Tomorrow, I probably need to create some content for whatever. I should probably book that gig with that club that keeps emailing me, or I should probably finally get the mastering done on that new single,” or whatever. Insert the scenario for yourself, but you keep putting it off like the thing that maybe you hate doing. If you write that down and figure out, I’m a big step guy, I got to do steps A, B, and C to get there. Tomorrow I’ll do A because, like you said, if you’re focusing on like a hundred things or you’ve got a list of 39 things, the average person, especially the hungry, wanting-a-career-type person, thinks that all 39 have to be done.

If you’ve got teams and you can dictate certain jobs to certain team members, of course, you can get all 39 done. If you’re doing it by yourself independently, that’s so overwhelming because you’re really thinking about the mastering, the single release, the music video, or “I got to practice, got to make that set list for tomorrow. I got to finalize that merchandise. I was supposed to do that cameo for so-and-so. I still got to get distribution here. I got to sign the BMI documentation there.” All these things. You’ve already got a dozen things to do, and then you look at adding all these things, it becomes overwhelming.

The moment you get stressed, badly stressed, I’m not talking good stress, some people can stress well and work through that, in my experience, the moment you get overwhelmed, stressed, bad, negative stress, it’s easier to just go, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” Next thing you know, tomorrow never comes, and then six months have gone by, and you’re like, “I didn’t put out that song,” or you did, but it got totally lost in the shuffle, which is so easy because you’ve got a ridiculous figure of songs being released daily. The last time I read it, it was 75 to 100,000 songs a day. I just happened to dabble on a news article. Apparently, that’s gone up to 120,000 a day. I don’t know if that’s true. I imagine it would be. How do you stand up when there’s 120,000 being released a day? How does your song stand up? It might never happen.

This is what I was saying earlier. You’ve got to accept some comfortableness somehow. Not be okay with failures all the time, try and have goals to achieve, but also accept that maybe with you not having a million-dollar budget for marketing in comparison to a Beyoncé-type figure, obviously her song is going to get pushed and algorithms naturally versus yours. That doesn’t mean yours failed. I think a bigger failure would be, “I’m just not going to put it out because it’s too much work.” Just do the work.

If you never put out music again, trust me, as someone who’s got numerous releases with different bands out there, you will be way happier when you’re feeling nostalgic, and you go back and go, “I’m so glad we did that,” versus, “I’ve got this really cool record on my hard drive, but no one will ever hear it.” Let people hear it. Someone will like it, surely. Even if it is just one person, that’s success. You shared your art with that one person, and it meant something to them. That’s a great gift.

Success is about connecting with even one person. Share on X

I agree. I think the same way about my first album. It’s like some of it, I love the production. Some of it, I skimped on the production because I just couldn’t afford it. I still go back and go, “I’m really glad I put this song out. I may have never done it otherwise. I’m glad it’s in the world. It’s a good song. It might not be top production, but that’s okay.

It’s totally okay.

I did it. 

Also, this sounds a bit dense, but when it comes to songwriting and things like that, I’ve always looked at it as like, how many ideas can we have before the ideas are full? Kind of like a USB stick. Remember those little memory sticks that were so popular? You don’t really see them anymore because we have the cloud. I always used to think I can only fit so many things on this. Songwriting is the same. If you didn’t put out that song, there’s a chance you wouldn’t finish the next one. Or maybe you end up with all these pieces of songs, but you never have a complete song. My brother always used to say that to me. “You’ve always had thousands of ideas and still do. You need to finish one at a time.” It used to bug me.

 

“Whatever, you go finish a song.” He’s right. Put it out. It clears up some space. It’s no different to when you have a hundred things to do in your daily life, and you’ve got to pay the electricity bill, walk the dogs, feed the kids, grocery shop, clean the house, cook. You don’t have space for all of that in your head, especially if you’re creative. You still need to be creative. If that’s what’s going to make you happy, just do whatever you need to do to create space, find the balance, be happy at the end of the night, go to bed, wake up, and do it all again tomorrow.

I love it. That is a great cap on this, I think. We’ve had such a great conversation, and we’re clearly very similarly minded.

I agree.

Everyone that’s listening to this or watching this is going to want to check out your podcast. Where do they find it?

You can find it anywhere. You can either just go to our website, musicians-mentor.com, or just go on any of the typical streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple, iHeart, Amazon, all those kinds of things. Just type in Musicians Mentor, it’ll come up. What I’m going to do for yours, Bree, is I’ll just link the Profitable Musician Podcast in my show notes. I’m going to take this audio and I’m going to do a pre and post. In that, which I’ll send to you beforehand for approval, I will hype up all of the beautiful work you do, and we’ll just take it from there.

You’re so much more organized than me. I just got to fit it into my life. No editing. Are you also on social? I know you’re on Instagram because that’s where I connected with you.

Yeah, I’m on social mostly as Travis Marc, but you got me through the Musicians Mentor one, which I think on Instagram is Musician Mentor Pics. I don’t post on it very often. I post really about the podcast, whoever the guest is, or whatever we’ve done. We’ve been doing these songwriter rounds lately. I would do posts about that as well.

I guess I’m lucky you responded then, since you don’t post on there that often.

Thank you so much for reaching out. It’s been a great opportunity. I think you guys are doing a great job. The fact that we could partner up on this is a lot of fun. I’ve been wanting to do this kind of thing. It’s so funny because it’s like, I feel like it gets a little blurry because, obviously, we’re talking so across the board here, which contradicts, for me personally, some of the things that I’ve spoken about here.

I just think to talk about some of the great things that a podcast like yours does, or even just some of the things that I think mine does, it would take us longer than an hour. I encourage everybody to go check out your podcast, check out my podcast, check out like-minded podcasts, just like do whatever you can to learn.

The different perspectives help. Your perspective is so different from mine. You’ve lived in multiple countries, you’ve toured, you’ve been in all these bands. I’ve lived in California, had kids, and balanced a career and a family. It’s very different. You can learn from both. There’s so much that we have in common as well.

Totally. Just to conclude here, the fact that the lives are so different yet still end up on very similar paths is a beautiful thing because, for listeners, then you can understand that, like you had said earlier, there is no wrong, there’s no path. If you decide at 75 you want to put out a single, and you’ve got the drive to do it, you can do it. No different to these four-year-old multi-crazy instrumentalists that you see on Instagram that have like half a million followers.

If you have the drive, you can do it. Share on X

Obviously, parents are handling those accounts, but the proof’s there. If you want to do it bad enough, you’ll do it. You just have to, sometimes unfortunately, refine what you’re trying to do and then, like you had said earlier, dedicate a certain amount of time to it because wanting things, talking about things, and actually doing things are all very different.

You’re speaking my language. I’m all about action. That’s what we teach here. Thank you so much. This has been so great. Thank you so much for all of your experience and knowledge and sharing it with everybody that’s listening and watching.

Thank you as well, Bree. I look forward to the final thing coming out. This is going to be great. I’ll talk to you about it after this, but I’m going to basically just work it similar to one of the Spotify or Instagram collaboration deals, where it’ll come out and it’ll probably somehow make it look like we’ve featured artists on the same song.

Cool. I love that idea. I can’t wait to see it.

Wicked.

 

Important Links

• Musicians Mentor
• Musician Mentor’s Instagram
• 39 Little-Known Income Streams for Musicians

 

About Travis Marc

Multi instrumentalist/songwriter born in South Africa, signed to universal records while living in London where I fronted (and drummed) for alt/rock band dead days before moving to New Orleans when he now works as a full time musician/songwriter and career consultant for up and coming musicians.