Most musicians think they’re in the music business, and they’re right. Unfortunately, they leave the business part out and expect to have a successful music career.
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Learning from McDonald’s
There’s a legendary story about Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s.
While hanging with a group of graduate students many years ago, he asked, “gentlemen, what business am I in?”
They laughingly answered, “hamburgers!”
And Kroc said, “wrong.”
I’m in the Real Estate business.
The Business of Business
We all know that McDonald’s sells hamburgers. But those hamburgers allow McDonald’s to purchase the most important street corners in the world.
Let that sink in a moment.
The Business of Music
What does this have to do with players, singers and songwriters?
Plenty:
- What do you do? There are many fast food places, some serve hamburgers, some serve chicken, and some, fish. None of them tell the world, “we sell food.” So why do you think it’s okay to say, I play guitar (or drums, or write songs, or…)?
- What about your business? Music won’t buy you real estate, but then again it could. What kind of music could you create if 10 rental properties gave you an income of $5,000 per month?
This isn’t a post about Real Estate though, it’s about the two parts of a music career: Music and career.
Music is what you do and there are thousands of kinds of music.
Career is how you pay for your life and there are thousands of careers too.
Make sure you’re learning about and working on both all the time.
