My very-productive morning started with an 8:30 am phone call from my Visa company regarding unusual activity and what they thought might be a fraudulent charge on my account. It was a 99cent download from itunes!
Please let me sleep in until at least nine if it's about such big expenditures...!!
This week's Chapter of Music Success in Nine Weeks is all about Connecting with fans- newsletter list and surveys. Who are your fans?, What are there hobbies?, Where do they go when they're not out hearing live music, What interests do you have in common with them that you can build upon in your newsletter? (coffee? tapdancing?)
Just fyi, the ideal fan minimum is 1,000 (http:wwtinyurl.com/1000TrueFans)
but don't panic if you're not up to this yet... the fan building info is in the next chapter)
I do have a newsletter, and since I've been on the blog challenge, I'm being much more regular about it (making sure it goes out every month) and also thinking of things that might interest people that have nothing to do with music. Just for an example, when Vita and I played for the Celebrate Fairfax festival in VA, there was a football player there signing autographs (DeAngelo Hall), and he's a "cornerback". I asked on a few of my sites what a cornerback was, and boy, did I get a lot of mail. It seems my fans know all about football. Who would've guessed!
This month's newsletter goes out next week . (Sign up on the right panel of the blog). It has my smoothie recipe (as featured on the Backstage Gourmet Radio Show with PJ Grimes), the latest update about Vita and his bike accident (he's going to be ok), and a "Call for action" (looking for people to rate/review our Electric Green CD on itunes).
I'm continuing to work on my goals and writing down 5 successes every day. I was a little bummed to see that I didn't meet one of my goals (by August 6th to have 1,000 people on fan list), but I did gain a lot more than I would've without that so I'm going to look upon it as progress.
On a more positive note, one of my goals for the summer was to tackle some of the things that make me uncomfortable. I took a class on "reading a teleprompter" which for me was more about being comfortable in front of a camera. I learned to cook several healthy dishes (in preparation for the Backstage Gourmet radio show), and I started going to some sort of exercise class at the Y every single day. Including ballet, where I like to pretend I am very elegant while I can see that I am not!
But the biggest takeaway from all this, is that the more I do these things, the more comfortable they feel. I've always felt very comfortable playing the violin, performing, etc. it's like a 2nd skin to me, but it's not the only skill you need as a musician, so I'm taking these newfound skills, and the confidence gained with them and saying, "Yes, I can do this!". and that's the biggest motivator there is.
Checkout the interview Vita and I did with our recipes...
http://healthylife.net/RadioShow/archive.htm
P.S.
Just an aside note, nothing to do with Music Success in Nine Weeks or the blog challenge...
If you like tapdancing, my cousin's wife is on that show "America's Got Talent" Tues Aug. 17th 9 pm NBC with the Hot Shot Tap Dancers. They are incredible dancers and could use your votes! NBC.com will have all the voting instructions for e-mail voting and phone voting that night...(you can actually vote after the show is over all night long!)
