Music Success in Nine Weeks: Blog Challenge Week -Creating a Contiuum Plan

Last week of the Music Success in Nine Weeks Blog Challenge! It goes so quickly and you realize how much you can get done in 9 weeks when you keep your focus and put your mind to it. I also like having a road map, which Ariel Hyatt gives you in her book.
Chapter 7 (last week) the focus was on live networking. I just returned from the WAA conference (Western Arts Alliance), where I tried all the suggestions, even the one about touching your head and repeating to yourself the exact things you want before you go into a room. I did this in the restroom before my pitch session and the woman that walked in did give me a weird look (maybe people don't talk to themselves as much outside of NY?!), but I soldiered on and felt good about the "pitch session" (they give you 2 minutes to let people know about your group). Now that I'm back, I'm doing the last step which is the follow-up - probably the most important and also the easiest to slack on....

Moving into Chapter 9 - Creating a Continuum Plan.
My first reaction to this was - NO MORE SELLING. This is of course the opposite of the point (the point is to think about what you can offer your fans that they can buy on a regular basis). Starting with a free mp3 for joining the mailing list, going to 99c downloads, full album, song per month club, special events, private shows, custom songs, aligning with charities, etc.

Then I actually started brainstorming about what would be fun, for both me and the people who enjoy our music, The idea of creating events that would help foster that sense of community. It brought me back to when I did the "Fiddlers on the Loose Show" with a funky-jazz fiddler (DaPhat Funk) a Greek fiddler (Elektra Kurtis) and our Irish set. That was such a nice night and several people came up and said they might not have bought a ticket and gone to hear one of those genres on their own, but they loved all of them and were so glad to have it brought to them.
So my ideas on the consortium for us are:

1. Do some theme shows for our fans that involve other artists-
Thinking about Valentine's Day or other holidays, but maybe some obscure ones.

2, Have a 12 days of Christmas club and those that join will receive a video and/or soundclip of us playing our version of our favorite Christmas melodies. (Can you tell I LOVE Christmas?)

3. Bring in some other people to make it an event. In LA, they were talking about t-shirt companies that come to the gig and make t-shirts right there. Maybe we could have jugglers or pipers or face painting.

4. Write and record a tune just for you. You can have your own Planxty! (the Irish tunes the harper O'Carolyn wrote and dedicated to his hosts were called Planxty ______ as in Planxty Sullivan or whatever their name was. Fill in your own name!

I'll of course keep you posted when we roll all this out, and if you want to be the first to know, join our mailing list/newsletter. You can also write me with any ideas you have, what we can offer you that would be fun.

SO TO RECAP:
Music Success in Nine Weeks is a deceptively small book that packs a big punch. It's not something you read once and put away, it's a program you follow and build on and revisit! Having the framework is helpful and if you need some extra accountability, you can do as I did and join the blog challenge.

The suggestion in the book that helped me the most and one I highly recommend is writing down your 5 successes every day. I have a notebook that I labeled FIVE SUCCESSES and I've been doing it faithfully since I started the challenge. It's a great motivator!! Writing down your successes makes you evaluate what you are actually doing to reach your dreams. It also reminds you that those big moments happen because of all the daily little moments. That's inspiration to keep going with all those daily moments.