Michael Walker: If you’re listening to this then you likely already know that being an independent musician can be a lonely road. And maybe your friends and your family don’t fully understand why you do what you do, or why you invest so much time, energy, and money towards achieving your music goals. And especially early on, it can be hard to find people who really understand what you’re trying to accomplish and how to make it happen. So, that’s where Modern Musician comes in!

My name’s Michael Walker and I can understand and relate to that feeling. I’ve been there myself, and so has our team of independent artists. The truth is that basically everything good in my life has been the result of music. It’s the reason I met my wife, my 3 kids, it’s how I met my best friends. And now with Modern Musician, we have seen so many talented artists who started out with a dream, with a passion, without really a fanbase or a business. And you’ll take that and turn it into a sustainable full-time career and be able to impact hundreds, maybe even thousands or millions of fans with your music. We’ve had thousands of messages from artists who told us we’ve helped change their lives forever. It just gets even more exciting and fulfilling when you’re surrounded by a community of other people who get it, and who have shared their knowledge and success with each other openly. So, if you are feeling called into making your music a full-time career and to be able to reach more people with your music, then I want to invite you to join our community so that we can help support your growth and we can help lift you up as you pursue your musical dreams. You’ll be able to interact in a community with other high-level artists, coaches, and industry professionals, as well as be able to participate in our daily live podcast, meet these amazing guests, and get access to completely free training. If you’d like to join our family of artists who truly care about your success, then click on the link in the show notes and sign-up now.  

Brian Nelson-Palmer: So here's the two ways that this is helpful for you as an artist. First, if you want a gig and you're following up with a booker, it's on you to remember to follow up with the booker. And most musicians don't have a good system for remembering to follow up with the booker. It's basically like a: Oh, I'm going to remember that on Thursday and it's Monday and there's no way you're going to, so you forget until Saturday and then they're out on Saturday. So now what do you do? That's what happens. So snoozing is your superpower, because if you snooze that email to Thursday, at 8 am. Then Thursday at 8 a. m. It's going to reappear at the very top of your inbox and all you got to do is hit reply and say: Hey, just wanted to circle back with you on this, and this is your superpower way to remember to follow up with some of these business opportunities. Like, man, so powerful. 

Michael Walker: It's easy to get lost in today's music industry with constantly changing technology and where anyone with a computer can release their own music. I'm going to share with you why this is the best time to be an independent musician and it's only getting better. If you have high-quality music, but you just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people and generate a sustainable income with your music, we're going to show you the best strategies that we're using right now to reach millions of new listeners every month without spending 10 hours a day on social media. We're creating a revolution in today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

All right. So I'd be here today with my new friend Brian. So Brian Nelson-Palmer is the founder of Productivity Gladiator and, having been diagnosed with type one diabetes at a young age, he committed his time to be able to lead a productivity system to be able to enhance your practical productivity in your life and to be able to make a greater impact. And he's taken that to stages around the world. He’s been able to speak at TEDx and he's created a program called Productivity Gladiator, that's about helping to maximize your limited time. We all have the same amount of time in the day, but what we do with that time is really where we get leverage from it. This is one of my favorite topics to go into. I think it's extremely important and I know you're a musician yourself as well, Brian. So I appreciate you taking time to be here today.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Absolutely. Michael, it's a treat to be here, man. And it's a treat to get to talk with some fellow musicians because I spend most of my days teaching corporate types and businesses and organizations bring me in to teach their people, like you said, the personal practical productivity skills, but by night, I mean, I was the drummer in a rock band for five years and I absolutely freaking love it. Like it is such… it's so much fun. So the intersection between personal, practical, productivity skills and also music for me is: that's a personal thing. So it's so much fun to do this.

Michael Walker: That's awesome. And I feel like it's such an important conversation that we're probably about to have just because: for a lot of musicians or artists, maybe there's a mindset block around thinking: Yeah, I don't want to structure my days or I don't want to focus too much on the productivity stuff for the business side of things because that somehow gets in the way of being creative and I'm sure today, what you're going to share is going to be exactly the opposite. It's going to be a way to create more freedom and be able to be more creative. Just to start with, I'd love to hear just a little bit about your story and how you started Productivity Gladiator.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Absolutely. You alluded to it in the very beginning. That for me, it started when I was four years old. I was diagnosed with type one insulin dependent diabetes. So I'll never forget. I have a very vivid memory of sitting in Dr. Kinsella's bland 1980s stuffy office and holding my mom's hand and learning that while diabetics can live a full and mostly normal life, the life expectancy for diabetics is 10 to 20 years less than everyone else. So, now things aren't as dire as they were when I was four years old. Things have come a long way for treatment for these kinds of things, but from that very young age, I always had this sort of attitude or idea that: I'm not going to get the really long retirement where you wait till later and then do all these things. For me it's about maximizing, and living the life that you can today and enjoying the now, as opposed to waiting for it later. And so for me, that's kinda where it started and ever since then, I have been on a quest to live it up and have the best possible life while still working and still being a normal adult in today's society. And so not putting off to tomorrow what we can… the joy and the fun and the life that you can have today. So for me, it started with this quest to be: I have a good life balance. And then when I became a working professional and adult and I started in my careers, it was also about: well I want to be a top performer and I want to make more money and I want to do all those…. be successful at work but at the same time through my lens, I'm not going to get a retirement. So I have to do them, both. So how do you do them both? What does balance look like? How do you win in both realms? And so that's where that was the foundation in the beginning of the productivity gladiator sort-of thinking and the productivity gladiator system that you see now started in about 2014. So about 10 years ago, and it was an opportunity where I was doing a lot at the time. So this is where we tie in the music part of my background. So at the time when I started productivity gladiator, I was the drummer in a rock band, fellow craft. You can check us out on Spotify and stuff. We have several albums out. That was a boatload of fun. I was in Washington DC. Area. So actually this is where I've crossed paths with some of the people that you guys know in the Modern Musician community was through the Washington, DC. Local music scene. But then at the same time, I also was the syndicated podcast and radio show host. So I used to have the drive at five on Tuesdays. I did a local music radio show that was all about DC's local music scene, and it was about highlighting the great music and artists that are in the DC area that nobody knows about, right? Like you guys can certainly relate.

You've got this great music. You've got this great product and People aren't listening. And so how do we do that? So I had a radio show. The radio show turned into an annual music festival at the 9:30 club and some of the big venues there. And then from that success, I ended up getting looped in and founding the whammies, which is the Washington DC area Grammys.

So myself and the head of one of the non-profits that teaches music education in DC, I really wanted to do awards. And so it led to… because of DC music rocks and being the drummer at a band… Now it allowed me to do that too. And so if you check out whammysdc.org, you'll see the show that it is today. It's turned into quite a thing. So if you've ever wondered what the best pop song or who the best rock artist is in Washington DC. If you're coming through on tour, public service announcement. That’s a great way to find some artists is go to the whammies website and look at who won, and that might be good people to talk to about maybe, partnering with them on a show or something, but so that was the music side of things.

So I was doing all of that at the same time. I'm also a group fitness instructor and I have a day job and so I'm trying to live it up in every part of my life and my friends would ask: how do you do it all? How do you remember it all? How do you not drop the ball on this stuff? How do you still travel?

Like, here's my two week trip to Europe and my fun photos and that kind of stuff. And so my challenge to myself was: can I teach it to people? I wonder if I could… is it a system… Could I teach this system? And so in 2014, that was the beginnings of creating the system that it is now. And so, Productivity Gladiator now is teaching people that system. What does life-balance look like? It's very specific skills and tools, right? I like… my God, I feel like you go to time management seminars and their bottom line is you should just manage your time better. Well, that doesn't help me much.

Like how are you supposed to do that? And so I did have the opportunity to do a TED talk, or a TEDx talk, should I say, but I was really honored because I did a TEDx talk on the value of your time. And so if you want to check that out, you can go to ted.com and look me up. But the thing that was really cool for me about that experience was: I did that because I wanted to pay the message forward to the world. This was a really cool concept that I taught in productivity gladiator training that a lot of people really… it really struck them when they learned it. And so I thought: gosh, can I do a productivity gladiator? Can I do a Ted talk on that so that I can pay this idea forward to the world? And so I did. And when Ted received the talk. They get approximately 500 ish talks a day. There's a lot of TEDx talks that happen every single day at events all over the world. So just doing a TEDx talk doesn't necessarily mean anything, you guys know, unless people look at it, they watch it. It means something to them, that kind of stuff. They connect with it. And so for me, I was really fortunate in that the team at TED really connected with it. And so they picked it as an editor's pick and they put it on their playlist as one of the top recommended talks. And so it was that whole, tens of thousands of views in just a matter of a few days and lots of likes and comments. And it was a very cool thing to see. And for me, it was validating because: this is my idea. This is my system. I teach people how to do this better. And now the team at Ted agreed that this is a good idea and they gave it the nod. So a lot of times you go through life and you're like I don't, I think this is good.

I have confidence in what I'm doing. And every once in a while, you have that moment where somebody is like: Actually, yes, that is a very good idea and here, I want to share it. And so that was one of those validating moments for me. So that's a little bit of the background on where it came from. Now Productivity Gladiator is about ultimately businesses and organizations bring me in to teach personal practical productivity skills. My target market is normally aspiring leaders and early career project managers. How do you get the basis. Like email inbox to zero? How do you do that? Or to do list hacking? How do you not get distracted by all the stuff that's coming at you all the time? How do you focus on what do I need to be doing now? And what do I need to be doing next? And you walk into a meeting and you walk out with 50 things. that you need to do or keep track of. What's your system for keeping track of it, for getting it all done, for not missing a deadline for all of that stuff. And so those are the very practical skills that I bring and that I teach. And iit's been really just such a rewarding thing. So to get to talk to you guys about it now, because I got productivity gladiator associated with my name, but at the same time, I also have a whole rockstar side. That's a lot of fun to be playing shows for all these people in these big venues and stuff. So it's a treat to get to do this. So, thanks for having me.

Michael Walker: Man, that is amazing. Incredible story. And I really think that the topic that you're focused on, how you better leverage your time, is like the key question in general for all of us is how do we leverage the time that we have to, to increase our output? I just think it's such a valuable, in a meta kind of way, it's a valuable use of your time as long as, as, as long as you actually are improving your focus. I'm curious to hear this TED talk that you did that really resonated around valuing your time. You don't necessarily have to do the whole TED talk here. People can go watch it. I'm just curious what the big takeaway or the big idea was, because it sounds like it was something that was really important and probably would benefit a lot of people who are here.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: So I've got a treat for you right now. You listening or watching or whatever is: If you go to productivitygladiator.com right now, you can pull up on the website: There is a time value calculator. It's on the main page. You scroll down just one little scroll. It's right near the top. It's the time value calculator and it says calculate the value of your time. Click the button and it will do the math that you do in the Ted talk. So in the Ted talk the, it's the short version. What's really cool about the Ted talk. So what’s really cool about the TedTalk is it's a lot of really relatable stories. Like here's one: My dad used to drive all the way to the neighboring town to get gas because it was cheaper. I remember as a kid growing up every Saturday my dad would call out: I'll be back. I'm headed to get gas. On the shortest day, that trip took at least 45 minutes. And he went because the gas was 10 cents cheaper. And so growing up, my impression was: no matter how far away that cheaper gas is, you better go get it.

I went to Florida state. If you've ever been to Tallahassee or been through Tallahassee with your touring, I went to Florida state, which is on the line with Georgia. It's about 30 minutes to the Georgia border and Georgia had 15 cent cheaper gas. And so to make my dad proud as an upstanding college kid, I used to drive all the way to Georgia to get my gas. Looking back now and having this frame of reference that my time has value, saving a $1.50 to drive 30 plus minutes each way to save that $1.50 was not worth my time. I should have just paid the Florida prices and gone to the place right around the corner. The way that I would choose to spend my time now is, because you have this calculator, I have a number for the value of my time. The number I use right now is 30 bucks an hour. That's the number that feels good for me. So I make decisions based on that number. So what that means in very practical terms is If it's 30 bucks an hour, my time is worth and I'm going to drive all the way an hour back there and back to save $1.50. $30 for an hour compared to $1.50 saved is not worth my time. So it helps you to make those decisions. And that was going one direction. Now, the time when it is worth your time is an example like I got a quote for having my house cleaned and my laundry done by a service. They'd come to the house, they'd spend three hours. They brought a team of two people and they would clean the whole house, and they would wash my clothes. They do my laundry at the same time. So when you add up. the amount of hours that I would spend to clean my whole house and do the laundry versus the cost for them at the time….m We can use example numbers, but I believe they came in at about 90 bucks for that. So for me, laundry and cleaning five, six hours, probably on a weekend day. Realistically, the thorough kind of cleaning, right? We're talking scrubbing the toilet, the whole thing, not the run over it with a rug or rag real quick.

And so then we're talking like, all right, so now that's five hours of my time at 30 bucks an hour. That's $150 of value per se versus the $90 that I'll pay them. It seems like that might be worth it. And then in exchange for that, just like you alluded to Michael, it's the concept of what do I spend that time on?

What's worth my time? I'm not going to tell you that it's not that simple. Life isn't just numbers and a math problem. Obviously there's a lot of things that are worth your time that are not going to go with the math problem. So there's a lot more to the talk and I definitely hope that you'll check it out because it's things like working on your art or working on your music or spending time with your family or your kids or that kind of stuff. Man, how cool is that?

Michael Walker: [sarcastically] You don't get paid for that?

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Spoiler alert, man, you have to spend your time on that, but it's funny because you say spend your time. How do you spend your time? Now you have a number, and it's just a rough frame of reference, right? But by having that number. Here's a funny little example: I used to live in DC and they had express lanes on the highway. And so you could go into work, there'd be traffic on the main road, and you could pay the fluctuating toll amount was, it was like a dollar, three dollars, five dollars. And you could get in the express lane and bypass all the traffic. So you go on Google Maps, and I find out that it's a ten minute backup for traffic, and the toll was two dollars. If you have a number as a frame of reference, some people just look at the number and they're like that seems steep, or that seems cheap or whatever. What's your number? And so for me at 30 bucks an hour, that works out to what, like two, I think it's 2 and 50 cents for five minutes or something like that. That's the rough. So just using those example numbers, if it's going to save me 10 minutes, that 10 minutes is worth $5 to me. So if the toll is two bucks, and I've got something important that I need to get to, or it's time with friends, or it's something that means a lot to me, I'll spend the $2 and I'll get there. And so it's like stuff like that. So it's not always big stuff like hiring a cleaner. It's just sort of a reference number that really helps you look at how you spend your time. And it's a pretty cool thing.

Michael Walker: Super smart. Yeah. I've struggled with this before, and I think a lot of us struggle with this idea sometimes where we know theoretically that we shouldn't be doing this ourselves because it's not the best use of our time. And sometimes it takes getting over a certain amount of resistance to do it. For me, a couple of those things are: my time of going and getting a haircut versus having someone come.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: [laughing] He's talking to a bald guy right now. So I very much feel his pain.

Michael Walker: [laughing]  Oh man, that's it. That's it. No, I could save myself even more. I might just shave it off. There we go.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: There you go. Absolutely.

Michael Walker: But the difference of me driving somewhere and it takes maybe an hour or two to go do that versus paying 60 bucks for someone to come to our house on thumbtack and cut my hair. That's a good investment because it's a good trade of time for it. There's so many examples like that. I love that as like a practical tool. And the fact that you literally created a calculator around it, where you could calculate your time.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: It's funny: The Ted talk is like the shallow end. Then you have the calculator, which is like: we're talking like the five foot end of the pool or whatever. And then I do a workshop on this whole thing and now that's the deep end. Then we dive all the way to the bottom and we look: I've got all these time hacks for all the ways that you could buy your time back or things that you could avoid that you never thought about, that you're spending your time on, that you could spend another way.

And so like that conversation can just go…. I can see your, the wheels turning in your head, Michael there's so many places that can go. It's like a rabbit hole and it's a beautiful rabbit hole because man, the more time that you create, if you use it in a way that's rewarding or good for you, if you free up all that time spent doing haircuts so that you could actually do more music, which might make you more money in the long run, which might, whatever, yeah.Worth the investment. And the number is just a way to give you permission to say “Yes” to some of these things.

Michael Walker: Yeah, super smart. I think the one thing that comes to mind in terms of just how it relates to a lot of us as musicians, is especially nowadays, it's so easy to record ourselves and mix ourselves and master ourselves and do everything ourselves. In some cases it might be like what we talked about, spending your time with your kids or your family. Okay, you love doing it. So that's okay. You can do it, but I think for a lot of people there are at least components or parts of what they don't like it. They're like: I'm not good at this. I don't like it. It's I really wish that I didn't have to do this thing. And it definitely seems like there's huge opportunity there if they take into account a strategy, like what you're suggesting of actually looking at their time and figuring out. What's the threshold at which they're like, okay, I'm just not going to spend my time doing this because I can hire someone to do this part instead.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Let me tell you one funny story that's really helpful too: its permission to spend your time better. And here's a perfect example: I was in a workshop at an organization and the guy's name was Joe and Joe was, in his mind, the problem. I said you could hire a cleaner to clean the house and then maybe you could go on a date with your wife and Joe said: that's a double negative because then I'm paying for the cleaner and…. not double negative in that he wanted to spend time with his wife! He actually wanted to spend time with his wife! I said that and Michael was like: Oh yeah, spending time with his wife, yeah, that's a double negative. But no, it's a double negative in that he has to pay twice: He's got to pay for the cleaner and then he's got to pay for the date. And I said Joe, how would your relationship be a little different if you make it a free date? So you and your wife go take a picnic somewhere and you would date, you do a date that doesn't cost anything. Cause those exist by the way, if you're not already doing this, it's possible to do dates that are just quality time. There are free places to go. There are parks you've never been to. There are all kinds of things you can do that don't cost anything. And so if you had a three hour date, with your wife and in the same time you got the house cleaned, together, isn't that more of a double positive and a little less of the double negative? Is it that kind of thing? And so it's: how you're spending your time. Can you spend it over here? Spend the money part over here so that you can get the time back over here to do something that's way more important and fulfilling. And so I'd like to think that I've saved a couple of marriages through the years through teaching this just because people are like: Oh yeah, okay. Do a free date and get the house cleaned or something or whatever it is that's taking your time.

Michael Walker: That's awesome.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Michael, let me just do one thing that I do… I wanted to share. Michael and I didn't prepare this ahead of time, but I was thinking about…  so I'm a productivity hacker, right? For me I am, I'm like way into the deep end and way down at the bottom of the ocean on all of these little nerdy things. But at the same time, it's about making it better or easier or more efficient to do things better and have better life balance. That's my ultimate goal is to free up the time so that I can do more of the stuff that matters. Remember? Because for me, I have less years in my head. So I just want to spend it better now. And so thinking about that, I have five hacks that I want to share that are specific from my time in the music scene that are like productivity hacks and do it better hacks for musicians. At some point, I want to share those with you too, because I was just thinking about it going: man, if I could pay it forward to all my musician friends in the DC area, these are the five things like, man, please do this.

Michael Walker: [sarcastically] I don't know if that doesn't sound very valuable or enticing or intriguing. Yeah. Yeah. We want the five hacks. We want the hacks.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: They've spoken. All right, cool. Then here, let me share these. Cause I had a lot of fun just thinking about this and thinking back to all of that fun time doing that. So here they are: 1) Use ‘recommended if you like’ references. Like: Hey, you like my music, it's recommended if you like Jason Derulo, Taylor Swift, something like that. Use ‘recommended if you like’ references. And here's my example or my metaphor for that. Do you get spam calls on your phone and do you answer them? Because I don't. If it's a number I don't recognize and I know for musicians, answering the phone is partly business, right? So there might be money on that phone. Some people do answer the numbers they don't recognize but a lot of times we monitor our calls and that's what people do when they're considering new music. Let's say if the phone rings and it's a number you don't know, you're probably not gonna answer it. But if the phone rings and, oh, it's a friend of Taylor Swift's and I like Taylor Swift, then maybe that's a maybe. The odds of them answering the phone are better than the 99 percent chance they're not going to answer the phone before. And I say the same thing about your music. When I had with the whammies and the radio show, I had a database of artists that I had. There were 75 rock bands in my database, local rock bands in the DC area. If you ask Joe Schmo on the street in DC, to name DC rock bands, he likely didn't know any, and maybe if you're lucky, he might know one, right? And so in my quest to promote local music, I wanted to show Joe all 70 of these rock bands. And here's what I found out about Joe Schmo. Joe doesn't want 60 plus rock bands that he needs to check out. He's not interested, Joe happens to be an ACDC fan and there happens to be a band that's recommended if you like ACDC, that's the one that Joe wants to check out. And so when I had the radio show and I had the database, I always asked artists to give me three “recommended if you like” references and here's what the artists always reacted. They always said: well I'm unique. I'm not like anyone else. And I hear you on that. And by being like, or ‘recommended if you like’, I didn't say you were a copy. I said, you're recommended if they like Taylor Swift, or if they like, whatever the big name artist is that Joe's going to know: that's your thing. So lean into the ‘recommended if you like’ example. And I got one more little funny story about this. And something that I use in my business regularly is that for the longest time: when you take productivity gladiator training, you learn a lot of things, right? I wanted to, when I represented myself, I wanted people to think, Oh, it's this and this and this. And the best metaphor I got is man, you know the pizza spot? What's the best pizza spot in town? Like, you probably know where the best pizza is and chances are they probably have pizza in the name of their place. And we also know that they also offer salads and sandwiches and all kinds of other things on their menu, but they're known for their pizza. And so it's the same reference for you in that: don't be the “Harry's Pasta, Pizza and Subs”. Don't be “Harry's Pasta, Pizza and Subs”. I want you to be “Harry's Pizza” and they know pizza. And like my funny relevance for this is man, Subway, Subway is a sub shop, right? You know what Subway serves. You know what I get at Subway, the salad every time because they've got a great salad. But they're a sub shop and the same for your music, man. You should be able to follow the train of recommended if you like Taylor Swift”, you can be making $250,000 a year on that association. If you get up to that level… I'm not saying that you are Taylor Swift, but man, having that association just makes the looping back to the beginning. It makes them more likely to answer the phone on your music.

And so use that. Don't run away from it. Please.

Michael Walker: Super smart. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's something that we teach a lot, in terms of our campaigns and how they launch campaigns which always include some form of figuring out where do their fans congregate and then, speaking directly to those people. And we've had the exact same experience that it's like neuronal connections. Like we have existing pathways in our brains. And so you want to be able to tap into the existing momentum, the existing pathways. And if you're trying to be somewhere completely different that they can't understand or relate to, it causes them to have to be confused or stretch outside of like… just to understand it. Then it's much more difficult to actually cut through the noise. And so a hundred percent, yeah, just focusing on and I like the way that you put it to you, like you recommended if you like, not saying that you are Taylor Swift or these different artists, but if you like them, then they might like their music too.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Awesome. Absolutely. And credit to you, Michael, I watched one of the Modern Musician things you talked about it's your… Oh my gosh, it's escaping me. I was just thinking about it.

Michael Walker: Virtual tour hacking thing, maybe?

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Virtual tour hacking thing, right. And it's the same idea. I know you guys are along those same lines, so I know this concept probably isn't new to you checking this out, but at the same time it's: please don't run away from being associated with somebody like that because that doesn't make you any less unique. It just helps you find the people who might check out your music so that they'll answer the phone and you're not a spam call.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Love it. It's something that I've found through doing a lot of these podcasts. I know you've found this too through success leaves clues and patterns, but, the truth is the truth and there's a lot of different perspectives or ways to recognize it or interpret it or speak through it. So I always appreciate hearing, especially when it's something that… I have a mind map. Mind map has a certain way of looking at it and then I can see, Oh, that's interesting. Like this, there's another map that we're pointing to the same thing and we say it in similar ways, but it's super valuable to be able to have that reflection and have it spoken to.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: People need to hear it. And I know this from being an educator, right? People need to hear it five or six different times. I tell stories a lot because I can tell you the concept, like I can give you the bullet point version of this, but it's much more relatable when it's a story. It's much more relatable. And some people want the stories. Some people want the bullets. Some people want it written. Some people want to hear it. And so it's just… I share that because like after watching your session the other day, Michael, it was like: I know that you guys are already familiar with this concept, but, let me tell you about the pizza, pasta and sub shop, and maybe that'll be a reference that helps too.

Michael Walker: Super Helpful .

Brian Nelson-Palmer: So yeah. All right. So number 1) use: “recommended if you like” artist references because they will answer the phone. Number 2), post your shows on bandsintown and songkick. This is one in promoting this. And I know you guys, what's funny is some of these things. I thought about these things. And for a second, I thought: maybe I shouldn't share these things because these people will already know it, but you know what, I want to share it because it's helpful information. So here's the thing… in setting up the radio show and the festivals, and I was a booker for a while and the whammies now and all the stuff that I did with music. There are two places that the whole rest of the internet gets their show information from, and it's bandsintown and songkick.

And so your shows show up on Spotify because you go into song kick and you put in the show information. Bandsintown have a whole different side of the internet. And so from those main sources, there are others obviously, you can create a Facebook event… There's other ways to do this, but bandsintown and songkick gets you more than 80 percent of the rest of the internet on where they pull their show information. It's from one of those two sources. So make sure every one of your shows that you want people to be able to find, post them on those two sources. Do you do that already? Have you, is this already part of the 

Michael Walker: We had we had the CEO of bandsintown on the podcast at one point, Fabrice. And so we've talked a little bit about that, but no I think that's definitely useful information. Songkick plus bandsintown and just making sure that. Yeah. That you're focused on those two spots and you talk about leverage and about focusing your time. If you just focus on those two spots, then you can have over 80 percent of… you're probably more than 80%, probably like 99%.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Absolutely. Yeah. And that's… totally, and not to mention both of them are some people actually use, I run in some circles. Like I actually am an avid… I go on the rock boat every year. If you're familiar with the rock boat it’s basically a music festival on a cruise ship. It's wild. It's so much fun. It is so much fun. And instead of sleeping in a tent in a field somewhere for some of these other ones, it's a cruise ship. So it's all inclusive, all my drinks, all my food, there's a clean bathroom. I sleep in a bed every night. It's amazing. Like I am spoiled when it comes to music festivals and a lot of people on that boat use bandsintown. So if you're coming into town on tour? There's people that are finding out about your show that you had no idea because they just follow the artist and then bandsintown alerts them separately. So there are standalone things, but also, the data gets pulled by Spotify and pulled by Google and pulled by all the other sources.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Well keep them coming, I want to hear the other three!

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Number 3) snooze your emails. Michael, do you snooze your emails and Gmail? Have you ever done that? 

Michael Walker: When you talked about getting the email inbox zero, I was hesitant to even bring this up because I felt like I was like, Oh man. My relationship with my email is: I don't have a relationship with it. Like, I set up a boundary to it. And so it's pretty… I just don't use it. So like I have tens of thousands of emails in the inbox and, we have an amazing team and we have folks who will make sure that something doesn't slip through the cracks, but there's still, there's a piece of me, that's I know that my, like I, there's a whole level of mastery to my emails that I'm just not even touching.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: So I teach email inbox to zero training. And for artists, the reason this is specific is wait, I don't want to talk about email inbox to zero. Everybody has your own relationship with your email. And I totally get that. Just because you have emails in your inbox, doesn't make you a failure. Inbox zero is not the equivalent of getting an “A” for email, but. At the same time, being on top of your email is important because that is your business, right? Your business relationship as a booker, setting up these festivals? Let me tell you, working with musicians is like herding cats. It is awful sometimes because they don't get back to you. You have to ask them three times for the show posters and the information you need and the bio and the whatever else. I wanted them to come on my radio show and it was like pulling teeth, trying to get them to send me photos so that I can promote them. Come on guys. So email is important from a business angle and snoozing is: here's the power house, right? So snooze. In your email: If you go in your Gmail right now, there is a button at the top. You can either check the box or, if you're on the desktop. It's on the right side. It looks like a little clock. If you're on the app, on the Gmail app on your phone, you can swipe one direction and it's snooze or it's one of the little options if you hit the three dots, it's snooze. And when you snooze an email, it disappears. But it doesn't disappear. It's just archived. So it's not in your inbox anymore, but at the date and time that you snooze it to, it will come back.

So here's the two ways that this is helpful for you as an artist. First, if you want a gig and you're following up with a booker, it's on you to remember to follow up with the booker. And most musicians don't have a good system for remembering to follow up with the booker. It's basically like a: Oh, I'm going to remember that on Thursday and it's Monday and there's no way you're going to, so you forget until Saturday and then they're out on Saturday. So now what do you do? That's what happens. So snoozing is your superpower, because if you snooze that email to Thursday, at 8am. Then Thursday at 8am, it's going to reappear at the very top of your inbox and all you got to do is hit reply and say: Hey, just wanted to circle back with you on this, and this is your superpower way to remember to follow up with some of these business opportunities. Like, man, so powerful. Snoozing your emails is going to be awesome for you. It's going to be awesome for the people you work with. If the venue says: Hey, and two weeks before, they're going to do this for you. Or here's my favorite one: We got booked for a show one time and it was like four months in advance. And they said: Hey, if you follow up six weeks before, we'll do some social media promo for you. It's on you to remember to follow up six weeks before. So you know what I did? I snoozed the email to six weeks before. And at exactly six weeks, I sent them the image that I wanted and whatever the promo was so that they would start promoting for me. But it was on me to remember that. And that's your snooze. So man, if you're not already snoozing… There's little YouTube videos.

It's such a simple thing. But this little tool is going to be so valuable for you with everything you got going on. 

Michael Walker: Super Smart. Yeah. What that reminds me of this, no pun intended, what it reminds me of is how valuable just that concept of setting reminders and, quote unquote snoozing your emails and then also just like things in general, like it does feel like it's really important to have a clean space in the present moment to be able to be here and be present. But in order to do that, we need a way to do jujitsu on the idea of the things that are coming up right now. So we don't have to process, got to hold on to 20 different things, but we can actually just cast it to the right point of time where you actually can be actionable with it. Awesome.=

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Yeah. So snoozing emails, number three. Definitely guys, master that skill and it's going to take you two minutes to master that skill. That's how easy this is. But oh my gosh, it's going to be one of your superpowers. Everybody that I've taught snoozing emails to snooze is the heck out of their emails now because it's so valuable. So please do check that one out.

Michael Walker: Awesome.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Number 4) Schedule your social media posts once a week or schedule them in advance. And this comes from the value of your time, right? I feel like a lot of people get lost and I know you guys teach about how social media platforms aren't your fans. You don't own them. Facebook owns them. Instagram owns them. So you spend so much time on social media and the return is: Maybe you might get something good out of it. And you guys have a great system for helping people get more out of it, especially musicians. But ultimately, it belongs to Instagram. If you lose that account, you get locked out of that account, all those people, they're gone. So scheduling your social media posts, thinking, sitting down. And I would tell you to, my recommendation would be: batch your social media planning once a week. Every platform will allow you to schedule your posts. So schedule them once a week and think about, for the people that are following you, 2 things: How do you make it different in terms of: you don't want to post the same thing? Here's me having breakfast. Here's me having lunch. Here's me thinking about this deep thought in the afternoon. And then if you actually go back and look at the week, if you did it that way, be like: my God, I just did a lot of the same thing.

So by thinking about it in a week at a time, you know that you can say something profound on this day. It can be new music on this day. It can be a show update on this day. And so your channel is going to be interesting, different information. So by planning it in advance, that's helpful. And here's the other thing, it's what's in it for me (WITFM) is a sales tactic that I learned from my years in sales and the “what's in it for me” furry the people following your social media is: please answer that in every one of your posts, right? So here's some examples. You got a show coming up. Yes, they like you and yes, they might want to see your show, but tell them something interesting. They don't know. Here's my favorite drink at this venue from their menu. I absolutely love it: Oh my god… they have muffins at the 930 Club. The cupcakes at the 930 Club. If you've ever been you know what I'm talking about And man freaking drool. So instead of just saying 930 club. This week's 930 club thing can be about the cupcake. And then: so what's in it for them? Why should they check it out or new song notifications? It's recommended if you like: Hey, I got a new song that just dropped. If you like Taylor Swift, or I got to stop using her. Cause I don't like Taylor Swift. I never come over the different. What's the name?

Michael Walker: [laughing] What?

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Did you hear the Superbowl? Usher is my guy, man. Alright, if you like Usher, you're gonna love this jam or something like that. And remember, you're the pizza spot. Don't worry about being pizza, pasta, whatever. Say Usher. Tell them you like it. And then the next week, you can say, you're gonna love this jam if it sounds like, insert other R&B artists that's similar or something, but what's in it for them, the reason why they should check it out is really, really helpful to think about it because ultimately, everybody's on social media for themselves and you're entertaining them what's in it for them? Schedule your posts once a week and think about what's in it for them. That's number four.

Michael Walker: Love it. Yeah. That's just a valuable life skill in general, just like approaching every relationship and thinking about what's in it for them? What can I provide that's valuable to them? Zig Ziglar said something like: you can get anything you want to help other people get what they want. And certainly there's like a universal truth to that, what's in it for them. Awesome.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Yeah. And then number 5) live like you're worth the value of your time. It's a tagline from my TedTalk, but here's how you can try it. And you could do it. So I'm a coach as well. I'm a productivity coach and I coach corporate folks, they bring me in to teach their people and something. And so one of the drills and one of the tactics that we do is that we pull up your calendar and show me your calendar and let's look at how you're spending your time. And then based on how you're spending your time, I can determine what's actually really important to you. And so what's interesting is the corporate… now I'm going to, I got to translate this to corporate, right? Normally the corporate mission is to make more sales and do more something. And then when I look at the person's calendar, are they spending, cause we know the value of their time, right? Are they spending a proportionately more amount of their time on that thing; on that particular mission or strategy or something. So for you as a musician, if you want to write music or if you're trying to build fans or if you're trying to do something and we look at your week, are you actually really spending your time in the areas that will help that? And if you look at your calendar, how does it look? If I go in your phone, here's a spoiler alert. If you go in your phone, you can look in your history and find out how much time you spent on Instagram and how much time you spent on TikTok and how much time you spent on…

And so unless you're actually engaging with fans, if that was the mindless scrolling thing that people do, then you're spending your time. And if you're spending more time scrolling than you are creating music and that's your number one thing? Then maybe there's some juggling that should happen. So live like you're worth the value of your time is just a helpful way to look at that.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Yeah. I definitely said there's the magic to the calendar and like scheduling stuff on the calendar. I know for me, like something becomes real. When I actually put it on my calendar and it's, yeah, it's… I have ideas or talk about something

It's like you get on the calendar, then you actually have that carved out. And I think it's related to what you're describing with actually using your time intentionally and you're putting things in your calendar. Cool. And great reminder as well for a lot of us, we feel like we don't have enough time. They're like, oh man, like, how am I going to have more time to do X, Y, Z. But then if you look at your screen time, it's like: Oh, wow. I spend an hour a day or two hours a day on social media. And, oh, I spend a couple hours a day watching TV. There you go. You can get three or four hours back from that. Yeah, really powerful. All right. Brian, man, this has been awesome. Yeah. I love this topic. I think you focusing on how you can leverage your time, no pun intended, I don't know if there's a pun in there, but spending time to get time back is one of the best investments of time that you can have about creating leverage, sharpening the saw. So I really appreciate what you're doing. And for anyone here right now, who's resonating with this is interested in getting more clarity on how they can better utilize their time for themselves and for their music so they can be able to make a bigger impact with their music and build more success. What'd be the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

Brian Nelson-Palmer: For the learning stuff, everything is at ProductivityGladiator. So that's the name, that's the brand, that's the trademark. That's the everything. So you'll find it on whatever platform you're on. It's so funny because we just talked about not scrolling. We're all in the business of trying to find people and connect with people. So yeah, I'm on those social media platforms so that I can continue to add and deliver value that way. So I've got all kinds of stuff that I post there. So if you're interested in the learning, it's at #ProductivityGladiator. If you're interested in the personal stuff, it's at @BrianNelson-Palmer. And I I'd love to connect with all you guys. And also the oh my gosh, I just, I had a thought and it was like, oh, I wanted to make sure, oh, here's one: If you're a reader, I'm a big reader and let's connect on goodreads. There's a random one for you. If you haven't ever used the Goodreads app, it's a way to keep track of all the books you want to read or have read or all that stuff. And it also allows the best book recommendations I've got have been from people I've connected with on Goodreads and found this stuff. So last year, I think I read 61 books. I'm just a voracious reader. Like I love it. And so that is if you want to connect on Goodreads because you're on there. I certainly, man, do a lot of reading too, but all the socials and stuff. So you can find me on there. I've got a podcast where I'm delivering a lot of these little lessons. I try to package all of them up into a little knowledge nugget and each podcast is a very actionable thing that will help you with something. So put that out there. That's the stuff. And then of course, I do have the productivity gladiator training. So if it really resonates with you, I teach the corporate folks how to do this, but because I spent so much time in the music business, like it, all of this, I lived it. I continue to live it with the music. I'm still involved in the whammies. And so all of these productivity skills are directly relevant to being a musician and working in that too. So I do have that training as well, of course. And so I'm basically, it's one of those: however, I can help. I would love to help you.

So reach out to me. I'm happy to connect.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Thanks, man. And it's funny you mentioned the whammies. We have several team members and several clients who've mentioned that they are submitting for the whammies and have said: Hey I'd love you to vote for me. So it's a small world.

Brian Nelson-Palmer: Can I tell you one cool thing: so I'm the guy behind the whammies in that I brought the process and the way that you win the awards. I partnered with the musicianship as a nonprofit in DC that does it. And I brought the idea to Jeff Tribble who was the CEO at the time when we started this back in 2017 we were talking about pizza earlier… We had a meeting over pizza and I was like: Jeff, I want music awards in DC. I have the idea. I can do this. Let's partner together. And so I did it with them. And so I volunteer to do this every year. This is one of my passion projects where I give back this way, but one of the things that I'm proud of and that many people don't know about the whammies is that: the way that you win a whammy is a two step process. First, you get nominated and that gets you on the ballot. And the public votes for the top seven in each category. So in each year, there'll be 50-something best pop songs that get submitted. And by public vote, it gets narrowed down to seven. And then from those seven industry judges from the DC music scene, right? So the producers, the radio hosts, the people with the news, the writers for the paper… all those people are judges and they go on the platform and they judge each one of those finalists individually to consider them. And so then based on all of the judges scores determines the winner and the winners revealed at this big red carpet event and the events just like the Grammys, right? You got red carpet, you got performances. Here's the best pop song. They give a speech. Now here's a performance by this artist. If you're ever in DC in April, that's when it happens every year. But the process to win it, what I love about it is that it's not just a popularity contest. It's not who texted all their friends and got them to vote for them for this thing. It's actually the music business. The industry helps decide the winner and both components play a part. And so that's the part that I like for me personally as a radio show and stuff. I know that people will go online and I have some of the artists that have texted me and everyone in their phone to say: please, here's the website, please go on, please vote for me. And the award doesn't go to the person who texts the most people. It goes to the one that the music industry things too. And so I, that's one cool thing that DC does now that I really as a music person is like: man. I got, I live in Tampa now and Tampa doesn't have, they don't have the Tammies. There's no Tammies down here for Tampa. It's the whammies in DC or the thing, but that's, I love that DC has that way that's not just a popularity contest. Like it's actually gotta be good and the music business agrees to. And I personally, I like that. I'm proud of the fact that it turned out that way and that's how you win.

Michael Walker: That is cool. Yeah. What comes to mind is the system for rotten tomatoes, how it works. I have the critics score and the audience score and it's really nice having both of those. When they come together, you get a better scope for the actual end products versus just like one or the other.

Well Brian, thank you again for being a part of this. This is a really fun conversation. I would totally recommend anyone who's listening right now, who wants to go deeper into this world of really maximizing their time to go check out the resources. We'll put all the links in the show notes. And yeah, till next time. Yeah.

Hey, it’s Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there’s a few ways to help us grow.

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