Graham Cochrane:
Before you set out on a path of what your goal is, like, "Oh, I want to accomplish this, or do this, or see this happen in my life," don't look at those things compartmentalized. Zoom out first and say, "What kind of life do I want to live? What kind of life do I want to build?"

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. If you have high quality music, but just don't know the best way to promote yourself so that you can reach the right people to 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 with today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right, and we're here for the official first session of the entire event. Graham Cochrane, thank you so much for being here and being the kickoff session. How are you doing today, man?

Graham Cochrane:
Hey, dude, I'm pumped. I don't know how many times we've done this, but I don't know, have I ever had the first slot? I'm honored to kick it off, man.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, man. I'm glad to have you on here. I think you definitely deserve the first spot. I was talking, when I was introducing you before we started here, just about how big of an impact you've had on my life and my business. I remember when I first started out, and at the first conference I ever did, I really hadn't built up very much of anything, was just a completely new business. And you came on, you did an interview, you're part of the events, and it was a huge kind of domino for me.

Michael Walker:
And I've learned a ton from you, just in terms of your mindset and your philosophy about not just how to build a successful business, but also how to really show up and live a full life, too, and not to just be burnt out the entire time, but to actually care about your lifestyle as well as the business side of things. So I really appreciate you, and the way that you show up, and the way that you serve others. And today, I thought one of the best ways to kick off the entire event would be having a discussion about some of those topics around productivity and prioritization.

Michael Walker:
And especially considering the fact that during this event, there's going to be all these speakers, and there's going to be so much wisdom, so much knowledge. And kind of reflective of the internet as a whole, right now, right, there's so much awesomeness and so much information, but sometimes it can feel overwhelming and hard to really know, how do we apply all this, and how to get the most from it? So what better way to start off the event than talking about that issue directly and sharing some insights from the founder of Recording Revolution, who's built a YouTube channel to over 600,000 subscribers with millions of views, it's a very successful business, music business, and serves musicians all over the world.

Michael Walker:
And with that channel, it really focuses on recording, and how to get high quality recordings in a home studio. And so, I mean, if you want to learn more about all those things, go Google Recording Revolution, dig into their ... There's a mountain of amazing wisdom there. But today, I thought it would be really helpful to talk about kind of the foundation and the underlying things that led to that channel and led to the success, and really how to apply that as musicians to be able to increase their productivity. So Graham, thanks again so much, and to start out with, for anyone that hasn't met you yet, could you just share a little bit about yourself and how you got started doing what you do?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, well, first of all, congratulations on this summit, again. I'm so proud of you and what you guys have accomplished. I think you epitomize serving people well, and your brand is evident of that. People love interaction with Modern Musician, everything you guys do. So kudos to you, and the lineup this year is phenomenal. I saw some familiar faces and some new faces for me, so I'm excited and humbled to be a part of it.

Graham Cochrane:
So I got started in recording as a musician first, I loved performing, and then I loved songwriting, and then I discovered recording in high school and was like, "Oh my gosh, this is like a third art forum surrounding music that I enjoyed," went to audio school to learn it more. So that was my backup plan, if I didn't become a rock star, which I was literally trying to pursue. If that didn't work out, I was like, "Well, at least I could work in a studio all day and hang out and be around all of this," and that led me into freelance recording and mixing.

Graham Cochrane:
And that led me into, when I was at a low point in my life in 2009, when we had moved to Florida, we're fellow Florida buddies, we moved to Florida and I lost a job and was trying to ramp up my freelance work, I was doing a lot of remote mixing at the time, and mastering. I thought it'd be a cool idea to start blogging and putting out some video content about what I was doing with my client work, to just get some more interest in what I was doing. I didn't know anybody in Tampa at the time, I didn't have any local clientele. So that was my goal was to get more freelance work, and that led into what's, the Recording Revolution.

Graham Cochrane:
I started the YouTube channel, people somehow found the videos. And while it did lead to client work, what most people were interested was not hiring me, it was like, "How do you do what you're doing? Or, "That was a really helpful video, the way you explained EQ, or compression," or whatever it was, something about the way I explained it made sense to them, and they wanted more content. And so I kind of accidentally became a YouTuber and a content creator and a blogger, because people asked me for more of it. And that was the beginning of the rest of my life so far, which has been an incredible 12 year journey now of becoming an educator, learning what it means to teach in a way that not just gives people information, because I felt like there was plenty of good information out there before I got started, but what I saw was a lack of an ability to make people believe that they could do it themselves, right?

Graham Cochrane:
So I believe good education is, "Here's the information in a simple, clear way," but then you give them a dose of empowerment that like, "Hey, you can actually do this." And it's kind of interesting relating to productivity, I mean, I think overwhelm is a problem. I see that in the recording studio. It's such a overwhelming task to think about sound and microphones, and then you get to mixing, and it's just like, "Oh my gosh." And so people get shut down, and I so I felt like it's been my life mission in the music space to help reduce the overwhelm, make it simpler, and I would rather people just get one quick win in some element of it, because then they get that confidence, and you need confidence to then come back again.

Graham Cochrane:
So I've built a career teaching people about music recording, and then in the last three years I've added in a second business teaching people about how to build online businesses and make them run pretty much on autopilot so you have more time in your life. So productivity is interesting, I love this conversation, because I like to achieve a lot, but I don't actually spend a lot of time doing it, because like you said, I really value other things as well, so it's always a fun topic.

Michael Walker:
Heck yeah, man. So on the lines of productivity, one of the concepts or things that I feel like comes up a lot that is super, super valuable to understand, and I would love to hear your take on it, is the 80/20 rule, and how, 20% of the cause, 80% of the results. Could you just share a little bit of detail, for anyone maybe who has kind of heard about it before, or hasn't heard of it yet, is interested in becoming more productive, what is the 80/20 rule, and how does that work?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, so a lot of people have implemented this and thought about this over the years, sometimes it's called Pareto's principle. There was an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, or Wilfried Pareto, who noticed this lopsided ratio throughout a lot of elements of life. So he had a little garden, and he noticed that like 20% of his pods made 80% of his peas, not all the plants were as fruitful. He saw the wealth in Italy, that 20% of the population in Italy owned 80% of the wealth. If you're in a business, you know that 20% of your products probably generate 80% of your revenue. If you're a songwriter, you probably know that 20% of your songs get 80% of the streams. And it's not always 20-80, but it's really that lopsided nature that is a very important concept to understand that not all things are equal.

Graham Cochrane:
So as far as productivity goes, in anything you're doing, look at all the tasks you do in your music, or if you're a recording engineer, in your studio, or your business, all the things you do in a day or a week, and it looks overwhelming, and they all look important, but they're not all equally weighted in terms of their usefulness or productivity. So there's actually a small percentage of what you do that actually will lead to the majority of your results. And that's like the magic trick, you look at people that are doing so much, that's what it looks like. They look like they're doing all this, they're everywhere. How do they do that? Because we all know we have the same amount of time in a day, and I think the magic is realizing that you can't do it all, and so if you have the wisdom and the patience to zoom out for a moment and look at what you are doing and identify the 20% that really matters, or maybe it's 10%, or 15, whatever it is, do you have the guts to cut, or outsource, or get rid of the remainder of it, knowing that you could do a fifth of the work and get most of the results?

Graham Cochrane:
Then you have so much more free time to then either double down on that 20%, maybe, or do something else. Like I started a second business, not because I just want to work all the time, but because I had taken the Recording Revolution and dwindled it down to like five or six hours a week of my time, and yet the business kept growing. And so that allowed me to, "Ooh, I could start another business." I love talking about business, I was doing one on one coaching with people, so why not make another YouTube channel and start it? But that's the magic trick, is you can't do it all. Don't do it all. Just find the 20%, and if you could find the 20%, your life can look totally different.

Michael Walker:
So good, man. I love this, I love this concept. I feel like I've heard this talked about, I've talked about it several times, but every time I hear it, it just kind of reminds ... It's not like a one and done type of thing, it keeps going deeper and deeper. What it reminds me of, too, is the principle of having a lever. Like what was it, Galileo or someone said, "I can move the moon if you give me a long enough lever," or something like that, how a little bit of force applied in the right way can really create huge effect.

Michael Walker:
So I guess one question that comes to mind is, there's a couple of things. And this is almost asking this for myself as well, because I feel like I run into this sometimes, where I recognize how there's some of these key activities that are so important, and those are the things that are really the main needle-movers in my life. But then, I still end up filling the space with other stuff, like it tends to just kind of creep in. And sometimes, I don't necessarily always put away all those other things.

Michael Walker:
But when I get really intentional, and I think about it, I'm like, "Oh yeah, should I really be doing this thing?" What do you recommend in terms of, do you have any sort of processes, or a way to kind of zoom out, and how do you look at that in your own life? Let's say that you do sort of get this awareness, that you're like, "Oh wow, I'm doing this thing, and I don't think I really need to be doing ... It's not really that big of an impact," what's your process for being able to streamline it?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, that's a great point. You said it earlier, this isn't a one and done exercise, right? This isn't natural. What's natural is to ... So there's this related law, and I got nerded out over this when I first read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, because he talked about both 80/20 a lot. His discourse on 80/20 in that book is worth the price of admission alone. But the other related law is Parkinson's law, which is that work, or really anything, expands to fill the time you give it, it just always expands.

Graham Cochrane:
So if you had to write a paper in college and they gave you two weeks, you'll take the whole two weeks to do it, because you'll just fill the time, or ... But if you had to write it in 24 hours, you would still get it done in 24 hours. It's the whole work expanding, and I think that's more our natural state, is we fill our days with crap. And part of it is like, in America at least, you've got this 40 hour work week, which it was invented, really, I think the Ford Motor Company kind of kicked that off, because there were more hours, people working more hours at the turn of the 20th century, and the Ford Motor Company started to say, "We got to cap people's work hours at 40, because they're going to die in these factories, this is not good." And then some legislation came out like, "Yeah, 40 hour work week."

Graham Cochrane:
But that was legislated, so then now we're just used to 40 hours, and then we have, obviously people have gone above and beyond that to fill it back up again, because our nature is to want to fill up ... The 40 is arbitrary. And again, that was a lot of manual labor. A lot of us are in sort of intellectual labor, if you're a songwriter, a musician, a lot of it's just the creation of the song or creation of the brand, if you're in the online business space, we're creating digital products. That doesn't take as much time, but we're so conditioned of 40 hour work weeks that you almost feel guilty if you don't fill the whole work week. It almost seems like there's this gaping hole that needs to be filled with crap.

Graham Cochrane:
And on top of that, we have more stuff to do. You've got, social media didn't exist 20 years ago, email didn't exist 30, 40 years ago. You've got so many platforms now that you could do activity on that it's super easy to fill 40 hours. It'd be easy to fill 80 hours. And I think that's our natural state.

Graham Cochrane:
So that is the reality, and it's so hard. So I slip into this. What I recommend is that every six months minimum, you sit down and do an 80/20 analysis of your life. You could just do it on one part of your life, you could do it on your whole life, whatever you want to do. And that's the, reidentifying, or maybe for the first time identifying, what tasks of all the ones I do actually move the needle? So if it's what tasks actually get me more streams, or get me more gigs, or sell more merch. There's a lot of things I could be doing, but does liking every comment on Instagram, does that really make my business grow or my brand grow? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

Graham Cochrane:
So doing the analysis is the initial hard work. If you do that, you're going to have to come back in six months and do it again, because you're going to drift and start to fill the calendar. So I literally, I have them all in my phone, I have the Notes app, and I have a running 80/20 analysis thing. It was in a Google Doc, but then I just wanted it faster. And I just relook at it and be like, "Wait, what are the things that I said when I had clear head that was moving the needle forward, and then am I doing those things?"

Graham Cochrane:
So I always reference it, and I love Tim Ferris's suggestion to have a sticky note on your computer monitor or your desk somewhere, and have two lists, a to-do list and a not-to-do list. So for example, my not-to-do list includes social media of any kind. Engaging the comments, it includes checking email, it includes all these things. Because I have actually prescribed times to check email. So the not-to-do list is don't open up email when you're not during your set time to do email.

Graham Cochrane:
For me, I use a platform called Kajabi to run my online business, and I have found myself, it's like I'm in a daze, all of a sudden I wake up from this stupor, and I'm clicking around through my Kajabi backend just looking at sales analytics to make myself feel good, or not. And so I'm like, "Why am I doing this? Looking at my analytics doesn't do anything," unless it's like my once a year, every six month, "Let's do a deep dive and make sure," I'm just filling the time. So having a reminder close to me is like, "Hey, you said these are your time-wasters for you, so don't be doing those." And then here are the things that really do move the needle forward, are you doing those?

Graham Cochrane:
Because at the end of the day, if I'm a musician, it's a lot easier to just noodle around on TikTok or Instagram and feel like I did something today than it is to write a new song, reach out to another artist that I want to collaborate with, or get in front of, or maybe tour with, if they let us tour again, or whatever it is. There's some scarier things to do that actually might move your career forward, and there's some easier things to do that you could do from the comfort of your own home that don't really move your career forward, or they could, if you've identified some true activity, on social, let's say. I'm picking on social. But if there's some true activity that does move your business forward, great. But make sure you've identified that, and that's on your to-do list, and it's not just one of your time-wasters.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. So one thing that's really resonating about what you're saying is how ... The Parkinson's law. Things tend to fill it in, so it really is just about being intentional about what is filling it in. And another thing that you brought up, that reminded of an exercise that I think is a brilliant exercise, and for myself, that's great. I learn just as much during these interviews as everyone else, I think, but this is a great reminder for me. I love the six month check in to basically look at things, just document.

Michael Walker:
And I've done this before, where I did a time tracker, I just looked, "Okay, look, what am I spending my time on throughout the week?" And that was a hugely clarifying activity to be like, "Oh, wow, I'm spending too much time going through emails," or, "Oh man, I'm spending too much time looking at my text messages," or, "I'm spending too much time on social media." And having the clarity to be able to look at that and say, "I don't, this isn't as high value of an activity as this," and intentionally I'm going to put a sticky note and say, "I'm not going to do this activity," is huge.

Michael Walker:
One thing that I've seen before is, I forget, maybe it was Eben Pagan or someone that had this exercise where it was like a pyramid. And the idea of it was to kind of figure out the 80/20, but the way that they broke it down was, in your business, what are the $10,000 plus an hour activities, the $5000 plus an hour activities, $100 plus activities, $10 plus activities. And you kind of break it down based on what it would cost hourly to pay someone to do those roles. So I think, maybe, what I'm probably going to do for myself, and could be a valuable thing for anyone that's watching this right now to do, would be to do something similar where you'd track, every six months, look at everything that you're doing, and then maybe fill in those activities and be like, "Okay, what am I doing here that is a $10 an hour task?" And then deciding, "If that's $10 an hour, maybe I should hire someone to do this $10 an hour thing," and then instead spend time doing the $5000 an hour thing for myself. I mean, there's definitely stuff like that that I'm looking forward to digging in.

Michael Walker:
So one thing that we talked a little bit about that I think would be interesting to dive deeper is this idea of that you're never quite there, it's not like it just ends, you do this practice once, and then it's like, "Okay, well, cool, I never need to prioritize again," everything has this continual refining. There's an element to the 80/20 rule where it doesn't just stop at the first 80/20, it also goes deeper and deeper.

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, so I learned this first from Perry Marshall, he's got a great book called the 80/20 Guide to Sales and Marketing. If you want to just nerd out on how this principle can be applied in practical ways, he's like a Google AdWords and Facebook ad genius kind of guy. But I loved his approach of, he's like, "Yeah, 80/20, so find the 20% of your tasks that move your career or your business forward, or the 20% of your customers, or 20% of your fans that are superfans." He's like, "But then do it again, take that 20%. What's the top 20% of that 20%?" Because it's lopsided even there. So that becomes, technically, the top 4% of the whole pie of your fans or customers or activities that really move the needle in an even more lopsided way, where that 4% represents 64% of your results. So it's an even smaller, it might be one task, or it might be literally four customers, or it might be like 10 superfans, or whatever. These are the people or the activities that have ridiculously exponential results.

Graham Cochrane:
So practically, if it's a business, it could be the customers that will buy your album digitally, they'll buy the vinyl, they'll buy all your merch, they'll buy an every color, every size tee shirt, they'll come to every show, they'll pay to come to a retreat with you, they have endless amounts of money to spend and they value so much that they will spend endless amounts of money, they'll find a way to get it. Those are the kind of people that you want to do whatever you can for.

Graham Cochrane:
It's the same thing with products, or a service. You could look at the Recording Revolution, I sell online courses and membership sites, and I've had quite a few over the years. And you can say, "Look at this great product line, and people have bought all these different courses, and they're all great, they're all equal," but they're not. There's one or two courses that probably represent 80% of my revenue, and I could probably tell you, they're the mixing courses, so it was Rethink Mixing until I replaced that with Mixing University a couple years ago. Those, probably, are the majority of the revenue right there. All the other ones have sold, and they're just as good, I mean, I think they're just as good, and the results people get are amazing. But, it's always lopsided. People want a certain thing, and I could just promote probably those and make the majority of my revenue and almost ignore all the effort that goes into promoting the other ones, and not lose a whole lot.

Graham Cochrane:
So if you can go down from the 20%, down to the 4% of your total customers, or fans, or songs, I mean, you might find that you've written 50 songs, or released 50 songs, and the top 4% would be like two, your top two songs that represent most of your streams, even if it's 60 or 70% of your streams, maybe you should just double down on getting those songs in front of more people, or doing more things with those songs. You might have more traction with the small sliver of your material that most people care about. And if you can get over ourself, and knowing that, "But all 50 songs are great." Just like every band, every artist is like, "All my albums are great."

Graham Cochrane:
I was watching a documentary on the band Rush, I love Rush. And I was just going through the life of all their songs, and they've, I mean, they've released like 25 albums or something. And everyone has their own favorite Rush period of time, because they've changed their sound over the years, they're very eclectic. But it's Tom Sawyer, it's 2112, it's like two or three or four songs, it's like Free Will, Spirit of Radio. They've got like four or five of their few hundred songs that anybody really cares about at the end of the day. The nerds like us like all their stuff, some of the stuff in the late '80s is a little too cheesy. And they know it.

Graham Cochrane:
So they're going to play the big songs, if they're smart, because they just want to give the fans what they want. Or they could be jerks about it, and be like, "No, we're going to play everything from Caress of Steel that nobody cares about," but they're not going to do that. Because they know, "This is our top 4% of their songs, we're going to still make the ones that satisfy us, but at the end of the day, it's these four songs."

Graham Cochrane:
So I think this conversation is freeing, because it's, the alternative is exhausting. The alternative is do all the things. Oh, there's another social media platform? Jump on that too and do that all the time. You have to keep pumping out songs, they all have to be great. As a YouTuber, that could be overwhelming. Every video has to go viral, every video has to be great. It doesn't. I've made a great living having five videos be good. I don't know how many hundreds of videos I've made, maybe five are really ... I mean, I think they're all good, but only five have really moved the needle forward. And that's a freeing concept when you don't have to be prolific, you don't have to be amazing all the time, you just need a couple of songs or a couple of products or a couple slivers of your superfans to really move the needle forward, and then when you're in your business too, just a few of the activities are going to make the difference. And that, to me, is just weight lifted.

Michael Walker:
I don't know, there's so much wisdom in this conversation right now, and one thing too with like, if you find out that your two to four of your songs out of your 50 songs are the ones that are getting all of the traction, are getting the most, that really gives you this opportunity to reflect and be like, "What was it about those songs that really cut through?" And likely, there's going to be some elements or some components of it that people really resonated with. There's a reason that those were the ones that had legs.

Michael Walker:
I mean, for example, one thing with Paradise Fears was, we released, gosh. I think probably released like eight or 10 albums, and our most popular songs were a song called Battle Scars, there's a song called Sanctuary. And upon reflecting, what we realized is that we did something in those songs where, it was kind of, it was 21 Pilots-ish, but it was before 21 Pilots really became a band, was this idea of having like a spoken word speech part, and it was something that we did in both of those songs.

Michael Walker:
And lo and behold, that became a factor. We were like, "Huh, that's something that really, it seems like people really resonate with that," it's almost like poetry, like a spoken word thing, and it adds this kind of uniqueness to it.

Michael Walker:
And so if we'd never reflected on that, then we might not really use that as a tool, as a part of our signature sound. So I think that as musicians, as artists, especially if you've already released over 10 songs and you're able to see the stats, what are the ones that are really resonating, that gives you this clue to kind of go deeper. And you can continue refining over time, you keep releasing more music, seeing what sticks, it seems like one of the smartest ways that you can get more leverage.

Michael Walker:
So a couple of followup questions in terms of the 80/20 rule, and how it can apply to everyone just watching this right now. So one, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on just day to day planning and organization, and how you prioritize your project planning and just what you do on a day to day basis, because you're someone who has really epitomized, I think, this concept of being able to ... Yeah, five hours a week on Recording Revolution is incredible for the kind of impact that you have with it.

Michael Walker:
So one thing I want to dig into for sure is just sort of lifestyle and planning projects, and how do you apply the 80/20 rule there? And then I'd also be interested in following up afterwards with talking about what is the 80/20 for musicians, what are really the key leverage points that we think that they should focus on?

Graham Cochrane:
Before you set out on a path of what your goal is, like, "Oh, I want to accomplish this or do this or see this happen in my life," don't look at those things compartmentalized, zoom out first and say, "What kind of life do I want to live? What kind of life do I want to build?" And dream a little bit, be creative. What does that mean? If you're single, "Do I want to be married one day? Do I want to have kids? Do I like where I live?"

Graham Cochrane:
The pandemic has been interesting. We live in Florida, and everyone's moving to Florida. So they're like, "I don't like where I live right now, I want to get out to Florida or somewhere else," and so, do you like where you live? Do you like the fact that you don't sleep but five hours a night, maybe? Probably not. Do you like that you're unhealthy? Maybe not. What do you not like and what do you want to change? If you could press the Staples Easy button, the magic button, and everything changes, what would your life look like?

Graham Cochrane:
And it doesn't have to be this grand, ridiculous life, but there's probably some things you would want to see different in a good or a healthier way. And once you have that picture of it, then I think you can then have some context within which to look at your specific goals. And I love goals. I'm a goal-setter, I love dreaming, I love achieving things, it feels good. And I think a lot of people listening and hanging out today are the same, they want to ... Especially if you're a musician or a creative, there's something inherently beautiful about the project element of it, like writing an album and seeing it through to completion, or going on a tour, and it has an end date, but it's like a moment in time that you're ready to push through and finish and accomplish, it feels so good to tie a bow on it, done.

Graham Cochrane:
Even releasing one song feels good, because it went from concept, to writing it, to recording, mixing and mastering album art, it's on Spotify, like wow, there it is. That's just, I think it's the way God designed us, is to create something and see it to completion.

Graham Cochrane:
So that's a beautiful thing, but you can't just say, "Oh, I want to have a million streams," or, "I want to be this or that," without a context of your life. Otherwise, you might reach those goals and hate your life in the process, which is what most high achievers unfortunately do. They leave in their wake of success, broken marriages, broken families, broken bodies, broken mental health, broken communities, all kinds of things broken. And really, they're the ones that suffer too, inside. They're like, "Why do I feel hollow inside? I achieved this and this, but I don't feel whole."

Graham Cochrane:
And so it's because achievement doesn't satisfy that. You have to really zoom out and have a whole life. So the good thing about that is, if you look at your whole life, then you have somewhat of a framework, or literally a border around which you have to fit your goals in. So for me, when I started the Recording Revolution, I was leading worship at my church, and it was a setup/tear down church, and we had a rehearsal space that we had to go get the trailer, go to that storage unit on Saturday mornings, get all the equipment, take it to the rehearsal space, set it up, rehears for a few hours, tear it down, take it back to the storage unit. I'd be home like 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, and have lost half my Saturday, knowing that Sunday morning we have to go do the same thing but on the college campus where we met as a church, and set it all up again and do church, and come back and have a half day.

Graham Cochrane:
So I didn't really have two full days off, I had two half days on the weekends. And so I didn't have a lot of time with my family, and I had some good counsel from an older gentleman, say, "You're going to have to take another day off in the week, maybe take Friday off, so you can have at least one full day to spend with your family." I have young kids at the time, and that was when I was building the Recording Revolution. I was like, "Bro, I can't build a business in five days a week, let alone four." And that was a challenge for me. But that was the first taste of, well, you want to build this business, that's a good, healthy thing. You want to provide for your family, that's great. You want to get your music out, you want to keep serving your clients, that's great.

Graham Cochrane:
But you also need a healthy life. You want your wife to be happy, you want to spend time with your kids and not miss them during those early years. This is your season of life, so let's fit your work into what's left, as opposed to achieve my goals and fit life into what's left, that's the whole Parkinson's law thing.

Graham Cochrane:
So for me, all that being said, if you take the 80/20 analysis, figure out what's most important for me as a content brand, I know that putting out a new video every week is probably the most important thing I do. It serves my existing fans, it helps me to be discovered on YouTube and other platforms by new fans. It feeds the algorithm what it wants, and it pushes the business forward, because I know that my free content sends people into a funnel that's set up to serve them products, to over-deliver, to welcome them into the community, and that feeds my business and that feeds my family. So if I can only do one thing a week, it would be make a video. And so I make sure that I have that listed first thing, Monday morning. If that's the most important thing, in my mind, I should do it the first thing of the week, so that it's out of the way. First things first, like my mom always wanted me to eat vegetables first, so I got it out of the way.

Graham Cochrane:
I want to do the most important thing first, but whatever the things that only I can do that I must do, I do them at the beginning of the week so that if things fall apart, the rest of the week can be squirrelly, and I can say, "Well, I didn't have time to do this or this, but I got the most important things done." So I look at that front of the week, I look at that first part of the day. You can see the pattern, I wake up and do the most important thing in the morning. I've learned that I'm not really that interested in working after lunch, generally speaking, so if I have the choice, I'd rather get stuff done in the morning while I'm fresh, and then check out in the afternoon.

Graham Cochrane:
If I don't have the context of the life I want to live, which is I want to be home every evening with my family, off every weekend, I want to take my kids to school, pick them up from school. I want to be able to drop anything and take a vacation if I need to or want to. I want to be able to leave my business for a month at a time if I want to. If I want those things to be true, then what do I have to do differently about my business to still serve people well, still reach the mission of my brand and brands, but still allow me to live that life?

Graham Cochrane:
So I start with the end in mind, the life I want to live, and there's no prescription of what that looks like. And it's changed, from season of life. Like when my kids were at home before school, it looked one way, when they went off to school during the day, it looked a different way. One day when they graduate from high school, and I guess I'll be older, we'll be empty nesters, it'll look different. This summer, for example, I'm just working one day a week on Wednesdays, because I want to hang out with my kids during the summer when they're home. You get to make those decisions when you have your life in mind first, otherwise what's probably going to happen, especially if you like what you do, is you're going to fill up every hour of every day doing what you love, and you're going to think, "Aren't I doing a good thing? I'm doing what I love," and you're half right, but you're not really living a full life, you're only living a work life.

Graham Cochrane:
And as much as they're integrated in a lot of ways, and there's overlap, you aren't your work, you aren't your career. If you do that, that works only when your career is going great. If that career is taken away from you, illness, the market shifts, nobody cares about your music anymore, or you just get tired of it, then your whole identity's taken away too, then who are you? And that's a sad place. So you really want to build both, you don't want to say, "Work is bad, I shouldn't have a career, any ambition." No, you should have ambition, that's healthy. But it's not ultimate. So you want to make sure you're building a career and a life, and then I think you'll be served well no matter what comes your way.

Michael Walker:
Hey, what's up guys. So quick intermission from the podcast, so I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I want to share something that's not normally available to the public, they normally reserve for our $5000 clients that we work with personally. This is a presentation called Six Steps to Explode your Fanbase and Make a Profit with Your Music Online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel that's going to allow you to grow your fanbase online, and the system's designed to get you to your first $5000 a month with your music.

Michael Walker:
We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, and really see what's working best right now for musicians. And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you, and so if that's something you're interested in, in the description there should be a little link that you can click on to go get that. The other thing I wanted to mention is, if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating a new podcast is if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy, and that other people actually want to hear. And so that'll help us reach a lot more people. So if you're getting value from this, and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right, let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker:
That's so good, man. I mean, this is definitely resonating for me personally, and hopefully for everyone that's watching this right now. Super, super valuable. So a couple of things that came up as you were describing that were, I've heard this analogy before, and I think it applies so well to what you're talking about with making sure that you plan the most important things first, so those things happen, and then everything else can kind of fill the cracks. I've heard this described before like filling a jar, it's like you have these big rocks, you have these rocks and you have sand to fill the jar. And the big rocks are the most important things. Those are the needle movers. Those are things like recording your video per week, or as a musician, maybe your rock is writing, songwriting every single day for at least an hour, that's your rock.

Michael Walker:
Then we have a bunch of sand, these little things that just comes up throughout the week, this is the sand. And so if we start with the smaller things and the sand, and fill up the jar, and then you try to drop the rock in it, then the rock, it can't fit in the jar. But if you fill in the rock first, and then you fill it around with the sand, then the sand can kind of take the shape around the rocks. And so that's one analogy that I really like to think about that kind of illustrates what you're talking about of figuring out what are those core things for you, and making sure that those are the rocks that happen.

Michael Walker:
I mean, it's part of the reason that I admire you so much, is because of what you just said about not necessarily deriving your entire identity from what you do, or your job, which ultimately is going to, at some point, change, most likely, 10 years from now. I mean, 10 years ago, could you imagine you'd be where you are now? Maybe. Probably not. Things change really quickly, and so finding a deeper source of fulfillment, or deeper identity than just what you do, I think is so important.

Michael Walker:
One thing that I want to ask you about is, I think for a lot of us, especially if we haven't really done much of this work before where it comes to zooming out and prioritizing, and kind of looking at things on a higher level, we're just kind of going, we're just, day to day, we're doing the stuff, and there's a lot of busywork, and everything is happening. So we might not necessarily have the space to zoom out and to apply some of these things. So I'm wondering what your process looks like, or what you'd recommend for everyone here in terms of, let's say that someone's like, "Yeah, this is blowing my mind right now, and I really want to do this work to dive deeper and figure out, what should I prioritize, and zoom out, what do I want my life to look like on a bigger scale?" How would you recommend that they kind of create the space for them to really go deep? Would you recommend they make a trip and go somewhere else and unplug, or what does that look like for you?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, I mean, you said it, you have to create the space. There's never time to do these kinds of things, because you've probably filled every nook and cranny with what you deem as urgent. And I could tell you to take some time away, and I'm going to tell you to take some time away to do this. But unless you believe that it's worth your time, you're not going to do it. So you almost have to really stop and ask, "Is there something here, what we're talking about today, that really makes sense? If I could identify the 20%, the truly important things that would move my work and career forward, that I'm already doing, that make the biggest difference, and I could eliminate or outsource or automate the rest of it, would that be game-changing?"

Graham Cochrane:
I can tell you from personal experience, yes, it will be game-changing for you. You will have more free time, which will allow your shoulders to come down a bit, have more clarity. When you have more clarity, you make better decisions, you won't be as desperate, which leads to doing dumb things. You'll be able to take the good opportunities that come your way, because you'll have margin in your life to take those opportunities as opposed to going, "I would love to take that opportunity, but I'm slammed doing all this stuff, I got to get on TikTok right now." So there's so much good on the other side of this for you.

Graham Cochrane:
So if you believe that, then I would say put a date on your calendar, get at least a night way at a hotel, or if you don't have a hotel, somewhere where you can go where you're alone. I like to go to the beach, that's like my happy place. Just seeing the ocean allows me to clear my head, but it could be the mountains, it could just be a nice field, it could just be a beautiful part of the town. Just go somewhere where it's not your normal space, you need a different visual space. You 100%, I think, you can do this at home, but you will be better served if you see something different that will put your brain in ... Because your brain's going to be asleep. Your brain is so efficient. Talk about efficiency and productivity, your brain, the way God designed it is amazing, it's an efficiency machine. When can I switch off and just go in autopilot mode, because it doesn't have to consume too much energy? And it does that.

Graham Cochrane:
That's why if you drive the same way to work every day, you realize you're there and you're like, "How did I get here? I don't even remember driving," because your brain does it for you. You don't have to concentrate. So if you go somewhere else and see something different, your brain's like, "Ooh, new stimuli," it wakes up. And you want your brain to be awake, so that it'll be fully present to help you think about these things.

Graham Cochrane:
So I, once a year, get away, usually in December, sometimes January, if December got crazy. I'll get away. I do two nights, so I can get one full day a hotel, but I used to just do a night away, and I would go like half day, try to get into the hotel early, and try to do a late checkout so I can almost get 24 hours. And I just, I walk on the beach or I sit on a balcony, I think, I look at what's working in my career or my business this last year, what didn't work, those are two simple questions you can ask any time you want. What's worked in the last six months, what hasn't worked? Write them down, and then, "Oh, maybe I should do more of what's worked and less of what didn't work." But it helps to see it.

Graham Cochrane:
Also, check in with your heart, like, "Have my desires changed?" That's something you have complete freedom to change what you want to do. Maybe what you wanted to do five years ago is not what you want to do anymore. I'm a good example of that, like the Recording Revolution was the greatest thing that ever happened to me career-wise, and never asked for it, never expected it, didn't even know it was a thing that you could have an online business.

Graham Cochrane:
But I fell in love with this thing, and then after five or six years of going at it hard, I was like, "Man, this is, I don't know if I love it as much as I did." But I kept going, because I still did love it. But I was in denial, I was like, "No, you do love it." I wouldn't let myself have another love, which has been business. I love coaching people in their businesses, this kind of thing, their lifestyle fitting their business, or the business fitting their lifestyle, I should say.

Graham Cochrane:
But I was in denial, because I was like, "No, but this is what I wanted, and I love music," and I still do love music. But there was another love, another desire creeping in, and I had to give myself permission to say, "No, I love this too, and I actually want to go build a resource for people that were like me, that didn't know that there's another type of career, even if it's part-time." So give yourself permission to check your desires again, what's working, what hasn't worked, what goals have changed or not changed, if your season of life has changed.

Graham Cochrane:
But I would say do that in a separate location, with a fixed amount of time. You will come away with so much more clarity that comes from a place of honesty, and fully being present and awake as opposed to at your desk, or in your studio, or at your home, wherever, you have chores or rhythms or work, or the normal things you got to do, you almost have to break away from that to think clearly.

Graham Cochrane:
I think that's why, I don't know if you've experienced this, Michael, where you think more clearly when you're on vacation, or you're on a trip, because you're somewhere new, and you're like, "I'm going to change the world, I'm going to do this, I'm going to start exercising." And those aren't false ideas, that's like your true self saying, "Wait a second, I don't like something about my life, and I want to change it." Or, that's when your creativity kicks in, "Oh, I have this great idea." But then you come home, and it never happens, because you get back into your routine. But for a moment, you were fully awake and had a really good idea, and so you want to get to that place again, write it down so that when you forget, because I forget, I have a journal somewhere, I have all this crap on my desk, you have to read it and go, "Oh, that's right, when I was in my right mind, I said this is what I wanted, I said this is what I was going to do," and that's your own self holding yourself accountable. We all struggle with it, but I do think that could be a life-changing exercise. I would recommend doing it at least once a year.

Michael Walker:
That's so good. Yeah, I love that idea of being able to put yourself somewhere completely new so that the automatic things that we just do without even thinking about it, our brain just kind of kick in, and it's saved us a lot of energy throughout our day to day life, but it's definitely not very useful for zooming out and making changes. So it sounds like at least once a year, you'd recommend scheduling some time to really give yourself the space to be able to zoom out and look at some of the deeper picture.

Michael Walker:
And absolutely from experience in my own life and business as well, the idea for Modern Musician came when I was at an event. I was at a Jeff Walker event, and a lot of the most important aha moments, or moments of clarity, was when I was attending events like these, where it sort of broke my routine, it broke my rhythm and allowed me to sort of zoom out. And like a fish in water, if you ask a fish, "How's the water?" They're like, "What water? It just is this way." Being able to separate from the day to day, the minutiae, like Graham was saying, is super, super valuable for being able to have greater perspective, greater space to really analyze and see like ... Especially the things that you don't really enjoy that much, when you kind of zoom out and you're not doing those, and then you look at it, you're like, "I don't really like doing that thing that much." Or, "Oh, this is like my favorite thing to do."

Michael Walker:
Things get so much clearer when you can zoom out, and when you see the forest as a whole rather than just kind of being in the trees, chopping down things and trying to maneuver your way, which there's a time and a place for it, but also it's definitely not the place to be planning and be strategic.

Michael Walker:
One last question that I wanted to ask you, just because I think it's going to be super valuable for people as well, in terms of applying what we're talking about, which is, so on a daily basis, or maybe weekly, I'm curious how you apply the 80/20 rule to plan out each day. What does your regular planning process look like? Do you do it weekly, have a weekly review where you plan out the week, or once a day do you do a check-in, or what does that look like?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah, I think in terms of what does my work week look like? I think of weeks. So if I can get into a rhythm where I feel like my weeks are routinized, and they're strategic, and I enjoy them, then I'm good. So I'll, once a year, usually in January, it's funny, it's usually when I'm on the plane to the Show, where I'm on the plane and I'm reflecting, I'm doing the 80/20 analysis, and I'm like, "What do I want my work weeks to look like this yeaR? What worked about them last year, what didn't?" So that might be the time I get into the office versus the time when I leave, it might be the tasks that I'm doing, it might be that I ended up doing way too many interviews when I really ... Or maybe not enough, I like interviews, I like hanging out with people like you and talking about these things, so maybe I want to do more of those and less, like content, maybe I was trying to double up on content, but I really didn't need to.

Graham Cochrane:
So to me, if I can get my work week where I like the flow from Monday to Friday, whatever that looks like, then I'm wining. I don't think, really, monthly, and I don't think yearly too much, other than pre-scheduled events or things that I'm a part of or need to do. But to me, if I can get a week feeling good. And then obviously the day as well, I'll include that as well, my days will alternate or be different. And that's changed, like I said earlier, this summer, my week's going to be just one day, it's Wednesdays. And it'll be relatively full, but it's like six or seven hours without really much a break, just bang it out, six, seven hours, and then I'm done for the week. And so that, to me, will be a good work week for the summer, and then we'll reevaluate when the kids go back to school if I want to keep it that way, even though I don't need to, or do I want to go back to a couple days a week?

Michael Walker:
That's super cool, man. So we'll follow up on this another time, because I'm just personally curious. And again, it's one of the reasons that I admire you so much, and part of the reason that ... So Graham has like a Mastermind for businesses, so I joined his Mastermind, it's been awesome. And part of the reason is because, like what you just said in terms of, you're planning everything on Wednesdays, and then the rest of your time you're going to have for spending with family and doing other things. So at some point, I'd love to follow up and just be like, "If I do this, what am I going to spend the other four days of my week on, and how can I make sure that's really high quality time?"

Michael Walker:
But for now, there's so much good stuff, I think that it would be a good time to go to the Q&A and start answering your guys's questions that came in. So, man, this is cool. Like in the previous years, I would just go to the chat at this point, look through, stumble through. But shout out to our whole team right now who's working on the backend, they're incredible. Melanie, Ari, Jared, Steven, Eli, the leadership team that are really putting all this together right now.

Michael Walker:
So, that being said, we got a good list of questions here. Confident Newbie, I love the names that they give people by default here. Confident Newbie. Good for you for being confident as a newbie, that's really what it takes, is you're starting out, you're confident that you need to take action in order to learn. It says, "Can you give me some examples about what you choose to do or not to do? As a singer-songwriter, sometimes I feel like I need to do it all. Songwriting, singing, PR, promo." So what are some examples, maybe, as a singer-songwriter, that would kind of fall within those 80/20, the principle of the things that are the highest leverage?

Graham Cochrane:
Yeah for sure. So the number one thing you got to do is write songs, right? So people, I think, know that, duh. So does your calendar reflect that? Like you mentioned, I think, Michael, earlier, do you write for an hour a day, or do you have a day where you write all day long? Like professional songwriters don't wait for inspiration to strike. They go into their studio, or their room, and they sit down and they write. And maybe nothing comes out, but that was a good day, because they were in, butt in a seat. And it's almost that intentionality of like, "Well, if I'm a songwriter, I should write songs," so write songs, okay?

Graham Cochrane:
And then work on your craft. If you're a singer-songwriter, so that means you're actually performing your own music, sing. Enhance your vocal range and your vocal endurance, and try different styles, and just continue to use the instrument and practice, so it's just like instrumentalists, a guitar player should practice every day, a singer should sing every day. So you're writing songs, you're singing every day.

Graham Cochrane:
This, the next step is like, okay, this is the modern music world we're living in, and you've got a lot of people speaking over the next few days on the practical elements of how do you do the PR? How do you get your audience to grow, how do you get your songs placed on TV? That's why you're at the perfect summit for this, because all your questions can and will be answered here if you just pay attention, and, again, look for the 20% that you maybe need to work on. But you do have to promote your own music, you do have to treat yourself as a brand. You are a business, no one's going to do it for you anymore, unless you're an A list celebrity, musician, where they can just write songs, and they have a label and they have a whole PR team doing it for them, but that's not the majority of us.

Graham Cochrane:
But the great news is it's easier, cheaper, and faster than ever to build a fanbase, get in front of your fanbase, and not have a middle man between you and your fanbase. So you'd probably have to identify what maybe you learn these next few days, or what you've seen work in the past. What of those PR tactics and promotional tactics have made the difference for you in the past, and then how do you bake them into your calendar? Is it reaching out to other bands, is it reaching out to local radio stations, is it reaching out to people to have playlists on Spotify? Bake it into your calendar, don't just hope it happens. Like I'm not that smart, but if I can figure out what's worked, and then I can schedule myself time to do it in my calendar, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I got to email that person," or, "I got to do that." Then things happen, magically, because you're at least chipping away at those things that make the difference.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, absolutely. You're definitely in the right place to have that question answered. And like Graham has mentioned before, and this is one of the reasons I was so happy that this is like the first, kick-off session, because everything that we talked about really applies at a high level to everything you're going to learn, and it's going to be different for different people. But really refining down, maybe at the end of the event, you just go through all of your notes, and you circle the top three to five takeaways, or the top three to five opportunities. And then you choose one, and you're like, "Okay, this is my number one thing that I'm going to do as my next step, as my action step, based on all of these different interviews, all the different lessons I've learned," and that'd be a good starting point.

Michael Walker:
But you're in the right place for that. And I agree, I think songwriting is one of those things that's like, that's so core. If you're making a list, what are the $10,000 an hour activities? Yeah, songwriting is one of those. It's something to prioritize early on, well, throughout your entire songwriter career. So Radio [Xum 00:51:24], Radio Xum, said, "How do you avoid the habit of buying new plugins and hardware to get the most out of what we already have?"

Graham Cochrane:
So I don't struggle with this, but I used to. That's the ethos of the Recording Revolution is I make fun of people who buy a bunch of plugins that they don't need, because they can't get a good mix with the plugins they actually have. And I do that out of love, because I, whether it was I used to download plugins illegally back in the day, and then my conscience caught up with me and I went and bought those Waves bundles that I had downloaded illegally. But then realized, my mixes still sound like crap, even with the top plugins that every producer at the time is saying they're using, so maybe the plugin isn't the solution, maybe I'm the bottleneck.

Graham Cochrane:
Like I started to realize, "Crap, I'm just not good at mixing yet." Once I figured that out, I actually found it really addictive to be like, "How good of a mix can I get with the free stuff?" I wanted to flex the mixing muscle, and not have an asterisk next to my mix of like, "Well, maybe it was that super dope plugin you used." And so that's my own weirdness that came to pass, and that, I think, has bled into the Recording Revolution. And some people hate it, and they let me know. They're like, "You're an idiot." And then some people love it, because they're like, "Yeah, this is the thing. He's pushing me to make sure that I'm not just wasting money on gear purchase after gear purchase," which is a distraction.

Graham Cochrane:
At best, it's fun, you have some cool new tools to work with. But really, at worst, and this is more likely, it's a distraction from putting in the reps to get better at mixing. So it would be like a songwriter who has to get a new guitar every month to be inspired to write a song. It's like, dude, it's a distraction from you just sitting down and writing 100 new songs, hoping that 20% of them are half-decent, because 80% of them will suck, according to the 80/20 rule. So that's, I'm just, I don't struggle with it anymore, to your question, because I've realized, "Man, I've gotten good mixes with the free stuff, and my students have gotten great mixes with the free stuff." And so now I see that there's no longer a connection between the plugins you use and the quality of your mix, so that you're free to use the free stuff or the paid stuff, whatever you want to use, as long as you know where the mix comes from, and that's from you.

Michael Walker:
That's such a important realization, I think, to understand, is that yeah, the most important thing, like the needle-mover isn't the gear, it's your experience, it's the wisdom. I mean, I've observed that as well. Like now we've got this fancy DSLR setup, shout out to Luke for helping me set it up, he flew out and did it I think a year ago. But before that we had this old webcam, that was just like, didn't look like a professional at all, and we were able to build a seven figure business with that.

Michael Walker:
And so I see this a lot, the people who are the most successful, they come back, they're like, "Yeah, ultimately the gear's fun, it's cool, but it's not the most important thing." And then, one common mistake, it seems like, when you're starting out, is thinking that the tool is the thing, that plugin, that's the thing that's leading to the success.

Michael Walker:
I don't necessarily think that you should never buy a plugin, or pay for stuff. Clearly it's great to have a Martin guitar, a really nice guitar. But like Graham is saying, the guitar isn't what writes the hit songs. And you can develop that skill, and a lot of times I think it becomes an excuse for a lot of people, it's like a way to defer responsibility. Because, "Well, I can't afford to be successful, so 

Graham Cochrane:
That's what it is, it's an excuse. And you owe it to yourself, you're worth so much more than that to lie to yourself, and to delay and defer your ability to grow in your craft, whatever it is. If you want it bad enough, you can just have the humility to say, "Okay, I'm not good at this yet," whether it's songwriting, or promoting my music, or singing, or mixing. The people that get better faster are the people that are humble enough to say, "Yeah, I suck right now. What do I got to do to get better?" And they really want to work on themselves.

Graham Cochrane:
But it is hard. But if you want it bad enough, you're going to have the ability to be humble enough to ignore the distractions of purchasing things, and then get good. And then, I feel like if you get good, you should reward yourself with something you really wanted. Like, there is something to having a nice guitar. I love Martin guitars, and one day, I wanted to just get the most expensive Martin guitar I could find. And so I literally went to Sweetwater and I bought the most expensive Martin guitar that they sold at the time. And I love it, and it's just beautiful to play, but dude, I don't need it, it was just a fun purchase. But it's almost like a reward for just the years of playing, and gigging, and songwriting. But you got to work on the craft. Like man, you owe it to yourself. Don't lie to yourself anymore. Whatever it is, whatever thing is distracting you.

Graham Cochrane:
Sometimes it's not gear purchases, sometimes it's coming to conferences like this. Sometimes it's, "I'm going to go to the summit, and I'm going to learn all this great stuff from all these people, and then I'm not going to go do any of it, but I'm going to spend four days learning and not apply," and that's a lot of people too. That's the scary thing, is I want you to come here, this is the best place you could be, but if this is an excuse for you to not actually work on your career, maybe you should be songwriting right now, I don't know. And it's blasphemy to say, Michael, not the great first session piece of advice.

Michael Walker:
All right, ending the interview now, we're done. See you.

Graham Cochrane:
"Cut his feed, man, cut the feed." But you know what I'm saying. Like don't let these things fill up your time and your calendar if they're covering up the thing you need to do. And that's just life advice, maybe the thing you need to do is sit down with your spouse and have a hard conversation, or read a parenting book, or go to the gym, but there's a million things that are going to distract you from doing that, because it's just change, it sucks, and change means you have to admit that you need to change, and ah, that kills your pride. So there's a lot of deep-seated stuff that goes into just buying plugins. It's never just about the plugins, there's always something down in the heart that's going on. So we got a little deeper than maybe we wanted to go, but it's a real thing, I love the question.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, I'm glad that we went there, I think it's super important. That's like a fundamental human thing, is just, is facing fear in the underlying things that are leading to that, I think is super important. And I agree, I think it's also really important, like we talked about, everything that you learn, don't let it be an excuse. Take notes, figure out what's actionable, focus on the tip of the iceberg, the 20% that's actually going to move the needle for you and implement, and that's how you're going to get the most out of your time here, for sure.

Michael Walker:
All right, so we got a good list of questions here. I think we probably have about five more minutes to go through here before we wrap up and get ready for our next speaker, so next question was, I think it's pronounced [Abija 00:58:01]. That's a really unique name. It says, "How can we balance cutting out the low return things in our lives with cultivating new things that may not have a high return yet?" That's an interesting one.

Graham Cochrane:
And there's a lot of ways to go there. I think you're going to have to identify the reality that there's some tasks that don't have an immediate return, so they're not very satisfying. If I upload a YouTube video, short of some people liking it and leaving me a nice comment that just feeds my ego, it doesn't feed my family. Likes don't feed my family. But short of that dopamine hit, uploading one YouTube video makes no difference in my business in the short term. If I misinterpreted that information, I could easily say, "Then I should no longer upload YouTube videos if that doesn't make a difference."

Graham Cochrane:
And that might be true for a time, but the eventually my business, because of the model that it is, would eventually suffer. The reality is that the most important thing I could be doing is uploading a free YouTube video. That is what has allowed me to build this steady stream of discoverability. If you've ever heard of the Recording Revolution, it's because of little seeds I've planted every day. It is a farming metaphor. If you plant a seed in the ground, and nothing happens tomorrow, does that mean that planting the seed was a bad idea, and what you need is corn? No, the reality is you have to believe that it takes time, sun, rain, time, for that to turn into a full plant that then you can eat or harvest. And that's what's tricky about certain activities in your career, is some of them look super important now, and give you a dopamine hit now, but they really don't mean anything long-term in your business, and open source they're lying to you.

Graham Cochrane:
And then some tasks don't have an immediate return, and so they're lying to you too that you're like, "Well, I shouldn't do this," but really they're the most important thing you could be doing long-term. And I want you to be in this for the long term. Don't make decisions based off of, "What's going to get me famous or make me rich or feed my ego," or whatever you need in the next month or two, what is going to grow your career, and pay your bills, and serve you well, and scratch those itches in the next 10 years? You want to be setting your career up for longevity, and that might mean changing some of the tasks you're doing. So it's a great question, because it's a hard one to answer, and you have to answer for yourself. But research, coming to this summit, figuring out from the experts what actually does work, and not getting defensive in your mind when they tell you to do something that they know works. If they're saying it works, it's because it works, so maybe there's some legitimacy to it. Take note of it, and maybe it's counterintuitive, but maybe you should try it, even if there's no immediate returns.

Graham Cochrane:
That's why you want to learn from the best, see what they're doing, and trust that maybe this is a long play, "Because I did it, but it didn't get me results." Maybe it's a long play, and that's the kind of life I want to be, is playing for the long run. And it is challenging, and that's why you're always fighting the immediate, "Post to this, do this fun thing," but you have to decide what's really long-term going to serve you best.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, especially because it does seem like there tends to be a lot of, like short-term, the things that happen in the short term that make us feel great, like eating junk food and things that don't necessarily, they're not necessarily the most valuable long-term. So having the ability to zoom out, kind of look at a higher, like a longer-term basis, and be able to trust the people who've planted the seeds, and they're harvesting, and there's beautiful plants. And being able, like they're saying, like, "Hey, look, plant the seeds, you're going to have to harvest it, it's going to go for a while, but this is going to turn into a beautiful plant." It does take a lot of digging deep, I think, to be able to have the faith to do that, and certainly I think the role of having mentorship and guidance from people who are ahead of you in your life, or from events like this, is something that can really help you make some of those leaps of faith that are really important in order to have that long-term vision.

Michael Walker:
All right, so let's do one more question here, and then we'll wrap up for the day. So, let's see here. Okay, this is a pretty good one. How often do you pivot or course-correct in terms of what are your most important actions in your life?

Graham Cochrane:
Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, there's some that haven't ever changed, there's some that are pretty foundational. I hate change, by the way. So I hate pivoting, by the way. Mentioning, even starting the second business, I started this personal brand, it's under grahamcochrane.com, and for some reason, I had such a limiting belief where it was so hard for me to make that pivot, I was at a Mastermind group up in Maine, and I was at a place in my life when I knew I needed to start this other business, or I was going to die inside. I didn't want to stop Recording Revolution, but I needed to at least start this other business, but I couldn't, because of limiting beliefs, because I had all these fears of like, "What will people say? 'The Recording Revolution guy wants to start another business on business? Who does he think he is?' Or, 'Does he not care about recording anymore?'"

Graham Cochrane:
I had all these weird internal scripts that were just driving me crazy, so it was hard for me to pivot, and I hate change. Like if I have a good thing going, I'll just keep it going. So speaking as someone who hates change, at the same time, I have this weird, jacked-up view that I love to blow things up at the same time. Like, "Well, let's just stop doing all of that, and let's do something totally different." And they're totally in opposition of each other, and so I kind of live internally like I'm driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the break. And so inside I feel like a crazy person a lot of times, but I think there's wisdom to both, and so I try to pay attention to both when it makes sense.

Graham Cochrane:
At the end of the day, if you know, going back to your big vision for what you want your life to look like, if you know what that looks like, are you getting there with what you're doing? Is it working? And if it's not working, is it because it's truly not working, or do you have some mentors in your life telling you, "Hey, you're on the right track. You're not seeing the fruit of it yet."

Graham Cochrane:
Like when I teach people to start online businesses, I tell them, "Give it two to three years before you really make a decision if this is working or not." Some people blow up in the first year. Michael, I think you're one of those brands that really blew up quickly. But I don't think you're the norm, and there's a lot of people who are really talented, who are consistently posting content, doing their best. But I say give it two to three years. That's me mentoring them to say, "You don't see the fruit of it yet, but just hang in there, and let's reevaluate at the three year mark."

Graham Cochrane:
But short of that, if it's not working and people are like, "No, I don't see this working anytime soon for you," why would you keep doing it? Be willing and humble enough to blow it up and say, "That product didn't work." When I started Recording Revolution, I launched four courses before I had a course that actually really made a difference. People bought a couple copies of my first four, and I worked hard on those, but I kept trying new courses, and it was my fifth and sixth courses that just changed the game for my business, and that's when I started to see exponential growth. But it took me being willing to, "Okay, I'll make a new one. All right, that didn't work."

Graham Cochrane:
I launched a course for the Graham Cochrane brand that I thought people were asking me for, I thought it was going to do great, and it's a really great course, and I thought I would sell 100, 200 copies on my launch week. I sold 14. I was like, "What did I do" ... I didn't get it. But I down the road reincorporated it into a membership that I have, in a different way, and now tons of people are enjoying it, and accessing it, and paying for it in a different way, and it made more sense there. But I had to have the humility to say, "Gosh, this is supposed to work, but it didn't work the way I wanted to, but maybe there's another way I can use that." And that doesn't feel good. I hate pivoting, I hate change, that's my personality. Might not be yours.

Graham Cochrane:
But again, it's all about goals. I'm willing to pivot if I'm not reaching my goals. If I'm not happy with the way my life's going, I have some control over that. Not all control, but some. So I'm going to take advantage of the control I do have, and pivot, and try something new. And that's been the story of my career is like, I don't know what I'm doing. I know a lot more now than when I started, but when I started, I didn't know anything. So I was trying, pivot, and dude, that's everyone's story. It's never a straight line. This summit's going to help you get a little bit straighter, which is great, you'll avoid some of the pitfalls. But life is just zigging and zagging, and as long as you realize, "Dude, okay, nope, yep, nope, yep," you're accumulating wisdom, and not just knowledge, but wisdom, and there's a difference. Accumulating wisdom of how to make decisions in your career and life, dude, that's beautiful. You're going to get there.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's so good. And I think exactly what Graham's saying, in terms of taking stock of your specific vision, your specific goal as the first point, and then evaluating, like we've been talking about through this conversation, really giving yourself the time to zoom out and look at things and be like, "Okay, where are things at right now? Where are they? Have I made progress, am I going towards that path? Do I have a reason to think that I'm moving in the right direction?

Michael Walker:
It's like playing a game of golf where it's like every time you hit the ... Especially if you're not very good at golf or it's a new game to you, then constantly you have to, after you hit the ball, it's not a straight line, it's going to go ... You may flank it, it might go completely off, and then you have to kind of reevaluate. "Okay, well, where am I now, and where's the goal now?" And then just keep swinging, just keep ... "Okay, well am I closer now? Oh, I am." And eventually you can keep hitting it, and eventually you can get to the goal.

Michael Walker:
But keeping that, yeah, like Graham said, keeping that vision in mind as the outcome I think is one of the most important things, and that's the thing that might not necessarily need to pivot as often, maybe it's just the actions and trying out different things, and maybe something that you did, that you tried worked really well, so you're like, "Okay, I'm going to keep swinging like that, because that seems like that's moving me closer to it." Awesome. Well, hey, Graham, dude, thank you so much again for being a part of the event. I think this is the fourth ... I think it's the fourth, I think we started this in 2018. 2018, '19, '20, '21, yeah, it's been four years. So it's been an awesome use of time, and I feel like we've grown a lot.

Michael Walker:
Oh, oh, here's one thing I wanted to say, too. Just for everyone, I think this is really important. So with Modern Musician, it was really quick. The business grew quickly in the first year, but it was because the previous 10 years, we had been working our butt off with [inaudible 01:07:43], we had lived in our van, we slept [inaudible 01:07:46]. We put in the time then, and I think it's pretty much, very rarely will I ever say impossible, but I think in like 99.9% of cases, people who are successful or have seemingly overnight success stories really quickly, they had a foundation, or there's something that came before it.

Michael Walker:
It reminds me of one of our artists that they're working with in our coaching program, his name is Jason Tonioli, and he's awesome, he's like one of the smartest business owners that I know, and he's a piano instrumentalist. And when we started working together, he was already doing like $11,000 a month as a piano instrumentalist from his music business, selling hymn books, and just really smart guy. And then over three months, he had done $209,000 from his funnels. And one of his quotes that, I think I've shared this five or six times, because it's so good, is that he tells people, "Oh yeah, I'm a 10 year overnight success story." Because there's 10 years in the making. So I think that's a really important thing to take into account, too, is that it is about planting a seed and taking the right steps.

Michael Walker:
And certainly you don't need to wait 10 years in order to see that something's working for you, but you're going to see progress as long as you keep stock, and you're smart about tracking your progress. But it all starts with getting the clarity to look at your goals, look at your vision, figure out what are the things you're doing right now, the 80/20, that are actually moving the needle, they're moving you closer to it, and making sure that those blocks are prioritized, and that you're getting those things done as soon as possible.

Michael Walker:
And so Graham, this is great. I learn so much every time I talk with you, it's been an honor having you on the conference. Appreciate you kicking things off. And yeah, do you have any final parting words before we move to our next speaker?

Graham Cochrane:
Hey, just congrats to you on the last four years. This is an amazing event, it's why I do it. I think it's one of the only ones I do like this, and I know everyone's going to just be served well by everyone on the panel. So thank you, [inaudible 01:09:42], and I would just say, last thing to the people watching, I think you hit on it, is don't be in a rush for all your dreams or your goals to come to fruition. Everyone around you's saying you have to do it right now, and that's a lie. And that's just like the social media culture, it's hard to ignore. You're not in a rush. Just do the right things, good things will happen.

Michael Walker:
So good, that's awesome.

Michael Walker:
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. First, if you hit subscribe, then that'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.