Adam Ivy:
How is your life experience? How are your thoughts, your viewpoints, your mission? How is that aligning with the people that you would want to spend the most time with? If we understand who we're talking to, what we want to talk to them about, it all starts with knowing who you are and why people should care.

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 slowly 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 of today's music industry and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.
All right. I'm excited to be here today with my good friend, Adam Ivy. Adam is a American music producer, a brand strategist, professional YouTuber, and award-winning creative marketing specialist who has worked with over 2,400 independent recording artists in 23 countries. He's also worked with companies, you might have heard of MTV, Burger King, as well as major recording artists like G-Easy, Mod Sun, Kevin Gates, just to name a few. And he's been featured on CNBC, MTV, E Network, as well as dozens of nationally syndicated radio programs. He's got hundreds of thousands of followers now who follow him because of the same principles, the same things that we're going to be talking about today with building your community during this conversation around being able to build a relationship and build an authentic connection with your fans.
In the land of AI and artificial intelligence and tools, it's so important to have real connection and real grounding with that. And Adam is someone who really walks the walk and leads by example in that area. Adam, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Adam Ivy:
Hey, it's a pleasure, Michael. Anytime you ever want to talk shop or share some gems with your audience, I'm honored to be a part of it.

Michael Walker:
Adam, today is all about talking about how to build a fan base, how to build an audience, a community, and obviously right now there's... At the time of being here, there's a lot of movement and talk around AI and technology and it's an amazing tool to be able to connect with people while at the same time there's these fundamental principles and things that you having built large engaged audience, hundreds of thousands of people and helping artists to do the same.
I'm sure that you've seen the same patterns or the same common things come up over and over again when it comes to common challenges or the biggest misconceptions or mistakes. I'd love to start off by just hearing a little bit about what are some of the biggest challenges that you see artists struggling with when they first come to you related to building an audience?

Adam Ivy:
Oh yeah, man. I think that a few mental barriers that I have to try to deprogram out of artists and creatives in general is this idea that you have to go viral, that you have to that crazy blue check mark 100,000 followers before you can have a business. And that's so far from the truth. You and I both know this, but when you're first getting started, you think that fame is how you become successful financially, but it's the opposite or at least on par with one another because I think building that unique experience, that unique relationship with your audience is something that so many people overlook because they don't believe in themselves to the point, "What makes me special? People don't know me yet. I haven't released a lot of music yet." But you have unique ideas and imagination that I can't replicate, I can't predict, and that's the one thing.
AI, not Adam Ivy, AI, artificial intelligence is so great as far as getting people a little bit more structured, more organized, being able to get a content calendar up and running pretty quickly, and then from there you make it your own. Even some of these AI tools to browse information on the internet, do some research, so many different things as far as contact, information, sync libraries, you name it. But I think the one thing that I always lean back to... I've been on doing social media marketing since MySpace back in 2005.
So going on, what, 20 years now, which is insane, it's making me feel old. I'm getting more gray hair by the minute here, but it's all about building that experience and building a name that gives somebody a unique reason to connect with you. Not being the guy that sits in the middle... A guy or girl or whatever, in the middle, it's who are you? Are you bold enough to be yourself?
That doesn't have to be somebody that's super polarizing or political or anything like that, but as soon as I started leaning into the fact that I'm just opinionated, I'm goofy, I don't take myself too seriously, things just started taking off. As soon as I got consistent with that, I got on social media like so many of you guys and fought for years to find my own voice without knowing that's what I was doing.
I was wearing fitted caps and talking with a slightly different cadence thinking that I was being cool or connecting with the right people or whatever and it just got exhausting. The easiest thing I've ever done, which was the hardest thing is just lean into being me, not worrying as much as possible. I know we all are going to be hesitant to do this at first, but as soon as you can lean into what... Let me take a step back, Michael.
My whole mission in my own content is what I call talk to one, talk to all. I'm not talking to all the people in the world, but if I talk to the one person that I know my message, my story, my guidance help, all that stuff on YouTube is going to really touch. I know that there's a lot of other people just like that hypothetical person we talk... We usually call it a target avatar or archetype, customer archetype, prospect archetype where we're talking to one and we're talking to all.
So when you're creating music, I think a lot of people say to guys like you and I that's easy. You teach tutorials or you teach how to make music or marketing or business. I don't teach anything like that. You're bringing an experience into these people's lives. Entertainment, enjoyment, inspiration, right? Education mostly in our path. But you got to think about it. How many people come home from work? They're exhausted and your song helps them get pumped up to go to the gym when they don't feel like it. They might have gotten a horrible argument with their significant other or family member, somebody at work and hearing your song on the drive home completely changes their mental state.
We bring so much through taking these emotions and these thoughts and turning it into something pretty much from thin air as far as being a musician, and I think we undervalue that a lot. It's like it means something to us, but we don't realize what it's supposed to mean for them, and we can't predict that all the time. A few different things that I see artists really diving into is that they shouldn't, in my opinion. Take all of this as my opinion. If you don't know how to talk to an audience for free organically, if you don't know what they want to see from you, the thing is it's the time money ratio. If you have the time and not the money, spend the time to connect.
You're going to fail a lot, but it's a whole lot less risk than if Michael and I wanted to start a bakery and we'd have to buy the ovens. We'd have to find a retail location, have menus designed and then printed, and then seats and tables and staff, and water, and electricity. We could go and log on to Instagram or YouTube, or TikTok, or Pinterest, or LinkedIn or whatever, fill in the blank right now for free and spend a little bit of time to get the trade for attention.
As soon as your time is getting the attention that's when you can lean heavily into ads. That's one thing I see a lot of people just jumping into blindly. They'll watch a couple YouTube tutorials on how to set up Facebook ads, and though ads are great for padding numbers, the padded numbers don't generate a paycheck or sustainable careers. So it's really a dance. It's like a ballroom dance of using all the different tactics and the different avenues that we have paid or free to build something long-lasting here because nobody wants to be a one hit wonder that at one point had a decent chunk of cash and then it never came back.
I am the guy that I'd much rather have everybody watching this have long sustainable growth rather than short term spikes and using the tools that are available to us such as AI, such as social media, such as even networking events. These are the overarching things that we have to look at as a whole rather than one thing is going to make me famous. One thing is going to make me rich. One thing will just solve all my problems.
Michael and I talked about this in depth maybe last year where I was talking about how the solutions are within your systems. And if something is screwed up, if you're not getting traction, if you're having a bad relationship, if your health and fitness is out of wax, something in that particular system is broken. I'm going off on a tangent like usual, Michael. I think I answered that question.

Michael Walker:
I don't know if it's called a tangent when it's so good. There's so many cool nuggets.

Adam Ivy:
Thank you.

Michael Walker:
There's so many good things to draw from there. So it sounds like at the root of what you were just talking about is it's all about regardless of what method you're using to reach people, really the key thing is around the connection and the relationships that you're building with people. And if you're just going "viral" in a totally unrelated niche or somewhere that doesn't relate to your music, or if you're spending a bunch of money to inflate your numbers, but you're not really building real relationships with people that it's missing that engagement or missing that connection and that connection is really the thing that also leads to monetization as well.
One of the thing that you mentioned that I thought was so good was around this mindset of thinking that when you get started that you need to be someone or something else in order to be successful. You need to be famous. You need to have XYZ numbers or the blue check mark that... I guess now on Twitter you can buy it for $10 or $8, but it sounds like what you're diving into there is around this... What came to mind was the famous quote, be the change that you want to see in the world. And rather than thinking it's something else or some future time to do it, it's like, "No, just do that now." It's not about something that's going to happen at some... It's about who you are and who you're being right now, and you can actually be that future version of your... Actually connected to who you are now. Be that person now.

Adam Ivy:
No, 100%. I think a lot of people have this ideal of what success is to them, but if you were to strip judgment from the rest of the world, their definition of success would change incredibly. So some people say, "Well, why are you doing music? I want to take care of my family." What does that mean? What does that look like? I want to retire my mom. I want to travel the world. I want to be able to buy a Bentley or a mansion or whatever. Cool. There's obviously financial, relationship, health and fitness, love, all these different type of goals in your life, travel, broadening the mind and trying out new things.
I think a lot of times in the public realm of being a musician because whether you're just really wanting to gig for a living. Maybe you're a session musician. Maybe you're a pop star that wants to be on some of the biggest stages in the world. There's a validation key component to some of that. What we have to ask ourselves is are we looking for the validation internally or are we looking for external validation to make sure that it's confirming that what we're doing matters.
I think that as we get older, we talk about this all the time too, Michael, like my validation points, my view of success in my 20s, it's very different. I literally just bought a brand new Honda Odyssey. Had 4,000 miles, but it's new to me. Honda Odyssey minivan. I know some of you guys are probably judging me hard right now.

Michael Walker:
We have one of those too. It's a great family car. As it slides the thing in the middle. Yeah, it's great.

Adam Ivy:
That's the thing. It's my goal now. Even though I like nice things, I want to be able to see the world with my family. I want to be able to be a great dad. I want to be able to be the parents that have the room to carry grandma and grandpa around and our two big doodles and have multiple kids and stuff like that. So how we use the tools that are available to us in every facet of life. When I was in my 20s, I'd be trying to shoulder press 80, 90 pounds. And now being in my late '30s, I'm like, "Nope, I'm good. I'll do 30 pounds, 40 pounds."
There's no reason to ego lift when you're getting older. And I say ego lift in terms of lifting heavier than you need to. And the same goes for music career. You don't have to have every piece of content look polished and look like it should be in a Rolling Stone Magazine. You don't have to go out and buy $4,000 DSLR camera because this guy that's been doing it for 15 years uses these things. I think we have to look at, every good documentary is going to be full of content of the person coming up.
And it's not polished. It's gritty, it's grainy. It's amateur, but that shows the growth. It shows the journey, the trajectory. I think so many people want to cut out that part and just be like, "I landed here. I've always been successful. I've always been popular." In fact, I talked to one guy. I'm not going to name names. If you're watching this right now, it's you. I talked to this gentleman about six or seven months ago and he's spending $5,000 a month to keep his Spotify numbers at over 100,000 thousand monthly listeners.
He also pays a bot company to comment on his stuff on Instagram. I recently just watched him pay for an award for himself like one of these fake plaques that you can buy yourself for like a million Spotify listens. And I'm like, "I talked to you for 45 minutes and told you that it's all fake." There's nobody. But this is what a lot of artists. You guys watching this, you guys are here getting guidance and help, so I'm not talking to you, but this is one thing we can really fall into the trap of, "I want to look successful to validate myself." But it doesn't matter at the end of the day. It's if you bought 100,000 copies of your own book and they're sitting in your garage, all those awards that you got from buying your own book don't matter. They're fake.
We have to build legacy. We have to build... And I'm not talking about legacy like your great-great grandkids are going to be living off your music money, I'm talking about what do people say about you at your funeral? What does your music do for the people that listen to it? I guess it just boils down to being a good human being that aligns with how you present yourself to the world.
I think a lot of people try to jump into being a persona, and that's the fastest way in my opinion, of hitting social media burnout when you're trying to pretend to be a character and eventually you don't know who that character is anymore.

Michael Walker:
All right. Let's take a quick break from the podcast so I can tell you about a free special offer that we're doing right now exclusively for our podcast listeners. So if you get a ton of value from the show, but you want to take your music career to the next level, connect with the community of driven musicians and connect with the music mentors directly that we have on this podcast. Or if you just want to know the best way to market your music and grow an audience right now, then this is going to be perfect for you.
So right now we're offering a free two-week trial to our music mentor coaching program. And if you sign up in the show notes below, you're going to get access to our entire music mentor content vault for free. The vault is organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and last but not least, the business.
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So much wisdom bombs that are happening right now. It's so true.

Adam Ivy:
We need to get a sound effect thing.

Michael Walker:
Man, I love that you're referencing what are people going to say at your funeral or just bringing things back. There's something about this exercise of... I think of it... I don't know if it's the right name or not, the death bed exercise. And just imagining that moment that if we're fortunate enough like all of us are going to have this moment where we're on our death bed and we're moments away or we're 10 minutes away from saying goodbye to everything. It's everything that we've ever known, and in some ways, it feels like, "Oh, that's never going to happen. Or I've got time. I've got time."
But the truth is, all of us are going to have that moment unless something happens ahead of time. Most of us are going to have this moment where we're about to say goodbye to everything. And then you're talking about, we're going to start to see things in perspective and it's what really matters and what didn't matter. And those things like buying fake awards or fake plaques or fake X, Y, Z, which just seems so pointless in the context of what really matters which is so clearly not the image or the representation of who we think we are as much as it is about the real... Like you were talking about the real connections, the real impact, the real relationships that you have with people.

Adam Ivy:
Absolutely. I think that you see it a lot in show business when somebody... Great example of this would be like Jay-Z. When he was coming up, four-finger rings, all the jewelry, just dripped head to toe with all of the things. And now wedding ring, wristwatch, that's it. That's all he needs. 'Cause to him that's not wealth anymore. That's looking wealthy. True wealth, I think we both experienced this in our lives and been very fortunate, Michael, now the first time you make 10,000 in a month or a hundred thousand in a month, you're like, "Oh my God, I'm rich." And you're like, "I am no happier than I was with a small fraction of this because it doesn't define who I am."
So we have to look at what we really want to do with our voice. And Alex Hormozi, for those of you that are familiar, he has a really interesting frame where he says, "I would trade every penny that I have and everything I've ever done to be 10 years younger again. And in 10 years I'll trade everything I have at that point to be where I am now. Because you don't get the time back."
So that's why when it comes to your music career guys, if you don't have intention, if you do not set intention and do these things intentionally, you're not just going to magically fall into success. It doesn't happen. Don't get me wrong. We have lottery winners in life who might have a viral video take off and get a big record deal and hopefully godspeed, they do something with it. Same for the literal lottery winner. What's the suicide rate or death rate of lottery winners like it's staggering.
It's because your life changes overnight and it wasn't with intention. Now, you have to navigate what that new reality is, and a lot of people aren't built for it. And so if you live with intention, you make your music with intention, you market with intention, and we talk about it all the time, Michael.
Marketing is not complicated in terminology. You're taking music, you're bringing it to market. So you are marketing. You're offering, which is your music. But people want that brand that's attached to that music to be a place that they enjoy shopping. They enjoy hanging out at. We've all been to a mall. We've all been to a shopping plaza that's almost out of business, and there's like that one store that we have to go in. We're like, "I need this one thing. Or you buy a loaf of bread at a gas station that's shady."
You're like, I'm just going to get in here and get out and hopefully I'll never have to come back here. You want to build something around yourself that is a place people want to be. And the music is just a side effect. I know that's so backwards for a lot of you guys listening to this right now.
You're like, "No, I let my music speak for itself." You could blast that music as loud as you can in your living room and wave at cars driving by, but it's not going to speak for itself. It's impossible. It's impossible for your music to speak for itself unless it's in a market that can then enjoy it, absorb it, judge it, whatever they might do with it. We talk about this all the time with my students. Exposure is not really your problem. The connection is your problem. Right now, I know I can't. Maybe you can, Michael, but I can't name 10 American Idol winners or The Voice winners or America's Got Talent winner., 10 of them that are relevant right now on the billboard charts.
Maybe two, three, maybe? And yet we have 28 seasons of American Idol or something crazy like that. We have a million seasons of The Voice and all these other talent shows where these people have more exposure than most people on TikTok or Instagram. Millions of people tuning in to watch. And yet they don't succeed long term, most of them because they never had a real connection. They have all the visibility, but that's it.
And then they never learned. They never enacted the systems to maintain and retain that attention. And just having a fancy sporting goods store with nothing on the shelves, people can think it looks awesome, but if you have nothing to offer and there's nobody working in there, it's going to go out of business. And your music is if... Let me take a step back. Two things, guys. Write this down. Either your music is a business or it's a hobby.
Either it's a business or it's a hobby. A hobby just doesn't magically turn into a business ever. You have to have that intention. So if you're not looking at your business and yourself as an entrepreneur, as a business, as something that you can bring to the world, scale it, provide something of value long term, keep up with it. Eventually build a team or use tools, then just embrace the fact that you like it as a hobby. There's nothing at all wrong with that. I've had students that come into my programs that are a doctor.
There was one guy that was a aerospace engineer, and they just wanted more people to listen to their music. They're like, "Adam, I don't plan on doing this full time financially. I just want to have people enjoy what matters to me with my music."

Michael Walker:
Super valuable. I agree 100%. Music is a wonderful gift and a blessing regardless of what way you do it. But the idea you keep coming back to around intention, that's so good. That's so powerful because it does seem like... I don't want to get too woo-woo here. I like to think that I'm woo-woo compliant. I got that from my mentor actually. That happens all the time.

Adam Ivy:
That's hilarious.

Michael Walker:
Gosh, there really is something. Apart from the "law of attraction" there's just so much science around goal setting. And what is goal setting, but setting intentions and getting clear on what is it that you're aiming for. If you don't have a dart board, you don't know which way to throw the dart. You need to have something you're aiming for in order to have direction. I think that's a super valuable piece that they keep coming back to, which is really so fundamental.
Get clear on what is your goal. What are you trying to accomplish? And then bringing it back to what you're going to around visibility and connection. I know the framework that you teach is, was it visibility, connection, offer? Like Those three-

Adam Ivy:
Yeah, VCO. Correct.

Michael Walker:
That's a beautiful framework to walk through this journey. So it sounds like part of what you're saying is that there is a time and a case for visibility. You need to be able to reach new people and to be seen by them. But if that's all you have or you have vanity metrics or you're not building a relationship, then that's not enough. They're not going to go from visibility to buying something from you immediately.
So I'd be curious to hear what your advice would be for someone who's here right now when it comes to building community and building that engagement? Let's imagine that they've been doing the things to start putting themselves out there. They've been starting to generate content. They're getting some visibility, but they're still feeling that lack of connection or the lack of engagement. I love the framework that they described around speaking to one person instead of speaking to everybody.
Oh my gosh. That's just such a core valuable thing. Not last week, but actually it was two days ago, I got on a call with a new fan for a new music project that I've just started to release music for. That was the most meaningful experience that I've had around my music in years. It was literally just me connecting with one person and playing one of my new songs for her. She cried, I cried.

Adam Ivy:
That's amazing.

Michael Walker:
It was such a great example of what you're describing right now, which is so true about speaking to one person. And if you speak to one person in the things you are posting to multiple people that can propagate, that can speak to everyone in a more personal way. So now I'm starting to ramble a bit.

Adam Ivy:
I see where you're going here. I think that to build community, especially on social media, YouTube, it's all about having a conversation rather than a statement. So many people are going out there and trying to make a statement. They'll post a photo. They'll say, "Jamming out at this venue." Good times, right? That's a statement. That's not an actual conversation. You could have a joke all the time, take a picture in front of a fancy car and you're just like, hashtag blessed. Living my best life. That's a statement.
So I think a lot of people, especially post COVID have a hard time talking to people. They don't know how to talk to people. I'm historically pretty socially awkward. I've gotten over it a little bit and I think I'm better at it now, but it's about them. It's not only about you.
So how is your life experience, how are your thoughts, your viewpoints, your mission. How is that aligning with the people that you would want to spend the most time with? Because if we look at some of the biggest venues in the world for music, you can have somebody like the Rolling Stones or U2, or Taylor Swift, or Drake pack those out. Very different demographics, very different people. So even though there might be somebody that went to an Aerosmith concert now is at a Taylor Swift concert, that's what I call outliers.
If we understand who we're talking about or who we're talking to, what we want to talk to them about, it all starts with knowing who you are and why people should care. It ties right back to what I was saying a little bit earlier where there's a lot of people that don't feel like they're good enough. They don't feel like they deserve attention. One of the biggest things, a lot of you guys watching this right now, I promise, have either thought this or currently feel like this.
Adam, if I post all the time, I annoy my audience. Adam, you say I have to be consistent, but I know that would annoy me. Usually I say, "Who's your favorite athlete? Who's your favorite actor or actress? Who's your favorite artist?" And then they'll tell me... I'll say if they post it every day and shared a little bit about their life and what they're doing, would that annoy you? And you'd want to... Of course not. That's the point. These aren't your friends and family. These are people that look up to you in a different way.
These are people that are not as creative or not as imaginative or don't know how to take their emotions, their thoughts and feelings and talk about them, let alone write songs about them. I think so many times as singer songwriters, artists, rappers, whatever, you fill in the blank, musicians, creatives, we don't give ourselves enough credit for the imagination and the creative abilities that we have.
One of my former students, alumni, she was like, "Adam, I don't know what to write on social media. I can take fancy photos and videos, but I don't know what to write." And I was like, "You write some of the most in-depth lyrical storytelling songs I've ever heard in my life and yet you don't know how to write a caption?" "Oh, I never thought of it like that." I'm like, "You are a writer. A writer is a writer. Whether it's songs, whether it's blog posts, captions books, we have to figure out how to apply that."
Obviously, there's systems and there's marketing psychology to up your chances of getting engagement. And that's things that we learn through practice, through having coaches, mentors, guides such as Michael, myself, others in the space because we've been there. I'm not getting any younger. Michael is not getting any younger, even though I think we both wish we were.
I didn't start making music till I was 21. I've been making music now for over 15 years. I didn't get on social media until about the same time doing that for close to 20. So we look at things like a musical instrument. I just brought this up recently in a conversation. I was like, "Nobody ever thinks that you get lucky because you're so good at playing piano or guitar."
They're not like, "Oh, it must be nice." They're like, "Oh, he must have put a ton and time and effort into getting good at his instrument or their instrument." Why do people think that success in the music business side of things is just luck? No, you have to learn your instrument there. Marketing, branding, visibility, networking, the business side of things, the money side of things. And then maybe you'll do it right for long enough to get lucky because luck is involved in every aspect of our life. I'm lucky that I met my wife. I'm lucky that I have my friends around me. I'm lucky that I met you, Michael. I'm lucky that I ever had any success with my music.
I'm lucky that I went deaf in my left ear in 2016 so I could find a new passion and fulfillment and helping others and starting other businesses and just being more of a selfless person rather than the selfish person I was when I was doing music full-time.

Michael Walker:
There's so much good stuff in there. And to iterate down on literally, what you just like what you just shared, appreciating and being grateful for what you have. It seems like there's this... As you were describing, that I could feel it in my heart. I could feel the gratitude. I could feel that feeling. I think it's something that all of us have the ability to think about, to reflect on the things that we're lucky for, that we appreciate and it's really powerful. One of the most powerful expressions of who you are. And thank you for sharing that. I just wanted to take that little piece that you just shared. That felt awesome.

Adam Ivy:
No, glad to share that.

Michael Walker:
One thing I would love to pick your brain on... Why I love what I do and why I love being able to host things like this and connect with amazing people like yourself is because you start to see these patterns. You start to see these patterns between all these people who've accomplished amazing things, which helped so many people. One thing that I've noticed that you're a great example of, and this happens, it reflects around bringing things back to what's actually important and bringing things back to the root and the kind of the core.
So a lot of the things that we've talked about during this conversation have been the fundamental pieces that are really at the root of what's going on, the deserving, the feeling like you deserve to be heard, you're good enough, being the change that you want to see in the world, the connecting with people. So I really appreciate that we've been able to focus really most of this conversation on what truly matters and that what doesn't change too. It's like the principles. These are the things that are going to be true 50 years from now, 100 years from now.
That being said, "I also know there's a lot of people who are probably here right now who there's also that other flip side that's like the, what's shiny new object or what's the tool? What's the thing that's happening right now? What's the tactic or what's the thing? So I do want to speak to that as well a little bit. So I'd be curious to hear your thoughts or perspective on what's happening right now at the time that we're like here live in terms of specific tactics or strategies or if there's a wave that's happening right now that people might be able to swim along with and get some momentum, what do you see as some of those biggest opportunities?

Adam Ivy:
Yeah. There's a few of them that I'll try to unpack here. So as you just mentioned, Michael, I'm very much so a believer in fundamental foundational marketing because I think that, like you said, whether it's now 10 years from now, 50 years from now, foundational marketing is still going to be just as relevant as it is today. So I am not the guy that typically jumps on the viral trends and what's here today that's probably going to be gone in six weeks from now. But I will say that we have to pick up momentum as musicians and adapt or adopt a business mindset as quickly as possible and have intent with how we're creating and what we want that outcome to be doing, clever, amateur vertical videos, doing more carousel posts on Instagram.
These things are gaining traction a lot faster, doing collaborations with others that might be two steps ahead of you, and then you both have a win-win situation on your hands. These are things that are going to get the visibility, but again, I don't want anybody stepping outside of who they really are, stepping outside of the comfort zone 100%, but don't step outside of who you are to then fall into the trap of, "Well, I got all these views. I could tell you so many stories about people that I've either consulted with or I'm friends with students who found something that works on TikTok, for example, that isn't anything to do with their music and they just doubled down on that."
Now they're like, "Nobody is paying attention to my music because nobody thought that was your intention." So I think that using AI, as you've been talking about throughout your event here, and I think people need to be taking notes using AI as your team is the new trend that's going to help you.
You don't have to have use AI for songwriting. You don't have to use AI for composition, but if AI could help you write an email sequence to new people that join your mailing list from your website or give you an idea of how to structure a website, or maybe you have an idea that you need to expand on and you ask ChatGPT to write you a caption for Instagram, then copy paste it into a Google doc and make it your own or however you want to do it. That's the great thing.
There's a million different ways of accomplishing things in the music industry. It's not just my way. It's not just Michael's way. However, our ways work and they're repeatable and they're a system, and we've fallen into the mud time or 12 and have refined those systems to be more repeatable and more applicable in a foundational way that's going to work to get you traction, to get you relationships, to be able to promote.
Like Michael was saying earlier, it all boils down to visibility, connections, offers. Unless you want to be like a behind the scenes live AV tech at a hard rock restaurant venue someday, which is nothing wrong with that. I have friends that actually have that position. But if you want people to know you, if you want to be on stages, if you want to get invites and opportunities and have the ability to network, a lot of times in the music industry these days, in order to be heard, we have to be seen.
I know that's petrifying, terrifying, paralyzing for most of us, but as soon as you embrace that, as far as I get to rather than I have to, everything changes. So obviously one thing I will say, Michael, anytime one of these new platforms come out with a new feature, utilize the heck out of it because they're going to give you more reach, more discoverability. They want the masses to adopt these new features. So those who jump into that market first, it could be safe to say when people jumped on Reels, on Instagram, they exploded in growth.
Now, it's just another tool. When TikTok came out exploded in growth. Now, a lot of people have slowed down in those big growth explosions, but foundational marketing, knowing who you are, knowing why people should care, knowing who those people are, and then doing creative things to get their attention and keep them interested rather than the same camera angle, the same outfit, the same lighting, the same location over and over again, you have to keep it fresh. And again, you get to do this. None of us have to do this.

Michael Walker:
So good. I probably beat the heck out of this analogy. It's like a dead horse I keep coming back to, but it just is so good. And it sounds like what you're describing here is that the new features, the new things, the approach is not necessarily not using them or pretending they don't exist, but thinking of them as just one... The analogy is that like we're surfers. We're surfers in the ocean and we're looking to catch a wave and each of these new feature is like a cool new wave.
Okay, awesome, cool. It's like it's a wave. And yeah, if you catch the wave, you can get momentum. There's always more people that let other people catch the wave and then try to swim up and try to catch this wave that already passed and now it's not working anymore. But it really is the fundamentals. It's the principles of learning. How do I catch the wave in the first place? What are the similarities between all of these waves that are happening that really allow you to be in the position to catch the new waves and get momentum when those new features come out?

Adam Ivy:
Yeah. One thing we have to keep in mind, Michael, is I think a lot of people get discouraged when they find a wave. They might find two or three waves and they get to a certain point and then they get very jaded and discouraged that those waves don't exist anymore. Or they're not as big as they were when they first caught them. I think it's safe to say that what got us here won't get you there. So I think that you have to keep reinventing yourself.
You have to keep looking for the new wave, but maintaining who you are and just utilizing the new tools because we have more tools at our disposal than ever before in human history, which is a gift and a curse. But I think it's so important that we understand that you are going to change as a person. Your interests are going to change. Obligation leads to resentment. So don't ever feel like the world is forcing you to do this. You have the unique ability to go out there and have your voice heard.
And if you look at a room of 50 people in person versus 50 likes on a social post, and you can correlate, that's a lot of people. Now, you won't start feeling as much like a failure. You're just not, "Why did that guy blow up and I didn't?" My stuff is better? It doesn't matter. They're them, you're you. The comparison game is very dangerous. And just try to bring some value to the world. Be yourself. Be yourself in a unique different way because different is better than better. And be memorable. I think in all your marketing and all your content, your music itself, just try to find your unique lane.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value at this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guests 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 I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or 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 the 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.