John Oszajca: People have this tendency to sort of think, oh, these are old approaches that, these things aren't relevant anymore. But man, that just couldn't be further from the truth. They're just working better and better, honestly. It's because of the experience that we're getting better and better at communicating as marketers and musicians begin to really understand the importance of that message to market match. I'm seeing now seven figure students, I'm thinking one student, I don't know if he's quite topped a million, but he's very close. And many six figure sort of students. I didn't see that 14 years ago, it's really exciting. 

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

Alright, so I'm excited to be here today with John Oszajca. So John he's after four record deals with Interscope, Universal, Warner Brothers, Dreamy Draw he found himself disillusioned with the music industry, and saw a lot of broken pieces, from the inside out of the record label industry.

And kind of took things into his own hands and founded a company called Music Marketing Manifesto. And when I first started Modern Musician and I was sort of like looking at the space and seeing what was happening here there's so many people who had great things to say about MMM. Music marketing manifesto.

And yeah, I think that you're really kind of like the OG in this space who introduced so many of these principles of digital marketing and building funnels and email sequences and to the music industry, which is so, so needed. So, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast here to be able to dive into, kind of these fundamentals and these roots that haven't really changed in terms of direct response marketing.

So John, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. 

John Oszajca: Yeah, no, absolutely. Thanks very much for having me. Yeah. I appreciate the intro. 

Michael Walker: Of course. So maybe to kick things off, you could share a little bit about your story and kind of how you founded Music Marketing Manifesto and some of those pieces that we talked about with, being signed and, taking things independent and whatnot.

John Oszajca: Totally. So yeah, you kind of gave the overview there, but like probably everybody listening, I'm a musician and I've been at it for, most of my life, or at least, from about 13 on or whatever, whenever it was they started playing. But Quite a while ago now about 20 years ago now maybe even a little more, I got I was in Los Angeles, I was really, I was one of those guys that just hustled really hard and took me a few years I, sort of, from Hawaii and moved to Seattle for a few years and was doing pretty well there.

Relocated to Los Angeles, and after a couple of years there ended up landing a huge record deal. I have no way to track these things. The trade papers said it was the biggest new artist signing in history, at least at the time. And whatever it was a pretty significant deal. But unfortunately, as is so often the case all those big promises and all that money didn't amount to really much of anything.

They put it out. There's a lot of confusion around it. Didn't sell enough copies. I got dropped stuck with it kept trying to make it happen, got a new deal with Universal as it got closer to release, somebody higher up in the food chain cut me from the roster, so I got dropped again.

Then I got re signed to, to Warner Brothers, that was just a one off, so there was no dropping but it didn't do very well. Got re signed to an independent. Good guys, good intentions, but you know, they were even less successful than the majors. So it just kind of got worse and worse.

And while there was still some money in the bank from the deal, it looked like I had to, if I wanted to have a family and all those things, I had to get realistic and make some money. So one day, this is a while ago now, we're talking like maybe 2005, 2006, I see some flashy red headline for some course on internet marketing, if I just follow the steps and pay a couple of hundred bucks for the course then I'll be making millions of dollars in my sleep overnight, with little to no effort I bought the course, it was a paid advertising based strategy, and so, meaning I got fast results, I spent ten bucks, I picked some random affiliate product, promoted it, did everything the course said, went to sleep, and woke up, and holy crap, I sold the, I sold an e book for twenty bucks, and I made ten dollars on that, and my mind was just completely blown.

Blown. I knew, okay, this isn't a scam. There's something to this where I if I can sell one, I can sell more. And I just became obsessed on Internet with digital marketing in general, and did that deep dive that, people I'm sure you've done. We all do where, I probably consumed 1000 books and courses and workshops on marketing and really became a student of marketing and kind of cracked it.

And at first, stabbing in the dark and trying a million things my first sort of successful business ended up bringing in a couple million bucks in sales in a very short time well, not actually a couple of years and But it had nothing to do with music, and I was learning all these principles, and the music industry at this time, we're talking like 2007, really, digital marketing wasn't a thing.

Yes, people had websites. Yes, people did make some sales, but this concept of internet marketing hadn't permeated the music industry yet. And I started wondering, would all the stuff that I'm learning about, email marketing and direct sales, or direct response marketing, I should say, would that translate into the music industry?

And... I started using myself as a guinea pig and doing simple things like sending out an email to this pretty small mailing list that I had at the time. And holy crap, I'd wake up and there's 300 bucks in my inbox and I didn't do anything. And this is years into needing managers and record labels and lawyers and booking agents to, to move the needle at all.

So this concept of, whoa, I can take action all on my own with nobody else. And wake up and there's 300 bucks sitting in my inbox. That was, like a revelation. And I had a friend who was going to put out an album and I knew it wasn't going to sell based on his plan. I said, you know what, let me do this.

Let me use you as a guinea pig and put out your album using all this stuff. And we had only 400 bucks. That was the marketing budget he gave me. And we ended up again, this is like 2009. So CD baby was still the world's largest distributor of independent music. They may still be, I don't know, but we ended up setting the all time single day sales record at CD baby.

He was at the top of the CD Baby charts. He ended up on the Heat Seekers chart, Billboard's Heat Seekers chart. We recouped in a matter of days. And it was this pretty big success for a 400 marketing budget. So, that kind of began this journey. I got excited about it and turned my sights on the music industry.

And put out a course initially called Music Marketing Manifesto. And that was in 2009. So yeah, like 14 years ago. And to my knowledge, I'm, sort of the first person in the space to be kind of teaching direct response marketing. Or even really this degree of digital marketing to musicians and the world has kind of changed since, now we're all embracing forms of this stuff and the rest is kind of history.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. It's super interesting hearing, cause it's, it happened quote unquote a long time ago, right? Like 2005, it's really not that long relatively, but long enough that, you might think that. So much has changed that some of these principles or things like, that wouldn't wouldn't be relevant anymore, but I know from firsthand experience that it's like totally not the case, like it's more relevant than ever.

So, and maybe you know, being like, this OG in the space and being, and really kind of seeing the journey and the history as music has evolved, because clearly a lot has changed. And at the time of recording this now, it's AI and like things are going crazy. From your perspective, what are the digital for someone here who maybe is a little bit, versed on digital marketing, but isn't super deep down the rabbit hole, but they're just kind of getting into it.

They know it's sounds like it's important, but they haven't really dove in. Maybe you can share a little bit about like some of the fundamental differences between sort of a traditional, model versus going direct response and totally, and I'd also be curious to kind of hear your thoughts on, what are some of those fundamentals that haven't changed throughout, decades versus some of the things that are sort of changing and the things that we're evolving to.

John Oszajca: Yeah, well, I'll sort of tackle that last question because it correlates to something you said in the beginning of what you just said there about how people have this tendency to sort of think, oh, these are old approaches that, these things aren't relevant anymore. And you said it yourself, but man, that is just couldn't be further from the truth. Take email marketing, something that I occasionally hear ah email is not relevant anymore. Nobody opens their email or squeeze pages free music for in exchange for an email address. Who wants to download anymore? While I understand the thought process behind that point of resistance, that is just not true.

Like the these tactics that I've been sort of playing with for coming on what 14 years or something. They're just working better and better, honestly. And that's no hyperbole there. Like my conversion rates are stronger than ever. Like I'm getting, it's not uncommon for me to see 40%, 45 percent conversion rates, meaning and it's not always that good, but like one in Almost always in any kind of campaign that's refined, like one in two, one in three, if the worst people are signing up for this free download that nobody wants.

And it's not because they need a download, it's because of the experience that we're getting better and better at communicating as we, as marketers and musicians begin to really understand the importance of that message to market match. But so, so anyway I, that's a its own rabbit hole.

But I think it's really important to stress I'm not still talking about this stuff 14 years later because this is my angle. I'm still talking about this stuff 14 years later because this is what I'm doing and because it's never worked better. There's a, I could go down any path but this stuff has just really honestly never been more effective.

I'm seeing now seven figure students, like people making, Like a million dollars with the, with these approaches and that's, I don't know if I'm thinking one student. I don't know if he's quite topped a million, but he's very close. And many six figure sort of students.

So, the stuff I didn't see that 14 years ago, it's really exciting. But so, so you wanted me to talk about some of the differences between maybe the more traditional model versus. Yeah. What we do, the direct response kind of model. 

Michael Walker: Yeah. I mean, maybe in particular yeah, cause it seems like one of the common misconceptions for musicians in particular, just around obviously social media is like a huge place in our current society and for a lot of musicians and artists, when they think about, building a successful career or fan base, they think, social media is the thing.

And they might neglect having an email list or they might neglect. Some of these direct response marketing techniques. So I'd be curious to kind of hear like the contrast between those different approaches or how they come together and the perspective of it. 

John Oszajca: So to really simplify what I teach and believe is the best approach for all musicians is to build a mailing list and sell stuff to that mailing list.

And in order to sell stuff to the mailing list, you really need to create a bond. You need to create interest. You need to create desire. And so that but it is that simple. That's what we're doing. We're building a mailing list, or we can even go broader than that. We're building an audience, and we're selling stuff to that audience.

But again, I'll restate it in order to sell stuff, you really need to make people care. And we do that with our music. And we do that with our personality. And we do that by caring for other people and taking time to reply. And we do that by entertaining, And using some marketing smarts, time sensitive offers and scarcity and all these other triggers that tend to motivate people and, get them to take action.

What was the question? Where were you pointing me? Sorry I went down. 

Michael Walker: Yeah, this is great stuff. So, so we were talking a little bit about social media versus email in particular. 

John Oszajca: Sure. Sorry. So, so they're... I don't know who to blame for this problem. I don't know if it's people like us that create courses that, that, use scary headlines to make people to focus on a particular solution, or if it's actually journalists. And I tend to think it's a little bit more that people who don't practice what they're reporting on looking at.

A certain trends that do correlate to the space, but don't necessarily correlate to buyers and why they buy, social media for all it all. All it takes is for some new platform to come and get 100 million users in a certain period of time and then we're going to read everything about how the music industry needs to be, musicians need to be focusing on this and that's focusing on, the means rather than the end, that's, yeah, like social media.

Sure. These are audiences and getting our important bond creating, for lack of a better word, messages in front of social media can be very effective but it's just one potential path, towards that audience. I know for a fact that an email list is still far more valuable than a social media following, but that doesn't mean that, you shouldn't focus on the social media platforms, but we don't need to have the level of anxiety that we have around it like, Oh, I need to be more active on Instagram. Oh, I need to focus on all these vanity metrics or, it's not going to happen. Vanity metrics are to a degree important if you're chasing the big record deal.

But again, I think we need to see the forest through the trees and realize that really what is happening is we are one human being connecting with another human being on the other side of the screen and all that other stuff matters. But, going back to that 80 20 principle sort of thing it's the noise that's in the 20%.

Yeah, it does move the needle. But what really is gonna amount for 80% of your results is just making great music and connecting in a smart way with an audience. So, so social media, it is an, it is a platform to get you in front of an audience, but it's not the be all, end all. It is a means to an end and, whoop, and I just knocked my headphones out of my ear talking with my hands and a coffee cup. But yeah, so does that answer the question? I don't know if I talked around it or addressed it. 

Michael Walker: That, that definitely answers the question, yeah. Sounds like what you're saying is that the medium... It can ebb and flow, it can change to different things, but really it's a sort of, it's a means to an end and and the real the real end that, that you're looking to achieve is the, about connecting with another person, building a bond, building a relationship and 

John Oszajca: if I could, sorry to interrupt, if I could add to that what is core and I, again, I'm sure, all these principles, but this really, these concepts and the way we connect, at least from a marketing perspective, it goes back, well established more than 100 years ago by an advertising pioneer named E. St. Elmo, and this is something called the AIDA Funnel, it's the Awareness, Interest, Desire Action. And what he did is he recognized that, a person typically on average needs to be walked through a series of psychological states before they're willing to buy and that's really what we're trying to do.

Yes, it is making that connection, but it's not just aimlessly making a connection. It's making a connection and attaching that process to a an established selling structure, which is that AIDA funnel. I find it, it, really applies very well to the music industry. 

Michael Walker: Awesome. Maybe we could talk through that a little bit.

So the AIDA framework and how it relates specifically to musicians. Yeah. I feel like one question that I hear sometime or one concern is around. AIDA principles and, certainly like this is like a valid question or a valid point is from people who see different like course creators or marketers who are, offering courses or offering different things and using some like marketing principles and they might struggle to kind of be like, well, I could see how it works in that industry or in that niche or, but I don't think this would work for musicians or this wouldn't apply to me as a music artist, which obviously the two of us know, like that's not true. The same fundamentals can apply in different ways, but yeah, I'd be curious to hear sort of an example walkthrough of the AIDA framework in relation to, a digital marketing funnel for music artists.

John Oszajca: Sure. So AIDA in music is awareness. This is where our ad and our landing page kind of comes in. We're introducing people to who we are and what it is we do. And what is really important and where So much kind of where musicians benefit so much from a little assistance from sort of marketing coaches like yourself and me is just really help with that.

That simple sentence that appears in the ad and on that landing page. People they're not walking around consciously going, I need to buy some music from some guy named Joe, who I've never heard of. That's not an existing desire, but they are walking around going, I just love how Americana music makes me feel it takes me back to another time, or I just love hip hop, because it communicates a lot of my own frustration with society, or, whatever that reality is for a person and the particular sounds that, go along with it.

We, you a lot as humans align ourselves with music and musicians, because not always just because of the music and the musician themselves, but because what it says about us, and that's a sort of internal validation that I think we're all seeking. And when I reference this a few times, but there's this old quote that I'm probably bastardizing from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Motorcycle Maintenance, where Michael Persick said something like when a mind comes across another mind that thinks and acts like it does it's nothing less than a blessed event. And I think we've all experienced that where we're, we maybe just read a magazine article or something. And then we meet somebody at a party and they're quoting that same magazine article. And we're like, Oh my God, dude. And, we're best friends and we feel this instant affinity. And I think the same is true when we read a headline about a specific quality and experience that a musician has captured. We go, Wow, that's exactly what I love about music. I got to check this person out. We are seeking that spark of what this musician possesses, what this music possesses is what defines me and what I love about the world.

And so when, if we can communicate that in a sentence it's the most important part of this process because it will create that spark, create that curiosity and prompt someone to want to take that next step to, to see if there really is this, connection. So that's the awareness part. 

And then we've got interest, which of course is the music itself, and it's the content that we schedule to sort of go out to this new prospect every few days, depending on your preferences. We all use probably different approaches here. I use music and things like blog posts to really kind of connect on a core level, tell a core aspect of our life story that person also can hopefully relate to.

More music videos, bring them in a little deeper. This is a lot of people call these nurture sequences. We're all sort of familiar with this, at least as marketers, but that's the interest part of this. Desire is where, again, these marketing principles come in and we use some of these proven triggers like scarcity, time sensitivity.

We really need to force people to make a decision. Do you want this? If we just leave it open ended, even people that are interested, we'll just put it off and put it off because no one's you know, everyone's busy and everyone has other things to spend money on. It's we try to put off it spending money, quite often.

So when we put some kind of time sensitivity on it, for example, and there are other ways to do this other triggers, this is just the sort of biggest and probably most effective one that, that creates a little anxiety around losing something. I'm going to lose this discount. I'm going to lose this bonus.

I'm going to lose an opportunity to have this richer experience. Depending on what you're offering, it could be a personal connection of some sort that a person's going to miss out on, and it forces a person to go, do I want this or don't I? And when we force people to make decisions we, yes, we alienate some people, but we get more people saying, okay, yeah, I actually do want to do this and it, shoots are conversions, through the roof.

So that's kind of the desire part of this and, ultimately, if we do these things correctly, we will get action at the end, which is part of that AIDA funnel, which for us just means a sale. We convert someone from a stranger into a real meaningful fan. And, we call them funnels because they're big at the top and they're small at the bottom.

You're going to lose some people, you're going to alienate some people. That's what the funnels designed to do to qualify those leads and turn and really just grab onto the ones that have the potential of converting and convert them. So, so that's the AIDA funnel in a nutshell in the music space.

But to just one more point around that, this concept of this wouldn't work. I think where that comes from is that traditional marketers, they use pain as the I don't know the way to motivate people within their funnels, they're preying on people's pain points and agitating that pain and then dangling a solution and and with music, it's really the reverse and it's kind of beautiful, we're not scaring people into loving our music, we are using something that they love and we are just connecting our own love with their love.

And if we do that well, it's a process of exacerbating affinity as opposed to scaring people into parting with their money. 

Michael Walker: That's super powerful. We were actually recently doing a study with our team cause we were trying to figure out like what's the best way to motivate people.

And we were trying out a bunch of different strategies and we found out that It's not even close. Like the thing that if you want to motivate an action is if you threaten someone with death, Then the compliance goes like way up through the roof. You're just starting to kill them if they don't do the thing.

Sure. I'm just kidding 

John Oszajca: Oh, no, I thought you were going to make an analogy. Sorry. Sorry No, that's a joke. 

Michael Walker: We don't threaten to kill our team members yet. You see But sorry, that was a stupid joke. 

John Oszajca: No. I thought you were, I thought you were making an analogy which, those kinds of, I perhaps didn't hear a beginning part of that but, we often do use those kinds of analogies when talking about, marketing, like when we see it as black and white as that, then the more complex components of a real world kind of campaign become, become clearer.

You can motivate people with those kinds of extreme. I don't know. As ridiculous is that analogy would be you can motivate people with that. So So if you break that down, like what's a real world example of something that a person can't say no to then we're gonna get if we use that kind of thought process, we get closer to what we actually need to be doing.

It's you off. Yeah, 

Michael Walker: I was just gonna say I've used that joke several times before because I just, I think there's just something funny about that. It's yeah, like the best way to motivate people is like you threaten to kill them and and they'll do the thing. But on, on a sort of a philosophical level, you probably could make a point that a lot of the things that motivate us is if you believe in, like the selfish gene or sort of this like evolutionary theory that yeah, like we actually are like, very motivated by avoiding the death in multiple different ways.

Even if it's not as a direct of a thing, like we're literally going to die, our minds can kind of project the feeling as if we're going to lose ourself or die in some way, and that does seem to be pretty motivating. 

John Oszajca: I'm just thinking out loud. I don't know if this is right or what I'm about to say is going to sound stupid or not.

But I think ironically like even when it comes to what we love about music, it's probably connected to that instinct in the sense that I think we all seek to really establish our make our own identity, our own self more solid in this world so that those values are concrete enough to pass down to others in some way, to influence others or pass down to our children.

We do, I think as humans try to, I, this sounds, this is not maybe right, but you know, turn ourselves into statues of principle to some extent so that others can understand us. And it's, I think, connected to that very instinct. 

Michael Walker: Super interesting. Yeah. There's something there's something I haven't actually read the book, The Selfish Gene, but I've heard about it , one of the ideas that came from it was this idea of memes and like cultural memes. And, most of us, when we think of memes nowadays, we think of a gif or like a hamster or like a funny picture or something. But what originated, like the idea of memes were, this idea of a cultural meme.

And as it was described, apparently it was more of a, it almost was described as like a living phenomena that like cultural society, would have these different memes or these different, sort of, thought structures. And when, and a lot of our music is you have different memes of different expressions of, of society and it kind of rises and falls with our, our meta structure of society.

So it's kind of. Kind of interesting. Oh, and the point that he had made too, is that like these memes, they tend to propagate and they tend to sort of self replicate in a similar way to like, how our DNA works. So it's, it is interesting. I mean, music is certainly about self expression, about identity as you're talking about and our, who we are in our life and, sort of how we identify ourselves.

That was something that stuck with me that you brought up earlier was around. Really, like realizing that your music what it's doing for people is not as much about you as it is about like their experience and their identity and their relationship with your music. What it says about them. And that's what makes people, love a song and music is really about what it, how it resonates with them and with their life and their story.

John Oszajca: Totally. Absolutely. 

Michael Walker: All right. So, gosh, where do you go from here? This was great. We zoomed up into a pretty, pretty high perspective there. Sure. Kind of zoom, zoom back in a bit. So. So AIDA, yeah, so, so that's a great framework, super helpful to kind of to, to hear you walk through that.

And at one point in particular, I'd love to hear you describe or kind of coach artists through is sort of this feeling of, the reason we became musicians wasn't because we were thinking, gosh, what's gonna be the fastest, easiest way to make as much money as possible. I know I'm going to become a musician if anything is like for a lot of people is almost the opposite is we like, we want to just make music because it's something we're passionate about and we want to put it out and reach the world and we don't want to, we don't want to come across like we care about money or like we're greedy or like we're quote unquote sellouts, right?

There's a big kind of feeling of fear resistance in terms of how we come across when we make an offer. Or when we try to sell something so I'd be curious to hear your perspective on, for an artist who might be listening to this right now, who maybe they're like tracking with a lot of this conversation.

And then you got to the part where you're like, and then we introduce digital marketing tactics scarcity or time sensitivity that are designed to like, help, drive sales and drive actions. And for certain people, that might bring up this feeling like wrong, like our sleazy sales, car salesman, or I shouldn't do that.

Or which obviously is, the wrong way to look at it. Or, I mean, maybe wrong isn't the right word, but it's, it's certainly a limiting way, both for you and for the fan. So maybe you could talk a little bit about just coaching people through that whole mindset about selling.

John Oszajca: Yeah, there's a couple of sides to that. I think there's some legitimacy to that concern. We all have our values and we don't want to, violate our own integrity. But at the same time, I think there's also for a lot of people, a lot of fear, going and putting yourself out in that way.

It does invite criticism and, we're all very sensitive to that as artists. I don't know if this completely addresses it, but yeah. I, whenever somebody asked me about this, I always think about my own sort of first big experience around this, which was, is actually doing music marketing manifesto early days, like 2000.

I keep knocking my headphones out and I want to say, yeah, like 2010 or something like that. I did a webinar with CD baby. And this is like this. I don't know if they had ever done one like this. It was the, this whole concept I had to explain how this would work and, and affiliate links and all this stuff.

It was very early days. And we did a webinar with their audience and I did the same thing we do, we all do now. And we did a webinar and then I gave people a special offer, a big discount on MMM if they wanted to try it. And I pushed four emails in a row for four days. And around day three, I got I, I tend, I'm pretty good at dismissing criticism.

That's just because you're just going to get it. That's the thing with direct response marketing. It's going to get a response and you can't please all the people all the time. And it's important to remember that or so I've read that about 2 percent of the population are like, I think, psychopaths, if not, at least sociopaths.

So when you're dealing with 10, 000 people, you're going to get some nut jobs on that list, and they're gonna, they're gonna interact with you. So you got to have some degree of thick skin. But when I get a sensitive well thought out, critical email, it gets through to me, and somebody wrote me one of these emails, a big, page about how I, basically what I was doing was too aggressive.

And anyone who was going to buy is already bought and I needed to basically chill out. And and I was, I don't know, making I was making big mistakes. I can't remember their wording at all, but it really it embarrassed me and made me feel self conscious because, again, I'm kind of new at all of this, and I'm a musician.

I still see myself, I still am a musician. I still tour and perform and record and these kinds of things. I'm not as chasing it as I once was, but, I have my own integrity as well, and there are easier ways for me to make money. I do this because... Because I'm passionate about it, and this is my space, and these are my people.

So, so this criticism, oh, is this how the world's gonna see me? That's not what I want. And I sort of freaked out, and I took that sentence of anyone who's gonna buy is bought already. Stop emailing us. And I convinced, and I, but I had one more email to go. This is on day three. And I decided for a moment I'm not gonna email anymore.

I don't want to look stupid. And then I kind of licked my wounds for 20 minutes or so. And then I went, What are you doing? You know why you're doing this. There's a whole process to this arc. Like you, you have to email the final, like last chance kind of email. And so I sort of shook it off, kind of recentered my head and said, Yeah, no, I know what I'm doing.

I'm doing this for a reason. And people need that reminder, or they're not going to, take action. And sent out that email and made 4, 000 that day, which at that time, very small list and that was a lot of money for this new business of mine, like in one day. And it really reminded me that if, I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

I don't know. You just can't kind of listen to those haters. And I'll tell you the most and I have a lot of successful artists in my stable that do this stuff. And the ones that ask for, ask people to buy more often make more sales. Imagine that. So it is this There's a balance to it for sure, but this is a truism.

The more times you ask people to buy, the more sales you will make. So, it's just about balancing that with your own comfort levels. But know that you are trading comfort for money. And that's okay. That's also integrity. But, just be clear on why you're doing it and don't avoid making more money from your music because you're afraid of what a couple of potentially psychopaths might think about what you're doing.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with sending people opportunities, sending people who on their own volition signed up to your mailing list and can unsubscribe at any time, sending them an opportunity to have some more music or buy some more music or listen to some more, it's a, it really, when you break it down like that, it is kind of absurd. That said, we still need to, we do need to apply our own integrity. There does need to be a balance. We, I think it's more important to, to understand, why people are engaging with us. They're not engaging to be exposed to a selling machine. They're engaging to be exposed to entertainment and music and connection.

So, As long as we do that, the selling is easy. Going back to those extreme analogies, like the killing people, they're holding a gun to people's head, if we had people that were starving to death but had, I don't know a dollar in their pocket, and we started selling cheeseburgers for a dollar, the conversions would be 100 percent because we have exactly what people want, and we'd be doing them a favor, selling it to them.

So again, scaling that down to reality, like if we form sincere connections with people and make great music that they love. And we simply point them to an opportunity to buy it. It's a natural fit. And you're going to see great conversions and people are going to be excited to get those offers. And that's when the marketing is truly good when your real fans are going like, Oh, awesome new album, I want to get it.

And so that's what we're striving towards. Not he asked me to buy something, I think that's Yeah, ultimately, that's what's important is that people understand that is what we're striving for. And that is what we can create if we do this the right way. And we apply our own tone.

Some of us are very effusive and very over the top, and that will work because of who we are and who our audience is. And some of us can be the JD Salinger of internet marketing where we're reclusive and mysterious and don't communicate that often, but still ultimately pull off something that works.

So there are no rules. You don't have to go, Hey, 72 hours only you can send people a mysterious link that says 24 hours and linked to something and let that mysterious vibe be your thing. So there's a million ways to pull this off. And how you do it is ultimately up to you. We're, we as marketers reduce it to some pretty simple terms so people can see it.

But there's a lot of flexibility there. 

Michael Walker: That's so good. Thank you for sharing. And I feel like. So much of what you just shared in that story I can personally relate with and I know so many of the artists that, that I've connected with can relate with it in their own way as it, as it relates to getting feedback from people, especially with your music, when your music is such like a core part of you know who you are, and so when someone, yeah, when you get a troll or someone that doesn't like you, you get bad feedback. It's really easy to take that personally. Totally. So I appreciate you sharing that story about like handling that and kind of seeing the other side.

And one, one point that you brought up that I thought was really powerful. In your own story was how you took this moment to get some space and sort of observe. Yeah, it doesn't feel good to get criticism. Like it doesn't really matter who you are. Like it, it hurts, like it hurts if someone like, there's actually the same mechanism in our brain that when we feel like physical pain, like if we get criticized or like emotionally damaged, like the same thing kind of lights up and but you took a step back and you asked yourself, you're like, You reminded yourself, why am I doing this?

What's the reason why? And, yeah, that's something that, yeah, I think is so, so powerful to kind of, to come back to is that, reconnecting with Why are you doing this and why are you making music and in that as like sort of a pillar that could help Overcome some of the self doubt or some of the criticism or the trolls from the 2 percent of psychopaths or whatever so maybe we can maybe as we're coming to a close in the conversation.

We can talk a little bit about the importance of figuring out that reason why, you know for themselves that was something that you came back to as a pillar that helps you serve people and ultimately you touched on that too, is that what you're looking to do here and your success is based on you serving people and based on you figuring out what they want and giving them what they want and the more you can do that, the more successful you're going to be for someone here who maybe is listening to this and they're still just kind of figuring out who they are in their life and their music. And they maybe are early on how, what's your perspective around starting to dig into their why and sort of their, in their reasoning and their, like a pillar of that's going to keep them going through, periods of self doubt.

John Oszajca: Well, you're talking about as an artist, like why are they venturing into this career? 

Michael Walker: Yeah. Maybe just about how can people create sort of like a place in themselves like you had, where if they do, feel that doubt or self or criticism or the, everyone has ups and downs and everyone has these moments where it's they're, they have to keep going.

And yeah, here's your thoughts on how someone can do that. 

John Oszajca: I don't know if this will answer it or not. I'm not even 100 percent sure where I'm going as I open my mouth. But as far as the art... Part of it. That's I think completely personal and we all do it for different reasons so I don't normally weigh into that personal stuff, you know some of us are doing it for complex insecurity reasons.

Others are doing it because we're just passionate storytellers. Others do it because they love the camaraderie of the music life, you know or being on stage in front of a lot of millions of reasons Why a musician would do it, but in terms of, I guess, finding that comfortable space with that balance between doing stuff that, we would all love to just say, Oh, please I don't need the attention and then have lots of attention and lots of money.

We would all love to to be, to not have to ask for support by way of our marketing messages But what's the old, can I swear on this podcast? I don't know. Well, we'll just say wish in one hand and do something else in the other, and we'll see which one gets filled up first.

The reality of life is, is that's that, unless you get struck by lightning that's not a strategy, wishing is not a strategy or hope is not a strategy. So, so we need to figure out an effective path to get what it is we want. And that's where marketing comes in.

And that is asking for support. So. I think what is important is to learn the principles of this stuff, do understand why let's take some kind of pretty, pretty basic, but obvious marketing message buy my new album, 72 hours only, something like that, that feels a little maybe hypey to some people.

I can tell you that works, it works over and over and over again, that kind of an approach, not necessarily that exact headline but but it's very, It very much exposes us, we know when we send a sentence out like that to our list or a headline or an email out to our list that pushes that angle that our motives are transparent and that's what makes us feel uncomfortable.

Someone can accuse us of doing something that's for us and not for them and that does, that makes us feel scared and vulnerable. But let's reduce this to a reality of if I tell you, sending that out, and let's say I have a crystal ball, and I know sending that out is gonna make you 300 percent more money than not sending it out you could still choose, you could still say, you know what, for me that's it's important not to feel that way or to not have that make that impression on my fans.

That's okay, but just be conscious of the fact that these marketing principles will work. I'm choosing to embrace them because I want to be successful, or I'm choosing not to embrace them, and I'm trading some money for what you've, what is you view as integrity. That would not be a personal violation of my integrity at all, because I want to reach people.

That's my core value. So, so I'll do if I, if you tell me that this is going to help me reach more people, I think that's ethical because I believe in what I'm doing and it's benefit for other people. And yes, it's self serving as well. I have my own motivation between wanting to get that message, whether I'm talking about music or music marketing, I don't think, any of us are engaging and making the music we make because we think as you started off saying that it's a quick buck. We're doing it because we think it's important. So, so to me it's not a violation of integrity at all. It's ethical. It's more ethical because it's contributing to something that I think is good. But for whatever reason, if that, if you've got a deep seated perspective that makes you feel differently, that's fine.

I think then you just craft a campaign that makes you comfortable and as close as you can get to those principles, just, you know what I mean, like even understanding that, okay, some kind of a time sensitive offer is going to make you a bunch of money very quickly.

There's probably some very toned down, not asky kind of approach to that. Again, I sort of referenced this and I was just sort of making it up on the spot, but I can envision some kind of very mysterious ad. You're a death metal band and you don't want to push anything over the top. A black page with a timer on it and a, out by now album button and you send, you send a message out that just says 24 hours and the entire message is just a link that says 24 hours signed by the band. You can, that would be an example of something that's not needy or grabby and is actually mysterious and perhaps enhances the brand. Of the band that I believe would still be, well, it would be certainly more effective than doing nothing.

But I believe could be quite effective if you have the right relationship with your fans. So, so there, there are ways to overlay these marketing principles with your own vibe. But you if you're just stabbing in the dark and you don't understand marketing principles, then you're never likely to land close to the mark. 

Michael Walker: So good. Yeah, there's a bunch of really good stuff in there. And yeah, a couple of things that stand out. It's one of those cases of who is it like Emerson is like who you are speak so loudly that I don't hear what you're saying. In your case, like I'm seeing who you are and I'm here saying it's all good.

Right. But around just sort of the thought process of what you brought up of, well, yeah, like I'm going to offer this because my goal is to reach more people. And I know the more people I reach, the more people that I can help are the people I can serve or benefit. And that doesn't like, it's not like there's a lose win equation here.

I mean, I guess in some circles, like maybe that's the mindset, but Oh my gosh, it's so much easier and better for everyone when it's, it is sort of an approach of win. And sort of, and really realizing that, that through effective marketing or selling when it's the right offer to the right person that you're providing a huge service to them and a value to them.

And it seems like for a lot of artists who are struggling with that, it's actually sort of this internal feeling of fear or sort of this feeling of not understanding their value or having this like feeling of self worth or their music like they haven't quite had that validation where they've realized that their music can genuinely like really serve people and it's actually a win.

And it was something that you just shared your perspective. I'm like, well, yeah, like I If it's going to help me reach more people and better serve them, then I'm going to do it. But I just thought that was really valuable to hear and important because like you said, it's the amount of offers you make is directly proportional to the amount of sales that you make and the revenue that you bring in.

If you're not making any offers, you're not giving people a chance to say yes to anything. And a certain percentage of people are going to say yes to your offers. So therefore, like the more offers you make, the more, but in order to make those offers and be congruent. It does feel like it's, it makes things a heck of a lot easier when you are genuinely, you have a product that you really believe in and you really think it's going to serve and help the other person.

John Oszajca: If I could make an analogy that might be helpful to someone, I remember reading, what, it might have been some Dan Kennedy copywriting book, I don't remember, but it was some analogy that stuck out at me, which was to write a great sales letter which we don't exactly do in music, we write sales pages, but they're not sales letters in the traditional sense, but traditional sales letters, these used to be the things you'd get in the mail, and they could be 90 pages, or they could be two pages, but they're, letters designed to overcome, to, to create pain, agitate the pain, offer a solution.

Overcome the resistance, and they could be quite long, but he had said to write a great sales letter go out and sell, meet people in person and record every sort of pitch meeting that you have. And when you have that perfect, like meeting where you're just having a conversation with someone and you're both connecting and it results in the sale, take that, distill it into your sales letter.

And that's how you do it. Because chances are that what happened in that meeting is that you did all the things right, and you perhaps just didn't know it. So, I think that way to get around the cheesiness as a musician would be to perhaps imagine that conversation we've all had at a Merch table, what happens there when I'm sure everybody's experienced that you go and if you perform and you just say their CDs for sale at the bar or whatever, you're probably going to sell very few.

If you go and you stand at the merch table as people walk out and they feel welcome and safe coming up to you to talk then you're going to sell, tenfold more. So, so what happens in that interaction? One, they see what you're all about. They just watched you perform. Two, they come and they make a personal bond with you.

And you usually talk a little bit. They usually don't, oh no, that's not true. Many people do just come up and give you cash. But quite often, they come up, they ask you a little bit. I'm thinking about the hard sales, not the great shows where everybody's already a fan. But when you're on tour, opening up for somebody and nobody knows you and they just got exposed to you and they went, he was pretty good.

And then you say, I'm going to be at the merch table and you stand there and they come, Hey man, I loved your set. Oh, cool. Where are you from? There's usually some kind of walk, like meditate on that or whatever. And think that through an experience you've had that turned a stranger into a customer, someone who didn't walk by necessarily, they liked your set, but they weren't intending on buying, but you started chatting, what transpired before they ultimately bought that music.

Think about the psychological states that they went through the bond, the stories, the interactions and replicate that with your sales process. And you'll get where you need to be and you'll do it in an authentic way. All of us marketers have this moment where we learn about the principles of copywriting and the whole world kind of comes into focus and you realize that this is going on every day.

Some of us are just instinctively good at it and some of us are not. And I think that's the power of studying marketing is that you become conscious of just human behavior that works and gets a good response from other human beings. And so we don't waste our energy putting together these, marketing campaigns or whatever we want to call them when we're not conscious of what we're doing.

But, even if you're not conscious of this, even if you're not doing direct response marketing, you're trying to create an effect, you're trying to get a result. And we put all this energy into something that's not likely to work. So it's just so valuable to understand, hey, this traditionally gets us from, to convert someone into a customer.

So how do I turn that into a sort of online marketing campaign for my music in a, in an integrity based kind of way. I don't know. I'm sort of drifting there, but I think that principle of thinking through. I do that a lot when trying to write copy is I just kind of close my eyes. Sometimes I even talk out loud as weird as it is and just imagine 

I have certain shows that come to mind that were really hard. I needed gas money to get to the next town and somebody walked by and I kind of threw out some kind of a sentence to get them to come over and we start chatting and we start telling stories and before you know it, they bought, a CD for them and their friend and I got that conversion and just, that's a great starting point for creating a nice solid integrity based marketing message that reflects your own vibe and values and shouldn't alienate someone who's had a good experience with some of that music that you use to start the relationship.

Michael Walker: Super smart. Yeah. The, it comes to mind is thinking about that quote like entering the conversation happening in, in their mind and just like marketing in general, being a conversation back and forth, super valuable principle. 

Awesome. Well, Hey, John, thank you so much again for taking the time to come on here and to share some of the lessons and wisdom that you've learned in literally decades of doing what you do.

So, yeah, I'm a huge believer slash like someone who whose life has been changed, both with my band when we first started touring, although we didn't, we weren't quite conscious or aware of what we were doing with the marketing stuff, but like that was super important and then starting modern musician and sort of, finding this online marketing and digital marketing world.

It's great that you're able to help kind of bridge that gap, especially early on when you know, a lot of the stuff didn't exist yet. So, so yeah, it's the long winded way of saying appreciate you and in what you've done for the space and for anyone who is listening right now and would like to take a deeper dive into music marketing and learn more about music marketing manifesto and what you offer.

What would be the best way for them to go to learn more? 

John Oszajca: You just go to musicmarketingmanifesto. com and you can sign up to sort of go through a sort of free presentation that kind of explains all this stuff. Like what this looks like, I've talked about the principles, but in the sun something called music marketing blueprint is just the video presentation comes with a PDF as well.

That just kind of walks you through those steps. Like you can actually see the pages and wrap your head around some of the, what does that look like? What are the mechanics of this? So you can do that. And I've got a products and services link where people can learn more about everything that I do and offer.

And just to add, just wanted to thank you for your kind words and for having me on the show as well. I really appreciate it. 

Michael Walker: Absolutely. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. So, like always, we'll include all the links in the show notes for easy access. And yeah appreciate you taking the time and look forward to talking again soon.

John Oszajca: Cool, man. Thank you.

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

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