Eli Lev:
First album I released was All Roads East. The second album was Way Out West a year later, a year after was Deep South. And then this year was True North. So this year I've completed the Four Directions Project, and the only way that I've done that is through the help of my Patreon community, my free street team called The Levitator, and connecting with amazing people like you, Michael, and just mentors that have left these little kind of breadcrumbs for me to follow along the way.

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.

Michael Walker:
We're creating a revolution with today's music industry, and this is your invitation to join me. I'm your host, Michael Walker.

Michael Walker:
All right. I'm excited to be here today, talking with my good friend, Eli Lev. Eli is an indie folk artist from Maryland. And honestly, he's just one of the best human beings that I know. When I met him a few years ago, we started as a client, and sometimes when I meet with someone one-on-one, you just instantly know that this person's a very like raw, authentic human being and you really just resonate with this person. And I remember with Eli, it was on our first call, it was like, "Bam, this dude is awesome."

Michael Walker:
Eli basically started as a client and now he's ascended to being a business partner at Modern Musician. And he's really someone that I think encapsulates the idea of what does it mean to be a modern musician. He's a fully independent, full-time musician, raises tens of thousands of dollars through crowdfund. And has just really built an amazing connection, a real authentic connection with this tribe.

Michael Walker:
Eli, hopefully that wasn't too long with intro. We have to act like basically every day, but just wanted to make sure that people know how much of a badass you are. And thanks for being here today.

Eli Lev:
That's amazing. Yeah, thanks. I love like I have ascended the ranks of Modern Musician. And yeah, that was just possible by just having this amazing roadmap, essentially just laid out for me through your trainings and through your teachings and through your philosophies. So absolutely changed my music business and changed my life, so I'm super happy to be here. And yeah, you're right, it does seem like it's been maybe almost three years since we first... Pretty cool to be here now and see the next iteration of this program start.

Michael Walker:
Heck yeah, dude. You've seen version 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 as they've rolled out. This is an interesting question. Obviously this was a few years ago, so I'm not sure exactly if you'll be able to remember or not. But can you remember and walk through, how did you discover Modern Musician in the first place? And how did you... This kind of a big leap of faith, deciding to join Gold Artist Academy. How was your thought process as you're going through that?

Eli Lev:
Well, as a musician, I was just learning the ropes and trying to understand the industry. I came in really late in the game, like mid 30s, never really had done music before in like an actual band and just was like, "If I'm ever going to do this music thing that's been my dream for my whole life, now is going to be the time." So it was my first or second year into releasing music. And of course, I'm on the internet and finding like the different threads and I connected with Ariel Hyatt, she's amazing.

Eli Lev:
I connected with Carrie Cole as a vocal coach, Ariel Hyatt with the PR. I connected with Ross to set up my website. So I understood that there are these different experts out there online that can help me advance and learn essentially, because I had a lot of catching up to do. And then I came across your website through some recommendations and through search and I was like, "Whoa, I haven't seen this model really out there." The one that's authentic fan engagement and creating different value offers will allow your music business to last for a lifetime.

Eli Lev:
And then I was just like, "Ding, ding, ding, ding. That's my jam. I'm in it for the long game. I'm not trying to get signed, I want to actually connect with real people, so this seems like a really cool method to do that." So yeah, jumped on some calls and was talked through some... You talked about leap of faith and there was a couple of those moments where I had some resistance as an artist and as a person to be like, "Is this really going to get me into where I want?"

Eli Lev:
And then, now looking back on it, it's just like 10 times my initial investment in the program, so it's, of course it was worth it, but that was important. Also, realizing how valuable my music was and what I could can offer other people in their lives, that was a really big mental breakthrough that I had to get through. And that was essentially because of you and your staff and your team.

Michael Walker:
Thanks, man. Gosh, I wish I could just create a look like audience out of Eli Lev, so like 10,000, of you. You're awesome. I'd love to zoom out a little bit and look deeper into when you were just starting out. You mentioned that you had a late start with your music career in your mid 30s and gosh. For music careers in general, there's so many limiting beliefs and things I think especially around age like, "Am I too old to do this?" And getting started in your mid 30s, that was probably a big limiting belief you had to crush through. So I'm curious, what were some of the biggest challenges and struggles that you had to overcome early in your music career?

Eli Lev:
Interestingly enough, some artists wait until they've built a fan base to start an inner circle like Patreon. And before I even started releasing anything, I was like, "I will not be able to do this without people who believe in me." I just know that personally, I won't be able to carry myself through with all that and uncertainty and just be like, "Me, I'm going to do it." So I started my Patreon page at my third show as a solo act. And then I was like, "When we get to 25 Patreons, I'm going to release my first album."

Eli Lev:
And so I waited until I got that mark and that was like fire under me to get that, so I could release my first EP. Then the second EP was 50 Patreons, the third EP was 75, and the fourth EP now up to around 100. So that kind of community coming together around the music was the most important thing to me as an artist. And with those first supporters, it's grown into an amazing place. We do monthly Zoom calls and they help me make music videos and they even participate in the music videos. So it's been a pretty amazing thing.

Eli Lev:
That's been the one thing that's like, okay, I've had people in my corner from the beginning that I can connect with. Not thousands, not tens of thousands, just five or 10, and that made the difference at the beginning.

Michael Walker:
That's super smart and definitely a way to reverse engineer, I think what you're looking to accomplish. And having the awareness, I think to know that you needed to round up that inner circle and those people that are going to support you early on, I think is something super important and probably overlooked for a lot of people. The initial stages of self-doubt and putting out your music and being vulnerable and really knowing that you have some people in your corner that believe in you and want you to be successful is awesome.

Michael Walker:
How did you start out with finding those 25 people? For anyone listening this, would you recommend reaching out to like a certain kind of person and they're like already inner circle or how did you go about that?

Eli Lev:
I didn't have like a music fan base yet because no one had heard it. So I had to start with my friends and family, which was a very interesting experience, very humbling experience. Because the people who you think would be first in line to be like aren't, and the people who you would never thought in a million years would do that, like that one friend you had in high school on Facebook that you every once in a while see are going to be the first people that are like, "Yes, let's rock. I'm here for you." So that evens out.

Eli Lev:
But yeah, we have mentioned this where it's just like the power of big spreadsheets is pretty amazing. So I just put down 100 people that I knew in my life and I contacted each of them one by one said, "Hey, I'm doing something big here doing something special. I would love to invite you to the adventure and the journey. Here's what it is, it's a very small monthly fee and you get to see what I'm doing behind the scenes." And yeah, I had like 10, 15 people sign up out of that first 100.

Eli Lev:
So then six months later I made another 100 spreadsheet and I reached back out to those same people and then got another 10. And then rinse and repeat until today. So just starting with just a massive list of people and then really honing down and reaching out individually. That was how that got started.

Michael Walker:
That's super cool. It's a great example of like grassroots marketing, its finest. Just making a list of people to reach out to, reaching out to them one by one and not just, I don't know, like expecting that you're going to post on Instagram and that there's going to be thousands of people that are just going to discover you and come to your Patreon or somehow stumble upon on your Patreon through the internet. It really takes this concerted effort to just reach out directly to people.

Michael Walker:
In terms of your process, would you recommend having a daily rhythm where it's like, you're like, "Okay, every single day I'm going to reach out to X amount of people"? What did that look like for you? What was your actual system or process for where reaching out to those people once you had them on the spreadsheet?

Eli Lev:
So I use these pulses so that I'm not wearing myself out and that I'm not wearing out other folks either. So I'll do like a big reach out for a week and then I'll wait another two or three months, do another big reach out. Maybe do some follow ups a week later. So I'll let time go by sometimes. People just need to comprehend what it is, just to know about it. And if they don't join then, maybe they'll join six months later or maybe a year later or maybe never. But at least I can check in be like, "This person's important to me, so I want to let them know that."

Eli Lev:
So yeah, for me, and the same thing for crowdfunding for Kickstarter. It's like three months beforehand, do some grassroots, just put some feelers out there, see who might be interested. Two weeks before, make sure you've got your crew ready to go. And then there's these little pulses, like the first week, there's just gangbusters. And then, maybe week two or three do another push. And then the last three or four days is also going for it.

Eli Lev:
So that helps people just learn about it, "Okay, forget about it." "Okay, there's a chance to join and Eli's reaching out." "Okay, forget about it." "Okay, last chance." Maybe now I can take that leap of faith and rock this kind of project. So for me, I use different pulses and I time them so that people don't get burned out and neither do I.

Michael Walker:
That's super smart. It sounds like you use these pulses to... It is almost like a different type of campaign, so you might have like a Kickstarter campaign or you might like have an initial Patreon campaign. And these are these initial pulses where you have a group of people, you reach out to them. And maybe there's a few follow-ups in place where if you reach out and based on, if they don't get back right away, follow-up respectfully like a few days later.

Eli Lev:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
Then you have some sort of last follow-up for that pulse, where you might say-

Eli Lev:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
... "Okay, for this pulse." Awesome.

Eli Lev:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
How many Kickstarters have you done now? And how roughly, how much did you raise for each of the Kickstarters?

Eli Lev:
I've done two Kickstarters now, the first one was about 12K and this last one this year was around 20K.

Michael Walker:
That's incredible. That's really, really awesome. Again, you've only been doing this for a few years now. I guess, what do you say to anyone... I know that there's quite a few people who are probably going to be listening to this who may be one of those narratives in their mind. And obviously you're not... It's not like you're 105 years old or something.

Eli Lev:
Let me tell you how I made thing...

Michael Walker:
But I think that there's quite a few people that... Or even they would think that if you're not in your teens or if you're not in your like early 20s that it's almost impossible or it's not worth it to... It's too risky to to try to do music professionally. So what would your advice be for anyone who's maybe listening to this right now, maybe they have that doubt? They have that struggle where it's like, "Am I in too late of a stage in my life to really give this a shot"?

Eli Lev:
No, absolutely. I think that sometimes folks think they're too young to do music, and you're not. There's like 14, 16, 18, 20-year-olds who are just crushing it and that's awesome, and that's validating. There are folks out there who think that either you do music full time or you don't, and that's also not true. I did Lyft and Uber driving to make things happen in the begin of my music career. And it can be a part of your life, it can be a part-time part of your life for however long you want. It's just there for you however you'd like it to be.

Eli Lev:
And then there are folks who are like, "Okay, I'm retired. I've done music my whole life and what would I like to do now? More than anything else, I just want to share my music with the world." That's amazing. Whether you're 65 or 70, there's people out there who are absolutely going to resonate with what you have to say. Because if we feel it in our existence and if we feel that energy, that means that that energy exists out there in the universe, right?

Eli Lev:
That means that we just need to find a way to connect with that. And that is no age limit to energy. There's no age limit to connection or human engagement essentially. So wherever we are on that timeframe is awesome. And it's so funny because my latest singles called Move As You Do, which is exactly about this. Life happens in all sorts of different arrangements and music is always there. So whenever we feel called to that is beautiful. It's awesome. It's an amazing thing.

Eli Lev:
So for me, I'm going to be doing music the rest of my life, when I'm 75, 80, 85. I'm going to be... I just saw Willie Nelson a few weeks ago and the dude is like 88 and he's playing festivals, and he plays guitar better than I do. You know what I mean? So I'm going to keep going, I'm going to go Willie style, and that's totally cool.

Michael Walker:
All right. Let's take a quick break from the podcast so I can tell you a free, special offer 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.

Michael Walker:
Right now, now we're offering a free two-week trial to our MusicMentor coaching program. And if you sign up in the show notes below, you're going to access to our entire MusicMentor content vault for free. The vault's organized into four different content pillars, the first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and the last, but not least the business. When you sign up, you unlock our best in depth master classes from a network of world class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting edge strategies right now for growing your music business.

Michael Walker:
On top of that, you'll get access to our weekly live masterminds, where our highest level of Modern Musician coaches teach you exactly what they're doing to make an income and an impact with their music. Then once a month, we're going to have our MusicMentor Spotlight series. And that's what we're going to bring on some of the world's biggest and best artist coaches and successful musicians to teach you what's working right now.

Michael Walker:
And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top of music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are they're live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly. On top of all that you'll get access to our private MusicMentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of MusicMentor and maybe the most valuable is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up, collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career.

Michael Walker:
So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link on the show notes right now and sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing content, connect with the community and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our body, supporting the show, so don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now, and let's get back to our interview.

Michael Walker:
So awesome. I feel like a super power that you have or at least one thing that I think a lot of people struggle with is having the right mindset in terms of it's a long term... There's this shift in perspective that happens when it's like, you're, I don't know, trying to hack the system or trying to take short shortcuts or wins. And certainly there's nothing wrong with taking shortcuts if it's the right shortcut. But with you, and this is something I see in a lot of the most successful people is that they're not trying to game the system as much as just like figure out what are the fundamentals and how can I do this in a long term authentic way because I'm not going anywhere? This is a marathon, it's not a sprint.

Michael Walker:
So I'm wondering just about your perspective. For example, most recently, Eli, we have this one of our main flagship campaigns that we run up Modern Musician are these virtual tour hacking campaigns where you start having messenger conversations through ads and you can do some really geeky stuff long term where you can like automate it, you can build an AI chat bot. But with any sort of paid traffic funnel, a lot of times it requires like optimization and split testing and keeping things on track.

Michael Walker:
So Eli recently just took the cake as our top performing virtual tracking campaign ever. Is hitting like one cent per message, which just to put it into context, when we looked at his campaign, it was like he's getting like over 2000 messages per week from new fans. And I just imagine like if you're trying to respond to all those people personally or just your fingers would burn off. But I know that you didn't start, you didn't start at one time for message. You took a lot of iterating and testing and keeping keeping your eyes focused on the long term.

Michael Walker:
So I was wondering, could you share maybe a little bit about your perspective? How do you allow yourself to stay focused on the long term and to be able to know the difference between something that takes time and effort to get it working, but you're on the right track versus, am I barking on the wrong tree? When I know when to shift. I feel like that's a really difficult thing to tell sometimes.

Eli Lev:
Yeah, I think that's an awesome question and interestingly enough, it came from something that you told me very early on, which was, don't focus on lag indicators, focus on lead indicators. And I didn't know what you meant by that. I didn't know what lag meant, I didn't know what lead meant. It took me like six months to really comprehend what that statement meant. And when I finally got it, what you were trying to tell me was the sales, do you know what I mean? And whatever, the, did this post do really well or something. Or did that booking agent email me back?

Eli Lev:
Those are the lag indicators that aren't really talking about your process as a musician, as a creative, as a business person. So if your process is dialed in, if every day you're connecting with the morning vision magnet and you're super synced with your why and what you're doing. If every week you're looking into your systems and making sure that, okay, let's test this, let's test that. If every month you're going in and saying, "Okay, what worked last month? What didn't? Let me try some new things."

Eli Lev:
If that process' in place, then there're absolutely no way that you won't succeed because you're connecting with your why, you're figuring out ways to improve it. Maybe micro amounts, but over a long period of time, there's only one way that that's going to go, and that's towards your goal. So only by putting in those daily, weekly, monthly, even quarterly systems in place was I able to see, "Okay, how can I make a process that will pay off long period of time?"

Eli Lev:
And that once virtual tour hacking campaign started at $1.50, but it didn't matter. The $1.50 wasn't the indicator if it was or not, what was happening. How to indicate successful was behind the scenes that there's a system to improve. So I really owe that to that statement. It took me a very long time to figure that out, but I finally did and started implementing it. And that's where all the growth is coming from.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. It's so far too because I have my own mentors and I owe pretty much everything, all the success that I built to my mentors and to what I've learned through life experiences. So I'm pretty sure that like the lag indicator, lead indicator definitely wasn't an original thought, but it was from a mentor. Man, just what a wonderful thing that we can pay things for. And now I'm sure that there's people are going to be listening to this right now, they're going to hear what you just said, and that's cool. Something's going to click for them, and now that's going to impact their life and make a ripple effect on all of their fans.

Michael Walker:
And also a great like reminder, what you just talked about, again, it wasn't necessarily the, how can we game the system to get a bazillion views on my video and make it look like I'm more successful right now than I really am? It was the fundamentals. It was going through the morning routine, the vision magnet, and doing your planning processes and you're systematizing the optimization on a weekly basis. Gosh, that is a super power of just doing the retrospectives and the planning. That might be something worth digging into a little bit.

Michael Walker:
There's just that process of retrospectives and planning. Let's say that someone who's listening or watching this right now, they don't really have a good weekly planning or retrospective kind of system in place. What does that look like for you on a daily, weekly, maybe monthly or even quarterly basis?

Eli Lev:
Yeah, I'll break it down super easy. Super comprehensive is make your top three priorities for the year, that's it. Start there. You can write however many you want, you can write 10, 15, 20, circle the top three to five, and then throw the rest out. Because all of it is essentially an excuse not to do your top priorities and a way to come hide behind the most important things that you need to do to get to your goals and to really live your why. So I start there every year, I start with my top three priorities. Then I break that down into quarter. What do I need to do each quarter? The top three things I need to do each quarter to get to those top three priorities.

Eli Lev:
Every quarter I break those down per month, every month, what are the top three things I need to do that month to reach that quarterly goal? Same thing per week. Once the month comes around, I break down, "Okay, every week what are the top three things I need to do to reach my monthly and quarterly and yearly goals?" And I do that everyday too, so before the next day starts, I write down the most important thing and the three things that I must get done that next day. That's it. That is essentially the absolute, purest, straightest line to achieving whatever it is that I've put out for myself.

Eli Lev:
So it's so effective that I've finished my year priorities within the first quarter sometimes. If that happens, great, then I can just do it again and re-assess and keep going. But the most basic point is just top three priorities on whatever timeframe, then break that down into smaller timeframes. So you don't have a list of 10, 20 things to do, you have the one thing that you need to do that day and maybe two or three things that you could do, that's it. And once you've done them, you're done for the day and you can whatever, have some red wine or pizza or do whatever reward that you've got for yourself. So that's my most basic approach.

Michael Walker:
I love it. Yeah, I think that's so valuable because it's a system to really prioritize and figure out what are those three things, and even bolding the number one out of those three things that needs to happen, those different timeframes. The analogy that comes mind when usually we talk about that top three system is, I don't know if you've seen this video, Eli with dominoes where it shows this little, little tiny domino and then there's a slightly bigger domino, and there's a bigger one, bigger one. And there's probably eight or nine to these dominoes. And the last one's this giant domino. And there's this geeky-looking guy who's like, "You see, because with the mathematics and physics." And then he demonstrates, he pushes over this little tiny microscopic domino.

Eli Lev:
Wow.

Michael Walker:
And you're like, "How could this little microscopic domino knock over this giant domino?" And basically it just keeps knocking over the slightly bigger domino and the slightly bigger domino knocks a slightly bigger domino. And it leads up to that massive domino falling over. And really those top three, the daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, top three priorities, the yearly ones can be these big dominoes-

Eli Lev:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
... those daily ones stack up to it, so yeah. And it's just so good to have that clarity. I think like you said, you put it really well with, it prevents you from hiding, hiding behind these other busy work, busy to-dos that seem urgent, that seem like, "Oh, I have to do this." But a lot of times, the actual top three things are scary. They're scary, they stretch your comfort zone a little bit. They actually mean something, they mean something to you, so if you do fail at them, it's like it feels more personal. So yeah, just a wonderful process.

Eli Lev:
Dude, I am a huge fan of metaphors and I love the metaphor you just said, because I'm going to just take it another step further. Because now that we have this visual of what that is, we've got our massive dominoes on the outside, let's call it a room, right? And those are the biggest dominoes and they're going to break through walls for us and get us to that next room. But it's really easy to be comfortable in our room, and let's say we set up a bunch of dominoes around us. There's like five dominoes here, 10 dominoes there, and everyday we just knock down a bunch of dominoes and we're like, "Woo-hoo, that was fun."

Eli Lev:
But all we really need to do is just knock down that one that actually leads to that line, that gets us to that next stage. We don't need to do any of the other things, that's just fun and you feel good about getting a lot done, but it's not actually going to get us to that next space. So that just blew my mind, thank you for that metaphor. I'm going to meditate on that for a while. I absolutely love that and I'm going to find that video on YouTube, so.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, it's a good one. Anyone, it's just go check it out. It's probably called domino knocking over bigger dominoes, I don't know. You could probably-

Eli Lev:
Amazing.

Michael Walker:
... Google and find it.

Eli Lev:
I'll find it.

Michael Walker:
But gosh, I love that addition to the metaphor too towards the easy thing is to knock over all these little tiny dominoes like, "Look at all these dominoes I'm knocking over," and these little tidy ones. But if they're not aligned, if they're not stacked up against bigger dominoes, then you're losing that momentum. That really is far. It's the momentum and the alignment that you're building through that process you described with making sure that the quarterly top three lines up to the yearly top three, and that the monthly ones line up to the quarterly ones so that you get that domino effect.

Eli Lev:
Yep. In education, they call that backward design. As a teacher, every year, it's like, where did you want to get your students to? And essentially, what are the steps going backward to get them there? So same kind of philosophy as well.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Super cool. One other thing I would love to pick your brain on because I know you do a really good job with this is, your morning routine. What have you found to be the most important parts to make sure that you do set up the day to be a successful day? How do you structure it with meditation and with movements or what does your normal morning look like if you just nail it?

Eli Lev:
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that I started with just a 30-minute morning routine and now I'm looking at my calendar and it's up to three hours. So the timeline is, I wake up, I go out to the barn and feed some horses, do a run, do cold showers every morning to get things going. Do yoga, meditation. I've got a six-minute pure diary journal that I fill in everyday about things that I'm grateful for, how I'll make the day great and positive affirmation that always helps.

Eli Lev:
Then I do a daily retrospective where I have my own checklist. So I've built my own type-form from your example. And so that helps me just be like, "Okay, how am I feeling today? What are my goals? What am I do?" That's good. And then Rock, the health tracker, they also got me going on which is amazing. Health Tracker has 20 different columns from... It's got a morning space where it's waking up and doing my whole morning routine. So I'm just checking off things everyday. Then I've got an afternoon routine, and I've got an evening routine.

Eli Lev:
And every month I'm trying to build a healthy habit, and the only way to do that and they say you need two months, three months to actually put in a healthy habit into your life. So I keep track everyday like, "Did I do that thing?" And if I don't, then I need to do something, maybe contribute to a fund or something like that to make sure that I do.

Michael Walker:
We've got our music fund. So Eli and I, and Steven, we help keep each other accountable for our morning routines by if we don't do our Keystone habit, which is the new habit we're trying to do, then we'll donate to a music fund that basically gets given out to one of our Gold Arts Academy clients when it reaches $10,000 so they can record new music. It's a pretty cool accountability system that we're keeping each other accountable to.

Eli Lev:
Yeah. And just to be totally honest, I am never 100% perfect everyday. And sometimes I do things out of order, but the point is that I have accountability system where I can see that, see what's happening and I can have goals that I want to achieve and bring my habits in. And yeah, if you're traveling and touring, it's harder, but the point is that maybe you didn't do the whole routine, but maybe I did my meditation or maybe I did my cold shower or maybe I did my vocal warmups. Because that's ingrained in my body, my psyche when I wake up.

Eli Lev:
So as long as I'm connecting with a little bit of that and getting myself in the right head space, then that makes all the difference for the day. So essentially, I do my number one priority first everyday, and I'll do my top two hopefully before lunch. So by the time lunch comes around essentially like, "Great, I had a good day, did my things." And then if I want to do more, I can, if I have other things planned then awesome. But yeah, that morning routine essentially sets the day.

Michael Walker:
100%. Yah, I think it is really important like you mentioned, the point of it isn't to be perfect and always do every single thing, but just like having accountability in place to be tracking whether we have or not and have some incentive in place I think is super smart. And also, yeah, I'm sure that there's some people who would be to be like, "I just don't have time to do a morning routine like that. That's impossible." And it is that interesting, it's counterintuitive, but it does seem like for every minute you put it into your morning routine, you're getting at least three to five minutes back compared to if you didn't do it. It actually-

Eli Lev:
It's so true.

Michael Walker:
Sharpening the saw, the Abraham Lincoln story. I'm probably going to butcher it, but it's like there's someone who asked Abraham Lincoln, "If you were going to cut through a tree and you had like three hours, how would you spend your time?" And Abraham Lincoln famously said, "Well, I would spend the first hour and a half sharping my saw, and then like the next 10 minutes cutting down the tree." It's a great metaphor. A great metaphor for like... Because a lot of times you would think like, "Man, you're spending hours on your routine. I could be spending that being productive, doing something else."

Michael Walker:
But if you didn't do one of your team and you weren't centered and focused and just feeling good, feeling healthy and also just having your priorities laid out. Then likely we'd end up running around our domino house like a mad man and just knocking over the little tiny dominoes and not having the alignment.

Eli Lev:
Absolutely. Every minute spent on your morning routine is two minutes that you gain. So essentially it's like... Even meditations, it's like, "I don't have time for meditation." But if I meditate for half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the evening, I need two hours less sleep than I usually do, which is nuts. It's like, "Well, that doesn't make sense." I don't know why it makes sense, but that's the way it is. Same thing for productivity like, "Okay, if I do my yoga and if I run. If I take 30 minutes every morning to do that, I'm going to have an hour extra, two hour extra of actually having focused and being productive that day."

Eli Lev:
So yeah, you've got a wife, you've got two kids, you've got a house, you got a business, you've got a music brand and you crush your morning routine. I see it on the spreadsheet, so I know that you're doing it. So it's possible if you just carve out the time, make it like that. And it can start with 15 minutes, it can go to 30 and an hour, go to however, how you like. I started mine with like 20-minute morning routine. Yep.

Michael Walker:
Exactly. That's a really important point I think is that yeah, you don't have to start off, with multiple hours. You can work it into your schedule. You start, even if it's just a minute of meditation that you have to start with. That's going to start planting the seed so that can start to grow. So yeah, like you mentioned, started with 20 minutes, 30 minutes and now it's grown so that it's a fully beefed up version of the morning routine.

Michael Walker:
And I think that who you are and just the way that you've already shown up here on the interview and the way you've been able to articulate in your presence, I think is just... It's living proof, the proof is in the pudding kind of thing of the effects of having a good morning routine over the long term.

Eli Lev:
Yep.

Michael Walker:
Cool man. Reflecting on your music career, what would you say are a few of the things that you feel most proud of right now?

Eli Lev:
Wow. Might get a little bit emotional about this. The first project I had was called the Four Directions Project, which is about just from my time as a teacher on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona. And the Four Directions was a big part of their cosmology, and so I had the idea that that could help me and carry me through my music career because I had no idea what I was doing and no representation, nothing, whatever. Just like, "Okay, go."

Eli Lev:
So I was like, "If I have those teachings and if that reminds me of where I came from, then I feel like that'll be a great foundation for me in my music career." So the first album I released was All Roads East. The second album was Way Out West a year later, a year after was Deep South. And then this year was True North. So this year I've completed the Four Directions Project, and the only way that I've done that is through the help of my Patreon community, my free street team called The Levitator and connecting with amazing people like you, Michael and just mentors that have left these little kind of red crumbs for me to follow along the way.

Eli Lev:
So right now, really is a pretty special time in my music career because I've been doing this for four or five years and to have built a Spotify, an email list, a social media campaign, a Patreon crowdfunding. And then automating all that behind the scenes so that it just runs when I'm creating music and on tour, blows my mind like, wow. In such a short period of time, how is that possible? And it's through personal connections. It wasn't through blowing up on TikTok. It wasn't through having like a million views on YouTube.

Eli Lev:
It wasn't getting the right representation or the right magazine placement. It was all from connecting with real people. You showed me how to do that through messaging, through email, through live streams. So that's the core of that has just brought so much fruit. It's pretty amazing to just be able to sit back and see that.

Michael Walker:
That's so cool, man. You have so much to be proud of, and not just for you and your career, but also the impact that you're making on your fans, your community and the way that your music is touching people's lives. Maybe you could share what are some of your favorite fan stories or ripple effects that you've seen in the community that you're building?

Eli Lev:
Yeah. For the last almost two years now, I've been live streaming every Friday for Folk Friday live streams. That consistency and that connection has just helped so many people and helped me get through just all the darkness that we've had to get through these last year or two years, and people show up. They know that on Friday, they can come, they can hang out. We can have an awesome time, share music, play requests, meet each other, feel that connection. Doesn't matter politics, doesn't matter age, doesn't matter demographic. Everybody from all over the world can connect in these spaces.

Eli Lev:
From those folk Fridays, I will get messages right afterwards, like paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs on Facebook or like a whole email about someone's life story and about how the music helps them with what they're going through or that they look forward to it. Or they're going through a lot of pain, but whenever they put on a song or something that, that takes it away. And that's what it's all about. And it's not about numbers or statistics and all that kind of stuff in the end.

Eli Lev:
It's not even about revenue. It's about how can I connect with people and positively affect lives and enter into that conversation through music essentially? Music isn't the thing. It is the thing, but it isn't. Behind that is absolutely just connecting with someone in Iowa or in the middle of Saskatchewan or India or Spain or Australia that are writing these messages that are like, "Your music is helping me in my life, so thank you for that."

Eli Lev:
Those messages are the thing that... I put those in the daily vision magnet, so I see those every morning when I wake up and it's just like, "Okay, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing." And they keep coming.

Michael Walker:
So awesome. It's powerful, it's powerful. And it is interesting that out of everything that we do, it really is that connection, the grassroots connection, getting those messages seems... I know for me, that's easily the thing that drives me the most, is when we get messages from our artists that we're working with. It makes you feel like what you're doing is worth it, is being able to contribute and really make that kind of impact. And obviously, like you, that's what you've been able to accomplish, is that you've been able to create this ripple effect within your community. So that's awesome.

Eli Lev:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Last question, if you could you hop in a time machine and visit yourself back in the past when you're feeling some of that resistance that you're talking about, when you're early on getting started and you're just coming up and you're wondering like, "Is this music thing, is this really possible?" And if you could give yourself any advice back then, what would you say to yourself?

Eli Lev:
Yeah. Ooh, good question. I made that kind of commitment to music, it was my second year of graduate school. I was on winter break before the last semester and I went on a trip to Mexico, West Coast, small town called Sayulita. Just took my guitar and a tent and camped there for two weeks. And I was playing some songs that I had just messed around with and demoing and I was like, "You know what? These songs aren't terrible." And I kept playing them and then it felt like the beach was listening, was like that audience.

Eli Lev:
So the waves and the trees are doing their thing, and so there was this kind of... That was my first encouragement from that... Not my first encouragement ever, but there was like a moment there I was like, "You should do this thing." So from that moment, if I had just connected with that moment at every single point of the way, then that would be awesome. At some points in the way, there was self-doubt, there was like, no one's going to want to listen to whatever, more music by a guy from the suburbs in Maryland. There's enough music out there, no one needs more.

Eli Lev:
If I had just connected with that kind of space, that energy in that moment, it's like, yes, you know what I mean? Whatever is inside you, Eli Lev, people want to hear and it's worth it, and it's worthwhile. And what you can share is valuable. Some people are going to find it so valuable that they're going to support you in massive amounts of what they've earned to let you know how much that your music helps them. That would be it, just to keep reminding myself like, "Hey, you have a song, you have a story that can help the world and everything you're doing connects to that why." So that would be my continuing advice to myself even right now.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome, man. Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think all of us, that's a really valuable lesson to connect to and to fully appreciate that your music has value and that it's worth it. That your voice, that you deserve to be heard. Yeah, man, you're awesome, you're a living breathing example of what does it mean to be a modern musician, so let's go ahead and let's wrap up the interview. But man, you're awesome. Thank you so much for coming on here to share some of your story and your lessons.

Michael Walker:
And for anyone that's listening, watching this right now that wants to listen to your music or go check out more stuff, where can they go to check you out?

Eli Lev:
Now that my whole Four Directions is out there and there's this really cool graphic on my website. Actually I'm wearing the t-shirt for All Roads East. So each one of these is a part of a overall mandala. So if you just type in Eli Lev Music, E-L-I L-E-V music, you can get to my website and you can see all the mandalas and you can choose your own adventure. You can hang out to All Roads East, you can go Way Out West, all the lyrics are there. It's a whole journey. It's an hour long musical journey that took me five years to create. It's all there for you and I hope you enjoy it.

Eli Lev:
And at the bottom of that page is they can join my free levitator community and join me on the adventure if they'd like.

Michael Walker:
Heck yeah, yeah. And I would totally recommend anyone who's listening to this right now, go check it out, go listen to the music, because the music itself is awesome and Eli's awesome. But also, he's a great example of someone to learn from, so you can see the way that he's connecting with his community and be a part of that movement as well if you enjoy the music. Then I think he's a great model, so we'll put the link in the show notes so you can go check it out.

Michael Walker:
And again, Eli, thanks, man. I appreciate you coming on here. I know we talk all the time, so it's fun to dig deep into this and revisit some of the past. So man, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that we did meet a few years ago and it's hard to imagine where we'd be at right now with Modern Musician without you. I think that you're someone that also has just made a huge impact on our community overall. So I appreciate you, man.

Eli Lev:
Always amazing. I always get so amped whenever I'm able to connect with you and your ethos and your philosophy. I know the rest of my day is, I'm just going to crush it now. So thank you for just guiding me through these last three years. It's been amazing. I would not be where I am, absolutely not, no way without your guidance and help. So man, I'm super grateful of that. We've come this far and I'm looking forward to next steps. We're going to do some amazing, Modern Musician.

Michael Walker:
We're just getting started too. Yeah, it's been an incredible journey so far and yeah, the journey is the single step. Right now, it's pretty exciting times.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today and if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then 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 their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.