Making Music Your Full Time Job with Shane Heilman — Modern Musician - Grow Your Fanbase

Episode 76: Making Music Your Full Time Job with Shane Heilman

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Shane Heilman is an independent artist whose band, The Psalms Project puts entire Psalms to music.

In 2021, Shane quit his full-time job as a high school principal to devote himself to music and coaching full-time. 

Shane also recently graduated from the Modern Musician Gold Artist Program and was selected as one of our Gold Artists of the Year.

If you wish you could quit your day job and pursue music full time, but it sounds impossible, then you won’t want to miss this week’s episode!

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

  • How to entice your fans to support you and your career

  • Tools for being relentless and persistent with your dreams

  • The best way to make music marketing fun

Shane Heilman:
We're not wealthy. We're a middle class family, a normal family, just making a normal living. But that investment in myself has freed me up to live the life that I would live if I didn't have a job, because I don't have a job. You know what I mean? I'm doing exactly ... I'm getting up and I am making the music I want to make and you just can't put a price tag on that.

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.

Michael Walker:
I'm excited to be here today with Shane Heilman. Shane is awesome. He's someone, at this point with Modern Musician, we have 24 coaches on the team who are working hands-on one-on-one with different artists. And, I hear a little rumbling sometimes when we have a rockstar client or there's someone that joins the programs going through it, who's just extraordinary, it makes its way through the grape vines to me. And Shane is an example of one of those people. I just kept hearing his name coming over and over again like, "Oh, Shane is awesome. You got to meet Shane." I just had the chance to actually meet him face-to-face probably a week ago or so. He was just sharing his journey with his music career and some of the things that he's accomplished are really, really extraordinary.

Michael Walker:
He has an amazing story. I wanted to bring him on here just to talk a little bit and share his story. I think it's going to be really inspiring for a lot of you. I think for musicians, a lot of times we're raised to think that it's not really possible to have a career as a musician, that you can't really make money as a musician. I think anytime that we can, you got to shine a light on people who are proving that wrong, it's better for all of us. Shane, thanks so much for taking the time to come on here live today.

Shane Heilman:
Awesome. Thanks for having me, Michael. It's great to be here. Appreciate it.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, for sure. To start out with, I'd love to hear just a little bit about some of your story. Maybe you could introduce yourself or anyone that's listening right now.

Shane Heilman:
Sure. So I have been a musician pretty much most of my life. I think from a young age, just really got into just the power of music, was inspired by music, it's in my family, in fact, my grandpa, he played guitar at his birthday party. And all my whole mom's side of the family played instruments. So it was always, it was always there. So, from a young age I always wanted to play. And eventually when I was 17, I really started getting serious about it, started learning guitar with a friend of mine. We always started a band. I moved to Nashville, of course. Everyone's going to move to Nashville at some point, right? And we spent about four years there trying to get a record deal, but the band broke up in Nashville. And so a few years later I got this idea to start something called the Psalms project, which puts entire Psalms to music.

Shane Heilman:
So, the book of Psalms of course is in the Bible. And I would say the way I like to put it is, probably the most popular part of the most popular book ever written, right? So very familiar text to a lot of people, but then it gets a lot of stuff in there. That's kind of bizarre. There's a lot of stuff in there that's really intense, even offensive. There's a lot of stuff in there that people don't know is there. We all know like Psalm 23 or maybe some other ones, but there's a lot of stuff in there, again, that people are not familiar with.

Shane Heilman:
And so, I thought to myself, what if I put these to music? I mean, these are ancient Hebrew poems we're talking about. What if I put these to like progressive rock music? Or put them to just like really powerful orchestral music? And just let them talk, like let them tell the whole story of the whole Psalm from beginning to end with music, I thought that's a really intriguing idea.

Shane Heilman:
So I started to mess with it. And long story short, 10, 12 years later here I am. And that's what I'm doing for a living. I'm setting ancient Hebrew poems to music and people are actually listening to them and buying them. And I've, I've made a career out of it. I'm like 50 Psalms into it now. There's 150 of them. I'm 50 in after or 10 or 12 years. So it's quite a project, but yeah, that's what I'm doing now as a few months ago, I'm doing it full time.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That's super cool, man. I love that. It's such a good example of ... Sometimes we talk about this familiar plus unique formula where you take something that people recognize, that they're familiar with, then you put your own twist on it, you put your own stamp on it. And gosh, what a perfect example of what you're doing is you're reframing and really bringing it in for a whole new generation of people that may have never been able to absorb some of the wisdom that's being shared there. So it's really cool.

Michael Walker:
So, I'd love to dig in a little bit to your story and maybe early on, could you share what are some biggest challenges or struggles that you went through as you've ... because now you're at a point where you're doing it full-time and that's incredible. But I know that it wasn't always that way, and you had to go through this initial stage. Where were you at, at the beginning and what were some of the biggest challenges that you had to get through?

Shane Heilman:
Sure. Yeah. Well, honestly the first challenge is that honestly, growing up, I was pretty bad at music. It didn't, even though it was in my family and I always wanted to do it, when I first tried to learn guitar lessons when I was young, something just didn't click. I don't know if it was the curriculum or the guitar book or whatever. But I remember messing with my grandpa's guitar book at a young age, trying to learn and just thinking like, this just isn't for me, at least right now. I just wasn't, it just didn't, I didn't pick it up and like bam, I was playing. It took a lot of work and then also singing wise vocally, I had a lot of struggles. I didn't come out of the womb singing on key like my wife does, like some people do. Some people just have it. You know what I mean? I don't.

Shane Heilman:
So for me, it was a lot of work when I started to sing. This is later on like 20 years old or so, I really started to try to become a competent singer. I'd say it was probably a good five, six years before I felt like I was competent and had a style. I really had to, even my mom, when I was younger and I would sing in my room or sing in the shower, sing in the car. She's like, "Shane, you really shouldn't sing." When your mom tells you, you're bad, you know you're bad. That's what I had to overcome, vocally and musically.

Shane Heilman:
But, guitar really started to make sense actually, when I was a teenager. And this is actually after I became a born again Christian at a retreat, all of a sudden I had this interest to play music, beyond what I had before and I just all of a sudden, "You have to do it, you have to pick up a guitar." It was really strange. Just one of those things where you're like, you something's supposed to happen. You don't know why, you just do it.

Shane Heilman:
Then guitar started to make sense all of a sudden. I really started to learn, but yeah, it was years and years of work and then my band was bad for a long time. We moved to Nashville, failed in Nashville. I mean, so many empty gigs and disinterested audiences. So many times feeling like, I mean, all musicians can relate to this. Just like, there are days where you're like, "Man, I'm making the best music in the world." You know what I mean? You just wrote a new song and you're like, "Man, this is going to take the world by storm. I'm so good at this."

Shane Heilman:
And there's days where you're like, "What am I doing? I'm terrible. I'm not even close to as good as some of these people." You have both those days, all the time, still do, still do. A lot of those days, a lot of those times. And there was really a time after I moved back to South Dakota from Nashville, you kind of move back to your home area, tail between your legs a little bit and you're like, "What now?" But I just never gave up. I always knew I was supposed to be a musician, always knew that was where the passion was. I just kept grinding, kept working at it, working at it, getting better at songwriting, getting better at every aspect of it.

Shane Heilman:
And eventually started to write some good songs and was singing them pretty well, and people started to take notice. And then of course, when this idea came with the Psalms, which really is the FU formula, it really is, where you hear familiar sounding modern music or familiar sounding worship music, but then you hear the lyrics and you're like, "Whoa, what's this? This is different. This is way more intense, way more honest than most of the stuff I hear that sounds like this."

Shane Heilman:
And then it catches people's ear a little bit. It's such a great creative challenge too, because these are not verse chorus songs. These are weird songs. I mean, some of them are 10, 11, 13 minutes long, 50 verses of lyrics and so even when I started it, I thought it was just, this is like a pet project, you know what I mean? I'll just mess with it. See what happens. Have some fun with some friends making some good music, but then people started buying it online without any advertising. I'm like, "Oh, okay. There's some interest for this." And then people kept buying it and kept buying it and pretty soon we're four or five albums in and I'm like, "Okay, I think we got something here. Maybe I should actually advertise, maybe I should do something with it."

Shane Heilman:
So, yeah, I could go on and on, but lots of days, long travel days where you're like, "What am I doing?" And lots of days where like, "I'm terrible, maybe I should quit." But I just, I just never quit. That's the bottom line is, I just kept working at it until something clicked.

Michael Walker:
All right. Let's take a quick break from the podcast, so I can tell you about a free, special offer that we're doing right now, exclusively for our podcast listeners. 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 we're offering a free two week trial to our music mentor coaching program. If you sign up in the show notes below, you're going to access to our entire music mentor content vault for free. The Vault's organized into four different content pillars. The first being the music, then the artist, the fans, and 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 music mentor spotlight series. And that's where 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. And one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top music mentors. So a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast are there live interacting with you personally. So imagine being able to connect with them directly.

Michael Walker:
On top of all that, you'll get access to our private music mentor community. And this is definitely one of my favorite parts of music mentor and maybe the most valuable, is that you're going to have this community where you can network with other artists and link up and collaborate, ask questions, get support, and discuss everything related to your music career. So if you're curious and you want to take advantage of the free trial, then go click on the link in the show notes right now, sign up for free. From there, you can check out all of the amazing contents, connect with the community and sign up for the live master classes that happen every week. This is a gift for listening to our podcast 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:
That's so powerful. You know, just because I think that's the common themes for almost every successful person is that, they weren't just, they didn't just start out that way. Usually there was this phase where they had to go through kind of sucking, in order to not suck basically. The success looks like the willingness to look stupid and to suck and not be good in order to improve and practice and craft your skills over time until the point where you actually have made something out of it. And you're a great example of that. It sounds like it was kind of a struggle early on, you didn't really see yourself as the best singer or the best instrumentalist, but you kept showing up, you kept, kept honing at it, kept chipping away at it. And that's really, that's really the path and totally can relate. And I think probably a lot of us can like relate to this, ups and downs, ups and downs.

Michael Walker:
I've seen some clever memes that are images of a day in the life of an entrepreneur. And it's this rollercoaster where it's like, "Oh, everything's awesome. I'm the best." And it's like, "No, I suck. This is terrible. I can't do this." It's like, "Wait, no." But then this, this. It just shows this chart going up and down. So I think that as musicians, as entrepreneurs, that's something that all of us kind of have to go through on a regular basis.

Michael Walker:
So, I would love to hear maybe what do you think are some of the biggest breakthroughs or kind of aha's that you had that kind of helped you go from this point of early on feeling musically like the talent wasn't quite there, and you were still trying to figure out how can I do this full-time? What were some of the biggest breakthroughs, also in terms of just maybe monetizing what you're doing as well, being able to do it full time. There's a lot like challenges that come with that. So what were some of the lessons that you learned?

Shane Heilman:
Sure. Yeah. No great question. I think the first lesson I learned is how to do live concerts and how to handle a live audience. We were were, when by my band started, we were like 17 to 18 years old. You can imagine how bad we were in front of an audience. You know what I mean? Just relating to them, all that, we thought we'd just go up there and play. No, there's so much more to it. And so, when I went to a conference in, I think it was Estes park, Colorado, this is like late nineties and listened to Tom Jackson speak. I'm sure you probably know who Tom Jackson is.

Michael Walker:
Oh yeah. Tom's awesome. Yeah.

Shane Heilman:
And so, and he just opened our eyes to how to handle a live audience and how to put on an awesome show. So that was just a huge boom breakthrough moment for us, because once we figured out that and our shows got better, and I've taken that knowledge obviously throughout my entire life, using it for live streams or just anything. And I spent years and years leading worship at local churches where every week you're in front of people talking to them, leading them. And you're kind of leading the charge with music. That was just great experience being in front of people, thousands of hours of experience playing live, which is really helpful. And so that was huge because when you connect with people at that personal level, when they connect with you, they were like, "How can I support you? You just super impacted my life."

Shane Heilman:
And so, that was the biggest thing was, when you put on a great live show and you really give people an experience that will impact them for a lifetime, then they will do anything for you. And that's one, that was a big aha early in my career. I was like, "Wow. People are like supporting me. They're like giving me money to do this. I must be, this must be something worthwhile."

Shane Heilman:
I think the biggest breakthrough monetization wise for me, was I actually picked up a course a year or two ago. So again, we're talking like a year and a half ago, I was still doing basically nothing, just making it for fun. And I was a high school principal as a career thinking like everybody does, like, "I can't do it full time." Or if I did, it would be really a rough road. I'd have to tour all the time. That was my thinking.

Shane Heilman:
But I pick up this course called Spotify Growth Engine up by John Gold. And it really taught me Facebook ads. So the course took me through and I learned Facebook ads and what my goal was just how to grow my music on Spotify. Because I had a few thousand listeners on Spotify organically, which is pretty good, but I was like, "I could really grow this if I just actually put it out there." So I tried to use the Spotify growth engine, but then I realized, wait a second, like I could use Facebook ads to also sell my CDs and sell my merch and grow my audience. So I started to get some ideas. And once I learned how Facebook ads were, there was really no looking back.

Shane Heilman:
I started to put on Facebook ad for a free CD. Just a free CD, pay the shipping. And then of course there was an upsell to buy all of our albums, our entire anthology of Psalms. And within a few days, I was making like $3 to $5 for every dollar I spent on that. I was like, "Oh, this changes things." So started increasing the ad spend. And I mean, people all over the world are buying my CDs just off an ad. I was like, "Whoa. Yeah, maybe I don't need my job."So that was a pretty, that was pretty powerful moment.

Shane Heilman:
And then Chris Greenwood's stuff, Chris Greenwood's Smart Music Business. I listened to his podcast started listening to CD Baby podcast. I started listening to every podcast I could. I started to really get interested because well, I might be making almost enough to make a living right now, but what if I actually learned something else about how to market music? You know what I mean? So all that was just like a huge, a whole new world opened up to me at that point and yeah, I've been really enjoying it ever since.

Shane Heilman:
I've really actually been enjoying the marketing side of music now almost pretty much as much as the making music side, but nothing's like that moment as a musician when you're making great music. To me that's what it's all about. That's that's the value is making great music is what makes you feel like what you do matters, you know?

Michael Walker:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Shane Heilman:
But the marketing side is fun too, is what I'm saying. So I've enjoyed that.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, absolutely. And, I think that what's great about what you've accomplished too, is really like when you can match the marketing with the message and with the impact act of the music itself. And really the marketing is just a way to impact more people and to connect with them and to kind of raise the level of what you're currently doing. Then it's like things will really start to click into gear.

Michael Walker:
Cool, man. I'd be curious to hear, how did you discover Modern Musician and end up joining our program? Because that's kind of a big leap of faith, to kind of, join Gold Artist academy program. So I'm just kind of curious, how did you discover it? And what is your thought process as you kind of came on board?

Shane Heilman:
Right? Yeah. So Modern Musician came along at just the right time. Of course I followed Chris Greenwood's stuff. And so I got an email from Chris inviting me to a webinar with Michael Walker. And so, I joined it and I watched you go through your whole process. And by then I had a pretty decent background in music marketing and funnels and things like that. And as I watched you go through it, I was like, "Oh, this guy knows what he's talking about." And I think what really appealed to me was you talking about the high ticket offers, because that was something I hadn't really even considered or thought about much. Of course, I had been hired to place in concerts and things like that, but just the possibilities out there and the out of the box possibilities for giving people these life changing experiences, that was like, "Oh, I haven't really heard that." That really resonated with me.

Shane Heilman:
And when I watched this webinar, I had just quit my job two weeks prior. So, I mean, I was making with music like enough to pay the bills, almost kind of. I had a side job just in case I didn't. So I was kind of like, this thing was really up in the air, whether or not it was going to go. Whether or not I was going to be able to really make it. I was making pretty good income, but I have, I have four kids and a wife and a mortgage. And so, I mean, yeah, supporting a family of six with music, it's a lot.

Shane Heilman:
So, I took interest in the webinar and I was like, "Okay, I need to look into this." And then when I talked to Steven, also after I went into your webinar, it was just clear to me, and Ari too. I was like, "Oh yeah, these guys know what they're talking about." And what I really need is someone to come alongside me and just help me get some more ideas and expand and just kind of add more value to what I'm already doing. And I could just tell that Modern Musician knew what they were talking about and that they could just level up every stage of what I was doing. Because I would ask you guys questions. And it was like, "Oh yeah, they know what they're doing, there. Oh yeah. That'll work." You know? "Oh yeah. I hadn't thought of that. That'll work." You know?

Shane Heilman:
So, it was a big investment at the time because again, I got a family of six, I just quit my job, a very lucrative job, six figure job as a high school principal, just quit that to do music full time. And now I'm going to make this huge investment to go into this program. And yeah, I hope it works. But at the time I also felt like, you know what, I need to do this. I need to go all in with my music career. I believe in what I'm doing. It's already shown proof of concept. It's going to work. And Ari and Steven were streaming me like, "Oh, but trust me, this is going to work." You know? And I believed them.

Shane Heilman:
And so, I think Modern Musician really helped me just kind of focus. When you're doing music marketing as a musician, there's always just so much, right, you could be doing. There's so many directions you can go. I'm going to focus on Spotify. I'm going to focus on Instagram.I'm going to focus on Facebook. I'm going to focus on live streaming. I could just go on and on and on. And so sometimes it's just overwhelming. There's just so much you could do. And I think what modern musician did is it just gave me a step by step course to just, do this, do this, do this next. And I really needed that focus. And what was really helpful about the focus is I knew that focus was going to work because it was the same concepts I'd seen, but Modern Musician had really fleshed them out to a point where they were just much more helpful.

Shane Heilman:
And so, it came at the right time for me. So my goal going into Modern Musician was to double what I was currently doing. And so now three months in to Modern Musician, I just graduated technically. But now, I'm really close to that goal of doubling what we were doing when I quit my job. So it's just been absolute godsend for me and my family.

Michael Walker:
That's so, so awesome, man. Yeah.

Shane Heilman:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
And gosh, as a father of two, soon to be three, it's hard for me to even kind of fathom having, you said it was a family of six, right?

Shane Heilman:
Yeah, four kids, yeah. Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Four? Okay, four kids. You're basically double we're at right now. And I can just imagine, I know when I was about to be a dad and at the time I was gone with Paradise Fears. I was touring and I was really trying to figure out how can I provide with them without being gone? That was so much, that was a weight on my shoulders. I needed to figure it out. There was this drive. So I can imagine how much courage it took to leave this job that was lucrative that was paying you well, but you knew like you had this higher purpose. And to kind of take that leap of faith and then turn around and invest in like in our program, I think took a ton of courage. So that's just, that's awesome. Super, super inspiring.

Michael Walker:
So, this is a question I love to ask, because I think it's sort of like a magic sauce question. So, if you could go back to yourself, if you could travel in time and you could go back to yourself maybe six months to a year ago, right? Maybe right when you're getting ready to make that transition of quitting your job and going full time into it, and you could give yourself some advice, what would the advice-

Shane Heilman:
Simply, yeah. The advice would be set up with Modern Musician because they will help you fill all the gaps in your marketing strategy that I had and didn't realize I had.

Shane Heilman:
And of course, it took me only a month into it to wise up and do it, you know? But that's what I would've told myself way back then is, the best advice I can give anyone who's listening to this is, invest in yourself. I've invested personally, including Modern Musician, other things probably I've lost count, maybe like between $10,000 and $20,000 in the past couple years, just in my knowledge of being a better musician and being a better marketer, an entrepreneur and absolutely the best money I've ever spent.

Shane Heilman:
So my advice to people is just keep moving forward, invest in yourself. It improves your self confidence, your self agency. And also it gives you that extra or motivation, that excitement to go for it. You know what I mean? You're doing something about it now. The worst thing you can do is just nothing. That's the advice I would've given myself is, don't worry about the money. The money takes care of itself. If you invest in yourself and your skills because it's skills that will bring, that will make sure that money keeps coming in somehow.

Shane Heilman:
We're not wealthy. We're a middle class family, a normal family, just making a normal living. But that investment in myself has allowed me, has freed me up to live the life that I would live if I didn't have a job, because I don't have a job, you know what I mean? I'm doing exactly, I'm getting up and I am making the music I want to make. And you just can't put a price tag on that.

Michael Walker:
That's, it's so awesome, man. Yeah. And just for your own life too, but then also like your kids, man, they're going to get to grow up, seeing their dad living his best life. It's really, really cool. And what a great lesson too, I think for everyone is just the value of investments in all areas, right? Something doesn't come from nothing. A tree doesn't isn't just magically appear. The tree is, it's planted and it's nurtured and it's grown and it's really, it's investments.

Michael Walker:
And so I think that lesson can apply to so many different areas and the most valuable investment that you can make in yourself is yourself. Investing into yourself. And I do think, similar to you in the last year alone, I've personally invested over a $100,000 into mentorship and learning from different entrepreneurs and people that are the next level that I want to learn from. And it's something that they do as well. They also, they have mentors as well. So there's kind of this wonderful gift that keeps on giving, it's just baked into our human psyche is the need for mentorship.

Michael Walker:
And also at some, in some degree, like the pay it forward as well, to be a mentor for other people, I think. So really, really awesome to see what you've accomplished. You should be super proud yourself. And I appreciate you coming on here to share us some of the lessons that you've learned, share your story. And hopefully it's inspiring for everyone to kind of see what's possible. If you really don't give up, you just keep showing up. You keep putting one foot ahead ahead of the other one. And then eventually you can get to a point where you're waking up every day, doing the thing that you enjoy most in the world and you don't have to rely on, on anything else to support yourself. Pretty dang cool.

Michael Walker:
All right, man. Well, again, thank you so much for coming on here to share a little bit about your story. For anyone who's watching this or listening this right now, who wants to listen more or learn more from you, where could they go to check out your stuff?

Shane Heilman:
Yeah, they can go to the PsalmsProject.com and that's where you can hear our music and connect with us any way you want to. So that's probably the best place to go. Of course, you can go listen to us on Spotify or Apple music. Just go to the Psalms Project on Spotify, Apple music. Listen to the music. It's weird, but hopefully you'll like it. So.

Michael Walker:
It's weird but hopefully you'll like it.

Shane Heilman:
Hopefully you'll like it, yeah. If I can do it, you can do it, right? But yeah, I hope this inspires people to just go for it. I remember when I was quitting my job and I was writing my resignation letter to my staff. And I had a good relationship with my staff and I enjoyed my job. It wasn't like, I was like, burn it down as I leave. You know what I mean? It was a bittersweet moment. But I remember putting it at the end of my letter. I said it was a quote I think from Mark Twain. He said, "Live like your terminal because you are." And for some reason that just struck me at a certain part of my life. It's like, yeah. It's like, I don't want to do this the rest of my life. But if nothing happens, I'm going to.

Shane Heilman:
If I don't do this, what happens is nothing. Nothing happens. And so I just kind of like, you know what? I'm going to live the way that, I'm going to live out the calling I know I'm supposed to live out. And I'm going to trust that everything else takes care of itself. And of course you have to do the work. You have to do the hustle. But yeah, I hope this inspires people to, if they're in a place that I was, to go for it. So.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Thanks, man. I appreciate you sharing that. And gosh, there's something about that sentiment that really just hits to be in the heart. The idea of don't die with your music still inside of you.

Shane Heilman:
Yep.

Michael Walker:
So yeah, that's super awesome. Super awesome that you had the courage to sort of hear that calling and to go for it, take a leap of faith, because that's, it's always what it takes, is taking a leap of faith and having faith that if you keep showing up, keep doing the right things that it's going to work out. So, yeah, thanks Ben, again-

Shane Heilman:
Absolutely.

Michael Walker:
... for coming on here, coming in here to share your story. And definitely for anyone who's listening to this, go check out the music. It's awesome. It's weird, but it's good. According to Shane. And then Shane we'll talk again very soon.

Shane Heilman:
All right. Sounds good, Michael. Thanks a lot for having me on and thanks to Modern Musician, changed my life. Appreciate you guys.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Thanks man.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes, to learn more about our guest today. And if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then that'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take the music career to the next level. The time to be a modern musicians now and I'll look forward to seeing you on next episode.