Finn McKenty:
I think it's very tempting to get lost in the sauce of big numbers and think that you have to have big numbers to have a great life and you don't. That's not true. Remember, the goal is to have a great life that you enjoy and do things that makes you happy, not run up some number in a spreadsheet.

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.

Michael Walker:
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 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:
All right. Excited to be here today with Finn McKenty. Finn is an American marketing strategist, music commentator, writer and graphic designer, who runs the YouTube channel, The Punk Rock MBA, awesome name for a YouTube channel. It currently has over 376,000 subscribers. He's the Director of Marketing at the online education platform, URM Academy, and he's a big fan of technology and product design.

Michael Walker:
I figured it would be great to have him on here to be able to talk a little bit about how that relates to musicians, and we were just talking a little bit, picking out backstage about how, as musicians, it seems like the number one thing that most of us care about is really all around the artwork and how do I actually get my artwork heard by the right people? How can I take it to the next level? So I think that technology and product design, as it relates to that, is a pretty interesting topic. So Finn, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Finn McKenty:
Thanks for having me, I appreciate the opportunity.

Michael Walker:
For sure. Cool man, so to start out with, I would love to hear a little bit about yourself and your story and how you got started with your YouTube channel.

Finn McKenty:
Well, I'd been making content in one way or another since probably the early to mid '90s. I started making fanzines back then in my parents' basement, just interviewing bands I liked and stuff like that and putting it together, cut and paste, and photocopying them and selling them through the mail and whatnot. Sold a few thousand of those, by the time I was done with high school, which doesn't sound like a lot compared to millions and millions of views on YouTube, but if you actually think about what it takes to sell thousands of copies of something without the internet, it's actually really hard. It's harder to sell 5000 copies of something like that through the mail than it is to get millions of views on a YouTube video, in my opinion.

Finn McKenty:
That was my beginning of content creation and entrepreneurship, although I didn't really... I mean that wasn't a word back in the '90s. People didn't really use that word the way that they do now, so I didn't realize that that was my introduction to entrepreneurship, but it was. I did that for a while. I then, after the world of print magazines stopped making sense, I did blogs and also I worked for a DVD... Me and one other guy did a DVD print hybrid magazine called Flow, back in the mid 2000s, FLL, which I think we did 13 issues of that, did around 100,000 or 200,000 copies of each one, so a couple million of those floating around there. Some people might be familiar with it.

Finn McKenty:
After blogs stopped making sense, I said, "Well, what's next?" It became obvious that YouTube was the place where people were allocating their attention and so I started doing that in 2017. Took me about a year or so to get any traction on that. The first 75 or 100 videos I put out, nobody cared at all, but that's the name of the game. Then eventually, some of my videos started to get traction around 2018 and things have been pretty good ever since then.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, it seems like that's something that is pretty easily overlooked is that stage, that first year, the 75 videos at the beginning.

Finn McKenty:
And I consider a year to be pretty fast. Realistically, it might be two years or something. If you're starting from scratch.

Michael Walker:
Right. So it seems like that's this reoccurring theme and people who become successful is that, a lot of times, they have this early stage where they have to go through the grudge or they have to just figure out their bearings and start getting traction. What is it, in your mind, or what was it like, as you're going through that experience, how did you keep yourself going through that first year? Because relatively, maybe a year's a short time, but for a lot of people, to put that amount of energy and, essentially to believe in it enough that, even at the beginning, you wasn't really gaining traction, how did you work through that?

Finn McKenty:
Well, it's not my first rodeo at starting anything. I mean, I've started a lot of things. I've taken more than one business from close to $0 in revenue to over $1 million in revenue, so I mean, I've done this a few times and I understand that this is a thing. So I just said, "Well, I'm determined that this is going to work. I know that it's only a matter of time until it does, whether that's six months or a year or three years, it's going to take as long as it takes."

Finn McKenty:
But I think anybody that sets their mind out to become successful at anything can do it. That is just a mathematical fact. Now, we may not all be able to be the number one in the world at the thing, right? I mean, we can't all be LeBron. We can't all be the number one. We can't all be PewDiePie, but you can be successful in one way or another, for sure. There's no question about that. I think, to me, the key to it is understanding and managing your own psychology. There's a lot of people I think who have this false dichotomy in their mind that, if you're not number one, you suck. That if you're not selling millions of albums or getting millions and millions of views on every video, that you're a failure and you suck. But that's a false dichotomy.

Finn McKenty:
Creative people tend to be prone to distorted thinking. You can look up, if any of this sounds familiar, do a Google search for CBT distorted thinking patterns, and you'll probably see a lot of things that you recognize, one of which is black and white thinking. They decide they're either one of the other. I'm either the best or I suck. I'm prone to a lot of that stuff too, I was 38 or something when I started doing YouTube, so I have the benefit of maybe working through a lot of that stuff that, if I had started when I was 19 or whatever, maybe I wouldn't have. Controlling your own psychology, I think, is the hardest part of the whole thing. Getting better at your craft of course is difficult and important. But I think, for most creative people, that part comes easier than the mental side of it.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That's so true. Yeah, it seems like it's a lot easier to just put things into like a black or white category, but the truth is that hardly anything is just completely black and white. There is the middle area. And to speak to your point too, about having these expectations where it's like either you're a household name and you're successful and you're making millions of dollars, have millions of streams, or like you're a failure, it seems like, especially in the music industry, that's a prevalent, maybe it's carried over from the past with the music industry where it was like a lottery ticket. It was either you got a record label and you were successful, or none at all.

Finn McKenty:
Even then, I mean, if you go look up any major label that you want, take your pick, and then go look up their roster of artists. They will have hundreds of artists on their roster and you have not heard of 95% of them.

Michael Walker:
Right, absolutely. It's interesting too. I mean, with our business, we work primarily with independent artists, right? The truth of the matter, as it is right now, is that if you want to be like LeBron James, or you want to be at that level, right now, major record labels with the infrastructure they have, for the most part, there might be very few, rare exceptions, but like you're saying, you don't necessarily... We have artists who have six figure, and even seven figure music careers, and they're independent, but-

Finn McKenty:
I know tons and tons and tons, dozens of independent artists and creators making six figures. Tons of them. I'm not going to say it's easy, but it's not rare.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely.

Finn McKenty:
At all.

Michael Walker:
Right. Absolutely. To your point, it seems like, just in general, with my parents-in-law or with other people when I'm talking, if I mention the name of an artist and they don't recognize it, there's almost this idea that, "Oh, they must not be successful because I haven't heard their name," which is so silly when you think about it.

Finn McKenty:
Well, take my friends in Periphery, which, if you're into metal, you may know their name, but most people don't know their name. Well, they're making enough, they have Ferraris.

Michael Walker:
That's the goal too.

Finn McKenty:
I want to say they have, last I looked, maybe 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify or something, which is solid, but that's not amazing. But what they are is incredibly smart at working with the super dedicated audience that they do have, which is the same for any creator, same for any business. I think it's very tempting to get lost in the sauce of big numbers and think that you have to have big numbers to have a great life and you don't. That's not true. Remember, the goal is to have a great life that you enjoy and do things that makes you happy, not run up some number in a spreadsheet. There are lots and lots and lots of people who you have never heard of that have an awesome life.

Finn McKenty:
One of the things that creators do is accentuate the negative and eliminate the positive. This is a very common thing with creative people. So, if you notice those thoughts creeping up, the devil on your shoulder telling you that maybe this thing isn't so good and focusing on the negative, you got to shut that down. Don't worry about the big numbers. Worry about, do you have a life that you enjoy? And by the way, you could have the big numbers and have a miserable life. These things have very little to do with each other.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Absolutely.

Finn McKenty:
Focus on working with the audience you do have and be thoughtful about monetization. This is the thing, again, I know that creative people tend to not like numbers, but the reason why the guys in Periphery have a lot of money is because they do think about numbers. So think about that. Are you familiar with 1000 True Fans?

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Right.

Finn McKenty:
Do you know about that book or essay?

Michael Walker:
I haven't read the book, but I'm definitely familiar with the concept, 1000 True Fans, $100 a year.

Finn McKenty:
Exactly. Exactly. So you think about that, if you have a thousand people who will give you $100 a year for various things, that's a £100,000 a year. I think, pretty much anybody, would be happy to make $100,000 a year doing what they love, right. If that's not enough for you, then it's probably something you need to work on, because that's a lot of money. I mean, unless you live in San Jose or something, that should be fine, and if you do live in San Jose, then you might want to move.

Finn McKenty:
Yeah. I mean, you got to get into the weeds of monetization. You have to, rather than worry about the big number at the top, of when you log into Spotify, what is the number? When you log into YouTube, how many subscribers do you have? Rather than worry about those big abstract numbers, get into the weeds of it and worry about, "Well, what can I do with what I have today?" That's my advice.

Michael Walker:
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Michael Walker:
Yeah. That's so good because, it seems like it is so easy to get disconnected from what's really important right now, which, if your goal is to have a million streams or hundreds of millions of streams, then it doesn't just happen overnight, where you go from here-

Finn McKenty:
Well, and also, why is your goal to get millions of streams? Or, is it your goal to have a life that you enjoy, so start with your goal and work backwards from that. So for most, I can't speak for everyone, but for most creative people, they don't really care about getting rich. They just want to have a reasonably comfortable life, so start there. Let's say that that means you take home six grand a month after taxes or whatever. I'm just making that number up, but let's just say, it's that. Well, start from there. Do you need millions of streams for that? Maybe. Or maybe it's merch, maybe it's Patreon, maybe it's whatever. There's all these different ways to monetize, but start with a goal and then break it down from there. I think you'll find that if you want to take home six grand a month after taxes, let's say that's nine grand a month before taxes, it's actually not, I'm not going to say it's easy to make nine grand a month off your art, but that's pretty attainable.

Michael Walker:
A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely.

Finn McKenty:
And you don't need millions of fans for it.

Michael Walker:
Right. Right. Well, one thing I would love to talk with you about, because it seems like, already just based on our conversation, it seems like you're rooted in understanding the value of enjoying life and appreciating things as they are and accepting things as they are and how that can sometimes be in contradiction with having a big goal to be the number one in the world. To have X amount of streams, right? This is a topic that really fascinates me is the intersection between goal setting and achievement and fulfillment. Yeah, because they don't always go hand in hand, like you're talking about. You can be super rich, but absolutely miserable.

Finn McKenty:
Sure.

Michael Walker:
And what's the point? But at the same time, I also feel like-

Finn McKenty:
I mean, ask yourself this, think about big celebrities, people like that. Do they seem like happy people to you?

Michael Walker:
Depends on the person, but a lot of times not really.

Finn McKenty:
Broadly speaking, who seems happier? The average middle class parent that you might run into at Publix in Orlando or the celebrities that you see in the headlines.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That's interesting. No, that's a really good point. Yeah, maybe it's... What do you think that it is about... Do you think it's fame in and of itself? Having more of an ego around that or it's just harder to navigate? What is it that you think leads to that?

Finn McKenty:
I think that people who seek fame are broken people who are trying to fill a hole inside themselves. There's a hole inside themselves, for whatever reason, childhood trauma, whatever it is, and they're trying to fill that hole with the validation of strangers. The validation of strangers, the attention of strangers, has never made anybody happy in the long term. It makes you happy for two seconds, but it has never once made anybody happy beyond that.

Finn McKenty:
Money also doesn't make people happy. A lack of money sucks. That makes your life worse. If you're worrying about paying for your kids diapers or whatever, that sucks, but beyond that... I'm not rich by any means, but I have more money than I ever thought I would, and if I had another $1 million right now, it wouldn't change my life one bit. It would make zero difference, other than I'd be like, "Oh, okay, cool. I could go buy something stupid if I want to." But buying dumb stuff doesn't make you happy and fame doesn't make you happy either.

Finn McKenty:
I think a lot of creative people, it's not a secret that a lot of creative people are dysfunctional and have some things they need to work on, in terms of their mental health, stuff like that. That's not a secret. I don't think anybody would disagree with that. So when it comes to setting goals, I think it's important to keep that in mind, and remember the goal is to be happy, and it's very easy to keep chasing the dragon of "Oh if only I had this, then I'll be happy." Well guess what? When you get that thing, it's onto the next thing. I've said that to myself many times before in my life or my career, "Oh, once I make this much money or have this many followers, oh, then I'll be good."

Finn McKenty:
Guess what? You get there, and for, I don't know, an hour, you're like, "Fuck, this is cool." Then it's like, "Well back to the way things we were before," which not to say that's bad, but the idea that once you make it to the top of the mountain, you'll be happy, fiction. There is no top of the mountain. I think it's very important to ask yourself, "Do you need this, or do you want it? Or are you really chasing a false goal that's just based on a story you told yourself that may or may not have any basis in reality where reality means things that will actually make you happy."

Finn McKenty:
I don't know if that answers your question, but I think that's really important. You want to go on tour, you're like, "Wow. If only we could open for this band," and then what? I mean, by all means, chase that goal. But if you think that once you attain that goal, that suddenly, you're going to feel different, you-

Michael Walker:
This is some good stuff, man. This is really cutting to the root, right. When you're talking about there's the mountain, the first thought that popped in my head was the Miley Cyrus song... (singing).

Finn McKenty:
It's true. It's true.

Michael Walker:
It is true. No. And that idea, I think it's so important, what you're talking about, because how often does it happen that it's like a rat, or might not recognize that you're entire life, and at the end of your life, you're like, "Man, I always was trying to get somewhere else than where I am right now."

Finn McKenty:
Yep, exactly. Exactly, and at the same time, you do you do want to challenge yourself to make the most of life, but remember, if you're always living in the future and chasing after that next thing on the hedonic treadmill, that's no way to live. I mean, think about, to put things in the corporate world, how many executives make it to director or something like that, but they realize that, now their kid's about to go to college and they missed their kids' whole childhood, and they barely know them and their family life is falling apart, and they've let their physical health deteriorate, and they're like, "Wow, I'm 49 years old and I'm a director at this company and I've got all this money in the bank, but so what?"

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Finn McKenty:
"My marriage is falling apart. I don't give a shit how much money you have in the bank," versus how many parents are there, who maybe don't have a lot of money and they get a sweat bills here and there, but they get to spend time with their family every day and they wouldn't trade that for the world.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, this stuff is so fundamental in what you're speaking to. I think that probably a lot of people listening to this right now, and myself included, have this innate desire... I think probably part of it's just being human, like this innate desire to be loved and approved of and appreciated, and especially artists and musicians. We feel like we need to be appreciated and approved and be seen and heard for our artwork. And there's that feeling of not enoughness. Not enough.

Michael Walker:
How do we, I don't know if overcomes the right word, but how do we actually take things into perspective? And if we are on that wagon, where we feel like we're not... We're comparing ourselves to other people who are ahead of us and we just have this innate sense, and maybe we don't even fully understand where it's coming from. To your point, a lot of it's actually probably coming from some unresolved trauma or things that have happened. So where do we go to actually start to deal with that stuff, what's important, so that we don't feel like we have to seek approval from outside of ourselves?

Finn McKenty:
Well, I think everybody should spend conscious daily effort asking themselves those questions. The ones you just asked are different for everybody. There's no one answer for that, but whatever you have going on with yourself, spend time every day consciously working on that. I mean, my mom was good. My mom had a horrible, horrible childhood. Both her parents died before she was 14 and blah, blah, blah, all kinds of horrible things happened to her and she was a troubled person. But every single day, I remember, she went to AA, she was an alcoholic, and she went to AA and she went to several different 12 step groups, couple times a week. Every day, she had this meditation routine and spent hours on this stuff, every single and she was never able to overcome her demons, which I think is understandable given what happened to her, but she made a lot of progress, and that really stuck with me, throughout my whole life.

Finn McKenty:
I would recommend everybody do some version of that. Maybe you don't need to spend hours on it every day, because you might not be as troubled as my mom was. But whatever version, maybe you need to spend 15 minutes on it today, maybe it's an hour a day, whatever. But you're not going to be happy with any achievement from your art, unless you resolve that stuff. So it is pointless, does not matter, you could sell 1,000,001 albums. You could have a billion fans all over the world. If you don't resolve that stuff, you will not be happy. Period. End of question. No matter what. Every celebrity, every high achieving person in business is proof of this, and find one single person who has achieved success in life who will tell you that money or fame makes them happy. You can't find them.

Finn McKenty:
All I do is listen to business podcasts and interviews and stuff. Zero people with money will tell you that money makes you happy. Zero. The only people who think that money makes you happy are people who don't have money, and I understand why, because I used to think that too. It's not true. I'm not famous, but I get millions of people a month watching my videos, which is a lot. I appreciate it and I'm grateful for it, but the attention of strangers doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is spending time with my wife and knowing that we have a good marriage and starting a family with her. That's what makes me happy.

Finn McKenty:
I know this seems like it's not relevant to music, and especially if you're in your twenties or something, this might just sound like something your parents would tell you, but it's important stuff like this. Think about it this way, success in anything is a combination of two things, I borrowed this from my friend, Ram, if he happens to hear this, mindset and skillset. If you do not have the right mindset, you will never attain the right skillset. And if by some miracle you do luck your... I shouldn't say luck, but end up becoming successful, if you don't have the right mindset, it's not going to mean anything to you. I think of it as a foundation, the mindset is a foundation. The skillset comes afterward. If you have the right mindset, you will find the right skillset.

Finn McKenty:
You got to work on the mindset stuff, again, especially... No creative person is going to argue with the idea that creative people tend to be dysfunctional and have stuff they need to work on, so you got to work on that stuff just as much as you work on your music. By the way, these two things will go hand in hand. This will inform your art. It will make your art better. The idea that all great art comes from suffering, I think there is some truth to that, but do you want to suffer your whole life? I don't think you do.

Finn McKenty:
I think a lot of people are afraid to work on these things because they're afraid that if they... It's true to some extent, how many people get sober and then put out their sober album and it sucks? It's tough. Unfortunately it's true. But would you rather be rich and miserable or maybe have a little bit less money and be happy? The goal is to be happy. It's not to attain fame or money, so how do you balance those things? I don't know that I have the answer to that, but I think it's important to always remember the goal. The goal is not to log into Spotify and see some fucking number on your phone. That's a cool dopamine hit for two seconds, but it's not going to give you a happy life.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That's some really good stuff because again, it's something, it's on the surface, it's easier to talk about the things that are apparent, like the numbers and because of that drive, because of that feeling of not enoughness. We live in a society that almost encourages that feeling of not enoughness, because that's, essentially, a sales mechanism is to increase the not enoughness so that you have more motivation or drive to just resolve that.

Finn McKenty:
Buy stuff.

Michael Walker:
Buy more stuff.

Finn McKenty:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
But you're not enough, be more you by buying our shoe product. So it is an interesting one too. Just in terms of, obviously there is something about when you're really plugged into the flow and you are, like you mentioned, challenging yourself. You're stretching yourself or you're growing, and I would love to hear you talk a little bit about finding that sweet spot where... Because I also don't think that having goals or going after them necessarily means that you're not enjoying your life, right?

Finn McKenty:
Right.

Michael Walker:
But there's that sweet spot, so how do we fall into that rhythm?

Finn McKenty:
Well, for me, my motivation in anything I do is providing a happy life for my wife and our family. That's my goal. And that really, really helps me, in those moments where, I get discouraged because I put out a video that either people don't like or nobody cares about, which I would say putting out something that people don't care about is almost worse than putting out something that people don't like. Screaming into the void, to me, that's the most awful feeling as a creator. You put something out and you get four likes on it and you're like, "Well, that sucked. That didn't feel good," and that's, to your question earlier, that's how it was for the first year of my channel. I was getting 50 views on a video or something like that.

Finn McKenty:
So for me, the motivation is, "Why am I doing all of this? It's to provide for us and to set us up for the future and just to keep on doing what we're doing." We have a nice life now. Both of us grew up on welfare. My wife's family, they're refugees from Vietnam. I grew up single alcoholic mom on welfare, similar way, and that's the motivation to me, is keep providing. Which is a more fulfilling driver to me than validation. Yeah, if people like my videos, that's cool and I appreciate that, but what really matters to me at the end of the day is providing a decent life for my wife and our family.

Michael Walker:
That's some good stuff. Yeah. That idea of making your goal really about being able to provide. It seems like, and obviously it's going to be different for different people, and I think for men a lot... I know for me, when I got married and I found out that I was going to be a dad, there was this deep sense of needing or feeling like I needed to figure out how to provide for them. I assume that's something that's not just a male thing, as mothers, or maybe it's just a human thing, is a sense of wanting to contribute or the sense of providing value.

Michael Walker:
It seems like that's one common theme and my mentors and some of the most successful people that I know is that their focus is what you're describing, as providing value in some sort. Providing. And if you think about the nature of life itself, and the nature of nature, like trees, they grow and they provide fruits. They bear fruits and they blossom and they grow and they provide. So I think that there's something really there as humans, if we really lean into that. How can I provide the most value? That seems like that's a great way to really plug into the flow.

Finn McKenty:
Yeah. It's not fashionable these days to talk about stuff like that. I don't believe that gender roles are cast into stone or anything like that, but I have to think that biology plays a role. I mean, there's a reason that like... I can't speak to how women do or don't feel, but there's a reason why for hundreds of thousands of years, men have been in the provider role and have talked about that. That doesn't mean they have to be, or they always should be, none of this is cast in stone. But, I do think that there is some biology there. I don't know, 50,000 years ago, the men went out and killed the woolly mammoth and brought it back to the cave where the women cooked it and fed the family and both of those are valuable roles. Equally valuable. If some other cave family wants to do it the other way, good for them, but typically that's the way it works.

Finn McKenty:
This is a whole other topic, but I think a lot of people in creative fields really fight that stuff. They fight biology and they fight the conventional wisdom, and my opinion is that, the less you fight that and the more... Or should I say, how about this? How about this? If you spent your whole life fighting it, if you're happy, cool. Keep doing what you're doing, but if you're not happy with where you're at, then I would say, and I was very unhappy with where my life was for quite a while, and what I have found is that, in those moments, is time to question everything.

Finn McKenty:
Ironically the times when I was super unhappy, I thought I knew it all, but I said, "I am miserable. My life is not good. Clearly, I don't know it all. So I'm just going to question all the assumptions. I'm just going to try anything," and, and I asked everybody. I mean, some of the best advice I ever got was from the doorman at the building I used to work at, who used to be homeless and a crack addict and all this stuff, and I was having trouble getting along with people at work. I was like, "I don't know why, but I feel like this guy might..." He was a very wise guy. He had clearly learned from these experiences. And I said, "I don't know why, but I think Zach," is his name, "I don't know. Maybe he'll have something to tell me about this." So I said, "Hey, here's what's going on? Do you have any advice?"

Finn McKenty:
And he was like, "Yeah, you just got to fake it till you make it. Pretend that you get along with these people. Put on a face of being the person that they want to be around, and then eventually, it'll become true." He was right and it changed my life. So anytime I've been in these situations, I've looked to people who have achieved what I wanted to achieve, which is to be happy, and I ask their advice. And their advice may not work for me, maybe it will, whatever, but just try it.

Finn McKenty:
Artists can be very stubborn people, they think they know everything about everything, which is ironic, because they're 23 year olds playing to 17 people at an open mic. It's like, "Really, you know it all? You sure about that?" And, "Hey, maybe you do know it all. Maybe you're going to be the next Kid Laroi or whatever in two years, and you'll have the last laugh on all of us," but question it all.

Finn McKenty:
I think there's so much just dogmatic, dysfunctional thinking in the creative world, that it's like the creative world is almost anti-family, it's anti success. If you say anything sincere or kind or positive, they call it corny. There's just so much of this dysfunctional, negative thinking and you got to throw all that stuff out, because that's all bullshit. All of it is bullshit, from negative, unhappy people, who put out their negative, unhappy energy into the world because they want everyone else to be as miserable as they are because misery loves company. That's just a fact. If you're happy with where you're at, by all means, keep doing what you're doing, but if you're not happy, start just testing some of these assumptions, and in particular, start questioning a lot of this negative dogma that you hear in the creative world. I don't know if that's answered your question, but that's the core of all this. It's all about the story you tell yourself, because I don't know who said this, but whether you say you can do it or you can't, it's true.

Michael Walker:
I think it's been attributed to Henry Ford, but maybe it wasn't actually him that said it.

Finn McKenty:
Who knows?

Michael Walker:
But it's a great quote.

Finn McKenty:
But it's true.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, it's so true. Yeah, there's something so powerful in what you're describing right now, just from a mindset point of view of asking questions versus making a statement. A statement, it's a very closed off thing, and ultimately, it seems like every statement, there's a point where it's not true. It's like anything. What you're describing of having the shift in mindset, where rather than a feeling like you need to know everything, you need to have the answer for everything and you need to be right, and to be perfect, actually, just flipping it around and saying, "I don't know anything for sure, and I'm willing to test out and just see what happens and I'm willing to learn."

Michael Walker:
That just seems like a much more open way to approach the world too, because if you do it the other way, you have to really guard the way that you're showing up, and in this appearance you have to really have this false front that you're putting on, that you're always right, that if something appears-

Finn McKenty:
Ego. Yeah, exactly. It's all bullshit. Look, I've been doing the YouTube thing for a while. I think I have maybe 50 million views or something now. I am wrong all the time. If there's any asset that I have, it's that I know that, and I listen to people and I try their ideas, so I have a discord and I have a video suggestions channel in there. Sometimes people give me ideas that I'm like, "I don't think this will work, but you know what? I'm going to try it." And I would say more often than not, they're right. More often than not, that video that I thought wasn't going to work, ends up doing pretty well. I'm like, "Well, just goes to show. I don't know anything about what I do."

Michael Walker:
And that's even first from a standpoint of asking a question versus, making a statement. When you ask a question, something opens up. Right. And I feel like there's a lot more truth in asking a question, at least asking the right question than there is from making a statement, which-

Finn McKenty:
And actually listening to the answer, right? Because, are you asking the question just because you want to have the appearance of being humble and thoughtful, or are you actually going to listen to what you hear?

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That's good. Yeah. Asking the right question and then actually having a state of presence where you're actually paying attention to what was the answer and learning from it.

Finn McKenty:
How many times has someone asked your advice on something and you take the time to give them your advice, and they're like, "Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm just going to do it my way anyway." You're like, "Well, all right. Then why did you ask me? Just do what you want to do. I don't care." I call those people ask holes. You don't want to be one of those people. If you're going to ask your question of somebody, it doesn't mean you have to do what they say, but at least sincerely listen and consider what they're telling you.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. And to your point too, it sounds like your approach has really been to test things out and to try them out. Even if on the surface, you're like, "I don't fully understand this," or, "I don't think it's going to work," you have the willingness to listen and then to actually just try it out and see what happens. That trial and error seems like that's really where the magic happens, where the learning happens.

Finn McKenty:
Yeah. I don't know if your experience matches this, but from talking to other creators and to all the musicians I know, I would say there's almost zero correlation between the things that you think are going to be successful and the ones that actually are successful. So many videos or songs or whatever, the thing you put out, the one where you're like, "Oh man, I love this one. I slaved away on it. This is my best stuff ever. People are going to love this." You put it out, and it's like... Then the thing that you just crap out in 15 minutes that you're, pretty sure, is garbage, but you're like, "Whatever. I got to put something out." People love it. That's the one that blows up.

Finn McKenty:
This happens so many times. The point is, I think it's very, very, very hard to have objectivity about what we do as creators. There's no way that you can see your work the way the world sees it. You should always try, but it's impossible, right? Because it's like the fish doesn't know that it's in the fishbowl. It can't see outside the fishbowl, right? It's impossible. So I know that and I... I mean, I think I know a little something, but even that I'm not so sure because I'm wrong so many times that I don't even know.

Finn McKenty:
So yeah. Just got to be humble and test things. Test it in a smart way. Don't bet your house on a random idea, but make small bets, asymmetric risk profiles, if anybody is familiar with the world of finance, every time you put something out, every at bat you have a chance to hit a home run. Maybe you will. Maybe you won't, but just the more times you step up to the bat, the more likely you're going to win. What that means for musicians specifically, there's so many people with a hard drive sitting full of dozens and dozens of unfinished songs. As long as that song is just sitting on your hard drive, not out there in the world, you have no benefit from. I mean, you learn something from writing it, which there is benefit to that, but if your goal is to grow your audience, you got to release it. You got to ship stuff.

Finn McKenty:
Be prolific, especially now, in a TikTok world where people's attention spans are literally three seconds. I'm not even exaggerating, they're literally three seconds. You got to be prolific. You got to be putting out content, be putting out music a lot, so if anybody is listening to this right now, tugging at their collar, like, "Oh, I'm the guy with the hard drive full of unfinished songs," you got to put that stuff out. The one that you're sure, "Oh, this stuff is terrible. It's not finished. Nobody's going to like it." I don't know, you might be surprised.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That's such good advice, because I feel like, as creators, a lot of times we lean on the other end of the spectrum where, because of the fear of putting it out and being worried about how it comes across and especially, if we're starting out and it's that first year, like you're talking about, where you don't have a giant audience and like, "When I put this out, what if people don't like it or nothing really happens, it's an empty void?" It sounds like what you're saying is that, that's a part of it and you never know. You really do not know which of your songs is really going to land and connect with people until you just put it out, so don't hold it all in, just be prolific, keep putting it out. And then it's inevitable that it's going to start gaining traction and that you can get to a point where, again, maybe you're not LeBron James or the number one in the entire world. Maybe you are, if you're number one in the entire world, but only one person.

Finn McKenty:
I'd be thrilled to be... I always say, "If I played football, my goal would be to be the third backup kicker," because I'm still making league minimum, which is whatever, half a million dollars a year, and playing maybe twice a year, and nobody knows who you are when you go to the mall. That would be the dream.

Michael Walker:
That would be nice. Yeah, you get some of the benefits of it without having the cons of that come with fame sometimes.

Finn McKenty:
Yeah, and getting your body destroyed by playing football every week.

Michael Walker:
Right.

Finn McKenty:
An important thing to remember also is that, the self doubt and stuff is probably never going to go away. That's part of being a creator. I still think every video I put out is garbage. Every single one, I'm like, "This is terrible. This is crap. I hate this video. It sucks. Every single one." And I put out three or four videos a week and I think they're all garbage. From talking to people I know, I don't remember, you know the band...

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Finn McKenty:
Yeah, so my friend managed them for whatever, 20 years, and he said that even at their peak, there were times when he'd have to convince Brandon to go out on stage. Brandon would be backstage like, "Oh no, I can't do it. I'm too scared. I can't do it. Look at all those people out there. I can't do this," and he'd be like, "Brandon, they're here to see you. You got to do this." So multi-platinum selling band with tens of thousands of people out there in the crowd, screaming their name to see him, and even then, he's got stage fright, like it's his first open mic. These things are part of being a creator, not for everyone, but for a lot of people, so you just got to learn how to feel the fear and just push through it and do it anyway.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. That's so good. It does seem like that's something that, even the most successful people can speak to, and be like, "Yeah." It does seem like it gets easier over time to face the fear and do it anyways, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the fear is going away. It just gets easier, because you've done it a bunch, you're like, "Oh yeah, this is normal. I always feel like this before I do it, and then I always come off afterwards and I feel great."

Michael Walker:
We called that post show buzz, was after the show.

Finn McKenty:
Yes.

Michael Walker:
You'd come off and you just have that feeling. Because right beforehand, you always have the anxiety and the tension or the nerves or the excitement or whatever you want to call it. And like you're saying, it doesn't go away, but afterwards you come off stage, you're like-

Finn McKenty:
On top of the world.

Michael Walker:
You got the buzz. Yeah.

Finn McKenty:
Yeah.

Michael Walker:
Good stuff. One thing I wanted to dive a little deeper with you. I love conversations like this because I think it is certainly a little bit more philosophical and we're talking about some of these ideas, but this is really the root of what's important, because everything else, again, you have all this success-

Finn McKenty:
You figure out the rest.

Michael Walker:
Absolutely.

Finn McKenty:
If you get this stuff right, you'll figure out the rest of this stuff.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. Absolutely. Yeah, along those lines, when we were talking about questions, questions and answers and how important it is to have the right mindset of being a learner or being someone who's willing to ask questions, willing to experiment and just be curious. Be curious, rather than assuming something is the way that you think it is, just having the ability to be curious about it and be like, "Well maybe, what if?" So if it's so important to ask questions and ask good questions, what do you think are some of the most important questions that we should be asking ourselves maybe on a daily basis or yearly or regularly when we're doing that inner work and that reflection to be able to go deep into this stuff?

Finn McKenty:
Well, I would ask, to me, fundamentally, the question is, what really truly makes me happy, and I would always ask, more than anything else, what are the things that I currently believe? What are the stories I'm telling myself and which one of those might be false? Because we're all our worst enemy and biggest obstacle, right?

Finn McKenty:
Think about this. Here's another question to ask yourself. What is actually standing between you and the thing you want? For real. What are the actual, tangible obstacles? For most things, the answer is, "Well, nothing, other than a bunch of work and fear, for most things." Now, if you wanted to start SpaceX, all right, you might think, "Oh, well I need a bunch of money to do this." All right. If you need, let's say $50,000 to start this business you want, okay, well that might seem like an insurmountably large amount of money to you, but there's lots of people out there who will write $50,000 checks. How do you find those people and how are you going to pitch them? Well, the answer is you just go research them and then you just hit them up, email, LinkedIn, phone calls, whatever, harass them until eventually someone says yes.

Finn McKenty:
So again, and the answer, the two biggest things there, are hard work and fear. Fear of them saying no, which if you've ever done sales, well over 90% of people tell you to fuck off or ignore you. You're going to hear no a lot. But eventually someone's going to say yes, but there's some fear of rejection there and it's a lot of work to do all that. But that's it, most of the time. So just ask yourself, "What is really standing between me and the thing that I want?"

Finn McKenty:
Then also ask, if I have that thing, is it actually going to make me happy? What is the life that I want that will really truly make me happy, and how do I get there? Those are the questions to me, and then underneath that, there's a million smaller questions, but the questions about how to achieve a thing, to a lot of people, it seems like those are the big questions. You think that there's some secret knowledge in some book or podcast or whatever that's going to like, "Oh, once I know this thing, the doors to success are going to open and I'm going to be there."

Finn McKenty:
I mean, there's a few little things like that, a few little aha moments you're going to have, but primarily, it's just the willingness to persist and deal with rejection is most of it. I would encourage people to focus on those questions about managing your own psychology. What are the things I believe? What are the stories that I'm telling myself and which of those might be false?

Michael Walker:
That's so good. Yeah. I think even just the fact that you have the awareness to be able to ask, "What are the stories that I'm telling myself that might be false?" Is one of the first main steps of awareness, because usually those stories, we just believe them, we don't even think twice about them. We assume that they're real, but then, when you ask a question like that, it's like, "Oh wait, maybe..."

Finn McKenty:
I'll give you an example of one that I tell myself all the time. The story that I tell myself all the time is that my channel can't be bigger than a certain size because there aren't that many people that care about the stuff that I talk about, and if I try to talk about something else, then my audience won't like it, and so therefore, I'm painted into a corner of, my channel can only be this big. Well, I mean, even just me telling you that right now, and even you not knowing that much about my channel, you know that I just told you three things that aren't true, or they don't have to be true, right? But I'm always telling myself that, and then there's the angel and the devil on my shoulder, the devil's telling me this stuff and the angel is like, "I don't know about that. I think you might be lying to yourself."

Michael Walker:
Absolutely. Yeah, and just having the awareness to know that, the way that you just presented that, you have the awareness to see those thoughts and not necessarily believe in them completely. Because we all have stories that we're telling ourselves about who we are and how the world works, but it seems like the foundation of this mindset you're talking about this, this question asking and the curiosity is really looking at the thoughts as they're happening, which they're going to keep happening, but having the awareness to see, okay, this is what my thoughts are saying, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. It's just what this devil on my shoulder is telling me.

Finn McKenty:
Yep. I mean, what if Dave Grohl told himself, "Oh, I can't sing. Nobody will ever want... I could never be the front man of a band. I should just play drums and just be content to be in the background the whole time." I have no idea if he told himself that or not, but what if he did?

Michael Walker:
My son Xander probably wouldn't listen to The Pretender three times a day and-

Finn McKenty:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
... run around and jump off the couches.

Finn McKenty:
Exactly.

Michael Walker:
Love it. Yeah. Good stuff, man.

Finn McKenty:
Or people tell themselves, "My music is too weird, nobody will ever like this because it's too strange." Well, again, I know lots of people... I mean, I just did a video today about this band called Polyphia that plays instrumental progressive metal stuff that's super weird. Their latest music video has over a million views in a day, playing super... I would've never believed that it was possible to get that much attention playing that kind of music, but look, they did it.

Michael Walker:
Hmm. That's awesome. Well, hey man, this has been a lot of fun. I mean, these are my favorite conversations to have, and it's really refreshing to talk about this, because I think that it's probably 90, 95% of what people tend to gravitate as we're talking about isn't necessarily focused on what really matters, which is really the stuff that we're talking about right now. So appreciate you, thank you for doing what you do and for being here right now, to be able to share this with our audience. For anyone who's here right now, who would love to learn more or dive deeper and check out your channel, where's the best place for them to go to learn more?

Finn McKenty:
Just go on YouTube and search for my name. Finn McKenty, F-I-N-N M-C-K-E-N#-T-Y. I have two channels. One is called The Punk Rock MBA. The other one is just my name, Finn McKenty. You can check out either one of them. Yeah, that'd probably the best place to start.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Yep. Like always we'll put all the links below in the description for easy access and yeah man, appreciate your time. This has been a lot of fun.

Finn McKenty:
All right. Thanks for having me.

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 the 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 on your social media tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take the music careers to the next level. It's time to be a modern musician now, and I look forward to on our next episode.