Bob James:
The one thing I've learned in all my years is every artist that's failed is nearly always through self-destruction, is nearly always through a limiting belief or them not believing, literally not believing in themselves and sabotaging their careers. I'm become a big fan of working with the subconscious, work with mind, and getting people into the right space where, actually, they enjoy the journey.

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:
All right. I'm excited to be here with Bob James. Bob has over 20 years of music industry experience and his artists that he managed have collectively sold over 60 million records which is a lot of records. He helped negotiate the first ever digital deal with Universal Records, and he's the founder and former CEO of Music House which was the UK's largest and most successful independent music promotions company. We were just geeking out a little bit backstage exchanging accents. I was doing a terrible version of my British accent. He did a much better American accent.

Bob James:
It was definitely you.

Michael Walker:
No, I'm not even going to subject anyone that's listening right now to the accent that I did, but my son likes it, Xander, he's only a few years old so he doesn't know better. But now Bob runs a company called Get Money From Music which specializes in helping really provide the mentorship and the coaching to help with a serious need for musicians, right? The reason that we became musicians for the most part probably wasn't because we were looking for the fastest, easiest way to make as much money as possible. It was probably more about really being heard and getting our artwork out in the world and being creative, doing what we love, but the biggest challenge for so many of us artists is really figuring out how do we take that artwork and monetize it and make it sustainable so we don't have to sacrifice the art by having to rely on other forms of income. Bob, thanks so much for taking the time to come on here today and to be able to talk more.

Bob James:
It's my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me. I just want to correct one thing. The 60 million figure also includes my clients I used to do promotion and marketing for, not just management. Otherwise, I'd probably have a far bigger house if I was on 20% of all of that. Just want to clarify that in case anybody's sort of thinking, "Hang on a second."

Michael Walker:
Okay, I appreciate the clarification.

Bob James:
 yeah, we did very well.

Michael Walker:
Okay. Totally makes sense. Awesome. Hey man, yeah, I know that when you had a chance to talk with Ari, our promotion and partner director of Modern Musician, he had written down a brief and some notes for things that we talk about today and core areas of expertise, and he had talked about really how important it is to be able to link the business side of things with having the right mindset and having the right vision, removing limiting beliefs, getting really clear on the bigger picture with the artist journey. That stuff is what I geek at, but I think that's so foundational and everything else's built around it. I'm looking forward to talking more about that, and just for getting started, for anyone here who this is their first time connecting with you or meeting you, could you share a little bit about yourself and how you got started down this path?

Bob James:
Yeah, I'm a failed musician. I tried to play guitar, tried to play piano, saxophone, and I absolutely sucked. My voice broke and I couldn't sing, but I learned very quickly that I could make money by playing other people's music, and I became a DJ, and I was a DJ from 13 years old.

Bob James:
Then by chance, a friend of mine said, "Look, you're a successful DJ, you DJ all over the country, all the DJs, why don't you do club promotion?" I said, "Well, that sounds like fun," and had a go at it, put a list together of all the DJ contacts that I had, and the very first record that I worked was a record that every other promotion company turned down and he came and saw me, and he actually, the guy said to me, he said, "You're the last chance for this record that my son's made." I just felt just something, it's not the coolest record in the world, but it will connect with an audience without a doubt, and I actually played it out as a DJ that night, took it on, and that record went in at number one in the national charts in the UK, and that was a Jive Bunny, Swing the Mood which was my very first thing I promoted.

Bob James:
I started my career with a cartoon rabbit, but the thing was that led to a lot of other stuff. I ended up doing promotion for Simon Cowell, doing all of his pop acts, became a promotion consultant for Arista, ended up working on TLC, CrazySexyCool, Backstreet, it just went on and on, and then the company just grew and grew, but it all started through basically just a love of music and not being afraid to say yes. I think that was the key thing. Just having that belief in my abilities and just going, "Yeah, it's not life or death. I'm just going to go and do it. What's the worst thing that can happen? It doesn't work. Okay. But then I'll try again."

Bob James:
I think that's key to any musician and certainly in management, the one thing I've learned in all my years is every artist that's failed is nearly always through self-destruction. It's nearly always through a limiting belief or them not believing, literally not believing in themselves and sabotaging their careers. I'm become a big fan of working with the subconscious, working with mind, and getting people into the right space where, actually, they enjoy the journey.

Bob James:
It's an interesting thing, there was a study done by a guy called George Land and did it with young children, and he did it for Vanessa, and basically what happened was they found that 98% of children are creative. By the time you've been through the educational system, that goes down to 2% in adults are creative. So, the educational system knocks the creativity out of you and teaches you to become an employee because that's how most people work. What I say, they work for motivation. You do a month or a week of work and you get paid a check at the end of it, whereas creative people, musicians and people in the creative industries don't work on motivation. You don't write a song with a view of how much am I going to get paid, am I going to get $200 if I write this song today. You do it out of inspiration, and inspiration doesn't have a paycheck involved, but all creative people need to stop thinking about motivation, when am I going to get paid and start thinking about inspiration, and just expressing their creativity and have total belief.

Bob James:
It's a bit like why entrepreneurs are inspired to change the world. They have a total belief in what they are doing, and they have gratitude because they believe it's already happened. It's just a question of when the money lands in their account, but that's already happened. My job really now is to get musicians to that point where, one, they're inspired to be totally authentic. Rather than chasing the dollar, they chase their arts, they chase their creativity. Secondly, they believe in it, totally believe in it, and won't let anybody change their opinion. No matter if the record label comes up and says, "Oh, we need to put beats under this or we need to remix it." If you don't feel it, stick with your guns.

Bob James:
And then that's the most difficult one is having gratitude which is that you totally believe you've already had that success. When you walk into a room or walk out on stage, you are that successful person, and that's how I started Music House. I actually, when I first started my company, I had a switchboard with four lines. This is no word of a lie, four lines, and it was just me in my spare room in a flat, and I had different company names and different names of the people that run them on post-it notes round, and when people called up through adverts or whatever, I answered it, and was like, "Music House." And they said, "Can I speak to blah, blah?" I say, "Yeah, hang on a second. I'll just put you through" and I put mute on, counted to 10, and then put on a different voice. I was that whole company and I called it Music House because it sounded big, and that's exactly what that company turned out to be with 36 staff, multimillion pound turnover, and we had all those divisions and we had different people all working for those divisions.

Bob James:
But I know, I had it printed on my cards, the UK's number one promotion company, and I used to turn up at networking events. I'd say, "It's Bob James from the Music House." They'd go, "Oh, sorry. You're not on the list." I said, "Look, take my card. It says the UK's number one promotion company. I'm meant to be in there. If you want to go and explain that to your supervisor why you turned me down from coming into the networking area, then feel free to do it." He said, "Oh no, mate, you go in, you go in and I'll sort it out later," And that's how it started. You get in there, you network, you meet people, you develop contacts, but you believe that you're great, and that's how things start. That's the ethos of an entrepreneur and what artists need to get in their heads.

Michael Walker:
Man, thanks for sharing that. That's awesome, and definitely a great example of how important the right mindset and belief, having that gratitude even before the thing happens. Yeah, I think that what you're speaking to is one of the biggest challenges for most creatives, and I think all of us as humans go through the process of self-doubt sometimes, especially if we're doing something new, where we don't really have a reason to feel confident. We've never done the thing. We've never been successful with it. Especially when it comes to music and our creativity, it's putting ourselves out there and there's this feeling of vulnerability that kind of comes with that. And so, how does someone prime themselves to be able to cultivate that level of belief in themselves and in their vision early on if they're struggling with that self-doubt, kind of wondering, "Am I good enough? Can I really do this?" What are some kind of practices or how do they overcome that initial self-doubt?

Bob James:
I think the first thing to do is I call it artist DNA, and this is how I start with all my clients. I always literally get them start at the very beginning which is build the foundation. You never build a house until you've laid a solid foundation. Otherwise, it's going to collapse. The first thing I'll do with every artist and work with them is find out who they really are as far as their authentic self is concerned. Now, quite often, artists, and this is the reason they have self-doubt and sometimes they flounder a little bit is they set them up to be something that they think they should be because that is what will make them successful, whereas what you really need to do is to go even deeper and find the authentic reason why you actually want to be an artist.

Bob James:
Michael, if I was to start with you, for instance, and I said to you, "Okay, so why do you want to be a singer?" And you may answer, "Because I love performing." "Why do you love performing?" "Because I enjoy the reaction from the crowd." "Why do you need that reaction from the crowd?" And you just keep going deeper and deeper. I call it treasure, and what you're doing is you keep digging and it's difficult and you've got to hunt around for it, but when you find your true, authentic, the reason you do this, you're feeling an emotion and you might cry, and I've had a lot of artists that I've managed have been in tears going, "Oh my god, I can't believe it. That really hurts." Right, now we're at the foundation. Now, we can build on who you are. Now we know where the songs are coming from.

Bob James:
If you think about energy, and emotion is energy in motion. What you're actually doing is every time you sing, you are sending out energy. It's sound waves. All right? It's a vibration. It's sound waves. It comes into the ears. It's electrical signal. It's all energy. But what you got to do, if you can tap that emotion and connect that to that energy, when people receive it, they connect to the emotion, and if you've ever been to a gig and you've got an authentic singer up on stage and you feel it, you can't explain it, but you feel that connection, you can't help but be drawn into that music and that art, and that's what I always tend to work on is you've go back to basics and you build your brand. You build everything based on an authentic and authenticity, all right, your authentic self. That's the core.

Michael Walker:
That's good stuff, man. Yeah, really cutting through, cutting down to the why, and keep drilling, drilling down to the point that, yeah, you find treasure. There's oil pouring out and it's in the form of emotion. Huh.

Bob James:
And it's always there. People always say, "Oh, how do I tap into my creativity?" Your creativity's always there. You just got to accept it's there, and not doubt it, and get rid of the blocks, and the blocks are, as you say, things like not believing in yourself, the imposter syndrome, but it's one of those things that sometimes it can be very simple. I teach at quite a lot of universities, and first thing I say to my students when I'm doing mentoring tutorials with them, I say, "The first thing you need to do is you've got to get your beliefs right because if you're saying to yourself, 'Oh yeah, I'm an okay singer. I'm not the best singer in the world,' that's exactly what you're going to be, not the best singer in the world. What you've got to do is say, 'I am authentic. I'm an artist. I am an expression of my creative self.'"

Bob James:
The I am affirmation is something that once you get that mindset going and you start not caring what other people think because it doesn't matter because whether I like your music or not has no bearing on your career whatsoever because for every artist, there is somebody out there that will connect to them. There is an audience for them. You just got to find that audience, and if somebody says, "Oh, I don't like it," that's their choice, but you make your own choice which is to do what you want to do, and if it's something that's authentic, you will love doing it. Therefore, it's not going to be a chore, and you're not really going to care what other people think because it's your art.

Bob James:
If you look at those successful musicians, and I've been lucky, I've worked and done promotions, and sometimes they walk into a room and as they walk in, people used to call it the X factor, they're stars, but they walked in the room totally knowing that they were their authentic self. They were going to do what they did, and they didn't care because they just were going to sing. They were going to perform. They were going to pass their music on, and if people didn't like it, that's their problem because I'm keeping doing what I do. That's the mindset. Too many people now are following, "Well, I need how many likes on Instagram and how many views have I had on TikTok and what record label's going to sign me," and they get so bogged down on the trappings around the outside that they forget the authenticity.

Bob James:
And then when an artist that comes in that's totally authentic and then blows up, everyone goes, "Oh my god, where did they come from?" But look at the stars. Look at the big people that have just broken through. Adele broke through because she was authentic, and what she wanted to do was to have her say. She'd gone through a breakup and she wanted her voice to be heard, and by god was it, and that's it. People always think it's really complicated, but it's not, and the thing is also what we do. Sorry if I ramble. I get really excited about this side of things.

Michael Walker:
Keep coming. That stuff is awesome. Yeah, I love it.

Bob James:
The thing that people have is you try and control the journey. Now, I used to call myself an artist manager. Now, my tagline now, people say, what do I do for a living, I say, "I'm a possibility creator," because what we do is we try and control something. We put something into this field of vision in front of us. I'm going to get a manager. I'm going to get a record label. I'm going to get a music publisher. I'm going to be successful. I'm going to do tours. Anything that falls outside of that, oh no, can't be distracted. Oh no, not going to look at that, and become fixated, but when you go onto that narrow focus, you're restricting possibility. If you open it up, there's more possibility.

Bob James:
Now, what if you were to go over to do something completely different? Say, I don't know, you were fixated on being this original artist, and someone said, "Look, can you come and sing in my wedding?" "Oh no, I don't do that. I don't do wedding singing. I'm an original artist." But what if the possibility that you went there and you did a performance, and at that particular wedding was the head of Universal Records was just sitting there as a guest and felt that connection, saw that amazing performance that you did, and went, "With the right songs, you could be amazing," and that could be your break. The key is you've got to open up possibilities. You've got to say yes to more things. You've got to do more things. You've got to be more places. You've got to go to networking events. You've got to literally put yourself out there to help create more possibility, and then you'll start changing.

Bob James:
But all the time you try and control everything, and I've had it before. People say, "Oh, I'm not going to pay a hundred dollars for that because what am I going to get back?" Well, okay, what about that possibility that a hundred dollars, you could get something that is going to actually change your life? And also the time thing. It's been three years and I'm not a star yet. Okay. So if I said to you, "Okay, Michael, in four years' time, you're going to sell a million records," would you give up after three? No, because it's there. As soon as you start believing, it's there, then you just keep going because at some point it's going to happen. It's all in the mind. Everything that we do is controlled by the mind.

Bob James:
It's fears that stop us. It's imposter syndrome that stop us. It's self-doubt. We go into anxiety and panic about things because this hasn't happened. It's meant to have happened by now, or you have a hundred comments on your YouTube video which are all brilliant and one of them is negative, and you spend all night fixated on that negativity, "Why didn't they like me?" What about the 99 that were brilliant? A lot of it is in the head. A lot of it is something you just need to work on, and that's really, there's a bit of a thing is I always say that you're in a boat, okay, and a sailing boat cannot go head into the wind. In the music industry, you are go in with a headwind against you. You tack left, and it might take a little bit longer, and sometimes you have to go all the way back and then you can come forward again. Again, if you went back, you never know who's behind you.

Bob James:
I think that's the easiest thing and give it a real world example. Passenger has done very well, but his original warm-up act was Ed . Now, Ed Sheeran, he just carried on. He did live show after live show. He just kept on saying, "I'm going to keep doing what I'm going to do." He learned a lot of his songwriting skills from Passenger, Mike Rosenberg, and the thing is it happened. He created possibility. He was everywhere, and then eventually, it happened because he found the songs. He found his voice. He found his authenticity. It didn't matter what he looked like. All the people said, "You're not a star." It didn't matter because he found the songs. He found those, the authentic moments.

Bob James:
But the beauty is that Passenger didn't go, "I can't believe it. He used to be my support act. I can't believe he's so successful." He stayed in touch. He was grateful for all the time that Ed helped him out. He gave advice on songs. He continued to build that relationship all the time, and then when, and it wasn't until the when, Mike wrote a song which he went, "I think this is it," and he sent it to Ed, and Ed was like, "That's the one," and it was Ed that opened the door into a radio station in Holland that basically got that song played, gave him his first number one, and it literally went all the way around Europe, back into the UK. This is all self-released and then ended up inviting Mike to support him on his world tour, and then the following year, Mike played the same venues as a headline act. But it took time. Mike Rosenberg, Passenger, I think he released about five albums, and he was busking until his moment came along, until that song happened, and then it all changed.

Michael Walker:
Wow, that's awesome. I didn't know that about Passenger and Ed Sheeran.

Bob James:
A long-term relationship and they've been mates for a long time, but the thing is if you make those friends and those contacts, you're out there in the scene, and the other thing I always say is that everybody feels they're in competition. You're not. The key to success in the music industry is collaboration. Look at all the top songs, Lennon and McCartney, Holland–Dozier–Holland. Collaborations. Very few are solely written by one person, collaboration. Bands is a collaboration. Artists who work together, featured artists on DJ's records, they're collaborating, and everybody starts to benefit. And if musicians start to come together and say, "Let's collaborate," you want to put a show on, you want to sell out a hundred cap venue, then go get four acts that can all do 25 tickets each, and work together, collaborate. Don't be competition, and share the headline slot. Move it around each night. Oh, I'll go on first. I'll go on. No, everybody works together, but what you do is you get the audience, and you share the audience, and you keep building momentum, working with other people.

Michael Walker:
All right, let's take a quick break from the podcast. I can tell you about a free special offer 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. Right 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 getting 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 last but not least, the business.

Michael Walker:
When you sign up, you unlock our best in-depth masterclasses from a network of world-class musicians and industry experts on the most cutting-edge strategies right now for growing your music business. 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, and one of the most amazing parts is that you can get your questions answered live by these top-level MusicMentors, a lot of the people that you hear right here on the podcast, but they're live, interacting with you personally. Imagine being able to connect with them directly.

Michael Walker:
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. 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. You can 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 masterclasses that happen every week. This is a gift for listing to our podcast, supporting the show. Don't miss it out. Go sign up for free now, and let's get back to our interview

Michael Walker:
100%. Yeah, that's all so good. It sounds like what you're saying is that really the solution is a lot simpler than a lot of times we make it out to be, and really, the problem is that we're trying so hard to be someone or be something else and to make an impression, and that's actually the very thing that's holding us back from really enjoying the journey and ourselves and actually expressing our music in a way that long-term leads to success. When it comes to that kind of core of what you're describing of really having the right belief in place where you have the confidence to know, no matter what happens, I don't need someone else's approval. I don't need it to be anything else. I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to be, I'm going to be who I am. I make this happen.

Michael Walker:
You mentioned a little bit about maybe limiting beliefs and maybe some affirmations. How does someone cultivate that level of belief? Is it a daily practice that you would recommend, like affirmations, or do you think it's just, it's a matter of sitting down, doing that inner work of asking themselves why are they doing what they're doing, or what is it that kind of holds people back from reaching that point of being able to genuinely let go of needing other people's approval and being able to just show up and be themselves?

Bob James:
I think the best thing to do, there's two ways of doing it. Yes, you can do it yourself, and it takes time and it takes patience and it takes work and belief. The other way is that you'll find that everything that's in our mind, in our subconscious, our whole subconscious is made up of other people's thoughts. Our educators, our parents, our churches, whatever it is, we have programs. We're like a hard-driver computer, and we've been programmed from a very young age, and what you've got to do is actually just reprogram that. Now, you can do it quite straightforward by being aware of a program that keeps coming up, and you think, "That's a negative one. Why am I keep thinking that?" and making a choice to change that program, and then you can work on each one as an affirmation. Over time, you will replace that program with a new thought, a positive thought.

Bob James:
One of the things that I did is, and I'll be completely honest, I like to be transparent with everybody that I work with, and one of the things, I talk about Music House and having success, but I've also been bankrupt. I literally came down the other side and went back up again. Now, the reason being that I built Music House because I was a DJ and I loved music, and music was my passion, and my father wanted me to go and get a job, a proper job, a real job rather than music which wasn't a real career, and I fought against him, and to stop me being forced to go to university, I deliberately failed all my qualifications, my A levels in the UK so that I couldn't go to university, so I could then go out and be a DJ.

Bob James:
He actually said to me, he said, "You'll never amount to anything now. You've thrown your career away." And I remember saying to him, I said, "I'll prove you wrong. I'll be a millionaire." Okay? And he was like... Didn't really believe me, and was really disappointed in me because I was intelligent and I could have gone to university, but I just didn't want to do it. It wasn't me. I hated education which is very bizarre because I now teach. But anyway, that's another thing.

Bob James:
But I built Music House, and then I got to the point I had 36 staff, multimillion-pound turnover. It was doing great, and I invited my mum and dad to come to the offices, over three floors. I had a PA. I had the big office, and my mum was going, "Oh, this is great. This is amazing," and my dad just walked around and he didn't say anything, and all I wanted him to do was say, "Bob, I'm proud of you." He didn't accept it, and it crushed me, and I lost my focus, and all the fears started came in, and basically everything. I left, and I sold up, and I lost interest in that company, and then I went into a bit of a spiral, and went down and I became bankrupt.

Bob James:
Now, later in my life, I picked myself back up and started building things up, but where have things changed for me was when I met my partner, Rachel, and she's an advanced hypnotherapist, and she was amazing because what she did, she actually just basically through hypnotherapy went into my subconscious. Hypnotherapy is nothing like what you think on TV. It's not click your fingers and become a chicken or anything. This is very subtle what's going on. You're in complete control all the time, but she took me to the point, and again, this is where the whole concept of finding a treasure, was finding my authentic self, why did I build Music House, and it was to prove my dad wrong.

Bob James:
Now, of course, when you take that away and it didn't work, my authenticity went at that point. It's going to collapse. My drive went. What happened after that is I realized that now I make decisions for me. All right? I am now making authentic decisions based on my beliefs and who I am as a human being in this world, and I now have success, but it's completely different because it's my success. It wasn't success driven to prove someone else. It wasn't precarious which that was. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but it's understanding what's driving you, and sometimes if you've got limiting belief, and for me, I had fears as well, and she just basically changed my interpretation of those fears so I wasn't scared of them anymore.

Bob James:
Literally, collectively, since then, we developed a methodology because I ended up in education. It's another long story, how I ended up getting drunk on a boat in France and ended up becoming a teacher which work that one out, and possibility. This is a thing saying yes to things, and it is one of those things that together we started to sort of... I thought, "Hang on a second. This is what artists need. They need to get rid of these limiting beliefs. They need to find the core of who they are."

Bob James:
We built a methodology called The Maxcebo Methodology, and that's actually just taken off. We have clients now all over the world. We have a lot of very creative people that we work with on their mindset, and some of them, the therapy side of it is getting rid of the mental blocks, getting rid of those things that are holding them back, to the point we've now actually written Level 3 and a Level 4 diploma which has been rolled out to further education colleges across the UK based on this methodology. There's a book being published next year, and literally, for us, it's this passion because it's so simple. We've been confused by everything that we've been told, and actually when you come back to basics, when you understand that actually we are in control, individually, we create our future.

Bob James:
The only way I can really explain that is it comes down to one simple thing. It's called a choice. If we were to have an argument, okay, I have two choices. The first one is I can continue the argument, we could fall out, and we never speak again. That's a choice. The second one is I could go, "Why is Michael arguing?" And I could actually say to you, "Michael, are you okay? Is there a reason that you're feeling really angry at the moment? Is there something I can do to help?" Now, we could become best friends over that. Two different directions, one choice.

Bob James:
What we got to do is start making different choices rather than making choices from the ego, as in what's going to benefit me, start making choices about what's going to benefit the other person, and I always say when you're networking at a music industry event, the mistake everybody makes is they go in there and they go, "What can you do for me? Give me your card," and they come back with all their stacks of card. "I've met this person. They can do this for me. They can do that." They never call them. Six months later, it's an embarrassment. They throw the cards away.

Bob James:
But what you should do is go to a network and event, find one person, become a friend to that person, think about what can I do for that person, how can I be of service to that person, how can I deposit money into their, not real money, but currency, as in favors into their account, how can I be of used to them that they don't want me not to be in their network. It's only after you deposit that you can actually withdraw. You don't open a bank account and withdraw straight away. You've got to play the long game and cultivate relationships. Every opportunity that I've ever had in my life and in my career, when I look back, basically came through relationships, and most cases, the ones that worked the best were the ones where I helped them first. It goes down to the Passenger Ed Sheeran story, isn't it? He helped Ed, but it came back, and then everything that he wanted, the success he wanted came to him, but it was just the way it had to happen. Ed had to have that first.

Michael Walker:
So good. Yeah, there's so much wisdom in what you're talking about. Just that one concept of focusing, rather than what's in it for me, what's in it for... And it's pretty natural to operate from our egos and just think about what's in it for me, but flipping that switch where you can genuinely start thinking about how can I provide as much value as possible, how can I contribute, how can I provide more service, it seems like there's a magic switch when that happens where you're just, your whole energy changes and people can feel it, and it's a lot more attractive.

Bob James:
Think about every time you go out on stage. They're going, "I hope I have a good night. I hope I'm great." You think, "I hope everybody in this building has a great night, and I hope that I can go out and be of service to them and emotionally connect and give them something that is going to make them..."

Michael Walker:
That's so good. Just a total energy shift too.

Bob James:
That's all.

Michael Walker:
And then when you think about it, whenever we're feeling anxious or scared, it's usually because we're thinking about ourselves and we're super self-conscious and worried about how we're going to come across to other people. Man, that's a powerful shift. I love this stuff, and when it comes to, what is it called, the NLP and hypnotherapy and the stuff that you're talking about right now, I think it's fascinating, super interesting just the way that our brains work and our programmed and where those programming beliefs came from. In a lot of cases, we think that we are doing all these things, but actually very little of its conscious thought. It's just stuff that's kind of covered up.

Michael Walker:
I'd be curious, do you think it's possible for us to do an exercise or something that even the two of us right now and something that maybe people are listening can do for themselves and follow along, in terms of maybe a exercise around your methodology around how does someone uncover a limiting belief that they might not be necessarily aware of, and what do they do with that belief, how do they reprogram their mind, or maybe you think it would be possible to do some exercise or something so we can demonstrate some of that?

Bob James:
Well, we can, and I think that the first thing you have to do is remember that a lot of our beliefs are built out of habits. Okay? If I was to, I don't know, let's work, but let's just demonstrate habit. Do me a favor, put both hands up in the air, okay, like this. Now fold your arms. Now, unfold your arms, and fold your arms again, and unfold your arms, and fold your arms again. Now, every single time you folded your arms exactly the same way. Now, I want you to fold your arms the opposite way around. Okay? The first thing that happens there is it feels weird. It feels really uncomfortable. It's out of our comfort zone. All we want to do is just, oh, go back to how I always fold my arms because that feels good. That feels safe, and that's the subconscious keeping you safe. It will always get you to do the things that there is no danger, there is no threat because that's its job, to keep you safe.

Bob James:
The first thing is understanding that to move forward, you've got to come out of your comfort zone. Now, if you were to practice every day folding your arms the opposite way, and you were to do that for say three weeks, when I ask you to fold your arms, you will immediately fold it that way. Now, the proof of this is for every musician, right, and musicians don't realize but they've got the power to do this already because you do it when you learn an instrument. When you learn an instrument, how do you become proficient at that instrument? You practice. When you first learn the guitar, you've got to strengthen your fingers, otherwise you're going to get cuts. You've got to develop the skin on the fretboard. You can't play. What you do? You keep going. You play the chords. You're doing the same exercise over and over again until eventually you don't even look at the fretboard.

Bob James:
That point you walk out on stage, you're not thinking at all about what you are playing. You're now thinking about your performance, what you're going to do on stage because the subconscious takes over playing. What you've got to do is just reprogram. The thing is as soon as you feel, "Oh yeah, that's okay, that's what I normally do," you should be going, "Why don't I try and do something different now? I normally always say no here, so why don't I say yes? Now, if I say yes and it doesn't work out, what have I lost? Nothing. I can still go make that choice next time and say no."

Bob James:
That's the subtle shift that you start, instead of looking at it as an opportunity, oh, that won't work. Okay? Now, what I did was to Get Money From Music, when I set this up was it's designed to be the cheapest, easiest, most affordable way of getting started. All right? People always say, "I need a manager," but you're not ready for a manager. How do I get ready for a manager? The thing is it was to help people get to that point and get to these habits going and get people ready, but the thing is some people will always say, "Okay, so if I'd going to spend say a hundred dollars, all right, for a session, what am I going to get back from that?" Oh, so you're looking for a return on investment because that's what we're taught. You invest, you get a return on investment. There's not a return on investment. You don't invest. It's a bad investment.

Bob James:
But what happens if I was to say, "Okay, this has happened. Why don't you this time say yes and try that?" and they did that, and that changed their life, and that was where the opportunity came from. Again, this goes back to possibility created. I spent most of my time talking through the different possibilities, looking at it from different perspective because our perspective of what we think is right is based on our beliefs.

Bob James:
Again, give an example. I'm trying to put this into really easy to visualize. If you were to hold a beach ball up, okay? I've got this actually from a guy called The SUMO guy. There's a guy who wrote a book, and I saw this, I loved this, and if it's a multicolored beach ball. I'm looking at it, and I'm seeing a red stripe and a blue stripe, and I'm holding it in front of my face, close up. If someone says, "What color is the beach ball?" It's red and blue, but you're the other side of this multicolored beach ball, and you are seeing orange and green. When they say, "Michael, what color do you think it is?" "Orange and green" I say, "No, it's not. It's red and blue," and they're go, "No, it's orange and green." Someone else is on the other side, 90 degrees to me, and they're getting magenta and pink. All right. Another one say, "No, it's white and black," but if we turn it just subtly, everything changes, and actually, if I keep turning it, I now get your perspective.

Bob James:
Everything that happens in our life, it depends on what perspective you look at it, and this is the thing. This is what we're always chasing. You think about, "Okay, if I had the money, I could do this," but then when you get the money, it's "If I had more money, I could do this." I'll give you an example, right? It's just, when you travel economy, you want to turn left on a plane. For somebody always turns left and goes first class, all they want to do is go private jet. When you're in a private jet, all they want is a bigger private jet, a more comfortable private jet. It never ever stops. You see this with billionaires. They've got to have a bigger boat. There's nothing wrong with the boat they've got, but someone else has got a bigger one. They want to get a bigger one.

Bob James:
It's physical things. We've got to have more physical things, more possessions because that defines us. But does it? Does the make of guitar that you play define you as a musician or the type of piano you play define you as a musician, or is it you and how you express yourself using that piano or that guitar? And actually, as a great musician, could you go out there with a little simple ukulele and touch millions of people with the cheapest instrument possible? It's a different perspective. It's a different way of looking at things. I think when you start to question everything and go, "Yeah, why can't I do this?" And if it feels a bit uncomfortable, go, "Ah, okay, it's probably a good thing. Then maybe I should be trying this." Go against the fears. Fear, force evidence appearing real. Always remember that.

Michael Walker:
Man, I love the stuff. I get caught on this. One thing that comes up as you're talking about the analogy with the beach ball and how we all have different perspectives of the same thing. I've also heard the classic story of a elephant, where everyone's feeling a different part of the elephant. One feels the tail and feels the leg. They're like, "No, an elephant is a tree trunk," but it's all one elephant.

Bob James:
Absolutely.

Michael Walker:
It reminds me of one of my favorite concepts is this idea of the map is not the territory. I think this comes from the NLP sort of world is the map is not the territory, and the idea is that we all have our own kind of map of reality or of the territory, and we're all kind of carrying around a map, and the maps can be useful, right, from going from point A to point B. Our belief systems, they can help us do things, but if we lose sight of the fact that it's just a map, it's not actually the real thing, then we can get really attached to our map and we might lose perspective of being able to say, "Oh, this person has a different map. Oh, that's interesting that they look at it this way."

Michael Walker:
I love that analogy so much just from the standpoint of being able to appreciate that. Even the words that we're talking about right now and our ideas and our everything, it's all just created by our minds. It's just all just perspective. It's different maps of reality, of the territory, but it doesn't necessarily... The territory is what it is. That's one question that I have for you that I'm curious about your perspective because it is something I still, I don't know the answer to. I think it's really fascinating. It's just the relationship between the map and the territory because a lot of what you're talking about of being able to believe in something so strongly that it literally, it's almost like you have such a strong map that it literally changes the territory and it moves things around it, and I think there's a lot of truth to that, and I think that so many successful people, they had the mindset, they had the belief, and it was pivotal in terms of reading reality or kind of morphing reality. Like Steve Jobs, his reality distortion field, literally he moved it.

Michael Walker:
Then also I think that sometimes there is such a thing as self-deception or believing something that just isn't true, and no matter how much you believe it, it doesn't necessarily make it true. Cults are a good example of this, or there are certain cases where belief isn't everything. It's just a map on the territory. So, I'm curious, where do you find that line of saying clearly there is this relationship between belief and having a strong confidence and vision, especially when it comes to art and being successful in that domain. But where do you find that? Do you think that there is a balance point or there is a limit between the map and the territory, or do you think that everything is a function of the map itself being able to change territory? What are your thoughts on all that?

Bob James:
Well, my belief is we create our own reality. We create our own future. We create it through choices, and it is belief. If you believe that something I'm looking at is red, it's red, no matter what people say, but you may be viewing that and it may be actually green, but you call it red. You may be seeing things completely different. I don't know what your eyes are feeding into your mind. Everybody's reality, I think is different, and I do believe that you create your own reality. It's a bit like a computer game, that everything that could ever happen is already there. You've just got to choose what you want to experience within that because if you look at who we are as beings, right, and break it down, and the science, break it right the way down to the core, you go into the atom. What's inside the atom? There is one thing, space with energy. That is it, and absolutely everything in the universe is made up of energy.

Bob James:
Now, you can't see energy. Okay? It's like a radio station, all right, or a radio. You can tune it in to different frequencies and you'll hear different radio stations. Now, when you're listening to the radio, that radio station is what exists. But what we sometimes don't realize is you can tune in to another radio station which is completely different, but it's still there at the same time. Now, what we forget is that we've forgotten that we have a choice, that we can actually tune into whatever reality we want, and that is where the belief comes in. Now, the key here is that we're taught to follow our heads to think, but our mind is there, and if you look at it from the science of it, from the front of the mind, which is your conscious mind, right away through to this big bit, which is the subconscious at the back, we follow the reasoning. Well, you shouldn't do that because this might happen, that might happen. And the mind really does thinks it's in charge, but actually it's not.

Bob James:
What's in charge is we are in charge, the energy within us, and actually probably more towards the heart is in charge. I always say to people is that if you're navigating, stop looking at the map and follow your emotional guidance system. Trust the sat nav that is your emotional guidance system. Now, when you're driving your car and the sat nav says, "Come off this highway here," and you're going, "No, I've always driven down this highway. There must be something wrong," and you ignore it and you get stuck in traffic for four hours.

Bob James:
That's what we do on a daily basis. We ignore our emotional guidance system our sat navs. Someone else said to go down here so I'm going to go down here. That's the route I've got to go because we want to control it. But if you trust and go, "Okay, there's a reason it's taking me off the highway, the freeway, and it's taking me this way. Let me just go with it. It'll get me there eventually. It might be a bit later. It doesn't matter. I still get there eventually." And we've got that within us, and it's our emotional garden system. We feel something and that should follow the feeling. Does it feel right? Do you feel a connection and trust in your feelings? That's the first way of navigating is sometimes get rid of the map.

Bob James:
Now, I can sit down, and I've done promotion and marketing for years, and people say, "Okay, how do I get a marketing campaign that's going to make me successful?" Now, I can do that for one artist and they'll be very successful. Another artist comes along and replicates exactly what I've said, and it doesn't work for them because it's not a one-size-fits-all. The thing is, this is where it goes back to who you really are, you've got to make your own choices, and everybody, in a sense, has a different path based on the choices they make at any given time and based on their belief system of what they believe they're going to have.

Bob James:
Now, if you don't believe you're going to be successful, you won't be successful because your mind will actually give you everything that you think. If you think, "Oh, I'm never going to get a record deal," you never will. Why? Because you've told yourself. And so, therefore, whenever that opportunity comes up, you'll have a reason why you can't do it. Oh, I've lost my voice, or this has happened, or I don't feel great. All of these things come to the fore because your mind is given you exactly what you want.

Bob James:
You've just got to be very conscious of your thoughts, and I trained in mindfulness, and by god, was that an eye-opener because you start to clear your mind of all these thoughts and actually focus in. You can recognize a negative thought going, "Oh, what I thinking that? No, no, no, actually, I'm going to put that to one side. I'm going to let that one go." All right? Just let it go. Don't think about it. Don't worry about it, and I start trusting in... People say trust the universe. I know there's a thing called the secret, but the secret was always simplified. Imagine a Porsche, there'd be a Porsche outside.

Bob James:
It's not as simple as that because what it is, it's about what we want to experience in life, and the thing is we try and control it, say, "I'm going to be happy if I'm rich," but can you be happy not being rich? Yes, you can. What do you want to experience? Do you want to experience joy? You want to experience love. You want to experience happiness. What emotion do you want to experience? And focus in on that emotion, but don't control how it's going to happen because nearly every time you think about the future and you think, "I'm going to do this meeting, and this is going to happen," that'll happen.

Bob James:
Remember, you think it all through, going for an interview, think it all through. It never ever happens the way we think it's going to happen. If you think about the outcome, I'd want to feel the absolute joy of being offered that job and the pride that I have that people believe in me and believe I can be of service to them, and you start going in there, and then you'll sit in there and you'll sit on there with a smile on your face, sitting there with the confidence, experiencing it.

Bob James:
You take every question, you be authentic, and if you're not the right person, that's their choice, but there'll be other choices. There'll be other opportunities. Think about every record label that's turned down a hit act how many time. Why? Because they made a choice. But did those acts walk away and give up? No. I think this is the problem that people have is that they're in too much of a hurry. And no, there is no future, there is no past. All right? There is only now, and think about what you want to experience now, and that is what you're going to start experiencing

Michael Walker:
That's good stuff, man. Yeah, I love conversations like this, and it sounds like what you're saying is that one of the biggest obstacles or things that kind of comes up is in this analogy of the map and the territory is just being too fixated on our map, and that if we're able to let go of the map and just experience things as they are and be present in the moment, then it's almost like we have this internal guidance system that will actually lead us in the right direction.

Bob James:
Yeah, and the thing is, this comes back down to your authentic self, what's the experience you really want to have. What is your reason for doing something? And once you know that and you experience that, then you've got all the satisfaction in the world, and it's not necessarily about money. You don't need validation. Just sometimes it's actually just being who you are.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. And I think it seems like that's something that you're bringing up too is that really what this is about awareness of what's coming up, what are the programs what is your mind thinking. With thoughts, it sounds like when you're talking about the map and the territory, the point isn't necessarily to believe in the map so strongly or to want the outcome so much that you're losing sight of the territory or the way things are, but actually just being aware of the fact and recognizing, "Oh, this is my brain, this is my thoughts, and this is a constructive map. This is a constructive belief. If I behave as if this map is true, then it actually moves me towards a destination I want to get to." But at the same time, probably having that awareness of realizing this is just a program. This is just a belief. This isn't necessarily truth in and of itself. It's just one idea or one belief that I choose to believe, but it doesn't necessarily define me. It's not who I am. It is just one empowering belief that I can choose to believe about myself.

Bob James:
Yeah, and you can change those beliefs, and no, we have free will. We can make different choices at any different time, and the thing is sometimes it's experience, and sometimes you have to go through the negativity so that you can recognize the positivity when it comes. You have to have the failure before you can have success. I always say to my students, "Failure equals feedback." You have to fail before you'll have that success. And so, therefore, every time something goes wrong and you fail, you go, "Thank you. Be grateful because that is a lesson I've now learned, and now I'm going to be even better because I will not make that mistake again," rather than beat yourself up. It's changing the way you deal with things and realizing that we are on a journey. You don't need to worry when it's going to happen, but think about the emotion you want to feel.

Bob James:
Be in the present. All right? Be aware, not worrying. A lot of artists I've worked with, they're all looking ahead and, whoa, I've got to spend that, and how much is this going to cost, and I'm not going to do that. I always say to them, "Look, okay, again, if you are then going to say, 'I'm not doing that because I might risk my money,' then you don't believe in yourself because if you believed in yourself, there is no risk." It's the most natural thing in the world to invest in yourself, and if you don't believe in yourself enough to invest in yourself, why on earth would a record label invest in you?

Bob James:
Now, one thing I've done, I've set up businesses and got investment, and the first thing they say is as a director of the company, as the proprietor of the company, how much have I got at risk in this, and if I don't have anything at risk, they're out. If I believe in it that much that I say, "Do you know something? I've got every penny, all my life savings are going into this because I believe in this," then they're going to go, "Yeah, okay," because they now know that you are not going to take silly risk. You now know you're going to do everything in your power to make something successful, and so there is an investment. If you were to look at, I'm trying to think to explain this, but if you look at a candle, okay, and put a candle in a room with lots of other candles so it's really bright, that candle doesn't shine. You don't notice that candle. But you put that candle into darkness, into a dark room, and all of a sudden, it lights up the room. You can experience what it is.

Bob James:
Sometimes we need darkness. Sometimes we need negativity, and sometimes we need upset because that defines us. Again, Adele, the reason she was successful, she had her heartbroken. Now, when she had her heart broken, originally, she wasn't thinking about selling 25 million records at that point. All right? She was hurting and she expressed herself through song. Again, artists, what I always say is get in touch with those thoughts. Just express yourself because there's somebody else out there who's got that same emotion, and as soon as you represent them, they connect to you. Going to a concert is like a religious experience. It's like going to church if that artist is good and connects with you. You're all jumping together. You're all singing together. You're crying together. It's an emotional journey. People have lost sight of this. It's let's have lasers. Let's have big lights. No, no, no. What about emotion? What about connection? What about real authenticity that is just pouring of every pore and people really connect. That's artistry. That's art.

Michael Walker:
I love that visual, the candle in the dark, and just that idea of, yeah, being able to shine a light on the darkness because the darkness tends to, it doesn't do very well when it comes against light. The light will vanquish the darkness very quickly, but it thrives, and when it's hiding, and so that's shining, being able to bring that light to it. Even what you're describing with kind of going internal and figuring out your why, it feels like a lot of that process is really figuratively about shining a light on the dark and figuring out what that means in your own life, what you've gone through. Love it. Awesome. Hey, Bob, dude, thank you again so much for taking the time to come out of here. It's been a lot of fun. For anyone here who-

Bob James:
Press the button and then I don't stop talking. I'm sorry.

Michael Walker:
Press that button repeatedly. I'm a fan. For anyone who's listening this right now who has resonated with it and would love to connect more and learn more about what you're doing now, what would be the best place for them to go to learn more?

Bob James:
If you just go to getmoneyfrommusic.com, there's a contact page there, and just get in touch. What I always do is I always have a free consultation, just sit and have a chat and get to know, and I'll be totally transparent and honest with you whether or not I can help you or not. The way I do it, I don't work as management now. I work as a possibility creator. You just dip in and cover my time. That's it. I'm trying to give something back to people in the music industry. I've had a great living and a great life in the music industry over all the years, and actually it's more than 20 years because I've been lying about my age, but it's probably closer to 40 years now in the industry, but the thing is I'm trying to give something back, and I just want to help people, and if I can help them to be that little candle in the room, start shining their light, then I'll be very happy.

Bob James:
There's no contracts, nothing like that. It's just literally if I can help you, I'd love to help you. If I can't, then I'll point you towards someone who can.

Michael Walker:
Very cool. Yeah, man, I would definitely recommend that anyone who's listening this right now, go check it out, and take him up on the free session to get to know him. Yeah, I think that one point that you brought up that's so powerful is that, first of all, that the belief is really important, but then I know in my own life and from experience from my mentors that belief is also something that you can borrow belief from other people and especially from your mentors, right. There's a reason that in every great blockbuster movie, there's a Yoda or there's a Dumbledore, there's someone who they have this belief and it's something we all resonate with, we all need, and you can borrow that belief. And so, I think that what you're offering right now is super, super valuable just for people to be able to go inward and develop their own identity and kind of figure out, get in touch with who they are so they can express that, and yeah, I think it's totally worth everyone going and checking that out and hop it on a call, if they're call-

Bob James:
That's what I do. I work as a mentor for many people, and it is, it's sometimes having someone to bounce off, someone just to vent to, just to express yourself, who can give you an honest opinion where they've got nothing to gain out of it. There's no vested interest. They're not trying to sell you anything. It's just a question of, no, have you thought about this, have you thought about that, just empowering people to make better choices.

Michael Walker:
Good stuff. Cool. All right, man, what we'll do is we'll put the links in the show notes like always.

Bob James:
Thanks.

Michael Walker:
And yeah, really appreciate you coming on here so we can cut this stuff.

Bob James:
It's been absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much. I'm really grateful for you having me on the podcast. I do appreciate it. Thank you very much, Michael.

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 guests today, and if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us, that really helps us out. And third, best of all, if you leave us an honest review, it's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a Modern Musician is now, and I'll look forward to seeing you on our next episode.