Martin Sutton:
But so many people write so personally, they put so much of their own furniture in the house, that other people can't feel it's their home. So the key to this, for me, is you write with all of that beautiful authenticity about something that really means something to you, but then having the objectivity to step away from the song and go, "If I'd never heard this song before, would I understand it, would I feel it?" Because make no mistake, nobody cares, nobody cares how the songwriter feels when they write a song. They care how they feel when they hear a song. 

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. 

All right, so I'm stoked to be here with my friend Martin Sutton. He is the founder of Songwriting Academy. He's a multi-platinum songwriter, with credits with Backstreet Boys, American Idol, LeAnn Rimes, Celine Dion, and just too many to list here. His team has done over 500 million record sales. And today, I thought a great topic to focus on would be how do you hone in your songwriting, how do you write hit songs as a songwriter because it's the core of your success as a singer/songwriter or musician, is it really comes down to songwriting. 
Martin, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today. 

Martin Sutton:
Hey, you're very, very welcome. And you're absolutely right, the core ... In fact, the core of the whole music business hangs on those hit songs. Nobody would be in a job if there weren't great songs out there. There would be a lot of frustrated marketing men trying to do their very best. But let's face it, when you get a monster hit then it makes a massive to us, the writers, to the record labels, A&R guys get to keep their jobs, and the list goes on. So right at the core of the music business is a great song. 
I just want to make a small correction. We've updated our faculty recently, and we are the most successful faculty in the world in this kind of organization, with collective record sales of over three-quarters of a billion records and over five billion streams. So we always say look, nobody's holding a gun to anyone's head and saying you have to take our advice, but if it's not currently getting you the success you feel you deserve then it might be time to try something new.
You might be able to hear the birds outside at the moment, I've got the windows to my studio open. I might have to go and shush them away in a minute. 

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. I heard them a little bit. It sounded a little bit like a squeaking door or something. 

Martin Sutton:
It does. 

Michael Walker:
Man, that's awesome. 750 million, three-quarters of a billion record sales, that is really impressive. 
Another point, too, is I feel like the core of everything is songwriting and it seems like just a great opportunity in general. That's one of those skills that, even if you're writing songs and right now, you're just looking to get your songs played by another artist, it seems like that's just a really valuable skill to learn how to do. If you're pursuing a career as a musician yourself it's really valuable, but it also can be a really valuable career, writing songs for other people. 

Martin Sutton:
Completely. My advice that I give to everybody, whether they are artists pursuing their own singing career or otherwise, or producers, it's write songs for other people. I always say to artists, when you go into a songwriting session, don't necessarily say, "Hey, it's all about me today, everybody." What I say to them, my goal generally is just write a great song. As far as they're concerned, if they go in with this attitude of, "Let's just write a great song today," if it's for them, then they've got a great song for their career. If it's not for them, they've still got a great song that they can put out there. 

And, the amazing thing about getting other people to cut your songs when you're an artist is, first of all, it builds your reputation. It shows that you're a serious player and you know what you're doing, so it's really good for you. Second thing is it makes this really cool stuff called money, and money can help you build your career. You can reinvest that in your ow recording, your videos, whatever it is you want to invest it in. But, it's a win-win situation. You can't lose by having other people record your songs. 

And, the beautiful thing about songwriting is that anybody can do. Most people don't try hard enough, in terms of the crafting, to get their songs to the level that other people want to record them. Often, they don't know the techniques. Or if they do know the techniques, they just pawn it off and say, "Well, as long as you write what you feel, man, then that should be enough. If people don't understand that, that's their problem." Well, no it's not. It's your problem really, because you're not making a career out of it. 

But, anybody can write songs and you can learn how to make your songs better. That's the cool thing. Of course in this time, when everybody is in lockdown, then of course we're the ones that carry on working. How cool is that? All those people that had proper jobs that used to say to me, "Why don't you get a proper job?" They don't have proper jobs anymore and we do. So long live the music business, I say. 

Michael Walker:
Dude, I love that. And I love the fact that you, with your accent and the way that you phrase it so you use the "proper job." Apparently, that's the phrase you use over there. For us it's, "Oh, get a real job."

Martin Sutton:
Right. 

Michael Walker:
Real job. Proper, real. 

Martin Sutton:
Yeah. 

Michael Walker:
Biscuits and cookies. 
You touched upon one of the mistakes that songwriters make sometimes. It sounded like one of the mistakes that sometimes artists make is that they think too much about ... They think that oh, if they just write from their heart, which obviously is a great thing to do, to write from your heart, but they don't even think about anyone else when they're writing the songs. Can you go a little bit deeper into why is that a challenge? And, how can they overcome that?

Martin Sutton:
Man alive, this is just so important. First of all, my number one thing about songwriting is write from your heart, write with authenticity. But, don't write so you exclude everybody. You can do this thing where it's, "You know what, people have just got to interpret what I'm saying," and you can go down that route, but you're going to struggle to find new fans if they don't understand your song, because if they don't understand it, they're less likely to feel something. 
So the way that we teach, really at the core of what I say is write with your heart but edit with your brain. I always talk about music, songwriting particularly, being where love meets science. So there is the love that goes into the song, I'm feeling something, it comes from the feels. So I'm feeling something, and if you're feeling it, chances are somebody else in the world, or lots of people in the world, have felt the same kind of emotion. It might be heartbreak, it might be joy, euphoria, sadness, loss. It could be many, many things but if you've felt it, chances are that somebody else has felt it. So when you write that, you are absolutely on a universal theme that could sell a lot of records if you get it right. 
But so many people write so personally, they put so much of their own furniture in the house that other people can't feel it's their home. So the key to this, for me, is you write with all of that beautiful authenticity about something that really means something to you, but then having the objectivity to step away from the song and go, "If I'd never heard this song before, would I get it? Would I understand it? Would I feel it?" Because make no mistake, nobody cares, nobody cares, how the songwriter feels when they write a song. They care how they feel when they hear a song. You're the same, I'm the same, we're all the same. 

When we listen to a song for the first time on Spotify, or the radio, or live, whatever, we just react to it. We react to the frequencies of the notes, we react to the words and we immediately judge it. We judge it so, so quickly about, "Do I like this song? Am I going to carry on listening to it, or am I going to switch off? Emotionally, mentally, am I going to switch off?" If you manage to catch somebody into the song, you've got to keep them there. But, it's catching them in there. So they make a snap judgement about whether they loved the song, but they don't care how you felt when you write it. They care what they're feeling right now, when they hear the song. 

And then, of course the trick, that's one thing, bringing people into a song. But then, you've got to understand what we call devices in The Songwriting Academy, devices that keep people listening. There are certain intervals, like timing spaces within a song, that you can then start implementing the science on top of the love, that we know will keep people listening. Little things, what we call ear cookies sometimes, little things that will pull people by the ear, back into the song, keep them invested in the song emotionally and hopefully, fall in love with the song. Because really, we want the people that are listening to our songs to feel that same strength of emotion that we felt when we wrote it. But, if we exclude them lyrically then they're not going to do that. 

There's a real fine art to this. It is a mixture of authenticity and the crafting of it, being able to look at it objectively and saying, "Right, how can I make people love my song? How can I make sure that they get it?" So that's why it's so much more of a complex thing than a lot of people think. 

Sometimes, when you tell people you're a songwriter ... I think I've had it before when I was waiting for my kids to come out the school and an accountant would come up and say, "Oh, so what do you do, then?" I'd be like, "I'm a songwriter." There was this blank look on his face and somewhat dismissive as if to say, "Oh, good for you." I think he just thought I was sitting in a bedroom, smoking a joint and strumming my guitar, staring at my navel and singing about how miserable I felt. When in fact, it's a job. It's a proper, full-time job, "A real job." 

Michael Walker:
It is a real job. Yeah. There's so much, so much gold in what you just said. 
One thing that came to mind as you were talking about ... It sounds like what you're saying is that one of the mistakes is that it's always important to write from your heart, but it's also really important to figure out how to communicate in an effective way so that people actually understand what are you communicating, so that they can feel it and they can connect with it. I want to dig deeper into this, too, the different devices that you talked about, in terms of ear cookies. 
One thing that came to mind was it's like speaking a different language. If you're trying to communicate something and they're speaking a different language, then it doesn't really matter how good it is they're saying, they're just not going to understand it. Obviously, when you're speaking to someone you want to be authentic and with your heart. But even if you're communicating from your heart, if you're speaking a different language then it's going to be really hard for them to understand and to connect with what you're saying. 

It sounds like a big part of being successful with songwriting is figuring out how to be authentic and to express that, but also to be able to really reach out and connect with other people, to be understandable. 

Martin Sutton:
Yeah. 

Michael Walker:
That does seem like a hard balance to strike. How do you strike that balance between being super vague so that everyone in the world could relate with it, versus being specific enough but without excluding people? 

Martin Sutton:
What it is is that we have to find unfamiliar ways to say a familiar thing, first of all. It's all been said before, all of the cliches have been used. So one of the biggest challenges that songwriters face now is, if they want to sing a song about I love you, then of course they're shying away from the words "I love you," because it's been done a kajillion times. 

That's one of the big challenges in terms of language, and that's where we have to be super creative before we even start writing the song. It's where we have to garner ideas from different places, all over the place. I'm constantly switched on, looking for new ideas and new ways to say the same human condition about, whether it be love, sadness, loss, joy, finding new phrases to say that. That's the pre-work that you do.

But, when you're writing the song, like a lot of people they mistake simplicity for dumbing down. And they shun it because they think, "Oh no, I can't say that. That's just dumbing it down, that's compromising my art." And you know what? If you just are writing for art's sake, great, go for it. You don't ever have to play those songs to anybody if you're just writing for you. Put it on your hard drive, listen to it every night before you go to sleep, that's great. But the moment you play it to someone, that's like an artist hanging a painting on a wall, they are looking for some kind of public reaction. And anyone that says to you, "Oh, I want them to hate my work," then they're either very disturbed or they're lying. We all want people to like what we do. So if you want people to like what you do, then you have to think about what they might like. 

Let me put it this way. If you were having a dinner party and your favorite thing to eat is pineapple with anchovies, and you have a dinner party. Everybody sits at the table and you go, "Guys, I've prepared for you my favorite meal, it's pineapple and anchovies." We call them anchovies, here. And they're looking at this going, "If I eat this, I'm going to throw up." But you're going, "I love this." And they're going, "We don't get it. We don't get it. It tastes bad, it's horrible." "But, I love it." You can stand there all day long, convincing them of the merits of pineapple and anchovies. But, the smart dinner party host will say, "Hey guys, what do you like?" They will still cook something that they love, they will still put their heart and soul into cooking something. 

If somebody says, like me, "I don't eat rice pudding." But, let's say I love fish. Somebody may cook me a fish meal that is made with just so much love for them, but it's still giving me something that I like. Now, that's like songwriting. We have to think about other people. If you don't think about other people, then either don't play it to them or don't complain when they don't listen. There is no halfway house. It's not their job to get your song, it's your job to make them get it. 
You have to think about how are you going to do that, and a lot of people run away from simplification. They're scared of saying something really simple. They are scared of saying something simple like, "I would like to be with you." But what they do, often they'll go the other way. They will go completely metaphorical and they'll say, "I want to sail my ship of job on the ocean of euphoria ... "

Michael Walker:
Wow.

Martin Sutton:
"On your planet of love." And people are going, "I have no idea what you're saying." But sometimes just saying what you want to say, it's not dumbing it down, it's making it accessible. Now, I'm not saying that you should just go for the easiest cliché, but what I am saying is you can use conversational language in a really smart way, you can reinvent ... We've got this whole exercise that we do about reinventing cliches so they have a whole brand new lease of life, and yet they say exactly what you want to say. 

All of these things can be done so people understand your song. When they relate to it, then they may well love it as much as you do. And if they love it, what are they going to do? The first thing they're going to do probably is play it again, and then they're going to play it again. And from that one person you may get, in two days, you may get 100 Spotify spins just from that one person. The other thing they're going to do is phone up all their friends because they want to be the first one to be the one that realized your song was awesome. "Hey, have you heard that song XYZ?" And then, the word spreads, everybody starts talking about it. But, you've got to get so many things right. 
There's a song, James Blunt, the one that goes, "You're beautiful, you're beautiful, it's true." Okay now-

Michael Walker:
"I saw your face ... "

Martin Sutton:
A friend of mine, Sacha Skarbek wrote that song, had a huge success with it. Honestly, I don't know whether I could have been in a session where someone's going, "You're beautiful, you're beautiful, you're beautiful, it's true." I don't know whether I could have gone that far. But, here's the rub. Six million people bought that single. So whose right and whose wrong? 

Are you writing for yourself, are you writing for other people, or are you writing something that satisfies your soul but you want other people to buy into it? That's why we always say you have to consider the listener. I always say think like the listener. That doesn't mean write what's going on in their life, it means write what's going on in your life but remember that they're there. 

Jared:
Hey it's Jared, the co-producer and editor of the Modern Musician Podcast, and I've got something really exciting to announce. Registration for our annual Success With Music virtual conference is now officially open. You can go to the link in the show notes right now to sign up and claim your free ticket. We've got over 15 top music industry experts who are going to reveal how to build a loyal fan base and make a living with your music. Last year, we were named the world's biggest virtual music conference and this year, it's going to be bigger and better than ever. Join us and over 10,000 musicians May 27th to May 30th, so claim your free ticket now in the show notes and let's get back to the podcast. 

Michael Walker:
It's really interesting, too, hearing ... It seems like success in almost all facets of life, and especially in songwriting, comes from a focus on providing value and serving others, and a focus on contributing to other people. 
It sounds like what you're saying is that it comes from the way that you can best serve other people, in a sense, is by one, being authentic to yourself because that's what's going to resonate. But also, by really thinking about them, and by taking them into account and writing your songs in a way that they can understand, that brings you together as opposed to your ego basically separating and being like, "Oh, look how cool I am " as opposed to really focusing on creating something that they can connect with. 

Martin Sutton:
I want to jump in at this point, if I may, because that is so true how you can touch people with your songs. One of the moments for me, after I'd had the first version of a song called Everybody's Someone that was covered by LeAnn Rimes and Brian McFadden, it's a song basically saying that everybody's important, and for my hippy roots, that means a lot to me. It's I think the song that I would want played after I shuffled off this mortal coil, for people to remember that was my firm belief, that everybody is a somebody. 

Shortly after it was released, and it was all over MTV, and YouTube and stuff, and the box. I thought, "I wonder what people are saying about it." So being nosy, I went into Google and typed in the song, and I ended up at a forum for self-esteem. I believe it was the Dove beauty company, a forum that they had for self-esteem and people were posting up stories. This woman, she said, "When I was at school, I was bullied and made to feel completely worthless." And she said, "I've just heard this song, Everybody's Someone," and she said, "I now realize that I'm a somebody." 
For me, I got a lump in my throat and I just thought, "Wow, I could almost quit songwriting a happy guy today, because I've changed somebody's life that I didn't know." A complete stranger, I've improved their life because of something I wrote. And that, for me, is one of the most addictive feelings that you can get, when you affect somebody in a positive way that you don't even know. Occasionally I'll get emails coming in, or messages coming in on Facebook saying, "Your song did this to me," or "Your song made me feel like this." 

There was an even more amazing story from one of our mentors, Sharon Vaughn, who wrote an amazing song called Trip Around the Sun. A woman came up to her on this thing called a Blues Cruise, which is a boat where I think it's a two-day tour, where it's songwriters are singing their famous songs. The woman came up and thanked Sharon. Sharon was like, "That's okay." The woman said, "No, thank you. You saved my life." Sharon said, "Well, what do you mean?" She said, "Well, a year ago," I'm not sure how long it was. But she said, "I lost my husband, and I was driving to a bridge to end it all. Your song came on the radio, I pulled over into a lay-by and I cried for 30 minutes, and I turned the car around and went home." 

And when Sharon told me that story, I just couldn't stop crying because it was so amazing that a song of hers had actually saved somebody's life. And a year later, the woman came back on the same cruise, and while Sharon played the song acoustically, the woman scattered her husband's ashes in the water. 

Michael Walker:
Wow. 

Martin Sutton:
This is the power that music has. Often I'll say to people, "When you're writing, just for a moment, when you're a writing stop thinking about you, and put your hands out like this. Imagine the world in it, and think about who you want to affect and how you want to affect them. Get out of your own head, and think about what you want your music, what purpose your music is serving in the world. And if you serve the song, then you serve the listener as well, instead of serving yourself." That's why I had to jump in, when you said about how people are going to react to these songs.

Michael Walker:
I love that story, dude. Thanks for sharing that. I was getting teary eyed as you were sharing that. The kind of impact you can make with your songs is like almost nothing else. What can have that kind of impact on someone across the world, where you've never even met them and you can save their life? Who are you not to do this? If you can have that kind of impact on someone else, who are you to not do that? 

Martin Sutton:
I always say about songwriting, it's two things. It's knowing what you want to say, and saying it but with music. That's it, that's songwriting. So many people over complicate it. They will over-complicate it with, "Well, I need to be poetic about everything, and I need to be Shakespeare, and I need to be able to play every instrument, and I need to be able to produce." It's like no, you don't. When you collaborate, which is what everybody does, then you don't need to be able to do everything. 

You just need to know what you want to do. You need to know what you want to say to people, how you want to say that to people. And if you want to say to the world, "Hey, you know what, it's okay, we can pull through this," let's talk about right now. "Hey, if we stand together we can pull through this," then just find a way of saying it musically. You don't need to be a musical genius. 

I still can't read or write music. I started off as a busker on the streets of Norwich in Norfolk, which is a little county over the East of England, and I still can't read music, I still can't write music. I've done everything with my heart, with my intuition, with my ears, with my brain and with just a lot of drive, a lot of desire and passion for what I do. And, those for me are the biggest ingredients that you can possibly have for songwriting. 

Even if you can't sing, you can contribute ideas, and lyrical ideas and thoughts into a song that could turn it into a massive hit. Even if you can't write a lyric, you might come up with a melody on a guitar that people just go, "Oh my God, that's amazing!" So there's room for everybody, and everybody can do this, but most people are lazy. I've got to say it, Michael. Most people are lazy. They will write a song and they'll to the end and they'll go, "Full stop. There, I've written a song." No you haven't, you've written a first draft of a song. 

Now that's like saying to J.K. Rowling, "So the first time you wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, that was it, was it? That's what got you the publishing deal?" Not in a million years. She rewrote that first chapter of the Philosopher's Stone 15 times and she still got turned down by 12 publishers. But, because she rewrote it 15 times, guess what? She became a billionaire off the back of it. A billion pound business, a $1 billion business, because she cared enough about. There was no arrogance there going, "Well, if they don't get it, it's their problem." It was like, "They don't get it, gosh. Why did that publisher not get it? I know, I'll rewrite it." And, "Why did that publisher not get it? I don't know. Maybe it was this. I'll rewrite it and have another go." 

How many songwriters do you know do that? Most of them have just got this, it is a kind of arrogance, and I think it's coupled with laziness sometimes, that they just think that the first draft is it. Great. And they post up on Facebook, "Hey, just wrote a banger today." It's like, "Well, it's not in the charts yet." "Hey, I just wrote a song I love today," that's a whole other story. It's not a banger until it's in the charts, topping the charts. 

I can say all of this with so much confidence because I've been that guy, Michael. I've been the guy that wrote a song and put my full stop and my period point at the end of the whole thing, sang it to someone and they just glazed over because they didn't get it. And I thought, "Oh, well they don't understand me." Why should they understand me? I've been the guy, and then I've been a professional songwriter for 26 years now, 27 in fact. And I had to learn how to consider the listener, how I want to affect the listener, and how to get enough heart in the song so it's real, and how to get enough conversational language in the song to make people understand it, how to manipulate melodies so they'll move people and how to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Oh, and rewrite. 

Michael Walker:
I love it. Yeah. It sounds like really the core of what you're saying is that this is something that, if you really want to become truly successful at, it's good to leave your ego at the door and to come back, and to rewrite and to get feedback. And, to think about other people and it's not all about you. 
One thing that I wanted to dig into a little bit, because this is something I'm sure you're a master of, being at the level that you're at, is you mentioned how you have different strengths as a songwriter. You might be a really good lyrical writer, or really good at melodies, or maybe there's a certain different thing and one of the best tools that's available to you is co-writing, and finding people that compliment you. What's some advice that you have, in terms of how would you recommend that someone that's watching this right now that doesn't really have a ton of different connections, but they want to improve their songwriting. How do they start finding the right people to co-write with? 

Martin Sutton:
Okay, the first thing is make that affirmative action, make that affirmative decision, because a lot of people are just super scared of collaborating. Some people have collaborated once and they've had a bad experience and they've said, "No, I'm never going to collaborate again. I work better on my own," and they've made that decision. But, that's like going on a bad date and then staying celibate for the rest of your life. Don't put yourself through that. You're missing out on so many great musical dates, where the chemistry is there. So first all, make the affirmative decision that it's okay to collaborate. And you might have to kiss a few frogs along the way before you find your prince or princess, but that's okay, too. I've been there. 

The second thing is, is that get yourself involved with professional communities. There are plenty of communities that you can find on Facebook and a bunch of other platforms, where there will be people in there that it's almost like sometimes I wonder if they're just trying to wind people up. I've seen people posting things saying, "I've got a song called Curtains. Who can help me write it?" And, that's it. Or, "I want to sing. How do I start?" If you surround yourself with people that aren't really taking it seriously, that aren't doing their own work on it, then you're in an uphill struggle. 
But, surround yourself with the people that you want to be like. Surround yourself with the people that are really, really working hard. And, even if they're not quite there yet, even if they're not quite getting those songs recorded, you listen to what they're doing and you think, "Wow, they've worked really hard at that. I really admire their songwriting and they seem like a really cool person, too." Be around your tribe, choose the people that you want to be around because the more you're around those kind of people, the more you will become those kind of people. 

In the early days, I was hanging around with loads of people that had publishing deals before I had my first publishing deal. And, I was just writing with them, I was hanging out with them, I was going for drinks and stuff. And then somebody said to me, "Oh, my publisher's great. You should really have a chat, because you're a pretty cool writer," and that's how I got my second publishing deal, that was. But, it's hanging out with the right people. That doesn't mean that you have to do it physically, and of course physically at the moment is pretty impossible anywhere in the world, but there are professional communities. 

We have one in The Songwriting Academy, it's completely free. It's a professional community with members from all over the world. You know what they're doing, Michael? They're hooking up with each other and going, "Hey man, I like your song. Maybe we should co-write over Zoom or Skype." I'm seeing this happening in front of my eyes, and every day the community is building, and building, and building, without me hardly advertising it because everybody's telling everybody about it because it's a cool place to be. Get the toxic people out of your life, the ones that are going to try and pull you down, and surround yourself with people that are doers, people that want to do the work. But, they're not going to do the work for you, so make sure that you're going to do the work as well. You've got to do the work. 

You know what? All that takes is love. You've just got to love what you do and it's never like a job. You know that classic old saying, "Do what you love and you never work a day in your life." I'm in my studio right now, I can't wait to turn around and carry on working on the mix I'm on right now. Even though I've listened to it 100 times, I've just got a new pair of monitors and I'm thinking, "Wow, wow, I just love this. I love these monitors. I want to mix, I want to mix." This is after 27 years of doing it. It never goes away if you love it. But, care about it, just care about everything you do and care about the people around you. Choose your friends wisely, and choose your collaborators, pick people that you just get on with. 

That's the other thing I want to say about collaboration is don't just pick people that have got a big track record. "Oh this guy or this girl's written for this person, so that's the one I want to write with." Because sometimes, those people can be assholes, too. Pick people that you just get on with and develop the relationships. Do things for people, ask people how you can help them instead of immediately asking for something from them.

You were talking about feedback. I don't know whether this happens to you as well Michael, but I get loads of emails or even messages on Facebook when I friend somebody on Facebook, and the first thing they do is send me a song saying, "Can you give me feedback on my song?" It's like, "Man, I don't even know you." You wouldn't go into a pub and just ask somebody for $50, just because they said hi to you, it doesn't work like that. Ask what you can do for other people, build relationships, and that positivity will spread and people will want to know more about you. And, they will want to help you if you help them. It's a really simple equation. Nothing to do with music really, it's to do with life. 

Michael Walker:
Absolutely, yeah. It feels like it comes back to what we talked about earlier too, just about being focused on serving and providing value. 
I love what you mentioned too, in terms of surrounding yourself with the right people. I forget who said it, but someone has this idea or quote that, if you look at the five people that you spend the majority of your time with right now, then you're a combination of all five of those people, combined into one person. And, it sounds like what you're recommending is that you very intentionally choose the people that you want to surround yourself, that are going to be motivating, that are going to encourage you to move forward. And, that the way that you build those relationships is the same way that you build any relationships, you don't come into it and just be focused on you, you, you and your own ego, but you think about how can I help them. What can I do to provide value for them? That's the way that you start any good relationship. 

It's funny. It's an app called We Should Write Sometime, and I think their idea is it's like Tinder, or it's like one of those apps but for songwriting. Apparently, it's gotten listed on Forbes, and Billboard and a few different places. But, that could be a cool potential thing for songwriting. But these same principles are still going to apply to that situation, too. Being successful with that is always ... Your success in life itself is how much you're going to be fulfilled and how much you're going to enjoy. 
Have you ever met someone whose really, truly, deep down really, really happy, whose super, super selfish? And, just is totally arrogant and doesn't ever think about anyone else. It doesn't seem like it. 

Martin Sutton:
No. No, absolutely not. They're often super selfish because they're deeply unhappy, and they're often deeply unhappy because they're super selfish, whether it be rooted in narcissism or whatever it may be. But no, the happiest people I know are people that are always making other people happy, they're doing things for other people, they're doing favors for other people.

I made a conscious decision at the beginning of last year. I sat down with my team in the Academy and I just said to everybody, "Okay, all of the members of the Academy that have put their faith in us, I want to give them more. I want to give them more than they asked for." And, the craziest thing happened. We started doing this, we started adding things to their membership, and guess what? Suddenly, the business exploded as well. In a good way, exploded. It's this win-win situation. I'm a bit of an old hippy still, and a firm believer in a universal law of prosperity. You know, the more you give, the more you will receive. It just seems to be just true. Be a good person. 

When we put people into collaborations, this makes me laugh always, we make people say a Songwriter's Vow. Now, this may seem ... People are going, "You do what?" I've just held a five-day online bootcamp, five days of intensive training. We've got another coming up in June, but it's the first time that we've done this online. I've done 30 of them live, as three day events, but now it's an extended thing, five days. When I put them into a collaboration, I had people all over the world standing up in their rooms, holding up their right hand and saying, "I promise." And it's things like, "I promise to respect my collaborators, to not fiddle with my phone, to not noodle on my guitar, to listen when I have a really strong urge to interrupt and to leave my ego at the door." The final one is, "and to not be a dick." Then there's, "This I do solemnly swear in the presence of The Songwriting Academy." 

It's kind of a bit of fun. But you know what, Michael? It works because people come back to me and go, "You know what? I don't think I was the dick." And it's like, you know what, if it works then fabulous. But if everyone's on the same footing about hey, let's go in to have a great time and bear in mind, the more fun you have in a collaboration, the better the songs are going to be. Then if you go in to have a great time, you leave your ego ... You mentioned the word ego twice now, you leave that at the door. And, you just go in to see how much you can have in the session, then you will inevitably come out with a better song than if you go in to prove to everybody how amazing you are. But, it's such a fascinating thing.

Do you know what? Then when you win, and you get a big, hit song on the charts, and you are sitting in the Top 10, you get a big check through the door, then you go, "Wow, all of that fun and I get paid for it as well. What a bonus." That is the best feeling in the world, when you actually get rewarded as well for having so much fun, and you see it on ... I recently saw a thing of 27,000 people at a festival and my song opening up this EDM festival and it was like, "Wow! That's the reward that you get." You can't even go to a red letter day website and say, "Can I have this experience for a day?" You have to work for it, but by God it's worth it. Yeah, just be good. 

Michael Walker:
I love that, dude. 
I think I told this story last time we talked, but it fits so well with the theme that I just can't help but share this parable. In this parable, this man dies. He lives a really good life, and he was a good, kind person so when he dies God's like, "All right, you did it, dude. You were a good guy, you get to go to heaven. But first, before we bring you to heaven, we're going to bring you down to hell to basically see why it's so great up in heaven." He's like, "Okay."
So they go down to hell and he's confused at first, because there's this giant table with a feast on it. It's the most delicious looking food, and it's just an amazing feast. So he looks at God and he says, "What's going on, isn't this hell?" And God said, "Well, look what they're eating with." Each of them has these three-yard long chopsticks, and they're trying to eat and they just can't, they can't eat any of the food. It's all right in front of them, but they can't eat any of it. So the man's like, "Oh, that's terrible." 

So they go back up to heaven and at first, the man's confused because he looks down at the table and it's literally the exact same scene, with the feast and with the exact same three-yard chopsticks. He looks at God and he says, "What's going on, what's different here?" And God said, "Well up in heaven, we feed each other." 

When it comes to what we were talking about with the either selfish or outward facing, it is ... There's a balance in terms of like if you're on an airplane, you need to take care of yourself first. You need to have your basic needs filled. It's okay to be selfish, to a certain extent, in order to serve other people. But, there really is something, a shift that happens, like what you described. You gave more value and boom, the business blew up. 

Martin Sutton:
Here's the thing Michael, when it comes to songwriting think about it in terms of that. If you're writing a song just for yourself, then great, have fun with that. Or, are you going to write a song for somebody else? Are you going to write a song for somebody else so they can feel exactly what you feel? Because there are so many people out there that can't express their emotions, they look at songwriters with amazement. A lot of songwriters don't realize it, we're just sitting there writing away. But they're looking at it, the muggles out there, they look at us and they go, "Oh my God, you write down what you feel, and then you sing it out loud in front of strangers." And if we get it right, we become the soundtrack for people's lives. If we care enough, we become the soundtracks for people's lives. 

And, we write the songs that maybe enables a guy whose never able to tell his wife how much he loves her because he's just tongue-tied for some reason, and he can put on a record and go, "Listen to this guy." Or the woman or the guy that's been harboring a trauma for decades, then we can write the song that opens their tap on the pressure cooker there, that allows this trauma to come out and it enables people to cry, which is a positive thing and it releases this tension. Finally, they're able to let this thing out and deal with it. This is what music can do, but we've got to get it right. It took me decades to get it right.

The whole reason I started The Songwriting Academy was to give people what I didn't have when I started out. I don't take wages out of The Songwriting Academy, this is something I'm just trying to grow something globally here, so we can spread the word, really. Just spread the love about songwriting. And it really is just about just getting people to feel what you feel, and that's it. If you care enough about other people, then let them feel what you feel but don't exclude them from it. But, all of these things that we teach, I guess it's the extra icing and the decorations on the cake that make people want to eat the whole cake instead of looking at it and go, "Oh, that's a nice cake. Next." So it's like I say, love and science all wrapped up into a gorgeous bundle. 

Michael Walker:
I love it, dude. I feel like we're both hippies at heart. 

Martin Sutton:
I know. 

Michael Walker:
But it's true, it really is all about the connection. 
Speaking of being super generous and being a giver, dude, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today, and to be able to share this. This has been really valuable.

Martin Sutton:
I think it's great that you're just creating so much knowledge for everybody, making it available for everybody. Great job to you as well. 

Michael Walker:
Thank you dude, I really appreciate it. And yeah man, thank you for being a part of it. 

Martin Sutton:
Excellent. Thanks so much Michael, appreciate it. 

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about our guest today, and if you want to support the podcast then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe then that'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media and 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 now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.