Melissa Mulligan: As an artist, once you start sharing your music or even creating it, you will be asked, "Well, what's different about you? What's special about you? Why does the music industry need your music?" And what I want to remind everyone is, that's a rhetorical marketing based question that has nothing to do with you as a human and as an artist. You as a human, before you even get out of bed, have intrinsic value, 100%, and your art, anything that you have to say, anything that you have to contribute to the world has value. And the rest of us need to hear it.

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 they 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. So I'm excited to be here today with Melissa Mulligan. Melissa is a vocals and branding coach who's been helping artists for over two decades now. She's worked with professional recording artists like AJR Chelsea Cutler, Jeremy Zucker, New Found Glory, when I saw that, I was really hyped. I mean, I grew up listening to New Found Glory on tour in the van. Like there's a lot of songs that really relate to that, that lifestyle is so super cool.

Michael Walker: Currently she's working as a vocal consultant for a major label, Music Industry Professionals. Her students have been signed to major record labels, toured around the world, won platinum and gold records and performed on all the late night and daytime talk shows. She has a huge amount of experience and worked with some really amazing people. Specifically I think today, what we're going to focus on is as an artist, really clarifying your artist identity and how you show up and what kind of distinguishes you from other musicians so that you can be authentic to yourself, but also to be able to resonate and find the right people who are going to really understand your message and to resonate with it so you can grow your audience. Melissa, thanks so much for taking the time to be here today.

Melissa Mulligan: Well, thank you for having me. I'm thrilled.

Michael Walker: Oh yeah. To start out with, I'd love to hear a little bit about your story and kind of how you got started in this role.

Melissa Mulligan: Well, I come to this world as a singer and a songwriter and an artist myself. I remember growing up wanting to take voice lessons and wanting to get help. And there's this disconnect between academic, classical music training and music theory, all of those things and the creative urges that an artist has and I found that I could get really high quality training in certain aspects of music, but not a lot of help on the creative side. And I would often run into situations where a voice teacher or a classroom would be telling me that what I wanted to do was just flat out wrong.

Melissa Mulligan: On one hand, it made it harder for me to find freedom as an artist, because I was worried that there was a right way to do things and I couldn't find it. And as a people pleaser, I think a lot of artists want that validation. When I got to be a little bit older when I was in like, I'd say my late teens and early twenties, I realized that there wasn't solid vocal training available for people who wanted to do rock, pop punk, alternative music. And so those people just vocal coaches wouldn't even touch them like Jordan from New Found Glory when we first met he's like, "You're a voice teacher? Talk to me."

Melissa Mulligan: I just think there was this lack of respect for creative odd ball people, like me, in the coaching arena. And so that was really when I got this idea of like, well, I'm going to create it then. I'm going to create a space where oddball weirdo artistic people could have respect, healthy voices, solid anatomical training, whatever they need, but more than anything like respect and love and appreciation and validation for their art form.

Michael Walker: That's so good. It kind of reminds me too of, I'm taking a course with Ryan Tedder right now. Ryan Tedder is just like a master at the top of his game. One of the points that he just brought up and really like made like a whole, several times he's kind of alluded to this, is that, the technical aspect of the music theory and all the chords, isn't the most important thing. And that really there's something more fundamental and a lot of the way that he processed they going to work things is based on what sounds good. I'm playing around with things and not necessarily like what's proper or what's like the right or the wrong way to do it. And that it's more about finding your authentic voice. And it kind of acknowledging that he doesn't even know where some of the magic comes from with the melody. It's just kind of like come to him. It's more about getting out of your own way and allowing it to flow through you.

Michael Walker: So I love that you've kind of created this space for people that doesn't necessarily, it sounds like, it doesn't necessarily indicate that there's a hard right or hard wrong way to do things. And that sometimes there's a more nuanced approach. Certainly there's a different techniques and tactics and whatnot and rights. Like there's more black and white things there, but with something like art, like there's so much creative flexibility to it. It's kind of like a right brain type of thing. That's awesome.

Michael Walker: So working with all these creatives, musicians, creating this community, I'm sure you see a lot of patterns, a lot of similar challenges and things coming up that people need to go through. What are some of the biggest challenges that you see musicians struggling with when it comes to expressing themselves and establishing their artist identity?

Melissa Mulligan: That's a great question. Most of the problems that I see are people trying too hard to figure out the marketing, worrying about that, stressing about that rather than taking a good, hard look at themselves and what they want to say. It's hard. We're asking artists to be introspective, real, authentic people, but we're also asking artists to do something we didn't use to ask artists to do, which is produce your own music, run your own social media, figure out your brand, figure out your identity. It used to be, you were crazy talented and somebody could discover you and figure all that out for you. Nowadays, artists, I think are hip to the fact that they've got to have a sense of what that is, and it gets them into a harmful headspace really early on.

Melissa Mulligan: If you're 16 and you're writing songs and somebody is telling you, you need to figure out your brand, fire that person. If you're 16 and you're writing songs, you should be exploring every DAW, every instrument, every lyrical style, everything you want to say and letting it come together organically. By the way, if you're 36 and you're feeling a little lost creatively, and you're not sure what you want to do creatively, live there. That is where the magic happens. The answer won't be found in, I need to figure out my brand, do I wear a hat? What are my colors? Take a step back and just like make music, make great art. And then it's much easier to describe unique art. If you're not making unique art yet, then the descriptors aren't really going to help you. Does that make sense? It seems like there's a lot of cart before the horse stuff that people fall into.

Michael Walker: Yeah, I think that totally makes sense. It sounds like one mistake is wanting to kind of put the cart before the horse in the sense of trying too hard to make an impression or to figure out your brand, as opposed to acknowledging, especially like early on, you need to explore. It's more about self-discovery and about openness and willingness to try and experiments and to acknowledge like, I don't know who I am and I'm discovering who I am through the experiences that I'm having, but being willing to acknowledge that and let that be okay, being uncomfortable with that process, which allows you to have more creative flow.

Melissa Mulligan: Yeah. And if you happen to be in a meeting with somebody that you think is important, or somebody at a label, or somebody like Michael or me. And someone says like, "Well, what kind of music do you make?" If you were to say, "I'm on a journey and I'm pulling in elements from like youth jazz ensemble and my current affinity for hiphop and Dua Lipa," that's fascinating to somebody in the industry. There's this myth out there that you have to pretend, you have to have this slick elevator pitch immediately, and you have to know what genre you fit into and what ... That kind of idea is sort of dead. So you can feel free to be authentic and say, "I'm figuring it out. And I'm inspired by these specific things." It's going to come together and it's going to be great. That's a much better elevator pitch to, this is who I am as an artist, then that fake facade of I'm totally slick, and I've got it all figured out right now.

Michael Walker: That's so good. That's so interesting too, because it seems like the people who are at the top of their game, a lot of times they have this underlying understanding of like the more I see the less I know. Even as established as they are, they understand and they appreciate that there's a lot that they don't know. It seems like our life's work is almost a journey of self-discovery. And as soon as we think we know who we are, it's like, oh, guess what? You're not actually that. You're not that job or that role or that thing, and now that's gone. What is it? Who are you really?

Michael Walker: But it is interesting how there is kind of that balance of being able to communicate and express who you are in a way that is relatable and understandable. Let's say that someone's listening to this right now and they're kind of, this one thing that they are really struggling with or they're trying to figure out like, who am I and what is my unique edge and what's my artist identity? How do they kind of get started with discovering or expressing themselves? I know you mentioned a little bit about experimentation, but what does that look like in your experience?

Melissa Mulligan: Yeah, sure. I think if you're listening and you are not yet in a DAW, if you're not yet recording at home in Logic or Ableton or Luna or Studio One or something like that. If you're not in a DAW yet, I would start there because that is where you can say, okay, I wrote this song on piano, but I'm going to build it up without using piano as my main instrument. I'm going to start somewhere else. You have to be willing to suck at this and not have it work out right away, but pull in different instruments that you would normally not use, just fool around with different sounds. You need to have those happy accidents and you will wind up with something that's kind of new and different.

Melissa Mulligan: Make a Spotify playlist of like, I love the kick drum sound and this song, or I love the guitar sound in this song. I hate the song, but I love that guitar sound. To give you some things to try and recreate when you're experimenting. You'll come up with something weird that no one's ever heard before. And then your artist identity just comes down to word smithing a description, which you might need some help with. Not everybody's great at boiling it down to a two sentence or a three sentence description. But in our mastermind program, we've had people go from, well, I like country and I like alternative so I guess I'm country alternative. To saying, I am like if Emmylou Harris fronted Nirvana, and we were produced by Pharrell Williams, like that's a note description, right? But it takes experimentation and getting some things together, I think before you can wordsmith it that way.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Yeah. That's really smart. And I also, I found that that's a great way to describe, if you're kind of struggling to communicate what you sound like to someone else, like if you can share, it's like this person and this person and this person had a baby and like they all came together and it's like that, that's like a really natural model for kind of attaching it to something that people can grasp and understand. Also really effective for marketing. If you're reaching out to people who are like ... And you reached out to people who are fans of those artists and so it's like they had a baby with this band. A lot of times, that's a really powerful way to communicate it really quickly before they listen to the songs.

Michael Walker: Also want to piggyback off what you just said in terms of like, of modeling and recreating elements of your favorite songs and your favorite artists. There's one thing that Ryan Tedder talked about in the course is like, all of the most successful songwriters, they're learning from each other and they're taking things and they're literally like listening to the top songs and then they're like re-spinning it in their own way. It was kind of like that book Steal, Steal Like an Artist, where it's okay to model and to reference things that they really like, and maybe even recreate them in a DAW. And then take the instruments that you use to create those sounds and just turn them into something new and add your own unique twist to it. I love the advice to to get into the DAW and just start exploring, exploring your sound and see what comes out and modeling things. What are some other mistakes or challenges or things that you see coming up as like a pattern for musicians who are at that stage?

Melissa Mulligan: Sure. Well, I mean, definitely we talked about the cart before the horse problem, but I think overall, I think it's difficult to know where you are on your roadmap. It's difficult to know maybe even what the music industry landscape looks like today. So a lot of artists will come to me saying, "I want to release an album." And my question is always, "Well, why?" "Well, because I'm hoping I want to get signed and I think now's the time." Or, "All of my fans, all 50 of my fans want me to have an album out." Breaking that down, we can often figure out that, what you really should be doing is releasing singles and building an audience. And there's no such thing as getting discovered and getting signed to a label anymore, without you getting yourself from zero to 80 to 85% of the way there.

Melissa Mulligan: And oh, wait a minute, you don't actually play any instruments. Okay, wait a minute, you don't actually work in a DAW yet. Okay. So let's back up, what you were really looking for was to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a producer and then hope that you were going to drop an album on Spotify and magic was going to happen. So there's really no plan. There's really no roadmap. There's really no solid understanding of what this landscape actually looks like. So let's back it way up and let's figure out a way for you to become creatively brilliant, completely self-sufficient and savvy. Those are probably the three main things that artists need to have today. The fourth would be emotional resilience, obviously. I think just not understanding those three big buckets and wanting to just throw a bunch of money and a bunch of effort at something without maybe putting in the time in whatever phase you should be in is probably the main problem that I think people have that they struggle with. 

Michael Walker: That's so good. Ironically, it seems like, the more self resilient you are, the more attractive you are to record labels and to getting those opportunities versus if you're like really, really like are desperate and you really feel like you need a record label, then that's very unattractive record label. And you spent so much time and wasted money and effort trying to do that. So it sounds like what you're recommending is really starting with yourself and getting things to a point where you have something that's self-sufficient and then using that as maybe a record label could be more like gasoline that you pour on a fire, but the fire needs to be started already.

Melissa Mulligan: Yeah. You and I talked about this when we first met, like if you have super fans, evangelical fans, you have a lot of options. You may be getting good deal offers. You may not need them or want them, but that's where you're empowered and you're in control of your career. And in my opinion, you really have to be self-sufficient in your skill basis today in order to drive that and really make that happen.

Michael Walker: Awesome. So maybe we could dig a little bit into that idea of self-sufficiency and some of those skillsets that you're talking about, that are really like important skillsets to develop for anyone. Even eventually you get to a point where you need to start like delegating or outsourcing some stuff, what would you say are like a few of the most important skillsets that you would recommend people who are listening right now to mark off on a list and to start thinking about proactively, how can I start to improve these specific skillsets?

Melissa Mulligan: Well, home production, for sure. Top of the list. No doubt about it. Second would be your musicianship. You don't have to be an amazing virtuoso player of anything, but in my opinion, the world opens up to you, if you can speak the language of music with other musicians, just know chords and how they tend to flow together. If you can accompany yourself while you're writing. And by the way, the more savvy you get with new musicianship and production, the more you can collaborate with people from home, which I've been yelling about for five years, but really became a big issue during this pandemic era. The artists I work with who were tech savvy, were able to collaborate with producers and other musicians across the country and make great music happen. To that end, I think too, I'm starting to learn more about some video editing, even just getting some apps, learning a little bit more about visual content creation is amazing. It's an amazing skill to have today.

Melissa Mulligan: And then lastly, lastly would be starting to learn more about the marketing, the social media, advertising, funnels, things like that. The one thing I left out for now, of course, is adding a ton of creative thought into your live show. Right now that's not the biggest focus, but a big mistake that I see a lot of artists make is they just want to play well and have great stage presence. That's not going to blow anybody's mind visually or experientially. So the same amount of creativity that I recommend you put into your songs, I eventually will be recommending you put into how you're going to bring that experience to people live.

Michael Walker: Yeah. That's so good. I mean, clearly right now with like the pandemic, live shows are kind of at a halt, but it does seem like we're kind of turning around the corner and things are going to start opening back up and there'll be a huge need. Like there are so many people that want to connect and come out to live shows. With paradise fears, like this was my favorite tour that we ever did. And I know for most of our fans who attended like several different tours, like this was like the one that stuck out was the one that was probably the most creative idea for the tour, which we call the acoustic and the round tour. And basically we brought our own stage set up in the censor of the room. And like, we were just surrounded by people on all sides.

Michael Walker: And there was a speaker in the middle of the room. Like all of us were listening to the same mix and we were all like, you're hearing it together. Then people are literally like within like a foot away from like each of us as we were performing. And it was just like a really special experience and felt very connected. That seems to me like an example of what you're describing with like making something unique or making it like different in a way that just kind of shifts things on a side can be really valuable.

Michael Walker: One thing that I wanted to ask, because I think you're 100% on point in terms of like all those skills that you just mentioned are so important to cultivate and to learn over time. Yeah, I think that for a lot of us, especially nowadays, there's almost an overwhelming amount of information and an overwhelming amount of stuff to do. And a lot of us feel like we don't have enough time for all these different things that we want to do. And like we're spending all these different plates.

Michael Walker: So I'm curious to hear if you have any thoughts or like a framework in terms of like, best ways to accumulate new skills and budget a certain amount of time. Like you're like, okay, so for 30 day challenge, every single day, I'm going to spend an hour learning this skill. If you have any thoughts, just in terms of like some of the best ways to actually acquire and accumulate those skills.

Melissa Mulligan: Sure. My mentor and someone that I coach alongside with all the time is multi Grammy winning producer, Mike Mangini. I bring him up because I think he's got some amazing ways of teaching this and he's made himself more and more available this year than he ever has before. But Mike's worked with everyone from, well, the Jonas brothers to AJR, Katy Perry, Jackie Evancho, David Byrne from the Talking Heads, Smash Mouth. I mean, it's just 35 years of experience. Mike runs these six week production masterminds. I think it's super brilliant.

Melissa Mulligan: So one night a week, there's a group Zoom call where he takes you through like a certain skillset. And they build on each other week after week. But then the second class, the people in the class share their screens and their audio in stereo. And he can take over your screen and drive it and like help you make what's in your head come out of your speakers back at you. But then as he gets to know you guys through the end of the class, you're driving, like he's not taking over your screen. He might talk you through. I hear this, I hear that. And what we found is in six weeks, people's skillsets go through the roof as does the creativity, because you think about it, you're watching Mike co-produce all these other people who are doing things you would never think to do to begin with.

Melissa Mulligan: So now suddenly you're learning how to do things you wouldn't even asked about. I know that I'm incredibly biased, but if I thought there was a better answer, I would give it to you. In terms of learning production, you could watch YouTube tutorials. You could put in 30 minutes, 45 minutes a day. What I'm seeing though is in those six weeks, I'm seeing people's skills, like I said, evolve two years worth in that six week period. So that is my favorite recommendation.

Michael Walker: That's so important. I see this reflected across all of my mentors and like the most successful people that they have a propensity of finding mentors or finding talent of people, like whatever they're looking to grow in, they find people who are currently doing it or have developed the experience and learn from them as directly as possible. And I think you're right that nowadays especially, there's so much opportunity to learn from these mentors. Literally like people like Ryan Tedder and people, what was the name of the producer that you recommended too? The multi-platinum producers doing the six week masterminds?

Melissa Mulligan: Mike Mangini. He does it through our company. It's called the Music Production Mastermind and it's on our site, mastermindroad.com. The winter session, I think starts late February for this, but I mean, you can get in touch with me or him and I'll help you figure it out if that's something that you think makes sense. Yeah, I agree. I think if you're going to invest some time and some money in something, I would invest it in great coaching.

Michael Walker: Yeah. Sorry to cut you off there too. We'll definitely put the link so people can go check that out. Yeah, I think it's super valuable to have mentorship from people who have a ton of experience. One thing that popped in popped into my mind that I really wanted to share was the Abraham Lincoln quote of if you give me a day to cut down a tree or something, I'm going to spend the first half an hour sharpening the saw. Yeah, there's something so beautiful about that analogy, especially in regards to things like what we're talking about right now, where it's like, literally you could spend 30 years of your life just on your own, trying to "cut down this tree with a dull blade."

Michael Walker: And it's like, you'll make progress, but like, it's going to take so long and so much effort and energy and in the long-term, it's going to waste a lot of time and money. And if you can find someone to sharpen the saw, and that's just going to give you so much leverage to learn quicker. There's no real good excuses nowadays to not find those people and to learn from them. I think it's really important. It's why we're here right now is so that we can help the people who are listening to avoid the same mistakes that we made and to learn quicker and we're all learning together. I think it's awesome what you guys are doing.

Melissa Mulligan: ... I wanted to work with you. Like, okay, here's somebody who's got a very specific skillset that I deem is really valuable that I want to learn and I want to know. It is the most efficient, enjoyable way for me to learn what it is I want to learn and have the help while I'm doing it. Yeah, I think you and I are like in that way. Just constantly seeking the mentorship and the coaching and the guidance.

Michael Walker: And it never stopped still. Like my mentor is like they have mentors themselves at higher levels. There's something beautiful about that. I'm reading a book right now called the selfish gene. It's like a heady kind of book about our genes and the way that DNA replicates. A lot of the thoughts and the ideas and the culture that we have, I feel like is sort of like comes together. It's different thought, babies are formed from like different fields and different ways of thinking. Even what we were talking about earlier with referencing your influences and thinking about it in terms of, oh, it's like this person and this person had a baby.

Michael Walker: It seems like a lot of the new genres or new kind of creative music styles that come out are sort of like birthed from two different genres coming together and creating something kind of unique, kind of like the same way that two humans come together and they create a baby and the baby is neither parent. There's also something like its own and it's different, but it's also it's born of those two parents.

Melissa Mulligan: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I spend every day listening to the music that people between the ages of let's say 15 to 23 make because in addition to the industry professionals that I coach, I run these coaching programs for like younger aspiring professionals. And most of them are making radio ready, Spotify, they're killing it, with the music they're making on their own. But I can tell you that generation, there is no genre. It is not even a blend of two or three genres. It is simply whatever, whatever, but it's very describable, you just describe it in a different way. You would describe the instrumentation and the sound of someone's voice, maybe ukulele with trap beats. And the voice may be is like, if Ingrid Michaelson met Ella Fitzgerald. It's this brilliant, brilliant mosaic style music. And we could have 30 people in a Zoom listening session and every single person is completely unique from the other. They're the coolest generation of musicians I've ever heard, I have to say.

Michael Walker: Yeah, that's awesome. It does seem like there's just an explosion in creativity because of the access of the tools that we have that we can create. What used to take tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to record or just even wasn't even possible, you can do now for a few hundred dollars, what people couldn't do with hundreds of thousands of dollars, 10 or 20 years ago. That's insane. It also seems like in every solution there's a problem and in every problem there's a solution, but one of the problems that arises from this explosion of creativity and an artwork is a feeling of being lost in the noise and being able to feel like we have value or that we're doing something different. We had talked about this last time that we talked, was a little bit about this idea of intrinsic value and people having belief in who they are and being willing to show up. Could you talk a little bit about that, that idea of having intrinsic value?

Melissa Mulligan: Yes. It kind of circles back to the artist identity question. As an artist, once you start sharing your music or even creating it, you will be asked, "Well, what's different about you? What's special about you? Why does the music industry need your music?" And what I want to remind everyone is, that's a rhetorical marketing based question that has nothing to do with you as a human and as an artist. You as a human, before you even get out of bed, have intrinsic value, 100%. And your art, anything that you have to say, anything that you have to contribute to the world has value, and the rest of us need to hear it. Like whatever's in your heart, we need to hear, first of all.

Melissa Mulligan: And you might need help describing what is unique and special about you. That doesn't mean that there is nothing unique and special about you. It's a descriptor that they're asking for, not proof that you are valuable. The universe doesn't play cool, cosmic tricks on your heart. It doesn't put these dreams and desires to make music and share it with the world upon you only to make it impossible for you to do and worthless for you to try. That's not how life works.

Melissa Mulligan: If you're looking for proof that you're good enough, I would just ask you to instead check in with yourself and look for proof that you want this, that it lights you up, that participating in the creation of music, lights you up. That is the only proof you need that you're on the right path. And that this is meant to be a big part of your life. I don't think anybody can guarantee monetization to a certain extent, because that really has nothing to do with anything. But yeah, the music that you make that's coming out of your body and your brain is something that the world needs to hear. That's why you have a desire to make it.

Michael Walker: Oh, what's up guys. So quick intermission from the podcasts. I can tell you about an awesome free gift that I have for you. I wanted to share something that's not normally available to the public. They normally reserve for our $5,000 clients that we have personally. This is a presentation called six steps to explode your fan base and make a profit with your music online. And specifically, we're going to walk through how to build a paid traffic and automated funnel. It's going allow you to grow your fan base online. And the system is designed to get you to your first $5,000 a month with your music. We've invested over $130,000 in the past year to test out different traffic sources and different offers, really see what's working best right now for musicians. And so I think it's going to be hugely valuable for you. And so if that's something you're interested in, in the description, there should be a little link that you click on to go get that.

Michael Walker: And the other thing I wanted to mention is if you want to do us a huge favor, one thing that really makes a big difference early on when you're creating new podcasts is if people click subscribe, then it basically lets the algorithm know that this is something that's new and noteworthy and that people actually want to hear. And so that'll help us reach a lot more people. So if you're getting value from this and you get value from the free trainings, then if you want to do us a favor, I'd really appreciate you clicking the subscribe button. All right, let's get back to the podcast.

Michael Walker: That's so good. I got goosebumps several times as you're sharing that. I know I've heard a quote that much more poetically puts this idea, but something about how, what the world needs more than anything is it needs for you to show up and to be yourself. Like in a symbolic way, it's kind of like we each have a flashlight or like we each have a light that we're emitting. And that through that expression of who we are, that light, it has the power to enlighten the people around us.

Michael Walker: Music is one of those sacred things that really like you expressing yourself and sharing who you are. And shining that light has the ability to really resonate with people who are in a dark place who have struggled with the things that you struggled with. Where does music come from? Where does really good music come from? It comes from that process of expressing an emotion and resonating with other people who also have that emotion. And that can be something really so powerful about that connection that happens. So I think you're right that, we don't have to necessarily seek ourselves in someone or something else. And a lot of times it's just about letting go and more truly expressing that and having appreciation for that and realizing that you have intrinsic value that you can share with that.

Melissa Mulligan: I've never met someone who makes music who says they make music because they want to be rich and famous. I mean, when it comes right down to it, everyone says, I want to share, I want to connect, I want to change people's lives, I want to change the world, I want other people like me to feel heard and seen. I mean, we do this because we want to make connections. So why would you disconnect from your essential self in order to try and be more successful. Because what you really want is to be seen and heard authentically. So you're kind of killing your own dream, the second you start disconnecting from who you are, trying to please everybody, trying to seek an algorithm. You have to always bring it back home to the reason I'm doing this is to make real connections with humans.

Melissa Mulligan: And as you pointed out, that's what people respond to anyway. Is you showing up and being authentic. I always tell the people that I work with, you brought up the flashlight, which I love. I always say like, shine brightly so that others may see their own goodness, their own value. Like you can aluminate other people's worth when you're brave enough to show up and shine. You give other people permission to do the same when you do that.

Michael Walker: That's so good too. And that is an important distinction too, I think that, that your light often shines brightest when you're not necessarily focused on yourself and like your ego and it's more about providing value for other people and shining a light on other people and encouraging them and inspiring them. That's almost like a more true representation of yourself than this idea of who you are, like the ego side of it.

Melissa Mulligan: I think about that a lot as a mentor, especially with like the younger people that I work with, like yes, I show up and I tell him when I'm having an insecure moment once in a while. I let them see that I'm vulnerable, but I also make a conscious effort to hold myself accountable, to like celebrate my wins and celebrate my gratitudes and have good self-esteem. I want to model that and show that you shouldn't be afraid to shine. I think we as adults need to make sure that young people understand that self-deprecation isn't maybe as cool as it's made out to be all the time.

Michael Walker: Yeah. That's so good. There's something so powerful about using that as a motivation, to be a good role model. I know for me and for our kids, like that's something that's hugely motivating. It's like a huge driver. It's just to be the best role model for them and to encourage them to be their best selves and the same thing with our artists that we're mentoring as well. There's a new sense of purpose when you can really focus on being the best version of yourself so that you can be a good role model for other people as well.

Michael Walker: One thing that we had talked a little bit about last time that we talked, that I wanted to bring up is the zone. Kind of this zone of like flow that artists, in particular, I'm sure everyone here has had this happen, and that's probably a part of the reason that you would want to be a musician is because you've experienced the state of flow and the state of connection and being in the zone where time sort of faded away. I was curious to kind of hear some of your thoughts about that zone and like where the magic comes from and how people can get into that creative zone.

Melissa Mulligan: Yeah. Well, I'm a big fan of growth mindset obviously, but when it comes to creativity, I talk about it in terms of open versus closed mindset. And there's a great John Cleese video. It's like a talk that he gave to a convention, I think, about creativity and this study that he did. I'll send it to you, Michael, if you've never seen it before, because you'll love it.

Melissa Mulligan: Creativity needs open-endedness and no outcome and no deadlines and a lot of humor and a lot of playfulness. So if you can just force yourself to have that point of view on demand, then you will always have great results, but that can be a little bit difficult. I really like for artists to have some creative tools, some prompts that they can fool around with that work for them. One of the industry's favorites is take a song that you love, rearrange the chords, and then write a lyrical response to that song.

Melissa Mulligan: So if I was going to reply to Adele's, Someone Like You, I would write it from the perspective of like, Hey, crazy lady on my doorstep, knocking on my door in the middle of the night and screaming at me, nevermind I'll find someone else. That's nuts. I think the lyric is kind of preposterous. But it's not meant to be a song that you keep or a song that you use. It just takes all that pressure off of starting from scratch, staring at a blank screen, staring at a blank piece of paper. But yeah, the mindset is really everything. Finding time to create and play without consequence is usually what gets people into the zone.

Michael Walker: Good stuff. So it sounds like what you're saying is that it helps to sometimes have prompt or have like a canvas. There's almost like something that's kind of counterintuitive or like paradoxical about intentionally setting limits on ourselves, creative limits, to allow us to be more creative. The same way that having like a canvas, like a paint board or having a prompt or having an idea, even though it's like a closed playground, that kind of gives you the ability to kind of let your creativity out within the confines of that playground. I'd love to hear a few other examples of that. That prompt is awesome. Basically taking a song, one of your favorite songs and writing response to it and playing around with the vibe of it. What are maybe one or two other prompts that you see people really resonating with or being a good framework to start with?

Melissa Mulligan: Sure. I like to do a lot of random word prompts for topics. I even at one point gave a bunch of my clients, I made them a little card deck of like adjectives and pretty nouns and stuff, but you can get a magnetic poetry kit. You can put a little words and ideas into a jar and pick them out for yourself. You can get a random word generator app for your phone, and you have to write your way from one word to the other, even if you don't use those words. That's the prompt. One of the guys on our team, Grammy, Emmy winning songwriter, Peter Zizzo, amazing. He was like responsible for Avril Lavigne's career for starters, and I'm such a fan.

Melissa Mulligan: He always tells our students, like you have to do morning pages, you have to wake up and just do a free association brain dump. And that puts you in the mindset of a writer all day. So you might not come up with anything good while you're writing. Like don't pick up the pen for 10 minutes. Even if you're writing, I have nothing to say for 10 minutes. But then throughout the day, your brain is conditioned to hear tidbits of conversation and go, "Ooh, that's good." And then I'm starting to take voice memos down and I'm starting to type in things in my little book throughout the day.

Melissa Mulligan: So that's his trick. And I mean, he has to write every day, come hell or high water. He has no options. His trick is to just train your brain to be scanning the world for inspiration. And then you're just creating like a word bank and an idea bank throughout the day. So when you sit down to write, you have all these gems that you experienced throughout the day. I love that. When I've done that, it's worked great. I don't always remember to.

Michael Walker: That's so good. So basically like making it a morning habit, morning routine to one of the first things that you do when you wake up is to brain dump. It's almost like going down a slope, like with a sled, the more that you do it, it kind of starts to create this groove. And so throughout the day, you make that the first thing you do every day kind of creates this deeper groove then you start to really pay attention and notice other opportunities for writing songs. And it kind of goes down that groove. Oh, it's so good.

Michael Walker: One idea that I'd like to kind of add to the mix too, in terms of a prompt is asking yourself, I think this is something that you definitely would agree with, and I'm sure that this is one of the things that you really dig into with like artists identity and pulling up ideas for songs and whatnot, reflecting on your biggest struggles or your biggest challenges and specifically stories, especially stories where it's like you struggled with something and you overcame it. I think there's like a lot of emotional emotional cues that you can dig into.

Michael Walker: There tends to be like a feeling, almost like a radar or like a clue that you're on the right path is if, when you think about something and it kind of comes up and it is like there's like a space, like there's certain amount of trauma around it, or there's a certain amount of emotion. And there's almost a sense of like fear of like, "Ooh, I don't know if I could share that. I don't know if I could think about that." Where it's vulnerable and that that might be a clue or a compass to kind of be like, okay, that could be something to write about and to kind of just see what comes up. Potentially, if not for you to help other people, who've gone through a similar trauma to be able to heal from that. So it might be another idea to kind of throw on the data bank of prompts.

Melissa Mulligan: The number one cause of writer's block is self-censorship. So that's the number one positive, right there. It is, I can't write about that because so-and-so will hear it and know it's about them. I don't want to tell this story because it's too vulnerable or because it's too personal, or it's too much of a downer. I always write love songs. I want to write something upbeat. All of that you need to write yourself through that stuff. So what I always tell people is, first of all, dare to suck, dare to write horrible. You got to write crap for 20 minutes before the good stuff comes out anyway. So just do that. But I always tell people, write the thing you don't want to write about and plan on throwing it away. But if you're like, ugh, nope, ugh, nope. Now you're editing while you're creating. So now your left brain is taking over your right brain and canceling everything out.

Melissa Mulligan: So you have to write all of that stuff that you don't want to publish. No one has to know. Eventually you'll get somewhere and maybe you will use some of. You'll pick and pull and you can edit later. But the brain dump, to your point, Michael, like a lot of the magic absolutely happens when you get super real and super vulnerable. It's when you're connecting your words to your feelings and your real experiences, that the magic really happens. You can figure out what to share later and how to publish it another time.

Michael Walker: I love that. That's so good. Well hey, Melissa, it's been awesome talking with you. I've really enjoyed it. I've got like goosebumps ever since we started talking. We've gotten pretty profound in a few of these points. But I also feel like we also brought it back to earth and we landed the plane. We talked about some really awesome specific strategies and techniques people can take into account. Really appreciate you doing what you're doing and creating these mastermind groups and helping artists to succeed with the thing that they're passionate about. I think it's awesome. Thank you for taking the time to be here today and to share some of lessons that you've learned. And for anyone who's listening on this right now, who's interested in learning more connecting with you, where could they go to, to get in touch?

Melissa Mulligan: Sure. Probably the easiest is the website, which is mastermindroad.com. I'm Mel Mulligan on Instagram. That's my personal Instagram. I have a business one too, but just reach out to me personally, that way I'll know that you came to me through this podcast. Those are probably very simple ways to get in touch and we can talk about goals or strategies or whatever. I'm happy to help.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Great stuff. And do you have any any like free training, free workshop that might be a good place for people to go as well in terms of diving deeper into some of these strategies that we're talking about?

Melissa Mulligan: Yeah, for sure. I mean, first of all, if you reach out and it makes sense to do a complimentary roadmapping conversation, I'm all about that. It is like my favorite thing to do and I carve out time every week to do those. So, that's fine. Depending upon when you hear this, we often do run free events. Like right now we're in the midst of a 10-day MVS Fest, we call it, where like me and Jeannie and Peter and me, and a whole bunch of experts are doing these free live classes on every type of creative or industry related topic you can think of. Yeah, depending upon when you hear this, there may be something else available, but reaching out is a good first step.

Michael Walker: Awesome. Beautiful. We'll put a link to the website in the description in the show notes so that you can go check it out. And whenever you're listening to this, they'll probably have the updated versions of what events are available at that point.

Melissa Mulligan: Yep, exactly.

Michael Walker: Cool. All right. Well, Melissa, thanks again. That was great, having this conversation and I appreciate what you're doing.

Melissa Mulligan: Thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon.

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