Michael Walker: Yeah. All right. I'm excited to be here with my new friend, Sara Campbell. Sara is the founder of Savvy Music Studio. She helps independent teachers and creatives design sustainable businesses. So, as a business and marketing coach for musicians, she helps them to teach from a place of authenticity and blending clarity with strategy, but not hype. And she's the creator of the BravePants Branding Program, which guides clients to grow visibility and income without getting burnt out. So I'm really excited to have her on the podcast today, talk a little bit about the cross section between, as a musician, how can you share your gift in order to be able to teach, be able to turn your music into an additional form of an income stream to sustain your music. So thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Sara Campbell: Thanks for inviting me, Michael. I'm excited to chat.

Michael: I had to resist so, so much the urge to introduce you with the catchphrase, the Babes Who Hustle. Apparently, so this was like on our initial bio. You were featured on a magazine like 10 years ago or something. So anyways, yeah. That's funny. And then we were like, there needs to be like a male, like “h who hustle.” We could go down like a whole rabbit hole, but, Sara, could you share just a quick introduction into your story and how you started this platform, started working with music teachers?

Sara: Sure. So I have a long background in music and performing. I've got a couple of like fancy degrees and all that jazz. And I started teaching probably about 20 years ago, and I got into blogging back when blogging was hot and all that stuff. And I started talking a lot about marketing and kind of giving people insights into how I was running my own business and just over time it grew into Savvy Music Studio. I've worked with several different companies, and now I'm having a lot of fun working with independent music teachers and also people outside of that. I work with performers, I work with content creators, and I really have a good time helping people figure out how to do this sustainably because I think so many people are feeling really burnt out nowadays, and it's time to come back to our roots and figure out how to be joyful about what we're doing again.

Michael: Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, I love that particular focus, because it does feel like, especially in our society, it's easy to get kind of caught in the rat race and even have external success, but not actually be joyful or happy as we're doing it. Could you maybe share a little bit about how you came to that specific point? I'm guessing that there's probably a reason why that part of it really became such a core part of it for you.

Sara: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it's like your standard brand story, right? I was experiencing that myself. I was definitely really burnt out years ago when I was trying to cobble together a job, multiple jobs at the time to sustain me. I realized I was working so hard and never taking any time off, not going on vacations, struggling to make ends meet. And I thought, there's gotta be a better way to do this. So I worked with coaches, I did a lot of research on my own, and then I realized: hey, if you're gonna do this, if you're gonna be a musician, a performer, a teacher, all of these different things, you really need to get your goals in line. And you need to know why are you doing this in the first place. And so that got me getting really serious about figuring out business strategy and how to put your goals first rather than your clients first or the craft first. Because I think, especially as performers and musicians in general, we can get really sucked into that and we forget. Why are we doing this in the first place? Why is this our job? It's because we love music and because we love to perform or we love to teach, but you're doing this so that you can have a life outside of that. And I think it's easy to lose sight of it.

Michael: Yeah. That's a great lesson. Yeah. I mean, it kind of reminds me of just how weird it is, like backwards of a system it is if you spend your whole life doing something you hate so that someday you can kind of like retire and then at that point you're like, oh man. It just, yeah, it seems like such an important question that you're asking right now, which is: why? Why are you doing what you're doing and what's the purpose of, what's the point? And setting goals around that. I would love to hear your recommendation as it relates to goal setting. How does someone get started on doing that inner work of figuring out what do they want, what are their goals? And do you have any advice on what things to avoid in goal setting versus what things work really well?

Sara: Sure. I think that for a lot of us, when we think of goal setting, we get really focused on numbers or like, I want to reach this many people, or I want to get this many people on my email list, or I want to make this much money. But we kind of forget to take a step back and go, okay, well, what do I want my life to actually look like? What do I want to be able to do outside of work in five years? If I could, I always use the phrase like, if you can wave a magic wand and suddenly you're able to live this life that you're taking more time off of work, you're spending time with friends, you're spending time with family. What would that actually look like for you? Rather than getting into how much income do you want to make or how many people do you want to reach, tell me why you want to make that much income. Tell me why you want to reach that many people. And that's when we start getting clearer on, oh, well, I want to be able to make X, Y, Z dollars so that I can take 10 weeks off a year and go on multiple vacations with my family, or I want to be able to take a couple hours out of my day every day to go read a book or go to the gym or go have dinner with friends. And we forget the life stuff because we get so focused on finding success in the business. We forget that needs to translate into success in your life outside of the business. So to really hone in on that, because I feel like I danced around the answer. I like to start with: what do you want your life to look like in five years? Don't tell me just about your business. Tell me what happens when you get up in the morning, what's going on later that day. Walk me through your week, walk me through your year, and really describe what are the things that you wanna be able to do.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah, that's super helpful. So what I'm hearing you say is that it's easy to get trapped or lost in number-based goals, which can have their place, but it can be beside the point too. Going deeper and asking why does that matter to you? What do you actually want your life to look like can help you get to a more truer place of what actually motivates you and why it's important. It reminds me of the analogy or the metaphor of kind of like climbing up a bookshelf and how important it is to make sure that you're climbing up the right bookshelf. And yeah, maybe setting those goals without the why could be sort of like climbing up the ladder and it's like, cool, you can keep climbing up the ladder, but if you're climbing up the wrong bookshelf, then you might realize, wow, I got to the top of a place that I didn't really want to be at. Yeah. So what you're saying is make sure you're climbing up the right ladder.

Sara: Yeah. That's a great analogy. You don't want to get to the top of that and realize that that book that you've been reaching for is on the next shelf over.

Michael: Awesome. So, cool. So what I'm hearing you say is that one of the best places to start is really by creating some space in your life and getting clear on five years from now, what do you actually want your life to look like? What do you actually want your day-to-day life to feel like, to look like? What are you doing? And getting clarity on that and understanding what's really driving you. And then from there, how do you recommend that someone organizes their day-to-day life around those goals? How often should they set that type of goal? How often should they reflect on it? Do they break up the timeframe so they can kind of think through the next year? What's your process for planning around those bigger goals?

Sara: Planning is my happy place, so I could talk about this for a long time, but I would suggest really, we need to look at these things at least once a year and give it a very serious look. Everybody thinks about January as the time to set goals, but I don't care what time of year it is. If you're gonna do your yearly planning in September, fantastic. Do it in September. But sit down, really look, and not just by yourself. If you have a partner or you have a family, sit down together and really look at: are we going the direction that we see ourselves wanting to go in five years? Or like, hey, let's talk about retirement. All of these things you need to get really serious about. I would say at least have one really big goal-setting session per year. And then I like to think of planning in quarterly sessions and then monthly sessions and then weekly sessions. So you start big and you try to break it all down, but then you have to keep revisiting that in different periods of the year so that you don't get so overwhelmed. When you do that first initial goal-setting session, you're like, okay, this is all the stuff that I've written down, but how the heck do I get there? So that's where the quarterly planning and monthly planning and all that kind of comes into play.

Michael: Cool. So, you know, starting with the big why is really helpful, that five-year kind of target, but then kind of bringing it back to some of those timeframes, you mentioned once a year doing a deeper planning. Quarterly is really a sweet spot where it's a big enough timeframe where you can really do some big things, but it's also close enough that it doesn't feel ambiguous. And even weekly. Yeah, weekly having a check-in, creating a space to just see, yeah, are you aligned with your bigger goals. What it reminds me of is I love this video. I don't even know what it's called, but it has like probably a few million views on YouTube, and it's this scientist-looking guy who's just kind of like your classic kind of geeky, like, oh my gosh, these experiments. And he has a bunch of dominoes stacked up, this little tiny, tiny domino. And then there's a bunch of dominoes stacked up and each of them gets taller and taller until he has this massive domino. And he's like, based on gravity and momentum, and then the point is he pushes over this little tiny domino and it knocks over the bigger ones. So that little tiny domino knocks over this huge, massive domino at the end of it. And that's what comes to mind when I think of what you're recommending right now with this big picture goal. It's like five years, big dominoes, like how am I gonna do it? But if you align all of your timeframes up, sort of like you push over one day at a time towards, and you keep it in alignment with the right dominoes, then you can knock over those big five-year goals.

Sara: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you don't eat an elephant all at once, right? What's the phrase, like you eat an elephant one bite at a time. I don't know who wants to eat an elephant. That's a very odd phrase, and I'm sorry for the vegetarians out there.

Michael: There's only one way to find out. We need to get an elephant here, stat. Cool. So let's go a little bit deeper into the forest. Now I feel like we've kind of zoomed out. We have a good lay of the overall forest: goal setting, and we've talked about planning and different timeframes. What would you recommend for artists? I think there's probably a lot of people who are watching and listening to this right now where their big goal, their big five-year vision is that they want to be doing music full time. And they want to be expressing themselves, creating their artwork and creating a community around it, making a sustainable income with their music. And now maybe they're clear on that being their goal, but they're like, how the heck do I actually make that happen? And where do I start? It's so much noise. How do I cut through? What would your recommendations be for, at the time of recording this right now, what do you see that's working right now as it relates to business strategies for them to actually accomplish those goals?

Sara: There's so many different ways to do it, and I think it really depends on who you are as a person and what really lights you up. When you have a career in music, there's so many different doors to take. There's so many different paths. You have to start by asking: what is it that I really love to do, and how can I maybe do that thing in different ways? I think that one of the things that works really well for musicians is to think a little bit more about diversity. What are the different income streams that are coming in, and to get clear about where is this income coming. Okay, so gigging, right? So the actual shows and things like that and the money that comes in from shows. Great. What about the way you're distributing your music or the way that you're treating your socials or the way that you're monetizing your social channels? Great. And then think about what are the other income streams that would make you happy. Is it doing custom work for people? Is it composing for television or composing for movies? Is it teaching people how to riff like you? There's so many different ways that you can go about it. Choose what makes you happy and what really lights you up, because when you do that and you choose those income streams, then you're gonna be more successful at it, because when you do something that's lighting you up, it attracts people. People get excited when they see people who are passionate about what they're doing. So I think you gotta find out, what do I want to do and what makes me really happy? Because if you choose some path that somebody's like, yeah, you can do this and you can do this and you can do this, and you just try to follow a formula that's handed to you, but if it doesn't fit and you find yourself going, I am not enjoying this, then the income's gonna dry up. Because if you're not happy doing it, people aren't gonna come to you. So find what makes you happy, find what lights you up.

Michael: Good stuff. Yeah. So what I'm hearing you say is that, kind of like that bookshelf analogy, you make sure you're on the right bookshelf. There's a lot of different paths that you could take. There's a lot of different routes that could probably get you to that same destination, but you have to figure out what actually resonates with you and what you enjoy. It's gonna be different for everyone. Would you recommend that folks just make a list of all of the different ones and then start to explore, kind of get their feet wet with the different income streams? What do you recommend their process looks like for testing out those different ones, and knowing that also, what is, we have lots of quotes during this episode, but one of the good ones is like “you chase two rabbits, you don't catch either one,” which is definitely true, but also from the exploration phase, it is kind of nice to test out. You have to chase 10 different rabbits to see which one you want to chase. What's your advice in terms of people kind of discovering that for themselves?

Sara: Sure. I'm glad that you asked this because not only do we have to pick something that lights us up, but we have to pick something that people are asking for. You need to do your market research. You need to think about, of your following, of the audience that you have, what are people already looking for out there? Because if you chase the one rabbit that you're like, I really like doing this thing, but then you find out that nobody's asking for that thing, you're gonna have a really hard time with that income stream. So look out there and ask: where is there a gap that I can fill that matches what I like to do? You gotta find what is it that people are searching for, what are they wanting to do, and that's the direction that you can go. One of the things that I can speak about more specifically as somebody who coaches teachers, musicians who are teachers, is to think about what do people want to learn. There's so many people out there that see all these cool performers and they're like, oh man, I wish I could sing like that, or I wish I could play like that. And I think sometimes that musician performers look at teaching as kind of like a fallback gig, but it can actually be a really lucrative profession if it's done right. So you gotta look for what do people want. Meet them there. That's where you're gonna find the money, and that's where you're gonna find the joy.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. So it is important to kind of look at the market around what people are asking for, what do they actually want, and filling in the gaps rather than just kind of going off and doing something that seems interesting, but that people aren't actually looking for. I've thought about this a lot too as it relates to artists, and I would love to hear your perspective on this. From like a business standpoint, to me it feels a lot more straightforward in terms of identifying a need or an issue. That's just how business foundations are built, is identifying a need, a problem, and then offering a solution to it. But it does feel like, I think it's still the same thing for artists. It's just a slightly different framing of like, what is the problem that you're solving. Getting in touch with that can help someone who is an artist, who doesn't necessarily think it's not as black and white as for business, like solving a need, but it still is like a service and they are certainly fulfilling a need. I'm curious what your thoughts are as it relates to what does that look like for artists who are creatives, who wanna make music, and how should they be approaching their business from that same vantage point that's gonna help them actually build a sustainable business. What is the need that you think that they're fulfilling?

Sara: Ooh, that's a really good one. I think it really depends on the artist, because there's so many genres out there, there's so many different types of music that are being put out into the world and types of performances. This is where you gotta know your audience. So if you're listening to this, I want you to think about: who are the people that listen to my music? Who are the people that seek out music like what we create? And what kind of a human is this person? What are they doing in their daily lives? Why do they seek out music? What is it that drives them to open whatever music platform and search for a new artist, or what is it that drives them to follow an artist? Most often I would say that the need that you're filling is some type of an escape or it's some type of a deep emotional need. But again, I think it depends on what kind of a musician are you. What is your music bringing to the world?

Michael: Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it, is sort of like an emotional release. And it depends on you as an artist, what kinds of songs you write, and probably depends on just song by song, doesn't it?

Sara: Probably, yeah.

Michael: You might have a really happy song or a song about falling in love, and it's like, what need does that song fill? Well, it fills the need of someone feeling the emotion of falling in love and wanting to express that and feel that and share that with someone. Probably helps too with figuring out places where that song fits as a soundtrack for TV and film and some other needs that it could fit, but it certainly is a need, even if we don't necessarily think about it that way a lot. Okay. So it seems like one thing that you have a lot of expertise around is different kinds of creative businesses, but particularly teaching as a form, as one of those diverse streams of income. It seems like it's a really applicable one to every artist, because every artist is doing something magical with their instruments and they're making music and they have a skill that they can then pass on. How would you recommend kind of framing, there might be some artists who are listening to this right now who don't necessarily see themselves as a teacher and they might not fully understand the opportunity. They don't want to lose their art by focusing on the teaching part of it. How do you recommend that they can think about teaching, and who is it right for? Versus, basically, who do you think is the right fit for a teaching stream of income?

Sara: Well, certainly teaching is a skill in and of itself, right? And we know that not every performer is a teacher at heart. So, how do you know, how could teaching play a role in your income? Think about: do you wanna work one-on-one with people? Do you enjoy being able to have those deep conversations with people and to figure out, why do you wanna play, what do you wanna play? And having those student-led teaching situations rather than like a mentorship down. There's different types of teaching, like those two things that I just mentioned, like being a student-led kind of teacher where the student really drives what you're teaching versus, hey, I'm gonna teach you how to do X, Y, Z riffs, or I'm gonna teach you how to do this song. There's different types of teaching. You have to ask yourself, what kind of a teacher am I? And there's different forms too. I mentioned one-on-one already, but for many people that's not their happy spot, and they would rather do group sessions with people, or they would rather create a course and, provided that you have an audience that you could actually sell that course to. Just don't go creating courses all willy-nilly and not having an audience to sell them to. You gotta think about: what is it that my audience might be seeking out, and what is it about my playing or my singing that sets me apart? I think that's probably where you'd wanna start. And then think about what style of teaching would align with the way that I want to work, because there's so many different possibilities out there.

Michael: Okay. Got it. So teaching, it might not be for everyone, and you'll probably know after you do it a little bit whether it's something that you resonate with, you enjoy or not. There's also a lot of different kinds of teaching, could be one-on-one, could be group coaching, could be doing courses. You mentioned one piece that is probably worth diving deeper into, having an audience. Building an audience.

Sara: Yeah.

Michael: And I guess that applies whether you're focused on teaching or you're focused on growing your original music or whatever. You need to be able to build an audience. So maybe you could share, from your perspective, what are the most important things that someone can do to start building that audience and nurturing it, building a real community.

Sara: So I'm sure you talk a lot about this. Here I am. I'm sure there's some fantastic advice. I think my favorite bit to say is: okay, great, so grow your platforms, do the social things, get the followers and all that jazz. But please be sure that you are also building a place that you own. You need an audience that you actually own. You don't own Instagram. You don't own YouTube. Name any platform where you've got followers. You don't own those. If it's any kind of social media, you don't own it. So make sure that you've got some place where you've got email addresses. You can directly contact these people and you own that list. Because just imagine what could happen if one day you open your phone and Instagram is gone and that's where all of your followers were.

Michael: Mm-hmm.

Sara: Not saying that's gonna happen anytime soon, but, you know.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, we, at the time of recording this, recently had sort of a scare with TikTok where that was almost all gone. MySpace used to be a thing and it's not really anymore. Sara, I think for everyone listening, I didn't put Sara up to this at all, but what you just shared was like a perfect elevator pitch for our software that we built called Street Team, which is basically the way I describe it is it's like if Patreon and Discord and Facebook groups had a baby, but instead of Mark Zuckerberg owning the baby, you own your artist fan relationships. So you own the email list, the text message, but you can build a community, you can connect with your fans. And everything you just shared is why we exist and why we built the platform. But in terms of starting to cultivate that owned list, the email list, the phone number list that you actually, even if Instagram dies, you still have that connection, how do you recommend that artists start to transform their following from different platforms into an actual email list? How do they grow an internal list?

Sara: Well, there's so many different ways to do it. A lot of the standard advice out there, which works, is offer a freebie or give them some type of an incentive to join the list. And it doesn't have to be that you have to come up with this crazy cool downloadable or anything like that. It could be as simple as: hey, every week we send out behind-the-scenes updates about our band. So if you want to hear the crazy stories from being on the road, or if you want to know what we're up to behind the scenes when we're composing, that's where you want to go. Give them some reason to join you over there. I think that behind-the-scenes stuff is one of the most attractive things to fans that you already have, because they already love what you're doing. They see what you're putting out on socials, they love following you, but getting that extra glimpse of what your world is like is so attractive to people.

Michael: Awesome. Yeah. So classic advice with freebies is always a good thing. Incentives, but even things that they don't necessarily have to go crazy about, just giving people access. Yeah, giving people access, behind-the-scenes content is a good way to start. Okay. I feel like one pain point or something that a lot of us can relate to is content strategy and just knowing how much to post, when to post, where to post. Do you have any recommendations for artists in terms of creating a content calendar that doesn't feel overwhelming, but does help them connect with their fans and reach new fans?

Sara: Oh boy, that's a big topic, isn't it? Content is, I feel like, like you just said, a big pain point for a lot of us, because it takes a lot of time. When it comes to putting together content strategies, I think zooming out is always important and really getting a clear idea of what does your marketing calendar look like. What are you selling at different times throughout the year? First off, getting that laid out so that you know, okay, we're focused on this tour over here, we're focused on this album release over here. And just map it out first. Figure out what are you selling and when. Because oftentimes we don't think about that until the last minute, and then planning stuff out is way harder when we're always scrambling day to day. So if you want to build out good content calendars, you have to think about what does your launch cycle look like, and work it backwards. If you know the tour starts on this date or the album launches on this date, then you need to start working your content calendar backwards to think about, okay, when do we do the big final push for tickets, or when do we do the sneak at the very beginning. When do we do the sneak peek: guess what's coming soon, you're gonna be so excited. So for me personally, if I am working through a content plan, I'm always reverse engineering. I start with the date of the thing: when is the event happening. Then I start going backwards. What happens three days before that? What happens two days before that? And then just keep going backwards until you kind of build out that full content calendar. That's gonna give you an idea of what needs to happen and when. Then there's all kinds of other things you can think about in the types of content, but I think that the main thing is actually building a calendar first.

Michael: Cool. Good stuff. I mean, it kind of reminds me of the conversation we had earlier around goal setting and five-year planning and then coming back and reverse engineering with that end in mind. So your recommendation is: get clear on what are the big rocks or what are the big events that you want to baseline your calendar around, and once you know what your big tours are or your big events or releases are, then you can kind of reverse engineer and figure out a timeline for leading up to that. How do you create breadcrumbs that kind of naturally, or how do you create those dominoes, how do you create the dominoes that kind of lead up to that naturally.

Sara: Exactly, and that's a much better way to approach content than, what do I have to post today. I mean, with the way the algorithms work out there and all the trends and stuff, I think we chase a lot of that and that's how we come up with our content. But if we can zoom out and, like you said, think of the big rocks and the dominoes and then look at how the whole picture works together, then figuring out your content plan is a lot easier.

Michael: Awesome. Well, Sara, it's been a lot of fun talking through some really fundamental pieces. I think for all of us as humans and as artists, as business owners, learning how to set goals properly for a five-year timeframe, reverse engineering that, and your content calendar, management, planning that. It feels like this is a very practical conversation that hopefully people can take away and be inspired to revisit their own timelines in terms of how they're planning out their life and literally dreaming it into existence. So I really appreciate you being here today. For anyone that is resonating with the conversation and would like to connect more with you and your materials and resources, what's the best place for them to go to dive deeper?

Sara: Sure. You can follow me at Savvy Music Studio on pretty much any platform except for TikTok. I'm not on TikTok, sorry. But you can look for me on Instagram, Facebook, savvymusicstudio.com. We have, actually, we have a program. Our big program of the year starts in October and that's our BravePants Branding and Marketing program, where we really help people figure out the nitty gritty from the beginning, because marketing is a pain point for a lot of performers. Figuring out how to market stuff, and especially if you have a teaching part of your career, you've got to figure out your brand before you market things. That's what we work on from the inside out. It's really fun.

Michael: Awesome. That sounds super valuable. Like always, we'll put the links in the show notes for easy access. And Sara, thank you again for being on the podcast today.

Sara: Thanks, Michael. It was fun.

Michael: Yeah.