YOU… Versus the World

I’m stayin’ riiiiiiight here. Do you hear me?” — Randall Flagg

The last several months have been nuts. You know what I mean because it happens to all of us at various points in life and in career: Everything hits at once. For me it’s been a solid 6-month mix of feature film work, studio pitches, a television library to get off the ground, a marriage to prepare for, a solo record to finish, strategic business relationships to nurture, and managing game projects from opposite sides of the world.

Out of those nine things… only four of them are happening in or around Los Angeles.

Where’s Waldo Deano?

People are starting to ask me if I’m relocating to Asia from Los Angeles. I can clear that up emphatically: No. Los Angeles is home for me. As long as I make music for a living, it always will be. There’s no escaping that even if I wanted to. Now, I do not believe that you necessarily have to be here to make a living as a composer/musician/performer, but I do believe you’ll have a huge advantage if you are here. It’s like the big college debate: Will going to music school make you super successful as a musician or composer? Of course not. It will, however, give you a severe upper hand over those who don’t go simply by the fact that education (at any level) is a shortcut through the learning curve of anything. If you know more faster than the next person, you ought to get out of the starting gate faster, too. Seems logical. Same with being located where things are happening most in your field… in my case, the “entertainment capital of the world” — Los Angeles.

50% of Everything, or 100% of Some Things?

I worked a lot of jobs before I decided to become a full-time artist. One was as a commission-based salesman. It was a steep learning curve as I’d never worked in sales in my life. After about the first two months of badgering customers to buy, just like they trained us to, I came to a frustrating conclusion: Commissioned sales sucks ass! It’s a cut-throat atmosphere that is not easy to work in. Basically, you’re throwing yourself into competition with people you essentially live with. Different from “destination sales” (e.g. selling hamburgers at McDonald’s, scanning items at the checkout line, etc.) — any situation where a salesperson’s pay is based on an hourly rate as opposed to their percentage of profit earned — commimission-based sales lives and dies on the concept of a team of people competing against each other to drive traffic into a venue and get the customer to buy right, then, and there. If you cannot do that, you don’t “fade your commission” and you get voted off the island. Like I said, it’s cut-throat as hell. Way worse than being an artist!

But I learned something completely valuable working in commission-based sales: I realized that if I was going to get anywhere in that gig I would have to figure out a way to multiply myself so that there were more “Deane’s” on the sales floor than just one. I did the math one day and reasoned that 50% of everything is better than 100% of some things. In other words, I could try to be the person who got 100% of every sale on the sales floor, but meanwhile, while I was busy selling to those people, more customers (read: more potential buyers) were flocking through the door looking to buy at a rate faster than I was able to close deals. What if I switched up my game-plan? What if I greeted and “qualified” every person who walked through the door, and once I learned why they were there and what they needed, I turned them over to one of my colleagues who just had to finish the deal and get them happily on their way? I could split the commission 50/50 with that person (since we both did half the work), and everybody wins! While he/she is finishing that deal, I greet more people, hand them off, greet some more people, hand them off… until finally, every single person on the floor is earning based on my setting up their deals for them. In turn, I would get half of everyone else’s reward for “throwing them the deal”.

THAT… THAT is why I’m working more and more in Asia and Europe these days on top of my regular stuff in Los Angeles. It’s a numbers game. 50% of everything is better than 100% of some things.

That’s not always my formula as an artist — I take 100% of certain things because nobody else can do what I’m doing in terms of how I do it or what my clients want from me specifically — but this is another way of looking at parts of your business that don’t have to rely solely on your being there in order for them to succeed. When you begin to think this way, the opportunities come from places that you would never expect… because you aren’t looking in the same old places. You aren’t counting on the same old phone to ring. It’s a different phone now… a wider network… a larger territory… a broader wingspan.

Doing What You Need to Do to Be Happy

The Musicave can be anywhere I want it to be. If I have meetings and face-to-face sit downs then I have to be in the places where those meetings are convenient for my clients. Sometimes that’s Los Angeles, sometimes it’s Kyoto or London. Four months ago, I flew from Jakarta to Kyoto to London to Los Angeles in the span of three days. It blew goats… but I had to do it if I want what I envision for my career. It takes what it takes. I’ve become a virtual expert on how to live and work in multiple spots, namely Indonesia, Japan, Argentina, Amsterdam, London, Oregon, and of course Los Angeles. To do it, I’ve built a mobile rig — the kind I’ve dreamed about for years and pictured in my mind for a long time. Unfortunately, until this last year, the technology hadn’t grown up enough to meet the demands of my main studio rig… but now… I’m completely mobile. I can score a feature with my mobile rig, which fits neatly into a carry-on luggage. I recently tested this theory on Hattrick and Level 7 for Matt Wilson (which is going to kick your lovin’ ass, by the way!). I wrote and produced the entire Eastern Chronicle project on this set-up.

But trust me… it’s much more creatively stimulating for me to be Japan during cherry blossom season writing themes in Sibelius. And that’s the beauty of being an artist in business for yourself: You can make this into whatever you want it to be. You have the rarest luxury of being able to go wherever you want to go, do it however you want to do it, or try whatever it is you’ve always wanted to try. If you would love to travel the world and write music that inspires you differently than it does when you are looking at the same four walls day after day after day, then fuckin’ do it, man! Seriously… what’s stopping you? What could be so important as to get in the way of what makes you happiest in your career? I’m not saying everyone should sell their house and be a world traveller, but I AM saying that if that’s what would make you happy, then you aren’t doing yourself any favors by staying put and increasing your overhead day by day, month by month, year after year. You should just do whatever it is that brings you the most joy.

Don’t Listen to Me… Listen to Yourself

Only you know what you should do. I’m just throwing out ideas… trying to make you think differently than perhaps you have before. Maybe you’ve done the math and this doesn’t work for you, either logistically or practically… that’s fine. Things in your world might be as wide as you want them. That’s amazing and I support you 100% if you are happy.

Just promise me one thing: You aren’t saying “no” to what really makes you happy out of fear as to what could happen if you changed something. That’s a life-killer. I would hate for you to tell me that. That voice that you hear now as you read this that’s telling you “Yeah, that’s great, BUT… you have [this] and you have [that] and running off into the wild blue yonder is easy for some but not for you…”? Well… just remember… there’s never a perfect time.

What would your music sound like from THIS chair?

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