November 14, 2025 • 61 mins
Join host Jason K. Powers on an exciting debut episode of Backstage Money as he talks with Mark Maxwell, owner of Maxwell's House of Music and mentor to countless musicians. Mark shares his journey from working in his father's music store to running his own successful music shop and being a part of his band, The Crashers, for over 17 years. They discuss valuable tips on building and sustaining a music career, the importance of valuing your time and efforts, and strategies for making good financial decisions. Mark also reveals insights on how to rehearse properly, communicate effectively within a band, and manage band finances wisely. Whether you're in an original band or a cover band, this episode offers essential advice to help you thrive in the music industry. Don't miss it!
Subscribe on your favorite podcast channel: https://backstagemoney.captivate.fm/listen
Grab the "Gig Sheet" talked about in this episode at https://www.maxwellshouseofmusic.com
Get the free ebook, A Musicians Guide To Infinite Banking, at https://1024wealth.com/music
And don't forget to schedule a call with Jason K Powers and see what your financial future can look like - visit https://1024wealth.com/music
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Foreign.
Welcome to Backstage Money.
Real world finance for musicians.
I'm your host, Jason K.Powers, and today is an exciting
episode.
I am very excited about thisone and I think you're going to want
(00:22):
to take notes.
Today I am joined by MarkMaxwell, owner of Maxwell's House
of Music, a lifelong musician,a mentor to thousands of players
through his store, lessons andstage programs.
We're going to talk shop aboutbuilding your music business, serving
a community, keeping the art alive.
Mark, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Jason.
(00:42):
Glad to be here.
It's a wonderful thing,talking music, talking money.
I like both of those things.
That's right.
That's right.
We love it.
We love it.
And I'm loving the thronething for our, for our viewers, those
of you who are watching onstreaming of some kind.
I love the throne scene wehave going.
Yeah.
This year.
That's great.
(01:03):
This is, this is somethingthat, yeah, it was the idea of several
people here and I just kind ofall came together.
There's a fireman in our townwho's a taking guitar lessons and
we were talking about making agame of Thrones out of the, the Guitar
Hero guitars.
And he said, I can build thatfor you.
I mean, you should see this thing.
(01:24):
It's massive and it's really amazing.
So, yeah, it is fun.
So fun.
But anyway, so how you doing?
You doing good?
Yeah, doing awesome.
I love, I love chatting withyou and just learning all the insight
you've got, which we're goingto kind of unpack a little bit.
But first, you know, give me a.
Who is Mark Maxwell?
Where, where'd you, we say,how'd you get here?
You know, we were talking.
(01:44):
How'd I get here?
Yeah, yeah.
I, my family, my dad is adrummer, played here in Louisville
area.
The Louisville area.
I'm in southern Indiana, whichis Jeffersonville, Indiana.
And right across the bridge.
If you go across the bridge,you're in Louisville, Right.
So home of the Kentucky Derby,Kentucky Fried Chicken, all the goodies.
(02:04):
But.
So I grew up in this area.
My, my dad was a drummer.
His band played on the DickClark Caravan of Stars back in the
day.
Right.
Which was a famous kind ofthing that toured the, the countryside.
And anyway, then he eventuallystarted working at music stores and
then opened a music store andthen I went to work for my dad and
(02:24):
eventually I opened my own store.
So I, I, I worked with thefamily for a very long period of
time.
I've always played music sinceI was a kid.
I've been in several bands.
I was in an original band for10 years, and then I was then, you
know, played here, there, andeverywhere, and eventually ended
up playing in a band that Iplay in now called the Crashers.
Been the same six guys for 17years, which is crazy.
(02:50):
And, you know, the p. Peoplewill talk, ask me all the time, they'll
say, man, how'd your band stay together?
I'd say, because we make abunch of money.
And when you're paid a lot ofmoney to be in a band, you stay in
that band.
Right.
Particularly that.
These guys are also very nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, I've alwaysworked at a music store.
(03:11):
I've always played music in a band.
It's the kind of.
The two things that have beenalways, you know, in my life.
I love doing it.
I love people that play music.
I want to encourage people toplay music.
And.
Yeah, I.
It just.
I.
My brother is the drummer inmy band.
He owns a drum store directlynext door to me.
So I have this store which ismostly guitars and keys and some
(03:36):
electronic drums, but mybrother's way into drums, and he
has a custom kind of drumstore next door to me.
So.
Yeah, so it's kind of been afamily thing all my life, that this
is what we did.
We played music.
Right.
So we don't know anymore orany less than that.
My dad, I would think you'dprobably say he's kind of the.
The.
The Godfather of music inLouisville, Kentucky.
(03:57):
Right.
That kind of.
He's just been around hereforever, and he's done a lot of things,
and so.
And he's done a lot of goodfor the community.
So, you know, I think that'swhere I'm a life.
A lifer in the industry.
He definitely is.
He's.
He's.
He's.
He's been around it forever.
He owned, you know, thebiggest music store in town as far
as that goes.
And he, you know, he.
(04:17):
The best thing is that hetaught me how to give back.
Right.
My dad started.
My dad was in a real bad car wreck.
I was 10th grade in school,and he had a really bad car wreck.
And he was a drummer.
He was working at his musicstore during the daytime and, of
course, playing gigs sixnights a week, because back in the
day, that's what you did.
Musicians played six nights a week.
(04:39):
He was playing, was drivinghome, he wrecked.
It was a really horrificaccident and took him a long time
to heal.
But after that fact, hisfriends got together and put on a
big community benefit from my dad.
And all kinds of money came inI remember this.
I was like.
I said, I was 10th grade.
(05:00):
I remember at home when we gotdone after that event, there was
cash on our kitchen table,like just stacks of money.
And I remember my dad saying,well, I.
We need this much to survive.
Now I'm going to take the restof this and I'm going to give it
away.
And so he started a thing intown in Louisville called murph,
(05:21):
the Musicians Emergency Relief Fund.
And so if you were somebodyand you needed some money, my dad
would give you, hand you money.
So literally a drummer had acar wreck, got all his teeth knocked
out.
My dad bought him new teeth, right?
My, you know, you, you.
He always called it puttingbeans on the table.
If you couldn't afford yourelectricity bill, my dad would try
(05:43):
to pay for it.
It was like.
So he was very good at takingcare of the people in his town, right?
And so that was, you know, I.I think I learned really well from
him doing what he did.
So again, eventually, I did myown store, doing my own vibe.
And of course, if you're in aband, that was a.
That was a fluke, to be honestwith you.
(06:06):
One of my guys at the storesaid, hey, sit down and tell me what
you would do because yourband's very successful.
I built a band in the town.
We were very.
Was the first band I evertreated like a business.
First time ever in my life.
Like, I really just kind ofalways played in the band.
Hey, let's go play.
Because that's what they call it.
Play.
Let's go play music.
(06:27):
Let's just play.
You know, it's not real, it'sjust play.
But I was like, I really want to.
I really want to build abusiness, right?
I want to build somethingthat's going to be great.
And so I started to.
Started a band and.
And we treated it like abusiness from the.
The get go.
And it kind of blew up.
And anyway, a couple of yearsago, one of my employees said, hey,
(06:49):
you need to talk aboutbuilding a band and what it takes
and what you ought to do, youknow, because I'm always giving people
advice.
And so I did it.
I did it really for the people in.
In the Louisville area.
Right.
It wasn't supposed to gonationwide or worldwide.
And now people in Australiaand New Zealand and Canada and everywhere
(07:11):
else are watching it.
So it's been a crazy thing.
That's right.
And for those of you who don'tknow of this, what Mark is talking
about, can I.
Can I just say it if.
Sure.
If you're in a band.
No, no, no.
If you're in a band, and so that's.
(07:32):
So.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Come on.
If you're going to say it, sayit right.
We're gonna, we're gonna do it.
If you're in a band.
No, come on.
Some things today.
Come on.
No, if you're in a band.
If you're.
(07:53):
That's.
If you're in a band is how it started.
So it started kind of goofy, right?
That's right.
If you're in a band, you dowhatever, right?
You, you, you drink a lot ofwater before the weekend, right?
Because you're going to getdehydrated, right?
If you're in a band atpractice, maybe you should practice
(08:17):
really soft so you can hearevery mistake, right?
So.
And also that you can work onyour dynamics.
Like, I gave all of the tipsthat I possibly could come up with.
I still do to this day.
But yes, if you're in a band,maybe you ought to think about how
much money.
You know, the first one I didwas all about money.
It was about value and yourtime, right?
(08:39):
More than anything.
It was like.
So I, the, The whole, the veryfirst one kind of got me in some
hot water because I was like,hey, you know, I've spent my life
learning to play guitar, to bea singer, to rehearse, to play in
my bedroom, to rehearse withthe band, you know, and, and played
a bunch of gigs.
(08:59):
And, and by now, with all thattime I've put in, I could have been
a surgeon.
I mean, literally, it couldhave been a surgeon, right?
So why am I not being paidlike a surgeon, Right?
Why is it that musicians.
And I'll tell you why it is,but it just blows my mind that we
(09:19):
don't value the amount of timethat we've put into this thing we
call playing music, right?
And, and, and, and, and sountil you value your time more, you're
never going to really make any money.
And people are.
Will say, oh, it's my town.
My town won't allow that to happen.
That's not true at all.
We proved it.
(09:40):
We were all playing in $500bands 17 years ago, literally playing
in five.
Each one of us playing inbands that were 500 a night, right?
And we, we built this thing,and in less than five years, we were
at a level that's justridiculous financially meaning.
(10:02):
And so I think we kind ofproved that we could do it, right?
And then I wanted to share itwith the world.
And so I did, actually.
I wanted to share it withpeople in Louisville, but it made
it around the world, and nowwe're sitting here talking about
it.
Because you've seen it before, right?
That's right.
That's right.
I did not.
I did.
I did nothing.
(10:24):
Like, we didn't do anything that.
That made it go where it went.
It was just obviouslysomething that no one had ever talked
about, and it just grew very quickly.
So strange but true.
So, yeah.
Anyway, that's great.
Yeah, that's great.
So.
So on the advice you give inthis series, you've got.
(10:46):
I don't know how many pointsyou have now out there.
200 something.
Okay, so what do you think?
What's the top two or threethat stand out for you the most?
You know, lessons for artiststhat maybe save them time or money
or relates to money and habitsor building the business.
(11:08):
You know, just monetarily speaking.
What can they learn?
Now?
It just depends on your goals.
So if you said, hey, I want to be.
There's two sides to this.
I want to be an original band,or I want to be a cover band.
So when you get into thisthing, there are two roads to choose
(11:29):
from.
Hey, I want to be a cover band.
Okay, let's talk about that.
What that means.
I want to be in an original band.
Right.
Those two roads are different.
And I think when you say,first, this is what we're going to
be, we're going to be anoriginal band.
Okay.
We're going to be a cover band.
(11:49):
Okay.
I do think it's important tobe one or the other.
I'm.
I'm a. I just don't know manybands that have done really well
being both.
So I would say choose one.
Start.
At least start by saying,we're going to be this or we're going
to be that.
And then you have to say,well, what are my goals?
What do I really want from this?
(12:10):
Well, after me living for sucha long period of time.
I was 42 when we started theband that I'm in called the Crashers.
And here's what we came up with.
We sat around a table andeverybody said, well, if this could
be the last band you everplayed in, what would it.
What would.
What would make you stay.
What would make you want tostay here and do this?
(12:32):
Well, one guy said, well, I'dlike to be.
I'd like to make the mostmoney I've ever made playing in a
band.
Okay, write that down.
Next guy said, I don't want toPlay past one o' clock in the morning,
okay?
Write it down.
The other guy said, I don'twant to.
I don't want to.
What was it?
Oh, I want to play in front of the.
The most amount of people thatany band's ever played in our town,
(12:53):
okay?
And the other guy said, I wantto play the best gigs in our town.
The next person said, I don'tever want to move my equipment again.
Right?
I want somebody else to movemy equipment for me.
So we wrote down all thosethings as goals.
Here are the goals.
So what would we have to do toget these six goals that we wrote
(13:13):
down?
Well, how would we get there?
Like.
And so we just kind of reverseengineered, like I said.
Okay, so, guys, we're allstanding on this.
Took weeks and months oftalking, right?
Because it was like a game plan.
It was like, hey, here's howwe're going to win.
And I don't think enough bandsdo that.
I think they think it's allabout getting in and rehearsing the
(13:36):
band and being in a rehearsalroom and then go playing a gig.
It's really not.
It's, where is your destination?
Where do you want to go withthis thing?
What do you want to happen andsee happen?
And where can your limiting beliefs.
If you know anything aboutlimiting beliefs, you should study
these.
Limiting beliefs stopped youfrom getting wherever you want to
(13:56):
go.
And I think that's the biggestproblem that I had when I was younger.
I don't have them anymore.
I do have beliefs about myself still.
That's really strange.
But I try to talk myself outof them.
So I think we as musicianshave our beliefs that we can only
go this far or we can only beworth this much money.
(14:17):
And if you'll just kind of keep.
Get rid of that belief and,and believe a little higher level,
you can do anything you want.
I mean, my band, it's weird,man, how we ended up.
You know, I. I've started todo some zoom calls with bands to
where they're all sitting in aroom and I'm sitting there with them
(14:39):
and I'm trying to say, allright, tell me where you guys want
to go and I'll help you get there.
Right?
I started to do that more andmore lately because I don't know
if they.
If they can see the end resultvery well.
And I'm.
I'm a guy who can go, okay, ifthese are the goals, how would we
get there?
How would we.
(14:59):
If this was going to be theend cap of what we were going to
do, what would it take to get there?
And so we got there literallyin three and a half years, and strongly
there by five years of being a band.
So by the fifth year, we weresolid with every goal that we had,
right?
(15:22):
And with that, I, I just, I. Iwas like, wow.
But the problem is, is we weretoo dumb, and we stayed at that same
level for five more years asopposed to going, hey, wait a minute.
What if we doubled up on allof this, right?
Because we set a financial goal.
This is how much we're goingto be a night, right?
(15:43):
And it was so ridiculous thatnone of us could even believe it,
but we tried, you know, it waslike, hey, let's be $5,000 a night,
right?
Let's be $5,000 a Night.
We were all playing in $500 bands.
Let's be $5,000 A Night.
That was just like, literallysaying, hey, I'm going to do a long
(16:05):
jump, and I can only jump 5ft,but I'm going to go ahead and jump
10ft, right?
I'm going to go myself, right?
So we go.
Something we never thought wecould do, but we thought, why not
just try to get our beliefsystem behind it?
And so we did, and we ended upgetting there.
And then we went way furtherthan that.
And now, like, it's justamazing how if you just stop stopping
(16:31):
yourself from doing greatstuff, you can do anything, anything
you set your.
Your mind to.
And so, I don't know, I thinkwe've proven it as a band.
What I'd like to do is I'dlike to prove it, because I've proven.
I've proven what you could dowith in a cover band.
But now I'd like to take thesesame principles on an original band
(16:52):
and say, all right, let meshow you step by step what we did
to get there, right?
Because I can tell you what wedid step by step to get us to the
point of being a veryexpensive cover band, Right?
Yeah, I can tell you how to dothat and also how to stay together.
You know, again, money keepsyou together.
(17:12):
If you're making a lot ofmoney, why not?
Right?
Well, let's talk about thatfor a second.
Like, on the flip side of it,you know, what's some of the biggest,
you know, money?
Making mistakes you see youngbands, local bands make when it comes
to growing.
Well, they don't know.
I'll tell you this.
If I was a young band again, I would.
(17:33):
I'd offer myself, and I gotcriticized for this, too.
But I would offer myself up tofree to one place in my town.
So if I lived in any city, Iwould go find a pizza joint or a,
a bar somewhere that's doesn'thave much going on.
You could go to with your bandand walk in and say, hey, could we
(17:54):
be your house band everyMonday night?
Right.
We don't want anything for it.
We don't want to, you know, Iknow you're.
I went to a place and said,tell me your worst night.
Well, Monday nights aredefinitely our worst night.
Okay, could we come here andplay every week for an hour, hour
and a half, maybe two hoursevery week and just invite our friends
and make this thing a big deal?
(18:16):
They said, yeah, well, westarted doing that and then every,
that place got packed to thepoint it was a big deal.
Well then you go around to allthe rest of the places in town and
say, hey, come see us thisMonday night.
We're going to be playing atthis place.
It's packed full of people andanybody that owns any place in town
is going to walk in and go, ohmy gosh, I want this band to play
(18:38):
at my place.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
So I would tell young bands totry to find a place where they can
kind of, you know, become areally good band and be consistent.
You know, like again, once aweek gig somewhere where they can
go in and set up and play,invite all their friends, and eventually
they invite everybody on theplanet to come see their band.
(19:00):
I would do that in my townagain if it was me.
I just think that.
I think that the biggestproblem is that you're not being
seen.
There's not enough people inyour town that know who you are.
My band's a pretty popularband, but you can still walk down
the street and say, hey, haveyou ever heard a band called the
Crashers?
And people go, no, no.
Right.
And.
And we've been doing this for17 years.
(19:21):
So you would think everybodyin this town would know who we are
and they don't.
So I would also.
Again, most people don't knowwho you are as a band.
And so you've got to find away to get people to know who you
are.
And so I think as a youngband, that would be my first thing
to do.
And then as you pack the placeand the guy's making money hand over
(19:42):
fist on whatever, pizza, beer,whatever, then ask for some money,
start getting paid well toplay that gig.
And then when other peopleshow up from other clubs to try to
book you, you can say, hey,man, this is what we ask for.
This is the price.
Second thing is that everybodyprices themselves way under, right?
There are bands in this townpaying for $300.
(20:03):
There are bands playing for $500.
Are they crazy?
Seriously, like, I just blowsmy mind that they.
Now here's the thing.
If you can't draw any people,can't ask what you want.
If I can pack your place out,I'm worth a lot of money.
So maybe the right questionis, what would make people show up
(20:27):
and watch my dance?
Maybe that's the rightquestion to ask.
Not, how do I make more money?
Well, how do you get more people?
Because if you have a wholebunch of people showing up and watch
your band, guess what happens?
You can ask for whatever youwant, and I'll be glad or anybody
be glad to pay you.
You pack their place.
(20:48):
That's the question.
How do you pack a room?
How do you get followers?
Well, and I know, and there'sa lot of right now, in particular,
a discussion going on in theonline platforms about, do you even
take a chance in doing thesefree gigs?
Are.
You know, some have an issuewith that, right?
And you don't.
(21:09):
You should.
You should have an issue withit, but you pick one place, you don't.
I can't use that word.
You don't give yourself away.
Okay, look at the harshestword for that.
But.
But don't give yourself away, right?
In other words, give yourselfaway at one place.
(21:30):
Find one place that's notdoing very well that you can go in,
set up your gear, play a show,invite all your friends, all your
family, and then start meetingpeople to say, hey.
Every Monday night we do this thing.
As you build that, itshouldn't take you four to eight
weeks before the place iskicking, right?
(21:50):
And you can go back to the guyand say, hey, man, this is how much
we want to do this thing andstay here at your place on Monday
nights.
He'll pay you whatever.
I mean, literally, he.
He'll pay you a very good sumbecause the fact is, you're making
money.
That's what happened to us.
We had a fan, little pizza place.
Guy wasn't making any money ona Monday night.
We started playing, and thenext thing you know, we're like,
(22:13):
you know, a very popular thing.
The place is packed and.
And.
And the guy's paying us goodmoney to play his gig.
And then we didn't play freeanywhere else, anywhere.
So somebody came to us andwe'd say, hey, yeah, we're a thousand
dollars.
It was Simple Simon.
We were a young band and itworked, right?
And they'd be like, okay,we'll pay you $1,000.
(22:34):
That was three times more thanany band was making at the time,
you know, So I don't have aproblem with people playing a free
gig, as long as it's the same gig.
And you don't want to giveyourself away at every place in town.
So just pick one place, startthere, Build your crowd, build your
following.
(22:55):
That's what I say.
Yeah, that's great.
I think there's something tobe said about too, where in a way,
you know, you're starting outlike that.
You're.
You're helping them, they'rehelping you.
It's not just about, well, letme come in and me be me, right?
It's a little bit of it.
Give.
Listen, it's.
My dad always said to me, hesaid, look, look, a good deal is
(23:18):
a good deal for you and a gooddeal for them, right?
You can't win and they lose.
They can't win and you lose.
What's happening?
That's the problem is that alot of people.
I'm not going to blame it onclubs, but there are a lot of places
in town who are winning in the music.
Matter of fact, I'll tell you where.
(23:39):
Who's winning.
Nashville, Tennessee, is winning.
Every club in that place hasgot a lot of people in their club,
and here's a band in there,and every one of those musicians
is losing because they'replaying for pennies.
They're playing for pennies,and they should stop playing in Nashville,
period.
Nashville's the music city.
(24:00):
Well, show us the love.
Show us the love.
If you're the music city, whydon't you pay us to play?
Because you're making a ton ofmoney in your bar, and they are,
through sponsorships, throughthe people standing at the bar, paying
$12 for a beer.
Give me a break, right?
So I, I. Nashville makes mereally, my blood boil.
(24:24):
But you know why?
Mostly because the musicianswill just be like, well, we can't
do anything to stop it.
Well, yeah, you can not play there.
You can absolutely say, nomatter back, you call me.
I'll be glad to talk youthrough how to make your band profitable
on the COVID side.
It's hard to make itprofitable on the original side,
(24:47):
but we can talk about ways todo that, too.
But I think people are givingtheirselves away.
Their talent, what they'veworked their whole lives towards,
right?
And I. I think it's a travestyI do.
It breaks my heart.
Especially.
Especially in Nashville, Tennessee.
Breaks my heart.
I go down there and watchmusicians playing and I know they're
(25:09):
playing for pennies, and itjust breaks my heart.
So how do you.
How do people wrestle with themindset of.
Well, because I'm sure a lotof them are.
I don't want to turn this downbecause I don't want to lose the
exposure.
Right.
And for me to say no justmeans no work, you know?
(25:33):
Does it really?
I hear there's that.
That fear.
That fear of, well, if I keepsaying no to stuff like this and
what to do, you know, I'llnever get anywhere.
I feel.
Yeah, yeah, that is.
That is something.
It's.
It's not right, but it's something.
I will say this to you if I'lluse the word.
I can't use that word.
(25:54):
Trying to not be raw and nasty.
I don't think I can tell youwhat worked for us.
We built something that had akiller website.
And it looked like we wererock stars on our website.
And we pushed that website toevery bar, every joint in town, every
(26:17):
event place, every dressmaker,every tuck shop, every flower shop,
any place that we thought wasgoing to be some kind of event, one
of the three, either a publicevent, a corporate event, or maybe
even a wedding.
And so we pushed our websiteout to everybody.
And then when they called us,we priced ourselves out of the market
(26:38):
heavily, right to where we hadto listen to no a lot for about six
months or a year.
But then by that point,something had happened where people
had never heard a band say,no, I won't play, right?
Like, we became the firstchoice for people to call.
(27:00):
But we would say, I wish wecould do that.
We just can't.
I wish we could.
But we're $1500 and you'relooking for a $500 band, right?
And people could not believe that.
I would not.
Well, how about if we did 900?
I'd say, man, I wish we could.
Well, what do I.
What about twelve hundred dollars?
Man, I wish we could.
I wish we could.
(27:22):
Now at that moment, you'revalue in yourself, your time, your
life, and your product thatyou're designing now.
If you don't believe in yourproduct, then fine, go give it away.
Just go give it away.
But if you spent your time andyou thought about it and you worked
hard and you built thatproduct up, you wouldn't want to
give it away.
(27:42):
You just wouldn't want to.
It doesn't make sense to me.
At all.
I don't care what band you're in.
I know how to.
There's about 25 things thatyou would have to do, but if you
did all of those things, youcould be very profitable, and your
band could be one of thebiggest bands in your community,
(28:03):
in your town.
You just have to change theway you're thinking because we are
thinking wrong.
I promise you that.
It's.
It's.
We are thinking wrong.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I say that all the time,too, you know, the change of thinking
(28:23):
to change your thinking.
And in my business, you know,it's changed the way you think about
your finances, and it willchange your life and what you're
saying.
It will change.
Change the way you valueyourself, the way you see yourself
in the business and what you're.
Where are your boundaries?
Right?
Where.
Where are you going to drawlines and say, I'm just not going
(28:45):
to cross this line?
Even though it's tempting, youknow, man, it's very tempting.
And here's the thing.
My guys in my band got verymad at me the first year because
I'd said no to a lot ofthings, a lot of good things.
I mean, like.
Like things that I would havenever said no to in the past.
Never.
And they were like, why would we.
Why don't we do this?
(29:06):
What are we doing?
I said, we're gettingeverybody to respect us is what we're
doing.
We're getting everybody inthis town to understand that we value
our time.
We under.
We value what we're doing, andwe're creating this buzz in the town
that we may have something special.
Now, you do have to show up.
When you do show up withsomething special, right?
You have to.
(29:26):
You have to show up and swinga big bat.
And.
And of course, we had a wholeyear to work on swinging a big bat,
and we eventually did.
We got to that point to where,hey, we can go in here and swing
a really big bat, and it'sgoing to work for us.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost like a band.
It's weird.
I even told my guys when wewere playing, I was like, don't quit
(29:48):
your band that you're playingin now.
Don't quit your band becauseyou're going to be mad at me because
I'm going to let go of allthese great gigs that your band's
not even getting offered, butwe're going to get offered, and I'm
going to say no to them sothat they'll believe that we're A
better product than not.
I mean, it's like anythingelse, man.
It's me holding up a Mercedeskey and me holding up a Ford key
(30:13):
and me saying, which one wouldyou like to have?
And if, and if you said, if Isaid, here's a free car sitting outside,
which one would you pick, Jason?
Would you pick the Mercedeskey or would you pick the four key,
pick.
The free Mercedes, man.
It would.
Why?
(30:35):
You would.
Everybody would.
Why?
Yeah.
More value.
Because you believe it's more value.
Yeah, that's the thing.
You believe this Kia is morevalue and it could very well be.
Or that Mercedes settingalpesign could have 250,000 miles
and be a 2002.
And this Ford key could havebeen a brand new one right off the
(30:58):
lot with no mileage on it andworth 30, 40, $50,000.
So perception is what we'reselling here, right?
How do you get people toperceive that your band is worth
more than the next band?
Right?
And then how do you deliver?
How do you deliver?
(31:19):
How do you become somethingthat's so good, that draws so many
people, that you're undeniable?
Right?
That's what I can teach a bandto do.
That's what I can teachanybody to do in two ways.
I can teach them in thebusiness sort because everybody goes
in the rehearsal room and rehearses.
They rehearse wrong, by theway, but they do rehearse.
(31:40):
So I, we have, I have aspecific way to rehearse a band and
I have a specific way to dealwith the business that actually does
work and will, you know, but Idon't know that we ever learned how
to rehearse right in therehearsal room.
And I don't think we definitely.
No one ever taught us how torun our business at all.
(32:02):
Matter of fact, it's barelyever talked about.
You know, this is the music business.
Right, Right.
It really is.
And, and how do you get aheadin that?
How do you win that, that, youknow, that fight?
And so I don't know.
I think that's why I starteddoing these.
These, if you're in a badthings is because I, I felt like
I knew how to do it and I, Imean, I proved how to do it with
(32:29):
more than just my band.
There are now bands in ourtown that are making ridiculous money,
right?
And they're just following ourdirection, right.
Kind of what we did and how wedid it.
So anybody can do this in anytown, everywhere in the world, and
people will say to youstraight up, it won't Happen in my
town.
Okay, you're, you're right.
(32:51):
It will not happen in your town.
100%.
You are 100% correct.
Or you can say, I'm going tochange everything about my town and
how it works so it can be done.
It just takes a brave soldierto take off on this thing.
So.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's great.
(33:12):
So, so let's meet one piece ofadvice on the back end.
So, you know, we've talkedabout a little bit of getting, getting
paid.
Okay, so now you've gottenpaid or you're consistently getting
paid.
What are some practical advicesteps for bands at that point?
(33:33):
Or maybe don't do this.
We, and you know, in othercalls, we, we talk about, you know,
where not to place your money.
Make sure you're warehousingyour money a little bit somewhere.
Investing money.
Oh, my years.
I tell you what I wish wewould have done.
I wish that our van would havedone what we talked about going into
(33:55):
year five.
If we would have, we wouldhave been a much better off band,
right?
Whether it was taking some ofa portion of our money.
Because what we did with ourmoney is we split that money up.
We, we put each guy.
There were six guys whostarted the band.
Each one of them got 10%.
Okay?
So whatever money we weregetting, 10% was going to.
(34:17):
So 60% of the money was offthe table.
So now there's 40% of the money.
Now we knew we wanted a roadcrew and we were like, well, how
much is that going to cost us?
Right?
Well, it's going to cost us300 to get.
For you guys to set up ourgear and tear it down, okay?
So we budgeted that, which wasabout 20% of the money, right?
But then we had this other 20%that was left over.
(34:37):
So we got into the point we'reeven doing that to this, to this
very day.
We talk about percentages,like that person's paid 2% of our
money or that person's paid 3%of our money.
Like, we know our, like,again, it is a business.
Like, it is a real business.
And so reinvesting that moneyand whether it be in real estate
or in the stock market orhowever you decide to reinvest so
(35:00):
that your band can come out ofthis thing and actually have some
kind of money to, to survivewith, right?
In the long run of life.
Hey, I, I, I. Yeah, I can'tsay enough about that.
I wish we would have donebetter than what we did.
We did do a good thing.
It's just, you know, thehindsight's 2020 situation.
It's like you, you get throughit and you go, man, just imagine.
(35:24):
A matter of fact, if you're anoriginal band, my opinion, I'll say
this.
I think you should record 12songs a year, right?
Every month.
I think you should go in thestudio and cut a song and release
it every month.
Release it, Release it,release it, release it.
If you did that in threeyears, you'd have three full records
(35:45):
out, right?
But what happens with theoriginal bands is they'll, they'll
go and they'll recordsomething and then they don't record
anything for two or threeyears later, right?
If that, the consistency ofanything works better than nothing.
And that's money or anything else.
So you want big muscles, go tothe gym and lift a weight every day.
You'll have big muscles.
(36:06):
There's no if, ands or buts.
You are going to be strongerperson if you go to the gym.
Do that.
If your band does the samething, be consistent.
If you're writing songs, be consistent.
If you're recording songs, be consistent.
If you've got money thatyou've made and you're making good
money, like all of my personalmoney from my band, I live on my
(36:27):
day job and my band is my funmoney, right?
So I go, I travel with thatmoney, I invest with that money.
I do all kinds of things withthat money from my band as opposed
to using it right in, in anykind of, you know, living expense
way.
So I have two jobs.
I work at a music store thatpays my electricity, my house, my
(36:52):
car, whatever that is.
Right.
My living expenses.
So it's another thing.
Most musicians cannot surviveon just being a musician.
Even though there are a lot ofguys in this town that are just musicians,
but a lot of them also willlearn to teach.
So there'll be teachers duringthe day, musicians at night.
So investment wise.
Yeah, I wish we would havebeen smarter.
I. I really do.
(37:13):
It's.
It's.
Especially since we've beentogether for 17 years because for
the last 12 years of that wecould have had a killer nest egg
as opposed to not realizing ittill about year 10 that we should
have done it.
Yeah.
And that's a conversation thatcomes up just in about every recording
we do is you hear it.
I wish I would have startedsome kind of mistake, some kind of
(37:37):
saving, some kind of somethingwhen I got started or early on, or
when I can't.
Right.
And I think that's a commontheme throughout this, and that's
actually one of the mainreasons I wanted to start this podcast
to begin with, was because youhear that, you know, you run into
situations, you start seeingmusicians, even very well known musicians,
(38:01):
internationally known, youknow, who haven't been on the forefront
lately.
Some crisis happens and all ofa sudden there's a GoFundMe page
up and.
You'Re thinking, why in theworld does that guy have a GoFundMe
page?
Right, right, right.
And it's, you know, thankfulthat there are institutions like
(38:23):
GoFundMe where they have that capability.
But also, my gosh, if we couldinstill some systems and processes
and planning in the earlyyears and get those kinds of things
put in place where you havethese safety nets and you don't have
to go to the public, you know,for that.
(38:44):
Yeah, well, you're.
This is exactly.
It's.
It's not.
Yeah, it's an interestingthing because you're dealing, okay?
So you work your.
You work really hard to beable to do something and all of a
sudden you get to that pointto where, oh, wow, I'm now making
a good living by playing music.
But you forget that one dayyou're going to have a bad back,
(39:06):
you're not going to be able towalk, your knees are shot, whatever
it be, and you have no money left.
Right.
At all.
You have no nest egg whatsoever.
Nest egg is not a wordmusicians use.
Right.
Which is why most people leavebeing a musician and they go do anything
else.
Right.
In the whole wide world, they.
(39:27):
Which is kind of sad.
Again, we don't charge enoughmoney for what we do and how, and
how long it's taken us to getto this point to be able to do this.
And we don't need to giveourselves away and we need to get
paid better.
And then we need to realizewhat we do with that money.
Even if it's just 20% of yourmoney that you go, okay, for the
(39:49):
rest of my life, no matterwhat, 20% of my money is going to
go somewhere else.
I'm going to save that money.
I'm going to invest that money.
I'm going to.
I want to buy my.
You know, I have a friend whotook all his and just did real estate
right now.
He's up to like 27 houses, right?
It's crazy.
And I'm like, dude, I've seenseveral musicians do that.
(40:10):
I remember where they actuallykind of started again.
Any kind of investment,anything is good, right?
Just take 20% of your moneyand if you don't know anything to
do with it.
Get a guy like you, right?
You're out there talking aboutthis because it's.
It is a need.
It's horrific.
It's crazy to me is what it is.
(40:31):
But.
Yeah, I don't know.
Who am I?
I'm just some dude.
Indiana, hey, you made it this far.
You made it this far.
Okay, so.
All right.
All right.
The.
If you're in a band, what isone of your.
What's probably your favoritepiece of advice that comes up?
(40:51):
And people are like, I never knew.
I never thought about that.
I mean, do you have something?
I know it's probably every point.
I'm sure every point you giveis like.
Everybody's like, wow.
You know?
But what's kind of one that's a.
Lot, A lot of favorite one?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think there's afavorite point.
I think.
I don't think there is.
(41:11):
I mean, there's.
There's points that peoplesay, you know, I know this.
I just didn't think about it, right?
I know this.
I just.
I never thought about it like this.
Or I know these tips.
I just don't think about them often.
And now it's bringing me backto, you know, to thinking about them.
So I don't know what to sayabout that.
I don't think there's any one point.
(41:35):
I do think that.
I do think I wish that wewould have more conversations.
That's what I wish.
I wish we'd had moreconversations about what we're doing.
But we kind of get in ourlittle bubble of our band and we
don't really have communitywith other bands.
So I think if I was going totalk about anything, it's trying
(41:57):
to make a community of people,you know, like minded people in your
town.
So all the COVID bands, notthat you're starting up, you know,
you don't have to start a, youknow, group or, I mean, you know,
but.
But it just.
It is a thing to have acommunity of people who do what you
do in your own town so thatyou guys can talk about, you know,
(42:21):
how you.
How.
Because there's bands in towndoing things I wish I was doing,
right?
And so it's.
It's not like I know everything.
I'm watching other bands andlearning from them.
It's not, you know, I justkeep learning.
But I'm.
I tell you what I won't do iskeep making the same mistake over
and over, right?
How stupid is that?
You Know I will not do that.
(42:43):
Yeah.
So.
And I think the next phase forme and my band is that we've kind
of become a backup band for alot of bigger artists now.
So we're.
We're going down the Dominicanand playing a show, and we're going
to play in Vegas.
Also backing up Mike Reno fromLover Boy and.
And John Elefante from Kansasand several people like that.
(43:04):
So we've become that bandthat's kind of like a backup band
for artists.
In other words, it was like,okay, we would just want to play
this bar in our town, right?
To where, well, we want toplay this event.
Well, we want to play this event.
And we just kept staging it tothe point to where, wow, all of a
sudden, Kid Rock stand onstage with this and we're like, how
did this happen?
(43:25):
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
And.
And I know how it happened.
And now all I want to do istry to share it, but it's a very
individualized thing.
Right?
So I can't.
I can say all these tips andyou can try to put your own little
roadmap together, but until wehad a conversation about your specific
band, your specific band isgoing to be different than my band.
(43:47):
And so we really need todecide how do we deal with that?
Right?
How do we deal with your band?
Like, what is it that you have?
Or what would you do or wantto do, and how far can that take
you?
You know, my friend started aACDC tribute band and he went to
this point and he knew itwasn't going to go any bigger.
(44:08):
Now it got big, as opposed tomost of the bands were down here.
His band that was doing anACDC tribute band was here.
Then he left that band to godo something that's now way up here.
Right.
Because he saw the opportunityand thought, I want this opportunity
to last and I want it to bebig and I want to make a lot of money
(44:29):
doing my thing.
So I think we are our biggestlimiters of everything.
So.
Yeah, yeah.
So in.
In that you just rolled outsomething new that's helpful for
bands and.
Yeah, I've got it.
I've got it, you know.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Tell us.
Yeah, yeah.
(44:49):
I don't know.
What's it called?
What do I call it?
The gig sheet.
It's a gig sheet.
What?
It's just one of the littletips we do.
I.
If we're going to book a gigbecause there are six people that
are in our band, then we havea sound man that's seven, then we
have four crew members.
That's 11 people that have to know.
(45:11):
Oh, we also have a merchperson, 12.
Wait.
All right, there are 14 people that.
That my band supports.
And all of us have to be onthe same page.
So when we book a gig, theperson that books that gig fills
out that sheet.
And that sheet is anelectronic sheet that I can look
at.
So I know this weekend whereI'm playing, I can go to my phone,
(45:34):
I can say, all right, here'swhere I'm playing.
This is what time we're playing.
This is how long the gig lasts.
This is.
Are they providing a PA system?
So it's all the questions thatneed to be answered on the front
side so that everybody.
The drummer shows up and allhe's got is a pair of sticks because
he thought there was going tobe a drum set.
Yep, we've got a problem, right?
(45:56):
And there's no drum set.
So this one sheet, which is afree thing, it's a. I just.
I want to get.
I give it all away if I could.
But this is a one sheet that'sfree that you can go to our website@maxwellshouseofmusic.com
your band can take this, useit, change it the way they want to
use it or whatever, or justprint ours off and be able to have
(46:17):
it.
But what this does is answersall the questions on the front side
so that you know what's goingto happen, right?
And then everybody in yourband, without having to say a word,
right, hey, the one sheets upon this gig.
Here it is, right?
I tell everybody, get a Google Calendar.
Google Calendar.
So that everybody knows what'shappening, right?
Have that.
(46:37):
And then two is on the GoogleDrive is where we put this piece
so that I know I'm playingthis weekend, where I'm playing,
what's going on, everythingabout that gig.
No one has to talk at all.
So it's a good way to communicate.
I'm soon going to drop an agreement.
Some people would call it acontract, but it's not legal.
(47:00):
It's the agreement that I usefor every gig that we play.
So when we're going to play agig, we send them an agreement that
says we're going to do thisand you're going to do this.
Here's how we're going topromote it.
Here's how you're going topromote it.
Here's what's.
Here's how we win this thing together.
That person signs that, sendsit back to me, right?
(47:22):
With half of the money.
No Matter what.
I don't care if it's a yearfrom now.
Right?
So this is the.
This is the stuff we have totalk about.
So then we take that money atthat money, remember that we booked
for next year, and we stick itin a certain account.
(47:43):
You want to make some money?
Upcoming gigs can make you alot of good money as an investment
piece.
Right.
We can talk about that someday.
But anyway, bottom line getsdown, too.
So the next.
The next, again, the one sheetright now is called the gig sheet.
And that gig sheet will 100%teach you how to.
How to.
How to run your band just alittle bit better.
(48:06):
So.
Yep.
Did you look at it?
I did.
I got it right here.
I got it right here.
I love you.
Got.
Even got payment info,production and logistics, you know,
the band, the promos,marketing, all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
It was like, hey, it is great.
It's a.
It's.
It's one of the best things ever.
It's like, again, if you wantto be a professional band, act like
(48:27):
it.
I mean, just, you know, if youwere going to.
If you were going to.
If you were going to open alamp store tomorrow next door, you'd
have to have the building anda computer and lamps and light bulbs.
You'd have to put up a sign.
(48:48):
You'd have to advertise, you'dhave to start a.
You'd have to do all of thisstuff to open up a business.
So why don't you do all thosethings to open up a business?
You get what I'm saying?
That's what I'm trying to do,is to get them, like, to mind that
this isn't just about playingguitar, playing drums, playing keyboards,
singing in a band.
This is another step in life.
(49:10):
This is.
How do you.
How do you start a realbusiness called whatever you want
to call it, Right?
How do you start a businesscalled the Food Fight?
Foo Fighters.
Foo Fighters is a killer business.
Kiss.
Killer business, right?
They are, yeah.
They're creative and good, butthey've built themselves an amazing
business.
We're all businesses.
(49:30):
It's just some of them aredoing good and some of them suck.
Right?
And I don't mean musically.
I'm talking about financially.
Right.
Business.
A lot of great musicians out there.
A lot of bad business peoplein the.
Oh, as musicians?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's so sad for me.
It's so sad.
It's so sad.
And a lot of people say, well,I don't care.
(49:52):
Well, you do.
I mean, you know, that's.
Again, Another reason our bandstayed together for so long is that
we're all doing pretty goodfinancially in it, right?
So if you're doing pretty goodfinancially, it's harder to quit
something, you know?
Plus, the guys in my banddon't suck.
They're all nice people.
I like them.
Right, yeah, that also makes sense.
(50:14):
I tell people the first thingI ever did.
I sit down, as we sit down atthe table, and I was like, look around
this table.
Are you sure that we can allsurvive this without killing each
other?
Right.
That was like the firstquestion ever answered.
Yeah.
You know, are these goodenough people?
Yeah, they are good people andI want to be in a band with them
now.
What?
Right.
Yep.
(50:35):
Well, let's make our goals andthen figure out how to get there.
All right, so tell us again,where can people see all your bits
about if you're in a band,where can people.
People get the gig sheet andlearn more about what you got going
on?
Yes.
Maxwellshouseofmusic.com thatwill take you straight to everything
that you need.
(50:55):
If you want to buy a piece of gear.
We have a great music store here.
It's a beautiful place.
If you want to get ready for atour, we have a great facility to
do that.
As far as, like rehearsalrooms and things like that, it's
a great place.
But if you want this gig sheetfor free, maxwellshouseofmusic.com
Definitely go there, get thegig sheet.
It's.
It is.
It's pretty cool.
It's a good way to do business.
(51:17):
And if anybody wants to inthis whole wide world want to talk
to me about their band and howto make it bigger and better.
812-283-3304 I'll be glad tohave a conversation.
I want people, I want you towin and I want us as a musician culture
to win.
What's scaring me is this.
(51:38):
Can I say this real quick?
Here's what's scaring me.
I put a thing out on if you'rein a band to say, hey, do me a favor,
thanks for watching, but tellme how old you are, what instrument
you play and where you're from.
So the guy says, hey, I'm fromHawaii, right?
I'm 72 years old and I'm a drummer.
Well, we put all that stuffinto AI and we figured out that the,
(52:01):
the, the average age of theperson that's watching if you're
in a band is 58 years old.
Wow.
Why is that?
That's the question you haveto ask.
Why well, we had the Beatles,we had the Eagles, we had Van Halen.
We had Motley Crue, we hadRock Band.
(52:23):
We had bands.
We didn't have this.
The phone.
Yeah.
And so we're losing musicians.
And not only that, how manyparents are going to say, hey, I
want you to become a musicianwhen you get older?
Nobody, no parent says that.
They're like, you want to starve?
(52:44):
Be a musician.
That's what parents say totheir kids.
We have to change thatattitude of, hey, this is a lucrative
business to be in.
Right?
It's a good thing to be a musician.
It's a wonderful thing.
It's the it's all about.
And again, I want it to befinancially great because I know
how great it is for my soul, right?
(53:06):
And finances will never catchup with how wonderful music is for
the soul, period.
But wouldn't it be niceinstead of being down here at the
finances, that we could beright up in here, Right?
Wouldn't it be great, youknow, soul getting fed, stomach getting
fed.
(53:27):
That's it.
That's it, man.
Preach it.
I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
But somebody has to say it.
That's right.
That's right.
Well, okay.
All right.
Every show, we like to wrapthings up with a segment called Final
Riffs.
This is where we kind of turndown the storytelling and we crank
up the honesty and ask ourguests a few quick hitting questions.
(53:50):
Some pull out real lessonsfrom life music.
Some shed light on who theyare as a person in the hot seat.
You know, you never know whatkind of gems are going to come out
of this part.
So, Mark, this is where weloosen it up and we get a little
reflective.
You ready?
All right.
No, but I'll do it anyway.
No, no.
We leave out the what color isyour underwear?
Kind of questions, you know?
(54:10):
Okay.
I don't wear it.
No.
Sorry, Kyle.
All right, real quick.
If you could go back and tellyour younger self one thing about
business side of music, whatwould it be?
Hardest one.
Oh, wait, wait, no, no, it'snot hard at all.
I would say to my youngerself, be the best.
You don't try to be anybody else.
(54:31):
I spent too much of my timeyoung trying to be like Kiss and
be like Van Halen and beingall these bands that I wanted to
be like, as opposed to beingthe best me.
That'd be the first thing onthe creative side of things.
The second thing is just is torealize also financially, you can
have anything you want at ayounger age.
You just have to Know how toask for it.
(54:52):
And so that's, it's a, it's a,it's a, it took me so long, I could
teach, I could teach a 20 yearold kid how to do this really well
right now.
And I'm 59.
It took me a long time tofigure it out if they would listen.
The problem is will they listen?
Yeah, that's right.
All right, who's someone inthe music industry that has impacted
(55:14):
you the most and why?
My dad.
Probably just because he wasinstrumental in me learning to be
a good musician.
Right.
Yeah, I would have to say he was.
My mom taught me to be a good human.
My dad taught me to be a good musician.
Right.
And you know, I would saythat's probably where that all started.
(55:37):
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
I hear that a lot coming fromthe parents.
Right.
It trickles down.
They very much were supportiveof what I wanted to be and do, so.
Yeah.
All right.
What does success in the musicbusiness look like for you now?
That, and how has thatdefinition changed over time?
How would you define success?
(55:58):
Yeah, I thought success wasbeing a star.
That's what I thought it wasgoing to be.
But since that didn't happen,I had to.
The alternative is that I cansurvive on how I do what I do.
Right.
I can survive.
Well, I could survive doingeither one of these jobs.
Working at a music store orworking in a band.
I could survive on either one.
(56:18):
But both of those togethermake it a pretty good lifestyle.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd say that.
All right.
Non work related hobbies.
Yeah.
How much?
Nothing.
I, I, I, I now, I mean, I liketo play basketball.
(56:39):
You know, I, I don't do itvery often, but I like it.
I used to go fishing all thetime when I was a kid.
That was one of my favorite things.
I don't, I don't do thatanymore either.
I should probably do boththose things so I'm not going crazy
out of my mind.
There's nothing else.
I'm a music guy.
I wake up and I start my day.
It's all day this, you know,today I'll spend my entire day working
(57:01):
at this store.
And then I'll go to rehearsal tonight.
Right.
So I don't know.
I'm, I'm a music guy.
I'm a music guy.
And so I said, somebody said,what are you gonna do when you, when
you retire?
And I said, I don't, this isnot something I retire from.
It's, this is retirement to me.
Right now, maybe I don't stickaround, do as many hours, you know,
(57:22):
But I don't know.
That's it.
All right, so, so thenspinning off of that.
If you couldn't do anything inthe music industry, what would you
be doing?
Where do you think you'd endedup, maybe if you couldn't have been
in the music industry at all?
Oh, I definitely know theanswer to this question.
I don't know.
(57:42):
I definitely know the answerto this question, but I don't know.
I think.
Oh, I don't know.
I mean, I really likepsychology, so I would probably have,
maybe have been a therapist orsomething like that.
You know, I think I, I think Iwould have liked that to a certain
degree to help people.
(58:04):
So maybe a therapist.
Okay.
Okay, final question.
What's one thing you thinkevery artist should be doing to build
longevity in their career?
One of many.
Being nice.
Be nice.
Yeah, be nice.
I think I, I think again, itis just be nice.
And, and, and, and yeah, themore you do for others, it's just
(58:29):
like your band.
Your band is not there for you.
Your band is there for them, right?
You're on stage for someoneelse's relief of life, your entertainment.
You're no more than a Netflix show.
You're nothing but that.
You're.
They're coming to see yourband because their life is crap this
week, right?
(58:49):
They're too busy.
I just got to get out and havea drink.
Go, go to the bar, whatever itbe, right?
I want to go see this band soI can forget about my life for a
couple of hours.
That's what you are.
So be really good at that andbe nice to those people because they've
had a really rough week.
And you're the, you're the,you're that, you know, they, you're
(59:10):
that movie that they go andsee, and they, it takes them away
to another place.
You're their relief of lifeand be that and be nice to them,
because without them, you are nothing.
You don't have any kind ofexistence as a band.
You can't go out and play gigs.
No one shows up and watches you.
Be very kind to those people.
(59:31):
That's great, Mark.
Thank you so much for coming on.
I know you're a busy man.
I know.
Jason, I, I, I appreciate youhaving me, man.
This is very cool.
I'm glad you're doing this.
I know our listenersappreciate it too.
Getting all the advice andhead on over to maxwellshouse music.com
and.
Okay, if this hit home withyou, subscribe and share it with
other musicians.
And hey, if you want a systemto keep your money working while
(59:54):
you create, grab my freeebook, A Musician's Guide to Infinite
banking.
It's at 1024wealth.com musicand I don't have that.
I have to get that.
You got it coming.
You got it coming.
Then as soon as we're done,we'll get it going.
That's incredible.
I can't wait to.
I had no idea you did this.
I have no idea what you did.
(01:00:15):
Unbelievable.
That's right.
Okay, so imagine, we talkabout, you know, imagine covering
touring costs while yoursavings keep compounding.
Or what if you could fund yournext release without stopping the
growth of your money along the way?
That's what this ebook is about.
So for our listeners, grab afree copy@1024wealth.com music and
when you're ready to see howthis could fit in your own world,
(01:00:36):
book a call.
Let's talk.
Until then, you've beenlistening to backstage Money, where
music and money collide.
We'll see you next time.
And until then, keep creatingand keep your money working.
Mark, you want to close us outwith and if you're in a band, One
more.
If you're in a band.
If you're in a band, you makesome money and you save some money.
(01:00:57):
That's it.
Love it.
Thanks, guys.
Take it easy.
Thank you so much.
Foreign.
Welcome to Backstage Money.
Real world finance for musicians.
I'm your host, Jason K.Powers, and today is an exciting
episode.
I am very excited about thisone and I think you're going to want
(00:22):
to take notes.
Today I am joined by MarkMaxwell, owner of Maxwell's House
of Music, a lifelong musician,a mentor to thousands of players
through his store, lessons andstage programs.
We're going to talk shop aboutbuilding your music business, serving
a community, keeping the art alive.
Mark, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Jason.
(00:42):
Glad to be here.
It's a wonderful thing,talking music, talking money.
I like both of those things.
That's right.
That's right.
We love it.
We love it.
And I'm loving the thronething for our, for our viewers, those
of you who are watching onstreaming of some kind.
I love the throne scene wehave going.
Yeah.
This year.
That's great.
(01:03):
This is, this is somethingthat, yeah, it was the idea of several
people here and I just kind ofall came together.
There's a fireman in our townwho's a taking guitar lessons and
we were talking about making agame of Thrones out of the, the Guitar
Hero guitars.
And he said, I can build thatfor you.
I mean, you should see this thing.
(01:24):
It's massive and it's really amazing.
So, yeah, it is fun.
So fun.
But anyway, so how you doing?
You doing good?
Yeah, doing awesome.
I love, I love chatting withyou and just learning all the insight
you've got, which we're goingto kind of unpack a little bit.
But first, you know, give me a.
Who is Mark Maxwell?
Where, where'd you, we say,how'd you get here?
You know, we were talking.
(01:44):
How'd I get here?
Yeah, yeah.
I, my family, my dad is adrummer, played here in Louisville
area.
The Louisville area.
I'm in southern Indiana, whichis Jeffersonville, Indiana.
And right across the bridge.
If you go across the bridge,you're in Louisville, Right.
So home of the Kentucky Derby,Kentucky Fried Chicken, all the goodies.
(02:04):
But.
So I grew up in this area.
My, my dad was a drummer.
His band played on the DickClark Caravan of Stars back in the
day.
Right.
Which was a famous kind ofthing that toured the, the countryside.
And anyway, then he eventuallystarted working at music stores and
then opened a music store andthen I went to work for my dad and
(02:24):
eventually I opened my own store.
So I, I, I worked with thefamily for a very long period of
time.
I've always played music sinceI was a kid.
I've been in several bands.
I was in an original band for10 years, and then I was then, you
know, played here, there, andeverywhere, and eventually ended
up playing in a band that Iplay in now called the Crashers.
Been the same six guys for 17years, which is crazy.
(02:50):
And, you know, the p. Peoplewill talk, ask me all the time, they'll
say, man, how'd your band stay together?
I'd say, because we make abunch of money.
And when you're paid a lot ofmoney to be in a band, you stay in
that band.
Right.
Particularly that.
These guys are also very nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, I've alwaysworked at a music store.
(03:11):
I've always played music in a band.
It's the kind of.
The two things that have beenalways, you know, in my life.
I love doing it.
I love people that play music.
I want to encourage people toplay music.
And.
Yeah, I.
It just.
I.
My brother is the drummer inmy band.
He owns a drum store directlynext door to me.
So I have this store which ismostly guitars and keys and some
(03:36):
electronic drums, but mybrother's way into drums, and he
has a custom kind of drumstore next door to me.
So.
Yeah, so it's kind of been afamily thing all my life, that this
is what we did.
We played music.
Right.
So we don't know anymore orany less than that.
My dad, I would think you'dprobably say he's kind of the.
The.
The Godfather of music inLouisville, Kentucky.
(03:57):
Right.
That kind of.
He's just been around hereforever, and he's done a lot of things,
and so.
And he's done a lot of goodfor the community.
So, you know, I think that'swhere I'm a life.
A lifer in the industry.
He definitely is.
He's.
He's.
He's.
He's been around it forever.
He owned, you know, thebiggest music store in town as far
as that goes.
And he, you know, he.
(04:17):
The best thing is that hetaught me how to give back.
Right.
My dad started.
My dad was in a real bad car wreck.
I was 10th grade in school,and he had a really bad car wreck.
And he was a drummer.
He was working at his musicstore during the daytime and, of
course, playing gigs sixnights a week, because back in the
day, that's what you did.
Musicians played six nights a week.
(04:39):
He was playing, was drivinghome, he wrecked.
It was a really horrificaccident and took him a long time
to heal.
But after that fact, hisfriends got together and put on a
big community benefit from my dad.
And all kinds of money came inI remember this.
I was like.
I said, I was 10th grade.
(05:00):
I remember at home when we gotdone after that event, there was
cash on our kitchen table,like just stacks of money.
And I remember my dad saying,well, I.
We need this much to survive.
Now I'm going to take the restof this and I'm going to give it
away.
And so he started a thing intown in Louisville called murph,
(05:21):
the Musicians Emergency Relief Fund.
And so if you were somebodyand you needed some money, my dad
would give you, hand you money.
So literally a drummer had acar wreck, got all his teeth knocked
out.
My dad bought him new teeth, right?
My, you know, you, you.
He always called it puttingbeans on the table.
If you couldn't afford yourelectricity bill, my dad would try
(05:43):
to pay for it.
It was like.
So he was very good at takingcare of the people in his town, right?
And so that was, you know, I.I think I learned really well from
him doing what he did.
So again, eventually, I did myown store, doing my own vibe.
And of course, if you're in aband, that was a.
That was a fluke, to be honestwith you.
(06:06):
One of my guys at the storesaid, hey, sit down and tell me what
you would do because yourband's very successful.
I built a band in the town.
We were very.
Was the first band I evertreated like a business.
First time ever in my life.
Like, I really just kind ofalways played in the band.
Hey, let's go play.
Because that's what they call it.
Play.
Let's go play music.
(06:27):
Let's just play.
You know, it's not real, it'sjust play.
But I was like, I really want to.
I really want to build abusiness, right?
I want to build somethingthat's going to be great.
And so I started to.
Started a band and.
And we treated it like abusiness from the.
The get go.
And it kind of blew up.
And anyway, a couple of yearsago, one of my employees said, hey,
(06:49):
you need to talk aboutbuilding a band and what it takes
and what you ought to do, youknow, because I'm always giving people
advice.
And so I did it.
I did it really for the people in.
In the Louisville area.
Right.
It wasn't supposed to gonationwide or worldwide.
And now people in Australiaand New Zealand and Canada and everywhere
(07:11):
else are watching it.
So it's been a crazy thing.
That's right.
And for those of you who don'tknow of this, what Mark is talking
about, can I.
Can I just say it if.
Sure.
If you're in a band.
No, no, no.
If you're in a band, and so that's.
(07:32):
So.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Come on.
If you're going to say it, sayit right.
We're gonna, we're gonna do it.
If you're in a band.
No, come on.
Some things today.
Come on.
No, if you're in a band.
If you're.
(07:53):
That's.
If you're in a band is how it started.
So it started kind of goofy, right?
That's right.
If you're in a band, you dowhatever, right?
You, you, you drink a lot ofwater before the weekend, right?
Because you're going to getdehydrated, right?
If you're in a band atpractice, maybe you should practice
(08:17):
really soft so you can hearevery mistake, right?
So.
And also that you can work onyour dynamics.
Like, I gave all of the tipsthat I possibly could come up with.
I still do to this day.
But yes, if you're in a band,maybe you ought to think about how
much money.
You know, the first one I didwas all about money.
It was about value and yourtime, right?
(08:39):
More than anything.
It was like.
So I, the, The whole, the veryfirst one kind of got me in some
hot water because I was like,hey, you know, I've spent my life
learning to play guitar, to bea singer, to rehearse, to play in
my bedroom, to rehearse withthe band, you know, and, and played
a bunch of gigs.
(08:59):
And, and by now, with all thattime I've put in, I could have been
a surgeon.
I mean, literally, it couldhave been a surgeon, right?
So why am I not being paidlike a surgeon, Right?
Why is it that musicians.
And I'll tell you why it is,but it just blows my mind that we
(09:19):
don't value the amount of timethat we've put into this thing we
call playing music, right?
And, and, and, and, and sountil you value your time more, you're
never going to really make any money.
And people are.
Will say, oh, it's my town.
My town won't allow that to happen.
That's not true at all.
We proved it.
(09:40):
We were all playing in $500bands 17 years ago, literally playing
in five.
Each one of us playing inbands that were 500 a night, right?
And we, we built this thing,and in less than five years, we were
at a level that's justridiculous financially meaning.
(10:02):
And so I think we kind ofproved that we could do it, right?
And then I wanted to share itwith the world.
And so I did, actually.
I wanted to share it withpeople in Louisville, but it made
it around the world, and nowwe're sitting here talking about
it.
Because you've seen it before, right?
That's right.
That's right.
I did not.
I did.
I did nothing.
(10:24):
Like, we didn't do anything that.
That made it go where it went.
It was just obviouslysomething that no one had ever talked
about, and it just grew very quickly.
So strange but true.
So, yeah.
Anyway, that's great.
Yeah, that's great.
So.
So on the advice you give inthis series, you've got.
(10:46):
I don't know how many pointsyou have now out there.
200 something.
Okay, so what do you think?
What's the top two or threethat stand out for you the most?
You know, lessons for artiststhat maybe save them time or money
or relates to money and habitsor building the business.
(11:08):
You know, just monetarily speaking.
What can they learn?
Now?
It just depends on your goals.
So if you said, hey, I want to be.
There's two sides to this.
I want to be an original band,or I want to be a cover band.
So when you get into thisthing, there are two roads to choose
(11:29):
from.
Hey, I want to be a cover band.
Okay, let's talk about that.
What that means.
I want to be in an original band.
Right.
Those two roads are different.
And I think when you say,first, this is what we're going to
be, we're going to be anoriginal band.
Okay.
We're going to be a cover band.
(11:49):
Okay.
I do think it's important tobe one or the other.
I'm.
I'm a. I just don't know manybands that have done really well
being both.
So I would say choose one.
Start.
At least start by saying,we're going to be this or we're going
to be that.
And then you have to say,well, what are my goals?
What do I really want from this?
(12:10):
Well, after me living for sucha long period of time.
I was 42 when we started theband that I'm in called the Crashers.
And here's what we came up with.
We sat around a table andeverybody said, well, if this could
be the last band you everplayed in, what would it.
What would.
What would make you stay.
What would make you want tostay here and do this?
(12:32):
Well, one guy said, well, I'dlike to be.
I'd like to make the mostmoney I've ever made playing in a
band.
Okay, write that down.
Next guy said, I don't want toPlay past one o' clock in the morning,
okay?
Write it down.
The other guy said, I don'twant to.
I don't want to.
What was it?
Oh, I want to play in front of the.
The most amount of people thatany band's ever played in our town,
(12:53):
okay?
And the other guy said, I wantto play the best gigs in our town.
The next person said, I don'tever want to move my equipment again.
Right?
I want somebody else to movemy equipment for me.
So we wrote down all thosethings as goals.
Here are the goals.
So what would we have to do toget these six goals that we wrote
(13:13):
down?
Well, how would we get there?
Like.
And so we just kind of reverseengineered, like I said.
Okay, so, guys, we're allstanding on this.
Took weeks and months oftalking, right?
Because it was like a game plan.
It was like, hey, here's howwe're going to win.
And I don't think enough bandsdo that.
I think they think it's allabout getting in and rehearsing the
(13:36):
band and being in a rehearsalroom and then go playing a gig.
It's really not.
It's, where is your destination?
Where do you want to go withthis thing?
What do you want to happen andsee happen?
And where can your limiting beliefs.
If you know anything aboutlimiting beliefs, you should study
these.
Limiting beliefs stopped youfrom getting wherever you want to
(13:56):
go.
And I think that's the biggestproblem that I had when I was younger.
I don't have them anymore.
I do have beliefs about myself still.
That's really strange.
But I try to talk myself outof them.
So I think we as musicianshave our beliefs that we can only
go this far or we can only beworth this much money.
(14:17):
And if you'll just kind of keep.
Get rid of that belief and,and believe a little higher level,
you can do anything you want.
I mean, my band, it's weird,man, how we ended up.
You know, I. I've started todo some zoom calls with bands to
where they're all sitting in aroom and I'm sitting there with them
(14:39):
and I'm trying to say, allright, tell me where you guys want
to go and I'll help you get there.
Right?
I started to do that more andmore lately because I don't know
if they.
If they can see the end resultvery well.
And I'm.
I'm a guy who can go, okay, ifthese are the goals, how would we
get there?
How would we.
(14:59):
If this was going to be theend cap of what we were going to
do, what would it take to get there?
And so we got there literallyin three and a half years, and strongly
there by five years of being a band.
So by the fifth year, we weresolid with every goal that we had,
right?
(15:22):
And with that, I, I just, I. Iwas like, wow.
But the problem is, is we weretoo dumb, and we stayed at that same
level for five more years asopposed to going, hey, wait a minute.
What if we doubled up on allof this, right?
Because we set a financial goal.
This is how much we're goingto be a night, right?
(15:43):
And it was so ridiculous thatnone of us could even believe it,
but we tried, you know, it waslike, hey, let's be $5,000 a night,
right?
Let's be $5,000 a Night.
We were all playing in $500 bands.
Let's be $5,000 A Night.
That was just like, literallysaying, hey, I'm going to do a long
(16:05):
jump, and I can only jump 5ft,but I'm going to go ahead and jump
10ft, right?
I'm going to go myself, right?
So we go.
Something we never thought wecould do, but we thought, why not
just try to get our beliefsystem behind it?
And so we did, and we ended upgetting there.
And then we went way furtherthan that.
And now, like, it's justamazing how if you just stop stopping
(16:31):
yourself from doing greatstuff, you can do anything, anything
you set your.
Your mind to.
And so, I don't know, I thinkwe've proven it as a band.
What I'd like to do is I'dlike to prove it, because I've proven.
I've proven what you could dowith in a cover band.
But now I'd like to take thesesame principles on an original band
(16:52):
and say, all right, let meshow you step by step what we did
to get there, right?
Because I can tell you what wedid step by step to get us to the
point of being a veryexpensive cover band, Right?
Yeah, I can tell you how to dothat and also how to stay together.
You know, again, money keepsyou together.
(17:12):
If you're making a lot ofmoney, why not?
Right?
Well, let's talk about thatfor a second.
Like, on the flip side of it,you know, what's some of the biggest,
you know, money?
Making mistakes you see youngbands, local bands make when it comes
to growing.
Well, they don't know.
I'll tell you this.
If I was a young band again, I would.
(17:33):
I'd offer myself, and I gotcriticized for this, too.
But I would offer myself up tofree to one place in my town.
So if I lived in any city, Iwould go find a pizza joint or a,
a bar somewhere that's doesn'thave much going on.
You could go to with your bandand walk in and say, hey, could we
(17:54):
be your house band everyMonday night?
Right.
We don't want anything for it.
We don't want to, you know, Iknow you're.
I went to a place and said,tell me your worst night.
Well, Monday nights aredefinitely our worst night.
Okay, could we come here andplay every week for an hour, hour
and a half, maybe two hoursevery week and just invite our friends
and make this thing a big deal?
(18:16):
They said, yeah, well, westarted doing that and then every,
that place got packed to thepoint it was a big deal.
Well then you go around to allthe rest of the places in town and
say, hey, come see us thisMonday night.
We're going to be playing atthis place.
It's packed full of people andanybody that owns any place in town
is going to walk in and go, ohmy gosh, I want this band to play
(18:38):
at my place.
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
So I would tell young bands totry to find a place where they can
kind of, you know, become areally good band and be consistent.
You know, like again, once aweek gig somewhere where they can
go in and set up and play,invite all their friends, and eventually
they invite everybody on theplanet to come see their band.
(19:00):
I would do that in my townagain if it was me.
I just think that.
I think that the biggestproblem is that you're not being
seen.
There's not enough people inyour town that know who you are.
My band's a pretty popularband, but you can still walk down
the street and say, hey, haveyou ever heard a band called the
Crashers?
And people go, no, no.
Right.
And.
And we've been doing this for17 years.
(19:21):
So you would think everybodyin this town would know who we are
and they don't.
So I would also.
Again, most people don't knowwho you are as a band.
And so you've got to find away to get people to know who you
are.
And so I think as a youngband, that would be my first thing
to do.
And then as you pack the placeand the guy's making money hand over
(19:42):
fist on whatever, pizza, beer,whatever, then ask for some money,
start getting paid well toplay that gig.
And then when other peopleshow up from other clubs to try to
book you, you can say, hey,man, this is what we ask for.
This is the price.
Second thing is that everybodyprices themselves way under, right?
There are bands in this townpaying for $300.
(20:03):
There are bands playing for $500.
Are they crazy?
Seriously, like, I just blowsmy mind that they.
Now here's the thing.
If you can't draw any people,can't ask what you want.
If I can pack your place out,I'm worth a lot of money.
So maybe the right questionis, what would make people show up
(20:27):
and watch my dance?
Maybe that's the rightquestion to ask.
Not, how do I make more money?
Well, how do you get more people?
Because if you have a wholebunch of people showing up and watch
your band, guess what happens?
You can ask for whatever youwant, and I'll be glad or anybody
be glad to pay you.
You pack their place.
(20:48):
That's the question.
How do you pack a room?
How do you get followers?
Well, and I know, and there'sa lot of right now, in particular,
a discussion going on in theonline platforms about, do you even
take a chance in doing thesefree gigs?
Are.
You know, some have an issuewith that, right?
And you don't.
(21:09):
You should.
You should have an issue withit, but you pick one place, you don't.
I can't use that word.
You don't give yourself away.
Okay, look at the harshestword for that.
But.
But don't give yourself away, right?
In other words, give yourselfaway at one place.
(21:30):
Find one place that's notdoing very well that you can go in,
set up your gear, play a show,invite all your friends, all your
family, and then start meetingpeople to say, hey.
Every Monday night we do this thing.
As you build that, itshouldn't take you four to eight
weeks before the place iskicking, right?
(21:50):
And you can go back to the guyand say, hey, man, this is how much
we want to do this thing andstay here at your place on Monday
nights.
He'll pay you whatever.
I mean, literally, he.
He'll pay you a very good sumbecause the fact is, you're making
money.
That's what happened to us.
We had a fan, little pizza place.
Guy wasn't making any money ona Monday night.
We started playing, and thenext thing you know, we're like,
(22:13):
you know, a very popular thing.
The place is packed and.
And.
And the guy's paying us goodmoney to play his gig.
And then we didn't play freeanywhere else, anywhere.
So somebody came to us andwe'd say, hey, yeah, we're a thousand
dollars.
It was Simple Simon.
We were a young band and itworked, right?
And they'd be like, okay,we'll pay you $1,000.
(22:34):
That was three times more thanany band was making at the time,
you know, So I don't have aproblem with people playing a free
gig, as long as it's the same gig.
And you don't want to giveyourself away at every place in town.
So just pick one place, startthere, Build your crowd, build your
following.
(22:55):
That's what I say.
Yeah, that's great.
I think there's something tobe said about too, where in a way,
you know, you're starting outlike that.
You're.
You're helping them, they'rehelping you.
It's not just about, well, letme come in and me be me, right?
It's a little bit of it.
Give.
Listen, it's.
My dad always said to me, hesaid, look, look, a good deal is
(23:18):
a good deal for you and a gooddeal for them, right?
You can't win and they lose.
They can't win and you lose.
What's happening?
That's the problem is that alot of people.
I'm not going to blame it onclubs, but there are a lot of places
in town who are winning in the music.
Matter of fact, I'll tell you where.
(23:39):
Who's winning.
Nashville, Tennessee, is winning.
Every club in that place hasgot a lot of people in their club,
and here's a band in there,and every one of those musicians
is losing because they'replaying for pennies.
They're playing for pennies,and they should stop playing in Nashville,
period.
Nashville's the music city.
(24:00):
Well, show us the love.
Show us the love.
If you're the music city, whydon't you pay us to play?
Because you're making a ton ofmoney in your bar, and they are,
through sponsorships, throughthe people standing at the bar, paying
$12 for a beer.
Give me a break, right?
So I, I. Nashville makes mereally, my blood boil.
(24:24):
But you know why?
Mostly because the musicianswill just be like, well, we can't
do anything to stop it.
Well, yeah, you can not play there.
You can absolutely say, nomatter back, you call me.
I'll be glad to talk youthrough how to make your band profitable
on the COVID side.
It's hard to make itprofitable on the original side,
(24:47):
but we can talk about ways todo that, too.
But I think people are givingtheirselves away.
Their talent, what they'veworked their whole lives towards,
right?
And I. I think it's a travestyI do.
It breaks my heart.
Especially.
Especially in Nashville, Tennessee.
Breaks my heart.
I go down there and watchmusicians playing and I know they're
(25:09):
playing for pennies, and itjust breaks my heart.
So how do you.
How do people wrestle with themindset of.
Well, because I'm sure a lotof them are.
I don't want to turn this downbecause I don't want to lose the
exposure.
Right.
And for me to say no justmeans no work, you know?
(25:33):
Does it really?
I hear there's that.
That fear.
That fear of, well, if I keepsaying no to stuff like this and
what to do, you know, I'llnever get anywhere.
I feel.
Yeah, yeah, that is.
That is something.
It's.
It's not right, but it's something.
I will say this to you if I'lluse the word.
I can't use that word.
(25:54):
Trying to not be raw and nasty.
I don't think I can tell youwhat worked for us.
We built something that had akiller website.
And it looked like we wererock stars on our website.
And we pushed that website toevery bar, every joint in town, every
(26:17):
event place, every dressmaker,every tuck shop, every flower shop,
any place that we thought wasgoing to be some kind of event, one
of the three, either a publicevent, a corporate event, or maybe
even a wedding.
And so we pushed our websiteout to everybody.
And then when they called us,we priced ourselves out of the market
(26:38):
heavily, right to where we hadto listen to no a lot for about six
months or a year.
But then by that point,something had happened where people
had never heard a band say,no, I won't play, right?
Like, we became the firstchoice for people to call.
(27:00):
But we would say, I wish wecould do that.
We just can't.
I wish we could.
But we're $1500 and you'relooking for a $500 band, right?
And people could not believe that.
I would not.
Well, how about if we did 900?
I'd say, man, I wish we could.
Well, what do I.
What about twelve hundred dollars?
Man, I wish we could.
I wish we could.
(27:22):
Now at that moment, you'revalue in yourself, your time, your
life, and your product thatyou're designing now.
If you don't believe in yourproduct, then fine, go give it away.
Just go give it away.
But if you spent your time andyou thought about it and you worked
hard and you built thatproduct up, you wouldn't want to
give it away.
(27:42):
You just wouldn't want to.
It doesn't make sense to me.
At all.
I don't care what band you're in.
I know how to.
There's about 25 things thatyou would have to do, but if you
did all of those things, youcould be very profitable, and your
band could be one of thebiggest bands in your community,
(28:03):
in your town.
You just have to change theway you're thinking because we are
thinking wrong.
I promise you that.
It's.
It's.
We are thinking wrong.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, I say that all the time,too, you know, the change of thinking
(28:23):
to change your thinking.
And in my business, you know,it's changed the way you think about
your finances, and it willchange your life and what you're
saying.
It will change.
Change the way you valueyourself, the way you see yourself
in the business and what you're.
Where are your boundaries?
Right?
Where.
Where are you going to drawlines and say, I'm just not going
(28:45):
to cross this line?
Even though it's tempting, youknow, man, it's very tempting.
And here's the thing.
My guys in my band got verymad at me the first year because
I'd said no to a lot ofthings, a lot of good things.
I mean, like.
Like things that I would havenever said no to in the past.
Never.
And they were like, why would we.
Why don't we do this?
(29:06):
What are we doing?
I said, we're gettingeverybody to respect us is what we're
doing.
We're getting everybody inthis town to understand that we value
our time.
We under.
We value what we're doing, andwe're creating this buzz in the town
that we may have something special.
Now, you do have to show up.
When you do show up withsomething special, right?
You have to.
(29:26):
You have to show up and swinga big bat.
And.
And of course, we had a wholeyear to work on swinging a big bat,
and we eventually did.
We got to that point to where,hey, we can go in here and swing
a really big bat, and it'sgoing to work for us.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's almost like a band.
It's weird.
I even told my guys when wewere playing, I was like, don't quit
(29:48):
your band that you're playingin now.
Don't quit your band becauseyou're going to be mad at me because
I'm going to let go of allthese great gigs that your band's
not even getting offered, butwe're going to get offered, and I'm
going to say no to them sothat they'll believe that we're A
better product than not.
I mean, it's like anythingelse, man.
It's me holding up a Mercedeskey and me holding up a Ford key
(30:13):
and me saying, which one wouldyou like to have?
And if, and if you said, if Isaid, here's a free car sitting outside,
which one would you pick, Jason?
Would you pick the Mercedeskey or would you pick the four key,
pick.
The free Mercedes, man.
It would.
Why?
(30:35):
You would.
Everybody would.
Why?
Yeah.
More value.
Because you believe it's more value.
Yeah, that's the thing.
You believe this Kia is morevalue and it could very well be.
Or that Mercedes settingalpesign could have 250,000 miles
and be a 2002.
And this Ford key could havebeen a brand new one right off the
(30:58):
lot with no mileage on it andworth 30, 40, $50,000.
So perception is what we'reselling here, right?
How do you get people toperceive that your band is worth
more than the next band?
Right?
And then how do you deliver?
How do you deliver?
(31:19):
How do you become somethingthat's so good, that draws so many
people, that you're undeniable?
Right?
That's what I can teach a bandto do.
That's what I can teachanybody to do in two ways.
I can teach them in thebusiness sort because everybody goes
in the rehearsal room and rehearses.
They rehearse wrong, by theway, but they do rehearse.
(31:40):
So I, we have, I have aspecific way to rehearse a band and
I have a specific way to dealwith the business that actually does
work and will, you know, but Idon't know that we ever learned how
to rehearse right in therehearsal room.
And I don't think we definitely.
No one ever taught us how torun our business at all.
(32:02):
Matter of fact, it's barelyever talked about.
You know, this is the music business.
Right, Right.
It really is.
And, and how do you get aheadin that?
How do you win that, that, youknow, that fight?
And so I don't know.
I think that's why I starteddoing these.
These, if you're in a badthings is because I, I felt like
I knew how to do it and I, Imean, I proved how to do it with
(32:29):
more than just my band.
There are now bands in ourtown that are making ridiculous money,
right?
And they're just following ourdirection, right.
Kind of what we did and how wedid it.
So anybody can do this in anytown, everywhere in the world, and
people will say to youstraight up, it won't Happen in my
town.
Okay, you're, you're right.
(32:51):
It will not happen in your town.
100%.
You are 100% correct.
Or you can say, I'm going tochange everything about my town and
how it works so it can be done.
It just takes a brave soldierto take off on this thing.
So.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's great.
(33:12):
So, so let's meet one piece ofadvice on the back end.
So, you know, we've talkedabout a little bit of getting, getting
paid.
Okay, so now you've gottenpaid or you're consistently getting
paid.
What are some practical advicesteps for bands at that point?
(33:33):
Or maybe don't do this.
We, and you know, in othercalls, we, we talk about, you know,
where not to place your money.
Make sure you're warehousingyour money a little bit somewhere.
Investing money.
Oh, my years.
I tell you what I wish wewould have done.
I wish that our van would havedone what we talked about going into
(33:55):
year five.
If we would have, we wouldhave been a much better off band,
right?
Whether it was taking some ofa portion of our money.
Because what we did with ourmoney is we split that money up.
We, we put each guy.
There were six guys whostarted the band.
Each one of them got 10%.
Okay?
So whatever money we weregetting, 10% was going to.
(34:17):
So 60% of the money was offthe table.
So now there's 40% of the money.
Now we knew we wanted a roadcrew and we were like, well, how
much is that going to cost us?
Right?
Well, it's going to cost us300 to get.
For you guys to set up ourgear and tear it down, okay?
So we budgeted that, which wasabout 20% of the money, right?
But then we had this other 20%that was left over.
(34:37):
So we got into the point we'reeven doing that to this, to this
very day.
We talk about percentages,like that person's paid 2% of our
money or that person's paid 3%of our money.
Like, we know our, like,again, it is a business.
Like, it is a real business.
And so reinvesting that moneyand whether it be in real estate
or in the stock market orhowever you decide to reinvest so
(35:00):
that your band can come out ofthis thing and actually have some
kind of money to, to survivewith, right?
In the long run of life.
Hey, I, I, I. Yeah, I can'tsay enough about that.
I wish we would have donebetter than what we did.
We did do a good thing.
It's just, you know, thehindsight's 2020 situation.
It's like you, you get throughit and you go, man, just imagine.
(35:24):
A matter of fact, if you're anoriginal band, my opinion, I'll say
this.
I think you should record 12songs a year, right?
Every month.
I think you should go in thestudio and cut a song and release
it every month.
Release it, Release it,release it, release it.
If you did that in threeyears, you'd have three full records
(35:45):
out, right?
But what happens with theoriginal bands is they'll, they'll
go and they'll recordsomething and then they don't record
anything for two or threeyears later, right?
If that, the consistency ofanything works better than nothing.
And that's money or anything else.
So you want big muscles, go tothe gym and lift a weight every day.
You'll have big muscles.
(36:06):
There's no if, ands or buts.
You are going to be strongerperson if you go to the gym.
Do that.
If your band does the samething, be consistent.
If you're writing songs, be consistent.
If you're recording songs, be consistent.
If you've got money thatyou've made and you're making good
money, like all of my personalmoney from my band, I live on my
(36:27):
day job and my band is my funmoney, right?
So I go, I travel with thatmoney, I invest with that money.
I do all kinds of things withthat money from my band as opposed
to using it right in, in anykind of, you know, living expense
way.
So I have two jobs.
I work at a music store thatpays my electricity, my house, my
(36:52):
car, whatever that is.
Right.
My living expenses.
So it's another thing.
Most musicians cannot surviveon just being a musician.
Even though there are a lot ofguys in this town that are just musicians,
but a lot of them also willlearn to teach.
So there'll be teachers duringthe day, musicians at night.
So investment wise.
Yeah, I wish we would havebeen smarter.
I. I really do.
(37:13):
It's.
It's.
Especially since we've beentogether for 17 years because for
the last 12 years of that wecould have had a killer nest egg
as opposed to not realizing ittill about year 10 that we should
have done it.
Yeah.
And that's a conversation thatcomes up just in about every recording
we do is you hear it.
I wish I would have startedsome kind of mistake, some kind of
(37:37):
saving, some kind of somethingwhen I got started or early on, or
when I can't.
Right.
And I think that's a commontheme throughout this, and that's
actually one of the mainreasons I wanted to start this podcast
to begin with, was because youhear that, you know, you run into
situations, you start seeingmusicians, even very well known musicians,
(38:01):
internationally known, youknow, who haven't been on the forefront
lately.
Some crisis happens and all ofa sudden there's a GoFundMe page
up and.
You'Re thinking, why in theworld does that guy have a GoFundMe
page?
Right, right, right.
And it's, you know, thankfulthat there are institutions like
(38:23):
GoFundMe where they have that capability.
But also, my gosh, if we couldinstill some systems and processes
and planning in the earlyyears and get those kinds of things
put in place where you havethese safety nets and you don't have
to go to the public, you know,for that.
(38:44):
Yeah, well, you're.
This is exactly.
It's.
It's not.
Yeah, it's an interestingthing because you're dealing, okay?
So you work your.
You work really hard to beable to do something and all of a
sudden you get to that pointto where, oh, wow, I'm now making
a good living by playing music.
But you forget that one dayyou're going to have a bad back,
(39:06):
you're not going to be able towalk, your knees are shot, whatever
it be, and you have no money left.
Right.
At all.
You have no nest egg whatsoever.
Nest egg is not a wordmusicians use.
Right.
Which is why most people leavebeing a musician and they go do anything
else.
Right.
In the whole wide world, they.
(39:27):
Which is kind of sad.
Again, we don't charge enoughmoney for what we do and how, and
how long it's taken us to getto this point to be able to do this.
And we don't need to giveourselves away and we need to get
paid better.
And then we need to realizewhat we do with that money.
Even if it's just 20% of yourmoney that you go, okay, for the
(39:49):
rest of my life, no matterwhat, 20% of my money is going to
go somewhere else.
I'm going to save that money.
I'm going to invest that money.
I'm going to.
I want to buy my.
You know, I have a friend whotook all his and just did real estate
right now.
He's up to like 27 houses, right?
It's crazy.
And I'm like, dude, I've seenseveral musicians do that.
(40:10):
I remember where they actuallykind of started again.
Any kind of investment,anything is good, right?
Just take 20% of your moneyand if you don't know anything to
do with it.
Get a guy like you, right?
You're out there talking aboutthis because it's.
It is a need.
It's horrific.
It's crazy to me is what it is.
(40:31):
But.
Yeah, I don't know.
Who am I?
I'm just some dude.
Indiana, hey, you made it this far.
You made it this far.
Okay, so.
All right.
All right.
The.
If you're in a band, what isone of your.
What's probably your favoritepiece of advice that comes up?
(40:51):
And people are like, I never knew.
I never thought about that.
I mean, do you have something?
I know it's probably every point.
I'm sure every point you giveis like.
Everybody's like, wow.
You know?
But what's kind of one that's a.
Lot, A lot of favorite one?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think there's afavorite point.
I think.
I don't think there is.
(41:11):
I mean, there's.
There's points that peoplesay, you know, I know this.
I just didn't think about it, right?
I know this.
I just.
I never thought about it like this.
Or I know these tips.
I just don't think about them often.
And now it's bringing me backto, you know, to thinking about them.
So I don't know what to sayabout that.
I don't think there's any one point.
(41:35):
I do think that.
I do think I wish that wewould have more conversations.
That's what I wish.
I wish we'd had moreconversations about what we're doing.
But we kind of get in ourlittle bubble of our band and we
don't really have communitywith other bands.
So I think if I was going totalk about anything, it's trying
(41:57):
to make a community of people,you know, like minded people in your
town.
So all the COVID bands, notthat you're starting up, you know,
you don't have to start a, youknow, group or, I mean, you know,
but.
But it just.
It is a thing to have acommunity of people who do what you
do in your own town so thatyou guys can talk about, you know,
(42:21):
how you.
How.
Because there's bands in towndoing things I wish I was doing,
right?
And so it's.
It's not like I know everything.
I'm watching other bands andlearning from them.
It's not, you know, I justkeep learning.
But I'm.
I tell you what I won't do iskeep making the same mistake over
and over, right?
How stupid is that?
You Know I will not do that.
(42:43):
Yeah.
So.
And I think the next phase forme and my band is that we've kind
of become a backup band for alot of bigger artists now.
So we're.
We're going down the Dominicanand playing a show, and we're going
to play in Vegas.
Also backing up Mike Reno fromLover Boy and.
And John Elefante from Kansasand several people like that.
(43:04):
So we've become that bandthat's kind of like a backup band
for artists.
In other words, it was like,okay, we would just want to play
this bar in our town, right?
To where, well, we want toplay this event.
Well, we want to play this event.
And we just kept staging it tothe point to where, wow, all of a
sudden, Kid Rock stand onstage with this and we're like, how
did this happen?
(43:25):
Right?
Yeah, yeah.
And.
And I know how it happened.
And now all I want to do istry to share it, but it's a very
individualized thing.
Right?
So I can't.
I can say all these tips andyou can try to put your own little
roadmap together, but until wehad a conversation about your specific
band, your specific band isgoing to be different than my band.
(43:47):
And so we really need todecide how do we deal with that?
Right?
How do we deal with your band?
Like, what is it that you have?
Or what would you do or wantto do, and how far can that take
you?
You know, my friend started aACDC tribute band and he went to
this point and he knew itwasn't going to go any bigger.
(44:08):
Now it got big, as opposed tomost of the bands were down here.
His band that was doing anACDC tribute band was here.
Then he left that band to godo something that's now way up here.
Right.
Because he saw the opportunityand thought, I want this opportunity
to last and I want it to bebig and I want to make a lot of money
(44:29):
doing my thing.
So I think we are our biggestlimiters of everything.
So.
Yeah, yeah.
So in.
In that you just rolled outsomething new that's helpful for
bands and.
Yeah, I've got it.
I've got it, you know.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Tell us.
Yeah, yeah.
(44:49):
I don't know.
What's it called?
What do I call it?
The gig sheet.
It's a gig sheet.
What?
It's just one of the littletips we do.
I.
If we're going to book a gigbecause there are six people that
are in our band, then we havea sound man that's seven, then we
have four crew members.
That's 11 people that have to know.
(45:11):
Oh, we also have a merchperson, 12.
Wait.
All right, there are 14 people that.
That my band supports.
And all of us have to be onthe same page.
So when we book a gig, theperson that books that gig fills
out that sheet.
And that sheet is anelectronic sheet that I can look
at.
So I know this weekend whereI'm playing, I can go to my phone,
(45:34):
I can say, all right, here'swhere I'm playing.
This is what time we're playing.
This is how long the gig lasts.
This is.
Are they providing a PA system?
So it's all the questions thatneed to be answered on the front
side so that everybody.
The drummer shows up and allhe's got is a pair of sticks because
he thought there was going tobe a drum set.
Yep, we've got a problem, right?
(45:56):
And there's no drum set.
So this one sheet, which is afree thing, it's a. I just.
I want to get.
I give it all away if I could.
But this is a one sheet that'sfree that you can go to our website@maxwellshouseofmusic.com
your band can take this, useit, change it the way they want to
use it or whatever, or justprint ours off and be able to have
(46:17):
it.
But what this does is answersall the questions on the front side
so that you know what's goingto happen, right?
And then everybody in yourband, without having to say a word,
right, hey, the one sheets upon this gig.
Here it is, right?
I tell everybody, get a Google Calendar.
Google Calendar.
So that everybody knows what'shappening, right?
Have that.
(46:37):
And then two is on the GoogleDrive is where we put this piece
so that I know I'm playingthis weekend, where I'm playing,
what's going on, everythingabout that gig.
No one has to talk at all.
So it's a good way to communicate.
I'm soon going to drop an agreement.
Some people would call it acontract, but it's not legal.
(47:00):
It's the agreement that I usefor every gig that we play.
So when we're going to play agig, we send them an agreement that
says we're going to do thisand you're going to do this.
Here's how we're going topromote it.
Here's how you're going topromote it.
Here's what's.
Here's how we win this thing together.
That person signs that, sendsit back to me, right?
(47:22):
With half of the money.
No Matter what.
I don't care if it's a yearfrom now.
Right?
So this is the.
This is the stuff we have totalk about.
So then we take that money atthat money, remember that we booked
for next year, and we stick itin a certain account.
(47:43):
You want to make some money?
Upcoming gigs can make you alot of good money as an investment
piece.
Right.
We can talk about that someday.
But anyway, bottom line getsdown, too.
So the next.
The next, again, the one sheetright now is called the gig sheet.
And that gig sheet will 100%teach you how to.
How to.
How to run your band just alittle bit better.
(48:06):
So.
Yep.
Did you look at it?
I did.
I got it right here.
I got it right here.
I love you.
Got.
Even got payment info,production and logistics, you know,
the band, the promos,marketing, all that stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
It was like, hey, it is great.
It's a.
It's.
It's one of the best things ever.
It's like, again, if you wantto be a professional band, act like
(48:27):
it.
I mean, just, you know, if youwere going to.
If you were going to.
If you were going to open alamp store tomorrow next door, you'd
have to have the building anda computer and lamps and light bulbs.
You'd have to put up a sign.
(48:48):
You'd have to advertise, you'dhave to start a.
You'd have to do all of thisstuff to open up a business.
So why don't you do all thosethings to open up a business?
You get what I'm saying?
That's what I'm trying to do,is to get them, like, to mind that
this isn't just about playingguitar, playing drums, playing keyboards,
singing in a band.
This is another step in life.
(49:10):
This is.
How do you.
How do you start a realbusiness called whatever you want
to call it, Right?
How do you start a businesscalled the Food Fight?
Foo Fighters.
Foo Fighters is a killer business.
Kiss.
Killer business, right?
They are, yeah.
They're creative and good, butthey've built themselves an amazing
business.
We're all businesses.
(49:30):
It's just some of them aredoing good and some of them suck.
Right?
And I don't mean musically.
I'm talking about financially.
Right.
Business.
A lot of great musicians out there.
A lot of bad business peoplein the.
Oh, as musicians?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's so sad for me.
It's so sad.
It's so sad.
And a lot of people say, well,I don't care.
(49:52):
Well, you do.
I mean, you know, that's.
Again, Another reason our bandstayed together for so long is that
we're all doing pretty goodfinancially in it, right?
So if you're doing pretty goodfinancially, it's harder to quit
something, you know?
Plus, the guys in my banddon't suck.
They're all nice people.
I like them.
Right, yeah, that also makes sense.
(50:14):
I tell people the first thingI ever did.
I sit down, as we sit down atthe table, and I was like, look around
this table.
Are you sure that we can allsurvive this without killing each
other?
Right.
That was like the firstquestion ever answered.
Yeah.
You know, are these goodenough people?
Yeah, they are good people andI want to be in a band with them
now.
What?
Right.
Yep.
(50:35):
Well, let's make our goals andthen figure out how to get there.
All right, so tell us again,where can people see all your bits
about if you're in a band,where can people.
People get the gig sheet andlearn more about what you got going
on?
Yes.
Maxwellshouseofmusic.com thatwill take you straight to everything
that you need.
(50:55):
If you want to buy a piece of gear.
We have a great music store here.
It's a beautiful place.
If you want to get ready for atour, we have a great facility to
do that.
As far as, like rehearsalrooms and things like that, it's
a great place.
But if you want this gig sheetfor free, maxwellshouseofmusic.com
Definitely go there, get thegig sheet.
It's.
It is.
It's pretty cool.
It's a good way to do business.
(51:17):
And if anybody wants to inthis whole wide world want to talk
to me about their band and howto make it bigger and better.
812-283-3304 I'll be glad tohave a conversation.
I want people, I want you towin and I want us as a musician culture
to win.
What's scaring me is this.
(51:38):
Can I say this real quick?
Here's what's scaring me.
I put a thing out on if you'rein a band to say, hey, do me a favor,
thanks for watching, but tellme how old you are, what instrument
you play and where you're from.
So the guy says, hey, I'm fromHawaii, right?
I'm 72 years old and I'm a drummer.
Well, we put all that stuffinto AI and we figured out that the,
(52:01):
the, the average age of theperson that's watching if you're
in a band is 58 years old.
Wow.
Why is that?
That's the question you haveto ask.
Why well, we had the Beatles,we had the Eagles, we had Van Halen.
We had Motley Crue, we hadRock Band.
(52:23):
We had bands.
We didn't have this.
The phone.
Yeah.
And so we're losing musicians.
And not only that, how manyparents are going to say, hey, I
want you to become a musicianwhen you get older?
Nobody, no parent says that.
They're like, you want to starve?
(52:44):
Be a musician.
That's what parents say totheir kids.
We have to change thatattitude of, hey, this is a lucrative
business to be in.
Right?
It's a good thing to be a musician.
It's a wonderful thing.
It's the it's all about.
And again, I want it to befinancially great because I know
how great it is for my soul, right?
(53:06):
And finances will never catchup with how wonderful music is for
the soul, period.
But wouldn't it be niceinstead of being down here at the
finances, that we could beright up in here, Right?
Wouldn't it be great, youknow, soul getting fed, stomach getting
fed.
(53:27):
That's it.
That's it, man.
Preach it.
I know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
But somebody has to say it.
That's right.
That's right.
Well, okay.
All right.
Every show, we like to wrapthings up with a segment called Final
Riffs.
This is where we kind of turndown the storytelling and we crank
up the honesty and ask ourguests a few quick hitting questions.
(53:50):
Some pull out real lessonsfrom life music.
Some shed light on who theyare as a person in the hot seat.
You know, you never know whatkind of gems are going to come out
of this part.
So, Mark, this is where weloosen it up and we get a little
reflective.
You ready?
All right.
No, but I'll do it anyway.
No, no.
We leave out the what color isyour underwear?
Kind of questions, you know?
(54:10):
Okay.
I don't wear it.
No.
Sorry, Kyle.
All right, real quick.
If you could go back and tellyour younger self one thing about
business side of music, whatwould it be?
Hardest one.
Oh, wait, wait, no, no, it'snot hard at all.
I would say to my youngerself, be the best.
You don't try to be anybody else.
(54:31):
I spent too much of my timeyoung trying to be like Kiss and
be like Van Halen and beingall these bands that I wanted to
be like, as opposed to beingthe best me.
That'd be the first thing onthe creative side of things.
The second thing is just is torealize also financially, you can
have anything you want at ayounger age.
You just have to Know how toask for it.
(54:52):
And so that's, it's a, it's a,it's a, it took me so long, I could
teach, I could teach a 20 yearold kid how to do this really well
right now.
And I'm 59.
It took me a long time tofigure it out if they would listen.
The problem is will they listen?
Yeah, that's right.
All right, who's someone inthe music industry that has impacted
(55:14):
you the most and why?
My dad.
Probably just because he wasinstrumental in me learning to be
a good musician.
Right.
Yeah, I would have to say he was.
My mom taught me to be a good human.
My dad taught me to be a good musician.
Right.
And you know, I would saythat's probably where that all started.
(55:37):
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
I hear that a lot coming fromthe parents.
Right.
It trickles down.
They very much were supportiveof what I wanted to be and do, so.
Yeah.
All right.
What does success in the musicbusiness look like for you now?
That, and how has thatdefinition changed over time?
How would you define success?
(55:58):
Yeah, I thought success wasbeing a star.
That's what I thought it wasgoing to be.
But since that didn't happen,I had to.
The alternative is that I cansurvive on how I do what I do.
Right.
I can survive.
Well, I could survive doingeither one of these jobs.
Working at a music store orworking in a band.
I could survive on either one.
(56:18):
But both of those togethermake it a pretty good lifestyle.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd say that.
All right.
Non work related hobbies.
Yeah.
How much?
Nothing.
I, I, I, I now, I mean, I liketo play basketball.
(56:39):
You know, I, I don't do itvery often, but I like it.
I used to go fishing all thetime when I was a kid.
That was one of my favorite things.
I don't, I don't do thatanymore either.
I should probably do boththose things so I'm not going crazy
out of my mind.
There's nothing else.
I'm a music guy.
I wake up and I start my day.
It's all day this, you know,today I'll spend my entire day working
(57:01):
at this store.
And then I'll go to rehearsal tonight.
Right.
So I don't know.
I'm, I'm a music guy.
I'm a music guy.
And so I said, somebody said,what are you gonna do when you, when
you retire?
And I said, I don't, this isnot something I retire from.
It's, this is retirement to me.
Right now, maybe I don't stickaround, do as many hours, you know,
(57:22):
But I don't know.
That's it.
All right, so, so thenspinning off of that.
If you couldn't do anything inthe music industry, what would you
be doing?
Where do you think you'd endedup, maybe if you couldn't have been
in the music industry at all?
Oh, I definitely know theanswer to this question.
I don't know.
(57:42):
I definitely know the answerto this question, but I don't know.
I think.
Oh, I don't know.
I mean, I really likepsychology, so I would probably have,
maybe have been a therapist orsomething like that.
You know, I think I, I think Iwould have liked that to a certain
degree to help people.
(58:04):
So maybe a therapist.
Okay.
Okay, final question.
What's one thing you thinkevery artist should be doing to build
longevity in their career?
One of many.
Being nice.
Be nice.
Yeah, be nice.
I think I, I think again, itis just be nice.
And, and, and, and yeah, themore you do for others, it's just
(58:29):
like your band.
Your band is not there for you.
Your band is there for them, right?
You're on stage for someoneelse's relief of life, your entertainment.
You're no more than a Netflix show.
You're nothing but that.
You're.
They're coming to see yourband because their life is crap this
week, right?
(58:49):
They're too busy.
I just got to get out and havea drink.
Go, go to the bar, whatever itbe, right?
I want to go see this band soI can forget about my life for a
couple of hours.
That's what you are.
So be really good at that andbe nice to those people because they've
had a really rough week.
And you're the, you're the,you're that, you know, they, you're
(59:10):
that movie that they go andsee, and they, it takes them away
to another place.
You're their relief of lifeand be that and be nice to them,
because without them, you are nothing.
You don't have any kind ofexistence as a band.
You can't go out and play gigs.
No one shows up and watches you.
Be very kind to those people.
(59:31):
That's great, Mark.
Thank you so much for coming on.
I know you're a busy man.
I know.
Jason, I, I, I appreciate youhaving me, man.
This is very cool.
I'm glad you're doing this.
I know our listenersappreciate it too.
Getting all the advice andhead on over to maxwellshouse music.com
and.
Okay, if this hit home withyou, subscribe and share it with
other musicians.
And hey, if you want a systemto keep your money working while
(59:54):
you create, grab my freeebook, A Musician's Guide to Infinite
banking.
It's at 1024wealth.com musicand I don't have that.
I have to get that.
You got it coming.
You got it coming.
Then as soon as we're done,we'll get it going.
That's incredible.
I can't wait to.
I had no idea you did this.
I have no idea what you did.
(01:00:15):
Unbelievable.
That's right.
Okay, so imagine, we talkabout, you know, imagine covering
touring costs while yoursavings keep compounding.
Or what if you could fund yournext release without stopping the
growth of your money along the way?
That's what this ebook is about.
So for our listeners, grab afree copy@1024wealth.com music and
when you're ready to see howthis could fit in your own world,
(01:00:36):
book a call.
Let's talk.
Until then, you've beenlistening to backstage Money, where
music and money collide.
We'll see you next time.
And until then, keep creatingand keep your money working.
Mark, you want to close us outwith and if you're in a band, One
more.
If you're in a band.
If you're in a band, you makesome money and you save some money.
(01:00:57):
That's it.
Love it.
Thanks, guys.
Take it easy.
Thank you so much.
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