May 27, 2025 ā¢ 59 mins
š¶ Boost your productivity, creativity, and success in music by harnessing the power of dopamine! In this episode of Musicians Tip Jar, Chris Webb and Dave Tamkin dive deep into dopamineāthe brain chemical responsible for motivation, reward, and pleasureāand reveal practical strategies musicians can use to turn dopamine into their greatest ally. Learn how to optimize your habits, enhance your creativity, and stay motivated on your journey to musical and financial success. š” Key takeaways:
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Visit MusiciansTipJar.com for more resources and tools to empower your financial journey.
Intro & Outro Music Donated by: The Magi https://www.themagimusic.comĀ
Intro Read by: David āDJā Lee of The Magi
https://soundcloud.com/rockababyrockĀ
Pictures by: Kit Chalberg https://kitchalberg.com/
- What dopamine really is and how it affects musicians
- Proven techniques to harness dopamine for greater productivity
- How to avoid dopamine distractions that derail your goals
- Practical action steps to keep your motivation and creativity consistently high
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/musicians-tip-jar--4698023/support.
Visit MusiciansTipJar.com for more resources and tools to empower your financial journey.
Intro & Outro Music Donated by: The Magi https://www.themagimusic.comĀ
Intro Read by: David āDJā Lee of The Magi
https://soundcloud.com/rockababyrockĀ
Pictures by: Kit Chalberg https://kitchalberg.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the show that explores the methods and strategies
on rocking the financial side of your music business. With
over forty years combined experience, here are your hosts, Chris
Webb and Dave Tampkin.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to Musicians Tip Jab, where we talk about musicians
and money. I'm Chris Webb, joined by my go host
Dave Tampkin. Hey, Dave, question for you, do you know
why the songwriter dated dopamine? No, Chris, I don't, because
it made everything feel like a hit. Today today we
(00:36):
break down all you need to know about dopamine and
how we can be the lead singers of its power
instead of its groupies. We cover everything from what it is,
how it affects us and our fellow musicians, and some
powerful tricks to make it your.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Be best friend.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
You know it's going to be a good podcast. When
you're intro's make you laugh. That's when Chris is going
to be on for the next thirty.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Bus Dopamine High. The quote today comes from the character
Don Draper from Admin which I was disappointed that most
of my business course students didn't even know what that
show was anyhow, main character from it and this is
a poetic insight into dopamine driven behavior. He says, the
(01:27):
pleasure isn't owning the thing. The pleasures are in the pursuit.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
I often bring up how many licks to the center
of a tutsuro pop when I'm talking about marketing, with
the parallel being how many clicks until you want your
client to get to the action? And everyone looks at
me like I'm an idiot, like what's that? And I
mean that cartoon, that commercial how many looks to the
center of a tutsuro pop is from the eight early eighties,
(01:56):
so I don't even know why I'm referencing it, honestly.
This week's nonprofit is Understaffed. Understaffed is a collective of
emerging musicians in the New York metropolitan area dedicated to
the performance of works for chamber, orchestra and small ensembles.
Understaffed aims to perform in both conventional and unconventional venues,
hoping to bring classical music to those who might not
(02:19):
be as familiar with the genre. Understaffed also makes an
effort to regularly perform works by lesser known creators, including
both historically overlooked composers and up and coming contemporary composers.
Learn more at understaffed music dot org. If you find
this information useful, everyone, please rate and subscribe to the
podcast and also slam or gently hover over there like
(02:40):
button and press down if you're on YouTube, so we
can help you keep up on your finance side of
the music business.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Let's get one thing straight.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
If you're a musician who struggles with a procrastination, it
doesn't mean that you're lazy or lack ambition. More often
than not, the problem lies in a gap between your
goals and your brain's built in motivation system. That system
runs on dopamine, a chemical that drives you toward things
(03:10):
that feel rewarding. And what's the trick. Your brain releases
dopamine not just for achieving goals, but in the anticipation
of achieving those goals. Understanding this little known psychological technique
can transform your relationship with your self discipline, and allow
you to unlock that flow of consistent creative output. Let's
(03:32):
dive into this and a lot from what Dave has
put together from our dopamine exploration.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Let's go.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
It's nice just let everyone upfront that I am a
procrastinator in this friendship. Here but let's start with asking
you what's your relationship with procrastination and how do you
handle that when it comes to music and your finances.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, what I think is so interesting about this conversation
today is it it seems like it always whenever we
are on these topics, there's so much within my own
personal life that I'm like, Wow, we're really hitting on
something that's probably just mostly to help me.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
You know how that feels, especially for this episode, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, and this is probably because it's common, right, But
when you're self employed, you're constantly having to struggle with
motivation and being on top of your stuff. I think
all students are in the same boat, like, Oh, I
got all these things I gotta do. I gotta get
this stuff done by these deadlines, and it's just a
life thing.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
But my relationship with it often.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Is that I I anticipate the results. Like you said,
like in the opening that I was reading from, it
really is about knowing what it's going to be worth
by keeping myself moving forward. If I can keep my
eye on that prize, so to speak, then my relationship
with procrastination is actually pretty manageable. I have a couple
(05:05):
of techniques that we can talk about that I think
work for me well. But in general, I feel like
procrastination for me mostly occurs when it's something that I
don't really care about. What about you, what's your relationship
with it? Are you pretty healthy you guys date regularly,
or what's going on?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
I used to be healthy with it. Moving to Madison
changed things as far as playing shows as often and
having that dopamine hit when you're learning new stuff or
wanting to write new stuff and then being able to
perform them right out of the gates felt good and not.
With so many shows lined up in this last year,
(05:46):
it was really hard for me, and I guess still
is hard for me to put that time aside, go
down into the studio and just wood shed some songs
and perform to a wall to make sure my chops
are there, the vocal muscle memory is there. All that
stuff has kind of dissipated and started to feel that
(06:08):
nervous anxiety by playing the few shows that I do
play around here because I'm so unrehearsed. So I was
really looking forward to this episode because I thought there
was a nice parallel, not only to try to overcome
that but also talk about finances too, where when you
have a lot of gigs coming in, you sit down
(06:30):
and you do your budgeting, and maybe when you don't,
you still need to do those things and make sure
you're hitting your targets.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, we certainly can see that the whole music community
lives in that sort of state like you, where there's
all these ups and downs, there's these plateaus where and
then there's parts where it just feels like everything is harder. Yeah,
So let's first kind of dive into why the musicians
struggle with procrastination. And I think that we're gonna, obviously,
because of the podcast content here, we are catering more
(07:00):
to this to the discussion of musicians. But I do
understand that this can this stuff can apply to so
many other areas of our lives, and we're gonna just
kind of leave that in the room. But we're going
to focus in on musicians and why we struggle with procrastination.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
And if you want to see our show notes on this,
it's important because we are going to cite a lot
of this information. So we're not experts in this, but
when we're talking about the prefrontal cortex, you know, the
science behind that is something we researched and wanted to
bring to the table.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
So, you know, we've both been reading books that talk
about this stuff a lot, and even the parallels with
this controlling these neurological aspects and manifestation. One person that
does that really well is Joe Dispensa, doctor. Joe Despensa
spends a lot of time focusing on the neurological end
of the way that we function.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Did you mean to say Joe Dispensa de spends a
lot of time on.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
This, No, I did not.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So let's talk about what happening neurologically when your brain
evaluates a task as complex, uncertain, or open ended like
writing this new song, often feels it activates the prefrontal cortex,
the area that responds to decision making, planning, and self control. However,
(08:18):
this part of the brain consumes a lot of resources
and becomes easily fatigued, particularly when you're not in a
low stressed state, like reving an engine. This is my
analogy on this. I think if we think of we
should think of it like reving an engine. Because I
think this analogy works easy to imagine how we use
so many exterior things to try and get this dopamine
(08:43):
fix right. And we'll talk about all the ways that
we get distracted so easily. But I mean, even my kids,
I watch them needing these dopamine fixes right from their
social media.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And all that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
But the problem with those types of dopamine fixes where
they're just quick and instant basically, is that they're not
It's like you're revue the engine, but it's not in gear,
and you just keep revenue engine, revenue engine, and eventually
when you do put it in gear, the engine just
doesn't work that well because you worn it out. Revenue
engine not going anywhere. And that's that's kind of what
(09:15):
you know, when I think of overdoing your dopamine or
not really keeping your prefrontal cortex in a healthy state,
is often kind of what's happening.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
I went to Talladega last weekend in Birmingham, Alabama, and
they would reb those engines at the starting line, and
some people that had too much dopamine ready to go
would either flood the engine or they would stall.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
It perfect and then then all your ears got were bleeding, right,
they were you.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Know, I actually had I brought a bunch like just
in little packets. On my side. I had my molds,
and but anytime I saw someone like plugging their ears,
or if they're waiting in line for a beer, I
would just pull one out and say, you know, I
see your plugging in your ears with your fingers. Would
you like one of these? And be like, I'm okay,
I'm okay. Like you won't be okay if you continue
(10:08):
to stand where you're standing for the next three hours,
which you know, to say. For a race car driver,
they have a goal line at the end, they have
a finish line. It's there, you can see it. But
songwriting is ambiguous. There's no correct way to write a
verse or produce a mix, so that goal line is
(10:28):
subjective in a way, so that ending, getting to that
final point is a little bit more difficult to start
when you don't know where the finish line is.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
For musicians, Yeah, and that's a great point. And in
addition to that, you're also self managing, right, you're also
juggling all of this stuff independently. You are responsible for
all of your branding, all your promotion, all your writing,
all your recording, and then of course your business end
of things that we love to talk about here, all
the finances, it's all there on your plate, and no
(11:00):
one else is coming to take control of that stuff
unless you delegate it out. So your cognitive overload just
continues to get worse.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And we talk about this a lot with overwhelming triggers
and the magnola which you and I you know, with
our ice baths separately, not when we take them together.
But that's your fear center, you know, which steers you
away from that uncertainty and those emotionally loaded tasks. So
and that leads to avoidance. It's like a fight. You're
(11:30):
not going to stand there. You're not gonna you know,
it's like fight or flight. Most people want to put
their hands up and say, hey, I don't want to
do this. And you know, with songwriting, that's what makes
I think musicians, which you and I say quite a bit,
such great entrepreneurs because it is we don't just put
up our hands, but we have to figure out ways
(11:52):
to move forward.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, and you see that overload often. You see we
call it burnout sometimes too, But maybe we're interpreting it
incorrectly sometimes by saying burnout, because it's not really that
we're burnout.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's that we're overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
And I do see that a lot in personality traits,
where when something looks too risky or it feels like
it's messy, or it feels like it's unclear, and we
do feel overwhelmed. We're also just avoiding it because it's
easier just to get away from it and just shut
down instead.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
And the second thing would be like the delayed gratification
and the absence of the immediate reward, which is what
I'm going through right now with less shows. So dopamine's
role is not Usually they think that's the juice, the
power that keeps things going, it's the pleasure from the act,
but it's not. It's the motivation and the anticipation chemical
(12:47):
that your brain releases dopamine when it expects a reward,
So it's not necessarily when the ward is achieved. But
much like well, we're can bring up when your phone
rings or you hear that text quite a bit in
this podcast. When you hear that, you're like, oh, what
is on the other end of that? Dean to let
me know this might be exciting?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, So let's let's maybe a couple examples for musicians
struggling with this, I mean, where do we start first?
Maybe we talked about just how long it can take
to release anything. I mean, that's sort of the pinnacle
position for most musicians businesses, is how much content they're releasing, right,
(13:33):
particularly music, and how hard it can be just to
get that cross that finish line with it, and how
many times it can just shut down because we're just
some we'll let anything become the reason. But really, you know,
it's if there were dopamine hits that we're saying keeping
(13:54):
you going right. We talked about at the very beginning,
like just looking toward that end zone, that that finish
line right, it can help with this. But that's certainly
one of the places that we see it a lot,
and we struggle with it. I know I struggle with
it often.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
One way releasing music, you and I were raised on albums,
which the music industry has changed that a little bit
for us to get that dopamine hit with singles, And
we've interviewed quite a few artists here that their goal
is every month to release a single instead of thinking
of the overwhelming task of releasing an album.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
There's also the end of it when we look at
it financially with our some of the people we've talked
to that we've helped with their finances, there's certainly feeling
that absence of immediate reward when they're looking at their finances,
realizing how deep and dead they are and how long
that road is and how impossible it feels to get
(14:52):
out of that, or just even to build an emergency
fund or any of these tasks can seem just too
much and there's no immediate reward coming from that stuff
from just looking at it.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Tasks like editing tracks or sending out emails to venues.
I mean, every time you send an email to venue,
you're either going to get accepted or rejected. And if
you have a ton of those to do, it is
hard to put those feelings in front of every email,
like here we go again, Am I going to be
(15:24):
accepted or not accepted? That's quite a bit of work,
you know, emotionally, physically, and emotionally well.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And we always talk about how much what do we
say eighty percent of this industry is rejection? What are
we setting ourselves up for there? We're asking a lot
of our dopamine and the last you know, a little
part of this too. Is just that we we lack
short term wins. Often in these little short term winds,
(15:52):
if we can't create them, it causes this dopamine drought,
which is actually a thing, and so your brain seeks
other sources to fill that in. We have you know
a lot of kids are off in this way. And yes,
we're all still kids in some place in our head,
and we need. We have a hard time being bored,
we have a hard time not continually being stimulated. And
(16:13):
that's when we turn to all these social media platforms
to give us that instant dopamine hit. Right, people they
turned a porn or, they turned to you know, going
out and drinking heavily. Like we look for these immediate
dopamine hits.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Do you watch Sunday Morning the show Sunday Morning on
Sunday mornings. No, when the trumpet sounds again, Chris, every
Sunday Morning, I cry, I laugh. I learned something this
last Sunday. They took five kids and took their phone
away from them for three days was the goal. One
kid couldn't even do it. He's like, nope, I need
(16:50):
my phone back. The other three one ended up getting
a flip phone because he enjoyed having so much more
time left in his day. And then the third one
was somewhere in between, where she deleted a bunch of
apps that were taking up her time. But I was
thinking of that one kid who felt that he had
more time just to sit at a wall where that's
when creativity starts. That's when you start to dream and
(17:12):
plan your futures, when you have that time in your
day to look off into the sky and say, Hey,
what can I do with my day and make it
fun and memorable? And what kind of relationships can I create?
And I felt bad for the kid that he couldn't
even get through that short period of time.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah. Well, and I'd lend me many adults would struggle
even more yeah than those kids did. So how easy
is it to feel productive during doing like a busy
work but not actually making any progress?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Well, it's busy for just the sake of being busy.
My friend Christia and I always laugh when we can't
pick up the phone, Sorry I'm busy, or she'll just
answer to tell me she's busy she can't talk to me?
What just an ongoing joke? But is busy to be
productive or busy just to be busy. So I think
(18:03):
that's what we're going to talk about here, is like,
what are you busy doing?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Well?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
We trap ourselves, right, We constantly feel like we're being
productive by doing certain things that we even we can
even trick ourselves to think that it's advancing our music career,
But what is it really doing is probably wasting our
time with quick, little instant dopamine hits.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yeah, And what started as something where we would have
to take time out of our day to sit down
and do to accomplish something doesn't feel as great when
you can get the small dopamine hit from a game
on your phone or going through Instagram or TikTok. It's
harder to put that down because it feels better to
get that instant gratification.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, and that's sort of like the wearing your engine
out metaphor. Really, you know, we're conditioning our brain to
need those easy dopamine hits. So then when we really
need that dopamine to do what it was created in
our you know, evolution to do, it just can't work
well because it's been worn out.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
I guess that brings us back to the fear of
judgment and perfectionism and emotional risk. And I'd love to
hear some of your thoughts on this because when we
first started this podcast, something I not to say, I
wouldn't have known because of how well you sing and
how well you put a set together and how hard
you work that perfectionism is something that drives you. And
(19:32):
you've had to say before that you know, you had
to deliver things before you got to that point because
you do care about things so much that you could
keep going until it is just right. So let's let's
talk about that a little bit, because music and and
your finances, you know, it's not just work, it's who
we are. So can we talk about some of that stuff,
(19:53):
like how creating feels vulnerable and releasing music opens you
up to criticism and perfectionism, like you've said before, could
be paralyzing.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, well, that does bring up an interesting thought in
my head because I always say that when I get
to a gig, you know, and a lot of my
gigs are four hours, that my happiest time is when
I sit down, because I sit on a stool, I
sit down behind that microphone, and I go to work,
you know, because it's really something that I truly enjoy doing.
I enjoy being so good at it, at what I do,
(20:26):
and it's almost less important than anybody even cares. That
is something that matters, but it's not nearly as rewarding
as knowing I am in this safe space, all my
stuff is set up correctly, all these things that I've
done to prepare. You know, I was motivated to rewire
my pedal board to make sure it wasn't going to
(20:46):
crap out in the middle of the song. All those
things that I that I perhaps had to find motivation
to do came from that moment that I get to
sit down and go to work.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
That's a great place to be because it could be
been easier to define your success during those four hours,
like you just said, if people are paying attention or not.
But it has to be gratifying to know you're nailing
those four hours.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah. The funniest thing about that is that sometimes I'll
finish the song, you know, all these songs I've played
a thousand times, and I'll finish up like that was
the best I've ever played that, and I look around
and there might be on a hundred people in there
and no one recognizes it. You know, and I think
to myself, like that was for me. That really was
(21:36):
for me, you know, because I mean, it just doesn't
matter that much if dopamine from this angle for me
comes from this recognition that this is something bigger, right
than just making playing song. It's it's something getting something
(21:57):
bigger out of it, a bigger meaning out of music itself.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
It's important to bring up the point of doing this
just for me. How it also is parallel with your
finances and making sure you have a successful career. Make
sure you send out those emails, make sure you get
the posters ready, or you've delegated that to someone else.
Because the other thing is the lack of structure or
(22:25):
the external accountability for being creative. It's like a double
edged sword. I think musicians often don't have those fixed
hours or managers or projected timelines, especially indie artists. This
leads to having to make how many decisions a day?
And that's fatiguing low urgency for anything. You're not being
(22:47):
accountable to a boss outside of yourself. You have to
be accountable for yourself, and underestimating those time costs sometimes
could really put musicians in injeopardy as far as achieving
those goals.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And all of this translates for us that without structure,
your brain drifts towards this the easiest option whatever is
that your arms reach, which is usually it isn't deep
creative work that's at arms reach. And so it's really
not laziness that we are focusing on here, it's these neuroeconomics.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Musicians don't procrastinate because they're unmotivated. They procrastinate because their
brain is making rational decisions based on faulty reward math.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So we avoid high.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Effort, right, We avoid emotional risk, we avoid unclear payoffs,
and we avoid delayed rewards, so your brain defaults to safe, easy,
instantly rewarding actions instead. Dopamine priming can reward your brain
for consistent creativity in your music business. So let's talk
a little bit about that, because what powers your motivation
(23:59):
to write songs can also fuel your financial success. This podcast,
we often talk about applying the same principles of que
based rituals, micro rewards, momentum building habits to help your
financial side of your music business. You're budgeting and your
forecast are great examples of this. To build systems that
help you flow through all of these processes and allow
(24:23):
you to learn to use dopamine to not only spark
ideas and inspiration, but also secure your creative future.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So when was the first time you heard of dopamine
priming And A what do you think it meant? And
B how do you see that it applies to musicians?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Well, actually, this was a new term to me from
this research, so one. The first time I heard of
it was about a week and a half ago. But
it's been really fascinating to me because I've since I've
looked up a bunch of different resources and read a
bunch of stuff about it. And how many people Again,
these are these kind of things where it's like you
(25:01):
start reading and you're like, wow, so many people deliberately
apply this technique, so many people in the music business,
so many people in business itself, And just also just
understanding the power in which intentional effort towards these things
can make a difference, and understanding ourselves right so often.
(25:24):
The other end of this problem for me that came
out of this was that people are struggling with it
and don't know they're struggling with it, right, They're suffering
from this without even knowing what it is.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
I like the fact that we're already doing this in
other places, not only in our life but with performing
in music, and we just need to take those same
rituals and place them where we want a different outcome
in our life. Before playing a gig, we warm up,
we get our vocals ready to go, We stretch, We
(25:59):
do everything we can to tune our instruments literally and
tune our brain in our body for what's coming next.
And we've learned that we need to do that to
perform our best, to make sure we can hit those notes,
to make sure as we're getting all of it, we
don't pull our back out on some of the stage
things I do. It's just it's not as easy anymore, Chris.
(26:20):
And if I don't get my stretching in, it's quite uncomfortable.
But we know the outcome when we don't do those things,
and we don't want that to happen, so we warm up.
So now I look at dopamine priming, especially over this
last year and a half, is I'm learning to warm
up for those other things that I need to get done.
(26:42):
Do you ever get stuck deciding between working on your
music and managing the business side.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Let me answer that question by first defining what we're
saying dopamine priming really is. Dopamine priming is the practice
of creating small cues or rituals that your brain associates
with leisure or reward. These cues train your brain to
expect a positive experience. This helps you to get started
(27:08):
on difficult daily tasks, whether it's recording vocals or doing
your business side of things like budgeting. Think of this,
like Dave said, as warming up. And when we're talking
about making an deliberate action of creating these dopamine primings.
For me, there's often that same thing where I'm expecting
(27:29):
that positive experience out of this, or I'm also reducing
the challenge that's coming to me later and that gives
me a dopamine hit, you know, Like I said, but
I know that my pedal board is wired well and
that nothing is going to go crackly on me when
I'm in the middle of a song. That is a
motivation to do something right now to make that happen later.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
So what would you say a budgeting tip would be
then for using that example.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, And so also to answer your question, do I
ever struggle which one to work on. I don't actually,
but I do feel like the two of.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Them must be nice, must be nice.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Chris, Well, what I might notice is that it's not
that I'm struggling to know which one work on. Is
that I just feel like working on more of one
than the other. Maybe that is struggling, but more I
look at it as like, that's what my body wants
me to do, that's what my brain wants me to do.
I'm going that direction and I often use that flow.
And I think that's the benefit of owning your own businesses.
You go with where you feel like working. If you
(28:29):
can get that flow going of doing what you feel
like doing and still somehow at the end of the
day look back and say I got all this done,
I think that's a really nice place to be as
a balance. But it does come from these little dopamine motivators,
you know, these dopamine primers. Because when I'm working on
the budget, when I'm looking at what I'm gonna make
(28:52):
this month or what I need to increase in order
to hit my numbers, Like next month, I'm out of
town half of the month, and I'm not out of
town for work trips, I'm out of town for fun,
and so I have half a month to make all
the money I have to make. So that motivates me
to really be focused on not only how I'm forecasting,
(29:17):
but reaching out a little bit more deliberately, right, because
that fear that that anxiety is going to distract me
to be able to enjoy these trips that I'm taking
if I'm not focused on it now. So that dopamine
hit is that dopamine primers to know that I'm going
to be preventing myself from being able to stay present
and really enjoy what the heck I'm paying.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
For to go do. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So, Yeah, there's a lot of ways that I think
you can look at your situation and find a little
bit of motivation. But I think it's different for everyone
because I don't. I think there's also that negative end
of it. People are often intimidated. Like we said, they
shut down because well, I could work on my budget,
but I know that the numbers aren't going to look good.
I could just open up Instagram instead.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, it's the trip you're coming up? Are you coming
to medicine at the end of the month.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yes, that's the second trip I take. I'll be there
and I'm going to come see you.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
It'll be nice to have you here. Yeah, if I
have to clean and vacuum, yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
I've never seen you, knew.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Huh, So that'll be really that's going to be a
great reward of.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
It'll be nice. We'll have a fire, get to see
the dogs looking for having you for sure.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, it's excellent.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
How have you found ways to trick your brain into
staying motivated when there's no immediate payoff.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Well, we talked about this a little bit during how
to Structure your business, and I think when we were
talking about the financial scale as far as you know,
I think we mentioned having the five thousand dollars or
the goal that you have in mind for you know,
paying yourself in advance. And I've learned to you that
as far as setting little goals for myself. So it
(30:57):
is fifteen twenty minutes, get down and do it, and
I actually write it down on a piece of paper,
I swear it myself and get the fuck up, go
do this right now. And then I come back and
I just throw the paper away and like I did it,
And it's just something I don't know if it was
the actual writing it down and talking to myself in
third person. But having those little goals have helped me
(31:19):
not only financially, but have helped me to start practicing
and writing more. And in the last two weeks I
have two more songs which I probably have not had
one in the last year that I felt comfortable enough
to write now, so I can tell it's working.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I like to focus on us of the opposite end
of while we know that these quick dopamine hits are
not good for us, you know, I think a lot
of what I research brought up a lot of evolution.
Dopamine is an evolutionary tool that our brain developed to
(31:56):
motivate us to run like hell when that tie chasing us,
or you know, those kind of situations. It was often
what it.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Is, but it felt really good because it was like.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
No question, this is what I want to do right
and now if we can get those big hits from
spending hours on social media right or from twenty something.
I'm not trying to call out anybody in their twenties,
but a lot of porn right or people that are
drinking heavily or doing drugs to get those dopamine hits.
(32:28):
Easily and quickly big ones, right, those are big dopamine hits.
The problem is the way that you know that that
isn't good for you is that you always feel like
crap at the end of the day, right at the
end of the experience. You don't feel good after that
is over, right, And so you can clearly hear that
there are very sophisticated indicators in our brain telling you, hey,
(32:49):
that that was not good.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
You know that didn't.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Although you were hitting all that dopamine. The dopamine hits
don't result in happiness, right, they don't, So we can
tell that it's not about getting dopamine that we're really
trying to do. So this lure of quick dopamine is
not really what we're hitting for. What we're trying to
do is use the dopamine to get us motivated to
(33:14):
do the other things that will actually in return create happiness.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
So much like you said when it was there for
fight or flight, the original dopamine feeling, you know you
have to go get food otherwise you don't eat, and
you need that dopamine to kick you in to say
I'm starving or I need to protect myself with these
quick dopamine hits on social media. Your brain doesn't know
(33:40):
the difference. If you release a song and you get
negative feedback, it's awful feeling. We just haven't the dopamine
hasn't caught up with us an evolution because your brain
feels like the rejection is the same as the perceived
feeling that you get from that dopamine priming. You need
(34:02):
to do that in order to accomplish your goals. Otherwise
you get the other side of it, which is I
didn't accomplish anything. I didn't get those things done, I
didn't move forward. And what you're saying is these little
hits they're not producing the goals that we want. So
(34:23):
we have to take the little hits of dopamine and
put something structured behind it to make us move forward
in a positive way.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, So part of that can be removing those other things, right,
taking away the allowance to have that, and creating a
structure and an accountability to yourself that allows you to
have that dopamine. So you're not reving the engine for
no reason all the time, you're revving it for very
particular results in mind. And so you know, we're talking
about building some sort of structure, some sort of weekly
(34:54):
check in with yourself, some sort of way to set
up a way to keep yourself accountable. And this is
tough for people because you know, you get up in
the morning, the first thing is you get on your phone,
right the first thing you do, and you don't take
time for yourself, You don't feel where you aren't, you
don't recognize all the good You're just going straight to
(35:14):
the dopamine hits. And they could be positive or negative,
but you're just gonna scroll through them, right, or you
might go for the candy, right, Like that's another one
of those things again. Like I know this is talking
about the negative stuff, but like just this concept of
how we get these quick dopamine hits from junk food,
highly processed food, and sugar foods, like all of these
things that they're in the same camp as alcohol. To me,
(35:35):
they're in that same camp and the reason that we
like them so much is because they're quick dopamine hits.
So if you could take those and remove them, right,
creating some sort of structure around your rules and what
you're doing, and help yourself by staying healthy doing the
things that actually release positive dopamine that create long term motivation,
(35:55):
like working out right, doing meditations right, creating some sort
of expectation that you're going to treat yourself well so
that you can prime yourself to get that work done
that you know needs to get done.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
It's hard to get away from those things too. Tell
us about the situation on Saint Patrick's Day when there
was so much candy at Joe James's house at his party,
and you're like, Okay, my kids love all this candy.
When tick them for a walk, you know, on the
way home, what happened?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Oh yes, yeah, so yeah, they had eaten their their
heads full size of candy over at our friend's Saint
Patrick's Day party. And I was like, well, we need
we need to get out of here because this is
just I mean, I usually it used to be that
years ago. I had come and I'd get hammered right
before kids, And now like here we are. I had
one non alcoholic beer.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
My kids are the.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Ones that are high on something, and I'm like, we
got to get out of here. So we're walking back
to the train to head home and it's the end
of the parade and it's like all the parade people
are just like getting rid of the last piles of
candy that they haven't got rid of, and they're just
throwing him by my kids. The kids were dodging, you know,
Jolly Ranchers is running like they literally couldn't get away
(37:12):
from it, but they thought was the greatest thing in
the world raining candy on them.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Well, let's go to the fourth thing that we talked
about perfectionism earlier, the emotional risk and the fear of failure.
So to add to the question that I asked earlier
about you being perfect and moving past that, how do
you push through that pressure of being perfect or wanting to?
I guess I should.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Say yeah, I mean, I don't got I don't have
a great answer for this one, except for to be honest,
which is I've stopped trying for perfectionism. I've tried to
find more beauty in imperfectionism. And my mind also is
always saying, as soon as I start going down the negative,
(38:00):
I have a little red light that flashes and says, well,
time to reroute. Yeah, And I really don't let myself
go to the negative because that emotional experience and the
negative doesn't really bring anything good out of it. I've
even started doing that with like when I say something
stupid in a social situation, which we all do all
(38:23):
the time, and you can go later an hour later
and just be like, God, why did I say this
one thing? That one thing? Why did I say that?
And then all of a sudden, it's just like in
your head and you know, and you spile down that
I've gotten so much better it, even though I'm just like, yeah,
they won't even remember, why am I? You know, like
I'm just reprogramming. So I mean, and this goes back
to Joe Despenza talking about this a lot. Whereas you
(38:44):
have to rewire, you have to rewire for these situations
to go more positive. You can't keep going down the negative.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
Couldn't agree more And I suffer from that loophole as
well as far as just spinning out on that one
thing that I wish I could have said differently, or
that one less one less dad joke would have been
for the day, not even being the dad I just said.
Full of them.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Well, we can we can talk about all of the
ways that we struggle with getting instant dopamine or not
really controlling our dopamine intake very well. But I think
The other thing that we can talk about is ways
to use dopamine priming priming as musicians and be a
little more intentional and feel like you have a little
bit better control of how to be positive with this stuff.
(39:32):
So the first thing we wanted to say was to
create these presession rituals. These these are all just ideas
and for everyone you know, to take which one of
these works or resonates with you. Maybe you're doing some
of these already, but just know that that's what this is.
This is these pre session rituals. These are dopamine priming
for good reason, for good cause. So maybe Dave Star
(39:53):
was some of these.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
In the recording studio, it's in the basement, and although
we have humidifiers and everything else, it does have a
basement kind of sent to it a little bit sometimes
and abound. The first time I lit a candle and
I started working on my tunes. That the next time
(40:14):
I was like, I'm going to do that again, and
it kind of just set the flow. So I like
just to set my environment up for success, whether it
be clean off my office table or just put the
mood lighting on for myself and Neil Soul music in
the background for a playlist or something, just to kind
of settle down. So it starts the process for me,
(40:35):
and I'm like, okay, now I'm in go mode.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I like that, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
And I saw you put incense on here too, which
is funny because it's the one thing I can't have
near me when I'm singing because it clogs me up,
so that one doesn't work as well for me. But
I do like this idea of creating a space. My
whole thing with the dopamine priming is if I'm going
to record, I will go down and set everything up
(41:02):
as if I'm the engineer. I spend my engineer time
setting it all up, getting the room lighting right, getting
the sound you know, good with the microphones and the levels,
and then I leave for like whatever, take a walk,
do something else for a little bit. And then that's
how I prime myself. Now I know, oh, I get
to come down as the artist. That's how I come
in feeling like everyone's got everything ready for me.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
You know, it was just me an hour ago.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
I feel better. I feel I pride myself to be
ready for like being in the artist's mind.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
And everybody, so, you know, Chris as a minimalist when
it comes to the way he likes to organize his desk.
He has just you know, one little piano right there,
a mouse, mouse pad, speakers. There's nothing there. Me, on
the other hand, I can pull. I have a Buddha
right here. I have a glass owl. My brother gave
(41:57):
me this from Hawaii. I don't know how long ago.
I mean, I could keep going with a bunch of
crap that I have in front of me. Let's see, Oh,
yesterday is history, tomorrow is a dream. Today is what counts.
And Chris would not have any of this stuff there,
and he gets shipped done because he's not playing with
(42:18):
all this stuff that I get to play with in
front of it. And maybe that's what I need to
start doing, is just clean some of this stuff off.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Well in the way, what we're saying is shrink that
starting line, right, like, start with the smallest version of
these tasks. And if you know that there's going to
be a lot of distractions, that could be an easy
way to shrink the starting line.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
A bit for you, or do a cold punch that'll
shrink a bunch of stuff too for you.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Or both, because we're both they do good things yes,
and so you can also talk about this with your
finances too. It's just sometimes just open that financial tool, right,
get familiar with the way it looks, get comfortable with
all of the little the columns and understanding that stuff.
Maybe spend some time just getting to know spreadsheets and
(43:07):
how to use a spreadsheet, like do little mini things,
these micro actions that help make the bigger thing feel easier.
And if you are trying to save for your first
big goal, like you're getting your emergency fund done or
you're paying off your debt, like Dave said, you can
start with a manageable number that feels like, Okay, I
(43:28):
did that. Now, if I can do that, I can
make it bigger. That is a good approach. If it
feels like a win, it's going to build momentum and
carry you through these more challenging things as they grow.
What's interesting is that as you do this, you will
look back and you'll be like, what I thought was
so hard is now so easy, right, And you can
start to handle bigger and bigger things. This is how
(43:50):
people go on to achieve incredibly large success because those
things don't seem that big or large anymore to them
because they've built up this ability to you create a
starting line that feels more manageable for where they're at.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
We talked earlier about writing. You know so many emails out,
well write one email a day to a new venue
and just let that keep adding and adding and adding.
It's a lot easier to do one email than try
to do twenty in a day.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Then that same thing goes for your your list of
things for the day. If you have a long list
for the day and you just thought about how long
that list was, you're just not going to do anything.
But if you just say, okay, this one thing, this
one of my I usually try to leave something on.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
A list that I know is quick.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Actually, and this is probably a doble main trick at
all rhymed it is it did. So you take that
one thing and you're like, oh, I can do that
one thing. It's just got to send an email, you know,
to somebody like you said, and that takes me five minutes.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Well that's done. I can take that off my list.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Up.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
I'm getting I'm getting momentum right like I'm getting going,
And then you just do the next thing and then
you just That's why I like having a list of options.
It's not just a list of things to do, it's
a list of options.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Also read the book The One Thing if you haven't already.
And with having a to do list, I would highly
recommend putting your writing A one, two, and three by
your top things for that day, because otherwise we're going
back to it's easy to be busy, just to be busy.
I have found that I will, like you, put one
(45:23):
good thing that's easy to do, Chris, I'll find ten easy,
easy things to do and just have a very successful
day of doing nothing. But I got a lot done.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
And that is the difference, right when we know we're
getting good dopamine hits versus bad of the means hits.
Like we said, if you spend a whole day drinking,
it might feel real good in the moment. Right at
the end of the day, when you're recounting your day
in bed, you're probably not feeling super great right, not
just physically, but like emotionally, like how did I get
how did I do today?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
How did I what did I push forward on my
needle of my life? You know?
Speaker 2 (46:00):
And most of the time, when you're done with eating
a bunch of candy, all day. You're not going to
feel like you did much right, You're not gonna be
very good, and that's your.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Body reacting to it, right.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
But the reward is in the process, right, You're not
like also waking up being like today I'm gonna record
and release an entire album that I haven't even started yet.
This is gonna be awesome, right, Like, the reward is
in the process, right, breaking it down, feeling like you're
making progress towards it. Those are little dopamine hits that
those are the ones that keep you feeling like you're
making progress.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
There's a great song in The Journey by Martin Sexton.
I highly recommend it if you haven't heard. It talks
all about that. Do you use anything to like visually
keep track of this stuff? For instance, I use an
app called Streaks, and I just wasn't wondering you're gonna
smile on that one for some reason because.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
And do your laundry.
Speaker 5 (46:55):
I feel bad they had to dude wipes at Telladega
done and the logan the slogan was something about skid streaks,
skids something. I'm like, this is all wrong, Like this
is just not you don't feel good walking up to
the table to get some dude wipes when that's their slogan.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
It streaks.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Yeah, but streaks is great just if you want to
do something three three days a week. If you're going
to say, hey, every day, I'm going to play twenty
minutes of piano, guitar or whatever, it's just nice. I
just get that little dopamine hit like I get done,
and I know I did it. But I don't know
if there's anything you use just to say okay, you
know with head above branding, I do that a lot too,
(47:41):
to say how many emails did I send out, how
many things are in, how many things shipped today? So
it's a good visual for me.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, I guess I just keep a no list. That's
my main way of functioning within just a notepad note.
Not very sophisticated, but I don't think that I need
anything more. I like being able to have full control
of it, and I know that it opens up whether
I have Internet action connection or not. I'm just going
on the fly and that stuff. But I also am
(48:10):
very diligent about keeping it updated.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
It is my guide.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
It really is a critical thing for me.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
Though you mentioned earlier about doing your finances that sometimes
it might be easier to not want to know what
your budget looks like, or you don't want to know
how much you owe on something. Do you think we
avoid financial tasks because we make them feel like punishment.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Well, I do think they feel like punishment for some people,
Like I think it legitimately feels the opposite of a
dobamine it right, And I don't think it's an easy
thing to reprogram that. And I think we run into
this a lot. And there's resistance with musicians that are
in that mindset that this is an impossible thing to
(48:57):
make a living off of. Right, they really they believe that,
and then they open their budget app and all they
do is feel worse. Right, they don't or they don't
have a budget app.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
They just don't.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
They don't try to make that happen because it feels terrible.
So yes, I think it's a real problem. I think
it's a real It's it is almost like you need
to remove that negativity first, sort of like removing the
candy from the.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Pockets of my kids.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
It's like, in order for them to really start to
get to a point where they enjoy their creative space,
I need to create the creative space.
Speaker 4 (49:36):
Do you have any tips on making those mundane financial
tasks like feel good?
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:45):
I actually I think that getting into the habit of
giving yourself space.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
I know this one.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
It seems like a low great answer, but meditation, to
me is the only way that I get any sort
of clarity on this stuff. And it's because our life
is so fast paced, right Like, you're constantly being pulled
in so many directions, with so many tests and so
much pressure, and financial pressure is just as bad as
(50:12):
any other type of weight on you. And the only
way that I create that space to feel good is
to meditate and let myself not feel anything for a
little while, right Let the boredom sink in, let the
let all of the feelings just kind of float there
for a little bit. So that's my number one recommendation.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
What about you, Dave.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
I go back to the I go back to streaks,
I go back to the mini games. You know something
that just motivates me knowing I accomplish something and if
it means in my savings, if it means dividends coming in,
have I hit my goals and they I learned how
(50:54):
to do this by starting out with small goals, And
I think I've fallen in love with that idea that
the bigger picture just keeps adding. And that's like at
the end of the month, I get to see how
this has affected the bigger picture. But as long as
I keep my mind just set on these little wins
during the week and the month, financially, I've done okay
(51:15):
for myself and makes me want to show up the
next day to achieve those same goals. Now, if I
could just do that with practicing, I'll be a great
guitar player one day.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
You are a good guitied player.
Speaker 4 (51:27):
That way, that was written down everyone that you are
a great guitar player, as Chris to Dave with a laughter.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
That's not true.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
I do actually have two other ones that I think
are worth sharing for how we can improve this dopamine
priming or just the use of dopamine. And I really
do think that we need to remove the negative stuff
in order to make room for this to function the
way it's supposed to function. So it could be that
the reason you're not feeling motivated is because you have
(52:03):
used up all your dopamine. Right, That's what we keep
saying over and over again, and so it's really important
to remember that you need to remove or at least
try to remove. We're going to say try. I'm going
to say you need to experiment with ways of changing
the way you're doing things to see if it helps
improve your motivation and getting stuff done. So my number
(52:25):
one thing and that is to stop looking at your
phone first thing in the morning. I think a lot
of people have a rule about thirty minutes of time
in the morning before you even open up or look
at a screen. Will make a big difference in the
way that dopamine is flowing through your body. Let it
be something else. Let your body and your brain do
experience other things besides this instant look on your phone,
(52:49):
look at your emails. Right that stuff is going to
be there, and it can really improve your ability to
feel more motivated by giving yourself a little bit of
time before you start that, and then the same thing
at the end of the day. My other one is
that at the end of the day to think through
your day with gratitude. Right, I go like, what did
I do well today? Right?
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I do this every night and every morning, and it
doesn't it makes it sound like it takes a ton
of time, but it doesn't it right. These are just
little things that allow me to feel more about how
I did. The more you can be in touch with
how you felt about it, the less you're going to
do those things right. The more that I recognize, oh,
when I spent that time drinking for six hours with
(53:30):
my buddies, it was fun.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
The same time, I don't.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Really like the way I feel afterwards, you know, and
all those bad jokes, like they weren't that funny anyway
I thought they were, or whatever whatever it is that
you you you can If you don't spend that time
at the end of the day reflecting on this stuff,
you won't realize that you may be doing the things
that you actually don't really like right. So recognizing, oh,
(53:56):
I should change that tomorrow allows you to wake up
with a little bit more intention the next day.
Speaker 4 (54:02):
After eight pm, the only people that my phone will
ring for are the people in my closest contacts, so
my family, my mom, my closest friends. That's it. No
work calls will come through. And that's really helped too,
because most of them are on the same page and
we're all kind of slowing down the day together in
(54:24):
a way, which has helped not be on my phone
after eight o'clock and kind of set the tonality for
the rest of the evening.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
I love those that we have those options, and that's
I mean, I do that with the parental controls of
my kids all the time too, because I know where
they're going to waste their time with quicked op I mean,
hits the most. I have to block that stuff out.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Sometimes we just need to take the alcohol out of
the house, right, or we need to do what we
need to do right, Like, there are ways to help
yourself sometimes, and that's what we're doing is we're rewiring, right,
You're rewiring, and sometimes that can be tough at first,
but what that does is build a ce behavior reward loop.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
That's the only time we'll say loop in this episode.
But the idea is that your brain starts to crave
whatever it is that your ritual is, right, it starts
to want that more and more. So if you can
build good, positive loops right in your habits, then they're
(55:24):
gonna want more of the good stuff. The same thing
with food, Like the more you give your body the
right food and remove the bad food, the more it's
going to crave the good food.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
The more you get good at practicing on a schedule
and really doing quality practices on your instrument and those
show results, the more you're gonna crave more of that.
So you really have to figure out how to reprogram
that stuff, and sometimes at the beginning that is kind
of tricky.
Speaker 4 (55:52):
And when you combine that with smart money habits, you're
not just surviving, but you're building a thriving music business.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
And we say this so much that this when you
get to this finish line, which it's a never ending
finish line. Every time you cross it, there's a new one. Right.
That's all great things. But when you start doing these
things with your finances and you start seeing the results,
you're going to crave more of it. You're going to
want to keep going because it feels really good. That
(56:19):
is a healthy dopamine head. Final thought here, it's not
about forcing discipline, right, We're not forcing anything here. We
are redesigning our environments. We're making everything motivation. Right. We're
trying to create this smart habit with this survival, with
this dreams and our goals and finding happiness. Right, all
of this is create the queue, shrink the task and
(56:41):
reward the process and repeat that. So our action step
for you today is to focus on one of these
precession rituals and give it a go for the next week.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
We know that sometimes one action can change so many things. Right,
So many times when I read a whole long book,
I'll get like one main thing that will stick with
me out of like a six hour read, one main
thing that gets and that one thing is so worth
it to me. So when we're giving you these single
action steps, we're trying to give you a chance to
(57:14):
focus on that one thing that actually stuck with you
and apply that and see how that makes a difference
in your life. We know your time is valuable and
we appreciate you spending the time with us. We appreciate
you being a part of this community, and it's our
hope that you feel that sense of community here at
musicians tip jar and that you'll help spread the word
to make us all stronger. And if you'd like to
get a hold of us, what's the best way to
(57:35):
do that?
Speaker 4 (57:35):
Send us an email at musicians tip jar at gmail
and musicians tipjar dot com, where you can check out
all the resources and discounts we've collected just for you.
Also check out the episodes on our YouTube channel. If
you find the information your soul, please rate, subscribe to
the podcast and slam or gently hover over that like
button if you're on YouTube, so we can help you
(57:56):
up on the finance side of your music business.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
If you're a singer, plug one finger over your ear
and use the other one to tap.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
That like button.
Speaker 4 (58:07):
If you're at NASCAR, use your nose while you're bring
both your ear drums.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
That's always.
Speaker 2 (58:16):
Thank you for joining us, and remember there is already
enough for everyone.
Speaker 3 (58:20):
You just need to know how to get it.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
So until next time on behalf of Dave Tamkin and
myself Chris Webb, stay happy, healthy and wealthy in this business.
Dopamine drives the hustle, but it's purpose that sustains the grind.
Speaker 3 (58:35):
This is Musician's.
Speaker 6 (58:36):
Tipcar Somebody, Somebody. Nothing on this show should be conceived
(59:00):
specific personal or professional advice.
Speaker 4 (59:02):
Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, business, or financial professional
for individualized advice.
Speaker 6 (59:08):
Individual results are not guaranteed, and all discussed strategies have
the potential for profit or loss.
Speaker 4 (59:14):
The hosts th're operating on behalf of Musician's Tip jar
LLC exclusively
Welcome to the show that explores the methods and strategies
on rocking the financial side of your music business. With
over forty years combined experience, here are your hosts, Chris
Webb and Dave Tampkin.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to Musicians Tip Jab, where we talk about musicians
and money. I'm Chris Webb, joined by my go host
Dave Tampkin. Hey, Dave, question for you, do you know
why the songwriter dated dopamine? No, Chris, I don't, because
it made everything feel like a hit. Today today we
(00:36):
break down all you need to know about dopamine and
how we can be the lead singers of its power
instead of its groupies. We cover everything from what it is,
how it affects us and our fellow musicians, and some
powerful tricks to make it your.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Be best friend.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
You know it's going to be a good podcast. When
you're intro's make you laugh. That's when Chris is going
to be on for the next thirty.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Bus Dopamine High. The quote today comes from the character
Don Draper from Admin which I was disappointed that most
of my business course students didn't even know what that
show was anyhow, main character from it and this is
a poetic insight into dopamine driven behavior. He says, the
(01:27):
pleasure isn't owning the thing. The pleasures are in the pursuit.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
I often bring up how many licks to the center
of a tutsuro pop when I'm talking about marketing, with
the parallel being how many clicks until you want your
client to get to the action? And everyone looks at
me like I'm an idiot, like what's that? And I
mean that cartoon, that commercial how many looks to the
center of a tutsuro pop is from the eight early eighties,
(01:56):
so I don't even know why I'm referencing it, honestly.
This week's nonprofit is Understaffed. Understaffed is a collective of
emerging musicians in the New York metropolitan area dedicated to
the performance of works for chamber, orchestra and small ensembles.
Understaffed aims to perform in both conventional and unconventional venues,
hoping to bring classical music to those who might not
(02:19):
be as familiar with the genre. Understaffed also makes an
effort to regularly perform works by lesser known creators, including
both historically overlooked composers and up and coming contemporary composers.
Learn more at understaffed music dot org. If you find
this information useful, everyone, please rate and subscribe to the
podcast and also slam or gently hover over there like
(02:40):
button and press down if you're on YouTube, so we
can help you keep up on your finance side of
the music business.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Let's get one thing straight.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
If you're a musician who struggles with a procrastination, it
doesn't mean that you're lazy or lack ambition. More often
than not, the problem lies in a gap between your
goals and your brain's built in motivation system. That system
runs on dopamine, a chemical that drives you toward things
(03:10):
that feel rewarding. And what's the trick. Your brain releases
dopamine not just for achieving goals, but in the anticipation
of achieving those goals. Understanding this little known psychological technique
can transform your relationship with your self discipline, and allow
you to unlock that flow of consistent creative output. Let's
(03:32):
dive into this and a lot from what Dave has
put together from our dopamine exploration.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
Let's go.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
It's nice just let everyone upfront that I am a
procrastinator in this friendship. Here but let's start with asking
you what's your relationship with procrastination and how do you
handle that when it comes to music and your finances.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, what I think is so interesting about this conversation
today is it it seems like it always whenever we
are on these topics, there's so much within my own
personal life that I'm like, Wow, we're really hitting on
something that's probably just mostly to help me.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
You know how that feels, especially for this episode, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Well, and this is probably because it's common, right, But
when you're self employed, you're constantly having to struggle with
motivation and being on top of your stuff. I think
all students are in the same boat, like, Oh, I
got all these things I gotta do. I gotta get
this stuff done by these deadlines, and it's just a
life thing.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
But my relationship with it often.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Is that I I anticipate the results. Like you said,
like in the opening that I was reading from, it
really is about knowing what it's going to be worth
by keeping myself moving forward. If I can keep my
eye on that prize, so to speak, then my relationship
with procrastination is actually pretty manageable. I have a couple
(05:05):
of techniques that we can talk about that I think
work for me well. But in general, I feel like
procrastination for me mostly occurs when it's something that I
don't really care about. What about you, what's your relationship
with it? Are you pretty healthy you guys date regularly,
or what's going on?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
I used to be healthy with it. Moving to Madison
changed things as far as playing shows as often and
having that dopamine hit when you're learning new stuff or
wanting to write new stuff and then being able to
perform them right out of the gates felt good and not.
With so many shows lined up in this last year,
(05:46):
it was really hard for me, and I guess still
is hard for me to put that time aside, go
down into the studio and just wood shed some songs
and perform to a wall to make sure my chops
are there, the vocal muscle memory is there. All that
stuff has kind of dissipated and started to feel that
(06:08):
nervous anxiety by playing the few shows that I do
play around here because I'm so unrehearsed. So I was
really looking forward to this episode because I thought there
was a nice parallel, not only to try to overcome
that but also talk about finances too, where when you
have a lot of gigs coming in, you sit down
(06:30):
and you do your budgeting, and maybe when you don't,
you still need to do those things and make sure
you're hitting your targets.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Well, we certainly can see that the whole music community
lives in that sort of state like you, where there's
all these ups and downs, there's these plateaus where and
then there's parts where it just feels like everything is harder. Yeah,
So let's first kind of dive into why the musicians
struggle with procrastination. And I think that we're gonna, obviously,
because of the podcast content here, we are catering more
(07:00):
to this to the discussion of musicians. But I do
understand that this can this stuff can apply to so
many other areas of our lives, and we're gonna just
kind of leave that in the room. But we're going
to focus in on musicians and why we struggle with procrastination.
Speaker 4 (07:13):
And if you want to see our show notes on this,
it's important because we are going to cite a lot
of this information. So we're not experts in this, but
when we're talking about the prefrontal cortex, you know, the
science behind that is something we researched and wanted to
bring to the table.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
So, you know, we've both been reading books that talk
about this stuff a lot, and even the parallels with
this controlling these neurological aspects and manifestation. One person that
does that really well is Joe Dispensa, doctor. Joe Despensa
spends a lot of time focusing on the neurological end
of the way that we function.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Did you mean to say Joe Dispensa de spends a
lot of time on.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
This, No, I did not.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
So let's talk about what happening neurologically when your brain
evaluates a task as complex, uncertain, or open ended like
writing this new song, often feels it activates the prefrontal cortex,
the area that responds to decision making, planning, and self control. However,
(08:18):
this part of the brain consumes a lot of resources
and becomes easily fatigued, particularly when you're not in a
low stressed state, like reving an engine. This is my
analogy on this. I think if we think of we
should think of it like reving an engine. Because I
think this analogy works easy to imagine how we use
so many exterior things to try and get this dopamine
(08:43):
fix right. And we'll talk about all the ways that
we get distracted so easily. But I mean, even my kids,
I watch them needing these dopamine fixes right from their
social media.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And all that.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
But the problem with those types of dopamine fixes where
they're just quick and instant basically, is that they're not
It's like you're revue the engine, but it's not in gear,
and you just keep revenue engine, revenue engine, and eventually
when you do put it in gear, the engine just
doesn't work that well because you worn it out. Revenue
engine not going anywhere. And that's that's kind of what
(09:15):
you know, when I think of overdoing your dopamine or
not really keeping your prefrontal cortex in a healthy state,
is often kind of what's happening.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
I went to Talladega last weekend in Birmingham, Alabama, and
they would reb those engines at the starting line, and
some people that had too much dopamine ready to go
would either flood the engine or they would stall.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
It perfect and then then all your ears got were bleeding, right,
they were you.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Know, I actually had I brought a bunch like just
in little packets. On my side. I had my molds,
and but anytime I saw someone like plugging their ears,
or if they're waiting in line for a beer, I
would just pull one out and say, you know, I
see your plugging in your ears with your fingers. Would
you like one of these? And be like, I'm okay,
I'm okay. Like you won't be okay if you continue
(10:08):
to stand where you're standing for the next three hours,
which you know, to say. For a race car driver,
they have a goal line at the end, they have
a finish line. It's there, you can see it. But
songwriting is ambiguous. There's no correct way to write a
verse or produce a mix, so that goal line is
(10:28):
subjective in a way, so that ending, getting to that
final point is a little bit more difficult to start
when you don't know where the finish line is.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
For musicians, Yeah, and that's a great point. And in
addition to that, you're also self managing, right, you're also
juggling all of this stuff independently. You are responsible for
all of your branding, all your promotion, all your writing,
all your recording, and then of course your business end
of things that we love to talk about here, all
the finances, it's all there on your plate, and no
(11:00):
one else is coming to take control of that stuff
unless you delegate it out. So your cognitive overload just
continues to get worse.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
And we talk about this a lot with overwhelming triggers
and the magnola which you and I you know, with
our ice baths separately, not when we take them together.
But that's your fear center, you know, which steers you
away from that uncertainty and those emotionally loaded tasks. So
and that leads to avoidance. It's like a fight. You're
(11:30):
not going to stand there. You're not gonna you know,
it's like fight or flight. Most people want to put
their hands up and say, hey, I don't want to
do this. And you know, with songwriting, that's what makes
I think musicians, which you and I say quite a bit,
such great entrepreneurs because it is we don't just put
up our hands, but we have to figure out ways
(11:52):
to move forward.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Yeah, and you see that overload often. You see we
call it burnout sometimes too, But maybe we're interpreting it
incorrectly sometimes by saying burnout, because it's not really that
we're burnout.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's that we're overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
And I do see that a lot in personality traits,
where when something looks too risky or it feels like
it's messy, or it feels like it's unclear, and we
do feel overwhelmed. We're also just avoiding it because it's
easier just to get away from it and just shut
down instead.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
And the second thing would be like the delayed gratification
and the absence of the immediate reward, which is what
I'm going through right now with less shows. So dopamine's
role is not Usually they think that's the juice, the
power that keeps things going, it's the pleasure from the act,
but it's not. It's the motivation and the anticipation chemical
(12:47):
that your brain releases dopamine when it expects a reward,
So it's not necessarily when the ward is achieved. But
much like well, we're can bring up when your phone
rings or you hear that text quite a bit in
this podcast. When you hear that, you're like, oh, what
is on the other end of that? Dean to let
me know this might be exciting?
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, So let's let's maybe a couple examples for musicians
struggling with this, I mean, where do we start first?
Maybe we talked about just how long it can take
to release anything. I mean, that's sort of the pinnacle
position for most musicians businesses, is how much content they're releasing, right,
(13:33):
particularly music, and how hard it can be just to
get that cross that finish line with it, and how
many times it can just shut down because we're just
some we'll let anything become the reason. But really, you know,
it's if there were dopamine hits that we're saying keeping
(13:54):
you going right. We talked about at the very beginning,
like just looking toward that end zone, that that finish
line right, it can help with this. But that's certainly
one of the places that we see it a lot,
and we struggle with it. I know I struggle with
it often.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
One way releasing music, you and I were raised on albums,
which the music industry has changed that a little bit
for us to get that dopamine hit with singles, And
we've interviewed quite a few artists here that their goal
is every month to release a single instead of thinking
of the overwhelming task of releasing an album.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
There's also the end of it when we look at
it financially with our some of the people we've talked
to that we've helped with their finances, there's certainly feeling
that absence of immediate reward when they're looking at their finances,
realizing how deep and dead they are and how long
that road is and how impossible it feels to get
(14:52):
out of that, or just even to build an emergency
fund or any of these tasks can seem just too
much and there's no immediate reward coming from that stuff
from just looking at it.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Tasks like editing tracks or sending out emails to venues.
I mean, every time you send an email to venue,
you're either going to get accepted or rejected. And if
you have a ton of those to do, it is
hard to put those feelings in front of every email,
like here we go again, Am I going to be
(15:24):
accepted or not accepted? That's quite a bit of work,
you know, emotionally, physically, and emotionally well.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And we always talk about how much what do we
say eighty percent of this industry is rejection? What are
we setting ourselves up for there? We're asking a lot
of our dopamine and the last you know, a little
part of this too. Is just that we we lack
short term wins. Often in these little short term winds,
(15:52):
if we can't create them, it causes this dopamine drought,
which is actually a thing, and so your brain seeks
other sources to fill that in. We have you know
a lot of kids are off in this way. And yes,
we're all still kids in some place in our head,
and we need. We have a hard time being bored,
we have a hard time not continually being stimulated. And
(16:13):
that's when we turn to all these social media platforms
to give us that instant dopamine hit. Right, people they
turned a porn or, they turned to you know, going
out and drinking heavily. Like we look for these immediate
dopamine hits.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Do you watch Sunday Morning the show Sunday Morning on
Sunday mornings. No, when the trumpet sounds again, Chris, every
Sunday Morning, I cry, I laugh. I learned something this
last Sunday. They took five kids and took their phone
away from them for three days was the goal. One
kid couldn't even do it. He's like, nope, I need
(16:50):
my phone back. The other three one ended up getting
a flip phone because he enjoyed having so much more
time left in his day. And then the third one
was somewhere in between, where she deleted a bunch of
apps that were taking up her time. But I was
thinking of that one kid who felt that he had
more time just to sit at a wall where that's
when creativity starts. That's when you start to dream and
(17:12):
plan your futures, when you have that time in your
day to look off into the sky and say, Hey,
what can I do with my day and make it
fun and memorable? And what kind of relationships can I create?
And I felt bad for the kid that he couldn't
even get through that short period of time.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah. Well, and I'd lend me many adults would struggle
even more yeah than those kids did. So how easy
is it to feel productive during doing like a busy
work but not actually making any progress?
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Well, it's busy for just the sake of being busy.
My friend Christia and I always laugh when we can't
pick up the phone, Sorry I'm busy, or she'll just
answer to tell me she's busy she can't talk to me?
What just an ongoing joke? But is busy to be
productive or busy just to be busy. So I think
(18:03):
that's what we're going to talk about here, is like,
what are you busy doing?
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Well?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
We trap ourselves, right, We constantly feel like we're being
productive by doing certain things that we even we can
even trick ourselves to think that it's advancing our music career,
But what is it really doing is probably wasting our
time with quick, little instant dopamine hits.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Yeah, And what started as something where we would have
to take time out of our day to sit down
and do to accomplish something doesn't feel as great when
you can get the small dopamine hit from a game
on your phone or going through Instagram or TikTok. It's
harder to put that down because it feels better to
get that instant gratification.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, and that's sort of like the wearing your engine
out metaphor. Really, you know, we're conditioning our brain to
need those easy dopamine hits. So then when we really
need that dopamine to do what it was created in
our you know, evolution to do, it just can't work
well because it's been worn out.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
I guess that brings us back to the fear of
judgment and perfectionism and emotional risk. And I'd love to
hear some of your thoughts on this because when we
first started this podcast, something I not to say, I
wouldn't have known because of how well you sing and
how well you put a set together and how hard
you work that perfectionism is something that drives you. And
(19:32):
you've had to say before that you know, you had
to deliver things before you got to that point because
you do care about things so much that you could
keep going until it is just right. So let's let's
talk about that a little bit, because music and and
your finances, you know, it's not just work, it's who
we are. So can we talk about some of that stuff,
(19:53):
like how creating feels vulnerable and releasing music opens you
up to criticism and perfectionism, like you've said before, could
be paralyzing.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Yeah, well, that does bring up an interesting thought in
my head because I always say that when I get
to a gig, you know, and a lot of my
gigs are four hours, that my happiest time is when
I sit down, because I sit on a stool, I
sit down behind that microphone, and I go to work,
you know, because it's really something that I truly enjoy doing.
I enjoy being so good at it, at what I do,
(20:26):
and it's almost less important than anybody even cares. That
is something that matters, but it's not nearly as rewarding
as knowing I am in this safe space, all my
stuff is set up correctly, all these things that I've
done to prepare. You know, I was motivated to rewire
my pedal board to make sure it wasn't going to
(20:46):
crap out in the middle of the song. All those
things that I that I perhaps had to find motivation
to do came from that moment that I get to
sit down and go to work.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
That's a great place to be because it could be
been easier to define your success during those four hours,
like you just said, if people are paying attention or not.
But it has to be gratifying to know you're nailing
those four hours.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah. The funniest thing about that is that sometimes I'll
finish the song, you know, all these songs I've played
a thousand times, and I'll finish up like that was
the best I've ever played that, and I look around
and there might be on a hundred people in there
and no one recognizes it. You know, and I think
to myself, like that was for me. That really was
(21:36):
for me, you know, because I mean, it just doesn't
matter that much if dopamine from this angle for me
comes from this recognition that this is something bigger, right
than just making playing song. It's it's something getting something
(21:57):
bigger out of it, a bigger meaning out of music itself.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
It's important to bring up the point of doing this
just for me. How it also is parallel with your
finances and making sure you have a successful career. Make
sure you send out those emails, make sure you get
the posters ready, or you've delegated that to someone else.
Because the other thing is the lack of structure or
(22:25):
the external accountability for being creative. It's like a double
edged sword. I think musicians often don't have those fixed
hours or managers or projected timelines, especially indie artists. This
leads to having to make how many decisions a day?
And that's fatiguing low urgency for anything. You're not being
(22:47):
accountable to a boss outside of yourself. You have to
be accountable for yourself, and underestimating those time costs sometimes
could really put musicians in injeopardy as far as achieving
those goals.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And all of this translates for us that without structure,
your brain drifts towards this the easiest option whatever is
that your arms reach, which is usually it isn't deep
creative work that's at arms reach. And so it's really
not laziness that we are focusing on here, it's these neuroeconomics.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Musicians don't procrastinate because they're unmotivated. They procrastinate because their
brain is making rational decisions based on faulty reward math.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
So we avoid high.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Effort, right, We avoid emotional risk, we avoid unclear payoffs,
and we avoid delayed rewards, so your brain defaults to safe, easy,
instantly rewarding actions instead. Dopamine priming can reward your brain
for consistent creativity in your music business. So let's talk
a little bit about that, because what powers your motivation
(23:59):
to write songs can also fuel your financial success. This podcast,
we often talk about applying the same principles of que
based rituals, micro rewards, momentum building habits to help your
financial side of your music business. You're budgeting and your
forecast are great examples of this. To build systems that
help you flow through all of these processes and allow
(24:23):
you to learn to use dopamine to not only spark
ideas and inspiration, but also secure your creative future.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
So when was the first time you heard of dopamine
priming And A what do you think it meant? And
B how do you see that it applies to musicians?
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Well, actually, this was a new term to me from
this research, so one. The first time I heard of
it was about a week and a half ago. But
it's been really fascinating to me because I've since I've
looked up a bunch of different resources and read a
bunch of stuff about it. And how many people Again,
these are these kind of things where it's like you
(25:01):
start reading and you're like, wow, so many people deliberately
apply this technique, so many people in the music business,
so many people in business itself, And just also just
understanding the power in which intentional effort towards these things
can make a difference, and understanding ourselves right so often.
(25:24):
The other end of this problem for me that came
out of this was that people are struggling with it
and don't know they're struggling with it, right, They're suffering
from this without even knowing what it is.
Speaker 4 (25:37):
I like the fact that we're already doing this in
other places, not only in our life but with performing
in music, and we just need to take those same
rituals and place them where we want a different outcome
in our life. Before playing a gig, we warm up,
we get our vocals ready to go, We stretch, We
(25:59):
do everything we can to tune our instruments literally and
tune our brain in our body for what's coming next.
And we've learned that we need to do that to
perform our best, to make sure we can hit those notes,
to make sure as we're getting all of it, we
don't pull our back out on some of the stage
things I do. It's just it's not as easy anymore, Chris.
(26:20):
And if I don't get my stretching in, it's quite uncomfortable.
But we know the outcome when we don't do those things,
and we don't want that to happen, so we warm up.
So now I look at dopamine priming, especially over this
last year and a half, is I'm learning to warm
up for those other things that I need to get done.
(26:42):
Do you ever get stuck deciding between working on your
music and managing the business side.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Let me answer that question by first defining what we're
saying dopamine priming really is. Dopamine priming is the practice
of creating small cues or rituals that your brain associates
with leisure or reward. These cues train your brain to
expect a positive experience. This helps you to get started
(27:08):
on difficult daily tasks, whether it's recording vocals or doing
your business side of things like budgeting. Think of this,
like Dave said, as warming up. And when we're talking
about making an deliberate action of creating these dopamine primings.
For me, there's often that same thing where I'm expecting
(27:29):
that positive experience out of this, or I'm also reducing
the challenge that's coming to me later and that gives
me a dopamine hit, you know, Like I said, but
I know that my pedal board is wired well and
that nothing is going to go crackly on me when
I'm in the middle of a song. That is a
motivation to do something right now to make that happen later.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
So what would you say a budgeting tip would be
then for using that example.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, And so also to answer your question, do I
ever struggle which one to work on. I don't actually,
but I do feel like the two of.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Them must be nice, must be nice.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Chris, Well, what I might notice is that it's not
that I'm struggling to know which one work on. Is
that I just feel like working on more of one
than the other. Maybe that is struggling, but more I
look at it as like, that's what my body wants
me to do, that's what my brain wants me to do.
I'm going that direction and I often use that flow.
And I think that's the benefit of owning your own businesses.
You go with where you feel like working. If you
(28:29):
can get that flow going of doing what you feel
like doing and still somehow at the end of the
day look back and say I got all this done,
I think that's a really nice place to be as
a balance. But it does come from these little dopamine motivators,
you know, these dopamine primers. Because when I'm working on
the budget, when I'm looking at what I'm gonna make
(28:52):
this month or what I need to increase in order
to hit my numbers, Like next month, I'm out of
town half of the month, and I'm not out of
town for work trips, I'm out of town for fun,
and so I have half a month to make all
the money I have to make. So that motivates me
to really be focused on not only how I'm forecasting,
(29:17):
but reaching out a little bit more deliberately, right, because
that fear that that anxiety is going to distract me
to be able to enjoy these trips that I'm taking
if I'm not focused on it now. So that dopamine
hit is that dopamine primers to know that I'm going
to be preventing myself from being able to stay present
and really enjoy what the heck I'm paying.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
For to go do. Right.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
So, Yeah, there's a lot of ways that I think
you can look at your situation and find a little
bit of motivation. But I think it's different for everyone
because I don't. I think there's also that negative end
of it. People are often intimidated. Like we said, they
shut down because well, I could work on my budget,
but I know that the numbers aren't going to look good.
I could just open up Instagram instead.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Yeah, it's the trip you're coming up? Are you coming
to medicine at the end of the month.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yes, that's the second trip I take. I'll be there
and I'm going to come see you.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
It'll be nice to have you here. Yeah, if I
have to clean and vacuum, yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
I've never seen you, knew.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Huh, So that'll be really that's going to be a
great reward of.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
It'll be nice. We'll have a fire, get to see
the dogs looking for having you for sure.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
Yeah, it's excellent.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
How have you found ways to trick your brain into
staying motivated when there's no immediate payoff.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
Well, we talked about this a little bit during how
to Structure your business, and I think when we were
talking about the financial scale as far as you know,
I think we mentioned having the five thousand dollars or
the goal that you have in mind for you know,
paying yourself in advance. And I've learned to you that
as far as setting little goals for myself. So it
(30:57):
is fifteen twenty minutes, get down and do it, and
I actually write it down on a piece of paper,
I swear it myself and get the fuck up, go
do this right now. And then I come back and
I just throw the paper away and like I did it,
And it's just something I don't know if it was
the actual writing it down and talking to myself in
third person. But having those little goals have helped me
(31:19):
not only financially, but have helped me to start practicing
and writing more. And in the last two weeks I
have two more songs which I probably have not had
one in the last year that I felt comfortable enough
to write now, so I can tell it's working.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
I like to focus on us of the opposite end
of while we know that these quick dopamine hits are
not good for us, you know, I think a lot
of what I research brought up a lot of evolution.
Dopamine is an evolutionary tool that our brain developed to
(31:56):
motivate us to run like hell when that tie chasing us,
or you know, those kind of situations. It was often
what it.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Is, but it felt really good because it was like.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
No question, this is what I want to do right
and now if we can get those big hits from
spending hours on social media right or from twenty something.
I'm not trying to call out anybody in their twenties,
but a lot of porn right or people that are
drinking heavily or doing drugs to get those dopamine hits.
(32:28):
Easily and quickly big ones, right, those are big dopamine hits.
The problem is the way that you know that that
isn't good for you is that you always feel like
crap at the end of the day, right at the
end of the experience. You don't feel good after that
is over, right, And so you can clearly hear that
there are very sophisticated indicators in our brain telling you, hey,
(32:49):
that that was not good.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
You know that didn't.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Although you were hitting all that dopamine. The dopamine hits
don't result in happiness, right, they don't, So we can
tell that it's not about getting dopamine that we're really
trying to do. So this lure of quick dopamine is
not really what we're hitting for. What we're trying to
do is use the dopamine to get us motivated to
(33:14):
do the other things that will actually in return create happiness.
Speaker 4 (33:18):
So much like you said when it was there for
fight or flight, the original dopamine feeling, you know you
have to go get food otherwise you don't eat, and
you need that dopamine to kick you in to say
I'm starving or I need to protect myself with these
quick dopamine hits on social media. Your brain doesn't know
(33:40):
the difference. If you release a song and you get
negative feedback, it's awful feeling. We just haven't the dopamine
hasn't caught up with us an evolution because your brain
feels like the rejection is the same as the perceived
feeling that you get from that dopamine priming. You need
(34:02):
to do that in order to accomplish your goals. Otherwise
you get the other side of it, which is I
didn't accomplish anything. I didn't get those things done, I
didn't move forward. And what you're saying is these little
hits they're not producing the goals that we want. So
(34:23):
we have to take the little hits of dopamine and
put something structured behind it to make us move forward
in a positive way.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah, So part of that can be removing those other things, right,
taking away the allowance to have that, and creating a
structure and an accountability to yourself that allows you to
have that dopamine. So you're not reving the engine for
no reason all the time, you're revving it for very
particular results in mind. And so you know, we're talking
about building some sort of structure, some sort of weekly
(34:54):
check in with yourself, some sort of way to set
up a way to keep yourself accountable. And this is
tough for people because you know, you get up in
the morning, the first thing is you get on your phone,
right the first thing you do, and you don't take
time for yourself, You don't feel where you aren't, you
don't recognize all the good You're just going straight to
(35:14):
the dopamine hits. And they could be positive or negative,
but you're just gonna scroll through them, right, or you
might go for the candy, right, Like that's another one
of those things again. Like I know this is talking
about the negative stuff, but like just this concept of
how we get these quick dopamine hits from junk food,
highly processed food, and sugar foods, like all of these
things that they're in the same camp as alcohol. To me,
(35:35):
they're in that same camp and the reason that we
like them so much is because they're quick dopamine hits.
So if you could take those and remove them, right,
creating some sort of structure around your rules and what
you're doing, and help yourself by staying healthy doing the
things that actually release positive dopamine that create long term motivation,
(35:55):
like working out right, doing meditations right, creating some sort
of expectation that you're going to treat yourself well so
that you can prime yourself to get that work done
that you know needs to get done.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
It's hard to get away from those things too. Tell
us about the situation on Saint Patrick's Day when there
was so much candy at Joe James's house at his party,
and you're like, Okay, my kids love all this candy.
When tick them for a walk, you know, on the
way home, what happened?
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Oh yes, yeah, so yeah, they had eaten their their
heads full size of candy over at our friend's Saint
Patrick's Day party. And I was like, well, we need
we need to get out of here because this is
just I mean, I usually it used to be that
years ago. I had come and I'd get hammered right
before kids, And now like here we are. I had
one non alcoholic beer.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
My kids are the.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Ones that are high on something, and I'm like, we
got to get out of here. So we're walking back
to the train to head home and it's the end
of the parade and it's like all the parade people
are just like getting rid of the last piles of
candy that they haven't got rid of, and they're just
throwing him by my kids. The kids were dodging, you know,
Jolly Ranchers is running like they literally couldn't get away
(37:12):
from it, but they thought was the greatest thing in
the world raining candy on them.
Speaker 4 (37:18):
Well, let's go to the fourth thing that we talked
about perfectionism earlier, the emotional risk and the fear of failure.
So to add to the question that I asked earlier
about you being perfect and moving past that, how do
you push through that pressure of being perfect or wanting to?
I guess I should.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Say yeah, I mean, I don't got I don't have
a great answer for this one, except for to be honest,
which is I've stopped trying for perfectionism. I've tried to
find more beauty in imperfectionism. And my mind also is
always saying, as soon as I start going down the negative,
(38:00):
I have a little red light that flashes and says, well,
time to reroute. Yeah, And I really don't let myself
go to the negative because that emotional experience and the
negative doesn't really bring anything good out of it. I've
even started doing that with like when I say something
stupid in a social situation, which we all do all
(38:23):
the time, and you can go later an hour later
and just be like, God, why did I say this
one thing? That one thing? Why did I say that?
And then all of a sudden, it's just like in
your head and you know, and you spile down that
I've gotten so much better it, even though I'm just like, yeah,
they won't even remember, why am I? You know, like
I'm just reprogramming. So I mean, and this goes back
to Joe Despenza talking about this a lot. Whereas you
(38:44):
have to rewire, you have to rewire for these situations
to go more positive. You can't keep going down the negative.
Speaker 4 (38:52):
Couldn't agree more And I suffer from that loophole as
well as far as just spinning out on that one
thing that I wish I could have said differently, or
that one less one less dad joke would have been
for the day, not even being the dad I just said.
Full of them.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Well, we can we can talk about all of the
ways that we struggle with getting instant dopamine or not
really controlling our dopamine intake very well. But I think
The other thing that we can talk about is ways
to use dopamine priming priming as musicians and be a
little more intentional and feel like you have a little
bit better control of how to be positive with this stuff.
(39:32):
So the first thing we wanted to say was to
create these presession rituals. These these are all just ideas
and for everyone you know, to take which one of
these works or resonates with you. Maybe you're doing some
of these already, but just know that that's what this is.
This is these pre session rituals. These are dopamine priming
for good reason, for good cause. So maybe Dave Star
(39:53):
was some of these.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
In the recording studio, it's in the basement, and although
we have humidifiers and everything else, it does have a
basement kind of sent to it a little bit sometimes
and abound. The first time I lit a candle and
I started working on my tunes. That the next time
(40:14):
I was like, I'm going to do that again, and
it kind of just set the flow. So I like
just to set my environment up for success, whether it
be clean off my office table or just put the
mood lighting on for myself and Neil Soul music in
the background for a playlist or something, just to kind
of settle down. So it starts the process for me,
(40:35):
and I'm like, okay, now I'm in go mode.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I like that, you know.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
And I saw you put incense on here too, which
is funny because it's the one thing I can't have
near me when I'm singing because it clogs me up,
so that one doesn't work as well for me. But
I do like this idea of creating a space. My
whole thing with the dopamine priming is if I'm going
to record, I will go down and set everything up
(41:02):
as if I'm the engineer. I spend my engineer time
setting it all up, getting the room lighting right, getting
the sound you know, good with the microphones and the levels,
and then I leave for like whatever, take a walk,
do something else for a little bit. And then that's
how I prime myself. Now I know, oh, I get
to come down as the artist. That's how I come
in feeling like everyone's got everything ready for me.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
You know, it was just me an hour ago.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
I feel better. I feel I pride myself to be
ready for like being in the artist's mind.
Speaker 4 (41:33):
And everybody, so, you know, Chris as a minimalist when
it comes to the way he likes to organize his desk.
He has just you know, one little piano right there,
a mouse, mouse pad, speakers. There's nothing there. Me, on
the other hand, I can pull. I have a Buddha
right here. I have a glass owl. My brother gave
(41:57):
me this from Hawaii. I don't know how long ago.
I mean, I could keep going with a bunch of
crap that I have in front of me. Let's see, Oh,
yesterday is history, tomorrow is a dream. Today is what counts.
And Chris would not have any of this stuff there,
and he gets shipped done because he's not playing with
(42:18):
all this stuff that I get to play with in
front of it. And maybe that's what I need to
start doing, is just clean some of this stuff off.
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Well in the way, what we're saying is shrink that
starting line, right, like, start with the smallest version of
these tasks. And if you know that there's going to
be a lot of distractions, that could be an easy
way to shrink the starting line.
Speaker 4 (42:40):
A bit for you, or do a cold punch that'll
shrink a bunch of stuff too for you.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Or both, because we're both they do good things yes,
and so you can also talk about this with your
finances too. It's just sometimes just open that financial tool, right,
get familiar with the way it looks, get comfortable with
all of the little the columns and understanding that stuff.
Maybe spend some time just getting to know spreadsheets and
(43:07):
how to use a spreadsheet, like do little mini things,
these micro actions that help make the bigger thing feel easier.
And if you are trying to save for your first
big goal, like you're getting your emergency fund done or
you're paying off your debt, like Dave said, you can
start with a manageable number that feels like, Okay, I
(43:28):
did that. Now, if I can do that, I can
make it bigger. That is a good approach. If it
feels like a win, it's going to build momentum and
carry you through these more challenging things as they grow.
What's interesting is that as you do this, you will
look back and you'll be like, what I thought was
so hard is now so easy, right, And you can
start to handle bigger and bigger things. This is how
(43:50):
people go on to achieve incredibly large success because those
things don't seem that big or large anymore to them
because they've built up this ability to you create a
starting line that feels more manageable for where they're at.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
We talked earlier about writing. You know so many emails out,
well write one email a day to a new venue
and just let that keep adding and adding and adding.
It's a lot easier to do one email than try
to do twenty in a day.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Then that same thing goes for your your list of
things for the day. If you have a long list
for the day and you just thought about how long
that list was, you're just not going to do anything.
But if you just say, okay, this one thing, this
one of my I usually try to leave something on.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
A list that I know is quick.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
Actually, and this is probably a doble main trick at
all rhymed it is it did. So you take that
one thing and you're like, oh, I can do that
one thing. It's just got to send an email, you know,
to somebody like you said, and that takes me five minutes.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Well that's done. I can take that off my list.
Speaker 5 (44:50):
Up.
Speaker 2 (44:50):
I'm getting I'm getting momentum right like I'm getting going,
And then you just do the next thing and then
you just That's why I like having a list of options.
It's not just a list of things to do, it's
a list of options.
Speaker 4 (45:01):
Also read the book The One Thing if you haven't already.
And with having a to do list, I would highly
recommend putting your writing A one, two, and three by
your top things for that day, because otherwise we're going
back to it's easy to be busy, just to be busy.
I have found that I will, like you, put one
(45:23):
good thing that's easy to do, Chris, I'll find ten easy,
easy things to do and just have a very successful
day of doing nothing. But I got a lot done.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
And that is the difference, right when we know we're
getting good dopamine hits versus bad of the means hits.
Like we said, if you spend a whole day drinking,
it might feel real good in the moment. Right at
the end of the day, when you're recounting your day
in bed, you're probably not feeling super great right, not
just physically, but like emotionally, like how did I get
how did I do today?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
How did I what did I push forward on my
needle of my life? You know?
Speaker 2 (46:00):
And most of the time, when you're done with eating
a bunch of candy, all day. You're not going to
feel like you did much right, You're not gonna be
very good, and that's your.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Body reacting to it, right.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
But the reward is in the process, right, You're not
like also waking up being like today I'm gonna record
and release an entire album that I haven't even started yet.
This is gonna be awesome, right, Like, the reward is
in the process, right, breaking it down, feeling like you're
making progress towards it. Those are little dopamine hits that
those are the ones that keep you feeling like you're
making progress.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
There's a great song in The Journey by Martin Sexton.
I highly recommend it if you haven't heard. It talks
all about that. Do you use anything to like visually
keep track of this stuff? For instance, I use an
app called Streaks, and I just wasn't wondering you're gonna
smile on that one for some reason because.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
And do your laundry.
Speaker 5 (46:55):
I feel bad they had to dude wipes at Telladega
done and the logan the slogan was something about skid streaks,
skids something. I'm like, this is all wrong, Like this
is just not you don't feel good walking up to
the table to get some dude wipes when that's their slogan.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
It streaks.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Yeah, but streaks is great just if you want to
do something three three days a week. If you're going
to say, hey, every day, I'm going to play twenty
minutes of piano, guitar or whatever, it's just nice. I
just get that little dopamine hit like I get done,
and I know I did it. But I don't know
if there's anything you use just to say okay, you
know with head above branding, I do that a lot too,
(47:41):
to say how many emails did I send out, how
many things are in, how many things shipped today? So
it's a good visual for me.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, I guess I just keep a no list. That's
my main way of functioning within just a notepad note.
Not very sophisticated, but I don't think that I need
anything more. I like being able to have full control
of it, and I know that it opens up whether
I have Internet action connection or not. I'm just going
on the fly and that stuff. But I also am
(48:10):
very diligent about keeping it updated.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
It is my guide.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
It really is a critical thing for me.
Speaker 4 (48:16):
Though you mentioned earlier about doing your finances that sometimes
it might be easier to not want to know what
your budget looks like, or you don't want to know
how much you owe on something. Do you think we
avoid financial tasks because we make them feel like punishment.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Well, I do think they feel like punishment for some people,
Like I think it legitimately feels the opposite of a
dobamine it right, And I don't think it's an easy
thing to reprogram that. And I think we run into
this a lot. And there's resistance with musicians that are
in that mindset that this is an impossible thing to
(48:57):
make a living off of. Right, they really they believe that,
and then they open their budget app and all they
do is feel worse. Right, they don't or they don't
have a budget app.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
They just don't.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
They don't try to make that happen because it feels terrible.
So yes, I think it's a real problem. I think
it's a real It's it is almost like you need
to remove that negativity first, sort of like removing the
candy from the.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Pockets of my kids.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
It's like, in order for them to really start to
get to a point where they enjoy their creative space,
I need to create the creative space.
Speaker 4 (49:36):
Do you have any tips on making those mundane financial
tasks like feel good?
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:45):
I actually I think that getting into the habit of
giving yourself space.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
I know this one.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
It seems like a low great answer, but meditation, to
me is the only way that I get any sort
of clarity on this stuff. And it's because our life
is so fast paced, right Like, you're constantly being pulled
in so many directions, with so many tests and so
much pressure, and financial pressure is just as bad as
(50:12):
any other type of weight on you. And the only
way that I create that space to feel good is
to meditate and let myself not feel anything for a
little while, right Let the boredom sink in, let the
let all of the feelings just kind of float there
for a little bit. So that's my number one recommendation.
Speaker 3 (50:32):
What about you, Dave.
Speaker 4 (50:33):
I go back to the I go back to streaks,
I go back to the mini games. You know something
that just motivates me knowing I accomplish something and if
it means in my savings, if it means dividends coming in,
have I hit my goals and they I learned how
(50:54):
to do this by starting out with small goals, And
I think I've fallen in love with that idea that
the bigger picture just keeps adding. And that's like at
the end of the month, I get to see how
this has affected the bigger picture. But as long as
I keep my mind just set on these little wins
during the week and the month, financially, I've done okay
(51:15):
for myself and makes me want to show up the
next day to achieve those same goals. Now, if I
could just do that with practicing, I'll be a great
guitar player one day.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
You are a good guitied player.
Speaker 4 (51:27):
That way, that was written down everyone that you are
a great guitar player, as Chris to Dave with a laughter.
Speaker 3 (51:41):
That's not true.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
I do actually have two other ones that I think
are worth sharing for how we can improve this dopamine
priming or just the use of dopamine. And I really
do think that we need to remove the negative stuff
in order to make room for this to function the
way it's supposed to function. So it could be that
the reason you're not feeling motivated is because you have
(52:03):
used up all your dopamine. Right, That's what we keep
saying over and over again, and so it's really important
to remember that you need to remove or at least
try to remove. We're going to say try. I'm going
to say you need to experiment with ways of changing
the way you're doing things to see if it helps
improve your motivation and getting stuff done. So my number
(52:25):
one thing and that is to stop looking at your
phone first thing in the morning. I think a lot
of people have a rule about thirty minutes of time
in the morning before you even open up or look
at a screen. Will make a big difference in the
way that dopamine is flowing through your body. Let it
be something else. Let your body and your brain do
experience other things besides this instant look on your phone,
(52:49):
look at your emails. Right that stuff is going to
be there, and it can really improve your ability to
feel more motivated by giving yourself a little bit of
time before you start that, and then the same thing
at the end of the day. My other one is
that at the end of the day to think through
your day with gratitude. Right, I go like, what did
I do well today? Right?
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (53:08):
I do this every night and every morning, and it
doesn't it makes it sound like it takes a ton
of time, but it doesn't it right. These are just
little things that allow me to feel more about how
I did. The more you can be in touch with
how you felt about it, the less you're going to
do those things right. The more that I recognize, oh,
when I spent that time drinking for six hours with
(53:30):
my buddies, it was fun.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
The same time, I don't.
Speaker 2 (53:32):
Really like the way I feel afterwards, you know, and
all those bad jokes, like they weren't that funny anyway
I thought they were, or whatever whatever it is that
you you you can If you don't spend that time
at the end of the day reflecting on this stuff,
you won't realize that you may be doing the things
that you actually don't really like right. So recognizing, oh,
(53:56):
I should change that tomorrow allows you to wake up
with a little bit more intention the next day.
Speaker 4 (54:02):
After eight pm, the only people that my phone will
ring for are the people in my closest contacts, so
my family, my mom, my closest friends. That's it. No
work calls will come through. And that's really helped too,
because most of them are on the same page and
we're all kind of slowing down the day together in
(54:24):
a way, which has helped not be on my phone
after eight o'clock and kind of set the tonality for
the rest of the evening.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
I love those that we have those options, and that's
I mean, I do that with the parental controls of
my kids all the time too, because I know where
they're going to waste their time with quicked op I mean,
hits the most. I have to block that stuff out.
Speaker 3 (54:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
Sometimes we just need to take the alcohol out of
the house, right, or we need to do what we
need to do right, Like, there are ways to help
yourself sometimes, and that's what we're doing is we're rewiring, right,
You're rewiring, and sometimes that can be tough at first,
but what that does is build a ce behavior reward loop.
Speaker 3 (55:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (55:03):
That's the only time we'll say loop in this episode.
But the idea is that your brain starts to crave
whatever it is that your ritual is, right, it starts
to want that more and more. So if you can
build good, positive loops right in your habits, then they're
(55:24):
gonna want more of the good stuff. The same thing
with food, Like the more you give your body the
right food and remove the bad food, the more it's
going to crave the good food.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (55:34):
The more you get good at practicing on a schedule
and really doing quality practices on your instrument and those
show results, the more you're gonna crave more of that.
So you really have to figure out how to reprogram
that stuff, and sometimes at the beginning that is kind
of tricky.
Speaker 4 (55:52):
And when you combine that with smart money habits, you're
not just surviving, but you're building a thriving music business.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
And we say this so much that this when you
get to this finish line, which it's a never ending
finish line. Every time you cross it, there's a new one. Right.
That's all great things. But when you start doing these
things with your finances and you start seeing the results,
you're going to crave more of it. You're going to
want to keep going because it feels really good. That
(56:19):
is a healthy dopamine head. Final thought here, it's not
about forcing discipline, right, We're not forcing anything here. We
are redesigning our environments. We're making everything motivation. Right. We're
trying to create this smart habit with this survival, with
this dreams and our goals and finding happiness. Right, all
of this is create the queue, shrink the task and
(56:41):
reward the process and repeat that. So our action step
for you today is to focus on one of these
precession rituals and give it a go for the next week.
Speaker 3 (56:52):
Right.
Speaker 2 (56:53):
We know that sometimes one action can change so many things. Right,
So many times when I read a whole long book,
I'll get like one main thing that will stick with
me out of like a six hour read, one main
thing that gets and that one thing is so worth
it to me. So when we're giving you these single
action steps, we're trying to give you a chance to
(57:14):
focus on that one thing that actually stuck with you
and apply that and see how that makes a difference
in your life. We know your time is valuable and
we appreciate you spending the time with us. We appreciate
you being a part of this community, and it's our
hope that you feel that sense of community here at
musicians tip jar and that you'll help spread the word
to make us all stronger. And if you'd like to
get a hold of us, what's the best way to
(57:35):
do that?
Speaker 4 (57:35):
Send us an email at musicians tip jar at gmail
and musicians tipjar dot com, where you can check out
all the resources and discounts we've collected just for you.
Also check out the episodes on our YouTube channel. If
you find the information your soul, please rate, subscribe to
the podcast and slam or gently hover over that like
button if you're on YouTube, so we can help you
(57:56):
up on the finance side of your music business.
Speaker 2 (57:59):
If you're a singer, plug one finger over your ear
and use the other one to tap.
Speaker 3 (58:06):
That like button.
Speaker 4 (58:07):
If you're at NASCAR, use your nose while you're bring
both your ear drums.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
That's always.
Speaker 2 (58:16):
Thank you for joining us, and remember there is already
enough for everyone.
Speaker 3 (58:20):
You just need to know how to get it.
Speaker 2 (58:22):
So until next time on behalf of Dave Tamkin and
myself Chris Webb, stay happy, healthy and wealthy in this business.
Dopamine drives the hustle, but it's purpose that sustains the grind.
Speaker 3 (58:35):
This is Musician's.
Speaker 6 (58:36):
Tipcar Somebody, Somebody. Nothing on this show should be conceived
(59:00):
specific personal or professional advice.
Speaker 4 (59:02):
Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, business, or financial professional
for individualized advice.
Speaker 6 (59:08):
Individual results are not guaranteed, and all discussed strategies have
the potential for profit or loss.
Speaker 4 (59:14):
The hosts th're operating on behalf of Musician's Tip jar
LLC exclusively
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