Welcome to Episode 56 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the podcast that tells you how to become a more efficient and effective business person in the music industry so you can grow your band to new heights.

My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How's it going today, man? I'm doing pretty awesome. How is everything over there on the East Side? James, That's great to hear. Things are good on my end. I just had some delicious left over pumpkin pie for breakfast because we're recording this the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Dude, let me tell you, I was stuffed. I felt like I was gonna burst. We had tofurkey which, like homemade Tofurky, not the store bought stuff. That stuff is dry and disgusting.

Sorry for people who like store bought tofurkey, but I can't stand it. Homemade Tofurky, mashed potatoes, stuffing broccoli, cauliflower bake with like bread crumbs on top squash All the good stuff. It was amazing. And of course, finishing it off with pumpkin pie can't beat the classics. How was your Thanksgiving? That honestly, it was pretty perfect. You know, I like your style of, you know, the breakfast of champions. You know, the pumpkin pie. That's that's genius. That sounds like something my wife would dio. But this year, you know, she did all of our all of the prep work the day in advance, So that was like like when it actually she said it felt wrong on Thanksgiving that she didn't have to, like, spend the whole day cooking.

It was like she did a couple things. And then we actually get to spend the day together with our kids, which was great. And we actually she made the pumpkin pie the day before, and so we actually got a head start on our leftovers, and we started with pumpkin pie on Wednesday night. Oh, I'm right there with you on the pumpkin. Smart move, though. We did it with some French vanilla ice cream. So you know, just a little icing on the cake of happiness. Yeah, no pun intended way.

Uh, did not have ice cream. We have an ice cream shortage in this house, but there have now been instructions, given that next time someone goes shopping, Bannon Jerry's vegan ice cream will be picked up. Yep, that's right. That's right. That vegan Cherry Garcia added to the list. Yeah, exactly. It's tough because we've been doing mostly online ordering within perfect foods, and they have a lot of stuff, but they don't have ice cream because obviously that would melt in the two days it takes to ship it up here with FedEx.

For anything that's just, like refrigerated or produce or dry foods, things like that, it's been amazing, and it's pretty much the same. Price is going to a grocery store, so I can highly recommend it in perfect foods has been a lifesaver for us, and they're super great, like sometimes they mess stuff up in the box. And when they do, you just send him an email like, Oh, we're so sorry we'll refund you. And don't worry, guys. We're not sponsored by them. No, we're not thistles. just James being really excited about grocery delivery.

I love food. That's really what it comes down to me to. Food is a love language. Oh, yeah, it absolutely is. And and they speak it like they make all kinds of grocery puns. So if there's an issue, I right back with stuff like, we were looking forward to our guacamole. But this week we'll have to Avoca don't. Because you forgot to put them in the box. So can you please take them off the bill and they'll come right back with puns? So yeah, a plus for their customer service. Yeah.

There you have it. Guys. This is what happens when food nerds start talking about pumpkin pie first thing in the morning. Yes, Yes, exactly. And on that note, their customer service is goals like, I wish every company had customer service like that. Speaking of goals at the end of last episode, Episode 55 which was all about having a remote or long distance band. One thing we stressed was, you have to have goals for everything you do for every member. What? They're responsible for that kind of stuff. So we figured, what better way to follow up that episode than doing an episode about setting goals.

So that's what we're going to talk about this week on the podcast is how you can set goals that you aren't just going to say, Oh, I want to do this and then forget it three days later and it never ends up getting done. So the first thing and let's say that our goal is to make this episode about goals is decide. And we have decided that we want to make an episode about setting goals were saying specifically, We're going to make Episode 56. Our goals episode now It doesn't matter if this is a big goal or a small goal.

In our case, this is a pretty small goal. Ah, big goal would have been launching the podcast because we launched the podcast and had 10 episodes prerecorded before we started. That is a big goal right there. But we had a clear step, which was record 10 episodes one at a time. I don't think we did this next stuff, though. Matt, which probably was in the steak. We should have done this. Do you wanna let the listeners know what? The step we skipped was we didn't write it down, you know?

And that's because, Well, we all, you know, live in different places. So, you know, we didn't actually get a digital transcript up or any sort of group chat. But in a sense, we did do this because we sat down as a collective and went over a whole list of topics that we wanted to go over. And so, in a sense, we kind of had an outline already, you know, already built for us. Um, you know, you were pretty vigilant, right off the get go, just to making sure that we had a bunch of resource is necessary to us on.

That's like a really, really important thing when you are setting goals. And James, I'm gonna call you out because normally you're right on it with the band name puns, But you had three opportunities to set your goals. Well, I'm gonna have to push back a little bit on that because I have used that one before. And so credit to me for one not over using it and to forgetting that I made such a bad pun. Maybe I'll bring it back and and bring that pun back for some newfound glory in the future.

Oh, I love it. I love it back. Thio, what we were talking about writing it down is important because this really helps you plan. With the end in mind, we've said before plan with the end in mind, uh, you know, if you want to walk from Colorado to New Jersey, you have to know that you're traveling east first, you know, and you have tow. Understand that your end goal is east. If you start heading west is gonna take you a really, really, really long time to get to the East Coast, and you're probably a little wet.

So here's the deal. You sit down, you plan with the end in mind, whatever that goal. Maybe if it's a big goal, let's say it's getting a million streams. Okay, that's a reasonable size goal. How do you get there? Well, first you have to get 500,000 streams. And how do you get there? Well, you got to get 100,000 streams were able to get there. How do you get 200,000? Well, first you gotta be able to get to 10,000. Well, how do you do that? You're gonna need to focus on digital marketing.

Okay, Well, what do you have to do to do that? You're basically able to, if you plan from the end in mind, compartmentalize everything and dissect it so that you have all these small little facets And then you can really figure out what does your day to day look like? If you know all of these facets all the way down to like their micro workings, and then you can say, Hey, okay, how do I get 10,000 streams? Well, I need to be posting on social media every day, you know, And so, like when you actually break down everything and look at it and it's like core, that's when you can actually, like assigned jobs to people.

That's when you can say, like, you know, like, hey, songwriters, you know, we need to be working on more material. Well, that's a really loose goal that doesn't really hold anybody accountable or anything like that. But if you as a band, you have a goal that says like, Hey, we are going to focus on writing at least one song every two weeks. Then you might even be able to compartmentalize that a little bit more and say I'm gonna write a chorus every three days. It doesn't even have to be a full song, But maybe you start writing courses and they don't sound good.

You chuck him, whatever you scrap them. But if you sit down and make this goal of, I'm gonna write a chorus once every three days, you start doing that and one or two of those songs start to sound good. And then you at least have something to come to the table with, and you're consistently making progress. You know, that's what our whole last episode was about, continuing to get smarter, continuing to get better. There is no excuses is essentially what we were saying in our last episode, and here it's kind of, uh, this is the how do you make it?

Easier step. If you write everything down, then you have a clear outline. How many of you guys have ever worked at a place where they have like goal boards in the back? If you worked at a fast food restaurant, there were times when you would see like ticket times, or you would see like percentages of happy tickets or whatever or whatever you're, you know, in retail. I'm sure there's percentages of sales, things like that. And you, as an employee, can see those employers put this up because people like goals they really dio.

And even more than goals, they like achieving goals. They like hitting those milestones when you make a big deal about setting a goal, and then you make a big deal about achieving that goal. It's like, gratifying that's fulfilling these air, the little victories that you have, tow, isolate and then repeat. You want to turn these into a formula, you know, if you say Oh, I was able to get 10,000 streams by posting on social media every day, putting $50 worth of paid promotion in every week and reaching out to Spotify playlists and as thes curator is have you know, talk back to me.

We've been able to get our song on more platforms and so on and so forth, and this has allowed us to grow exponentially. Whenever you find that repeatable formula that accomplishes your goals that achieve your goals, that's your small snowball. There's a really big tendency in the music industry for people to as soon as they built that first snowball. They set it down on the ground and walk away from it. Try to build another snowball somewhere else. And it's like, No, that's the snowball that you wanna work with.

So many bands and every one of you every one of our listeners myself. Like I'm James. And, you know, when you had dreams of grandeur, we all had this idea. We're gonna make music. We're gonna tour, We're going to see the country. We're going to see the world. We're gonna go play shows in Florida and blah blah, you know, and all over the place in California, we're gonna go play everywhere. And we weren't the biggest band in our own backyard. So this idea of like, I'm gonna get out.

I'm gonna see the world without first saying like, have I developed a relationship with any of the local radio stations or with any of the local venue owners? Have I ever put on my own show in my own hometown so that I make all of the profits? Have I developed quality relationships with promoters. So that way, if I decide I'm gonna go out for a weekend warrior or for a week long run have I developed these quality relationships with people that can make this happen, you know?

And so, like, you have to decide in your band how you're gonna attack things is gonna be different for everybody. Some people go purely digital and really try to push that way. Some people go, you know, they want to go out on three day little weekend warrior tours. And whatever you decide is the road for you to take. You have to compartmentalize those goals, write them down. And then as you start to bring these people into your network, you're naturally gonna have what we call accountability buddies on accountability.

Buddy is basically someone in your band or a friend or a promoter or basically somebody else who's holding you accountable for your goals. And generally, these people are encouraging, very encouraging, like overtly encouraging. But at the same time, they're overtly encouraging because, like, they know that when they critique you, you're gonna take it to heart. And so it's very important to like we talked about a few episodes. Take that criticism. Take it constructively. Figure out how you can adapt out of your situation or figure out what you need to do to identify your goal.

And then you break it down. Plan with the end in mind. If you have this big goal, you have to create those sub goals and then stop and smell those individual roses. Yeah, exactly. And if anyone missed that episode about dealing with criticism in the music world, you could go back and check that out in your favorite podcast app at better dot band slash listen, and just look for Episode 54. It is called How to handle Criticism in the Music World Anyway, yeah, And to go further into that, Matt, you've already touched on breaking down your goals and planning with the end in mind.

And essentially just to wrap that whole thought up that you were talking about it makes things seem more achievable because you can check off the little goals like you were just saying, you know, celebrate the little victories, but it also shows you a clear path to your main goal. So if you say something like, I wanna be on the billboard charts. Okay, what do I do to get there? So that ties into what you were saying about getting a million Spotify plays. You have to get 500001st and then 100,000 and then 10,000 going backwards down the list.

So by doing all of that, you're setting out the steps for what you need to dio and saying These are the steps to do this, and that is how we're going to get to that goal. And that's why that's so important. Because without having that in place, your big goals are just going to seem daunting and impossible to achieve. There's no way you're going to be able to do that now. One thing to be said is that we're saying breakdown your big goals, but for smaller goals, you should also plan your first step on those because without proper planning, any goal you set is really just wishful thinking.

And if you create a plan, it gives you an actionable step to take. So you know what you need to do to get started towards that goal, and that's why we want to make this clear. Big goals should have every single step outline, so you can check goal off small goals. You want to have your first action item on the list, so you know exactly what you need to do to get started. Maybe that's the only thing you have to do for that goal. Maybe not. Maybe it's more like a medium sized goal, but either way you know you're headed in the right direction.

You're not going to just drop off the end of the earth and forget about that goal. You're going to keep going. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's honestly the essence of success. There's an old saying that Zo it's like, you know what the difference between you and everybody else is. You're still here. That's the difference in the context of that is where you have somebody saying like the only difference between you and some huge artist out there is that they never gave up. You know, when everybody says, Oh, I wish that I could be a famous musician.

I wish that I could be a famous artist. I wish that I could be a blah, blah, blah Well, all you have to do is practice repeatedly. You need to find a formula that is repeatable. You know, when you're breaking down your big goals, what you're doing is you're finding out the areas that you need to build systems for. Essentially, that's really what breaking your big goal down is. Now, when you start to get to your smaller goals, this is where you're actually trying to find the daily action, the consistent formula that you need tohave continuously growing in your business.

These are the things that will scale, you know, these are the things that are gonna go. OK, well, I noticed on Twitter. If I post a video, I get three times the response as if I post just regular text. And I noticed that if I post something with a link, I have less reach. And so this is where your analysis is gonna come in. This is where your critical thinking is gonna come in. And this is where some trial and error is gonna come in. Don't be afraid to try things.

You know, we've talked about a long time ago. You need to have a certain amount of money that is ready to go for operating expenses. Okay. Marketing is an operating expense. Some of that money is going to be thrown away. But that's OK, because no money is thrown away. You're either paying money to learn something about the market or you are paying money to achieve a small part of your goals, and it just depends on how well it works. And if you find something that works, that's when you want to repeat that.

When you're saying, Oh, you know, every week when I release you know this song I noticed if I put $50 have paid promotion in the United States, I only get, you know, 5000 views. But if I put $50 in Europe, I get 50,000 views. Now, if you're actually paying attention, you're actually analyzing those air things that you're gonna notice and then you're gonna go. Okay, well, I'm gonna basically direct a bunch of traffic to your website or your online store. You know, when you have your things like Google pixel on Facebook, pics will sit up and you could actually study your analytics.

You see where your fans are buying your music from you see where your fans are buying your merch from then you say, Oh, when I go on tour, I'm gonna go through these three places because you know, 50 people about my shirt as you break down these goals into little tiny things, then you realize that you can tweak your formulas and little tiny places rather than saying like, Oh, I released this song and I didn't get a million streams on it. I must be doing something wrong. No, If you were to break that down a whole bunch, you say, Hey, well, you know what?

I released this song and I didn't get a million streams on it. But look, this over here definitely brought me 50,000 streams. And this over here definitely brought me nothing. So which of the two you know now, instead of having this big, old wide field of saying, Well, how do I get to a million streams? It's like, Well, you know that that's like being swimming in the middle of the ocean, like, how do I How do I get toe Florida? You know, it's like, well, you get to Florida by starting by starting in the right direction.

So plan with the end in mind, plan your first step make sure that you focus on that. Make sure you focus on your last step because those are the most important steps. Three. Goal in the first step that you take. Keep going Buildup Momenta By checking these goals off your list, make sure that you when you find a repeatable formula, build that good habit and then when you finally have the ability to see this beautiful flower blooming from the hard work that you've put into it celebrate.

Smell that, Rose. Don't back burner any of those emotions. This is what you work for. So if you don't stop and smell the roses, if you don't appreciate your accomplishment, you'll get to the end of the road and say, Wow, I'm tired and my roses air dead. I should have smelled him. Yeah, and to be clear, we're not saying you should celebrate like you just won the World Series or the Super Bowl. But you can celebrate in moderation like you know, you one state champs or something like that.

I saw your face. He started to get it. You're the worst. That's just karma. So anyone listening, you can't see. But Matt just randomly picked up a pair of like needle nose pliers and was waiting them around. That was doing everything I could do not start laughing. So that was payback for the Flyers. There actually is a multi tool, isn't it? It is Nice. Very cool. One last thing I think we should mention because you brought it up a few minutes ago about having a budget for everything.

Part of setting your goals and planning is having a budget. I use a great tool called wine AB. You need a budget. We've mentioned on the podcast before. Again not sponsored. We do have an affiliate link for it, but of course, there's no obligation for you to use that link. You can just Google wine AB and essentially, what it does is it gives you a little category for everything that you need, and you can then go in and set a budget for each of those categories based on the money that you have currently.

So you're not saying based on the money I'm gonna have next week? No. The money you have right now has a purpose. Where are you going to allocate that? And so you can allocate it to all kinds of different categories. I have a budget for my personal stuff. I have a budget for business stuff, you know, like my recording studio, all that kind of stuff. It's all budgeted out. The thing here is that one of your budgets should always be like an emergency fund or, ah, unexpected expenses fund.

So that way, you know, let's say you're on tour after the pandemics over, and all of a sudden you know your van blows up, knock on wood. That never happens to you. But let's just say it does. Look, you have $1000 extra in your budget to pay for the repairs or, you know, rent a van to get you home. If your van is so shot that you just gotta abandon it at the workshop and let them scrap it or whatever, that way you have money to get home.

If you're touring internationally like you fly over to Europe or something, you better have enough money in that fun to fly everybody home. If a global pandemic starts up, you know you can't rely on like at the start of the pandemic. Airlines were being so stubborn about refunds that a lot of people pay for tickets twice because they couldn't wait till their return flight. So then they paid Mawr to fly home early. You gotta anticipate things like that are gonna happen. You know, it's not always gonna be a pandemic, but you should have a goal of having money set aside so that in the worst case scenario, you can get home.

That's a gold. A half is just like the personal peace of mind that hey, we could fly home tonight and pay for it with our emergency fund, we could drive home in a rental van and pay for it with our emergency fund. We could hire a lawyer because somebody broke their neck at one of our shows in the mosh pit. And, you know, they should be suing the venue security or somebody, but they're suing us. Now we need a lawyer. We can cover the start of that with our emergency fund.

Now, all of that is like, extreme worst case scenario. But I'm just trying to stress how important it is to set a goal toe have backups in place. So you're never stuck up a tree with wolves howling at your feet and you don't know what to dio were saying the same thing we always like to say when you sit down and you make a plan when you plan with the end in mind, when you bring people into your group into your network toe, hold you accountable, you set goals and then you stick to them.

You plan your first step and then you don't stop. You find your formulas, you repeat them. And then once those formulas have built something even remotely beautiful, celebrate the plan is often worthless. But the planning is invaluable. I can't remember who said that. I want to say it was Churchill or someone like that or Eisenhower. Maybe, but it's absolutely true when you sit down a lot of the times you're gonna end up going off of plan and things like that and plans change. But the time that you've taken to sit down and make sure that you and your mind know exactly what goals you're working towards, and exactly the types of systems that you want to build in order to achieve those goals that is priceless.

That is the recipe for success exactly. You make a simple plan, and then you execute it. You stick to your guns. Had to get that double whammy in there. Okay, that's it for this episode. I'm sorry, everyone. I apologize. That does it for this episode of the podcast. Thanks so much for it. Checking it out. I hope that this has spurred some ideas for you. So you have goals that you will write down, tell a friend, create sub goals everything we talked about. So you have the best possible chance of achieving that goal.

Fun fact. This was kind of ah punny episode. And after we recorded this, I spent about 20 minutes speaking entirely in puns to my fiancee, Jamie, And she was not amused, but I was having a blast. So for anyone who groans about my puns here on the podcast, be lucky that you don't live with me. I'll leave it at that. Sorry to Jamie. Sorry to everyone else who does not like puns. But you're just gonna have to deal with the puns, because that's me. That's what I dio.

I love making puns. And you know what? If you love puns and you're embracing all my puns with arms wide open. Or maybe I should say, with arms wide open. Thank you. I appreciate it. We'll be back with another episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern. Until then, have a Knauss, um, week. Stay well, and of course, as always, keep rocking.