Welcome to Episode 31 of the Bandhive podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing this weekend, Matt?

James, I'm doing pretty awesome. How about yourself, buddy? I'm glad to hear that, and I'm doing well also, so things are good here. We just had thunderstorm, and now it's beautifully sunny and I'm waiting for a rainbow to come out. I'm jealous. Let's hope that I can see it from down here in the studio getting right into things we have. What I think right now is a very important topic, because with everything going on in the world, people are losing hope and feeling despair and feeling unmotivated, and that is going to affect art.

And the last thing we want to see is people who can't create the art that they want to create because of the law of diminishing intent. So let's say that three great musicians, the best musicians that exist in any city, decided to start a band together, and they all individually can play wonderful music. They're incredibly skilled. But instead of writing songs and rehearsing together, they spent all their time planning what they wanted to do with their band, what kind of gear they need, what music genre they want to create, how they would get their music in front of people.

After a few years, the band fell apart because they weren't going anywhere. They never played a show. They never released any music. And in fact, they had never written a single song because they were so obsessed with creating their plans that they forgot to do what they set out to do, which was create beautiful art. This story is somewhat of an extreme, but it's operable toe illustrate how not following through on things you want to do, and getting sidetracked with essentially shiny object syndrome can really slow things down.

And that's where the law of diminishing intent comes in. So Matt Do you wanna tell us a little bit? About what, exactly this law states? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I you know, I really like your story. I think it's a very accurate representation of what? Getting sidetracked can really lead Thio. The law of diminishing intent basically says that the longer you procrastinate on doing something, the less likely you are to actually do it. And it's absolutely true. How many people do you know that? Have said I I'm gonna go to the gym this week or Oh, yeah, I decided I'm gonna start working out or I'm planning on doing this.

I'm thinking about doing that. All of those air. Good, because there are part of the planning process, you know, even Dwight Eisenhower. He was a fan of planning, but not because of the plan. He actually, as a famous quote that says I have always found that plans are useless, but the planning is indispensable. It's important to make a plan for what you're gonna do. But the most important thing that you could do start there's so many artists, there are so many different aspects of your life and your growth that will be hindered by not taking action.

If you have a new plan that you wanna instigated, you want to try a new marketing strategy Or if you want to write a new song, all of those things start by you actually putting the pedal to the metal. You know, like I can think about writing a new song. All I want I can think like, Oh, I want this song to be reflective of what's happening in society right now I want this song to be emotional. I want this song toe have clever lyrics that do this.

But until I sit down with my guitar in my hand and start writing, none of that's actually gonna happen 100% of songs that you don't start. You don't finish. The best thing that you can do for yourself is actually get down and start. James. I know that you spend a lot of your time planning, but you're also very, very good about taking your plan and implementing it almost instantaneously. How do you do that in your world? And what are some good like pieces of advice that you might give to somebody in a similar situation to you?

I'm glad you see me that way, Matt, But yeah, I'd say it's about 50 50 50% of the things I try to do. I get done. No one is immune from the law of diminishing intent, but one of the things that I really like to do is just starting right away as soon as I can. And obviously, this doesn't mean jumping into something without giving it a second thought in thinking about if it's a good idea or if it's a terrible idea, but usually for Bandhive, I'll go to you and Aaron and say, Hey, this is what I've been thinking about What do you think about it?

And as soon as you guys give me the go ahead boom, it's down to execution because I know that if I don't do it right away, I won't do it. I have something on my to do list from November, and don't I said to do list, not to do list. That's a really cool app for basically keeping your to do list that I haven't done. That being said, it's not vital. It's making a small change to my email settings, so I'm looking at it as Why should I do it?

It's been on there since November and nothing's gone wrong, but there are other things that are much more important. So I tend to prioritize things that are very important and make sure to filter out the not so important things. And that way I have time within the 1st 48 hours to start what I said or thought I was going to start. I like that you brought up 48 hours because the law, actually, you know, one of the one of the fundamental principles of this law is they say that you need to start your action within 48 hours.

That actually brings a certain quote to mind. The Amish have a saying, which is awesome. I first heard it through Ty Lopez, who heard it from Joel Salatin. They're both self help people in jail. Saladin's well, the foremost agricultural list on the planet. And he said to Ty Lopez, if you don't like what you're doing, just jump right in. Before you know it, you'll be halfway done. I think that that's such a powerful mantra for getting things done, because even for a songwriter like I'm a songwriter.

I love to sit down and write more music. I like poetry. I love to sit down and write lyrics, but until I sit down and make the mental connection that that I am going to write a song and I sit down from start to finish and I you know how many people out there have songs that you started? And then, like you know, you wrote a verse and a chorus, and then you're done. Or how many songs have you written music for that you have no lyrics or vice versa.

We all have those, and most the time. We all know that if you don't like, pick that song back up within one day of starting it, those songs never get finished. I probably have 1000 unfinished projects. That's because I, too, have never, ever, ever exempt from the law of diminishing intent, either. So that's why it's super important to jump right in, to surround yourself with people who are going to push you in your endeavors and and really like, you know, I like that you mentioned that you contact us every time that you have an idea, because that's exactly what you do, the three of us, we all work together on different things, and we bounce ideas off each other.

It's wonderful because we're all in different aspects of the music industry, so we're able to sharpen each other's opinions. But even more powerful than that is we're able to implement each other's ideas, were able to give positive feedback. And then on top of that, I think all of us are willing to turn to other sources and then get a little bit of insight from them as well. You know that in previous episodes, we've talked about the power of peer reviews, and I believe we're referencing music back then.

But it's just a valuable to get opinions on your plans from your peers now. And when I say appear, if you know somebody who's like an incredibly negative person or if you know somebody who generally is like Oh yeah, I can do it better type of personality. I would advise you never to show your stuff to them, because negative energy is like the great crippler of art. If you start seeing ideas to your naysayers, they're going to bring you down. They're gonna tell you. It's a bad idea.

They're gonna tell, you know, they're gonna and it may not even be in the form of you shouldn't do that. It might be in the form of Oh, that's a great idea. You should do it this way, though. And that derails your creative thought. I actually knew a drummer who was incredibly, incredibly talented, and he liked doing drum covers. But every time he would set out to do a drum cover, one of his other friends would say, Oh, you should do this song And instantly he would just You could see it in his eyes that he would lose the gusto for wanting to do it because it wasn't his own creative thought, and then it it instantly turned from like, This is what I want to do to create art into this is what I have to do now or this is what other people are telling me to dio.

And he really felt like he couldn't have his own creative, original thought. Get feedback from people you respect And honestly, don't be afraid to get feedback. After you've finished something you don't wanna go put $100,000 and do a song and then have your peers review it. That's a bad order of operations. But if you're making a place, your video and you say, like, Oh, yeah, I made this point through video by myself. Here's all this cool stuff that I did and then you take it 20 appears they might say, Wow, this is really good.

Maybe you should try adding a couple more camera angles in there. That's valuable feedback. That's something that they're able to look at what you have and actually help you build and compound on it rather than saying like Oh, yeah, you have this way that you're going to do it. You need to do it differently. As artists, we need to express our artistic abilities. When you play music, when you create art, it has to be coming from you. And so it's really important to not let naysayers get you down.

It's really important for you to pursue the type of art that you are supposed to pursue, and then it's really important to have a circle of peers that are really going to help you build and not going to tear you down. Yeah, and I think what you're saying about not talking Thio people who are always negative or think they could do it better is really important. And if you are one of those people, try not to be like that, because I can guarantee, you know, Matt, you and Aaron both are very positive, supportive, and you give constructive criticism.

But you're not the type of people who would just shoot things down or say Don't bother like things like that. You do express if you think an idea isn't good and that's fine, But you're not the type of person who says every single idea ever made is bad because nobody can succeed in life and, you know, just give up and work at a grocery store for the rest of your life. Like neither of you says that if you were, you wouldn't be on this podcast, and unfortunately it goes in the wider scope of things.

But just associating with people like that can really zap creativity, even if you're not specifically asking them for feedback on what you're doing. I don't know how many people I've unfriended on Facebook because every single post they made was whining or complaining or saying, Oh, you know, like, Oh, my mom took my Xbox weights like, Dude, you're 25 your mom took your Xbox away. Like, what did you do? This is something that actually happened. I don't think the guy was exactly 25 but he was in his mid twenties and his Xbox got taken away and I cracked up and I was like, I don't know what you did, but from your Facebook posts, you'd probably where it fault here.

And I didn't say this. Obviously, this is just my thought, but I just unfriended he was like, I don't need to see this like That's just so ridiculous. It's funny, but I feel bad for the guy. But I also can't see that, because it just makes me hate the world like, Yeah, it was ridiculous. Absolutely, Man, negative energy brings everybody down. I think in the early stages of creativity, some of the most important thing that you can really do is establishing a goal. And when you establish that goal, you don't necessarily know all of the steps to get there.

At that point, you're just you're in that honeymoon phase. You're still really enthusiastic about it. You're passionate. You have, you know, creativity. You haven't hit those really hard roadblocks yet, you know. So nothing nothing is there to slow your steam. So you bring in somebody that you've just established your main goal you haven't even compartmentalized yet. You haven't even started to break it down into sub goals and in tow. You know, monthly goals, annual goals, weekly goals, daily goals. You haven't even done that. And so if you're inviting somebody who's going to instantly break your spirit about, it's a hard task, starting anything is a hard task.

Creation is a hard task, and so if you're inviting in that negative energy, then you're inviting in the possibility for failure and the possibility, really, for just like stopping. We've all stopped doing something because, like the people in the room are into it, and that's just that's a hard realization to make sometimes. But that's why it's really important to establish your goals compartmentalized. And maybe you don't even have to talk to people about what your whole goal is. If your goal is to be the biggest rock band ever, well, you can't do that without being the biggest rock band in your town.

If that's your goal, then you can't do that without, like, having hit songs. And if you can't do that without having hit songs plural, you can't do that without having a hit song. Singular. Well, how do you have a hit song? Singular. You have to write awesome lyrics, Great hooks bubble about this. And then that's what you set out to. And then guess what? That's when you bring in your peers and say, Hey, I wrote this song. What do you think of it? This is my demo that I recorded on some crappy software, and it's okay to be embarrassed of it.

It's okay to be nervous when you send it off to people to get their opinions. But you wanna have this like finished product that you haven't put too much money in, Give it off to somebody, they'll give you feedback. That's how you can creatively grow without putting a giant hole in your pocket book. And it's also how you can keep motivated about something. When you make a demo. It's exciting, even if your song sucks. If it's yours, you're excited about it. It's like a both a boost to who you are because you finish this demo and you're excited about it.

And you give it to somebody who gives constructive criticism and says thes parts are really good, which gives you more fuel. And then they tell you okay, and these are the parts that need to be better, establishing goals and breaking things down. It's just it's this really strong psychological boost, you know, that you actually get when you accomplish a task. When you do that, your body literally gives you endorphins, which make you feel better. So accomplishing small tasks, rapid tasking and things like that, fantastic. And then take it to somebody you know, build the frame and then give it to someone to refine. Exactly.

And I think what you're really trying to get at two with the goals is they give a psychological boost. If you say I want to play a show to 500 people and you're banned, typically plays to 10 people years going to feel like it's never gonna happen, because how are you going to play a show to 500 people? But if you say I want to in the next three years play a show headlining to 500 people. And to do that, we're first going. Thio. Get our local shows up to 50 people by doing this, this and this, and then we're going to get our regional shows up to 50 people by doing this.

This and this while getting our local shows to 150 people. By doing this, this and this and so on, and you're going to build up over that three years. Let's say you're playing a show every six months, so you're playing six shows and you could say, Okay, my goals are 50 1, 52 50 3, 54 50 and 506 shows, and each of them is a little bit bigger than the one before. Quite a bit bigger, actually. If we're saying 100 people every six months, that's a huge rate of growth. But if you can set up your goals properly, you can absolutely pull it off. Now.

One thing that I should mention is when we're talking about playing a show to a certain number of people, that is not a great indicator to follow, because that's what we call a lagging indicator. The effort you put in is not actually equivalent to what comes out of that effort. So a better way to look at it might be to say, We want Thio reach 300 people with our promotion for this show in the hopes that 50 of them will show up leading up to. We want to reach 2000 people in the effort of promoting our show, hoping that 500 of them will show up.

Because that way, as long as you can reach 2000 people, you know you've done your best or you've hit your goal. Even if you don't get all 500 there. Let's say you get 400. You still know that. Hey, you know what? We reach the 2000 people we wanted to reach and 400 of them showed up. That's 20%. That's awesome. That's a really high conversion rate, actually, Super. Yeah, it's not realistic, but we're just throwing these numbers out here as examples. And so one of the things to look out for is if you use lagging indicators there beyond your control and you could miss a goal and feel terrible about it and emotionally drained because you didn't make your goal, even though that goal was not within your control.

But if use something that's within your control, that makes your goal much more realistic and achievable. This way you can hit your goal. And even if people don't trust your show, you know that you reach your goal and put it in your best effort. And maybe all that means is you have to set a higher goal to get the right conversion rate that you want or to get enough butts and seats, right. I love that example because this is also a really, really good way for you to figure out exact identifies that you can use to compound.

And so, like, I'll use my band, for example, with our CD release show. You know, we play in Spokane quite frequently and times we open, and then at times we, you know, direct support. Sometimes we headline on our CD release show. We headlined This was different than the other shows that we've played, you know, because we're in a different slot in the lineup. But because it was also a CD release show, we decided that we were going to do some radio marketing, So we contacted the local radio station in order to do radio marketing.

We decided that we were going to play an acoustic set beforehand and do a ticket giveaway on the radio. We decided that we were going to do a signing and a meet and greet beforehand at a bar across the street where anybody who came to the acoustic set could actually come and hang out with us. And we would be doing signing of all of our merch. Now, in doing all of those things, our goal was never Oh, let's play 1000 people. But it was, you know, a Let's make this show the best possible for them.

Let's see what new element that we can implement into this show. It wasn't so much that like, Oh, let's get 500 people you know at this show because I have no control over that. People don't come to shows every day of the week. Sometimes it's a Tuesday, and people you know only go to shows on weekends. Sometimes the venues not open or whatever. There's all sorts of different things that can play into factors of people. Actually coming to your show. What you can focus on is how you can better market your show.

The most recent show that we had planned in Spokane, it ended up being canceled because of Cove it and for that show, You know, the last time we played with our city really Sha and we had done meet and greets and all that stuff I just mentioned. But with this time, we were planning on making it event, getting local sponsors, actually trying to get local community marketing as well. We were gonna attack all the same front that we had before, But we were also going to bring in other ones.

We planned on doing marketing at high schools, actually, and and, you know, there was a local high school that was doing, uh, support the team where you can donate funds and they would put up one of their banners in your school, whatever you wanted on it. And so we were looking at doing that before the entire school year was canceled. With each and every one of these, you have, like, 10 different small things that you're trying in order to boost whatever your main goal is and each one of those small things is your compartmentalized goal.

You can way what each one of those bring you in. And what you're doing is building a system that's going to work best. You know that that's going to give you the best odds. You're never gonna be able thio guarantee anything. Sometimes you release a new album and your old fans don't like you anymore. Things happen. What you have to do is let your strategy evolve, and then you weigh each and every one of those. Don't forget to smell the roses because the ones that work really well, those will be the relationships that you actually, you know, if you do really well for the sponsor, you get them to pledge 1000 bucks.

You put their information up while you're playing a bubble. With this, they see business from that, you know, have a business venture for as long as it's profitable to both of you. So these were just great connections to make you stop and smell the roses, and then you look back at it. You say, Hey, I did this last time. How can I do it better? Yeah, exactly. I want to mention something to since you're giving the example of your band, it's really important to find someone to hold you accountable for these goals.

So you do actually do your best to achieve them now in a band that's made easier because you have your bandmates and you all have similar goals. But maybe you're working on your own goals individually, and you can have your bandmates hold you accountable for the tasks and goals that are assigned to you. But that's not always the case. You might not be in a band. You might have a solo project or they are the point person and the band are hired guns to play live shows things like that.

So if you don't have someone in the band who can hold you accountable for these things, you need to find someone who can. And again, this should not be a neigh Sayer. This should be somebody who is positive and supportive, and you can talk with them and check in on a weekly basis, saying this is what I've done, and this is what I'm going to do in the next week and follow along with your plan. The easiest way to do this is to find somebody else who is in a similar situation and want somebody to hold them accountable.

And that way it's not a one sided relationship. You could both work with each other. You hold them accountable while they hold you accountable. You can also set up a financial penalty for failure to follow through. So that way, if you are going to, for example, say you're going to release a new live video every month and you miss a month Oh, well, you know what? Now you have to donate $50 to your favorite charity because that way you're out some money. But it's also supporting a good cause.

The important thing here is don't get lazy with it and say, Oh, well, it goes to a good cause. If you end up seeing that start to happen, it might be more effective to say, If you don't follow through on your goals, you have to donate money to a charity that you don't support. That way it really is a financial penalty, and you don't have the escape of saying, Oh, well, you know what? I'm going Thio donate to the Humane Society like everyone loves dogs and cats.

Then you're going to say no. Well, you know what? I've just been giving them a ton of money, and it's not really holding me accountable. I'm going to donate money to promote whaling in the South Atlantic or South Pacific or whatever. No one likes wailing like That's not a great example. You find a charity that you don't like and donate to them. If you don't meet your goals now, I'm sure there's no charity for whaling in the South Pacific. I certainly hope there's not. That was just the best example.

I could come up with the top of my head because it sounds terrible. Yeah, way don't get political here, but if you tend to be left leaning, donate to the Republican Party for goals you don't meet. If you're right leaning, donate to the Democratic Party or whoever you know, just donate to somebody who stands for the opposite of what you believe, whether it's politics, anything social, animal rights, whaling, find something that will hold you accountable. And again, this is Onley. If donating to charities that you do like doesn't hold you accountable, that would obviously be.

My first thing is, if you don't meet your goals, donate to someone you like. But if that doesn't work, escalate and switch it to someone you don't like. So if you want an extra tool to hold you accountable, where you can set it up, where one of your accountability buddies checks in on you and has to verify that you've done what you said you were going to dio, there's a site called stick dot com. S T i c k k dot com. There you can set up goals and have a friend hold you accountable.

You can have a financial penalty that automatically applies different things like that. Full disclosure. I haven't used them, but I know someone who has were not unaffiliated. There's it's just another tool that you can use to be accountable if you feel the need for it. And if having accountability, buddy, that you check in with Weekly on Messenger or a video call or anything like that isn't working for you. But so just to close things off, Matt, what would you send this episode up as I think it's really simple.

Do stuff when you have an idea start nothing gets creative juices flowing like actually putting pen to paper, make your plan and then implement it. Don't waste time planning more than you need. Thio. Just make a plan and start. And then when you have something tangible, take that to somebody that you trust That's the best way to grow. And this works for every aspect of your life. Just find somebody who knows what they're talking about in the area that you are looking for. Mentorship. Well, that does it for another episode of the Bandhive podcast.

Thank you, of course, for listening. We really do appreciate it. And I really hope that what Matt and I have to say, this episode inspires you. Thio. Commit to the things that you are going to do and get started on them before the law of diminishing intent kicks in. If you've got a goal that you want to hit and you need a little extra accountability, why don't you head over to the band High Facebook group, which you can find by searching for banned hive or visiting Bandhive dot rocks slash group and post in the group about what you want to dio and how we can hold you accountable.

And we'll figure out a way to make sure that you get your goal done in a reasonable amount of time. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back next week at 6 a.m. In the meantime, we hope you have a nice week and, as always, keep rocking.