Systemize Your Music Business

We are moving fast this year. 30 days can come and go in the blink of an eye.

How are you coming with your New Years Resolutions? Something better than resolutions are goals. How about your GOALS?

I set some goals for this year and its been a crazy so far. What Ive learned and working to apply in my business this year are systems. Systemizing your business helps you put it on autopilot. Successful businesses are run by systems and those systems are run by people.

What is autopilot? It simply means your business runs without you, the owner, being there. Just let that sink in for a minute.

A true business is one where the owner doesnt have to be there for it to operate. In fact, in some cases, the business will run even better if the owner wasnt there.

This is done by systemizing your business.

How do we apply this to the music business?

Lets say you are an artist who wants to start a label. You really dont want to be a day-in, day-out businessman. You just want to write, record, and perform music and build a business around your talents to support your career.

You need a team of people around you to help you realize that vision. You need a personal manager, a business manager, and an entertainment attorney. You will also need a booking agent when booking shows gets to be too much for your personal manager.

These people help manage you as an artist. Now as far as your label is concerned, you are going to need to systemize recording your music as well as mixing and mastering it. Once you have that completed you need to find a good distributor.

In the meantime, while all this is going on, you still have to have a marketing division so that fans will know who you are.

The most successful artists have done this WELL! Look at artists like Jay Z & Ludacris who own labels but are still artist. They have their companies on autopilot. Another example would be the Rolling Stones. They have been in the game for years.

Even though the Stones dont own their record label, they still have their careers on autopilot. They only have to focus on recording and performing music. People are hired to run systems that do the other parts of the business to support their career.

Wouldnt you like for your career to be like this too?

So how to we systemize?

Make a list of all the tasks it takes to operate your business. You really have to break your business down. In the food industry, McDonalds is the perfect business model.

Actually, McDonalds is the perfect business model for any industry.

The owner of a Mickey Ds franchise doesnt have to work the register, cook the fries, flip the burgers, and work the drive-thru window. McDonalds has its systems in place. When you buy a McDonalds franchise, everything is already set up for you and anybody can operate it.

You should think of your business the same way. A good business system can be duplicated, packaged up, and sold.

Its good to have an exit strategy as well for your business. At what point would you sell your business?

Jay Z and his partners built Roc-A-Fella Records from the ground up and sold it for millions. Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons did the same thing with Def Jam Recordings. These businesses were valuable because they were systemized.

Truly systemizing your business is the way to be financially free in the future because it frees up you time to do the things you really want to do.

There is a business saying that holds true and stands the test of time:

"Work on your business and not in it".

This means delegate the mundane, time consuming tasks that need to happen but suck up all your time. You should be using your time to be creative and grow your business.

Start by brainstorming everything you want to do this week.

Pick the top three tasks so you wont get overwhelmed by trying to systemize your whole business at one time.

Take those tasks and break them down step by step. From this list, you create a procedure manual anybody from off the street can pick up and implement to run that particular system in your business.

Thats how you know when your business is truly systemized.