Grit Comes From Learning You Aren’t As Clever As You Thought You Were

I remember when NFTs were the craze, many “investors” were aware they were valueless.

Anecdotally, I spoke with a lot of folk who believed they were all going to be the ones to get in quick and sell before the price drop. To be clear, many of those folk actually did make money. For a minute, with the right intel and timing, there were some fat stacks that got made.

How that money got declared to the government is a whole other conversation. 

Folks were dumping money into something that everyone knew would crash at some point. Let’s exclude BTC and other utility driven coins from this equation. I’m sure a lot of Etherium investors from 2016 are laughing today. 

It takes a certain kind of person to stick with something so seemingly crazy.

The NFT/crypto enthusiasts are masters of grit

That hobby took a lot of self-control and faith.

Plus you were being made fun of the entire time. Grit is defined as a personality trait characterized by perseverance and passion for achieving long-term goals, by the APA. That sounds exactly like the crypto/NFT people. 

They threw money into the void on some Russian Roulette vibes. 

The entire goal was to hold off until the value hit the target number then sell.

More and more people would invest and then as the ascent slowed, voila people would sell the coin. The aftermath is a valueless entity and many broke people facing divorces and stuff. 

A lot of people did make money, but that just means a lot more people lost money.

Unless you were really in the know, this was gambling against the casino the whole time.

What I will say is those people have grit. The ones who really stuck with it and won are laughing today. Despite the ones who lost. 

Releasing music feels exactly like that to be honest.

Capturing attention requires more creativity than the best laid plans can offer

Those crypto/NFT people knew exactly how to sell to their market, I don’t. 

I dropped a song today and from what I can tell no one really cares. 

We recorded a bunch of snippets and got about halfway through preparing a cool visual campaign. We went to the greenhouse at the Botanical Gardens of Montreal and shot flowers and stuff. Then we were supposed to go shoot stuff at flower shops.

By now a full video should have been shot. 

While on paper dropping a bunch of Reels to support the release was supposed to build up some hype, I can’t say that I achieved my results. 

The views on the Reels and TikToks show a lot of people may be aware the song exists. 

Now that it’s out, there has been very little fanfare.

When I look at the visuals I produced and compare them to what my peers put out, I can see how despite everything looking good on paper, there needs to be more effort next time.

We did everything right except coming up with a hook.

Once they are hooked they will hear what you have to say

A lot of artists who leverage social media successfully will think of a way to hook people.

The dream is to get some challenge popping off that goes to your music. Some reason to care beyond another song. Because unfortunately there are a lot of songs out there. 

We wanted to tap into nature. 

The shots we used showcased us and flowers and was meant to toy with the hook of my song which goes, it’s prolly good to take the hours to smell some flowers.

Looking at the data, we didn’t get a lot of engagement. 

This sucks to be honest. I think this is one of the best songs of my catalogue, and all the people I demoed it on really liked it. Yet I still haven’t been able to capture attention.

Next time we need to take it all one step further. Just having visuals isn’t enough. We need a hook. 

Imagine if each post had been “Today’s flower is …” and some random fact. Then just the hook plays. That may have gone a lot farther.

You need grit to take those hits, look at the truth and get better. 

Quality is more than cameras and editing

Another blow to the ego is recognizing your content isn’t that good. 

I started filming food content. I learned how those videos flow and what kinds of shots matter. You can get a sense for what works and doesn’t.

There were a couple of videos I shot I had to redo because they were bad. 

Being a person of grit I shook it off on my Taylor Swift energy and learned to do better.

While I’m not a great videographer, I’ve learned so much that the footage we shot for this campaign isn’t as good as it could be. The next time we do some run like this there will be more strategy to what we capture. Definitely more time reviewing footage on the spot.

When we set out with the idea to promote this song, my skill with video was worse. 

I’m now learning to think about how the video should look before I walk in the room. It’s not that different from structuring the headings of an article before writing. These are the experience things that elevate a craft and come through painful ego bumps 

The grit lets me learn the lessons and apply them next time. 

Take life’s Ls and prepare for the next time

To call my song getting barely any spins on day 1 a loss is a gross exaggeration.

This song has a lot of promo left in it. There is still plenty of opportunity to push it. There is also a bunch more music coming down the pipeline. 

Instead of being salty I took the lesson, be less repetitive with the next campaign and come up with a cool hook.

The next song is built on the idea of “feel good shit”. Maybe we can do a mini interview series where we ask people what feel good shit means to them? Anyway there are ways to make people feel included and care.

Then when we get their attention, I can now bust out the new joint and flex on them if I feel that’s the right style to show them. 

This time around I’m trying to avoid aimless run it up efforts and work on building real fans that want to hear the songs. If you don’t like my music, I need to know that too. 

It’s only been 12 years, could take another 12. We’ll get there.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone