chances...?

As you'll all have seen I'm trying to grasp whether this creating a business plan is relevant all over a wide variety of professions. I think my lack of motivation is down to a number of factors, but then I thought about it from a different perspective. When your on a treadmill and it starts getting that little bit too difficult and your legs go a bit wobbly and you think mehhh enough... but you know you havent quite run as far as you would have liked... what do you do? Well for me, I switch it to a screen where I can see my distance or my time and I think to myself *Just get to this point* whether its 5km or 30mins, and I noticed I tend to get a mini kick, its that little bit of hope that says your a little closer to your goal, sometimes i'd do that a couple of time and before I now it I've been on there for an extra mile. Well what if I applied the same target setting to my career, and like I create a fitness plan a few months before a half marathon, I write up a business plan. I could write he plan of everything I want to achieve overall, then break it down into how I would go about achieving those things, and then put little time brackets in for when I would like to have achieved these things by. And sure, you never know what life is going to throw at you, and things maybe go a little faster or slower than planned, but then at least I can track this and keep note of why and how to remedy it in the future. Like we were advised for this module to plan out our study for the summer and new term months, I know I felt a lot more productive when I realised I could tick a lot of those things off.

Over the summer I've been trying out a lot of different things, such as, one reoccurring theme was lots of open mic nights and getting involved wherever I can, so I have run an open mic night at a local venue, joined a local original music promotion company, joined other acts in their gigs, gigged as a covers duo , gigged as an originals duo, performed backing vocals,  and helped recording.

Another theme was learn to play and write your own music, so I bought a guitar, started having lessons, started co writing with other musicians and now write solo.

Another theme was publicise yourself,  since learning a bit more about the ways in which I could exploit the internet for personal gain, I have now got my own website under construction http://www.georgiebird.co.uk/ (again its under construction so please dont judge it too harshly)  a thriving musician page on facebook, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Georgie-Bird/416931698408343 one (now retired but previously thriving) music page on facebook https://www.facebook.com/littlebirdandfriends, a soundcloud page with recordings https://soundcloud.com/georgiebirdmusic#, professional photographs, a twitter account linked to my facebook page, a professional email account set up to my website,  I'm also set up on radio airplay and Bandcamp. (however these are still being worked on). Though I have a few more sites to tackle, this is massive progress to what I hadat the beginning of the year.

So the next theme is creating a plan... I've come to the conclusion that this is important. I have found a musician that I really look up to. Dave is in a band called sinfiction, http://www.sinfiction.co.uk/ he has become both a friend and a mentor to me. He has everything planned. Not in the sense that he knows where he will be in a years time, because who knows what doors might open, but in the sense that he knows exactly what he needs to do to keep progressing at a good rate and get to where he would to be in a years time. He advised that he splits the year up in to quarters and at the same time as gigging and rehearsing weekly, each quarter is dedicated to a different area of promoting the band. For example this quarter is dedicated to getting radio airplay and air time. So his advice to me was work out steps you need to take, and then work out how you can do them, and get doing it. Book things in, because then you know you have a date to work to.

The autobiographies and biographies didn't mention any of these singers having a plan, but most of them clearly had luck on their side as each one kind of had fame fall into their laps one day when they were out playing a small time gig. BUT sitting and waiting for something to happen doesnt make it happen. So all these 'how to guides' are telling me to make a plan and go out there and make it happen, as no one else is going to do it for me and now its not all about just bagging a record deal. Would you really be willing to leave your entire career up to pure chance? Or do you think planning and achieving is the way forward?