Editor's Note: It is our great pleasure to welcome Danielle Egnew to Indietude. As a contributing writer,
Danielle brings her unique perspective and wisdom to indie artists everywhere We'd also like to thank
Danielle for her artistic creativity regarding our new site logo and buttons. Your awesome lady!
You'll recognize Multi-Award Winning Artist Danielle Egnew's name from a number of entertainment genres.
Boasting a highly successful Music Career as an Artist / Producer, acting in TV and Film, as well as penning
one optioned screenplay after another, Danielle Egnew is also an internationally respected Psychic Medium
and Speaker, hosting her own syndicated talk radio show "The High Road" and anchoring her own thriving
Private Practice in the Southern California area. www.danielleegnew.com/home.html
Danielle brings her unique perspective and wisdom to indie artists everywhere We'd also like to thank
Danielle for her artistic creativity regarding our new site logo and buttons. Your awesome lady!
You'll recognize Multi-Award Winning Artist Danielle Egnew's name from a number of entertainment genres.
Boasting a highly successful Music Career as an Artist / Producer, acting in TV and Film, as well as penning
one optioned screenplay after another, Danielle Egnew is also an internationally respected Psychic Medium
and Speaker, hosting her own syndicated talk radio show "The High Road" and anchoring her own thriving
Private Practice in the Southern California area. www.danielleegnew.com/home.html
Your Passion is Your Success
By Danielle Egnew
Let’s get one thing straight: Music is a process. It is not a destination, or an
outcome, or a limo and a bling party. If this is an unsatisfactory scenario for you,
then I recommend a career change before you are crippled with disappointment.
But I would be remiss in my duties as a professional in the entertainment industry
if I didn’t clue you in on one very important thing: Music is about your passion,
and your ability to represent your passion consistently. If you can do that – you
will absolutely score success.
The process of music involves your active participation in everything you decide to create, including your
future. Your future is created by stacking up little building blocks of what you have actually done today, and
the next, and the next. Do you know why it is important to watch a calendar? To write into those little squares
the things that you wish to accomplish in one year? I’ll tell you why – because time flies so quickly that it
doesn’t even need the frequent flier miles. And as an independent artist, the one key ingredient to your
career is time. Time is your secret weapon, the ultimate career sculpting clay that is, literally, either putty in
your hands, or waste material by your feet. But passion in your art is the fuel that makes the passing time
bearable.
Most artists get so hung up on the concept of “getting signed by [insert certain age here]” that they begin
working backward from that age in planning their career success. This is actually quite a shame, as not only
is the artist putting a cap on how long they will consider their art to be viable, but they are drowning their
passion in their work by prematurely ending a career while working backwards, with the wrong intentions,
in the time-management line. Completely confused? Let me give you an example:
“Julie” sings and plays guitar. Julie is 19, and decides that instead of finishing college, she wants to go for
her dream as a rock star. Julie read somewhere that A&R people won’t sign anyone over 24. So Julie decides
that she has 5 more years to try and “make it”, and if she doesn’t, she’ll have to throw in the towel. Julie then
becomes completely obsessed with herself out of desperation, pushing her career like mad because she read
somewhere else that most successful artists get launched in the business when they are 13 by parents who
are both producers – and Julie’s parents worked in a hardware store and WalMart. (Not to mention she didn’t
start until she was 19, so already Julie thinks she has wasted 6 years of career making time.) By the time Julie
is 22, she has one CD out, she’s played the Midwest, she’s had some reviews in some e-zines and some local
print mags, but she’s still panicked. No on in LA knows who she is, and she’s gained 12 pounds from stress
eating. By the time she’s 23, Julie has saved up enough money to move to LA, sure this will be her lucky year.
She spends all her time going to DYI seminars and desperately trying to network while every industry person
from here to Andromeda smells her desperation -- and runs. Julie turns 24, with one CD under her belt. She
lives alone in LA, plays a coffee shop circuit that she is barely maintaining because she has no draw, and has
a weird job at a 99 cent store. She doesn’t have a record deal, she can’t remember why she even got into this
crappy business, she wants to go home because now that she’s 24, she’s over the hill, and she’s furious she
didn’t finish her business degree in college because she could at least be making $30,000 a year back
managing the WalMart.
Now. Besides the obvious – what is wrong with this picture? Julie got a CD, she played shows, she even
moved to LA – but let’s take note of HOW those 6 years in her life were spent. They were passionless, and
planned. They were spent counting backwards, in fear, of that 24th year. Let me get one thing perfectly
clear: FEAR and SUCCESS cannot simultaneously exist in the same space, at the same time. You can be
fearful, but while you are fearful, the success cannot come in. It’s an issue of Spiritual Physics. And while
you are Successful, the Fear cannot come in. It works both ways. If you are wishing to assign a timeline to
your success, then I don’t recommend the arts, as music, and the rest of the arts, is a spiritual language, an
energetic language. And there’s no putting fate on a timeline. However, there is such thing as ushering fate
in, sooner than later. You can accomplish this by DOING, rather than PLANNING.
For instance, time is an artist’s greatest asset, as you may use it however you see fit. You may fill it with
recording one month, with promotions one evening, with house concerts one weekend. But to succeed in
your music, you must fill in those squares on your calendar with actual executed events that peddle that
effort forward. To count backwards from a “deadline” in your career is the same as perpetually planning
something that will never come to pass. An architect does not start with selling the gym memberships first,
then buying the work-out equipment, then laying the carpet, then putting a roof on, then laying the foundation
of the gym he is designing. An architect starts with a pencil and quite often, a napkin, and a great idea. And
he BUILDS FORWARD, not backward. The architect does not say, “If this building is not built in two years,
then I must retire forever.” The architect understands that he is only one link in the creation chain, but a
foundational link on which all things are built. He does not control the construction crew. He designs what
the crew will be building.
An artist is the same way. You must design your art, and create it. But you don’t control the label that
wishes to sign you. If you decide to have more command over your timeline, then you can become your
own label, and you can sign yourself, therefore taking the “future expectation” of “whether or not” you’ll be
singed off the stress table – to open you up to sheer creation and marketing of that passionate said creation.
In fact, most successful artists are people who have been working for 8-14 years on their music to become an
“overnight” success when their music “finally catches on”. However, these people have not been begrudging
the time spent on their music. They have enjoyed every moment of the creation (besides the usual ups and
downs of being human), and the marketing, and the nurturing of the process, until one day they woke up, and
the world had finally caught up to all of their hard work. Usually, these successfully folks hardly notice the time
that has passed, because they have experienced so much passion and joy in their journey.
Yes, business is important. Yes, it is important to have knowledge of the industry, and a plan. But, to have the
plan and the press kit and the slick attorney and the street team isn’t going to do you much good if your music
is passionless. If YOU are passionless, because you have become all about the destination, about receiving
the final stamp of approval called a “record deal” from a music industry that frankly, isn’t designed to approve
of anyone. YOU must approve of YOURSELF before anyone will want to partner with you in terms of anything
in your career – especially a label deal. Most music industry professionals are under a great deal of pressure
– especially since the record industry has sustained crippling sales losses this past year due to the fact that
the major labels chose to ignore the independent artist movement. The major music industry – and most
humans -- are typically drawn to happy people who are happy with themselves and their life. So approve
of yourself, and they will approve of you.
The success of your career is not linked with the length of time you have been working on your music -- 6
months, for a year, or for 15 years. What matters is how true you are to your own energy signature in your
work, because that truth will bring to you truthful results. How true are you to capturing your own spirit in
your music, and letting it shine, no matter what is one the radio? How brave are you, in the face of a “joiner”
industry, to stand in the center of your passion and fearlessly create, then be thrilled with your creation? If
your answer is, “Who cares how brave I am as long as it is commercial,” then punkin’, you’ll never be
commercial, because “becoming commercial” only happens once the industry decides you have something
to sell.
And how do they decide you have something to sell? They can feel it. And what is the ever-illusive “it”? IT
is your passion. Don’t wait for the right vibe to succeed. BE the vibe. BE your passion. BE your own success.
www.danielleegnew.com/home.html
By Danielle Egnew
Let’s get one thing straight: Music is a process. It is not a destination, or an
outcome, or a limo and a bling party. If this is an unsatisfactory scenario for you,
then I recommend a career change before you are crippled with disappointment.
But I would be remiss in my duties as a professional in the entertainment industry
if I didn’t clue you in on one very important thing: Music is about your passion,
and your ability to represent your passion consistently. If you can do that – you
will absolutely score success.
The process of music involves your active participation in everything you decide to create, including your
future. Your future is created by stacking up little building blocks of what you have actually done today, and
the next, and the next. Do you know why it is important to watch a calendar? To write into those little squares
the things that you wish to accomplish in one year? I’ll tell you why – because time flies so quickly that it
doesn’t even need the frequent flier miles. And as an independent artist, the one key ingredient to your
career is time. Time is your secret weapon, the ultimate career sculpting clay that is, literally, either putty in
your hands, or waste material by your feet. But passion in your art is the fuel that makes the passing time
bearable.
Most artists get so hung up on the concept of “getting signed by [insert certain age here]” that they begin
working backward from that age in planning their career success. This is actually quite a shame, as not only
is the artist putting a cap on how long they will consider their art to be viable, but they are drowning their
passion in their work by prematurely ending a career while working backwards, with the wrong intentions,
in the time-management line. Completely confused? Let me give you an example:
“Julie” sings and plays guitar. Julie is 19, and decides that instead of finishing college, she wants to go for
her dream as a rock star. Julie read somewhere that A&R people won’t sign anyone over 24. So Julie decides
that she has 5 more years to try and “make it”, and if she doesn’t, she’ll have to throw in the towel. Julie then
becomes completely obsessed with herself out of desperation, pushing her career like mad because she read
somewhere else that most successful artists get launched in the business when they are 13 by parents who
are both producers – and Julie’s parents worked in a hardware store and WalMart. (Not to mention she didn’t
start until she was 19, so already Julie thinks she has wasted 6 years of career making time.) By the time Julie
is 22, she has one CD out, she’s played the Midwest, she’s had some reviews in some e-zines and some local
print mags, but she’s still panicked. No on in LA knows who she is, and she’s gained 12 pounds from stress
eating. By the time she’s 23, Julie has saved up enough money to move to LA, sure this will be her lucky year.
She spends all her time going to DYI seminars and desperately trying to network while every industry person
from here to Andromeda smells her desperation -- and runs. Julie turns 24, with one CD under her belt. She
lives alone in LA, plays a coffee shop circuit that she is barely maintaining because she has no draw, and has
a weird job at a 99 cent store. She doesn’t have a record deal, she can’t remember why she even got into this
crappy business, she wants to go home because now that she’s 24, she’s over the hill, and she’s furious she
didn’t finish her business degree in college because she could at least be making $30,000 a year back
managing the WalMart.
Now. Besides the obvious – what is wrong with this picture? Julie got a CD, she played shows, she even
moved to LA – but let’s take note of HOW those 6 years in her life were spent. They were passionless, and
planned. They were spent counting backwards, in fear, of that 24th year. Let me get one thing perfectly
clear: FEAR and SUCCESS cannot simultaneously exist in the same space, at the same time. You can be
fearful, but while you are fearful, the success cannot come in. It’s an issue of Spiritual Physics. And while
you are Successful, the Fear cannot come in. It works both ways. If you are wishing to assign a timeline to
your success, then I don’t recommend the arts, as music, and the rest of the arts, is a spiritual language, an
energetic language. And there’s no putting fate on a timeline. However, there is such thing as ushering fate
in, sooner than later. You can accomplish this by DOING, rather than PLANNING.
For instance, time is an artist’s greatest asset, as you may use it however you see fit. You may fill it with
recording one month, with promotions one evening, with house concerts one weekend. But to succeed in
your music, you must fill in those squares on your calendar with actual executed events that peddle that
effort forward. To count backwards from a “deadline” in your career is the same as perpetually planning
something that will never come to pass. An architect does not start with selling the gym memberships first,
then buying the work-out equipment, then laying the carpet, then putting a roof on, then laying the foundation
of the gym he is designing. An architect starts with a pencil and quite often, a napkin, and a great idea. And
he BUILDS FORWARD, not backward. The architect does not say, “If this building is not built in two years,
then I must retire forever.” The architect understands that he is only one link in the creation chain, but a
foundational link on which all things are built. He does not control the construction crew. He designs what
the crew will be building.
An artist is the same way. You must design your art, and create it. But you don’t control the label that
wishes to sign you. If you decide to have more command over your timeline, then you can become your
own label, and you can sign yourself, therefore taking the “future expectation” of “whether or not” you’ll be
singed off the stress table – to open you up to sheer creation and marketing of that passionate said creation.
In fact, most successful artists are people who have been working for 8-14 years on their music to become an
“overnight” success when their music “finally catches on”. However, these people have not been begrudging
the time spent on their music. They have enjoyed every moment of the creation (besides the usual ups and
downs of being human), and the marketing, and the nurturing of the process, until one day they woke up, and
the world had finally caught up to all of their hard work. Usually, these successfully folks hardly notice the time
that has passed, because they have experienced so much passion and joy in their journey.
Yes, business is important. Yes, it is important to have knowledge of the industry, and a plan. But, to have the
plan and the press kit and the slick attorney and the street team isn’t going to do you much good if your music
is passionless. If YOU are passionless, because you have become all about the destination, about receiving
the final stamp of approval called a “record deal” from a music industry that frankly, isn’t designed to approve
of anyone. YOU must approve of YOURSELF before anyone will want to partner with you in terms of anything
in your career – especially a label deal. Most music industry professionals are under a great deal of pressure
– especially since the record industry has sustained crippling sales losses this past year due to the fact that
the major labels chose to ignore the independent artist movement. The major music industry – and most
humans -- are typically drawn to happy people who are happy with themselves and their life. So approve
of yourself, and they will approve of you.
The success of your career is not linked with the length of time you have been working on your music -- 6
months, for a year, or for 15 years. What matters is how true you are to your own energy signature in your
work, because that truth will bring to you truthful results. How true are you to capturing your own spirit in
your music, and letting it shine, no matter what is one the radio? How brave are you, in the face of a “joiner”
industry, to stand in the center of your passion and fearlessly create, then be thrilled with your creation? If
your answer is, “Who cares how brave I am as long as it is commercial,” then punkin’, you’ll never be
commercial, because “becoming commercial” only happens once the industry decides you have something
to sell.
And how do they decide you have something to sell? They can feel it. And what is the ever-illusive “it”? IT
is your passion. Don’t wait for the right vibe to succeed. BE the vibe. BE your passion. BE your own success.
www.danielleegnew.com/home.html
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