Published: Friday - February 15, 2008
Words by Donny Goines
Blog by Donny Goines (Photo: Don Hankins)
The other night I went down to boy Fokis' studio, so we could do a collab and we started talking about this topic. He was explaining his situation and I noticed how his paralleled to mines. I'm sure you can relate as well.
When running your own business (as an artist, you ARE a business), you have to learn how to multi-task and take care of several things by yourself. Although you may have a team in place, you still need know how manage, take care of publicity, basic responsibilities involving the business, etc. and sometimes operate as if its just you alone.
As an artist, it may be difficult sometimes to do this, but I will give you a few suggestions that may help. First you need to assess the situation as a whole and figure out what gaps need to be filled. For example, if you have a manager and publicist already, you may need to take on another job that's not being done such as booking agent (that's what I do, lol). Once you figure that out, your next step would be time management. You need to divide up duties and make sure that they don't take away from your main duty, which is making and performing music. Finally you may need to take some sort of classes or education in order to get what you need done if you don't have the resources to hire someone else (maybe go to an engineer school or learn how to use Protools if you can't afford studio sessions). Simply put, you might have to learn how to do another job entirely.
Since I've started I wore many different hats -- Manager, Publicist, Booking Agent, Accountant, etc. But, I never hang up the most important one which is the "Artist."
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