Is this good advice?
I was a touring musician and worldwide busker. Music was my passion, but the money was only subsistence-level, and my band kept hitting walls that a cash injection should've let us bypass. On the other hand, our poverty drove us to be EXTREMELY aggressive in advertising and EXTREMELY good (because if we sucked, then we were poor and had no good excuses). We'd blow bands off the stage and they'd look at us like superhumans. Then we'd have to raid a food pantry or eat 7-11 pizza out of sheer desperation.Once we got to the worldwide touring, it was obvious that the stakes got higher and you'd need to be more than just a scrappy DIY entity. Actually, our pattern was to break from tour, build up some cash, tour even more extensively, rinse-repeat. Being broke gets a lot more real when you're in Poland versus your home town.What you end up seeing is that financial incentives start to taint your music and life. For example, I agreed to a lot of gigs that were just for the money. Other times, I'd tone down certain songs for public consumption (saving the "real" versions for art shows and such), but these compromises started to seep into my decision making, and it's hard to tell your girlfriend/bandmate that you've got this art song that you won't dare play for cruise ship passengers.I saw this cycle a bunch and I can rant on about this if you're interested. The main point I'll make is that I knew people who had day jobs and/or trust fund money. For the wagies, they eventually shelved their art projects as the years progressed, maybe playing a vanity gig from time to time to prove that "they still had it." For the trusties, they tended to have the best gear and opportunities, but also slowly trickled out into nothing as the ROI of putting in hours eventually led them to music-adjacent professions or a 180 into the public sector for a nepo job.
>>35015612Based on my personal experience this is bad advice. I would argue growing your personal finances should become one of the things you love and to this end you'll end up loving anything that accomplishes this goal.
>>35015763I second this. I’ve branched out into my second career after the goal of being a touring musician was a success >>35015684My second interest in life was writing, and I had a similar trajectory. I attained success back in the MySpace days of posting blogs totaling 900 memoir-esque blogs totaling 450,000 words. Then I wrote a book about busking, several poetry collections, and other weird stuff. Now writing is my career and has been fairly lucrative working for celebrities, Fortune 100 companies, and small businesses (and crazy people). I found it fun to learn how to get top-tier gigs and it was varied enough that I have a number of “adjacent skill sets” that enhances money-getting. It tops out at $200,000/year but I like to work less to pursue my other projects.From writing, I’ve launched an affiliate website which I improve daily. From music, I’ve developed a portfolio of songs and bumper music to transition into an old man career of composing music. Plus, I don’t have to live off music, so I can play in a number of art ensembles to attain things that money can’t buy, like manageable fame/status, better access to people/places/events, and arthoes.The one thing I’ve never seen is a wagie getting out of their golden handcuffs. So grinding a career that makes you miserable so you can have toys and space to create is a losing strategy unless you seriously moonlight.
>>35015875Tourist here interested in affiliate stuff, shoot you a dm somewhere?
>>35015763>I would argue growing your personal finances should become one of the things you love and to this end you'll end up loving anything that accomplishes this goal.Nigga that's what the fucking post is saying, obviously you should get your money right before you try and venture into something thinking loving is the only thing needed. You think famous actors were just doing gigs for the love of the game at the beginning? No they were trying to afford fucking groceries, the fun in their fame only came AFTER they became rich.
>Is this good advice?Well, it didn't come from here; so that's one thing in its favour.
>>35015612>just get rich bro>is this good advicei mean yeah if you can just get rich
>>35015684>financial incentives start to taint your music and life. For example, I agreed to a lot of gigs that were just for the money.Most people spend 40 hours a week doing this anon.It's not just music.
Omg I do my job for money am I a bitch senpai?
>>35017240it's not what the post is saying... at all actually. "Doing something you love to pay the bills is only fun after you make it." Key word here is after, I suggested that rather than grinding through something you hate with the possibility that it leads you to the thing that you want to do (Like the post is saying) you instead learn to love the means to the end itself. You learn to love the financial growth, not just seeing it as a means to get to do the thing that you love, it becomes the thing you love. This way life stops being so miserable and you can immediately do something that you love instead of using the misery as an excuse for getting where you want to be, because it’s always possible you don’t get there and then you’ve just wasted your life being miserable.Istg people's literacy never used to be this poor.
>>35015612Yes. If you have an opportunity to make good money, take it. It's literally about who tells who what to do. If you have 10 mil, you can make someone else your slave for years and years. If you have no money, you're going to be the slave.
>>35015612No it's not good advice because the guy is posturing. Actual wealthy people who know how to make money work for itself don't fantasize limp-dick sentiments like the retard in the screencap.
>>35017435I agree and disagree.First, as a musician, there's the journeyman stage - where you don't have as much control over which gigs you can play, but the initial excitement carries you through. What happens in these nascent stages is that you can feel what it is ACTUALLY like, not what you imagined. I mean, I played CBGBs in the early 2000s and it was NOT a cool place. Frankly, I saw it as a tourist trap venue for scumbags and has-beens. Then we played L'amour (same place as Metallica making it) and the loading room/green room was full of risers not unlike a middle school jazz band. It was a severe letdown, and I even saw some young bands before us sneaking snips from a handle of whiskey, which made it even more lame and performative. We played a good performance and were invited to support national touring acts. We barely made any money.>the fantasy erodes...Later, I played in other bands and we made more cash. I remember a HORRIBLE private gig in Maine for money ($100 + free brunch) that I thought we bombed, only to have a woman eagerly come up to us and offer a similar gig in the same week for... a NURSING HOME. Yep, we could play the nursing home circuit (which is a thing, btw), and we even earnestly followed up before we realized what we were doing. Hell, after this gig, we went down to Provincetown and played for gays (not my audience); even then, they offered us the same thing (plus we'd make $250/night for busking). Now, as my other bands got more success, we could certainly get more gigs, but it was an endless stream of "paying dues" and letdowns. Hell, if we blew a band off stage when touring, I'd sometimes get threats from local acts that got outshined...>and that's when I started to realize......that this was the same as OFFICE politics. The only difference was setting.If we had been wealthy before this, we could've skipped most of this crap. You can be more selective. While you can't escape the 9-5, you can certainly choose ur misery.
>>35015612>If you wanna have fun do THISWhat people find fun or fulfilling is highly subjective. So his advice will work for some people and not for others. For that reason, I'll call it mid advice. The only way to find out if it would work for you is to live both lifestyles and compare for yourself which was more fun.
>>35015612You can't "Get rich first" in this life. At least not intentionally.If you intend to get rich, it will cost you. It will cost you youth and the ability to feel joy. Everybody else is happy despite not being rich.The real issue is if you're asking the question, most likely you're already fucked, you were already put by others into the path of "Make money before being happy", you only question it because for the first time you're able to choose, but you have already lost time and developed a ratrace mindset, so keep trying to get rich is closer than undoing the brainwash.
>>35015612If you get a good paying 9-5 job chances are you will have no time to even think about your dream and it will fade away.If you have no job you will likely get burnt out from barely scraping by and eventually need to move on anyways.The best balance is a job that still allows you plenty of time and energy to work on your dream. Much easier said than done.I have been in all three of these situations.But there's an important caveat. I suck/do things that only I care about. I was never going to make it anyways, nor was I ever really chasing success with my dream. I just wanted to get good at what I was doing (in an extremely niche thing that only I care about).I think the best approach is to go for it when you're young. Make sure you have at least a little money, or a part time job, or you know how to look after yourself - don't kill yourself. But go for that dream early. Either you suck like me but you get some good experiences (and you might be able to turn it into an adjacent career - I have seen people do this) or you actually do make it. Either way, you're not left wondering what could have been.
>>35018017Funny thing about humans. Their brains will learn and refine through attention and repetition, not even exhaustive ones, just by consistency. And if the thing you do doesn't need near perfection to be possible, the flaws will go over people's minds.Look at people who draw, there's all kinds of currents of thought about training, a lot of pain staking routines and methods, all of them with high cost in attention and mechanical ability. Yet the most charming art is half assed, they get to professional quality by sticking with it, and the most deciding factor for that is liking it in the first place. As long as you stick with something, you will find a way to make bank out of it.And yes, like the other anon says, there's people who will just throw money at everything without giving a fuck or knowing jackshit, clinging to them like a commensal bird picking off ticks is valid but will get you only that far.It's far more valuable to live a life you enjoy without looking towards impossible shit or shooting yourself in the foot by starting something you need to be perfect to make it or break it. Time is the only shit you're not getting back.
>>35018053>>35018017> As long as you stick with something, you will find a way to make bank out of it.This I've found to be FALSE. I used to live in these indie rock hotspots (Athens, GA; Portland, OR, etc) and there's no shortage of people that grind out unimaginable slop for decades and NEVER make bank.Oh, you'll get pity money from friends because you're "in the scene" (e.g., they're your coworkers at some restaurant), but what worked for me was working long days of unpaid rehearsal and writing at the expense of personal comfort. You find more opportunities at the threshold of pain tolerance and verifiable, incremental success. And then you have to steer your efforts towards making more of these opportunities to manifest by "luck" and networking. >most people burnout at the first bad gig or rejectionI know I'll catch some flak for this, but Sam Hyde has a lot of advice for creatives. And even he was rich from the beginning and then worked in car sales (as well as suing a dude for sexual harassment to the tune of $10,000 at an office job). Anyways, Sam's advice boils down to taking a "workman's approach" to art, grinding for hours, and consistently producing something that another person can see as you're oeuvre. >here's the rubYou can toil away at shit and never get ANYWHERE if you don't understand basic business principles like marketing, when to scale your business, local maxima/minima (ex., there are only so many pizzas being bought in Akron, OH on any given night), perfect vs. good enough, and more. Artists skip that step or feel that it cheapens their work. I have a friend in NYC who plays in major venues for A- and B-list celebrities, and he worked hard on self-producing an EP that's never come to fruition. Instead, he'd pontificate on why social media is bad while spending hundreds of hours grinding on shit no one wants to hear. He even got a massive pimple on his ear from all the hours he spent with headphones on. >still sounds like shit
>>35018096But brother, that's exactly what I was talking about.You are infected with the mind virus.It's too late for you, get it? Now that you're focused on getting rich, there's no way back for you. You will keep grasping at stars, you won't stop wanting shit. You will keep filling your life with advice on how to get rich, how to be best at business, how to make a profit etc. Could it be that a hard time of being poor triggered it? Whatever it is, you're stained now and it's gonna follow you wherever you fucking go, even if you do become rich. Main fucking reason the rich keep striving for richer.Yeah, there's so many pizzas ordered in the city and shit gets to an equilibrium. Some brainlet working that will say "Oh, at least it still pays the bill" and will go home to fuck his wife and get drunk with his friends. He's content. Whoever has that mindset but gets the short end of the stick will STILL go with the flow and say "Oh, I liked making pizzas, but I also love the city lights, I'm gonna do uber". So and so they keep flowing and filling every niche and are content with it. This is when they risk getting infected from a debt or a day feeling lost too long, but those who don't are happy in that equilibrium, that's the point of being alive.Now go keep chasing your own tail, wagie. The rich need the energy from your movement and the poor need you to keep pushing them through.
>>35018248>You are infected with the mind virus.Nah.>It's too late for you, get it?Nope. DOOMER MINDSET. I've already succeeded in a myriad of ways. And maybe that's what I'm getting at: redefining the definition of success. As you get older, being poor becomes less viable, so you realize you need to step up in the money-getting area. I mean, once I got off touring, I worked all sorts of wagie jobs (ie. driving a truck, installing vinyl graphics in the Bay Area, trimming pot, restaurant gigs, delivery, etc.), realized the trappings of wage work (you're a slave that has their life determined by others), and eventually worked myself up by starting my own writing business (and even made royalties off my eBooks). I worked for Walmart for Business and made $40,000 in two months because I had the grind mindset, working towards art, rechanneled. I worked for TikTok making $1,800/week plus other jobs, and the same musician grindset worked (ex., become more efficient, learn adjacent skill sets, and purchase gear to do so, like Stream Decks to trigger scripts/macros).As far as feeling content, all of that goes away when the same family man goes unhinged in traffic at some sports stadium, an old person pays with a check at a store, or some office worker drone refuses to leave a bar because THIS IS HER NIGHT and they were out of Bloody Mary mixers. People live lives of quiet desperation - and I find that any art-inclined person that puts in a REAL effort AND maintains a business mindset is rewarded.I lived with people that renounced financial success in lieu of finances in communes or Rainbow Gatherings. The smart ones settled down and their "gestation" period of grinding could be ignited. One of my friends managed to learn welding but worked at a thrift store. Once she marketed herself well, she started selling her art to an audience of lesbians.>The rich need the energy from your movement and the poor need you to keep pushing them through.Doomer mindset.
Only to an extent, there's a lot of ways to tie what you love into what you do so you don't need to completely compromise. For example if you love music, there's tons of ways you can still be in the music "industry" and make decent money even if you aren't the one actually producing music for money. You can program music related software, you can be in sales, you can be a corporate drone for a big music distributor, you can own a small mom and pop used CD store, you can be a music teacher or own your own music school, there's a ton of things you can do with music other than being the guy playing the guitar.I think people get too tied into the idea they need to do EXACTLY what their passion is with 0 compromise. But you can do a job that furthers your passion, and then spend your free time pursuing those passions.Or you just get a nice paying job, and then spend your free time focusing on pursing your hobby in a healthy manner. Which is the other thing I don't get about this concept. I have a 9-5, I spend 2-4 hours a day working on my hobbies and interests. I'm better than a lot of people who don't have a job and focus solely on it. In large part because my job means my hobby starts fun and interesting, I don't get burned out because it's my retreat from my day job. Am I ever going to be the best in the world? Probably not, but I wouldn't be the best in the world if I quit my job and had been doing this since I was 13 either.
>>35018270I'm glad you thrive in the business of selling bullshit, but your kind is overrepresented in the self-help area. Maybe I don't have what you have, I would feel like killing myself if I had to sell bullshit to people for a living, and pinpointing why I think like that is a whole other beast. The failure to make use of your advice is that people are not made the same. I don't deny business is the new literacy, It's just that not everyone can feel energized by business thinking and putting some of the people through that will give them their chunk of misery, while a lot of them feel alright living in the moment, i.e. they drive enjoyment from something aside from working and work what they're comfortable with.But I point out there's people hammering themselves over not being good at something they love and they keep putting effort with diminishing returns and either the shit isn't paying the bills or the money is not what they want. These are the people who have the hardest time. You tell them "Go learn business", and they can't be assed to learn business because it takes time away from doing what they wanted to do, so they do bad at business as well. In shit like medicine you get told a lot that you're nothing if you don't have perfect recall over a lot of shit, and the reminder that they're right is constant. Imagine the damage that causes if your guy isn't the type to quit and start over some new gig.
>>35018323>You can program music related software, you can be in sales, you can be a corporate drone for a big music distributor, you can own a small mom and pop used CD store, you can be a music teacher or own your own music schoolAside from teaching, none of those have to do with "loving music", they're just corporate roles that play the same in any industry.
>>35018339Sure but it ties into your love.You could program for anything, but when the end result is something you care about it makes the job so much easier to get through.I've had jobs where I've just coded random software people just hand to me, and it's fine and pays the bills. But there's a huge difference between that and creating a tool for the stuff I actually care about, because in the latter case I actually connect with what it's for, can add my own recommendations, and even use it once I'm done. If you're just a minimum wage cashier, there's a huge difference between sitting at a grocery store, and being able to chat with people about their music choices as they pay.
>>35018350I like to draw, I have thought some program that allows me to construct perspective would help me a lot. But you won't see me learning math and coding to build that shit nigger. I guess your post is more about finding your kind of people.
>>35018337> selling bullshitCommon complaint from the unknowing. The skills I learned in offices and through freelancing helped me develop my file system and version control. The work quality also showed me what works and what doesn't. I may not care about certain client work (I've had over 500), but every industry - including art - follows the same mechanisms.>people are not made the sameno shit.>energized from business thinkingthat's like saying you get energized from learning Hanon scalar exercises. I get the energy from the capabilities and understanding I attain, then leveraging those and reassessing opportunities. I never feel bored with this; it's a mindset shift that's enticing. Knowledge IS power, and many people are content to ride bad ideas to their logical conclusion without updating their belief system(s). >hammering themselvesI grew up with no talent but grinding. From school work to musicianship to my other hobbies, the time you put in is directly correlated to your success. The main problem with those in creative fields is that they think they can avoid the hours; I'd say that creative work takes MORE work. It's rewarding if you see it make you better over time, or other people keep saying, "damn, you're good.">>35018339Doomer mindset. I've worked for newspapers and the connections you can get cannot be found unless you're in the industry. Same for music, and yeah, doing the grunt work can seem unrelated. But, for example, if you're putting up Spotify pages for artists, you're learning a professional template. If you're making a website, you have a realistic yardstick of what people consider professional. Hell, I learned some programming and I regularly use that for Ableton Max ideas. I'd never know that if I didn't work on debugging software. All this makes you more capable of success AND enjoyment. Heck, it helps with dating, too, where I can just send my instagram of me playing solo acoustic guitar and I get my dick sucked for free
>>35015612Really, just don't turn a hobby into a job unless you're willing to ruin it for yourself. If you do something for fun, don't turn it into work.
>>35018363I mean coding is just one example.There's art stores, museums, companies that sell art related products. You could get into money laundering.The options are there if you wanted to find them.
>>35017858>make money work for itselfYou need to have money to do this in the first place.
>>35018053You're ignoring all those people who have been drawing for years and never improve. Some even get worse, somehow.
>>35015612Nope. It is a false dichotomy. You can do what you enjoy and work on getting rich at the same time. Do them both first.
