The 5 elements needed to succeed in the music industry.

You’re about to learn the five crucial elements that have fueled the success of all great musicians’ careers. Until you possess these key elements yourself, it will be almost impossible for you to achieve your musical dreams and build a successful career in the music industry.

Read below to discover these five key elements and act on the information you learn:

Music Career Success Key #1 – Don’t Set Realistic Goals

Not all of the most famous and successful musicians achieved their goals by thinking realistically about what seemed possible. Rather, they focused their minds like a laser ONLY on what they really wanted. When you set your goals based on what you want most, you’ll be much more motivated to actually achieve them. More on that in a moment…

Think about this – which of the following choices would inspire you to devote all of your time and energy to developing a music career? :

Record a demo with a band and maybe play a few shows around town.

Writing hits for an awesome band, then promoting your music by going on a massive world tour – playing to stadiums full of fans, making tons of money from music sales alone, and never working a regular job again.
Even if your goals in the music industry are completely removed from releasing music, the principle remains the same: don’t let yourself accept less than what you really want in your music career, just to be realistic. Life is too precious to live it by not doing the things you truly want. When you set goals that don’t inspire you, it’s almost guaranteed that you will NEVER achieve the things you truly desire in music.

All the biggest rockstars are people like you. They started small – whether it was broke with no idea how they were going to break into music, lacking musical talent or having no band to play with… Just imagine where they would be now if they were told that their music career dreams were unrealistic or seemed impossible. Well, of course they didn’t… they followed their dreams and made them come true!

You have to do what they did. Start building your music career by focusing on what you WANT, not what seems possible.

Music Career Success Key #2 – Manifest Your Musical Dreams Into Reality Before They Come True

Musicians who never achieve anything significant in this industry carve paths to their goals starting from where they are in the present moment.

On the other hand, highly successful musicians do something completely different. They plan their music career starting from the end point of achieving their goals, then work backwards to the present day. They already imagine themselves having accomplished their major goals, then build their lives around this vision. This is a much more effective way to determine exactly what actions are needed to put your music career together.

Music Career Success Key #3 – Start Living or Start Dying

The two keys mentioned above are crucial to building a successful music career. With that in mind, you need more than goals and an action plan to achieve your musical dreams. You must take action every day to get closer to your goals. You might think this is common knowledge, but you’d be shocked how many musicians give up on their musical dreams simply due to lack of effort (in terms of physical action).

Visualize this scenario (I use it as inspiration for the professional musicians I mentor): You have just learned that you have contracted an illness requiring major surgery. If you do not have this surgery, you are guaranteed to die in less than six months. To make matters worse, the surgery is extremely expensive and may not be covered by your insurance company (and you cannot borrow money to pay for it). So you have a decision to make: you can let yourself die, OR you can take whatever steps are necessary to get the money for the surgery.

Granted, this example is extreme, but it perfectly illustrates the type of mentality you need to build a successful music career. Making big moves (taking steps) in your music career is completely different than sitting around waiting for things to happen for you (letting yourself ‘die’).

With this in mind, hard work and constant action do not necessarily equate to music career success, when you don’t know exactly what you should do to achieve your goals.

Music Career Success Key #4 – Have HUGE Reasons to Achieve Your Music Goals

No matter what you do, something will always not go as planned in your music career plans. Whenever you are faced with unexpected events in your music career, it is the time when your commitment will be tested. For example, here are some difficult situations you might face:

Working a day job that you hate while regretting the fact that you never developed a backup plan to help you make a living doing what you love.
Playing crummy bars all the time with your band because you don’t know how to upgrade to bigger venues.
Trying to record an album, but doing it at an extremely slow and frustrating pace because you’ve never practiced developing your recording skills.
Working with unmotivated group members who drag you down (and the entire group with them).
Not understanding how to attract more music fans to listen to the music you’ve worked so hard to create.
Here’s what you need to do to maintain your commitment and dedication to achieving your musical goals:
Take out the sheet of paper on which you have the list of your written goals (which you developed in key #1 above). Then, next to each goal, write the BIG REASONS you have for pursuing them. For every musical goal you have, answer this question: “Why do I want to achieve this?” Spend a lot of time thinking about this for each goal before writing your answer, and review your goals/reasons twice a day.

By doing this, you will develop the ability to maintain motivation and stay focused on the main reasons you have for achieving your goals. This will help you progress in difficult times when your dedication is tested.

Music Career Success Key #5 – Don’t Try to Build Your Music Career Blindfolded

Once you have the 4 keys mentioned above in your possession, there is always a chance that your music career will go nowhere. This happens when you lack certainty about what to do to succeed, you (unknowingly) sabotage yourself, or you lack effective strategies to help you achieve your musical goals. The final key needed to build your successful career in the music industry is to train with a mentor who has experience helping musicians reach the highest level.

A truly effective mentor won’t just tell you what you need to do to succeed in the music industry. It will help you use all the strengths you developed by developing the first four keys and guide you on the right path to success, while preventing you from making the same mistakes that unsuccessful musicians make. Without this type of training, you’re essentially trying to build your music career blindfolded – completely ignorant of the best ways to succeed using your current skills and knowledge.

Now that you’ve learned the five keys that build the foundation of a successful music career, here are the steps you should take right away:

Focus on acquiring any missing keys that you don’t currently own.

Start working with an experienced music career mentor to quickly achieve your biggest musical goals.

Tom Hess is a music career mentor, touring musician and guitarist. He teaches online guitar lessons to musicians around the world and guides musicians on how to build a successful music career. Visit his website for music lessons to get lots of free musician resources to help you start a career in music and learn more about the music industry.