TPS #043: The Success Matrix for Artist Managers Pt. 2
Author: Andre Mullen - 2.5 min Read
Read Time: 2.5 minutes
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💡 Big Ideas:
1. The success matrix for artist managers is made up of a great question and a great answer.
2. The great answer is a habit birthed from the process of defining success for yourself.
3. The great answer is made up of 3 categories – doable, stretch, and possibility.
4. Extraordinary results require a great answer.
“The power of rain.”
The sound of raindrops hitting a window sill always makes me think.
As I sat on my couch looking out the window, watching it rain,
I was thinking about how to double my client’s merch sales in 30 days.
I knew how to double the merch sales. I had the resources to do it.
I knew I had to make a framework that would work
And that was going to take a new process altogether.
The success matrix for artist managers
This newsletter will be part 2 of 2 where I’m going to talk about the success matrix for artist managers. The success matrix is made up of two parts – a great question and a great answer.
In today’s newsletter, Part 2, I’m going to talk about finding the great answer as a result of asking the great question.
Success is something everyone strives to achieve. When we achieve success, we feel proud. Success motivates us to do well and is a chief indicator we have made an impact in the world.
To do so, however, means you must first define success for yourself, to know what success looks like to you.
When done over a long enough period of time, the process of defining success for yourself – asking yourself a great question – will create a habit of finding the great answer.
As an artist manager, forming habits to grow personally and professionally are not particularly easy, but necessary. When you commit to this process, you commit to being better and doing better. Most artist managers struggle with this.
But you’re not most artist managers.
So let’s get to work.
"If you want extraordinary results, you have to find the great answer to your great question.”
In Gary Keller and Jay Papasan’s book, The One Thing, they talk about the importance of achieving extraordinary results through the simple process of asking a great question and finding a great answer.
Throughout my 34 years in the music industry, I have witnessed many things – one of which is the lack of focus on processes and systems. This has consistently fed into the “hustle & grind” culture of the industry.
Processes and systems are essential if you want to consistently achieve your and your client’s goals as an artist manager. The great question and finding the great answer power processes and systems so your results are both achievable and measurable.
The Great Question and the Great Answer combine to form what I call The Success Matrix.
The Success Matrix is made up of 4 question-and-answer:
1. Big & Specific
2. Big & Broad
3. Small & Broad
4. Small & Specific
The Great Answer is made up of 3 categories:
1. Doable
2. Stretch
3. Possibility
If you want extraordinary results, you have to find the great answer to your great question.
Successful managers choose to live at the outer limits of achieving for themselves and their clients. They view and crave achieving what is beyond their natural grasp. They know that it’s the hardest answer to come by, but they also know by going beyond themselves to find it, they’ll expand and enrich their own lives, and that of their client, for the better.
If you want more from your great answer, you must realize it lives outside of your comfort zone.
Let’s look at each of the categories one by one.
Category #1: Doable
The easiest answer you can look for is the one that’s already within reach of your knowledge, skills, and experience.
With this solution, you already know how to do it and won’t have to change much to get it. You can think of doable as the most likely to be achieved.
Is this bad? Of course not.
There are situations you are working for your client that may call upon your current level of knowledge, skills, and experience. The wins achieved here are confidence builders in their own right. You probably built a process and utilized a system to achieve these wins every single time without knowing it.
However, when you ask a great question and are looking for a great answer, doable just delivers what you already know and have done.
Your best answers rarely come from an ordinary process.
Category #2: Stretch
This is the next level up from “doable”.
While it is still within your reach, it may be the furthest end of your range. For example, you want to connect your client to another artist for a collaboration. You don’t have a connection to the artist and they’re not in your network. This can be considered a stretch as you have to do some cold outreach.
The stretch requires you to extend yourself to the limits of your current abilities and capabilities. It is potentially achievable and probable, depending on your effort.
A great question will require a great answer that stretches you. However, even the stretch doesn’t require you to jump, but merely stand on your tip-toes and reach up.
Your great answer is beyond a stretch.
Category #3: Possibility
The possibility exists beyond what is already known and being done.
Similar to a stretch goal, you start by doing research and studying but you don’t stop there. Whatever you learn, you use it to set a benchmark and then build on top of that.
Here is where you uncover the best research and study those who have done it. The research and experience of others is the best place to start when you’re looking for your answer. Once you get this knowledge, you have established a benchmark – the mark for all that is known and being done – and this is your first step.
So where “stretch” was your maximum, now it is your minimum.
It becomes the place where you’ll stand to see if you can spot what comes next.
This is known as trending – the second step.
Ultimately, you’re looking for the next thing you can do in the same direction that successful managers are heading in or, if necessary, in an entirely new direction.
This is how big problems are solved and big challenges are overcome.
The best answer rarely comes from an ordinary process.
Hope that helps.
✋🏾When you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
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3. Here on my website, I have resources that can help. Check out The Playbook for more information.