TPS #054: Why Is Your Story a Secret?

Part #1: “Your Origin Story”

Everyone loves a good origin story.

And your origin story is crucial in relating to your audience. Your story gives a framework for understanding what your believe, your values, and you and your creativity’s place in the world.

Your story serves as the foundation to build trust with your audience.

When you share your origin story, it can inspire motivation.

Let me give you an example by sketching this out for myself:

(Origin Story) I spent nearly three decades in artist management and I started to get burned out from working with artists directly. So, I stepped away but I found myself consulting up and coming artist managers. Over time, the truth dawned on me that this wasn’t a “thing” and I was quite disappointed because I thought it was. But then I remembered something…

As you can see, the origin story begins to set the tone for you to know how and why I started my journey.

Now, let’s take a look at your belief.

Part #2: “Your Belief”

In this part, you are experiencing both internal and external struggles created by how you started – your origin story.

Your belief makes up your reason WHY.

For example, an artist manager could be struggling with lack of confidence (internal). For a singer, he/she could be struggling with lack of access to production equipment (external).

This part is very important because when everything looks opposite of how it should, your belief acts as your north star, the compass which keeps you on course.

Here’s my example:

(Introduction of the problem) When I was a young artist manager, I didn’t know anything about the business. There was something about being an artist manager that was “trial-by-error” and if I felt that way then, I knew many new managers felt that way now. Why waste the time, resources, and chip away at the credibility and trust built with an artist client because of this? How could we fix this…

(My Belief) Well, my unfair advantage was I always saw things in simple terms. And this meant I could see something a lot of managers couldn’t – that artist management and business management are the same. So why couldn’t simple business frameworks be given to artist managers? That’s what gave me an idea…

I identified my problem and applied my belief to begin the process of what I call The Compelling Vision.

Part #3: “The Compelling Vision”

The compelling vision of your story is what ties everything together.

A compelling vision is a big, exciting idea of what the future could look like.

For example, an artist manager’s compelling vision for their artist client should consist of long-term planning. For an artist, the compelling vision should consist of the artist’s artistic identity and vision.

Compelling visions are bigger than the person and always involve people en masse behind a purpose. Think of the 46 artists on the song like We Are the World and events like FireAid.

Here’s my example:

(How I’m Going to Overcome the Problem): What if I presented business management as frameworks – in steps and parts – so artist managers and artists alike would understand? I would use simple language, bite-sized pieces, and visuals. Done right, this could make a big difference…

(What This Means for Artist Managers and Artists): For artist managers, they would be able to start making slightly more strategic decisions and build credibility and trust with their artist clients. For artists, they would be able to learn the business to prevent being taken advantage of and grow a team for their career.

(What This Means for the World): And more importantly, this would result in more value within the music business at large. Artist managers would grow their artist client’s business and more artists would have growing careers. Everybody wins.

Your compelling vision has to be bigger than you. It creates meaning in your business. It creates meaning in your creativity. **

While you may not think your story is “exciting” or “important”, I would challenge you with this thought: If you were asked why you do what you do creatively and/or business-wise, what would be your response?

If your response is longer than 5 words, that is the beginning of your story.

And it gives birth to everything else.

Hope this helps.

Related: Building an audience as an indie artist always requires presenting your story and global brands want to hear it. Global Head of Music at WeTransfer Jamal Dauda sat down with Spotify to talk about working with artists with stories worth telling.