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Welcome to Inside Personal Growth podcast. Deep dive with us as we unlock the secrets to personal development, empowering you to thrive. Here, growth isn't just a goal, it's a journey. Tune in, transform and take your life to the next level by listening to just one of our podcasts.

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Well, I'm Greg Voisen and the host of Inside Personal Growth. And welcome back to Inside Personal Growth for another edition of our podcast and joining me on the other side. So if you're watching on on YouTube, you can actually see his lovely face if you're listening on itunes or Spotify.

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Well, good luck to you. But you can always go up and look for us on YouTube at inside personal growth.com and there you'll find Carter, and I. Good, day to you, Carter. How you doing? I'm doing Greg. I'm doing great. Greg.

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How are you doing today? I am doing good. It's a beautiful day here in Encinitas, California. And you're joining us from the Nashville area, is that right? I'm actually in Philadelphia today, a couple different places, but yeah, today I'm, in my Philly area.

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My Philly. Okay, well, I'm going to let the listeners know a tad bit about you. Then we're going to get into these two books that he sent to me. How to effectively release and promote your music as an independent artist.

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And I'm going to pull that one away and show this one to all the people watching on video. And that was is the YouTube Google Ad rockstar guide for musicians. So we'll get into that. So Carter is a multifaceted music industry professional who's built an impressive career span spanning performance, production, marketing and education.

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Known affectionately as the Soulful Traveling Spaceman Baseman, by his followers, Carter, began his music journey at the age of 15 and sense evolved into a recognized authority on both the creative and business side of music.

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Which is pretty interesting because we don't always get that as a performer. Carter has toured globally as a bassist for R B legend Freddie Jackson since 2016, sharing stage with Arctics like Jeffrey Osborne, Tower of Power, Brian McKnight, Patti LaBelle.

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His studio work has taken him to major music centers including New York, Los Angeles, Nashville, Philadelphia, collaborating with grab Grammy winning musicians and producers, such as Pablo Batista, Leon Hoff, David Ivory and Chick Therese.

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Hopefully I said that right. I don't know that gentleman. But, anyway, beyond performance, Carter has established himself as a marketing strategist. And for all of you interested, you, can find him@carterfoxconsulting.com.

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that's one place you can go to get him. He also has another website which will be in our show notes below. You'll be able to go down there and look for it. He's established himself, I said, as a marketing strategist, educator, working with major labels including Universal Music Group and Reservoir Media Management, as well as independent artists seeking to navigate the modern music landscape.

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He holds an MBA in entrepreneurship from Syracuse University and has spoken at prestigious institutions including usc, NYU and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Well, it's a pleasure to have you on Inside Personal Growth.

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You've got quite the bio, my friend. So you've been around, the block a few times and, and especially when it comes to the music business and the promotion of music. So this fascinating journey that you've taken as a professional bassist and a music business consultant, it's a great blend.

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It, obviously it works. What inspired you to turn your experience into practical guides for independent musicians? What did you see them or artists? What did you see them struggling with that? You said, hey, there's a gap here.

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These folks need help. Honestly, it was the gap of the business, if you will, the mart. That marketing and promotional, aspect. My whole career musically wouldn't have happened without my marketing experience. Just kind of walking hand in hand, managing people, running record labels in high school, just getting all this information into my own brain.

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Going to college for music business, getting the thing, the getting the NBA afterwards. And then I started talking to a lot of artists who were also like, hey, Carter, how, you know, how do I do this as well? How can I get streaming increases? How can I build up my publishing royalties?

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How. What are royalties? What are these things? How can I make a career? That was really what I started getting asked. I started getting. Taking more phone calls, taking more emails, consulting stuff. After a certain point when I felt like I felt accomplished enough, right? I've. The imposter syndrome started melting away and I was like, hey, maybe I can help other artists.

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I was already helping artists do this and it was just these same questions of, hey, how do I really effectively release and promote my music? Right? That's the thing. I kept getting, and that's where the initial book came from, Music Business Basics. That long title, the Green Book.

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That's the first one. Yeah. What's interesting is I think the listeners out there, whether they're musicians or not, they, you know, I think people just magically think that once somebody writes a song, performs it in some nightclub someplace?

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Does it someplace else that. That they have someone promoting them? Not always the case. Right. There's a lot of struggling artists. It's. So it's mostly struggling artists, to be honest. And nowadays, artists who don't kind of take that entrepreneurial step for themselves, that creative entrepreneur mindset, they're the ones who just kind of get caught in that.

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I, hey, I have this awesome song. It's recorded. What? No one's listening to it. No one's booking me. I can't do anything with it. I want to. How. How can I. And that's a lot of. Is it actually, what is the journey like? I mean, I don't even know if you personally have been there, but before, someone might even be able to get the eyeballs of an agent who.

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Who says, I want to represent this person because literally, let's face it, they got to be able to book them. They got to be able to make money, and they have to be somewhat recognized. But the journey up to recognition is a long journey. Frequently, I mean, you find people in their 40s and 50s are coming out, and they're just now being recognized.

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Right? Yes. There's a great saying, right. I'm sure you've heard of the overnight success takes ten years. Right. I wrote. I wrote an article about that for disc makers years ago when my own song went, quote, unquote, like, viral, not like on Spotify and a lot of the Internet stuff, and it got 100,000 streams.

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My biggest success at the time, this was 2019, 2020, and it was a big deal. How do you do that? How do you do this? And since then, that song has over 2 million streams. And it's through the promotion and these other efforts and that learning. But it's. It's a long journey to get people to say, hey, yes, exactly.

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I need to. I can make money off you. I want to work with you. And again, the journey starts with the. The musician. The. Starting with the, I'm an entrepreneur. Ish. You don't have to take that complete step like I'm running a finance company or something, but adopting the creative entrepreneur mindset, I need to, quote, unquote, run a business.

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I need to sell tickets. So, for example, you brought up a booking agent. How does a booking agent look at you? You sell. I just saw some stats about this. It was like performing 50 ticketed shows a year. That is at least 75 SOL. That's.

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That's a lot. And here's the truth. If you do that without an agent, you are very effective at what you're doing. You're very successful at promoting yourself, most likely your team, whoever is already working with you to book it. So you've learned the connections.

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And that's where you also see this entrepreneurship happening. A lot of it's no longer necessarily these huge booking agencies, not just CAA or ICM anymore. There's tons of local, regional, almost now national, international, independent agencies, just like independent labels, because the artists went out there, found all the connections, started booking themselves, started running tours and building fans, starting booking tours for their friends in bands.

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And then now a whole business has evolved out of that. But you need to be able to understand how to do that and build a fan base and release music and get, build a community like all these little different things. And then at the end of the day, as a musician and a music business person, if something goes super successful, so beyond selling tickets at a Show, beyond selling CDs or T shirts at a show or online, something goes viral, starts getting placed in movies, other artists maybe bigger or you know, you write a song, it goes viral, Beyonce wants to cover it.

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How would you actually make money off of that? That's your music publishing. So if that's registering with these specific agencies and copywriting your music and understanding that control. Back in the 60s, 50, you know, 50 years ago, the artists had no idea about this.

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Now it's completely flipped because the music business is more democratized, more open and independent artists can carve a living for themselves. And this is where again I'm getting inspired. I was inspired to write these books because I was like, cool. I was seeing success like this. I was working with bands, I'm working with more bands.

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I was working with large bands, small bands, new bands, iconic older bands. There was lessons to be learned that you could be repeated and processed. And I was like, I want to share these. And so I started with the one. You certainly are the go to guy, let's face it. I mean for I would say somebody in this in between stage, right, it's like, hey, I'm not maybe as recognized.

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But in your first book, the Music Business basics and that's B A S S I C S folks. A little play on words. It's a deep dive into planning, preparation and promotion. So okay, we read those three words and we go, yeah, that would seem kind of obvious, but I think to a lot of musicians and artists maybe it's not so obvious.

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You know, there's, they love their art so much that that's what they do, that's what they're into. So why did you feel these three phases were so essential to highlight, for indie musicians? Well, it actually started out as a self reflection of putting out my own music for a lot of years.

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And the people I was literally doing, consulting or managing or whatever, working with, playing basin usually and then helping them release records and came up with that thought, what was I doing every single time? And it was really having and looking at other arts, looking at friends, looking at other books that came out by the music industry masters, Donald Passman, Ari Hurst, and what kind of things were they informing in the patterns of releases for major artists too going on?

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And then it really just came down to saying this was what was happening. This is a quote unquote process. So not to go into the more business side, but I have an mba, so I went to a business school, I worked at a factory, right. A traditional, more old school business than music creativity, even though it was a CD factory, made CDs to learn this, I learned about manufacturing process, something that you can repeat, improve and learn from and then, you know, grow with.

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I determined in my own brain that this is what I kept doing to repeat my process and improve it. So I would be planning my releases or the bands really, whoever I'm working with, we set a release schedule, we set goals, we figure out the little bits of what you want to accomplish with that release.

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Do you want merch, you want vinyl, do you want 100,000 streams, you want radio airplay, do you want to book a whole tour? Etc. In the, in the plan, you prepare from the plan, you start getting all the assets you need. You finish this up and then you promote the release comes out, you execute your plans, you try to get 100,000 streams, book out, sell out all these tours.

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If you don't or you see something different, you go back, you learn from that and you adjust. And this process, as I was telling people, more like in my consulting world, in the management world, was just like, yeah, this seems like a really good thing to share, a really good thing that artists can all pick up and use.

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It's nothing too insane. It's not, it's not a hard lesson to learn of things. It's just an easy process to do, to take your music and actually do something with it. Because like you said, most artists, this is their baby, this is their thing. And when they're done with it, that's, that's kind of. They spent so much time and energy crafting this beautiful music.

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They don't. It's just not in their wheelhouse to necessarily know at that moment what to do with it next, to get it out to a bunch of people. That's where I come in as, As a, As a. As a consultant. And I think as a consultant, you're a good one because you've been there yourself. It's not like you're some agent or something who's never been in this and is just good at connecting.

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You understand the basics of business. And, you know, I was watching a documentary on, Adele and how Adele kind of came up at 16, 17, 18, singing on all these places. And, you know, she had such.

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She had a very unique mark. Right. Her voice, which was obviously extremely unique. Not everybody has that right. So you say one of the strongest takeaways from the music business basics is about protecting your work.

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You say royalties, copyrights, and licensing. Why do you think so many artists overlook this side of the business? Because you hear about all these people that like, oh, well, I sold the rights, you know, like the Beatles did to somebody for a billion dollars.

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Right. It's. I sold all the rights to these things. And I get that, that it is that. And with the streaming business the way it is and YouTube the way it is, and all these other platforms that many years ago were not available to many of these artists. What is your take on this?

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How would you have them navigate this dicey area of trademarks licensing, YouTube? I remember the day when, who was the company that was scamming the music and putting it on? It wasn't Spotify, it was.

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Oh, like Dapster. Yeah, yeah, Napster. Yeah, I remember the Napster days. Right. So, yeah. But it almost seems like, look, you've got to figure all this out. And I think it takes somebody like you to navigate it for him.

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It's. There's a lot of complications or, it's seemingly complications in this thing called music publishing. And that is what we're basically getting at. The trademark, in a way. The trademark is its own thing, intellectual property. But the copyrights, the royalties, your intellectual property again, with your trademark.

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So you can not have. Which we saw like Lady A, Lady Antebellum, changing their name and then getting in a famous trademark lawsuit with a regional artist going by Lady A. And it was a whole, A whole fiasco. It's important to understand these things, but it's complicated.

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It's. It's the legalese, it's the. It's the math of the music side. Right. Musicians already don't want to deal with that. Even though if you're a music person or a musician, you're probably good at math. It's just how, even if you don't like math, there's just something to it. But it's the harder part of the music business, but it's the real business of it.

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So I have a book out there called Music Publishing for Independent Musicians. It's very similar. It's not the one I sent you, but it's the sixth book in my series, similar in style to my other books where it's a simplified breakdown of One independent artist should understand about the copyrights, which you should know if you're going to sell, if you're hoping to build a catalog.

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Right. This is why it's important to do this. Because in the end of the day if you want to have a really long lasting career and as you said, you hear about artists selling their catalogs for millions of dollars or even sometimes it could be close to that really high billion, you know, if it's worth, you know, someday I'm sure Taylor Swift can do that, if she wants right now.

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That's, that's that money. Other if you don't own that, that's the. Anyone who records your song elsewhere, that song, it's the mailbox money. It's important for artists to protect their work because if that work gets picked up, it becomes a hit. If you're not on it, if you're not part of the songwriting team in BMI or ASCAP or the actual copyright, it's not yours to negotiate.

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There's no money for you. And it becomes a burden on you to come in with the legal team and prove that no, this is your copyright. You started this. But if you're able to understand how this all works first that when you write your song, you register it with your pro. Even if it's not done, it's registered, there's a record of it.

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Yes. You can record, you know, make sure you record it into something that has a timestamp as well. But the best way to have a real time stamp on your product is the copyright. You know, file it with the US Copyright or wherever you are, the copyright entity, right, the copyright body. And that gives you literally that control and catalog.

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And when it comes time to after a long career, a beautiful career or hey, even now a big thing independent artists can do is sell your pre royalties, almost get an advance now for your royalties which again is this publishing side.

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You have that right? Usually this was something the record labels controlled, right? In the 70s, I mean, from the beginning of the music business, record labels controlled the music publishing too. Artists were usually just performers. Songwriters were just their own thing. Right? They did all the business side of it.

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Who is the clearinghouse for a musician out there listening today? In other words, is it ascap? Is it like, hey, every time my piece gets played, how do I know that I'm going to get my royalty? Or it goes on a radio, and somebody plays it, in some small market.

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How does all that make it real simple, but simply how does it get funneled and then how does that actually all get paid out? So it's exactly as you were inferring. It's. It splits the cop these rights into a few places. So a radio.

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Every time your song gets played on radio or in certain, you know, if a restaurant plays it in the background, BMI or ascap, these performance rights organizations collect money. They're keeping all this data. Especially now that most stuff is digital. It's a lot easier.

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But back in the day, people are sending in the paper forms. It's someone's job to go to a restaurant and make sure they have a license. Through that you get a check every quarter. If you make a threshold that all your music's registered through your, your pro, they send you the money.

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When it comes to streaming, like Spotify, Apple Music, whatever your distribute, your distributor, it could be CD baby, or these, distrokid Universal Music Group, whoever that may be, hat will send you that money through that.

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There's a few other rights out there now too, like Internet radio. YouTube is actually a different kind of play on this stuff. To make sure you're registered, you need to use something called, Sound Exchange and your mechanical licensing collective to collect these mechanical royalties as well.

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You can use a site called songtrust to help you do that independently. This is, it's all publishing administration. So I, I'm trying to keep it simple. It's just like these streams, but it's sat. It's already complicating. And this is what makes artists not like this go crazy, I would think, unless they had somebody like you guiding them.

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And even at that, then they'd need to have somebody like a CEO kind of looking at all this and picking it up. And you know, in your second book, this one, you basically say that YouTube, because you just mentioned it, Google Ads, Rock Star Guide for Musicians.

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You zoom in on digital advertising. So where, when or why did you decide that ads specifically like Google and YouTube deserved an entire book of their own? Because I get it, you know, even our podcast, we buy paid ads.

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Those paid ads boost listenership, they boost impressions, they boost clicks, they do all kinds of things. So I presume that you put a strategy together for musicians to say, hey, you want to get recognized?

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This might be one of the ways you do it. And it would be through YouTube ads. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much. And going through the music business basics first book I threw, I'm talking about these different promotion things in there, right.

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During my phases, the promotion phase, I'm like, use Google Ads, use meta ads, use social media. And then it dawned on me, maybe I need to go a little more, you know, break it down a little bit for people. Right. Why? It's important, like you said, what strategies you can use and what, what can you look for on there to grow.

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And my book kind of touches, you know, it's specifically for musicians in a way, but it, the information translates to all kinds of creatives and businesses as well, as like a marketing launch using that digital ad. YouTube and Google Ads. Who, you know, YouTube is owned by Google at this point, kind of, kind of come together.

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They are one of the best cost effective, reaching marketing tool, you know, marketing channels one can use. You know, think about 100 years ago, how are you reaching anybody? You gotta find radio and newspaper and how expensive that is and then television, then whatever. Now you can spend a few cents to reach somebody brand new who's very focused because of all the data and cookies out there, who may be a very target, very hot listener, someone who's very active in your genre, who may become a new fan and create a conversion, if you will.

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Right. I kind of talked about setting goals in the, in an earlier phase. I want to sell tickets, I want to sell merch, I need more streams. YouTube itself, just one of the best discovery platforms. You know, YouTube shorts, YouTube, long form videos, new people can be discovered and go viral.

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New music is discovered and viral on there all the time. So putting yourself into that, using that strategy of digital marketing and inserting yourself into that in an effective and cost effective way. Because remember, you're also probably competing against Coca Cola and Justin Bieber and these like different kinds of major entities.

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You want to understand what you're doing the best and optimize the best. So I kind of broke down in the book what YouTube and Google Ads is right for for an artist, how you can go in and optimize yourself for it, a few different kinds of strategies and how to build those ads out and then a bunch of helpful hooks that will at least give you a basis to start on those, those conversions.

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Right. So if an artist writes music, let's say they've written quite a bit and they want to host it somewhere, are you saying, hey, you can set up a channel, at Spotify, you can set one up at soundcloud.

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You could, you, you have so many places you can do this. Right. I even see artists still who have like literally a website for themselves that are hosting music off their own website. Now I don't think their website's probably getting tons of hits.

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So it would be smarter to have it someplace where, you know, thousands and thousands of people every hour are coming through to look at the music. So what's your take on that? And talk. Talk to us about your 30 day ad campaign planner.

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Sure. So the 30 day ad campaign planner is that breakdown of what you can do in 30 days. Right. Using specifically. I kind of put it in the different books, depending on what you're doing, what it is. But we're talking about the YouTube Google Ads. So a 30 day YouTube ad Google Ad planner, starting with optimizing your channel, running the thing, running the ad based on what you're looking to do, introducing some retargeting aspects which is adding a little quote unquote complication, but just nuance to your marketing, and then just continuing to optimize that, in the effective ways and repeat it after 30 days after, you know, with.

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You don't want to have too long just to say this of a, you know, you don't want to not you can use a 90 day plan, but you need to be checking your results every 30 days and effectively changing them. If something isn't working the way it is, be it the budget, be it you're targeting, if you're not seeing, the results on your.

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For example, if you want. Pardon me for interrupting, but are you doing a B testing with them? So you're saying here's at A, here's at B, we want to see which one does better and then B does better, we're going to do a rinse, repeat and we're going to keep putting that into the cycle or how are you helping them test out certain ways to get recognized.

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So I believe I mentioned AB testing depending showing diff. Well, you have to do AB testing at some point depending on what you're seeing, testing your creative, testing those headlines, for example, testing the audiences and then the budget. And I think if it's not that one specifically, I do mention in one of the books, breaking that down based on a better order, it probably isn't that one.

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I try to keep them all fresh for that focusing, one. You know, you set your budget, don't change your budget, set your audience, don't change your audience, don't change your copy, just change the one piece of it. Just kind of going into that variation, testing, discussing where you're optimizing to.

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Right. So you just. We were mentioning a website which is a, you know, you need to have a website as an artist as well. There's a few reasons in general, it is great to host one. Booker, booking agents and different professionals, want to see the website and you can sell your own merch there just a good thing.

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But if you're selling tickets or you're selling, or you're trying to push streams, you obviously can't necessarily send them to your own site. You want to send people to where they're. They're being discovered. So you can also test that. Right? That's, that's another thing. And I've tested this on YouTube platforms, meta platforms, where you're sending what link?

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Right. Like I can send you to Spotify, I can send you to my website, I can send you to a tracking, a, landing page with tracking information. And at the end of the day, that's definitely the. Probably the best one. If you're able to get tracking info, we don't have to go down the rabbit hole of conversion optimization, but making sure your, your Google tag and all that is optimized as well on your website too.

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Well, you're looking to track it, but you're also looking at conversion rate. And like you said, we don't need to go down the path of conversion. That's really. If somebody clicks on it and then purchases something from you, then you could say that they converted. Now, you know, looking back, what was the breakthrough moment either in your career and helping other art, another artist that showed you the power of combining music with marketing strategy?

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You know, you got a degree in entrepreneurship. I think people can already tell by the way you speak, your high level of energy, that you're a really good salesperson and entrepreneur. You're a good marketer, let's put it that way. If you don't want to be known as a salesperson, you're a good Marketer.

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So. So tell me. Yeah, you nailed that. Geez. Yeah, right. Well, I can just. Just interplay the terms salesperson or marketer. You're a really good marketer, Carter. I don't think I'm a good salesperson at all. So that's what made me even laugh. The way you're saying that.

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That's cracking. Well, but you're not. You. You are an entrepreneur. You have a degree in entrepreneurship. And, you know, I. And I think the artists who create that. I'm not saying they don't think about entrepreneurship, but it's not the first thing on their mind.

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It's like, my first thing on my mind is to create a really moving piece that people are going to enjoy, and they're going to love the tune. Pharrell. What is it? Pharrell Williams. Am I saying his first name right? The happy thing.

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Yeah, that just went totally viral, you know, I mean, that's a tune that almost anybody can remember any time. And it's like, as soon as you say, here it is, and here was this guy from nowhere who. Who created that song, and it was great.

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Right? It makes you happy. I mean. And you know what? I just want to put that point 100 back out there, too, because I. No, I harp on this in all the books. The number one important thing with creating music in the music business is creating the music I know. You know, is the music, you know?

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Yeah. For all the. The insanity that I'm talking in the copyright line is all. It all starts with great music. And. And just to even kind of think, you know, answer your question or like, marinate on the question a little bit, was, you know, I.

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I think I started really falling into business. You know, I'm playing bass, and I'm doing a lot of bass sideman. And why I started picking up being like, what can I do to help as a business person is because I never felt I always wanted to be a lead singer or like, the. You know, that attack that. That person, that attention person.

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But I can't sing, or I don't have the confidence that I can sing. But I'm a great bassist, and I know I can help by doing this business stuff. And I always started. That's how I kept my value for people. Like, you know, they want Carter around because he can. He knows how to do all this stuff.

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You know, they. I work with amazing lead singers in. With Freddie Jackson's band, and the band's amazing, and it's. It's so Amazing. That's why I'm like, let me help the promotion. And that was honestly one of those funny moments of both of this. So I, Freddie Jackson, who's a legendary 10 time Billboard number one, having, R and B artist was on, was on so many cool television shows, all this great stuff.

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I started working with his manager and I was doing his social media. Like that's how it really started. I, I wasn't playing with him yet. I was playing with another band adjacent. And like the management team all kind of started working together and I started doing Freddy's social media.

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And this is 2014, you know, he doesn't have any other social channels. I. In a year, in two years, I literally mean the magic and watch these, all the channels grow, all the streaming numbers grow, all the bookings grow. Like, this is just from us putting in the marketing, promotion effort, putting in some, some doing what we do on this side.

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And then all of a sudden Mr. Jackson's like, all right, come play bass. And it just came full full circle of just how, how this all. And It's. That's been 10 years, almost full, circle moments of seeing things work together. Because before that, you know, I don't want to say it was a big comeback, but it really has been.

[31:11.2]
To watch him performing more shows in the last decade than when he, according to the data then when he was in the prime out and touring in the 80s and 90s, like, that's because the demand came back. And from those lessons and from a lot of the other artists of that caliber, you know, these other legendary artists, I got to work with on some of those resurgences.

[31:29.1]
I got to work with brand new artists who were looking to do this kind of stuff and just make their way out there to begin with and seeing the power of social. So he's a legend. He is 68 years old. I think he's one of my parents favorite artists. Like they listen to him.

[31:44.3]
I might, you know. Yeah, me too. I mean, look, I, I know people, I've told you this, but I'm no youngster. I'm older than him. How's that? And I don't believe it. I don't believe. How about, how about that, Greg? I don't believe that. I am 71. He's 68.

[32:00.7]
How, just as a side note from this, how's, his kidney diagnosis? He had some kidney issues going on. Is he doing okay or. He's doing okay. He's still just, you know, taking the medication or doing all the process that it is, because it's, you know, kidney disease is no joke.

[32:20.3]
It hasn't been a joke. We've experienced and seen what it's been like on the road, but he's getting so much stronger. He is so much stronger, than the past few years. So, I'm. We're very excited to be back on the road, again in a couple weeks, with him. So it's. It's very exciting.

[32:35.9]
It's good. He's a cool guy. I'm looking at his, his profile and, it got all these great tunes, folks. So go look up Freddie Jackson. Awesome guy. I mean, in his music goes back years and years and years.

[32:52.1]
Right. And I don't think everybody knows who he is. So, this is the man who plays the bass for him. So look, both of your books are focused on really empowering independent artists. If someone could only read one takeaway from your book or two, one from each book, what's the core message that you'd want them to walk away with?

[33:15.8]
And how could they apply it to their music career? I think I'm gonna. It's a great question. And you know me, I love to talk, so I won't. I won't try to. I'll only pick one. I, think it's the failing to plan is planning to fail.

[33:32.4]
This. This meant this idea. And I, I put that in, I think the intros and exits of all the books. Because it's true. And that's true from so many standpoints. And not just in music and music business, but like, even if you go into the studio. Yeah. Sometimes you don't need to have a plan. You let it happen.

[33:48.1]
But even just going into there, you need a plan when it comes to releasing your music and putting it out and have, you know, putting a show together or doing all this stuff, you need a plan. And without any of this thought, you know, maybe the plan doesn't exactly work the way you think it will, and you got to adapt and change, but if you don't have a plan at all, nothing.

[34:05.0]
Nothing's kind of going to happen. And even with YouTube ads, right. Like, it's. It's kind of a safe strategy. Have a. Have a strategy and, and work with it. And I'm not saying only plan. I. That's why this is where that caveat, you know, comes in. You got to act upon it.

[34:21.0]
But failing to plan is planning to fail. That's. That's my. And I think in Your business, the music business, like most businesses, as an entrepreneur, it was, I forget the famous president. But never, never, never, never give up.

[34:38.9]
Right? So persistence, you could add in another one to that and the other one would be persistence. I know a lot of people will walk away from this because they get despondent or a relative or a friend says, oh, you're never going to make it.

[34:55.3]
So just, you know, give it up and go back to computer programming or whatever the hell you were doing before. Because the reality is you're, going to have a tough time of it. But it's, it's even like my podcast show. I'm 18 years into this now. I can't tell you that every day has been easy and like, hey, you wake up and you go, yeah, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

[35:19.0]
But the point is, is you have some down times, you got some tough times that you got to, you got to push through them. Everybody gets them. Right? So, so what do you hope the future looks like for these indie musicians who embrace both the creativity, and the business tools that you've outlined in the books?

[35:43.2]
I hope to see a bunch of happy, successful, quote unquote musicians, artists who are living a healthy, safe, happy life through the music and art that they create and the business that they're developing around that. And I, that's what I want to see.

[36:00.0]
And I've seen some people turn, not just because of my books or anything, I'm not trying to take that credit, but once they've kind of adopted that, hey, I'm a little bit of a creative entrepreneur mindset, they take just putting out music to a another level, be it finding a way to go on world tours, you know, going beyond just regional or national, but actually figuring out to go to Europe and Asia and Australia to even formulating their own new entrepreneurship ventures, be it the booking agencies.

[36:27.5]
We talked about music festivals developing their own kind of businesses like a vinyl printer. We have a famous recording studio who in Philadelphia called Studio 4, who tons of Lauren Hill, the Fuji Cypress Hill just coming out of this famous era, who now is a vinyl printer and is becoming very well known for pressing vinyl just through that aesthetic and, and their entrepreneurial spirit to do that.

[36:53.6]
And it's a little different that way, but it's because the musicians working there were like, we want to do this. That's literally what happened with it. So, yeah, that's what I would love to see is just everyone be happy and see. Well, I mean, you know, look at that. You. You're pointing on something, you know, that day of the record player, which I thought was gone, obviously that's what I used to have.

[37:14.3]
And we used to play it on, and then it went to CDs, and then it went into digital world of wonderland, which is, you know, with, any kind of cell phone, whether Android or iPhone, you're going to get all your music you want. And now all the car companies link up with the Bluetooth so you can push all the music you want.

[37:34.6]
And if you're driving a Tesla, you just push the button on the Tesla and more music comes out. Right? So it's really become, an interesting thing. And I want to ask you this finally final question. You know, I want to know what's next for you.

[37:51.1]
Is there more books or there new music for you? Perhaps explained expanding the music Business Basic series. What's up for Carter Fox? What's he's doing next? So the next thing I have in coming out in a couple months actually is another book.

[38:10.1]
It's a new book and it's a step away from the music business marketing books, actually. It's called Exploring Cosmic Melodies, the relationship between music and space. So it's a love letter of my own inspirations. All my music, if you can get from the whole soulful traveling spaceman baseman thing, kind of has a, astronomical, spiritual, cosmological and scientific inspiration behind it, and video game, all this different kind of stuff.

[38:36.8]
Over the past, my whole life, I'm not gonna lie, since when I was a child, always obsessed with space and the stars. So I wrote a book over the last few years, really helped, to finish it through these other six books that we've been talking about. Music Business Basics series. Now, it'll be coming out in December.

[38:54.4]
Kind of goes along with my recent album release, Physics of the Impossible, that came out in July. But I'm very excited for this book. It, kind of explores history and just how humans have always been inspired to create music by space and the stars. And that's through astrology, through astronomy, all the way up to today with music like mine and all the electronic musicians and composers like Hans Zimmer and Philip Glass.

[39:18.6]
I'm very excited about that. And just to throw it out there, I am working on the second edition of Music Business Basics, that green book. So it may be a little more expanded with some of this information we've been talking about today within it. But I'm still trying to keep it that Easy, digestible, easy, actionable book.

[39:36.1]
Because that's the number one feedback I keep getting. To be honest, I keep getting told people are buying my book and some of these other books that are great, but mine's just since it's a little shorter, it's a little easier to act upon. Plus, I'm a musician who lives it and does it and works with the musicians who are living it and doing it too.

[39:55.1]
They just, it just has that real world aspect to it to take away. Well, I love the fact that you are working in this ethereal world with the connection between the cosmos. I know that, you know, people who are doing that usually are extremely inspired, by this element.

[40:14.7]
There's a whole spiritual connection which goes deeper and beyond. When we really realize how small we are in the overall size of this universe, you really begin to realize. Right. And I love that you're.

[40:30.1]
You've got this book coming out. It's going to kind of address this and talk to people about it because it'll be a book of inspiration. It'll be a book of, hey, this is way you might want to change your perspective, look at things a little different ways.

[40:47.1]
And I'm sure for somebody like you, you know that yesterday was equinox, so that being the case and the alignment of the stars and the planets, you know that things are now starting to go and slow down a bit.

[41:03.1]
That is the way that things, that things work. If we look at, our, how do you want to call it, our prayers to the north, south, east and west. However we do it, the point is, is that all of us are in one big tapestry, all interconnected.

[41:22.8]
There is no disconnection between all of this. And I would just send, out good vibes that we all just start to get along with one another a lot more than we have in lately. Don't know why we need all the disruption, but again, sometimes the planets not being aligned create crazy energies that then these crazy energies go nuts and in tune people go nuts.

[41:47.4]
So, anyway, pleasure having you on Inside Personal Growth. Namaste to you, my friend. Thanks for everything. Peace to you. Love to you. Love the books and love what you're doing. Take care of yourself. Thanks so much, Greg.

[42:02.7]
Travel soulfully. Thank you for listening to this podcast on Inside Personal Growth. We appreciate your support. And for more information about new podcasts, please go to inside personal growth.com or any of your favorite channels to listen to our podcast.

[42:19.6]
Thanks again and have a wonderful day.