I’ve rewritten this book four times. With each revision it got a lot shorter, which is good but it’s been a painful experience to go through. There was so much witty fluff, unnecessary fat and dubious narrative I’ve had to accept just isn’t important enough to share. Such is life.
I’ve written this book as much for myself as I have for you. What I teach here you won’t learn and apply in a single day, it requires constant attention, work and application. I need these top-ups too
What you are reading is a highly distilled playbook on how to create exceptional music, even if you’re untrained or inexperienced. My guess is you consider yourself to some degree, one or both or else you wouldn’t have ventured this far. It has been said however, that life to too short for mastery so even the most talented among us might still find some value in these pages.
I’d really like this book to be like a pack of assorted Tic-Tac’s. Small, convenient, and accessible anytime of day. One or two calories for freshness then continue on your merry way with something nice to suck on. (Or crush them in the first two seconds if you’re like me.) So really you can open this book on any page and gain something, it doesn’t read in a chronological fashion as this is not a biography, but for the ‘smash it out’ Tic-Tac crushers this book is best read start to finish.
The truth is, I’ve been incredibility fortunate to be surrounded and mentored by marvellous talent in several disciplines. Powerful tools, perspectives, processes, mindsets and happy accidents have allowed me to develop a an incredible suite of tools that increased my capacity to to learn and apply techniques that are seldom taught or shared. Some are so obvious they’re overlooked, some so subtle they’re hardly seen and others are ignored because we have no control over them.
I feel a moral obligation share these opportunities with you. I know what they’ve done for me and the others I’ve helped already have seen massive improvement in their output. I call them opportunities because they do require a change. It’s a journey that requires you to dismantle false beliefs about yourself and your work so you can allow these new opportunities to unlock your full potential.
Initially I was focused on private mentoring and working directly with creatives. I plan to continue doing this for a select few but as more creatives and even entrepreneurs have started to reach out I want to support them as best I can. I want to share a secret toolkit you can use immediately to get started.
When I began my journey as a professional creative I was far behind my peers. Inexperienced, lacking formal training and unaware of the scope of possibilities. I was working several side jobs to support my creative pursuits at the time and a champion of the ‘starving artist’ narrative.
I had been a visual artist and musician since I was thirteen but even after graduating I’d didn’t consider the possibility of a creative career. I was far more focused on entrepreneurial purists and trying to make money to support my love for music and art. Of course I could see that successful creatives existed but never saw a clear path to get there. I knew that I had a lot to catch up on so I could better commune with my peers and figure out how to become successful on my own terms.
A 10 year quest began… I was determined to up-skill and enhance my abilities so I could create a world in my image, bring my dreams to life and support my family. While I wanted to spend all my time making music and art most of my time was taken up working side jobs to survive. It is a paradox that plagues most of the world as the work they have access to doesn’t buy the time required to grow their own business.
For a time I worked two jobs to earn in a few days what I would in a week and focused the rest of my time on levelling up. I became a voracious reader (and listener) absorbing knowledge and mastering the tools I needed to contribute value to my band Tora and the other creative projects I was involved in. I would sacrifice time with friends and family to focus on work and with time I began to apply this knowledge across various endeavours.
Much to my dismay, nothing seemed to change. I wasn’t learning fast enough and I was still dependent on the same side jobs, trying to balance work and making music with my band Tora. At the time there were a few things I didn’t realise:
- I had developed many skills I wasn’t aware were valuable because I was in the wrong place to apply them. A problem of perspective and environment.
- I am far more compelled to take action and succeed if the risk of failure is greater the the risk of trying. A problem of risk management and self-doubt.
I needed to break my dependence on the side jobs I held and force myself into a position to make a real shift. I needed to create the necessity for change or else I’ll stay a dreamer with big ambitions and nothing to show for it. It was a challenging realisation and honestly I couldn’t stand the anxiety I carried with me everyday lacking a clear sense of purpose or contribution.
I saved and borrowed about $15,000 leading up to a move to Amsterdam with my band. We wanted to make an impact in the European market and I knew this was the time for a leap of faith.
The next three years became the most important and eventful years of my life. My creativity flourished, the skills I had developed revealed themselves in extremely rewarding ways and my output sky-rocketed.
What happened during these three years are the results of the tools and opportunities in this book. What took me almost 10 years to learn you can unlock in a single sitting.
This is a playbook of my transformation with the templates, principles and resources that have allowed me to achieve worldwide success as an independent musician/producer with Tora, raise tens of millions of dollars as a start-up co-founder with Unit Network and uncover the systems needed to help you build an exceptional creative brand through Rulique, my design agency.
This is not a ‘get rich quick’, or ‘discover your spirit animal’ kind of book it’s more a ‘this is what taking a risk looks like and this is why you should do it’. While my ideas and observations are leveraged from the musicians’ domain they can be similarly applied in many other creative fields and offer any reader some insight into contributing something to mankind.
I look toward an optimistic vision of the future powered by the vast artistic capacities that lay dormant in many of us. The goal of this book is to share new opportunities that can revolutionise your creative, musical and even entrepreneurial output. As you’ll see there are many crossovers as our capacity for creativity underpins almost everything that we do in our lives.
Let’s dive in!
