“I’m writing a book with Russell right now on dramatic demonstrations and studying all these marketers from the 1800s who didn’t have the Internet and how they got rich. It’s been interesting. The further I’ve gone down that rabbit hole and studied all these rich dead guys is you realize that there’s no such thing as internet marketing. There’s really just marketing, and we use the Internet to push it out. I only like to make that distinction because sometimes it’s helpful. Otherwise, we get lulled into this idea that what time we post on Facebook is what marketing is. That’s just the tactic. It’s not marketing.”

~Steve Larsen

“I think I would want to be one of those artists that have had an impact in society and have been an inspiration or an influence, a good influence. I think how in the past, we used to look up to our idols, and we used to look up to certain artists, and we used to really believe that if they can make it, so can we. They used to provide us with those great advice and great work ethics so I think that would be my goal, just to have a great work ethic and keep my values and morals intact and just keep becoming an inspiration to the youth that is out there because like I said the world is changing and it’s getting crazier so I think we just got to keep true to ourselves and just be sure that if you are an artist or whatever you are, if you’re creator, you should know that you have certain type of responsibility to… You have eyes on yourself, which means that whatever is that you create through your content, it should definitely make a change or influence people, even if you don’t make it in that sense, it would still influence those people who love you or who want to watch you do your things. Just have that in the back of my mind, which I always do. I just hope that I’m an inspiration to a lot of people.”

~Shannon K

“If you want to grow and be successful with anything, whether it’s entrepreneurship, music, art, filmmaking, whatever, you’d be well suited to spend a lot of time thinking about how you can build your personal brand. You want your audience to fall in love with you, not necessarily your craft or the thing that you do. When you can build that, Taylor Swift did, and you can have an audience of raving fans that just love you. By the way, even if it’s not like the whole world knows about you, if you have a thousand people or 10,000 people who love you and also love your music, but they love you, and it doesn’t matter what you do, if you switch from country to pop music, that’s totally fine. Then to folk music, you do whatever you want, they’re going to follow you because they’re endeared to you as a brand, to you as a person. They have a relationship with you more so than your music, your craft, or the thing that you do.”

~Eric Thayne

“Just don’t be afraid in general. Whether it’s going to talk to someone. I’m sure you’ve met plenty of those guys that are like, yeah, I’m a songwriter, but I’ve never really put my music out. I’m like, what? Well, then you’re not a songwriter, dude. That’s the thing that drives me the most nuts, when people I’m like, oh, cool, where can I check out your stuff? They’re like, well, I haven’t done anything with it. I’m like, well, then we can all say we’re songwriters but you have to have a product that you can hand to me so I can check it out. That’s kind of a pre-req to say, you know what I mean? That’s just fear, because we can all afford a computer nowadays. We can all learn the basics of garage band or whatever it is that you use, Cubase or whatever. That’s just fear, man. I know that anything that I’ve made in my life, one thing I can say for sure, I’m 50 years old. Anything that I’ve done, I’ve gotten value out of it. I’ve thrown money at projects that ultimately didn’t work out the way I expected them to, but there was always value from that experience because what else are we doing? What are we doing on this earth? If we ain’t learning and kind of experiencing stuff? What’s the point of it, man?”

~Carlos Baker