Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #34: Building Lasting Connections: The Importance of Fostering Relationships with Fans feat. Eli Lev

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 34

Interviewee: Eli Lev

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong, and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast.

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Jason: Welcome to the podcast today. Our guest is Eli Lev. He is a multi-talented marketer, musician, and business owner. You’ve been doing this music thing for a long time, Eli, but I think one of the things that’s most interesting to me is he loves spreadsheets. I found a fellow spreadsheet lover. That is not your normal musician introduction that you’ve ever had for a concert or any other time, is it, Eli?

Eli: That’s great. No, I should have them introduce me next time. Here he is, Eli Lev, Lover of Spreadsheets and singer-songwriter from Maryland.

Jason: It’s great. I love that you were telling me that just earlier because I think that’s one of the downfalls of many… Almost 80 % of musicians when you start talking about business or organization or just even a spreadsheet, they just glaze over, and they’re checked out. I think that’s a problem that you’ve obviously figured out how to address, so maybe tell us your story of how you’ve gotten to where you are and let’s have some fun chatting.

Eli: Absolutely. Let’s rock it. Thanks for having me on. I’ve been a huge fan of yours for a very long time since we connected first at Modern Musician. Thank you for having me on the chat. Just a quick rundown of who I am and where I come from. I’m from Maryland. I have been a career teacher my whole life. Six years ago, I got my master’s degree in English Education and picked up an acoustic guitar instead. I’ve been doing music full-time for the last six years. I’ve traveled abroad and all over the USA. I’m a fan across different time zones all over the world. I’ve streamed a lot, multiple streams on Spotify. I’ve been building my own record label for the last six years as an independent artist.

What you were talking about, Jason, which is spreadsheets. I mean, really spreadsheets are just the indicator of organization. I know folks who love paper. I know folks who have the notebook still, who do the paper calendars and if that works, great. What I have found is my go-to place for organization is I use these two software together. One is Notion, which is like a beefed-up spreadsheet app, and it’s got interactivity. You can customize your own pages.  I’ve got my entire booking there. I’ve got my media contacts there. I’ve got my daily vision magnet on there. Also, Street Team, which is a CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Manager for Musicians. I’ve been part of building the Street Team with Modern Musician, and now I use it and it is fantastic. I’m a teacher, term musician who loves to organize, essentially.

Jason: Did you pick up the guitar for the first time six years ago, or you’ve been playing as a kid?

Eli: I have been writing ridiculous songs for my entire life, like just silly songs to entertain myself and a few friends. Nothing professionally by any means. I was in a cover band in a small country called Andorra in Europe for a few years. I was in a high school band where we just messed around. Nothing serious until about six years ago.

Jason: Got it. You said you got your Masters in English, so were you a teacher in the school system for several years then?

Eli: I was. I was an eighth-grade teacher on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Northern Arizona for three years right out of college. Then I taught in Israel for a little while and Andora as well before coming back to the States to get my Masters.

Jason: Wow, very cool. You’ve upgraded the high paid life of a musician from a teacher.

Eli: Yeah, actually, I’m making more as a musician than I am as a teacher, which is pretty amazing. When people hear you’re a musician, it’s like, oh, my gosh, I’m sorry. That’s terrible. It’s actually pretty awesome if I get to do what I love and organize it in a way that can keep me successful and keep me happy and provide for me and my lifestyle.

Jason: You talk about organization. I know through Modern Musician; you’ve worked with probably several hundred people now and coached them and done classes for them. What do you see, is that for the normal musician, what’s one of the biggest Achilles Heels or problems that they have for making it to be successful financially, I guess, as a musician.

Eli: Yeah. It’s, Jason, maybe you know this, but it’s just that mentality of understanding that their music is their business, not just a viral post, not a great song, not a big show. Whichever artist can understand that what they’re doing is actually they’re creating their own record label. They’re creating their own business; those are the artists that just crush it. Those are the artists that stay with it for a year, five years, 10 years. They understand that it’s a business and every business needs time to grow, to learn, to have failures and setbacks, but you’re invested with everything you’ve got. Any artist that I see that has the mentality of “this is a business”.

If I have 50 fans, I’m going to send them emails and sell them things or if I have 100 fans, I’m going to live stream to them once a week or once a month so that we’re connected, and they know my brand. Or if I have 1,000 fans, then you know what? I’m going to do a crowdfunding campaign and I’m going to ask my top fans to stand up and see who wants to support me. It just goes from there. That’s the thing that I’ve seen that makes artists into musicians and entrepreneurs and successful musicians as well.

Jason: When I hear the word business, I just think if I were to rewind the clock back, I think back as a teenager, when you think of a business, you think of a Walmart, for example, you’ve got products on the shelf. I think sometimes when I’ve talked to musicians, when you say you gotta make it your business, does that mean I got to just get products? Go a little bit deeper on what you see as when you say business, what all does that mean? What’s the process that these people need to be thinking about?

Eli: I think that means that your fans, your fans in quotation marks, are the most important thing out there. My fans aren’t really fans. I call them Levitators. My last name is Lev, levitation, cheesy, that’s how I roll. These are the most important people to me, and those personal relationships need to be fostered and connected to. Those are real people, and you could consider them customers, but I think it’s more than that. It’s people who are going to connect with you and support you over a lifetime of music. You can’t really have those connections as deeply on social media. You can’t really have those connections as deeply on stage. There has to be this back end where you’re really building that relationship with folks. I love that. I love connecting with people. I could see how some artists might shy away from that where they’re like, I just want to do music and that’s it but if you just want to do music and that’s it, then great, you can do music and you can make songs, but that’s probably about it. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s making that choice and making that commitment to the people who support you and fostering those relationships over time in an organized way with business in mind.

Jason: Just building on what you’ve said here is when you think about business and you’re selling something, I grew up in the banking industry. That was my first, I’ll call it the first half of the career. I spent 12 years there. When I was in banking, the big thing was, what can you sell to people? It was this cross sell, cross sell, cross sell. It got so out of hand. I wasn’t at Wells Fargo, but I know Wells Fargo actually got sued by millions and millions of dollars because they sold all kinds of things to people that they didn’t need, and it got out of hand. I think the word selling has a very, it’s almost like a four-letter dirty word to a lot of people, and it turns them off.

I remember sitting in some training one time, and the guy got up and he said, your job is not to cross sell anybody. You’re not selling anybody. Your job is to cross solve and help solve problems and also serve. When that was told to me, I think all of a sudden, I had this epiphany that was like, Whoa. If I’m serving someone and doing what’s in their best interest and trying to help solve their problems, it’s not selling. It’s one of those where if your thing actually helps that person or solves that problem for them, morally, it would almost be a crime to not do that thing and so if you didn’t sell them that thing that’s going to help them, like if you found a cure for cancer and you knew you had that cure, it would be very wrong not to help serve those people and solve that problem versus selling.

I think as a musician, just in any business even, it doesn’t have to be just music. If you can look at things in the way of, okay, if these are my people, like you said, it’s not your fans. They’re individuals, people and figure out what problem they have. They like me for whatever reason, if it’s your music or your personality, and what can you do to serve and solve more problems or fill needs they might have. It definitely changes that idea, I think.

Eli: I love that. I interpret that as almost as, for me, that means providing a service. What service is my music providing? How can people listen to my music in their cars? I can provide CDs. How can people feel good and connected even when the world is shut down? I can livestream and give them a sense of community. How can people get out and explore the regions around their hometown and new places that they haven’t been? I can go on tour and play at some new venues or maybe their favorite venue. They can come see me there. How can they get a house show? How can they experience their entire house, light up with just music and people? I can provide that service as well. I love that process, and that’s exactly it. You’re essentially, how can you solve a problem? How can you provide a service? Then it’s your job to figure that out and give people the option to take you up on that offer.

Jason: As I’ve run across several, we’ll call them just standard musicians. If they do perform somewhere, maybe they’ve got a little gig. Most of it, I would say most all the time, very few of them ever ask for a name or an email list. They do their thing and somehow, I guess they think that they might have a whole bunch of people come up and say, please email me, or please follow up with me. I don’t think that’s the case. What’s been your experience? When you started doing music as a career, did you just immediately think, I got to collect names and a list, and I need to serve these people?

Eli: I think I fell on that really early. I think it was like a happy accident. Before I released my first album, I made a challenge to myself that I was going to get 50 people to support me on Patreon before I released any music. I needed at least 50 people to support me on Patreon to know that I should be doing music, and then I could release my first album. I did the same for my second album, and my goal was 75. I got it, and released my second album. Then my third album was 100 and so on. 12:07 I built my community from the inside out, not on social media, but from actual relationships with people and providing the service of on which is essentially monthly videos, extra Zoom calls, that personalized approach and to know that people really did want to hear my music because if they didn’t, then that’s okay. Then I wouldn’t do the whole thing. That’s right. It turns out they did it, which is fantastic. To your point on tour with the live shows, this last year, I had pretty much a huge epiphany, which was more important than how much a venue pays me, 12:45 more important than my performance, more important than what I’m wearing, more important than my set list, is the relationships that I can make at that show with actual people. That’s beforehand, that’s during, and that’s after.

Let’s say I walk into a show, there’s three other bands, and I’m like, crush it. I just go up there and absolutely slay. I put on my sunglasses and I’m just like, see, all I have to go is St. Louis. Nothing would happen. Nothing at all. Let’s say I got on that stage. I had a decent performance; you know what I mean? It was mediocre. It was okay. People liked it but I stayed for every other band’s performance. I gave tons of love, and I had conversations with everybody in that room and got people to sign up to my email list and texting. That showed me I would be much more successful than the other model. That was a huge epiphany for me. It’s about the relationships that you can create with people at that space in a live event.

Jason: Absolutely. I had a chance to sit down with Rick Barker last fall for a couple of hours and he was sharing stories about Taylor Swift and how she was getting started and she would sit after everybody else had finished performing and she was signing and interacting, signing CDs. She would outsell these big-name artists, country artists that she was touring with all over the place. It was sticking out and just trying to make those relationships pay off, whether you’re Taylor Swift or anybody else that’s there too.

Eli: Absolutely. I learned that from Michael Walker, who was on your podcast, who spent two or three years of his life just staying up until four in the morning, messaging people on MySpace and going out to the lines to his shows to talk to people who are lining up for the show they’re about to do. It’s that extra mile. It’s like, hey, I’m here, I also care, and I want to connect with you as a person that’s going to really set the foundation.

Jason: Thinking about these systems a little bit, I think you get musicians that go out and you’re interacting, and that’s great. I think the next place I see people fail is maybe what’s the follow up process? As I look back, I used to coach a lot of mortgage loan officers in my previous life. One of the things that they always were hoping was that there’d be some software that would come around and magically make them more successful as a salesperson. It was very interesting watching people who are supposed to be salespeople completely fail and they would put all of the process into action. They’d say, okay, well, when I have this software, it will solve all my problems and it will do everything for me. I watched it fail over six times with different softwares. These were good salespeople, but even though they had this gift given to them of a software that could send emails or keep track of the process, they couldn’t use it.

What I learned, what was really interesting is the softwares can do all kinds of things, but if that person who’s actually trying to sell can’t even just handle taking a piece of paper, and maybe there’s four things that need to happen, you’re going to send a birthday card, you’re going to make a phone call on this date. If they can’t even handle doing those things, no software is going to solve that problem. I don’t know whether you’ve seen that with musicians where all of a sudden, they think some magic software is going to solve everything for them and make them successful.

Eli: I have. I’ve seen this over and over again where we’ll share how to get new fans. They’re just obsessed with needing an email address. Get me email addresses. Get me lead dens. I need people to use my sign-up form. Then they’re like, but I’m not making money. Have you offered anything to these people that you just spent all this money getting? It’s like, oh, I sent maybe a newsletter two months ago. It’s like, Yo, that’s not going to cut it. You know what I mean? You need to send a text every week just saying, hey, how’s it going? Here’s a video. Happy Summer. Whatever you want to do, there has to be a text once every two weeks, at least. For your emails, the newsletter is gone. There are no newsletters anymore. Now you’re having conversations with people one on one. It’s not like all these colors and photos. It’s like, hey, this is Eli. How are you doing? What are you listening to lately? That’s it. It doesn’t have to be a sale every time. But you send one, two, or three of those emails, then that fourth email and you let them know that you have a new T-shirt and that you let them know that there’s a livestream that you’re doing that they can come and get a special deal on that T shirt, now you’re onto something.

You remind them again an hour before through text, hey, this live stream is happening now. You send them a follow up email that they could do after if they missed it. Now you’re turning those folks into a steady revenue stream and you’re able to sustain yourself as a musician. You could spend $1,000 getting names and emails and whatever, but that doesn’t translate to anything if you’re not doing exactly what you’re saying, which is fostering those relationships and making offers.

Jason: Right. I know with a lot of these systems; they call it nurturing the lead or nurturing your fan or your client. I think one of the things for me as a musician that I still struggle with because I think, oh, people aren’t going to be interested in that. What I’ve learned over time is if I’m in the middle of writing a song or working on a book or an album, if I’ll share some of the process with those fans, they love that. It takes nothing. What I’ve realized is you bring them into that, so they feel part of the journey. All of a sudden, when you finally get around to having something they actually can buy, now they actually care about the thing, and they’ll support you in that because they’re invested, and they were there on the journey. I’ve been feeling guilty. I’ve released an album and didn’t tell anybody I was doing it. I worked my guts out. I can’t tell you how many times I was in the studio and then it’s all of a sudden, hey, I got an album. As excited as I am. Then just nothing. Essentially, if you ignored those people, whereas I could have had videos, I could have had pictures or shown a little snippet of 30 seconds. Hey, check this out. I just got this back from my audio engineer. What do you think? They love that. I think the hard part, though, is if I’m a musician, how do you realize what people will be interested in and not feel guilty or fill that imposter syndrome?

Eli: Yeah, I think it’s a good question. That’s something I’ve learned as well is that people these days, they like to process even more than the final product. A lot of these viral videos are of people showing how something is made, essentially, and watching it come together or go apart in front of your eyes. I don’t think there’s anything that you shouldn’t share these days, which is interesting. Whatever you’re comfortable with, whatever people are comfortable with, go for it. If you feel comfortable sharing a moment on stage where you totally messed up the chord, you will get more likes and more comments and more engagement on that post than you would on the post where it’s like, Hey, there’s a new song out today. It’s human, it’s relatable, it shows you who you are and allows you to just be fallible. None of us are infallible. We’re all human. And if we can share that, that makes other people feel good about their human nature as well.

Jason: I found the same thing. If you share your blemishes or your weaknesses… Well, Saturday night I did a concert here at my studio and we had dinner and there were several new people that I actually didn’t know, and they’d come. I had one of my fans who asked me if I’d play it. I wrote a song that sounds like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, but I did a twist on it and said, okay, what would the soundtrack be like if I was doing a movie where they were showing Beethoven when he lost his hearing? It’s cool, but the song is hard, and I just barely finished it. I cannot play it well at all. This person said, well, I really love that, but I can only get through the first page. It’d be so cool if you could play this. We’re talking multiple sharps and then it switches to flats. It’s brutal. My wife still was giving me a hard time about it, even yesterday. I told everybody, I said, hey, this is going to be a complete train wreck and I’m going to play it on her. It really still wasn’t good. It really wasn’t but I did it and what was funny is I’ve done several of these dinner concerts and I got an email that night and the guy went from a guy that I just barely met and he said, I started playing piano a couple of years ago, and he said it was so refreshing to see that even people that are as good as you can just be real. He goes, it gives me hope that I can do it too. It still even makes me feel uncomfortable. Oh, my gosh, I’ll never do that again, but I got more reaction from it than anything else I did when I sounded good.

Eli: Exactly. Yeah, I love it. I do the similar thing on my shows where I’m just like, request anything, I’ll do my best. Jason, some of these versions that I’m doing of songs that I’ve maybe heard once or twice are just disasters but seeing me try my best, to play the song that they were more engaged and people more like, oh, my gosh, what’s going to happen? Then if I played a song that I played 100 times perfectly, people are like, okay, yeah, of course you did. That’s that same phenomenon. Leading into that and just being and owning it can be really cool, showing that we’re all human.

Jason: Just thinking that you got to be in that perfect social media, polished. You see these people doing selfies and they got to look perfect. I think as a musician, the more you can realize, hey, show the imperfections, it’s going to get 10 times the views and love than if you’re just perfect all the time, for sure.

We were talking a little bit about CRM systems and a follow up system with these mortgage officers. I started out in my career in the business side when just the internet was coming online, and we were just building websites. It was interesting, all of these problems like sending emails or sending text messages, but gosh, we sent faxes out and sent snail mail even back in the day. All of these systems started having their own software. You had the Mailchimps and there’s 100 other email senders, as well as every other system. I think you still see that today. One of the things that I think has really happened over just the last couple of years is there’s been some systems that have combined something that does what 15 softwares could have done.

There are multiple companies, Salesforce is probably the biggest one out there that did that. I call them Frankenstein. They’re so big and you can’t really… I’ve used them multiple times and consulted on them. That’s not a great solution for a musician at all. Talk about maybe some of the processes of some of these tools… I mean, you guys have your system that you’re using. I know with Modern Musician, the Street Team, that’s awesome but talk about some of the processes that people would want to solve with some of these softwares.

Eli: I started working with Modern Musician probably about four years ago. I was there in the days where they were piecing together Minichat, Zapier, Active Campaign, Patrion, ClickFunnels, and all these services. I was there during those days, and it was nuts, like trying to connect everything and one thing would fall apart, then everything would fall apart. Now I am only using one software, and this is the Street Team software that modern musicians have been developing over the last, I would say, two years. What I do is it has a conversations tab. In that conversations tab, I can see every email, every text, every Instagram comment, every Facebook comment, every TikTok comment, every Twitter comment as well. It’s all integrated into one dashboard. It’s my go to. It’s on my phone. When I have a QR code at live shows and people can send requests, their text literally comes to my phone, and I can see it right there when I’m playing, and I can just play it instantaneously. I can send all my emails from there. I send all my texts from there. I schedule all my social media posts from there. It’s pretty incredible. I sell through there. I set up my website through there and it’s all in one thing. Instead of using six different softwares like we did back in the day, just one easy to use CRM, and it’s made specifically for musicians, which is pretty rad. That’s all I use now, Jason. That’s it.

Jason: That’s awesome. I think that’s the dream. I think one thing that I’ve learned in doing a lot of CRM consulting over the years is there’s not a single software out there that’s going to do everything perfectly. What I have realized is all of these different softwares are evolving. Even though you might see some really shiny, cool, shiny objects, AI is the big thing right now. If you’re just a little bit patient and can wait the 6 or 12 months, rather than paying thousands of dollars for it, these other softwares typically will follow in step and

 have something that’s sometimes even better than what the original thing was. It’s really important, I think, to not chase the shiny objects. I watched in the corporate world in the banking system, man, we would chase shiny objects way too often and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on shiny objects that would be obsolete two years later.

Eli: I think the interesting thing behind all that is what we were talking about earlier is just the relationships. 27:59 The relationships and fostering that doesn’t change. It’s just the systems around it that might adapt a little bit. If you’re sticking through, you know what I mean? Through communicating somehow through these folks and letting them know what’s going on, they don’t know the behind-the-scenes stuff. They don’t see all the gears and levers. It almost doesn’t matter. As long as you’re having the relationships, great but if you can find something or one thing that consistently allows you to do that, for me, it’s Street Team, then fantastic. That’s what you want.

Jason: I think one of the things that I’ve seen, not very many businesses or especially musicians do this very well. I know Russell Brunson talks about a value ladder, and I don’t know whether you’ve got a value ladder built into your process with your fans. If so, tell us a little bit about it.

Eli: Yes, I live, eat, breathe, sleep, value ladders. That’s what I do. It’s one of the most interesting. It’s like really just meeting somebody. You’re not going to go up to somebody and be like, hey, let’s get married. You know what I mean? Oh, by the way, sorry, my name is Eli. It’s like, Hi, what’s your name? You know what I mean? Where are you from? Hey, this was fun. Do you want to meet again in two weeks or something? Or, hey, I got this show. Let’s do something fun together.

29:13 The value ladder is just a way of describing in business terms what a human relationship would be over a long period of time. First you get to know somebody, then you say, hey, do you want to hang out a bit more? Then maybe they’re going to buy you lunch. Maybe you’ll buy them lunch. Then you go on a trip together, and then you are besties, and you do all the stuff together. That’s essentially the breakdown of the value ladder on psychological human terms. On the musician and business side, yes, each rung is very specific.

Jason: I think a lot of times it’s hard for people to visualize what that might look like. I mean, I can’t even visualize if they’re at a show and you’ve got a QR code, if they hold their phone up and you can get them to do the QR code to get something, they put in their name and now you’ve got their number now because you can now text follow up. My guess is if I was in your value ladder, you’d probably have some automation that would just say, hey, I hope you like to show. What do you like best about it? I could text back, and it would feel personal. It’s not just a click yes or no, really robot style relationship. Yeah.

Eli: Let’s bring it to a metaphor that all musicians can understand, a liveshow. Let’s say that you’d say the bottom rung on the value ladder is if you are playing an outdoor show just in your town, you set up an outdoor show and somebody is walking by four blocks away and they just hear you in their periphery, that would be the beginning of the relationship. Online, that could be they saw your video, or they liked something, they were exposed to your music. Then they’re like, oh, I feel the vibration. Let me get closer. Then they go into space and now they’re actually in the yard thing. They’re experiencing the show. Maybe they’re following you on social media. Maybe they signed up for your texting list but the closer you get to the stage, the closer they are to you as a fan, as a customer, as a community member, they go higher up on the ladder, essentially.

If somebody’s in the front row, they’re riding the rails, they’re commenting on all your stuff, they’re replying to all your emails, they’ve got your shirt on thing but then there’s the backstage.  Those folks, I consider my inner circle. Those are the folks that are coming backstage. They’re seeing me before the show for meet and greets, after the show. Maybe they’re on the sidelines watching it, you know what I mean? From a special place. Even after that, Jason, those are the folks that get on the tour bus. Those are like the elite top of the value ladder. They’re riding along with you. They get to hang out and see what’s going on and they come to the studio with you. All of that relationship from somebody who has no idea who you are, to they have heard your music, to they like your music, to they’re buying your merch, to they’re part of your inner circle and supporting you on a monthly basis, to they’re buying the top high-ticket items, like maybe an original song or a house show, that is the value ladder and putting steps in place that allows people to get closer to you as an artist is a very important thing. As you know, you’ve got your 2 Comma Club man, you know this very well. So yeah, it’s all that process and it’s really fun. It’s really fun watching that happen in real time.

Jason: As you’re describing all of this stuff now, as a musician, I’m hearing this and I’m thinking, oh, my gosh, I got to organize and plan all this. Wait a minute, I got to have a website and I got to figure out somebody who’s going to program this stupid software now that I don’t know how to use that’s apparently going to change my life. I’ve got to have design stuff and, oh, wait a minute, I got to do music videos. How in the world does a musician find time to even write music or even sit down with the guitar or piano if they have to deal with all this other stuff? It takes the joy out of it, doesn’t it?

Eli: Well, to me, 33:19 the reason why I write music and sing music is to connect with people. Music is the means to that end. For some folks, music is the end, and maybe they have to do other things to do that but actually for me, music is just the conduit. It’s the vessel. It is the vibration that allows me to connect with our human beings that feel and perceive the world as I do that want to connect with other open hearted and like-minded folks as well. Really, the music is just this fun thing that happens that allows me to do that. Thinking about it that way, everything that I do in music gets me there, and everything that I do behind the scenes gets me there. Writing songs is just another part of that. All these pieces in place are essentially the whole, which is experiencing joy with others through music.

Jason: You talked earlier about building a record label. Building a record label by yourself, there’s a reason record labels had lots of employees.

Eli: I could see that now.

Jason: How in the world do you build a record label today? What have you found that works for you? Are you going out and you got lucky and sat across the bar from a really smart web developer, programmer and a designer? Where do you go if you’re looking for somebody like that?

Eli: Well, 34:39 I think a good way of knowing if you’re ready to bring somebody on your team is if you’ve done it, you know how to do it, and now you don’t have enough time to do it anymore. Or there’s higher level things that only you can do, but other people could do what you did, essentially. The first person that I brought on my team, I made my first website on Bandzoogle. Of course, you can. It’s so easy. It’s so great. You go in there, you put some things on, and you get a website. Then I realized that I needed more things on my website than I could do, and it was out of my skill level. I didn’t have time to learn how to do web design. I found this incredible web designer. His name is Ross, Electric Kiwi from the UK. He’s been my go-to guy for the last six years. If I need something new in my store, he does it. If I have a whole new design, he does it and that’s outsourced. He is my website guy. I started building my record label through that first.

Same thing happened with booking. Jason, I booked all my shows the first four years as a musician. I booked my first cross-country tour. I understood what it took to send out the emails, do the research on Google, do the follow ups, plot out the points. Got to a point where I couldn’t keep doing that and keep tracking everything. I found somebody to help me with that. They are overseas, way out in Indonesia, but they helped me with booking. Whatever it is, that next task that you’re like, you know what? I could probably show somebody how to do this. It’s just that time, money equation. I’m going to spend a little bit more money here, but I’m going to get this much time that I can spend on higher level things. My best and easiest advice is figure out how to do it yourself first and whenever you hit your limit, just get somebody else to do it.

Jason: Yeah, it’s great advice. You hear a lot about people hiring VAs. It’s amazing what the overseas market has done. I’ve used onlinejobs.ph. It’s a phenomenal site if you’re looking for somebody in the Philippines. We’ve used Fiverr. It’s been probably five years now. We’ve got a guy in Serbia that does music videos for us. He’s incredible. Nice. Vlad is his name. He’s great.

If you’re trying to just hire something because you’re being lazy, I love that you’re saying you need to learn how to do it first because I think a lot of people will take it’s almost a little bit of a cop out there like, oh, I’m just going to hire somebody to do it. What I’ve learned in doing multiple businesses is nobody’s going to care about your business or your music or your thing as much as you will. If you don’t care enough about it to figure something out, then don’t be frustrated when somebody else doesn’t care about it either, because if you didn’t care, then why should they?

Eli: That’s a skill, Jason, that you’ve learned over time is 37:41 learning how to do something and then training somebody how to do it. That’s a required skill in order to scale a business. You cannot scale if you’re not able to do that. A good example of this is me finding media contacts. It’s taken me, I’m not even kidding, six months to train somebody to do what I learned how to do. It’s building standard operating procedures for every single step along the way, making sure that every single one has been done accordingly, editing, proofing, making sure it’s good. Then only then after I’ve seen it done five, six, 10 times and do perfection, can I be like, okay, let’s go to the next task. I’ve had to learn how to do each of those and then only then could I tell someone, show someone how to do that. So, it takes time, but it’s worth it in the end because now I can focus on higher level things that no one else can do except myself in that business.

Jason: For sure. I think one of the hardest things when you do hire that person to come on is being patient with them and not expecting them to know everything and just somehow be a mind reader, especially a mind reader from halfway around the globe. I see I think the key is definitely being able to just evaluate, did I teach them well? If I didn’t, if I felt like that person was capable and smart and cared, then you owe it to yourself to learn how to become a good teacher as well.

Eli: Yeah, absolutely. That’s it. I think.

Jason: That’s what’s been really hard. That’s been a hard thing to learn. What’s really fun is once you get to the point where now they’re doing things better than you, and then they pass you and you’re I don’t even know how to do this anymore. Tell me what you’re doing.

Eli: Yeah, exactly.

Jason: Definitely, if you’ve scaled enough, that’s when you hopefully are hiring a manager or somebody that can know how to do the thing and still ensure that at least they know that they’ve got your back and are going to help. Any other thoughts on CRM systems?

Eli: Yeah. They’re constantly evolving. I’m learning every week, every month. It used to be that the whole industry changed every 10 years. Now, then it was every five years. Then it was like now it seems like every six months. Everything that comes out, it just puts everything on its head. Six months ago, we wouldn’t necessarily be talking about AI as much as we are right now but that’s great. And as you’re saying, shiny object syndrome is a thing. Very early on, I realized, okay, I’m one musician. I can’t get all my music synced and perform live and live stream on Twitch and go viral on TikTok and be a YouTube star and build my own website. You know what I mean? It’s just like there’s only so many things out there.

Jason: …and find time to write music. That’s the thing. Wait a minute, I got to do music songs and.

Eli:  …and record it and release it. Yeah, exactly. You can’t do it all. For me, finding exactly what my thing was and just leaning into it was really important. For me, it was really just free live streams on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. That’s been my pulse. I do these Folk Fridays every Friday. I’ve been doing them for four years since the pandemic. That is the pulse where I connect with my community. I ask them how they’re doing. They see how I’m doing, and share songs. It makes everything easier because everything can be built into that.  If I wrote a release, I could talk about it. If I have a new T-shirt, I can talk about it. If I’m going on tour, I can talk about it on folk Friday. That’s the place where I’m able to foster those relationships and let people know what’s going on. For some people, that’s TikTok. For some people, it’s Twitch. Whatever that community is, just pick one. You know what I mean? Maybe it’s Reddit. All good. Whatever works for you, just find your people, really lean into it and spend the time to build and foster that relationship. As you’re saying, bring them up that value ladder, bring them closer and closer to the stage, and then hopefully they get on that bus and ride with you until the end. I think.

Jason: The big thing is, before you dive into that fancy, shiny, CRM software system that does everything, if you can’t handle doing it on a piece of paper in a very basic spreadsheet, if you don’t know what it is you want to do first, the software is not going to be able to magically tell you what to do. I think the key is just setting those… Set the goal of saying, I’m going to build a list of people. Well, find those 50 people. Do it on a spreadsheet. Maybe it’s a paper signup sheet you pass around. If you can’t handle it, putting a QR code and having a system is not going to solve that problem for you. Yeah. It’s like someone.

Eli: Just gave you this incredible Samurai sword from the 14th century. It’s like, here’s a Samurai sword. You’re like, Whoa. I’m going to put it on my wall but learning how to use it and wield it and all those skills, that takes time. Absolutely, that’s a huge insight, Jason.

Jason: Anyway, I just hope for most musicians out there, it’s great to dive in and commit and you definitely need to do that but having a clear path of where you’re going to go and then committing to it, it will save you a lot of money and frustration and help you be successful if you’ll take it step by step and think of it like that ladder. You just value ladder, value ladder. You’re going a little wrong at a time.

Eli: …and mentors as well. I mean, Jason, I remember coming up in the whole online musician world, and you were a huge inspiration to me. You’re the first however many figure-musicians that came in and out of modern music. It was just like; I didn’t fathom it. I didn’t even think that that was possible. Connecting with people who have done it and you’ve seen it happen, that’s been huge. Connecting with Michael Walker and seeing you do it has been like, okay, maybe I can do that and then learning from the best has been a huge help for me as well.

Jason: Absolutely. I remember when I started my journey… I’ve been a marketing guy for over 20 years, but when I committed to doing the music, my mental place I was at was there’s no way to… I’ll be a poor musician and I’ll find something else that I can make money with. I remember going through it, it was called the One Funnel Away challenge that ClickFunnels with Russell Brunson did. It was like $100. I thought I had nothing to lose, $100. Somebody at a conference had told me I should do this. It was one of the few things you come back from a conference, and I actually did. I remember going through the first week and it was all of this, ra, ra, believe in yourself, you can do it. To the point where I’m like, okay, can I put it at 3x speed? I want to go barf. You can do this. I know I can do it. Tell me how I can do it now. I still remember it was over a week of just believing in myself. I even had Steven Larsons on there yelling at you to tell you to believe. I got to about the second week and then I got into the third week and all of a sudden it was starting to do this stuff and it got hard.

As I looked back, especially once I got a year or two down the road, when I could look back and be like, okay, what really made the difference? The fact that I believed that I could, and I’d look at it like, Oh, yeah. Well, if he can do it, then I can do it. Michael Walker, if so and so can do it, then why can’t I do it? There’s no reason, no. I think it’s interesting to look at what ClickFunnels has done with their 2 Comma Club awards. For those that aren’t familiar with it, they teach you to build a funnel and they tell you to focus on one funnel and get it, so it does a million dollars of revenue. That seems like this impossible thing. All of a sudden, they’ve just stayed with it. It was like, oh, there’s 200 people that did this. Whoa, wait. Then the next year you go back and they’re giving out 600 awards, 600 people did this. What? They did it with what?

There are people that have done million-dollar funnels with teaching people to rope cowboy cows. I don’t know if you’ve seen that one. I thought, Oh, my gosh. Online, I’m going to teach somebody how to rope a cow? I think you’d have to do that in person. The funny thing is that people can be successful with, and if they can do it, then why couldn’t I do it with sheet music? I turned around and I guess if you think about the five-minute mile, four-minute mile, all these different things. When somebody broke that barrier, now it was like, whoa, somebody can do that? Well, I can do it too, with a competitive nature. He’s like, Let’s do it. Let’s figure it out.

I think for musicians, the key thing is just believing that it’s possible and don’t be like me where I’m like, this is no fun. Get to the meat. That actually matters more than even the tactical doing all the stuff because when it gets hard, you’re going to want to quit and if you quit believing in yourself, you won’t keep going.

Eli: Yeah, it’s the mindset part and that’s the seed and having that very strong mindset and seed like, yes, I can do this. Everything else is just one other challenge that you’re going to figure out. It’s awesome.

Jason: You speak about mentors, and I’ll just put a plug in for… They call them mastermind groups, or at least you talk about finding your people that are going to support you. A lot of times, being around other people that have that same mindset or in a similar thing. I know Modern Musician does their Mastermind group, and it’s a lot of musicians, and they just get… Yes, you’re getting together and making relationships and making friends, but I think part of it is just rubbing off on each other and realizing, well, if Eli did this, then maybe I can do it or, Michael did this, I should be able to do this, too. Don’t underestimate the power of getting a group of a dozen or so people together. Definitely go have fun and play hard. It’s amazing the connections and the introductions and doors that open when you step up and spend, whether it’s $1,000 or $10,000 or let’s call it $50,000 that I know some of these masterminds. It’s worth it just for those relationships that may lead you to a door that for all you knew was going to be the million-dollar funnel.

Eli: Yeah, super powerful. Absolutely. Just getting in a space with others like you that have done it and you’re like, Oh, wow. There’s a lot of synergy there and pretty incredible stuff. You know that well. You’re the first modern musician Mastermind, actually. Platinum.

Jason: Down in Costa Rica, it was a blast. It’s awesome. We nearly drowned the first person or two, but we had a blast doing it. Everybody’s here.

Eli: Everybody survived. Thank goodness.

Jason: Anyway, there’s a plug for those masterminds. I think the key thing with those is trying to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. Whether it’s people that you hire or people that you’re going to hang out with because you typically are going to be very similar to the six or eight people that you spend the most time with. Ground yourself with people that are going to lift you up and believe in you for sure.

Eli: Absolutely. If you’re the smartest person in the room, get out of there.

Jason: Right. We’re about out of time. The podcast is called Successful Musicians Podcast. In your mind, what’s the definition of somebody being successful as a musician?

Eli: Yeah, with all this talk of business and marketing and making it and all that good stuff and organization, honestly, to me, it really boils down to if you’re happy with what you’re doing. 50:01 You know I am successful right now because I am happy with what I’m doing. I was a success two years ago because I love singing. I love writing songs and connecting with people. If there is happiness and joyfulness in the process, then that is just constant success. There is no time, no matter what. Every failure is just a part of the process. It can’t be wrong. Really owning that and understanding and just realizing that it’s a long-term thing. Being a success is just so grand now that you might as well start enjoying every moment because you’re going to be waiting 20 years if you think one thing is a symbol of success. That’s my just very succinct answer is just finding joy in the process along the way.

Jason: You talked about 20 years. I think the key is if you’re having that happiness and enjoying what you’re doing, you look back 20 years backwards and you’re going to… That’s probably about the time you may find the, whatever, the success that maybe everybody else thought was in their mind what success was, but you figured it out, being happy all the way along. That’s a great definition. Awesome. Well, last question for you. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given about being a musician?

Eli: Best advice that I’ve ever been given about being a musician. I don’t know where I heard this, but I can’t remember it was one of those just Spotify things that came up and it’s like, oh, here’s somebody who’s going to tell you about something. I can’t remember. I think it was just, 51:51 Don’t stop. Just keep going. I’ve had terrible shows. Five people have come to shows. Zero people have come to shows. I’ve played two Bartenders and a sound guy and their dog before. I’ve also played to 500 people at this amazing venue in DC. I’ve heard people say my music is great. I’ve been on a doorway when someone’s walking out of a show and said that I was crap. They liked all the other artists except me. I wear that with the badge of honor because I didn’t just stop. One day I’m just going to be like, oh, I’m done. I will be done maybe one day. When that happens, it’s like, okay, that’s great. I would just say don’t stop. Keep going as long as you’re finding joy and happiness in what you’re doing.

Jason: That sounds like some lyrics to a very successful song you may have to do right now.

Eli: [singing] Don’t stop. Keep going. Keep finding success and happiness with what you’re doing.

Jason: Eli, thank you. This has been fun. I think you’ve had a lot of good insights that I think musicians need to hear. It wasn’t the typical interview, which I’ve loved. You’ve been my spreadsheet buddy, right?

Eli:  Yeah, we’re spreadsheet buddies, ride or die now, Jason.

Jason: Whoever’s listening to this, whatever you take away, that organization and really believing in the business, you owe it to yourself to learn the business and you owe it to your fans. If you feel like you got something that’s worth sharing, please share it. Hopefully this podcast is something that people, if you feel like it was worth your time and I think it helps somebody, please share it, pass it along. Eli will definitely… We got to do this again. I think we’ve got all kinds of other directions we can go that would be really helpful for musicians down the road. Thank you.

Eli: Absolutely. Thank you, Jason. You are an inspiration to me, and I am incredibly honored that you asked me on. I’ve had an absolute blast. Appreciate you.

Jason: Awesome. If anybody wants to go check out Eli, where should they go listen to your music or learn more about what you’re doing?

Eli: Yes, I am on your local Google machine, type in Eli, ELI, and my last name is Lev, L E V, as in victory. You found me online, all streaming platforms, and I have a community called the Levitators. If you want to see all the gears in action and what happens, what I do, this is what I do and how I learn from other musicians, join the Levitators, go to my website, see what happens and you can use it and take it and make it your template for your own community. Awesome. Thanks, Eli.

Jason: Appreciate your time today.

Eli: Thank you, Jason.

Finding success and fulfillment in the music industry is possible. Looking forward to seeing you in our next episode.