One of my favorite quotes from motivational guru Tony Robbins is “success leaves clues”.  I love this quote because the quote itself is a great clue about how to become successful.  I sort of intuitively understood this long before I ever heard the quote.  It always seemed rather obvious that if you want to become successful that you can simply look around and observe other people that are successful and reverse engineer the steps they took to get there.  Or, just ask them.  Most people love to talk about themselves, and I’ve found over the years that the vast majority of people, when pressed, are more than happy to share details about how they’ve found success and dispense advice on how to become successful. 

I can recall years ago, when I was single, subscribing to a newsletter from a motivational, self-help guru who would give relationship and dating advice via his newsletter.  I was so captivated by the content and the articles he would send out that I ended up buying one of his ebooks.  It was the first purchase like this I had ever made and after I purchased the ebook I got really intrigued with just how this person was able to convince me to buy his 20 dollar ebook.  I started researching his business and his story and discovered this person was running a multimillion-dollar empire selling ebooks and dvds about dating and relationships out of his apartment.  I was blown away.

I was so inspired by this story and how successful this business was that I decided to start my own business using the same business model.  Fifteen years later I’m still making a full-time income from multiple businesses that I essentially modeled after this marketer’s business.  Success leaves clues, and if you look around carefully you can find thousands of examples of people and businesses that are crushing it in their chosen niches.

When I started teaching music licensing, one of the first things I did was start reaching out to other musicians who had even more success than I had. I knew that to effectively teach other artists how to license their music I would need to provide as many examples of other musicians who were succeeding as possible. For example, In the 100 plus episodes of my podcast, Music, Money & Life, I’m essentially providing hundreds of clues about how anyone can succeed in music licensing, based on examples of people who are succeeding.  Although no two paths are exactly the same, most successful paths have a lot of common denominators. 

If you want to succeed in music licensing, or any other specific niche, the most logical starting point is to seek out others who are already succeeding in the niche you want to go into, and study how they became successful.  It’s such an obvious thing to do that, that I think many of us miss it.   Can it really be that simple?  Yes! 

Now, one caveat, like I said no two paths are exactly the same.  We’re all unique and have our own paths to walk.  No two paths are going to unfold in exactly the same way.  But if you’re struggling to move forward, or you're not quite sure what the next step is, a great way to get “unstuck” is to go find someone who is further down the path than you are and figure out how they got there. 

When you seek out and study others who are more successful than you are, it’s inspiring.  They may not provide the exact formula or path for you, because again, no two paths are exactly the same.  But if you start really paying attention, you’ll pick up on clues that will help point the way towards your own future success.  It might be something someone says in a podcast you’re listening to.  Or it might be an idea you get from a course you take.  You have to learn how to take the knowledge that other people are imparting and figure out how to apply it to your own unique situation.

I’ll give you an example. When I first started licensing my own music, way back in 2002, I had very little knowledge in terms of how the business worked or how to succeed.  After I had licensed one song with my then publisher, my former songwriting teacher at Berklee, I reached out to her and asked her if there was any advice she could give me in terms of how to become more successful in sync licensing.  She sent me back a sheet of tips and suggestions both related to songwriting and how to interact with people in the business. 

One of the things on her list of suggestions was the phrase, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”.  She was implying that if I wanted to stay on top of opportunities and stay in the loop, I needed to reach out to her on a regular basis.  She was telling me how to effectively communicate with her and was expressing the reality of her day to day to life, which was that she was really busy.  It was a good reminder that if you want to succeed in music licensing, the onus is on you to make it happen. Success is not going to just fall into your lap, so make sure you are pro-actively going out and seeking out opportunities, connections, deals and so on.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease!

If you’re ready to learn from hundreds of other musicians, supervisors, publishers and more, who are all succeeding in music licensing, be sure to Join HTLYM Premium. When you join HTLYM Premium, you’ll get access to our wealth of resources, including daily licensing leads, in depth courses, webinars, industry directories, private coaching and more.  

Save $200.00 off the full cost of your membership between now and July 9.

Learn more: https://www.htlympremium.com/signup.html

Talk soon!
Aaron Davison