Uh-oh, Your Kid Wants to be a Musician!

The words of dread for almost any parents..."mom, dad, I want to go to college to become a professional musician."

Perhaps even worse..."mom, dad, I'm skipping college because I want to go on tour and try and get signed by a record label."

I don't think I need to utilize too much of my imagination to figure out what the response would be to those statements.  And rightly so!

However...

Before a young person of college age, or their parents, go off of the deep end, I think its important that both parties truly understand what it is to actually be a professional musician.  A lot of misconceptions exist for either argument of "for" or "against".

I have been a full-time professional musician for 15 years now.  I can say that it is indeed possible to make a living as such.  Though I must also say that the obstacles are many, the work is hard, and the notion of being an "artist" absolutely must go out of the window.  The level of dedication and discipline needed also far exceeds any conventional career that I can think of off hand.

There is a checklist of items that I like to make both the young people interested in a career in today's entertainment industry and their parents aware of.  And, if a single one of the points about to be mentioned can't be followed or agreed to, then I personally say don't even bother becoming a professional musician, or a performer of any type for that matter.  The points are as follows:

1. Major in business, minor in music.  A solid foundation in business is crucial because you are instantly self employed as an artist. Also, some background in marketing concepts will prove extremely valuable.
   
   
2. Practice your instrument like a maniac from the time you enter Junior High or High School through your first couple of years in college.  Why?  Because the need to network, establish yourself in the scene, and the time required to research venues and book gigs will eat up almost ALL of your free time.  That's not even considering if you one day get married, buy a home, have kids, etc.  I can promise you that, once those things happen, there will be NO time to do any meaningful practicing.
   
   
3. Even though genres like pop, rock, r&b, etc. require that you are relatively young, and genres like classical, jazz, and folk allow for the performer to be older and still be looked upon as "viable", as a rule of thumb I would say that, if you haven't established yourself in your chosen genre by your late twenties, then cut your losses and pursue another career while you are still young enough to do so.  This is because the older you get the more difficult it becomes to set aside the time needed to do all of the things needed to pursue a musical career.  Life becomes more complicated as you get older, not less (a slight nod to condition number two).
   
   
4. Build a volunteer team (family, friends, or dedicated fans) around you that can help with the many tasks that must be done.  You will quickly find it nearly impossible to micro-manage EVERYTHING that you must take care of.  Here are a few things:  Research venues or performance leads, build network of musicians to play with or form a band, try to book gigs, come up with promotional material and marketing campaign game plan, come up with and modify career game plan, maintain website, maintain facebook page or other social networks you belong to, come up with repertoire or compose original music to perform, plan and put together your stage show, figure out your finances/investments both short and long term….I think you may get the picture (notice I didn't even mention practice your instrument yet!)
   
   
5. Be willing to put aside having much of a social life in order to get all of the other things done that you need to.
   
   
6. ALWAYS treat what you do as a business...period!  If you don't think of yourself as being a business where you are the president, the worker, AND the product, then don't bother with this because you will join the ranks of "starving artists", who do it for the "love of it".  I'm sorry, but I have yet to see the simple "love of it" pay my cell phone bill...just being honest.

After doing all of that, is success guaranteed?  It depends on what YOUR definition of success is.  If you are looking to make a respectable, sustainable living, then I would say that would be very possible to achieve.  If you are looking to be the next superstar, own a few homes, have a few million dollars in your bank account, then no.

I don't care to be a dream buster, but this is the reality of the situation in today's entertainment industry.  

I personally have had a measure of success.  I would say my peak was somewhere around late 2009.  By then, my income matched or exceeding that of many of my non musician friends.  Then, after about 11 years of a steady increase in my annual income, things went south...and rather quickly. 

This is partially because of the economic down turn that took place in 2008, but also because of factors like the birth of my daughter, which was also in 2008.  At the time, I had to stay home and take care of her because my wife was a "9 to 5ver".  I couldn't take care of my daughter during the day AND do the things I needed to (I hadn't built a team that could help with the work load...a reference to condition number 4).  Since many of my performances are booked 6 - 12 months ahead of time, the effects of staying away from the telephones to book gigs didn't really hit until around the third quarter of 2009.

Also, I began to find it more difficult to find students that could afford my rates.  I went from a roster of about 30 private students up until about 2007, down to about 6 students by 2010.  This was another example of how the economy negatively affected what I do.

Between my inability to make calls to book gigs while taking care of my daughter during the day, and the economic downturn that resulted in less live performance opportunities and students, it was only a matter of time for my income earning ability to falter. If I didn't have to solely rely on myself to take care of every aspect of my business, I may have been able to absorb and adapt to my changing external conditions in a much more efficient manner.

Again, only one of the conditions numbered above were not met and it ended in financial ruin.

This has been a longer post than I originally intended, but I hope what I have shared proves of some value to someone out there.

By Shenole Latimer

Maintaining Weight Loss...1 Year Later

Up until October of 2010 I looked like the image on the left.  I weighed in at 285 lbs during the period that I was at my heaviest.  I then began a gradual modification of my diet, eventually added some exercise, and by October of 2011 I looked like the image on the right, which is me at 205 lbs.

The thing is, the image on the right isn't from 2011, it is from 2012.  In other words, I have beat the odds!

It's widely known that people who lose a great deal of weight often put it, or much more, back on.  I have managed to maintain my weight loss and the secret is encompassed within the first paragraph of this post.  Notice I used the words "gradual modification" and "eventually added".

The simple fact of the matter is, losing weight and keeping it off does indeed require a change in lifestyle.  And, lifestyles can't be changed abruptly and be expected to not revert back to what was previously established.  Changes that are made slowly and over time are far more likely to stay.

With that said, if you are looking to lose weight and maintain that loss, I offer you the blog post I wrote that details what I did to lose my weight.  And, heed my words..."gradually" and "eventually"!

The Challenge of Facing a Career Change

More people than ever are changing their careers.  Though the primary reason may be because of the state of the world economy in the past few years, other reasons could be simply feeling unhappy with one's current career and desiring a change of scenery, or it could even be health related.

In my case, it is the latter that has changed the game for me.

As a musician, my hands mean everything towards what I do and how I earn a living.  But now, I'm faced with having developed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both my left and my right hands.

I think for some people, changing their career can be a very difficult challenge.  For me this has not been the situation.  I first began having problems with my hands (it was my left hand first) back in 2008.  With those initial problems I encountered, something snapped instantly in my mind.  I realized that my days as a performer may be numbered, and so I set forth with trying to make peace with this realization.

I was a bit depressed at first.  After all, in my 39 years on this planet, I have been playing instruments since I was about 3 years old, playing the saxophone since I was 8 or 9 years old, performing live music in public since I was 16, and making a living as a full time musician since I was 24.

Sometime around 2009 I realized that, though music has been virtually all I've known my entire life, I have many interests outside of music.  Furthermore, I also realized that there were far more angles to music than just the performance end of it.

With all of that said, I have decided that, if my performance career must end, a pursuit in web design and application programming will be the next interest I follow, but with a concentration on...well...the music industry.  As has been said by many successful entrepreneurs, "to make money in business, stick with what you know."

I am currently working on a joint project, of my conception, with my oldest brother, my father, and a family friend with a very strong background in both business and engineering.  Much has been accomplished, but there is still much left to do.  My hope is that we may have this project up and running by the time my hands and my tired body scream out "I've had enough", with regards to performing live music.  Publicly, I have hinted at a retirement date of sometime around late Fall of 2013.

In sum, I would say that a career change doesn't have to be a course filled with dread.  It may be an opportunity for you to look upon yourself and say, "this is me 2.0!"

How Much is Left?

They say that boxers have about 100 fights in them before they hit a wall and their bodies basically shut down from being able to take the abuse that comes with the sport,  marathoners have but so many miles that they can run, and so on.

How many performances does a full time musician have in them...particularly the ones with no management or outside help?

I have been thinking, lately to myself, that there seems to be so much happening to my body in the past 6 months or so, which all seems to have something to do with the constant pushing that I've been doing over the past nearly 15 years, that perhaps I may be starting to reach the borders of my own limits. 

First, there is the CONSTANT tiredness I have been feeling for the past 5 or 6 years.  Then, there are the several times I have almost passed out during performances.  Also, there is the hearing loss I have experienced, as well as what seems to be a slight loss in short term memory.  The latter I blame on sleep deprivation (up until recently, I basically averaged 3 to 5 hours of sleep a night for nearly a decade). 

The newest item to add to this list is my development of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in both my right and my left hands, which has been diagnosed as being a side product of the countless hours spent on my computer researching venues, typing emails, designing my website, updating all of my social media, designing all of my graphics and promotional materials, typing press releases, and the list goes on!

When I look at some of the greats of the past, such as Miles Davis, they have all either taken a short break of some kind, an extended hiatus, or have retired from music all together.  As I look at what is happening with the breakdown of my body of late, I'm caught asking myself, "How much do I have left?"

by Shenole Latimer

How I Lost 70 Pounds

Back on Tuesday, April 7, 2009, in a blog post I titled "Crunch Time", I mentioned how my weight had ballooned to 270lbs and that I wanted to do something about that.  Unfortunately, my good intentions were out-weighed (no pun intended) by the rigors of life as a full time musician and of being a home owner.

Time went on and then something happened.

One day in October of 2010 I was putting on a pair of slacks to wear for a gig I had later that day.  They felt sort of tight.  I happened to glance in the mirror (I was in profile) and I truly was appalled at what I saw.  I quickly pulled out the scale and took my slacks off.  I stepped on the scale and saw the needle go all the way to 280lbs!

I realized then that I was closer to being 300 lbs than I was to even being 250lbs (still overweight for my height of 6'3").  I was instantly depressed.  I thought about how athletic I was in high school and college, and also about the nearly 30 medals, 2 MVPs and 1 MIP that I had won as a track star.

My depression lasted all of about 30 seconds, because I realized then that this was it.  The only direction my weight gain would go would be backwards rather than forward.  I'm proud to say that since the first week of October, 2010, and as of the morning of writing this blog post, I have officially lost 70lbs!  I'm only 5lbs heavier than I was when I was a competing athlete in college.

Ok, enough with the background and set up, here is what I did.

STEP ONE:  Figure Out Goals and Game Plan (Time Frame = 2 Days)

I already knew that one of the main reasons that some people fail at weight loss is because they don't have a game plan.  I also knew that another important reason that some people fail at weight loss is because they don't set logical, realistic goals.

I decided that, in order to be successful, I needed some time to figure out a game plan and a goal that was realistic for me.  I took two days from my schedule and cleared them out of as much as I reasonably could so that I would have NO DISTRACTIONS.

After much research and honest consideration, I figured that a realistic goal for me, considering my age, time I had available, current weight class, etc., was to try and get down to somewhere between 215-220lbs.  This is because I didn't think my body, age, and demanding lifestyle as a musician would allow me to get down to my dream weight of 205lbs (my college weight as an athlete).  I also thought that it would be realistic to give myself a year and not fall for the 5 and 6 month plans I was coming across online.  People seeking weight loss often make the mistake of trying to lose too much too fast.  Ultimately, they end up gaining it all back and then some!

My overall strategy was to make small changes over the course of time that would allow me to ease into an eventual and complete change in my eating and rest habits.

STEP TWO:  Set the Plan in Action (Time Frame = 12 Months)

I mentioned 12 months as the time frame for this step, but in reality you can really break it down into "phases".

(PHASE I:  Oct - Dec, 2010) - During the first phase of my weight loss plan I decided to completely cut out drinking soda.  At the time, I was drinking up to 2 or 3 litters of soda a day.  Soda was MY water!  Also, since I had begun to tour a lot (which meant doing a whole lot of driving by myself), I was drinking Coca Cola for the caffeine to help keep me awake on the road.  This is because I don't drink coffee.

The other thing that I did at first was to cut down my portions a bit.  I still would eat ANYTHING I wanted to, just less of it.  Instead of 2 slices of pizza, I would only have 1.  Instead of having 2 plates full of food for dinner, I would only have 1, etc.

One other thing that I did was to stop eating past 7pm in the evening.  Because of late night performances and the general demands of my schedule as a full time musician, I was often eating big meals after midnight and then going to bed about an hour or two after that.  In other words, I never had the chance to burn it off.

By the way, I think it's important to mention that I substituted drinking soda with drinking seltzer water.  I had come to discover that it wasn't necessarily the sweetness of the soda that I was hooked on, but the fizzle of it!

After about 2 months and losing about 25lbs I hit my first plateau or road block.  As hard as I tried I just could not break the 255lb barrier.  This is when I decided that I needed to go into another phase of action...PHASE II!

(PHASE II:  Dec, 2010 - Feb, 2011) - I cut out ALL fast food, with the exception of Subway, Quizno and Chipotle's.  I stayed with these places because they all offered filling meals that contained less fat than comparably priced meals from McDonald's, Burger King, etc.  Also, the former establishments' foods were generally less caloric than the latters'.  To put it succinctly, I started watching both my calorie intake and my fat intake.

This worked!  I got past the 255lb barrier and proceeded to lose about another 20lbs.

By the time I went on my February 2011 Tour I had managed to get down to about 237lbs, which is when I hit another barrier (plateau).  This was a VERY tough barrier to get through.  It was at this point that I realized I had to adjust and enter...

(PHASE III:  Feb - June, 2011) - I pondered and pondered what my problem could be.  I then realized that it was two fold.  One issue was that I wasn't doing any exercising what so ever up until this point.  Frankly, my schedule in both my business and personal life had become too dense.  My house was in foreclosure, my wife was out of work for a total of 2 years by this point, and I was gigging and touring on the road like a mad man to try and pick up the slack.  I was hoping that yet another dietary change would be enough.

Finally, I figured out that I was taking in too many carbs.  I was still eating a lot of pastas and white bread.  I made the switch to whole wheat and rye breads, and then cut my pasta intake by a good 80%.  That did the trick!  It took longer than it had for the previous phases, but by June, 2011 I had gotten my weight down to the 225lb mark.  And then, you guessed it, I hit another plateau!

(PHASE IV:  June - Sept, 2011) - Progress was slowing way down for me by this point.  I was beginning to think that it was not feasible for me to get any lighter than I already had.  It would take a lifetime search for something completely unrelated to my weight loss, and a medical scare, to get me to the next level.

In July, two things of great significance happened.  The first thing was that I managed to track down my biological father and 7 half siblings that I didn't know I had.  The second thing was that I began encountering spells where I would almost pass out on stage during performances.

How these two completely different things tie in together is that, when I met my second oldest brother (Kenny, who lives in New York City) for the first time, I told him about nearly passing out during several performances and how I thought it may be tied in with either my diet, or that perhaps I was encountering a blood sugar imbalance...maybe even becoming a diabetic.  He then told me (and this would become useful to me again later) that the men on  my father's side needed to eat frequently...five or even six times a day.

I thought about it and realized that I basically needed to speed up my metabolism.  One way to do that is to eat more frequently, and also smaller (fist sized) portions at each meal.  My father further advised me to take my regular 3 meals a day and simply divide them in half.  This was good for another 5lbs of weight loss!

By the way, I hope you are starting to see a few patterns here.  One of the patterns being that, as you get closer to what your target weight is (or perhaps should be), it becomes increasingly difficult to lose any kind of weight...certainly at the amounts that were previously possible.

(PHASE V:  Oct - Dec, 2011) - An interesting thing happened to me exactly one year after I had first started trying to lose weight.  I was packing up my car to go to a gig when I suddenly noticed that the large speakers that I use as part of my sound system seemed unusually heavy to me.  I couldn't understand why this seemed to be the case, as I had actually had plenty of rest the night before, and was not hungry or dehydrated.

It suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks.

All of this time I had been focused on weight loss, but I never considered doing any weight training to minimize the loss of muscle mass I would experience from losing so much weight from dieting alone.


DUUUUUUUuuuuuuuhhhh!

I promptly set about creating a weight training routine for myself.  I realized that by increasing my muscle mass, not only would I not lose anymore of my strength, but the added muscle would also help me to burn fat and keep my metabolism up.  This was good for another 5lbs of weight loss over the course of about a month.  My weight by the week before the Thanksgiving holiday was 215lbs.


(PHASE VI  where I'm at now) - Fortunately, Thanksgiving did not add anything to me that I couldn't get rid of within 3 days of going back to my usual routine.  But by now, I had decided to change my goals.


I realized that I had managed to get to my target weight range, but I felt I could actually make it to my "dream weight".  Not only that, my confidence has allowed me to come up with the goal of reducing my overall body fat to around 8-10% (beach body/underwear model body) by Summer, 2012.  This will take a lot of work!  I think I look good now, but I'm just now curious to see what I'm capable of. 

My oldest brother, Luis (he lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida), has lent me a hand by providing me with a book on weight lifting and nutrition.  What he and I both like about the book is that it is all based off of several studies that have been done in the last decade.  In other words, there is some science to back up what they have to offer you in terms of work outs, nutrition, etc.!  The book is called "The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises".  There is a similar book for women.

So anyway, following the advice in the book, I have managed to lose another 5lbs in about 2 weeks. 

IN CLOSING - I think if anything is to be taken from this marathon of a blog post that I have done, it is:

1 - Set realistic goals

2 - Come up with a sensible game plan to reach those goals

3 - Plateaus will happen.  Use those times to evaluate and adjust your tactics.

4 - Give yourself a realistic time frame to work with. (I first gave myself a year and am adding another 6 months to achieve my new goal).

5- It's cliche but it will take discipline, sacrifice, hard work, and time!


So, I sincerely hope that this post will help someone out there.  Just remember, if a 38 year old, self employed, full time musician (who is constantly gigging and touring on the road), father of an energetic daughter, and former home owner (who had to deal with doing his own house repairs, landscaping, etc.) can lose 70lbs, so can you!   : )

Written by Shenole Latimer

My Theory About How To Achieve a Successful Career in Music

So, here's the big question...is it possible to make a living as a musician?


Without hesitation, my answer is a flat out yes. I have been a full time musician now since 1998 and I have managed to make a middle class living with it. But, this has not come without a price.


First of all, there is the fact that I have next to no social life at all. The reason? I spend so much time either researching opportunities for performances, or actually performing that, when I finally do have some rare free time, all I want to do is either sleep or spend a little time with my family.

Secondly, there are the rigors that my body must constantly go through. There are many late nights and, with a young daughter to raise, very early mornings. This means that I the average amount of nightly sleep I'm able to get is far below what most people experience (I average about 4 hours to 5 hours of sleep a night). I have little down time because I must constantly be doing things to keep the ball rolling. Not to mention, some of the harsh environmental conditions I have been submitted to...ie, doing high energy outdoor shows in blazing 100 degree weather, with little time to hydrate or even eat because of the lack of time available to set up. The list goes on and on.

Before I go any further, I would like to make PERFECTLY CLEAR that I am NOT complaining. I am simply trying to enlighten those who do not understand what it takes to do this for a living. I lovingly call these folks "civilians".


Now, I would like to get to the point of this blog post, which is to share my thoughts as to what I feel it now takes to have a successful career in music, especially in this new millennium and digital age that we are in. I feel that there are several ingredients or "conditions" that must exist. They are as follows:

1. 
   
   
   
   You must start young - This is true for ANY musical genre. And, it is gravely important in regards to achieving a highly proficient level on your instrument of choice. This is because if you want to be purely a performer, you are going to spend so much time looking for opportunities that you will find time for practicing rapidly being eaten away.
   




2. 
   
   
   
   You must be able to put a team of people around you - In other words, you will need to think in terms of being a small business and find a way to acquire someone to eventually take care of the researching of venues and performance opportunities, someone to handle certain aspects of your marketing, someone to do the actual phone calls to get you booked, etc.
   
   I know a ton of musicians who read this will probably roll their eyes, but they CANNOT deny the simple fact that, as long as you must do EVERYTHING yourself, there will always be a ceiling as to how much money you can ever earn. It's simple math...the more time you must use up trying to handle the "back office" end of things, the less time is left for the actual performance end of things. The less you perform, the less money you can earn through performing or selling merchandise during that performance.
   
   By the way, how do you compensate this team of people I'm suggesting you have? Well, that is somewhere where one must use the creativity that we are born with as artists, because that money isn't going to be there in the beginning.
   




3. 
   
   
   
   You must become well established and reach a certain level of success by your late 20's - This is another thing that I think a lot of musicians are going to roll their eyes at me about, but I will hold fast in my opinion. The reason I state this is because, as one gets older, and certainly by their mid to late 20's, one will have more financial responsibilities. That's just a fact of life. There is no one out there that can tell me that their level of expenditures has not changed and gotten to be more expensive between the ages of 16 and 26.
   
   So, when I say you must reach a certain level of success, I mean that you must reach a point in your career where you can pay ALL of your bills and still have something left over after you have done so. If you can't do that, then it is time to look at doing something else with your life before you reach your 30's and start to have to worry about even more complicated things like a significant other, or kids, or a house....you get the point.
   




4. 
   
   
   
   You must master time management - I think this one is obvious! Even if you can find other people to take care of some of the other things that you must do, as I mentioned in #2, there are still so many things left to do that you will still have to take care of yourself.
   




5. 
   
   
   
   You must master technology - If you are a musician (or any type of artist) and you don't have a BETTER than average command/knowledge of the internet, computers, social networking, etc. you might as well pack it all in now.
   




6. 
   
   
   
   You must have some sort of game plan - I don't care how many different ways you can say this, but it is simply a fact that if you don't know where you want your destination to be, you can't possibly find a route there!
   




7. 
   
   
   
   You must have a drive that is so strong that it borderlines on fanaticism - This is such an important ingredient! Music and the arts in general are so challenging to make a living at and be successful that I feel that you actually need to be a little bit "crazy" to do it. There are so many factors that are constantly working against you, and you will face so much rejection, and so many people telling you that this or that can't be done (most notably, even some of your closest relatives), that you honestly must have the absolute strongest of convictions to stay the course.
   

So, certainly I think most of the musicians who read this will think I'm full of it or don't know what I'm talking about. But, as I was careful to mention at the top of all of this, this is MY theory or opinion.


Of course, any of this could be completely offset if one were to get super lucky, be discovered or signed to some sort of big record deal. However, these are simply not likely scenarios. The overwhelming majority of musicians and artists out there are "D.I.Y." (Do It Yourself).


So why am I writing all of this?


I'm not doing this to vent my frustrations...I'm not frustrated! I'm doing this because (A) I think "civilians" need to have a better understanding of those of us out there who are serious about what we are doing as artists and that we are not all flakes, as is commonly perceived, and (B) if a young person should happen to stumble upon this blog, and actually take the time to read all of this, I want them to know the honest truth about what being a musician really means...especially if you want to actually make a living at it.


This is not for everybody and it most certainly is not a game. And even if it were a game, this would be chess, not checkers!

by Shenole Latimer

A Little News Update: Vlog Post 26