While good sales skills will unquestionably take a band further. If you are looking to start a band or grow your band to reach new fans and hit new opportunities, there is a greater hurdle that must be surpassed. This hurdle is the ability to step outside the comfort zone. Once outside, a new band will be exposed new challenges and experiences that can improve and grow both the band and the music. While there are some aspects of Breakthrough Band that allow me to work within my comfort zone, I am seeing new ways to step up and do something… not so familiar.
In my day job, my role involves a large amount of sales. As much as a salesperson must have some natural inclination and an outgoing personality to succeed in sales, the ability to sell well is learned. I don’t mean to say that simply reading a book or watching a motivating presentation will gear someone to say the right things or do the right things, rather, someone who can put themselves into the right set of circumstances can grow and build their skills… and this is true for any outlet.
Your comfort zone is an imaginary bubble of boundaries that separate the known from the unknown. Simply put, things within your comfort zone are familiar, experienced, successful, routine, normal… comfortable. Outside your comfort zone, there is mystery and potential for both opportunity and disappointment. While fear is typically the boundary itself, the biggest difference between one side and the other is that word “opportunity”. These could be opportunities to play, to record, to win a new fan, to get some creative promotion, to take music farther than expected.
These opportunities may also not exist within your comfort zone. An interesting way to look at the comfort zone is with the concept of learning. When things are familiar and routine, there is little or no room for learning or growth. If you never try anything new and never take a risk, how can you possibly be introduced to something that can offer advancement?
There is a constant push in my career to step outside the comfort zone and push boundaries further and further. I am always encouraged to meet someone new, role play a different situation, put my name on the line, and go farther than last time. This has opened new doors for my and lead to success in my job and I am confident that without this strategy, there will be no success for me in music.
As Breakthrough Band carries forward with the challenges of starting a band and marketing it, I too am exploring and digging for my own opportunities within the industry. At this point, I am working with a good friend of mine to unfold some ideas into reality and this involves not only using the skills within my comfort zone, but also jumping outside what is comfortable to make this happen.
Specifically, I am in a position where I need to record my voice singing to a pre-existing track. Although I love to sing, I am not comfortable with the sound of my recorded voice, let alone sending it through the internet to be heard by others. I do not know the responses, the impacts, or the opportunities that will be passed up if my timidity gets the best of me.
What opportunities might you be missing out on just because you are not willing to step outside of your comfort zone? After playing around with Garage Band for a few hours, I think I am ready to hit the send button. |
