The First Quarter of A Startup

Unlike my usual posts, this article has no real agenda or direction — although it has been edited in a way that reads easily. I’m referring to them as my Q1 2018 Memoirs.

I journal daily, and usually transfer the important information to either my line a day book, a blog post, or into a more creative scrap book if I’ve written something more creative than logical.

Blogs are great. However, I’m writing a lot that isn’t being published, and I feel that these ‘memoirs’ are the gaps between significant subjects, and give me new clarity and direction when edited into something cohesive.

These are personal reflections in my first quarter of leaving a developing corporate career to get back to living an artistic life, and pursuing the growth of the Business I have made around that life.

January 2018

Getting My Mind In Focus

My mission is to enable Artists to commercialise their skills and talents.

Drawing upon inspiration of a political age where;

• Decentralised technologies like the blockchain
• Self-employment opportunities like the gig economy
• Progressive economies like crowdfunding and universal income

…are on the tip of everybody’s tongue…

I’m devoting myself to doing whatever I can to make music a space that is easier to make a good living in.

Bootstrapping in the purest sense, I took a jump into a romanticised bohemian-business startup journey, of which I plan to continue in mind. I can’t worry about what’s going to happen when the money dries up, that’s not the ‘Jazz way’, it’s not the Marcus Aurelius way and it’s not living in the present.

I must be liberated from the shackles of tomorrow. Every day, I must dedicate as much time and energy as I can towards the mission.

I’ve been writing a lot about this idea of ‘living the artist way/living the mission’ and how I need to live in line with it.

Even if it’s going to leave me broke and broken, it’s the way I must live and will eventually ground me.

Practical Work

The difference between failing and succeeding is apparently directly related to your work ethic. If you’re not putting the work in and grin-and-baring your teeth to the nitty-gritty work, that’s not necessarily fun — but is going to convert to business, bootstrapping isn’t going to work for you.

As a Music producer, I am an artist — but when I created BDEM in 2010, creating my own art became only part of my mission.

My answer to freedom to pursue art in a capitalistic world was to create a business about art, later becoming a business dedicated to freeing artists from corporate shackles and allowing them more time to create art.

So, what am I doing in terms of practical work?

• Consulting artists on ways to commercialise and market their talents & art.
• Overseeing the strategy, growth and scale of record label B-DEM Records Limited as founder and MD.
• ‎Strategising and growing a new music industry startup as co-founder.
• Consulting other media startups and small businesses to aid business development and strategic growth.
• Documenting my journey to share my experience openly with others.

But in reality, this means that I’m quite often still spending 6 hours a day writing information to be converted into marketing material and then another 6 hours a day behind spreadsheets — building lists of businesses to approach with a business proposition, building lists of competitors in the market space, building lists whilst drinking pints of coffee until I feel physically sick of the stupid little white cells and the stupid little c & p keys on my keyboard.

I’m still doing the same jobs I was doing in the corporate world. Jobs that I know work when building businesses, growing in marketing and on-boarding new clients. Except now, I am doing it from a different perspective. I can bear the sick feeling, because I’m doing it for a purpose I believe in. For a business that serves the future and evolution of great artists.

There’s no escaping work in this world, but giving work meaning is what is important.

This Time It’s All or Nothing

All of the business models for BDEM are in place and growing. We’ve made our initial approach to market with our Label services, Artist Development and Artist Management.

Now it’s all about marketing and growing these services, expanding our repertoire and further expanding our service offering.

We’ve got a good mixture of slow-building revenue sources for artists we’re investing in and growing through our label, and more immediate revenue from the Artist Development and Management services we provide outside of our roster.

We’ve got good plans of how these services we’re providing for artists outside of our roster eventually divide into a business separate from BDEM, to ensure BDEM keeps its identity as a label for Electronic Music with a dedicated roster.

Now is the age of fulfilling the plan we’ve made over the past 8 years.

Ramping Up Marketing

I’m a huge believer in the utmost importance of marketing. Some of the companies I’ve worked for previously massively neglected it, placing far too much emphasis on cold direct sales as a substitute for a good marketing strategy, which made it literally unbearable for me to work in Bus Dev.

If you’re in Sales or Bus Dev and the company you work for is neglecting marketing, you need to tel them to fix this. If they don’t within 6 months, get out of there. You don’t deserve to be punished by working in this highly stressful, demanding, commission-incentive position if investment isn’t being made in marketing to feed your sales effort. Find a company that markets well; selling will be easier and you’ll earn more money for your hard work.

I’m quickly becoming aware that already we’ve got to push our brand further, so marketing needs focus.

So far, all of our content has been written or still images. This is going well and I can see the increase in attention as a result, but we’re not yet reaching that far and with nearly 1.5bn English-speaking internet users we have a long way to go.

We’re ramping up our Instagram marketing, running Hootsuite so we can have a more team approach to our social media and we’re quickly going to want to move into podcast and video.

Starting To Think Properly About Money

As well as thinking about how we find and on-board clients so that we can start to pay our overheads, I’m also starting to think about how we handle financial growth thereafter so that the company is in the best position to grow in resource to suit growing clientele.

When do we bring the company out of dormancy and back to active status? How do I start to pay myself? — I’m going to need an accountant.

Is a business loan going to be viable to get our initial team officially on payroll? — I’m going to need to research what we need to take to a bank or loan provider to make them say “yes”.

Is investment from a venture capitalist or angel investor viable? — I’m going to need to research what we need to take to an investor to make them say “yes”.

Is equity funding viable?

How much equity do we really want to be parting with? Isn’t giving shareholders too much power inviting ourselves back into corporate bullshit?

All things to consider… I’m going to read The Lean Startup and Business for Punks as starting points.

February

Looking After Myself to Look After My Interests

As a bootstrapper, I’m wondering whether I should be paying £25 a month for a gym whilst I’ve got no income.

I’ve weighed up my options and jogging outside won’t cut it, I won’t use my kettlebells because I’ve got no space and pushups aren’t enough. I need a gym as a place to focus on weight lifting, HIIT cardio and stretching.

I’ll find a way to make this work financially.

I am restless in mind. I don’t really know what to do at the moment. I should feel inspired to work, but I actually just want to train. I want to clean up my eating and drinking and I want to train.

My room feels too cluttered and the space is closing in on me. I feel like I should meditate but it feels difficult. I’m listening to a bird outside. I should go deeper into that to escape my buzzing mind for 10 minutes.

I’m going to start getting up earlier, going to the gym, replenishing protein and electrolytes, calorie counting, drinking at least 2.5kl of water a day, eating plenty of fibre, not drinking alone, cracking on with working hard and start earning some damn money.

LinkedIn is Quite Toxic, I Never Really Noticed

I’ve been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn for years. After a couple of months away from the corporate life, it becomes evident that most people on LinkedIn are in a bad way psychologically and spiritually. There’s no depth… It’s just… Professional zombies — blank, lifeless and feeding off people’s attention to help themselves. Lots of recycled content and award ceremonies.

I tried to unfollow everybody outside of music, thinking that they must not fall into these corporate traps. Alas, the music industry is also full of many soulless people wired up to the money machine.

I still like LinkedIn, there’s really good potential to meet great people — I have done and still do this. But I’m done with the feed now. LinkedIn’s algorithms just make it too difficult to avoid what you don’t want to see.

Leg-Ups and Social Class

If it wasn’t for Hip Hop and Grime Music, I’d probably be a lot more cynical about the ability to rise from the bottom to the top. Most artists have to sacrifice the idea of monetary success as a trade-off for ‘the artist life’, associated with poverty and depression.

Some people are born more privileged than others, but it’s less obvious than it seems. I’m not just referring to the divide between the wealthy and poor. I’m talking about the divide that still exists between the working and middle classes, now blurred by clever political propaganda.

There can be two children who go to the same public school, have the same educational system and do the same after school activities, but one child goes home in a 18 plate BMW to a 6-bedroom owned property and the other cycles home to a 2-bedroom rented flat on an estate.

“But the parents could treat the children the same, just because the parents are wealthy doesn’t mean they spoil their children, or even give them any money to help them when they’re older.” You say…

When the child with the wealthy parent(s) reaches their mid-20’s and decides they want to start their own business, their parents may not help them.

The child (now adult) may have even put aside enough money, that they saved themselves through working, to survive during the startup and not live at home.

But, 9/10 their parents buy them a flat which they rent out to their child at a hugely reduced rate, oh and buy them a new car too, and the child has tens of thousands of pounds of inheritance from a deceased Grandparent. Or at the very least, they usually have a huge garage the young entrepreneur can use as an office.

Then if they fail at their business, they still have a their parents’ house when they die. They’re never going to be stuck for money because they’re next in a long chain of higher class decendants.

Then, ‘self-made’ people neglect giving back to the community or social improvements and adopt a mindset that giving back to the world is to support their own family, so the whole cycle goes around again.

That’s how the rich get richer, and the poor seldom break out, because of conservatism.

I hate still living at home at 28. There’s ways I can get out before my 30’s (by following the rat race), but it’s at the expense of living a life where I can actually try and break this system of keeping me and my children trapped in the working class. I’ve got to do this shit myself and I’ve got to succeed.

Protecting My Inner Citadel

What I’m doing a lot of this year is trusting my intuition, in all of my endeavours. I do trust myself more now I’m free to think for myself, in control of my own career. I’m noticing things that try to influence me and am cutting them out of my life before they claw my attention.

Employment Opportunities

I was offered an opportunity to do a task that might result in employment at a startup I’m really excited about.

However, the task was extensive and there was no formal role or start date as a result, and I was told it was still under the condition that the team love what I bring forward.

I was in a tricky position where I knew I was being tested on my commitment to securing the role, but I also had to protect my integrity and virtue — and prove that as a commercial negotiator I am not subject to a) taking risks that expose resource without a high chance of return; and b) that I will not discount a ‘sale’to the point the product is devalued.

I had to protect my interests.

I suggested that I’d operate as an independent consultant until the role comes up, with the initial requested task as an uncharged project. I could position this both as a prospective customer and from the perspective of internal commercial development. Then, if there was no opportunity for a role for some time, or if for any reason the team don’t find much value in my presentation, at least I would be able to use the work as a case study (with permission).

Then, if further consultation work was needed thereafter, without employment, we could discuss pricing independent consultation until there was potential to discuss bringing me in-house. That would be a good way for us both to protect our interests but giving me some security not to work for the company having any return.

I never got a reply after my proposition. I felt some regret as I knew that meant I’d failed a commitment test. But I still feel I took the right path, going against your virtues will never result in a good ending.

Employers need to be more aware that when they’re asking for ‘entrepreneurial’ types, they have to be prepared to negotiate with and respect them as professionals. If you ask for an entrepreneur and expect a ‘yes man’ employee, you’re missing the point.

Absent Friends

Man… I’ll always love old friends and I want see them well, but some friends you’ve just grown too different from in interests and activities that it’s not good for either of you to spend time with each other.

They’re going to accuse you of doing wrong by then for not meeting up anymore, and try to make you feel guilty. in reality, if either of you are walking into a plan that isn’t in line with the person you are, it’s not going to be a great experience.

Hopefully one day we find ways we can chill again, but right now our ambitions and lifestyles are too different for us to catch a vibe.

Gatekeepers

I guess I want to move towards a place where nobody can directly contact me (except my truly closest people including immediate family and the bdem team). Other than that, everyone should be trying to reach me through Twitter or something. I need to become unobtainable so I’m not distracted from the mission.

I need to get onto the 3310 with a new number. I’ll still have my tablet because I do need tech for work. But I don’t think smartphones aren’t the way for me anymore.

I don’t want to be a hermit. I need to be around people, out and getting experiences more. So still talking to everyone but only on scheduled time.

Don’t Get So Lost In Business That The Magic Dies

I had this dream... It was a beautiful complete story, in a beautiful Mediterranean setting, in a super cool bar in the sky. I met new people, I met a selection of friends who were all happy and shared the same interests and vibes.

There was a feeling of oneness in the bar, and a passion growing between me and one of the girls in our group. All us all were moving together on an adventure fuelled by alcohol, music and friendship. It was like my own little dream version of Human Traffic meets Moulin Rouge.

At the end of the night I had loosened my tie, had a heavy whiskey glass in hand and was slumped over a piano singing a song with one of the lads.

The feeling of the beauty of the world around, the carefree aura, the connection of people, the warm drunken smiles… I don’t want to let go of those feels from the dream. It’s like an experience I’ve actually had.

However, I’m back to real life now and doing the work is the only way I’ll get to the dream.

But I mustn’t lose sight of that person I was in my dream and the experience I had. I’ve got to live the dream, not lose it by working towards it but living out of sync with the truth. That dream was the truth. That’s what I need to be living in line with.

It’s good to have ambitions, but I needn’t put so much pressure on myself. It’s not healthy. I can still be very productive without such a high expectation of myself. I had a new realisation this morning. I’d rather have just enough money to cover my debt, car payments, karate training, gym subscription and have a little free money to have fun once in a while, than have a well-paid job in exchange for most of my time.

I just don’t care about material shit. What’s important to me is time. Not money. I need time to work on my mission. If I’m able to focus on that, I know enough about business to make it give back.

The universe is telling me to hold on in there. Believe in the dream, focus on what needs to be done that’s going to earn money and keep bdem alive and growing.

The Creative Director

I’ve got a responsibility to lead as an artist, not a businessperson. I’ve got to show people that there’s a way for artists to rise up out of the class-system bullshit without having to sell their soul.

I want people to trust my artistic and creative direction as well as business sense. I want to bring the producer and my ability to sculpt something with artistic value and allure back out to the forefront and live like that, not just as an executive.

I Think I’m Unemployable

Over the past month or so, my scope for types of jobs I would consider have become narrower and narrower. Going from any music job in London, to deciding that the Major labels probably wouldn’t marry up well with my independent nature, to deciding that I’d not apply for another job with a recruiter after a terrible experience with these guys, to only working for a startup, to only working in blockchain or streaming businesses….

Up until this point I’ve still been thinking about pursuing these job searches in London and applying, but this ambition is now all but dead.

If I hadn’t put myself in this position where am making no money it wouldn’t have ever been so important that BDEM did. I would have never been able to take it from a hobby to a full business. All I need to worry about now is earning enough to cover my bills. From there, is where scale happens.

Ambitions and Priorities

People warn you about getting too deep into your business, about it becoming your life rather than supporting it, or the dangers of becoming a workaholic.

If you have a conventional business, I can see how this is a problem. But when you work in art, there’s no other way to work well unless you’re in it, living it and fully immersed.

It’s funny seeing your business separate from you as you develop it. Apparently to be a successful founder you should be able to remove yourself from the business completely and it still be fully functioning and successful.

Your business has all of these goals, markers, priorities, responsibilities etc. it’s easy for your personal ones to go out of the window.

I do have some personal ambitions, some material things I’d like to own as a result of hard work and successful business. But the ambitions and goals of the business come first. I’m all about the mission. However, personal ambitions can give me more drive.

Really; I just want to train, make music and work on my music business. That’s where I’m at, and that’s where I see myself always being at.

My personal ambitions aren’t like; get a job, get a mortgage, get money, get married and all of that traditional conservative stuff. It’s not about get a...

My ambitions are about experiences and feeding my soul. Travel, romance, music, art, love, spiritual and philosophical elevation and all of those kinds of things. I don’t need the structure and security. My whole existence now is dependent on finding ways to live quasi-freely so that I don’t have to ‘work’ for other people. And that has become the core drive of my mission — helping other artists do the same.

Martin Carr was interviewed on BBC Radio 6 recently… He said he’d spent a lot of time away from creating his next album. “Doing jobs to make money”. Like, making music for schools and children, writing for other people etc. He alluded that he was supporting his lifestyle of creating an album doing everything but creating an album and that he should have just been focused on making his music.

That’s me right now... I should stop fucking around with all this trying to freelance, or trying to apply for jobs via crap recruiters. I can’t think about the mid-term right now. I’ve just got to do what I should be by working in the present and being patient knowing that I’ve got the right strategies and systems in place to make this work long-term.

I’ve got to go to work on the things that matter to me, my business and focusing on that hustle even if it means I’m pulling at my hair every month when my bills go out.

If you’re an artist you have got to find a way to make your art.

Don’t let yourself get caught in that trap of needing to pay the bills, and then the bills becoming bigger. Eventually you’re devoting your life to trying to earn enough money to have time to live your own life again.

Hobbyists

So many artists are just hobbyists. It’s why so many people I know who have been in music don’t really do it anymore. They didn’t ‘make it’ quickly enough — they got another career and they gave up on music.

There’s nothing wrong with being a hobbyist, but don’t pretend you’re committed if you’re not hustling and not jumping all over opportunities that come to you daily. I link artists up with opportunities daily that just get ignored, there’s no heart or fire… That’s everything. Be more hungry and devoted, if you really want to succeed as an artist.

Go work in sales for a while. Get a taste that if you’re not pushing something down people’s throats in some way they won’t eat it. People don’t really do anything passively.

Sleep and Rest

I’m getting up a bit later than I prefer at the moment, I’m having cool dreams though. My dreams seem to happen a lot in the morning — I think the soft daylight accentuates my REM. I like to play with a bit of ‘consciousness witnessing’, but I want to get up early and not sleep more than necessary. I’m a productive person with a lot to get done.

I’ve noticed I’m burning out a bit. My tasks in our project management system, Asana, are frequently stacked and often overdue. This has been causing me stress. I feel like I’m getting behind schedule and I know full well that the more things stack and the more new things get added, it just gets out of control. I’d like to delegate some of these tasks, but until we have staff on payroll it’s hard to motivate people outside of their usual responsibilities. I might consider outsourcing some stuff soon if I can’t get on top of it.

I’ve noticed that some of the tasks I was looking at would take well over a day to complete, so I’ve remembered old trick… I’ve not been small chunking and utilising sub-tasks properly. I need to break down tasks into sub-tasks with more realistic due dates (without project or task overlaps), so that I can properly assess where I’m at on a timescale.

I’ve also got to have a cutoff time for work in the evenings, and I’ve got to work towards having a day off on Sundays.

Building Systems Management

The team are working voluntarily out of faith in the growth of the company to support them in the future. The company has a duty to repay these people with a role and paycheque in a company that values them and allows them to do what they love — so, I have a duty to make the startup a success.

This is a good balance, giving me dedication and duty to drive and motivate the team — if we all have a common goal, then we’re all working together.

The BDEM team work alongside me, we’re all on the same level. We all work for the company and its mission. We all have our own responsibilities that we have to own and be really good at if we’re going to make it out of the startup phase successfully. And we have to have the right systems in place to support our workflow. One of my responsibilities is to keep all of this moving and positive.

If I do my job properly, we can manage weak links — nothing will depend on a particular person to be completed. Everything will always be able to move forward.

We’ve got to work harder than anyone else in our field, and be opportunity-savvy. That’s how we’ll do this.

Getting Back in the River

BDEM has quite a complex business model. Primarily, we’re a label — so we look after, manage, develop and nurture our own roster.

However, as a business, we also provide all of these services for artists and brands outside of our roster — which is one of our sources of revenue generation.

Initial development for go-to-market for our services is now done. We’ve got two services (Artist Development and Artist Management) up on the website and it’s time to get out there — time to get prospecting!

We need to get our brand and website everywhere. We’re going to be pushing out a lot more content through the website so that it’s a more useful resource to artists and brands.

Now it’s a matter of ramping up business development efforts. Building affiliate contacts, getting our content and copy right so that we show up in the right results in SEM, putting out great content, utilising hashtags on social networks, following industry peoples and gradually interacting with them, sending messages to old contacts, finding new people to connect with from as many sources as possible, recommending people, email and securing conversions to email signups. Constantly hustling, constantly optimising.

Building contacts in all these companies and working to form partnerships is one way into the market. Then it’s pushing direct to brands, getting our music in as many commercial opportunities as possible and showing artists that working with us is a genuine path to improved commercial success.

I’m living this now, it’s real. It’s no longer something I’m doing to pass my time until I find a job. I’m going to find a way to make substantial money out of this. Doubts still creep in, insecurities about whether I’ll beat my bills each month. But the reality is that I know what I’m doing and I have won new business for companies for as long as 12 years. So, my faith conquers my fears.

Lots of nitty-gritty business development stuff has started happening, and this is the stuff I’m going to need more help with ongoing. But it’s really not about stressing. BDEM needs to run as a business, but I don’t want the culture to become stale. We’ve got to be about enjoying the music, enjoying the work. Getting shit done, but loving the journey.

Bigger Than BDEM

We want to represent a lot more causes than music and business alone.

There’s an underlying political message we’re starting to indirectly support around breaking out of the corporate rat race and how to re-obtain control of your own time and focus more on art and community.

I’m calling that ‘ethical business’ and am exploring and pulling on economical arguments like basic income to find solutions to make it easier to live an artist lifestyle. I’ve got lots to learn, but this is part of the mission.

We want our ethical morals in business to stand out and scare the old industry, showing that artists really can benefit alongside the labels and service providers.

The most important thing for me is showing that true art can exist in a new business world that focuses on purpose over profit.

We have a mission, a calling, a political idea, a passion and we’re finding ways to harmonise them all. The mission that drives us… It’s like a new movement, a technological Bohemia and an artistic freedom that works in a new capitalist world where things like blockchain and universal basic income exist.

March

“Yeh man, I think for a lot of us creative types it reaches the point where it’s all about making your own way. I initially left my past job with the intention to get into London and start hitting the music jobs there to climb the ladder further and earn a reputation in the industry before properly diving into my own thing. I’m not even sure a lot of those people are good for me to be around, now.

But I realise, I’m in the best position I ever will be to build my own business - with minimal overheads. So I’d actually rather continue with the judgement of society for me still living at home at 28 years old, and work part time in a coffee shop or some shit if needs be. Whatever it takes to keep my head above water and not trade off valuable time, until BDEM starts becoming sustainable.

It’s difficult, but I believe it comes together for us all at some point.”

Freedom — Finding Clients

I pursued another opportunity to support myself as a ‘freelancer’ with some part time work alongside BDEM.

This time, another entrepreneur I’m connected with on LinkedIn was insistently asking for an ‘entrepreneurial business developer’ to work with him 10 hours a week to do some lead gen.

The way he worded it was that he’s running a growing startup and his business development needs were beginning to swamp him so he wanted to work with somebody part time on some lead gen work. He said he’d be paying national minimum wage for the work.

Great, I thought… Although I’m in the same position for my business, I know that I can probably outsource my requirements for below minimum wage through a number of lead generation companies I’m well connected with. So, personally doing some lead gen work for another business, in another industry (another that I’m very interested in), would give me a good break from burnout, a steady source of income, a great potential to work on a collaborative project or product between our brands and a way of keeping my head in the game.

He read the email I sent with my CV, story and proposition — but didn’t get back to me. Was that not an entrepreneurial way to achieve common goals, save resource and maximise margins?

Fuck this.

Plot change.

No more freelancing. Everything now is going through the business. I’ll create marketing to show how our services are effective for brands as well as artists and I’ll propose as the business not a freelancer from here forward. I won’t be taken seriously all the time I’m trying to be a quasi-freelancer when I’m really genuinely running a fully functioning business.

Now that I’m getting into prospecting, go-to-market, marketing and all of this customer facing stuff again and it’s my own business I feel alive .This will be scale-able too, once the angle is nailed I can hire salespeople in the future to follow the same procedure.

I’m no longer going to approach things as a freelancer. I’m going to sharpen up our pitch, angle and our marketing material and get out there and win clients as a business.

New Resource Hurdles

The busyness is real.

I know we need to take the next step forward soon, upping the ante.

We need to start considering investment/business loan/crowdfunding more seriously and how we go about achieving that.

We also may need to outsource some work to keep things moving and growing without stoppages. Outsourcing is comparatively expensive compared to doing things yourself (and taking months to do so), but it gets shit done.

Systems are getting kind of crazy now… We have HubSpot, Asana, Hootsuite, Canva and we haven’t got into accounting and marketing automation yet.

At some point we may need to consider a more robust and rounded ERP system to run our operations, maybe something that brings CRM and project management into the same platform.

Having all of this under one ERP might be the way to go, as long as we don’t lose functionality. Whatever will work best for the team long-term.

We also need to better encourage our artists to hustle for themselves. We’ll think about ‘churn’ in our artist development strategy. Artists need to be consistently putting music out to grow their presence in the streaming environment. Most of them also need to be managing their own social media a lot harder!

More Health

Sometimes I reflect on a big book of pictures I assembled of things I feel represent me as a person, and things I’d like to do in my life.

It’s a good idea as far as getting inspired and motivated is concerned, however I have now realised that it’s actually slightly backwards to use the end goal as a driving muse. It’s got all the things I want in life and things I want to be, and they are true to my to calling, but it misses the most important aspect of how I get to them — by maintaining my current situation.

I’ve been neglecting myself, my health. There’s no point looking at an athletic idol, for example, and saying “that’s what I want, now I’m inspired to exercise.”

The only way to achieve that sort of goal is to follow discipline and habits every single day. So for me that means more than just karate training 3 times a week, or even the gym 4 times or more in addition. That means tracking nutrition, fibre and water too.

I’ve got to be vigilant that I’m always living in alignment with my goals in the present moment, not just visualising them in the future.

My body had been aching like crazy, my neck and shoulder muscles wouldn’t relax. Then, I noticed that my mind would not relax either. So many ailments are psychosomatic.

Meditating. — I’d been neglecting it.

I found a new purpose for meditation. 10 mins to focus on relaxing my body, then mind. Relaxing your mind is so much easier if you are patient and allow yourself time to relax your body first.

I’m aware I need yoga in my life. 🧘‍

I’ve finally realised how much alcohol is a setback for me, and it’s time to step up to what I always said I would and make drinking something I only do occasionally. No more drinking alone and no more agreeing to meet people just for drinks — there must be a higher purpose to the event, with drinking (maturely, with water spacing) as a supplement to the experience.

I’ve always had some resistance to tracking nutrition too, like it’s not a natural thing to do and I should be able to manage without doing so — or that I’m insulting my willpower by not ‘just eating healthily. That’s changing too. Healthy people track and monitor their consumption, end of.

Recognition of Self-Employment

I’m living this label now, I really want people to start recognising this. I’ve done 18 hour days of work recently, and somehow I don’t have a real/full-time job in the eyes of some other people.

Family members try to call me in working hours, assuming that I now have an hour or two to spend on cups of tea — I’m working, just as if I was in an office for somebody else’s business, I have responsibilities and an agenda to fulfil on a daily basis.

Friends still seem to assume that I’m just taking some sort of career break or that I’m secretly looking to go back to work for somebody else, basically implying that they don’t have much faith…

“Well, you’re in a good position to do it whilst you’re at home.”

This one is a backhander of saying “if you had independence and responsibilities like me, then you’d not be able to play around with your little business and you’d have to have a real job.”

“How is your thing going?”

You mean my business, that I’ve invested thousands of pounds and 8 years of development time into. That is a limited company… Yeh, really well. We’ve just finished off the service overviews and taken them to market — got a few prospects and have proposed to a couple so should have some clients on the books soon.

“Oh..? [Random question about something irrelevant to try and make it seem like I don’t understand business]” [Confused look like they still think it’s a side hustle]

Or….

“Such and such says you have people working for you” [Sarcastically]

“Well, not exactly working for me… We’re more of a team all with our own responsibilities.”

“Yeh, that’s what I thought.” [With a proud look on their face 😏 like they’ve proved I can’t have people working for me]

I’ve got to tidy up our pitch and value proposition so I can deal with these people effectively without feeling like I’m being pressured to prove myself. It’s not their fault, I’m a changing person doing something different from the societal expectancy and that confuses people.

I need an office space, remote working is what makes people see you as a dabbler. But in reality it’s an overhead I shouldn’t need to pay just for the sake of convincing people I’m working.

The Ultimate Truth

I find it very strange, but very interesting, that drug-taking hippies, stoic philosophers of ancient history and karate men are seeking the same thing — something conceptual they all call ‘the truth’.

It’s a spiritual path to a kind of freedom, through a chosen pursuit of dedication — work that goes bigger than self, bigger than just doing something for monetary gain, your own family, your boss or your self.

The ultimate truth is about sacrifice, dedication and virtue. Natural occurrences and aligning your self and work with the greater plan of the universe.

The truth is the passion, the blood, the ‘in-tune’ harmonic ‘giving back’ to the world.

The ultimate truth is a sense of urgency and control of yourself, and an understanding that you can’t control anything beyond yourself and nature moves around you.

I can only do what is in my control, and that it is my duty to do well. I’ve been pondering mortality, but this only gave me a higher sense of urgency. Now I find it easier to get up early every day because I don’t want to die having not fulfilled my mission.

I want to live modestly, I want to live as close to ‘nature’ as possible. Materialism is becoming lost on me.

Getting Hippy

I connect with the relaxed people. The ones who exist with a demeanour everything with be OK in the end…

Rastas, Hindus, Bahá’í, Stoics, Zen practitioners, enlightened rappers, Soul Music, House Music, eccentric artists, rural continental Europeans. All that sort of stuff.

“To be alive is a blessing” sort of people.

Art means more to me than just the output or end object, or even the process and expression. It’s a vision of the world.

Music

With all this business development, I’d forgotten the passion of music itself.

I don’t make music enough, that needs to change.

Man, I love music.

Right now, I love House music.

I’d been working on a rap album, got pretty far with it… Had to hang up the gloves on it as it stopped resonating with me after I got onto my own mission. It was about corporate oppression killing the artist etc etc… It was a negative album, lots of depressed political views.

I’m tempted to say that one day I may come back to it, as its value artistically was pretty awesome. But I don’t want to be on that vibe anymore. I’m living charged and positive now.

I just feel like making house and funky house at the moment, if that means I have to park the whole idea of a rap album so be it.

Like what I learnt from Liv Boeree this morning — new information means you might need to make changes, regardless of what you’ve invested before.

As an artist I can have that freedom if a project doesn’t get finished and I lose the vibe, then I have to move on to the next calling. I don’t necessarily have to feel bad for not finishing projects.

Future and Past Thoughts

There’s no way I can go back to working much over 10 hours a week on somebody else’s business. I have to make this work.

This new mantra got me thinking about what happens if it doesn’t…

What does bootstrapping really mean? How can I eat healthy but super cheap? Yellow labels etc. Where can I live? Where can I work and use the internet? How do I cover a gym payment for training and use of shower/WiFi?

Until this business works I definitely can’t think about a family, will I end up too old for that? What about a relationship, can I actually find time to have one?

My thoughts of the future are mainly occupied by the future of the company. Little daydreams of morning meetings, beer fridges, coffee machines and team retreats, all expenses on BDEM. That kind of shit.

I listened to some of my 9 year old music which still sounded pretty good. And I saw some of my plans from 10 years ago, which not only have I smashed to bits but have heavily grown upon. This is reassuring, I’m on the right track.

The next stages of growth are the game-changers. How can we get an office and employees on the books? We need to do a formal plan for BDEM again, including financial growth projections.

The Manifesto

I’m striving for a bohemian stance in a corporate world. I don’t want to settle for bullshit or seeing people suffer for the sake of the status-quo.

It’s about sticking to our guns and being prepared to say “no, the way things are traditionally done is a cock of shit. There’s no reason why things can’t be done better.”

Everything I get beyond my means is going back into the music. Not just my music, the whole independent music community, the whole independent industry. Then, it’s onto social change.

I want to travel a lot. Beyond that, all I need is somewhere to sleep, somewhere to train, somewhere to work uninterrupted and somewhere to make music. I don’t need fast cars, big houses or fucking burger king sponsors. Greed is the enemy.

I need to earn money, BDEM needs to earn money. But our goal is self-sustainability, not profits at the expense of meaningful art and changing the world to be better.

We fight our battles, but play the game. We support what we believe in, and we all believe in art and business being able to harmonise better than it ever has to support the development of a world where people are more free to do that which alights them.

Being Modest

I believe that if you’re a true artist, you should never trade off your time for a material life. If you find yourself in the rat race and don’t know how you got there — do whatever you can to live a modest life and claim your time back.

Downsize your living condition, move back in with your parents… Whatever it takes to have time on your side.

I have to be a servant to art now. I have to give services to artists through BDEM and do a good enough job that they will pay us and that the services will be valuable enough that there will be high demand. We’ll also explore other business models and ways to earn revenue that don’t come directly from the artist — consumers, industry, ads etc.

If that doesn’t work out, I have to be modest and not hang my head in shame and never try again.

No more corporate 9–5 shit, but I’ll have to go back to a basic role not thinking “I’m better than this”. No work is too low for me if it gives me time to live passionately with a mission dedicated to art.

I’m A Dedicated Servant to Art, Not A Slave to Capitalism was originally published in The Ascent on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.