NHT Blog

We live in a generation where everything is designed to happen faster. We want instant gratification. People want tangible overnight success: Likes, followers, viewers, a dream business, a dream house, a trusting relationship. The main key that people have the hardest time with– especially in a generation where we want short-cuts to everything– is patience. It’s the hardest to master. The very thing we struggle to trust is the very thing we need most.

Recently, I sat down with a friend of mine who owns a hyper-local print magazine that is distributed for free to hundreds of businesses in the area. During our conversation, we started talking about how much the media landscape has changed just in my lifetime alone. I am a millennial, and I saw firsthand the shift from ordering magazine subscriptions to having virtually everything available digitally.

I recently announced that in January I will be a speaker at Podfest Multimedia Expo in Orlando.  Upon being notified of being selected, I completed the agreement that the organizers ask everyone (who is going to be a speaker at the event) to sign.  In there it very clearly states that you are there to share educational content from the stage and not venture into areas like political commentary or selling.

It’s okay to admit that you might be sick of hearing the word ‘collab’ at this point.  Admittedly, it does get thrown around an awful, awful lot these days.  It has for a while now, actually.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but unless and until a synonym replaces it, you’re going to have to simply accept that that is one word that is not going to go away any time soon.  Although I have to tack onto that, nor should it!

Three days ago, I was the feature on an AMA (Ask Me Anything) that the San Francisco Writers Conference put on (via Zoom).

Every so often the planets will align for music creators, and they’ll land on something that checks the boxes.  For me, “Nitelite” by Seth David Branitz could very well be in that discussion.

And good for him, by the way, since the casual music listener has no idea about the countless songs that get written, feel really good, but don’t end up going anywhere.  Thus, it’s all the more reason to celebrate when a song lands as the writer and/or artist hoped it would.

For more than a dozen years now I have seen and been reminded of the importance of managing expectations.  In fact, it has become so prevalent in my life that not only do I give it out as one of my top pieces of advice to people, but I even did a search on this very website to see if I’d already written a blog about the topic.

Around March or so, I start challenging people, “How’s that New Year’s resolution of yours doing?”  And it’s not even out of the realm of possibility that I bring it up again in May.  The point being that you – duh – need to stay with it, regardless of what goal you’d set.  After all, you wanted change as the new year started, so what made you decide it wasn’t important enough to stick with it?

For all the glass-half-empty opinions that get expressed about the music industry, there are good things happening for those who see the glass instead as being half full.

There’s the old expression, “I was in the right place at the right time” and I see lots of benefit in looking at the second part of that statement.