Leverage Your Creativity

While there are lots (and lots) (and lots!) of books out there on songwriting, the music business, and countless other facets of the entertainment industry, if you’re just sitting around waiting for one to fall into your lap to make you an overnight millionaire, order one about combating gray hair too.

The fact is, only you can take full control of your career.

On “Now Hear This Entertainment” I talk with guests a lot about different income streams that they – and guests like them – are finding to make a career in entertainment, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket and, as a result, having to wait tables until they hatch.

On the episode of NHTE that’s going to be released this week (Episode 114), singer/songwriter Rick Cipes talks about two rock musicals that he wrote and produced.  This is the same Rick Cipes who heads up the indie rock band The Agreeables, whose marketing is superhero driven, containing extensive animation.  Now that is being creative.

Sure, Sarah Donner talked way back on Episode 33 about doing a musical also, but that’s only one other guest, not everybody from the other 113 episodes.

Heck, way back on Episode 8 Dominick Pages talked about this “new economy,” as he called it, saying that scores of people in the business these days are wearing numerous hats.

In fact, Pages himself launched “Abbey Ridge Live,” an online, in-studio, live concert series that, among other things, promotes, yup, creativity.  (See the Be Creative Entertainment graphic in the latest episode released for ARL.)

Creative types are the lifeblood of the popular website Fiverr.com, doing a wide range of projects that bring in extra income.

You need to go find these opportunities rather than waiting for the golden ticket that exists only in the Willie Wonka movie.

Amazon has an affiliate program, which was a logical connection for the podcast area of this website, since listeners of “Now Hear This Entertainment” likely will want to go purchase music from the show’s guests or the books that some of them have written.

There’s another affiliate relationship in the works that has been developing solely because of some creative outreach done to promote a past episode of NHTE.

Now, what can you monetize?