How To Turn Your Rock Band Into a Success - Free 12 Day Mini Course
Lesson 5

Welcome back! Today we ask you to do something a bit unusual. You will probably need to go to a store to buy supplies before we can begin. So take the list below, grab another band member and your car keys, and get to the store.

You will need:

1. A whole lot of Post-it Notes or similar – each note will represent a single step along the way
2. Large Poster board(s) or similar – some prefer a wall in their practice room
3. Pens – preferred over pencils

Are you back from the store?

Everyone take some time to review and talk about the last four lessons. More specifically, how has knowing your obstacles and resources affected your goals and plans? Also, what exactly are your goals now? The answers to these questions need to be on the forefront of each of your minds as you begin the following exercise…

Drawing a map

Take out your supplies. There are two ways to do this: You can either designate one person to write everything for the band, or have each person write down their own and come together to talk about it later. The important thing is that you are able to consider each and every step needed to achieve your goals. But before you go writing down everything you can think of for every goal you have set, let’s pick out only a few goals over a limited timeframe.

1. “Where do we want to be 1 year from now?” You have spent the last week or more answering the question of what your goals are. Which 3 of those goals do you want to accomplish over the next 12 months?
    
2. Talk about and write down everything you could possibly have to do to reach your 3 goals on separate post-it notes. Don’t hold back. Every step counts. Some people like to start at the end and work backwards (i.e. What is the step before that? And the step before that? Etc…). Regardless of how you do it, try to think of every possible step towards each goal.
    
3. Break it down into smaller steps if you feel the need to, or do this entire exercise for each major action-item, each of the 3 goals.
    
4. After you have all run out of ideas, have a third-party look over the post-it notes and write down anything that they think might be missing. Feel free to ask your best friends, loyal fans, or better yet, someone you think is very good at planning or knows a bit more than you about reaching goals.
    
5. You should now have a large stack of written steps towards your goals. It would be total chaos and quite overwhelming to start picking them at random. So, take some time to talk about who would be best at doing each step. Assign each post-it action-item to a specific band member who you all agree would both enjoy it and do really well with it. Remember, some items several of you can do together. You are a team. If there are some things that none of you want to do or none of you are particularly good at, either break it down into smaller steps, team up on the task, or see if you can find someone outside of the band to do it for you. Ask yourself, “Would it help if someone else did this for us? Would it be more professional?” As you decide who will take on each task, write their name(s) at the bottom of the sticky note.
    
6. Pull out your poster boards, or clear off a large section of your practice room wall. Make 4 columns to represent 3-month blocks (e.g. Column 1: Jan – March, Column 2: April – June, etc…). If you want, you can make 12 columns, one for each month. But we recommend starting with 3-month blocks.
    
7. Place your action-items notes on the poster board in the order that seems best to all of you. This may take some time as you all discuss what should go where. You may also find that there are more action items that you want to add. Write them down too!

Congratulations!

You now have a map to reach your band’s goals. Make sure that it’s in a place that everyone in the band will see regularly. Another thing that’s very important is to keep the action items as you accomplish them, either in a stack or on a separate poster board marked “accomplished”. This will serve as a reminder of how much your band has accomplished throughout the year. Keep it in plain view as well. If you don’t hang on to your accomplishments, you will feel like they vanished into thin air. You’re putting a lot of hard work into your band’s career, and being able to physically see just how much work you have done feels great! Some bands even set up a reward system, where they have a party to celebrate accomplishing X number of steps.

If you want or need to, feel free to add a year or two more to your map. Don’t forget that you can also break your timeline down into smaller blocks (i.e. months, weeks, days, etc…). Do what feels right for you as a team.

Before you go back to “business as usual” with all of your new tools, reward yourself for all the incredible work you have done with this mini course. Most bands never bother to do even a small part of the work you have done here (and this is a big reason why these bands never get anywhere in the music business). You now have enough to get started with your band's success. Remember to regularly talk about everything that you’ve written down; keep your answers in front of you, on your mind at all times. Adapt, adjust, and refine your answers as you follow your map to your goals. Most importantly, ACT NOW!

As you develop your band’s map, don’t forget to include improving your live show. Few bands actually practice their stage presence and live show skills. And this is one big reason why struggling ‘local bands’ will remain ‘struggling local bands’. Work hard and begin now to improve your stage presence.

If you want Alex Staropoli, Draven Grey and me to take you and your band through the whole process of building a successful music career, get coaching for your rock band. 

In 2 more days we will begin to actually implement the map you are building and put it into action by using powerful steps that we know bring great results.

If you want to review the rock band mini course lesson 1, you can do so here. 
If you want to review the rock band mini course lesson 2, click here. 
To review lesson 3, click here. 
To review lesson 4, click here.