Is music your only real interest?
Or do you have others you genuinely wish you could incorporate into your career?
If you’re someone who feels trapped by only being able to do one thing, this letter is for you.
I’ve never felt like I belong anywhere. No matter what I do.
I’ve been making music for 20 years.
Worked in the music industry for about 8 years.
Helped literally thousands of musicians in various ways.
Still, I don’t feel like I’m really a part of it. I sometimes don’t even think of myself as a music industry person.
There’s always something that makes me feel like an outsider, or like I don’t have the ‘right’ to be part of this particular world.
I can think of plenty of reasons, and it doesn’t just apply to being in music.
Any time I explore an interest, I end up feeling like I don’t deserve it—like I’m not “legit”.
I now know it’s because I’m what Emilie Wapnick calls a “multipotentialite”.
I’m interested in a lot of different things:
- Music
- Writing
- Personal development & peak performance
- Marketing & branding
- Graphic design (& recently those animations)
- Business / building stuff
- Learning
This can make life hard when you’re surrounded by purists with the attitude of “if you’re not 100% all in on this one thing, you don’t deserve to get anywhere.”
And I know I’m not alone in feeling this.
There are plenty of creatives I talk to who identify primarily as musicians, but want to do more.
Maybe you’re one of them?
Today we’ll talk about being a multipotentialite—the pros, the cons, how I’ve managed to build a fulfilling career as one, and how you might be able to do the same.
Can you really be ‘successful’ when you’ve got multiple genuine interests?
Or is the only way to be all in on one thing?
In this letter, I’ll share what I’m uncovering and how you can apply it to your own situation.
Why it’s hard.
From what I can see, there are two major problems with having multiple serious interests.
The first is that it splits your attention, which can lead to feeling behind (in everything).
Say you have a few different creative pursuits—how are you supposed to master any of them if you have a genuine need to explore all of them?
This can be incredibly painful.
You see people all around you with their one thing and they just keep moving forward.
And you feel like a mess.
You want one thing, then another, then another.
It feels like you’re not succeeding at anything because you can’t stick to anything.
I’ve been to some bad places because of this.
Feeling trapped by the concept of having to stick to one thing.
Feeling like a loser—not being able to commit to things in the same way others can.
I’ve had moments where I seriously considered just quitting the creative life and going to work in an office.
Not an easy thing to deal with when you have an affinity for multiple things, but the world is telling you you’re not allowed to explore them all.
The second major problem is—in the eyes of some at least—it makes you less ‘pure’.
It can be harder to fit into a crowd if you’re not all in on one thing.
The purists in your respective creative fields might see you as some sort of imposter—like you’re not as serious about it as them because you have other interests.
I know there are music marketing people out there who think this about me.
I’m not ‘real’ because I like to talk about other things and approach it differently to them.
This is a close—minded way of looking at it (especially in 2023) and the ways in which I’ve been able to help people shows it’s simply not true.
But if you’re not someone who has multiple genuine interests, you probably don’t get it.
You probably don’t understand that people like us seriously need to explore different things.
It feeds the soul.
And of course every path comes with its necessary “boring work”.
Not 100% of everything you do is always fun.
But the multi—passionate seem to genuinely suffer if they can’t explore different things.
So is there a sound way to navigate this?
Is it possible to have a ‘successful’ creative career when you’re someone with multiple deep interests?
I believe the answer is yes—as long as you approach it the right way.
Let’s talk about it.
First, let’s get clear on something: What do you want?
This is an important question, because it will determine your specific approach to a satisfying creative career.
For example, if you want to reach the top with your music, you will have to go all in—at least until you get there.
The music industry is highly competitive.
You won’t reach the top if you’re not 100% focused on achieving that, because everyone who is will blow past you.
If this is what you want but you’re multi—passionate, it’s probably a good idea to focus on one thing at a time. Get to the top and then you can branch out into other areas.
This approach can also be good even for someone who doesn’t want to reach the top.
It’s not a bad idea to concentrate on getting your music career in a good place and then start exploring other creative things.
But that doesn’t work for everyone—there’s too much internal resistance.
It feels like you’re betraying yourself.
So what’s the alternative?
This is the direction I’m heading (and something I recommend considering if you care about multiple things):
Building a brand (ideally a personal brand) and incorporating all your interests into it.
Doing this can mean people fall in love with you, not just your music, art, information, whatever.
Building a presence that’s based on you means there’s something bigger—something overarching—housing all your interests and creative pursuits.
It’s with a personal brand you can more freely explore everything you care about.
There’s more room for the whole you.
You can take your content down various paths and incorporate different interests, and still have a presence people care about.
Because you’ve got a through line—you.
Does that mean people will be equally interested in everything you do?
No.
But if you establish the things that make you the most you and inject that into your online presence, there’s something bigger than the individual ‘topics’ you post about (music, art, etc.) keeping people engaged.
So how do you actually do this?
From what I can see there are plenty of different ways to go about this, but I’ll talk about what I’m doing.
I hope it will get you thinking about what you can do.
Here’s how I’m currently incorporating many parts of me into my online presence:
- Music—I get to help musicians every day, talk about it, listen to it, etc. I make a lot of content specifically to help musicians in the ways I can.
- Writing—I love writing as much as I love music. I write every day. It’s the basis for all of my content.
- Personal development—I incorporate personal development stuff into my content because I just need to talk about it. It’s such a deeply important part of me, and sharing what I uncover is very satisfying.
- Marketing & branding—Two topics that are fascinating to me and creatively satisfying. Helping musicians with this stuff is currently the primary way I make a living.
- Graphic design and animation—I make my designs and my little animations for content. It’s a practical way to get that fix.
- Business / building stuff—While I’m sharing things I care about online, I’m also satisfying my love for building stuff. While I’m primarily interested in helping musicians, I’m also interested in growing my own personal brand.
- Learning—I love learning in general. So I learn, and I share. I get to do something I love, and other people benefit from it.
This is my current setup. Maybe it will change in future, but I’ve been able to pack a lot of my genuine interests into my online presence and build something based around more of me.
I have a rewarding and fulfilling way of making an income, I get to help and provide value, and I get to share things I care about.
Not all of the stuff I share gets the same response, but that’s ok. I still get to share it because I’m able to sustain myself.
You don’t have to do it this way. This is just what I’m doing.
But I hope it gets you thinking about some different ways you could incorporate more of your genuine interests into your career.
I highly encourage you to define your goals and what matters to you.
If the main thing you want is to build a fan base and make money from your music, then you can focus on that, and weave your other interests into it.
If you just want a creative life and you’re flexible with what that looks like, it may be a different path.
You might decide to make a living writing while you work on building a fan base for your music.
Or you might decide to write songs for people as a living and build a fan base for your writing.
The main thing I want to get across here is that your life is yours and you have less limitations than you think.
You can choose your setup.
And it may not be exactly what you want right away, but you can build towards it.
If you’re someone who wants to build a personal brand / incorporate more of your interests into your online presence and make a career out of it, I have a few recommendations:
Recommendation #1: If you want to make a living as a multi—passionate creative, I do recommend being a ‘pro’ in some way.
Basically, I think you should be good enough at something that it can sustain you financially.
If you’re constantly jumping between interests but you’re not really good enough at any of them to be able to sell something related to them, building your creative career is going to be a lot more difficult.
This is a common problem I see with musicians who are interested in multiple things.
Maybe they love music, visual art, writing, and more…but they haven’t developed their skills enough on any of them to be able to make money from them.
This is only a major problem if you want to make a living with your creative work.
But it can also help to be great at at least one thing to help build a decent online presence that people feel is worth following.
So you need something worthwhile to sell. And this doesn’t have to be restrictive.
I recently bought some cinematic LUTS from Tom Noske to help my videos look better (new stuff coming soon where you’ll actually see my face again).
But he doesn’t just talk about video editing on his IG, and I definitely don’t follow him for that reason.
What sort of things you could sell? It doesn’t always have to be directly related to you being a music artist.
Think more expansively—if you have multiple genuine interests and you’re building an online presence based on more of you, it could be anything as long as it’s helpful.
Recommendation #2: No matter what, learn marketing and communication.
Learning how to market yourself and how to communicate effectively (through writing, speaking, whatever) are two of the most powerful things you can do for your creative career, no matter what you do.
These skills can basically take you anywhere and help you set up the life you want.
You’re probably thinking “Alex I’m already trying to learn marketing for my music”—and that’s great!
But I also recommend you learn some fundamental general marketing principles.
I regularly have conversations with my fiance about how we would market different things if we had to start a new business or something. It’s fun, and it can be super creative.
And learning how to write or speak (ideally both) can change your life.
I’m a terrible speaker currently.
I have to think about things for a while before I can articulate them properly, so writing is great for me.
Writing is the basis of all of my content: IG carousels, TikToks, Reels, newsletters, YT videos (coming soon), everything.
It can help you clarify thoughts and ideas, improve your communication with others, and a lot more.
I would say writing is one of the most powerful skills in the entire world.
Speaking is the same, and definitely something I’ll be working on more over time.
There’s a massive difference between someone who’s worked on their speaking skills and someone who hasn’t.
People will actually listen to you if you know how to speak.
They’ll take in your ideas and be more likely to take actions you want them to.
Although I’m not a great speaker yet, I can recognise its power and how great speaking impacts me.
Imagine you could show up online and consistently keep people engaged. Your speaking skills could be the different between that and having no one pay attention.
I know these aren’t always super exciting for musicians, and I’m not saying you have to give up all your time to learn these skills.
But I highly recommend you explore them a bit if you want to build a creative career you love.
Recommendation #3: Develop yourself.
If you’re always working on yourself and levelling up as a person, you always have value to bring.
Each time you step it up, you can help people one step behind you.
As you grow, they grow—it’s a win for everyone.
Every now and again I’ll talk to a musician who used to be doing well on social media and is now stuck.
It’s not always the case, but sometimes the problem is they just haven’t grown in any real way, and people have lost interest.
These musicians are doing the same stuff, talking about the same things, and people are just over it because they need more stimulation.
They’re not technically doing anything wrong… they just aren’t really growing as people, musicians, creatives (or at least they’re not sharing their growth).
Developing yourself can mean anything.
For me, it’s understanding myself, the world, how things work, and then sharing that with you to help you move forward.
For you, it could be increasing your skill at an instrument.
It could be taking on bigger opportunities.
Or experimenting more with your content and levelling it up.
Bottom line: The more you work on yourself, the more you’ve got to give others.
I could say a lot more on all of this stuff—and I know there are plenty of holes you could pick in some of my points.
That’s ok. This letter isn’t meant to be a step by step “how to” breakdown.
It’s meant to get you thinking.
Open your mind. You have more options than you think.
If you’re good at what you do; if you’re determined; if you can control your emotions; if you can learn how to market and communicate….
You can build a fulfilling creative life.
A final note on this: Don’t expect it to be easy.
Too often I see musicians and other creatives give up on trying to do what they truly want simply because it’s hard.
If you have a clear vision; if you know what you truly want—whether or not it’s hard shouldn’t be a factor that helps you determine whether or not to do it.
You can’t have a new life as the old you.
You have to become a new person, to let go of the old you so you can move forward.
If you can do this, your world will open up.
As always, I hope this gets you thinking.
Be expansive. Don’t let the world box you in.
And as usual, if you’d like some help, you can check out your options here.
All the love and stay awakened,
Alex
