Life Story Alert

I grew up backstage. In a world most people never see, on MusicRow in Nashville in the 1980’s and 1990’s surrounded by A-list artists, session players, songwriters, producers, executives.

It was a world of musical wizards, whose mission was and continues to be helping the muggle world process their feelings through art and music.

Really, that’s the extent of it, though sometimes the wizards get these crazy ideas that they can “change the world” (and sometimes it feels like they can).

In my 20’s, I mastered music the way I wanted to play it. I built up a lot of skills, and ended up finding my calling as a composer, sideman, and music teacher. This always confused the people who watched me grow up because they expected me to be like them, a “3 chords and the truth” songwriter.

But I was always a classical composer painting sounds with the palettes of modern industrial rock and soundtrack music.

Stealing techniques to paint with, not to be a shredder or a crooner or a songsmith. I was a composer.

Not the next John Prine - by design.

Maybe one day I’ll be enough of a wizard to write songs as simple and timeless as him, but really, few people ever achieve that. I’m happy with 17 chords in odd time signatures and 3 pages of really entertaining lies, it’s more fun that way.

For me, composition is usually baroque and looks more like a cathedral than a campfire.

I played and taught professionally for over 15 years, finding others who loved the intricate arts of musical alchemy, but then something unusual happened: I discovered a huge untapped need for this kind of wizardry in the muggle world of business.

And I started getting clients and getting them RESULTS.

And for the first time, somehow, I learned how to write hit songs… but they weren’t songs. They were brand and marketing strategies, wrapped up in tight bundles of just the right words.

The creative process was alive and well, in a completely different way.

It actually comes very naturally to me. I usually don’t feel like I’m doing anything at all, it’s more like channeling when the flow happens. There’s plenty of work that goes into setting up that flow, there’s research, there’s all kinds of frameworks and process, but bottom line, the moment the magic happens should always feel simple.

And consistently, it does.

When I jumped into marketing and branding, I was shocked to find a tribe of musical wizards who knew how to do all the same things the people I grew up around did, but could apply it to a massive open ended spectrum of solving different highly specific kinds of problems.

I’m literally surrounded by musicians, again. Oops!

And when we do marketing right, we’re helping people process emotions that lead to making better decisions. When it’s wrong, it’s a lie. So artistic integrity is at the center of everything… and really that’s defined by the value and impact of the thing being sold.

Usually when you have a problem with marketing it’s because the brand sucks, or the product sucks, or they hired the wrong people to sell it. But even incompetent people can sell something amazing that solves a real problem and HELPS people. So once you’re over that hump, how are you going to put the message in front of a ton more of the same kind of people?

It needs to be standardized (brand) and amplified (marketing).

News flash: this is what artists do every day when they name their projects, write the songs, record them, do gigs, and build audience. It’s the SAME THING.

This has all been an unexpected adventure… a journey that started in college with the discovery of symbolic Alchemy… and the concept of left / right brain integration. Something wizards and muggles both struggle with.

Wizards struggle to descend from the heavens of infinite possibilities.

Muggles struggle to rise from the graves of their limitations.

And somewhere in the middle there’s place where the East and the West are in communication, where the left and right brain are connected, where it all comes together.

I find this connection, this overlap, in a series of “devotions” - areas that all start with the letter M:

• Identity

  • Marriage

  • Mastery

  • Mentorshop

• Awareness

  • Mindset

  • Meditation

  • Manifestation.

• Movement

  • Music

  • Martial Arts

  • Marketing

It all comes together in the transformative work that I get to do every day.

I had no idea my life would evolve into this back when I was studying Music and Alchemy at Hampshire College and Berklee College of Music, writing the (still unpublished LOL) Magic Music Method, or becoming an entrepreneur, digital marketer, brand strategist, consultant… but here I am, grateful and excited for what the future holds.

What journey are you on?

What unexpected twists have led you to where you are today?