A while back, I was singing for a band called Difuzhan. Like everyone else in the band (and I’m sure this goes with almost everyone’s first band) I was very naive. We were gonna get big! We were gonna travel the world and be the best band anyone had ever heard! I even thought to myself about how everyone else does say this but we were different! (just like everyone else ;) )

The band did start to grow. We had lots of friends that followed us and we met a lot of new people as well. Towards the end, we were actually starting to plays shows on a regular basis (by regular I mean maybe once or twice a month). It wasn’t uncommon for about 30-50 people to come see us on any given night we played.

Now in our minds, this was nowhere near where we wanted to be. Hell, we were rockstars after all… We just figured we hadn’t met the right people or been noticed by the right record label, that’s all. This attitude showed! Instead of friends, they were fans. Things became a lot less personal, despite the fact that all of these people were paying as much as $12 each to come see us play. I always took that for granted because in my selfish mind they were just stepping stones on my way to the top.

Thirty people might not sound like a lot of people, but think about it. How many friends would you have to ask to come see you, and pay money for it before you get to 30? I have problems getting people over to my house for free sometimes! That is 30 people that took their time to drive downtown, pay for parking in most cases on top of paying for admission to the club we were playing at. I would call that a success!

Now come back to the present. I’m just now coming out of the same pattern of naivety. I’m working as a web developer and was determined that I was going to build the next Facebook or YouTube. Sure, there are hundreds of thousands of startups trying to do the same thing, but I’m different. I’m special, and they’re not.

I’m a rockstar with nothing to show for it all over again!

I occasionally think back to the “band days” and wonder about how things would be different, had my attitude changed. What if I had seen our successes and been thankful? What if I had spent the time to give every single person coming to see us the appreciation they deserved?

In all reality, my chances of being “big” at anything are 1 in 100,000; at least by most people’s standards. In some cases the odds are even lower than that!

I don’t need tons of money. I don’t need to be a rockstar. Just making a living doing something you love is much more achievable and a lot of people lose sight of that in hopes of “making it”. David Heinemeier Hansson recently gave a talk on the secret to making money online. He simply shows that having only 400 customers paying about $40 a month is almost $200,000 a year in profits. For me, that’s a lot of money. Would tons of people know about my website / product / company? Four hundred isn’t a lot by most standards, but I would definitely call that successful.

Most Commented Posts