 Over the years, I've worked with nearly every type of creator in every walk of life, and outside of home renovations, there's no one who has more trouble keeping their projects on time than musicians. And while it could be easy to say, that's because musicians are lazy, unorganized, aloof, and well, hell, I could go on all day, but the blame actually often lies in non-musician creators that musicians and their teams employ to get photos, videos, artwork, recordings, or anything else done. So in this video, I'm going to teach even the most unorganized musicians the psychological tricks and methods of how to keep the people you hire to work on your music to hit their deadlines so your release plans stay on track. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to go from zero to 10,000 fans on YouTube. And this is Muse Formation. Since I'm constantly talking about on this channel about how you should build your release strategies, around a nine to 18-month plan of releasing singles every six to eight weeks. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch the video that's linked now or in the cards. One of the keys to keeping up with that plan and keeping your audience thinking you're an artist they should pay attention to is employing constant sustained promotion. Meaning that when you have goals or you don't have anything interesting to promote, your fans of potential fans think you don't really take yourself seriously. So why would they don't vote the time to checking you out? But when you're constantly engaging fans and building up, they feel the need to engage with you, check it and see what you're doing. And then if you stay on top of their mind, they inherently tell other people about you. So I'm sure by now you get it. You need to be consistent and not release your music video three to eight weeks later, or else all that hard work gets diminished. But then it just doesn't seem realistic to a lot of people when you don't have a manager who's going to threaten to kidnap the video editor's family and skin them alive if they don't deliver the video edit on time. Well, actually it is, and here's the reality. Keeping someone on time takes, and I'm not kidding you here, when I say this, two fucking minutes away. First, let's talk about what doesn't take two minutes, but instead takes a whole five minutes, which is discussing the project properly up front. When you first talk to the creator, you're going to hire. It's super important to set boundaries. Here's a few things I like to say to any creator before I hire them. First, do you have the bandwidth to devote the time to this project that needs to get it done on this schedule? The reason phrasing it like this is important is bandwidth means think about all the other shit you have going on in life. And can this really happen? It also gives them an out if they don't telling them that you really like their work. And this is important, but unfortunately, hitting your deadline is most important, makes them realize they have to see it within that frame. Ask them what they will need from you to get the project done. This can be logos of finished mixer master the song on down to the contact of another visual artist involved. This is usually pretty easy. Just make sure you write it down or get it in writing form. If this gets asked on a call, I usually tell the creator that I'll email them after the call. I write the email subject while on the call. So I don't forget and make sure it gets followed up on. I should say one of the reasons I love Gmail right now is they have a nice function where they remind you when someone doesn't write back to you, which I enable all the time with these aloof creators. Next, if you are far out enough in your project to ask for this, ask them for an ideal timeline and try to accommodate that as best as you can. The fact is, since you're a musician, you know what it's like to be creative, that sometimes there's lows and when you're creative juices flow. I have to have so many of these videos taped in advance because some weeks I'm just too drained to think of anything interesting to talk about after how hard I work on everything else. Make sure they feel this will be a workable timeline since with creative types, it can be drastically different in what an ideal timeline looks like. It takes some people six weeks to come up with video treatments, whereas others can pump out six of them in an afternoon because there was overflowing with inspiration. So make sure the timeline seems feasible for their creative gestation period. Then it's time to talk about everybody's favorite subject, money. And the reason talking about money is important in discussing on how someone delivers something on time is the second someone feels wronged about their compensation. They will make an excuse to turn in your project late and it needs to be clear that they agreed to delivering something what they said they would do on time for the price that you agreed upon. You should be as insistent as you are capable of being. Then you give a third upfront, a third upon receipt of an acceptable draft and the last third on final draft. I like this language because so much of the time creators hate doing changes to their work and they procrastinate on doing those changes over and over and over since they don't want to do the changes and this gives them motivation that they are going to get paid and more is coming if they just put in a tiny bit of effort to just doing your changes. For more simple projects like photo shoots or album layouts, half upfront and half at the end is more than acceptable if the creator is not up for paying upon receipt of deliverable product. But that is part of the language. The other thing to discuss beforehand is how revisions will be handled. Will they be sending you preliminary cuts of something? Will you get a certain amount of revisions for your money? I generally like paying for three rounds of revisions for a price included in the initial budgeting, but I always get a rate for how much additional changes will cost. You also need to talk about if there will be any outsourcing and how that gets paid. Assisted stylists, rentals and studios, it all needs to be clear who's paying for that. Since if this gets messed up, creators will often justify turning in something late to you because you messed up that discussion. One other trick I always do as well is once creative decisions have been discussed in person or on the phone, I say, do you mind if we switch the email for the discussion of money or can we get final terms in writing? Unfortunately, so many people seem to have bad memories of financial try-ons actions, so having them in writing really helps keep everyone having no animosity towards one another and a good working relationship that keeps projects delivered on time. With creatives, the psychological game is playing against their irresponsibility. They are artists and they aren't used to being accountable, but here's a fun fact. There's this concept called Parkinson's Law and it is literally like a law for creatives that every project expands through the allotted time, meaning that if you say you have four weeks to do this, the person will spread that work out over two weeks, but in all reality, it will happen in the last few weeks of those two weeks and they could have just as easily done in a week if they put their attention span to it. You need to make them understand that the timeline is not negotiable and while I'm not in the business of condoning lying, explain to them that why your release date isn't movable is it often an important ingredient to these discussions and letting them know that you really want to work with them, but the release date is the biggest factor for making the decision to work with them can be super helpful in making sure your project stays on time. But how do we actually keep these aloof weirdos to their word instead of going out to the club or vaping on their couch all day? The first thing you need to do is put in your calendar with a reminder every single week to write them and check in so that you don't forget to make sure they're staying on course. Now it can feel weird to some of you to do this, but writing a nice email saying, Hey, how's everything coming? Do you need anything from me? No pressure. I just want to make sure everything's running on course. You could also say you just want to make sure you're not dropping the ball on anything and you were available if they need anything else. This is a subtle reminder that also shows humility and you may be the person that's holding things up. I put this in my calendar, let's say every Tuesday. If I talk to them about something on say Monday, I may move that to Friday or defer to the next week, but I make sure to always be checking in on them about four times before the next thing is due. So let's say after we brainstorm the concept, I'm going to check in on when that tree come in comes in. And then after that, I'm going to check in on when we're scheduled and then I'm going to check in when I have things after we've shot the project. This takes all about eight minutes in a month. If you're taking this project over four weeks and that's being generous, the next habit you need to get into is making sure to remind yourself to do these things and to check in with people by compensating for your forgetfulness. Most of the time, if I remember, I need to check in with somebody. I just tell Suri to remind me or I start doing right there. But there's an even better trick. I use this app called due because it will literally annoy the ever loving hell out of me until I do what it is telling me. Despite the fact that I'm a busy person who manages literally eight different businesses that needs me to do things, I still do procrastinate. And whether that is caused by exhaustion, just not feeling like doing it or being busy with something else that's more important, I need a way to make sure I do what I said I would do. Since your duty as someone who manages a project is to do exactly that, to do what you said you would do. So what due allows me to do is tell me I'm supposed to remind that person and it's going to bug me until I do it. While this could all seem pushy and no one really likes this behavior, most creators respect it and respect your hustle or dedication or whatever we want to call it. As someone who's mastered well over a thousand records as the person who holds up a whole stage of this process, I get these emails constantly and I understand them as long as they aren't insane, like emailing me three hours after I got files, they just show me someone's on top of their game and their project is important to them. Most creators respect these emails and just see that you're somebody they should actually be working with and often excites them to work on the project because they feel like you're going to stay on top of other things like promoting their work once you're done. Stay on top of people and get it in the habit of setting polite self-responsible reminders throughout the gestation period and you will stay on track with your projects. Thanks for watching. Am I missing anything? Is there any other way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I want to answer them, so leave them in the comments since I answer every comment in every post. I hope you liked this video and if you did please like, subscribe and get notified and I'm going to be breaking down the concepts in this video along with how to promote your music and how to make songs you're happy with in the future. I have a Facebook group linked below that is only helpful information. No playlist or con artists, only artists having helpful discussions allowed. If you want to learn more about me, work on a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do, go to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on all the socials. One last thing, there's two playlists here. One is on how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans and the other is on how you make songs you're more happy with. And the other is on how you promote your music with Spotify and the other is specially chosen to match this video. Or you can hit the subscribe button below and stay tuned as I have tons of tips for musicians.