Lennon Bone spent a decade touring as a musician across 13 countries before leaving his job in January to help artists grow online. He explains why creatives struggle with selling their work and why shortcuts don't work.
Can we be really transparent together for a minute and just talk about the very real push and pull between creatives and why we're terrible at business? Because I want to be upfront with you guys on a few things. This is a tale of deception and self reflection and a lot of interesting things. So I hope you'll stick with me. Very hard for me to talk about this to be real. I got hit with something that really stung and I don't know if it was intentional or not. It feels like it could have been intentional, but, you know, I saw someone else in my space start to use very similar language to me and, you know, so much so that it felt like they were stealing my ideas, you know, and don't get me wrong, like we're all just using everybody's, using each other's information and it's like you can't. It just. That just is what it is. So I get that. But it hit me really hard because I saw them doing it at a level that I don't. A little history about me. I started as a musician and in my early 20s I joined a band. Over the course of 10 years, we became professionals. We got to play major festivals like Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits and got to be on television tour over 13 countries. Like, while we weren't household names, you know, we could go anywhere in the US and have people show up to see us. And for many of you, you know, if you're a musician, that may be the dream. If you're like a visual artist, like you know, just having people know about your work and what you do, like that may be the dream. And so, you know, that's what I try to help artists and creatives do now is build a fan base and a money making opportunity around their work. You know, I do this by teaching people how to utilize the online space. And the irony in that is that I am building like essentially building this business right now. After coming out of a job where I did that with another company, I left that job in January to go full time into my own business. Helping artists and creatives, everybody online that teaches audience growth or like, you know, develop business development. Like, they're all so good at selling. So what do I mean when I say like they're good at selling? I mean they use terms like this is going to get you a thousand fans in 90 days or you know, this is going to explode your growth or this is the secret to whatever. And I get it, right? Like I know that as people we're curious about those things. And we want shortcuts and we want hacks. And this is a sore spot for me because I don't believe in shortcuts. I just don't think they exist. And so today, you know, as I was kind of sifting through all that and just having this gut check of like, hey, it doesn't matter, you know, we're all just going to keep doing our thing, whatever. Like, I had this moment where I'm like, you know, maybe I'm just not a good salesperson. I can't remember her name and I sure wish that I could. She said, you can't fake authenticity. And that really hit me, right? Like, you can't fake authenticity. And so when I thought about this idea of creativity and why we're so bad at selling, it's exactly that. It's because if you don't believe that, if you don't believe in the thing that you're doing, right, then you can't be authentic to it. And even more so, if you don't believe in why you're doing it, and you don't believe that you have something of value to offer, then you're not going to be authentic when you try to, quote, unquote, sell it or offer it to your people. And so while my business is still young.
And I'm not.
It makes me come to a place of do I want to be a good salesman? And I think the answer is no, I don't want to be a good salesman. I just want to be honest, you know, I just want to make things that work for people and if they don't work, I want to fix them. And I want to talk about business, like my business and the hardships that I'm having as a creative person. Right? Not as a business minded person, but a creative minded person first. Because, you know, that's what I would want. Like, I don't see anybody coming at it from that angle. There's nothing sexy about normal. There's nothing exciting about normal. So that's that. This is a tough video for me to make because, you know, you always worry, like, are people going to think that you're a terrible business person because you're like taking away all the things that everybody else seems to do, but I'm just over it. I'm just over it.
