In this talk, J. Anthony Allen explains why musicians and artists should start a business by first defining their "idea" as any potential income stream—record sales, teaching, licensing, merchandise, etc. He argues that the most important step is to act on a good idea before anyone else does, rather than getting bogged down in patents, which are costly and often unnecessary for many creative concepts. Allen distinguishes between patents (which protect inventions) and copyrights (which protect designs and artistic works), advising creators to focus on execution first. He shares a personal anecdote about an innovative musical instrument he conceived, only to see a colleague bring it to market faster because of greater resources. The story illustrates the danger of keeping ideas only in one’s head and the value of documenting and moving quickly. The overall message is that taking advantage of an idea—by documenting it, protecting what you can, and launching a business—prevents lost opportunities and accelerates income generation.
Chapters
Okay, so why should you start a business as a musician or any kind of artist, really? In this section, I'm going to be talking about the idea. And the idea is whatever you imagine being the income stream related to your music, it might be making records, it might be teaching lessons, it might be licensing to other media like film, television, or video games. Whatever it is, that's the idea. Okay? So throughout all of this section, we're going to be talking about taking advantage of your idea. And that idea is the thing that you imagine to be your income stream. So to kind of bullet out a couple of reasons that you should. Some things you should think about. The first one that comes to mind for me is to take advantage of your idea. This means you have a really good idea, right? And you want to do it before somebody else does. Now, that kind of leads you down the road of patent getting a patent. A lot of people ask about getting a patent. Don't worry about getting a patent right away. Here's why it's really expensive to get a patent. I've gone through the process twice, and the first time I had a lot of funding and a lot of lawyers, and it was fairly smooth, but, you know, probably a good 40 grand to do it. The second time, I just did it all myself. And I didn't really get the patent. It got denied. And that was, you know, probably because it was not a great idea to begin with, but also, you know, and we might have got a patent if it was a brilliant idea, and I still did it myself. I. I don't know. But you want to take advantage of your idea. So let's say you want to start a company. I don't know. I'm just looking around my office here. Selling socks. Okay? So I'm looking down at my feet and I have socks on. What's your great idea? What if you, you know, you need a better idea than just selling socks? Because people already do that. And just because somebody already does something doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. But let's say you want to sell socks online that have this design on it that you've created, okay? So now you've got something really unique. So nobody has that design. That is a good reason to start a business. You've got this idea. Nobody else has the idea. The reason I say don't worry about a patent is because the odds of someone coming up with the exact same idea in a case like that is minuscule. And that is not a patentable idea anyway. Socks with a unique Design on it is not patentable. The design is copyrightable. We'll talk about those things later. So don't worry about patents and copyrights for now. Just don't worry about it. But you want to take advantage of the idea. You want to do it before somebody else does. And that brings me to a little story. So I had this idea once, and I don't know how much detail I want to go into about what it was, because I don't want to incriminate someone. But let's just say it was a music thing. It was a musical instrument, okay? So I wanted to build this musical instrument. I had this idea for how it would work, and it was very complicated. I was at a music conference, and I was talking with one of my friends. You know, we had had a couple drinks, and we were just kind of shooting the breeze. And I told him, like, I had this idea for this instrument I wanted to build, and it was super unique and fairly complicated. And he was like, tell me about it. So I told him about it. I sketched out on a napkin how it would all work. It was an electronic thing, so it involved computers and, you know, code and the whole thing. And his reaction was, I think that's brilliant. And are you really gonna do that? Because if you're not gonna do that, I want to do that. And I said, no, I'm really gonna do it. And he said, okay, meaning he thought it was a good enough idea to do it, to invest the time in it, but he was going to stay out of my way if I was gonna do it. But if I was just gonna be say, oh, this is a cool idea, but I'm not really gonna do anything with it, then he might have moved on it, and that would have been okay. But I said, no, I'm gonna do it. So a year later, I go to the same conference. I see the same guy say, how you doing? Blah, blah, blah. We chat, and he said, he's doing good. You know, blah, blah, blah. In the meantime, I've been working on this idea. It was really complicated to build, and so I had collaborated with some engineers, and I was working on it and all this stuff. I go to a concert where he has a piece being performed, and it's being performed on the thing, on the instrument that I described on that napkin to the letter. He went and did it, and he was able to do it faster than me because he had more money and he had more engineering friends. He had people he could pull in that were engineers. He could pay Them better. He could get the work done fast, whereas I had, you know, books to read about all this stuff and, you know, some engineers that I could bounce ideas off of, but no one I was paying. So he beat me on money and he beat me getting the thing done. So, of course, what was my reaction? I was furious. I came pretty close to storming the stage after it to look at the instrument to see how he did it. And I went up to him and I said, you know, I've been working on this for a year. And his reaction was, oh, really? That's weird. And then he went and talked to people because everyone wanted to talk to him about how cool his instrument was because it was pretty cool. So I kind of went back to my hotel room and just kind of steamed for a while. And a year passed and he was still working with that thing. It really turned into his calling card for a while. He got a lot of press. He did really well using that instrument for probably a good 10 years. He was using it. He probably still is, actually. And here's what I figured out. I think that he honestly does not remember our conversations, because in interviews about his instrument, he has said someone asked him, where'd you get the idea? And his reaction was, I don't know. I just had this idea. And he's a super nice guy. So I honestly think maybe he drank more than I thought he had. And so he doesn't remember where he got the idea. He just remembers that it's an idea. I give him the benefit of the doubt because he's a nice guy, but the fact remains, he did it before me. I did not take advantage of that idea. What I should have done is, and what I learned from this is to keep my ideas quiet. At least not before they're written down in some tangible way. Because once they're written down, they're a little bit protected. So, you know, I didn't sue the guy. That's not my style. I took it as a learning experience that I didn't take advantage of the idea. He did, and I lost. And now I know. Don't do that. You know, don't let those ideas slip through your fingers. If you've got a good idea, you've got to move on it. And that's a great reason to start a business. Take advantage of your ideas. Okay, let's move on and talk about another reason to start a business.
