H​ey guys, welcome to electronic dance money, your number one business resource for making money as electronic musicians and producers.

What’s up everyone. Welcome back to a brand new episode of electronic dance money. I’m your host Christian casino, we’re going to be hanging out today. And I am having a great week. If you’re listening to this, like as it’s coming out, or you know, the week, week or two after it’s been out, I’m probably playing Halo infinite right now. I’m recording this on Tuesday, the game was coming out tomorrow and I cannot be more sight. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re curious about what’s Christian doing, I’m playing Halo, I’m definitely playing Halo. I’ve been waiting for this damn game for six years. So I’m having a great week. And I’m super excited to talk to you guys today. Today’s gonna be a fun episode, I think I think it’s gonna be really interesting, it’s gonna be insightful, it’s gonna be deep, it might be uncomfortable for some of you guys. But guess what, it’s probably something that we need to discuss. So we’re going to be talking and diving into some different mindsets. And specifically, we’re going we’re gonna be focusing on the negative in the toxic mindsets that are probably holding you back, you probably know others that have these mindsets. And they’re just overall bad mindsets that you want to avoid. As much as possible. As we start diving into these mindsets. The first one that I want to point out, is going to kind of it’s gonna lay the groundwork for why, why it’s important to really kill a lot of these negative mindsets and be as self aware as possible, and try to self reflect as much as you can as well. So the first mindset is talking about a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. And this is gonna, like I said, this is going to kind of lay the whole foundation on why we want to avoid these toxic mindset. So the the fixed mindset, essentially what that means. And I’m sure many of you guys have thought about this before, I know I definitely have had fixed mindsets, at certain point points in my life, still to this day, occasionally, I’ll have them and a lot of it comes from imposter syndrome, you know, that voice in the back of your head that is telling you that you suck at what you do, and you’re never going to be good. And a fixed mindset is really all about someone who believes that no matter what you do, your skills are only going to be as good as they currently are. There’s no growth, you can’t grow. If someone becomes big as an artist, they just, they had that natural luck, they had that the natural talent, they didn’t grow to be where they were, they just had it. And that’s what they became. And there’s no way out of being in a shitty situation or taking what you know, and learning from it and growing and becoming better over time. Versus a growth mindset, where someone who believes that if you develop your skills over time you work hard you practice and you can continue to work and have that consistent consistency. Over time you will grow to the level that you want to be at that you’re that you’re happy with. So being stuck in this fixed mindset is already going to be holding you back significantly, not just holding you back either though, because having this fixed mindset can actually onset some of these other toxic mindsets that we’re going to be going over. So the first mindset that you really need to focus on making sure that you get rid of in change your perspective is is definitely going to be that fixed mindset versus the growth mindset. Getting yourself away from that fixed and into the growth. This is where goals become super important. And we’ve talked about goals in the past and setting realistic and time sensitive goals is one of the best ways you can avoid this fixed mindset issue. Because many of us actually have massive amounts of growth over three to six months, sometimes even a year. But it doesn’t feel like it right. That I suffer from this all the time. One of the things that I was struggling with just a few months ago is you know, I’ll look at my business numbers. I’ll look at my accounting and my finances, and my numbers will Tell me that I’ve grown. Right. My numbers say that you’re doing well. But what I’m feeling in the moment, it doesn’t feel that way. Right? I look at who I’m working with how consistently I’m working with people,

how many quote requests, I’m getting website visitors, I’m looking at some of the data. It’s telling me I’m good. But when I’m feeling it, it’s not. It’s not there. It doesn’t feel like I’ve grown, it doesn’t feel like much has been happening at all. And so it wasn’t until, you know, I usually at the beginning of the year, I set a bunch of goals that I want to hit by, by the end of the year. And so it was just the other day last week on Thursday night, that I started to review my numbers again. And I realized, oh, shit, I’m, I’m $1,400 away from my end of the year goal. And that got me so pumped it like it lit a fire under me, it was like, okay, what can I do, to try to hit that goal, because I’m so close. And I’ve made that goal, I’ve made that goal shorter. You know, how many more paid projects I need to get. And once I realized that I was about to hit the goal. And I’m that close. I started to think you know what, it’s okay, if I don’t hit that goal, right? If I don’t complete it, and I’ve talked about this in the past, if you don’t hit a goal, it’s okay. At least you as long as you try and you get close, that’s just as good. And so I was thinking that to myself, I was like, You know what, fuck the goal, I’m going to try to hit the goal, right? That’s, that is the goal is to hit it, I’m going to try to achieve it. But if I don’t, that’s fine. If I can just reduce the amount of money, I need to hit that goal by like, even like half of it. That’s a huge accomplishment. That means that I significantly had a lot of growth. And so it wasn’t until I started analyzing my numbers comparatively, with my goals that I had set that I realized, oh my god, I doubled my business. I’ve almost tripled my business this year. Throughout the year, I felt like my business was being choked out and I was suffering and I wasn’t gonna make it and you know, is this the right path for me? Am I doing Am I making all the right moves. But it was the goal that at the end of the year, got me out of that fixed mindset that I’ve been struggling with. And I realized, I’m growing. There’s massive growth here. And especially, you know, I mentioned the last episode, but this is my busy time of the year. For me, this is where I do a lot of business, right onboard a lot of clients. And then within you know, the, within a couple of weeks, I start bringing I brought in a few more clients, it just, it’s something that happens over time is if you’re setting the right goals, if you’re setting time sensitive goals, and you’re setting realistic goals. That’s where you’re gonna start seeing the actual growth when you start reviewing goals. And this is the other part of the fixed mindset versus growth mindset is you need to be you need to be set setting goals that you review as well, to make sure you’re on track with them.

And that you remember what they what they are. And there’s a lot of times I set goals, I forget to review them. And five months later, I look at them, I go, Oh, I fucking crush those two months ago. Damn, okay, well, there’s it like, when you complete goals, it’s especially, you know, growth goals, it really helps you get out of that fixed mindset stage. So this is the first one that we really want to kill, we want to get out of fixed mindset, we want to move into growth mindset. So let’s move on to some of the other mindsets. And keep in mind that fixed mindset can take you down a really, really dark path that will lead to these other mindsets. There’s two really bad mindsets that play right in with fixed mindset. And the first one we’re going to be looking at is going to be scarcity versus abundance. And scarcity versus abundance is pretty it’s it’s fairly similar to a fixed mindset versus growth mindset. So let’s take a look at what a scarcity mindset is. And let’s take this from the perspective of let’s say, you as a producer, I have a perfect example of this. And I I know this guy is going to be listening to this podcast so I hope I hope you don’t mind I’m gonna name drop you because the dude makes incredible music. So you guys should definitely go check them out. His name is Nick haymes on Instagram, it’s Nic hay M S. Go check them out, increase. I mean, the dude is writing just top notch music and I had a call with him just the other day. And this is a perfect example of, you know, scarcity versus abundance mindset that he had that he was telling me before. cuz I had reached out to him after I heard a track of his, and was just like, hey, dude love this stuff, I want to just essentially talk some more and get chatting. And we were talking about his history in electronic music and I started sending him some resources to help him out with different things, podcast episodes and different articles and just genuinely like trying to help him out seeing what, what he’s struggling with how I can provide value to him. And he told me that when I first reached out to him, he was a little cautious about talking to me and then had gone to my profile knows Oh, he’s a mixing mastering engineer and kind of rolled his eyes like, this guy’s just kind of tried to sell me something. But he kept easily he kept entertaining the idea of talking to me, and then he realized, oh, no, this guy’s not trying to sell me anything. He’s like, genuinely trying to help me out, which I was I was, I just want to help him out. Because he writes incredible music. He’s a great producer. And if I find someone like that, I want to help you out however I can. That is an abundance mindset. But But within that there was a bit of scarcity. When when he saw when he went to my profile, and he rolled his eyes, and he was kind of like, Oh, God, like, here we go again. That right there is a scarcity mindset. But he flipped the script, and turned it into an abundance mindset. He kept he’s like, let me keep entertaining this and talk to this guy. And now he’s realized, oh, there’s so much value and knowledge that I can learn from, from me. And with that, I’ve been able to help him out in a number of different ways. And so this is a perfect example of what a scarcity mindset looks like, versus an abundance mindset. A scarcity mindset looks at potential opportunities as risky things that they don’t want to a path, they don’t want to go down, they’re less inclined to take risks. And therefore, they’re going to lose out on a lot more opportunities there to maybe I don’t know if afraid is the right word. But I’m sure a lot of people are in scarcity mindsets, and I can give, I’ll give you guys some examples of myself being in scarcity mindset, because it’s something I have been struggling with. But with a scarcity mindset, most of us are stuck in that because we always feel like we’re trying to be sold something everything might feel scammy, and the music industry’s just a scummy place. So a lot of people are standoffish. But with that, comes massive opportunities, that might seem like risky decisions. They just don’t want to go down because it doesn’t seem worth it. Versus an abundant mindset is someone who’s going to see opportunities. That may seem risky, but hey, let’s take a shot. And let’s see what happens. That’s an abundance mindset. They,

they know that there’s, there is an abundance of opportunity out there for them to take whether it’s risky or not. And if they don’t take it, then they’re losing out on possibilities or potential of, of mass massive opportunities. This is something that I’ve been struggling with my you know, scarcity versus abundance mindset. And so what I’ve started to actually do, because because I struggle, you know, sometimes I get emails from people that I’m like, okay, whatever, and I delete the email. And that’s a scarcity mindset. Or I feel like, you know, what, there’s just, there’s not enough other professional individuals that want to work with me. And it’s a struggle. And so I’m stuck in this toxic mindset of scarcity. And so what I’ve started to do, is I’ve taken a notepad, and I drew a line, down the middle of the page, and on the top left side, I have abundance. And on the top right side, I have scarcity. And whenever I think of whenever I’m making a decision, or an opportunity falls in my lap in my immediate thought is one or the other in terms of scarcity or abundance. I write that down. So I’ve started to write down when I have moments of scarcity mindset, I write down what it is that that thought is of that scarcity. And then I flip the script and I go, well, what could come out of this with an abundance mindset? What and I write that down in the abundance column. And so this is allowing me to switch my mindset from scarcity to abundance in helping me recognize more often when I’m having moments of scarcity mindset, and how I can switch it to an abundance and act upon the abundance instead of acting upon the scarcity mindset. So this is one of the ways to tackle this issue that I think is extremely valuable. And with a fixed mindset, when you start thinking like, you know what, my skills are always going to be bad. Then you’re starting to get in into a scarcity mindset where you won’t take as many risks right? Because you don’t Don’t think that you are capable, you don’t have the natural talent. So why would I take this risk? Or why would I take up this opportunity? So now you’re already as you have a fixed mindset, forcing yourself into another toxic mindset, which is a scarcity mindset, which once you’re in that scarcity mindset, and you’re not willing to take more risks or take more opportunities, well, now you’re, you’re pushing yourself into a place of like being, being in a permanent fixed mindset, because you’re not gonna see growth, right? You’re not taking risks, you’re not taking opportunities that can help you grow, so you’re never going to grow. So it’s like this toxic paradoxical loop that you get stuck in that you really want to try to avoid. And let’s talk about the third mindset here, which is, honestly, it’s one of the worst that I’ve seen, in today’s society in general, that I see a lot of people playing on, which is a victim mindset, people always assume that they have it bad, they have it worse, and they play on that, you know, I will, I’ll never be a big producer, because people just don’t play my tracks. They get stuck in that loop. Or, you know, it’s, they think I’ve worked so hard, I’ve done all this all, I’ve invested all this time and money into my studio, but my tracks just still aren’t good enough. They’ll never be good enough. Getting stuck in this victim mentality of thinking that there’s outside sources that are affecting you from being able to be where you want to be. record labels just won’t sign me because I don’t have the connections. No record labels actually want to sign me they don’t like my music, or promoters locally don’t want to book me because because I’m too small of an artist, I don’t have a big following on social media, I don’t have enough plays. It’s this very toxic victim mentality that’s exhausting and boring. And just, it’s really a pity party with of people who don’t want to accept responsibility for themselves. And this is it’s truly what I do believe. Now, I’m not talking about someone who’s truly a victim of something like a violent crime or anything like that. That’s completely different here, right? We’re talking about people who want to play on the victim mentality that, that they’re stuck in that they are not given opportunities because of X, Y, or Z. That’s the issue that that we’re playing on here. If we can break some of these down, right, let’s let’s take for instance, the promoter, the local promoter that doesn’t want to book you. Is it true that they don’t want to book you because you don’t have enough plays? Or followers on social media? They tell you that? Have you provided them value? What

are you doing for them? Why would they want to book you? Right? Right? That’s gonna be Question number one, why would they want to book you? What answers do you know, are true for why they don’t want to book you? Because it’s more than likely because you just you haven’t done enough for them. Right? You haven’t built you haven’t established a relationship for them, for them to want to book you. You haven’t given them a reason to book you. Sure, you might be able to play an awesome set, but are you going to pull heads in the door? Have you done enough to help the venue out or the promoter in general and you know, building up other shows, and take for instance, or you know, if you feel like you’ve invested so much time and money into your studio, but your your record labels don’t want to sign your tracks? Or your tracks? Good enough, right? Money and gear doesn’t make good track practice and time takes a good track? Have you only been writing for a couple of years, three years? That might not be long enough? And even you know, some people you might think well, I know x person who was producing for three years and they signed with a huge label, right? Well, how much time did they spend in the studio? How much time are you spending? How much time are you wasting? There’s so many answers for the reasons why you might not be getting the things that you you expect to get. And you you wrap yourself up in this victim mindset. And this is where self reflection plays a big role and in really trying to think you know, why? Why is it that I feel like people are out to get me or no one wants to offer me opportunities. And think about it from from a third party perspective, what could be the other reasons for why I’m not getting XYZ? Why am I unhappy? Now the the counter to the victim mindset is the creator mindset. And the creator mindset is exactly what you would think it would be. It’s someone who understands that they are the more than likely or unlikely, most of the time, they are the reason for the issues that they have. They take responsibility for their own reality, right? They’re aware that their thoughts and actions can affect themselves and their own lives. And with that, comes the idea that because they, they have that power, they’re able to affect it and change it in a positive way. And make realistic changes in their life that can get them out of that victim mindset and become a creator, a leader of someone who strives for positive attitude, helping others and holding that vision in their mind of them being a better person, so that they can help out others and in turn make a difference in the world, right? That’s a creator, mindset. This is this goes hand in hand with the Go Giver. I’ve mentioned the Gogi give her a million times on this, on this show, and I’ll keep mentioning it because it’s, you know, the Go Giver is all about a creator mindset, not a victim mindset. So if you feel like you might be struggling with a victim mindset, I think the Go Giver is a great place to start. And, and self reflection and taking a moment and thinking you know, what I am responsible for what’s going on in my life and how I feel and my thoughts. And you can change it, you can you can 100% change it, you just need to be willing enough to start the process in, in make the moves that you need to do to make change. And it can be very tough, it can be difficult, it won’t be easy. If you’re trying to get if you feel like you’re in this victim mindset and you’re getting yourself out of it, it can feel like the hardest thing you’ve ever done. But at the end of the day, you start pushing yourself into the abundance mindset into the growth mindset into the creator mindset and your life starts to become much, much, much more fulfilled. Alright, so

let’s talk about the last mindset, which we’re going to discuss today. And this is a mindset that many of you producers, can probably relate to. And it’s it’s a majority of producers. It’s one of the reasons why I started this podcast, it’s it’s everything about electronic music, that that’s an issue for producers. And it’s it’s really the the be it all do it all mindset, right? We’ve talked about this a million times, many of you guys can relate to it. Many of you know producers who can relate to it. And it’s all about the person that wants to produce their music, sound design, do their own samples, mix their own music master marketed, they want to, you know, run ads for it, they want to self release, they want to promote it, they want to do everything, they want hands on everything. They don’t want anyone to touch it because they feel inauthentic. They think it’s inauthentic to not do every little single thing. And the issue with this mindset is the simple fact that you’re not going to be amazing at every single little thing, you’re probably going to be really good at one or two, maybe three things. And with that, it’s probably going to be best that you outsource some things or find people to work with that can help you out partners or something. Because you’re just going to start holding yourself back from actually hitting the level that you want to hit. One of the most important things that you you need to do as a producer throughout your career is establishing and building a team. Without a team, you will go nowhere. That being said, there there are some people, every big producer has an agent, more than likely has a manager. If they’re touring, they have a tour manager. Some of them signed deals to record labels in the record labels handle a large majority of marketing for them, there’s there’s certain things that you just can’t juggle at consistently and effectively over time, and you need to establish a team.

So having this be it all do it all mindset is actually going to force you into a position where again, you’re stuck in this scarcity mindset where you’re not going to take risks, you’re not going to take opportunities, you’re not going to reach out to someone who you know, maybe you have to pay a few $100 to have them market your music. And you don’t want to do that because it’s just a little bit too much money. But the difference between you paying that person to market your music and you doing it yourself is literally the difference of you getting the things you want with your release. If you’re Let’s say you’re self releasing or releasing with a record label, right? You’re missing out on the opportunity of you having 100 plays versus 10,000 plays, or possibly even 10,000 plays versus 100,000 plays. And you’re missing out on the opportunity of getting on 10s and 10s of playlists, because this person has the secrets and knows how to do that for you, or getting X amount of followers based off of running ads, or whatever it is, you don’t want to pay person money, because either a it’s too much, you think it’s too much, the value is not there for you. Or you don’t want to put your music in the hands of you know, the the quote unquote, success of your music in the hands of others, you would rather let yourself fail, then potentially take up the opportunity or the risk of hiring someone to see how it pans out. That’s, you know, being stuck in this be at all do it all mindset that is really toxic for a lot of producers. I mean, there’s many producers that I’ve talked to a lot, right I do mixing mastering services. So that’s what I am trying to sell a lot of producers and I talked to some producers and they don’t want me touching their music because they want to do it. But the difference between me touching it and them doing it is a world of difference in terms of quality, right quality of their mix quality, their master that skills that they have not yet developed, because they’re so focused on other things like songwriting and production, and trying to get signed with other labels that they don’t pay as much attention to mix mastering. Over the past three years, I’ve probably spent hundreds and hundreds of hours, just mixing that’s it just mixing. So I’m already on a much higher like playing field in terms of quality of mixes compared to most producers. But they would rather not go the the route, you know, the road less traveled. Or they would rather go down the road less traveled in force themselves, and put so much friction on themselves because they think it’s more authentic. And it’s more than instead of trying to establish this team that they can go to and outsource things to, that they can rely on and they can trust. If you have those people you can rely on, you can trust that you know, if you send you know, if you send your project over to get mixed and mastered by this person, they’re going to do a good job and make you sound as best as possible and bring that quality that they want. And it saves you hours of work 235 10 hours, enough time for you to write one or two more songs then that you otherwise might not have been able to do. And you just get frustrated. Why is this mix not sounding good, you spend too much time on it and get to a point where you go, you know, fuck this track, I hate it. That’s we don’t we don’t want to be there, we want to avoid that. So avoiding this be at all, do it all mindset, take some self reflection, you have to realize, you know, I’m not going to be great at everything. It’s important. And we’ve talked about this in the past, it’s important to try things and kind of like understand the, you know, the basic process of what it looks like or you know, doing even just doing some research on Facebook ads, if you’re going to outsource that thing, and you haven’t done Facebook ads, maybe do some research, spend a couple of hours watching videos, listening to podcasts just to understand what it’s all about. If you’re like you know what, I actually do want to do this, try it out. If it doesn’t work, then find someone else to do it. Otherwise, if you love it, and it does work, and you want to keep working on it, keep working on it, that might be one of the three things that you’re really good at. You never know until you try but you have to try. And there has to be a stopping point where you self reflect and you realize, you know what, I’m not that good at this. Maybe there’s someone else that can help me out that can provide a lot of value to me that can do this for me. And that will be much more beneficial for me in time and energy and avoiding a negative mindset that’s

could ruin my day or potentially my week. And that’s it for today guys. Those are the four toxic mindsets that I see are really I mean, a lot of producers struggle with and I even I struggle with him. Listen, I’m human, everyone struggles with these. It’s something that we all have to work on. And it’s very I can’t stress to you how important it is to really self reflect and and look at these mindsets and try to avoid them and get yourself positioned into a much more positive mindset. There’s not a ton of shownotes but head to envious audio.com/episode 68. To check out the show notes check out the List, get the Go Giver strongly recommend it. And that should be it guys. I’ve got a guest coming in, I think in the next couple of weeks. That’ll be a lot of fun. But I’ll see you guys in a couple weeks. Take care