Just get in the room, do the damn thing, and sometimes luck will find you.
In 2010, my band was trying to build a career. We were aiming for more momentum and larger venues, but all that was available in our local town were small tourist pubs that had iffy attendance. But given the choice between not playing and playing, a musician always chooses playing.
So we ended up playing at a mostly empty club in Avila Beach, California. And we played it like it was Madison Square Garden. All the energy, all the rock. One month later, I got a call on my cell phone. The voice on the other end said, “Hi, I’m the owner of Mr Ricks, and I happened to see you guys play a month ago when I was coming through town. I really loved your show and your energy. Are you guys interested in opening up for Aerosmith?”
In 2013, I got a call on my cell phone that asked if I was interested in learning about a place called Wizard Academy. Even thought I wasn’t technically looking for a job, I decided to postpone my recording session and have a cup of coffee. One month later, I was standing in the Wizard’s Tower in the new office of the Vice Chancellor.
In April 2016, I started talking about whisky on our Wizard Academy youtube channel. Primarily it was to show our whisky sommeliers how to talk about whisky without being snobs. I also saw it as potential marketing content for Whisky Marketing School.
I posted two or three across the span of 6 months.
But, in December,I decided we needed some sort of momentum and content growth. I decided to do a whisky advent calendar to create consistent content and jumpstart into the new year.
It turns out the first video was of a whisky that had never existed before. On December 1st, thousands of people opened their advent calendars and then went online to google the whisky. My video was one of two links on the entire internet that talked about the whisky. We went from 50ish subscribers to thousands almost overnight.
Does luck drive things? No. Do coincidences favor the prepared? Yes. You can only benefit from amazing coincidences if you’re in the room. So get in the room.
If you’re waiting to start something, this is your sign.
