RICK BARKER
entrepreneurs typically straddle the balance
between left-brained and right-brained skills
and personality traits.
Here are the 10 most important skills for
today’s entrepreneurs according to Forbes
(different article this time). How many do you
associate with yourself or other artists you
know, based on your personal experience?
1. Curiosity
2. Time management
3. Strategic thinking
4. Efficiency
5. Resilience
6. Communication
7. Networking
8. Finance
9. Branding
10. Sales
I got off the call with Rick freshly inspired
and with a handful of ideas to develop. I
hadn’t gotten far before he called back a day
or two later with another idea I had to take
him up on.
While he’s based in the U.S., Barker has
developed close ties to the Canadian music
business in recent years. He’s been a fixture
of the last few editions of Canadian Music
Week, coached participants on CTV’s The
Launch, and established a professional rela-
tionship with a number of Canadian artists.
One of those artists is Chris Green-
wood, much better known as Manafest, a
genre-bending singer, songwriter, and rap-
per who combines elements of rock, rap, and
pop in his signature sonic concoction. He
has amassed four JUNO nods, multiple GMA
Dove nominations, high-profile placements
in popular film, TV, and gaming titles, and
performed well over 1,000 shows across four
continents.
Perhaps most impressively, though, is
the fact that he’s sold over 300,000 albums
as an independent artist – 15,000 of which
were sold directly via Facebook ads in an ag-
gressive 2018 campaign that has since been
touted by Facebook itself as an example of
the platform’s effectiveness. His page also
has over 211,000 fans, which dwarfs those of
some arena-touring CanCon staples.
Greenwood now runs SmartMusic
Business.com, featuring a wealth of courses
and resources to help artists grow their
fanbase, monetize their music, try new strat-
egies for success, and maintain a positive
mindset while doing it.
Bottom line, Barker calls Greenwood
“one of the best entrepreneurs that [he
knows],” and the two invited Canadian Musician
to be a fly on the wall during a conversation on
how artists can make 2019 their best year ever.
“It’s about thinking in a business mindset,”
begins Greenwood. “Sometimes that’s hard
to do as an artist because we just think, ‘Oh,
I just want to make music.’ But an entrepre-
neurial artist hustles bootstraps at the begin-
ning, and invests their money into their mu-
sic, into their vision, into their art, [and then]
getting the merch made, getting the website
done, getting their assets built so that they
[have the foundation of] a business.”
I remember meeting the members of
indie pop outfit Paper Lions shortly after
moving to my adoptive home of Prince
Edward Island a little over 10 years ago.
During an interview in their jam space, they
described how they ran their business, with
the four members able to draw hourly pay
for work they put into band projects, from
updating their website and social media pag-
es to album release prep and pretty much
everything in between. It seemed very novel
to me at the time.
Their online presence was (and remains)
far better than that of many of their peers
who boast better name recognition across
the country, and more notably, they’ve kept
a large and detailed database of their captive
fans, accumulated over the years through
free track downloads, giveaways, etc. I’ve
since seen first-hand how that database has
helped them make informed decisions when
planning tours and raise a five-figure sum
in a crowdfunding campaign to help cover
costs of their 2013 LP My Friends.
They’re operating entirely independently,
beholden to no one but themselves. That
means they have the option of continuing on
that path or, should the circumstances line
up in their favour, aligning themselves with
entities like labels or external brands that
can forge mutually-beneficial arrangements.
As Barker explains about today’s in-
dustry landscape: “Because we went from
a business where we were splitting dollars
when we were selling CDs to now splitting
pennies, it’s like a lot of the development
needs to be on you. Management com-
panies are going to look for artists that
already have some momentum going that
they’ve created on their own, because they
can come in and put gasoline on the fire. A
record company is coming in, a promoter…
You have the tools to start your own fire.
Quit waiting for us to come to you before
you say, ‘Well, once I get a manager, I’ll start
doing this,’ or, ‘Once I have a publishing
company, I’ll start doing this…’”
Greenwood echoes Barker’s belief that
entrepreneurship is inherently about taking
risks, and he learned that lesson early on. “To
be honest, I was faced with a lot of rejection
[early into my career],” he candidly admits.
“And so I really had to persevere through a
lot of that junk. That’s why it’s so important
to get educated, and … get the right mentors
to help you fast-track, because I spent a lot
of time doing the wrong things.”
Those experiences led him to focus on
working smarter, and to constantly seek new
tools and approaches to do so. “I want to
leverage the internet because I can be in a
million different places at once, as opposed
to slugging it out on the road and touring,
which I did for so many years,” he says.
Of course, that’s not to say putting in
work on the road is ineffective – especially
not when you’re earning stripes; it’s more
about leveraging what you’ve already built to
keep progressing, to keep building more.
As the Forbes piece on entrepreneurship
MANAFEST
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 39