Always getting asked about branding artists branding music logo colors. What's it all mean lucky for us. My buddy. Greg will gnaw from musician monster was in Nashville. And I said, hey, I'll give you a ride to the airport. You help me figure all this stuff out. Let's jump into the episode. Helping you, navigate the music industry. Here's Rick Barker with the music industry blueprint podcast. All right. So in this episode of the podcast we are live on the drive. We are actually driving from one of the coolest cigar shops in the Nashville area called Uptown cigar. I am here with my buddy. Greg will not a lot of you that are in my master class. No Greg. He taught The Branding exercise and Has been world traveling. I live vicariously through Greg. He asked me if I'd ever been to Europe. I said yes on his Facebook page him and his wife sold their house and they practically live in a different country every month by doing Airbnb. Tell me a little bit about that experience. Wow, that's a question. I think one of the things that is when we sold our house, you know, we had no idea. What we were going to do, you know, I didn't know what was going to feel like to literally sell all our stuff be homeless and then just travel and I think one of the the hardest things kind of do through that was to push through everybody else's limiting beliefs about what we what we were doing and why we were doing it and a lot of people didn't understand that we got questions. Like, you know, why are you uprooting yourself? Why would you do that to go away from all your friends? How old are you? I'm 31. Okay and your wife, she's 29. Okay, so do it now. That's the way I look at it. I got pissed on my gosh. Now. I have to wait till I'm like 65 well do this but you're doing it now. Well, yeah and some people were like, you know, well, enjoy it while you can tell you have kids and right but I think that was the hardest part and a lot of people didn't realize is that you know, that quote not all people who wander are wander are lost. Yes for that quote. Well that was definitely true for us because the reason that we wanted to do this was because we were we were born in Florida. Our parents know raised us in Florida. We didn't really I have that choice and my wife and I wanted to build a life together. So part of a selling all our stuff was cutting the root. Okay wanting to build a life for ourselves and purposefully to get out of our comfort zone God grows people and so we didn't really know how to answer that question. So where have you lived this past year 2018? Oh man, Ireland Northern Ireland. Scotland Wales, England. France. Spain Italy Switzerland Czech Republic Germany. I'm there are way more way other more countries that I can't remember right now, but we lived in each country for about a month a little bit less and got to experience a lot of different things while we were there and it just I still haven't processed that entire. Prep yet, but it was definitely something that I'll be able to look back on the rest of my life and write annually learn lessons from so some people now are saying what the heck does this guy do that? He can travel like this and one of the things is you and I Met originally from your podcast you run the musicians monster podcast. I was looking at podcast for the music business and I was looking at it and I found you and a lot of it had to do with your branding. It's like the green In the month, everything was on point and I reached out to you and told you I was a fan of what it is that you had done and we talked a little bit and then obviously what I loved about your story was that you weren't just some guy that said hey, there's these musicians will go in and try to make a bunch of money off musicians. You are a musician, right? So you were speaking from a place of expertise and one of the things that gets thrown around a lot is Brandy. Branding branding and what I saw you doing was you are simplifying a very complicated process. So tell everyone a little bit about most of the folks listening to this are musicians when it comes to a musician's brand. What does that actually mean? Yep. So branding is more than just like pretty colors and logos and fonts and all that stuff those tend to be like the visual result of something else. If you look at a lot of different artists, they brand what okay. So let me take a step back here. One of the things that I love the most about music and branding is that you change it changes all the times for musicians will brand every album different go brand their tour. It's it's constantly changing and it's very adaptable. So one of the things that is so important about branding is first before you get the logo before you get the colors and designs and all that stuff. You have to figure out kind of who you are as an individual first, right? And then once you That out that becomes your core brand and then the visuals and the designs come after that. So you can take that core with you. Once you identify it wherever you go, right and then depending on your current style that you're playing your current project you're working on you can always reference that core and note that The Branding and the graphics are going to be on aren't going to be on point every time one of the things you and I talked about before is you know, there's a lot of people that will see what they think is working and it really doesn't line up with their music. It doesn't line up. With their values, it doesn't line up with their beliefs. I think you know, if you've got very friendly positive music, but you think that who the black looks good and you like Gothic fonts or whatever. It doesn't line up with who you are as an artist you have this cool little kind of a checklist. You know, what is the one thing when you sit down with a client for the first time? What is one of the first things that you start asking them? What are some of those first questions? Yep, so, Or not I never listen to the music. Okay, don't listen to the music. Okay, I asked them to pick words that they would use to describe the emotions that they convey through their music or they frequently convey. So I happened pick one word or three single words, like hope or inspiration or whatever. Okay, and then what we start doing is we start matching those emotions to Colors because I didn't know if you know this or not. Ricky probably do your smart guy. Not that smart. But go ahead. Well you ask a lot of questions. Yeah. No I get smarter. I'm about to Smart. All right smarter by there you go hashtag. Yeah, right. So there's actually there's a science in the psychology behind matching colors with emotions. All right. So what I do is I just start identifying the emotions that are in the artists music and then I start matching that up with color, right? So once the artist knows who they are what their message is who what they believe what they want their creative Legacy to be how they want to impact other people through their music. The rest is easy because depending on what their music sounds in the way that their project is kind of going the sound of their music. I could just start matching the emotions with different colors and then fonts and then Graphics but it all starts with what do you want people to feel when they see your music right and you know visuals and branding is just the visual extension or the visual medium that you use to convey these Spirit and the emotion of your music. I remember I was watching one of your Presentations and I had been using a red button on a lot of my landing pages because I thought it would get people's attention and what it was really implying was danger when I wanted them to move forward and I went and changed them all the blue after I had watched your deal and other thing that I saw that I really like that you did and a lot of you guys know Bree Noble. I've been a guest on her podcast. She's been a guest with me is that you and Bree designed her? A logo by you asking her a bunch of questions and I love the before and after right portion of that. It was like you got her very involved and what she thought she was and how she was portraying herself were two completely different things and you were able to dial or in and bring her back and it was a 90-day transformation. Right? One of the interesting things with Bree was that it wasn't that she knew who she was. She just didn't know how how do I convey that through? Design, right how do I match the sound of my music with my official design so that not only would do people feel my music when they hear it but also when they see it and that's essentially what The Branding is you once you kind of figure that out. There's just like so simple just plug it in and that's one of the things that you know, I teach and it was easy because you also utilize canva and you are showing people how to make their own logos with all these free different tools and things like that. So, About three exits away from the airport. So while I still have you trapped in the car, where can people find out about you and where can they where can we send them to get something that can help them start and their branding exercises? Yep. Absolutely. So I have the music brand checklist and it goes over a few fork or things that you need to know to help you start branding your music and if you go to musician monster.com forward slash brand, you'll be able to download that checklist. I talked about how to match the Motion of your music with color and I also talked about the for music brand archetypes. Right? And I also give some examples that you can use to bring your music awesome. So we'll make sure that those are available for you in the show notes. If this is your first time hit me up on the podcast. I do appreciate it. You can head over to Rick Barker.com and grab a free copy of the book. You can also check any of the past episodes. A lot of you are interested right now and getting your songs and playlists episode number. 50 as a great deal Mike Warner and I talked about that we'll be able to help you out there. Also while you're there. If you're an artist the only way to know where you're going is to finally figure out where you're starting you can take the artist assessment and I will talk to you on the next episode Greg appreciate you enjoyed our time together today good to finally meet you in person. Yes, sir. I feel like I know you already because we've done so many things together, but now you guys get an opportunity to experiences Brilliance. And once again, you can get his information from the show notes. I'll talk to you guys on the next episode change. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the music industry blueprint podcast. Be sure to subscribe and tell a friend remember there is no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to the music industry the check out my website Rick Barker.com take the quiz and I will send you information specific to you to help make sure that you are on the right. You've been listening to the music industry blueprint podcast with Rick Barker. You can follow Rick on Twitter at Rick Barker music and remember you don't drown by falling into the water you drowned by staying there.
Do you understand that branding is more than just colors and logos? Do you know that it's also okay for your branding to change over time? Listen to this episode of the MIB podcast to hear Greg Wilnau and I discuss the importance of branding. He also briefly talks about how he and his wife sold all of their belongings and now travel and live ALL over the world! Really neat stuff. 👍🏻  “How do I match the sound of my music with my visual design so that not only do people feel my music when they hear it, but also when they see it.”- Greg Wilnau What do you want to hear from the Music Industry Blueprint Podcast? Tell us here! ***Want to be a guest on the Music Industry Blueprint Podcast? *** Send an email to podcast@musicindustryblueprint.com With the following information: Name, website, social handles, questions you would like to ask Rick and contact information  Resources:  Greg Wilnau  Music Brand Checklist Artist Assessment Grab My Book "$150,000 Music Degree" Here! with Rick:  Facebook Instagram Youtube  Twitter Soundcloud RickBarker.com Contact: podcast@musicindustryblueprint.com for a chance to be a guest on the MIB podcast show  ---   Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/music-industry-blueprint/message 