Yesterday, my friend Eric Schechter published a blog post on the Clickbooth blog about how being a drummer puts you at an advantage in the entrepreneurial world.
As a disclaimer for those that don’t know; I am a drummer and have been since the tender age of 6. It just so happens that Eric’s blog post hit close to home and touched on a lot of my personal beliefs on this topic. After all, as Eric mentions in his post, he can think of a handful of successful entrepreneurs off of the top of his head that were once or still are drummers.
Before you read further, I would like to make it mandatory for you to read Eric’s post over at the Click booth blog.
The reason I want you to read the original post is so that I can comment on each of his 5 points in the article. Here goes:
Drummers Love Their Job
This is so true. Most drummers decide to take on the throne not only because it’s by far the most fun instrument to play but because they don’t want the pressure of being in front of the stage. This makes drummers the quiet assassins…. The essential element in the background… The engine…. The heartbeat… The thing you can’t see that is the most important element in a working system. Knowing this and being under-appreciated for it actually makes drummers that much happier. Being a linchpin is the best feeling in the world.
Drumming Takes Practice
In high school, I treated drumming and band practice like it was my job. I didn’t care about schoolwork as much because I knew I was supposed to be in my garage working on complicated Mike Portnoy grooves and patterns. Now that I can fast forward and realize where I am in my entrepreneurial life today, I see that I have the same mentality as I did back then. In my head, I couldn’t miss my daily rehearsal back then. Today, I can’t NOT get through my task list everyday. Just like a drumming pattern, my business life has a certain rhythm that I have learned to follow everyday.
Staying on Beat
In Eric’s post, he talks about how drummers stay really focused when they’re working on something. This is actually where I disagree most with Eric. I actually couldn’t disagree more. Drummers are notorious for short attention spans and bantering in times of silence. Eric, for instance is ADHD (Sorry dude). I admittedly jump from task to task too quickly while I’m working. I think that a better point that could be made is how most drummers will never quit until they accomplish something. Most often it’s a beat that they heard on an album. While we might get pissed off and impatient on the way there, we do always get there in the end. That’s one of the most important attributes to possess as an entrepreneur.
Being the Backbone
Being an entrepreneur can mean a ton of different things. You can work by yourself, you can run a team of employees, or you can even outsource work to foreign countries. No matter what, you are the reason the operation exists and without you, everything falls apart. In music, if the drummer drops a stick, misses the snare drum, or forgets when to crash the cymbals, the entire flow of the song is off and the audience (the customers) recognize the error.
Drummers are Hard To Find
This is a great point. Just go to your local music instrument store and look over the classified postings on the bulletin board at the front of the store. What are people looking for most? It’s always the drummer. What’s even worse is that the RIGHT drummer isn’t found until the band has to go through several of the wrong ones. The best argument for the importance of great drummers is that most of the bands that make it in the music industry had their drummer when they formed. Or better yet – the drummer was the one that put it all together in the first place.
That’s the entrepreneurial spirit that is so apparent in drummers.
Thanks for the inspiration, Eric!