Independent Musician Strikes Chord With Customized Love Ballads

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's a struggling singer-songwriter to do? Should they keep struggling? Should they get another job? Should they set up a lemonade stand? More on that at the end of this episode.

Well, instead of any of those things, what if they write custom love songs? Customized love ballads, in fact. That's what one woman from Windsor, Ontario did when she discovered the bottom of her bank account and it's paid off. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

In this episode, I'll also give you my number one tip for PR. If you're trying to get the word out about something and you're looking for some organic coverage, if you want to go on the radio or get covered by another media outlet, my number one tip, that's coming up along with this episode right after this quick thank you to our sponsor. [Music]

It was February 1st, 2016, and Chrissy Cochran was working on her resume. Until the previous year, she had a day job and a steady paycheck while playing music on the side. But after only nine months of striking out on her own to play music, she was looking at the bottom of her bank account.

She had to do something to make some extra cash and keep a roof over her head. When it came down to it though, she just couldn't bring herself to send out that resume. She needed extra money, but wanted to do something with music. So as many of us often do, she procrastinated and instead opened up an email from her mom. Well aware that her daughter's financial troubles had her singing the blues, she came to Chrissy with an idea.

Valentine's Day was coming up and a musician she knew was offering to cover love songs for people to give to their sweethearts as a unique gift. Chrissy thought the idea was interesting, but she had a better one. What if she took the concept a step further and offered to write and record original love songs? She could charge more and have a better chance at making her rent for the next month. Intriguing idea, but even if you have customers, how do you get access to the most intimate details of a person's relationship in order to put together a custom song for them?

Well, of course, you put together a questionnaire. She dove in that night and focused on questions that peeled back the curtain on a relationship. She started with simple questions, asking for their loved one's name, what they look like, what they love about them the most and so on. But then she went deeper, asking how it felt when they first met and what their love language was. Without skipping a beat, she added her questionnaire to a new page on her existing website under a tab labeled songs for your sweetheart.

The very next day, she began accepting orders for $325 a song with a goal to write 10 original songs for clients by Valentine's Day. In all honesty, Chrissy had no idea if this would strike a chord. When she didn't sell any songs the first day, she was discouraged. But by the second day, word had gotten around. With Valentine's Day on the horizon, she was asked to speak on local radio stations about her idea.

By the 10th of February, Chrissy had sold all 10 songs. Four days later, she had succeeded in writing and recording 12 original love songs in 11 days, which made it the most productive week of her life as a musician. So how did she do it? How did she knock out 12 original songs in less than two weeks? Well, at the time, she was reading Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, who mentioned the mantra, "Done is better than perfect." That became a motto for her as she was writing the songs.

She didn't have the luxury of second guessing herself. Customers had paid for the songs up front, so if she didn't deliver, she wasn't just gonna have difficulties making her rent payment. She'd also leave someone without a gift for that person they loved. So in other words, she had to make it work. She said the more that she did, the easier it got.

She really was just taking things one song at a time. Luckily, the first song she wrote was for a friend, so that took some of the pressure off. Her friend was even kind enough to agree to appear in a CBC video interview talking about what it was like to share that song with her husband for the first time. It made them laugh, cry, and even dance around their kitchen. That video interview ended up being broadcast on CBC television across Canada.

So on the actual week of Valentine's Day, Chrissy's inbox was flooded with requests from people all over the Great White North who wanted customized songs. At that point, she put away her resume and started keeping a ledger to keep track of all the requests. In this day and age, it comes as no surprise how difficult it is to be an independent musician. In order to stay afloat financially, you need different sources of income. With this idea, Chrissy was able to create work for herself in her own field and doing something that was truly meaningful, something she could feel proud of, something she could feel good about doing.

Two years later, Chrissy has composed and recorded over 50 of these customized commissioned love songs. That's enough content for four albums. It's also opened up another unexpected source of income for her, weddings. Prior to the project, she had struggled to play weddings because so much of her music was about unrequited love or not family-friendly enough for a wedding. She doesn't have to second guess herself now.

She has a whole book of love songs she can play on cue. [Music]

All right, what is the number one tip for PR? If you wanna get featured on CBC or on a radio interview or whatever local or national media would be most valuable. Number one rule is you need a hook. You need something that makes it a story.

Nobody cares about a new album or a new book or a new business or a new anything without a hook. I have to think about this as an author. When I get ready to publish a book, I may have spent a year and a half or longer working on that book. I may be proud of it. I may think it can help a lot of people, et cetera.

But you know what? If I don't have a hook, nobody's gonna care. At least in the PR world and the world of producers who are constantly being pitched on hundreds or thousands of things all the while on the hunt for something that actually is valuable and interesting to their audience. The thing is the hook is something that is timely, it's different, it's relevant, it makes people talk about it. For example, I recently saw that Country Time Lemonade has put out a little campaign saying that if anyone, at least in America over the summer of 2018, is fined for opening a lemonade stand, they're gonna pay the fine.

This is the result of various news stories that have been picked up about kids who open a lemonade stand, may end up getting in trouble with the local government. And of course, everybody says, "Well, that's absurd." And it just becomes much more of a story than it originally was. Well, Country Time Lemonade has been incredibly smart because they're offering to pay those fines and everybody's talking about it. It becomes a story by itself. I mean, I'm talking about it on a show, but aside from that, I think I've heard about it three other times this week.

So they were basically getting tremendous brand exposure at very low cost because it's not gonna cost a whole lot to pay these fines. So I hope whoever thought that up gets a promotion or a raise or something because it really is brilliant. And to close out this story, this was a great hook too. I'm sure Chrissy is an amazing musician and singer-songwriter, but it's really hard to get attention. It's really hard, especially to get traditional PR.

But because she was doing something unique, well, it worked and then it kind of spread and grew from there. And by the way, I have another note here. When she first started to get pressed for the project, she initially thought, oh no, now somebody's gonna take this idea and do it too. But then she thought, well, actually that might be kind of nice because no two songwriters are gonna write the same songs when presented with the same story. So same here for this episode.

Maybe somebody will hear this and go off and run with it, but that's okay, it's not gonna harm her. She's done 50 customized commission songs so far and presumably many more to come. So good work, Chrissy. This was a fun project. Thank you for sharing it with us.

And to you, thank you for listening. And thank you for being part of Side Hustle School. The goal of the show is to provide all these different models that you can think, okay, what can I do? Maybe I'm not gonna go write customized love songs, but maybe there's something else I can take from this. Maybe I can think, okay, what's the hook for my business idea?

Throughout your busy day, ask yourself what's one thing you can do to get closer to your goals. Don't forget, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. Today's show notes are at sidehustleschool.com/559. That is for episode 559, I'll be back tomorrow. This is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School.