At the end of 2015, Aiche and I did a breakdown of my work year. It was an illuminating exercise for me that brought forth a lot of inefficiencies and an awareness of a lot of downfalls in the way that I operate, both as a creative and as a service provider. When I stop and take stock at a macro level of my entire year – how many minutes I spent actually creating, how many minutes or hours I spent on the road, what those travels yielded in terms of creative output and collaborations, etc. – I can really tell how effective or ineffective I was in my business. It’s very valuable and I encourage you to figure out a way to do it that’s right for you. It will absolutely change your perspective.

In order to do this, I like to first deploy certain apps to measure and report any hard data. Apps make that super easy. Second, I like to identify the VIPs in my life who helped make the greater things happen, thank them, and reciprocate in whatever way that is most helpful. Thirdly, I identify people and relationships who ended up as nothing more than opportunistic – meaning, they don’t really want a relationship per sé, but, rather, access to me so I can open doors or make things happen or grease strategic wheels for their thing. Then I ditch those people ASAP.

So, it’s kind of a three-part process. I’ll share some info on the first two parts below:

173

The number of days I was on the road (calculated via TripIt), down from 247 days in 2015. Far more time at home with my family in 2016, which was terrific. Half the time was spent in cities around the world where we are launching community chapters in 2017 for SCOREcast, the web hub for media music composers and musicians that I started in 2006. The other half was dedicated to an applied amplified focus of growing my production music company, Imaginator Music Media. We expanded our office in Singapore in April and launched an office in Stuttgart, Germany on September 1st.

12

The number of album projects I played drums on. Better than 2015 (7), not as good as 2017 is contracted out to be at this point. Still really happy with that number, though, especially considering a lot of them were artists I’ve never worked for before and several producers I didn’t mind strengthening bonds with.

“The proof is in the pudding.”

I have no idea where that saying came from, but it is gospel for so many things.

It’s been exactly ten years since I aired my very first podcast broadcast with the SCOREcast Podcast Show. In 2013, I launched ON THE HIT, which found an immediate audience with musicians all over the world. Now, REBEL CREATIVE just hit it’s 100th episode this month.

Each of these resources was launched for one purpose: To provide creative artists a familiar voice who understood their plight. As my career grew, I was able to know a little bit more about what I was talking about, moving from just a shoulder to cry on to an actual helping hand.

But, here’s what I’ve learned throughout all that: Most people will listen, but if they cannot see you eating your own dog food, they don’t take you very seriously. And let me say this — I don’t *need* to be taken seriously, but it does help me sleep at night if I know my dedication to these things is not falling on deaf ears.

About six months ago, three different people in one week told me I should be “vlogging”. I had no idea just what in the hell that was. It sounded like a treatment for a venereal disease or something. Maybe some sort of new highfalutin West Hollywood age-defying serum treatment. I don’t know — it was a word I’d never heard before. So, I took to the web to research what they were talking about.

Lo and behold, some of my closest musician pals were doing “daily vlogs” already. And, of course, YouTube was littered with “daily vlogger” celebs like Ben Brown, Casey Neistat, and Shaun McBride. I started watching some of these personalities along with their musician counterparts and was immediately drawn to the way they seemed to be bonding so quickly and effortlessly with their audiences by showing versus telling. It struck me that utilizing video might be the key to short-circuiting the one thing I’ve always found difficult about podcasting – proving your theories. With video, nothing is ambiguous because people are seeing you in the moment with their very own eyes. You are practicing what you preach right there in front of God and country.

That was it. I was hooked. I researched the setups of some of these people, spent a little dough, and during the week of my initial rehearsals with the David Foster and Friends tour in Spring of 2016, I started capturing on Snapchat as much as I could without getting fired from the tour. Throughout the Foster tour, I posted nearly 40 short behind-the-scenes videos on Snapchat covering everything I could think of that might be interesting to people about a large-format marquee act like David and what it was like to be on stage in the midst of all of it.

After those shows wrapped up, I bought some legit cameras, learned Final Cut Pro, and started mapping out my own little mobile vlogging setup.

The result is what I’m releasing today – the official Deane Ogden Vlog.

There are already two episodes available on my YouTube channel, with new episodes coming every few days or so. My goal with this is, as I said, to show you rather than just tell you how I live my Rebel Creative lifestyle around the world. I’m providing a peek into my personal life as well so that you can see how I struggle just like everyone else to balance my career as a dedicated professional musician with my home and family priorities.

I’d love for you to consider SUBSCRIBING to the channel so that you don’t miss any episodes. Each one is less than 10-minutes long, a quick and easy watch that is packed with information and right-before-your-eyes illustrations on how I do what I do every day in the global music marketplace.

I’m super excited for this series, and I hope you enjoy it.

Here’s the trailer if you want a little taste before subscribing: