Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jake Beck. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Jake thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

I intentionally keep things vague often, but I think most people have a completely different impression of me when they meet me in person vs. when they see me online. My interactions with people are generally very open, deep chats however it’s harder to encapsulate that online so I keep things generally pretty light with jokes as I dont want to contribute to the overall heaviness of social media stories. I’d rather be a brief refuge from all of the political info-graphics trying to indoctrinate people into seeing nuanced conflicts as one-sided “good vs. evil” bullshit that keeps everyone separated.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started blowing up on social media right before COVID, getting flown out to headline festivals in Baja and selling out Toronto concerts. Once lockdown happened, I lost all my drive to do creative work. I used the CERB money granted by the government (well, taxpayers lol) to start my own marketing company. I hired and trained an international team hiring from 4 separate continents, and almost all employees were female. I did NOT do this for “equal representation”, I did this because they were genuinely the best at what they do. My business was to help get entrepreneurs and creatives landing huge features on massive outlets like Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, and Forbes etc, and our success rate is 99+% as we only accept clients on a basis of result expectance and deny anyone who doesn’t meet the criteria aggressively.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I am not someone who puts the onus on society. Your work is valued at what it’s valued at – end of story. No amount of bitching and complaining is ever going to make what you create more valuable for people. What you should do as an artist is be SUBJECTIVE in making the art you want to create, but be OBJECTIVE in how you choose to package and deliver it to people. I never tell any of my clients to change their art but if I’m mentoring someone and responsible for their success, the very first thing I do will be to look at all parts of their content – lighting, sound quality, length, time of posting, etc.

It’s not the peoples’ job to find you valuable – it’s your job to create value. Feel free to disagree with me but it’s likely gonna be a bumpy ride

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I’m deeply privileged in this regard but I will say from experience with everyone I work with that it seems as if music school tends to harm people. Of course theres plenty of benefits but as far as entrepreneurialism goes, it’s very rare I see someone come from music school with any awareness of that world whatsoever. There are certain beliefs instilled in people like “never do anything for free” which is just kinda whack because if Lil Wayne asked me to play guitar on one of his songs, the LAST question I would ask would be about pay. I’ve had people slide into my DMs asking to open for me, I’ve had people slide into my DMs offering to PAY me to open for me, and I’ve had people ask me to pay them to open for me. Who do you think I would choose? Remember now that I am 0,0000001% as successful as someone like Lil Wayne.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jakebeck.ca
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/jakebeckmusic
• Youtube: https://YouTube.com/jakebeckmusic

Image Credits

Aaron Sambey for the black and white one
Jessica Chin King for the pink sweater one