We recently connected with Jeff Stauffer and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jeff, thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
One thing I did right when I decided to pursue a career in country music was realize just how much I did not know. I began to seek out material to educate myself on all aspects of the music business from music production to social media. The difficulty with that was learning who to listen to. The internet is full of “noise.” So many people telling you what to do and pretending to be experts. It took me a while to decide who I was going to listen to-who were the pretenders and who was actually an expert. After I figured some of that out, I actually started making progress.
So, to really answer your first question: I just stood on the shoulders of others who’ve done it already. I’ve learned from their triumphs, their mistakes, and their advice. Knowing what I know now, I would have streamlined some of the learning curve by grabbing the coat-tails of the right people sooner!
I heard Barbara Cloyd say something once about the most essential skills of a successful musician in Nashville and it sounds more true every day. She said that you need four things: 1) to be talented, 2) to be a hard worker, 3) to be teachable, 4) to be good at networking. She went on to say that you can get lucky on one of the four, but you have to work at the the other three. I don’t know if anyone can work at being more talented, so I’ve tried to give as much effort to bettering myself with the remaining three traits as I can!
The biggest obstacle I’ve found in between me and learning more is me! Everyone has 24 hours in a day. How hard I’m willing to work in those 24 hours will define how successful I can become! The knowledge I need is out there; I have to go get it!
Jeff, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Well, first and foremost, I’m just a dude who loves country music. I grew up playing stringed instruments, and have always wanted to create music that people would want to listen to. To do that, I first begin with creating something that I myself would want to listen to!
Country music is simple. It’s about real-life stories and real-life people. However, I think one of the downfalls of some country artists today is that they’ve never experienced what life in the country is like. People can see through that stuff. I grew up in the country. I spent my childhood playing outside with my brothers. It’s real to me, and that comes through my music. I don’t have to try to imagine what life in the country is like: as Blake Shelton would say “I Lived It.”
I would have to say that I’m most proud of my debut album. I can’t begin to tell you how much work went into that project. We started on it in 2019 and it just came out on 10/22/22; three and a half years later. I know that there’s a lot of artists who’ve be fortunate enough to be able to afford to go into a studio and drop ten or twenty grand on an album. I just couldn’t do that. And now, looking back, I’m glad I didn’t, I would have missed out on so many lessons that have been learned along the way. And I’ve been learning lessons since well before 2019. My brothers, Luke, Kyle and I played in a band when we were just kids. You learn a lot about music when you start so young. We were trying to record “masterpieces” with our parents’ computer in our bedroom. Lots of mistakes were made!
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
My social media was quite a grind for a long time. Until I decided that I was going to take several different ideas and post them on TikTok everyday, no matter the outcome. My plan was to take the most successful idea and keep that going. And… it worked.
I decided to try re-making the intros to famous country songs for people to guess. Those videos started going viral and it really inspired me to keep going. As a by-product, I really learned a lot about music production from listening to all those songs so closely!
My advice would be two-fold. 1) show up every day with content that people want to consume. 2) come up with several different ideas for how you can showcase your talents; post all of them; and then focus in on the ones that get the most traction!
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
Yes! There are three major ones that have impacted me significantly.
1) Rick Barker, former manager of Taylor Swift, and author of the “$150,000 Music Degree” played a large role in teaching me the in’s and out’s of the music business. I had a few conversations with him early on, read his book, and enrolled in several of his management courses. The guy knows his stuff, and is a great teacher!
2) Marty Dodson, Clay Mills, and Bill O’Hanlon have written three books to date about songwriting. The books are about Lyrics, Melody, and Co-Writing. I wish I would have bought those on day one! Such practical instruction for such a vital part of music!
3) Billy Decker. He’s a mix engineer in Nashville. For some reason, his style of mixing made so much sense to me. I studied every interview article written about him, listened to every podcast I could find, and watched every video anyone ever made about him. Then he wrote a book. I pre-ordered it and then read it multiple times. Game changer.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://jeffstauffermusic.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/jeffstauffermusic
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeffstauffermusic
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/jstauffermusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqMJrYlKrNn9nL-1u-ZkK0A
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@jeffstauffermusic https://open.spotify.com/artist/2cPn1Sn3IgOXxMfcnFAXtw
Image Credits
Kyle Stauffer, Javier Corrales Castaneda