We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jordan Shaw. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jordan below.

Hi Jordan, 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?

A WHOLE mess of trial and error, paired with asking a lot of questions to folks I knew were farther along on the same path… but mostly trial and error. I went full time with country music about 2 years ago, and I knew very little about what I was trying to do. I just knew that when all was said and done, I wanted to put food on the table doing something that I loved, even if I knew very little about that thing. Playing guitar/piano and singing always came somewhat naturally (been doing those since I was a kid) but the business/entertaining side of my business certainly had a learning curve.

Something that has helped me tremendously is what I call my “running note”. It’s simply an ever evolving note on my phone of lessons learned that I can reference at anytime if need be. For example if something ended up being a win, it gets put in the note for future reference. Loss, same thing, to serve as a warning when faced with a similar situation. I usually update this immediately after a show, or on a day off when I’ve had time to reflect on the shows from the previous week/weekend. It’s proven to be extremely helpful time and time again.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a full time country singer songwriter based in Boise, Idaho, and holy moly what a ride it’s been y’all. I grew up in the smallish town of Gastonia, NC (it was small back then) where I cut my teeth in music singing gospel and leading worship in Church. When I turned 18 a large church just outside of Atlanta, GA invited me to be a part of their leadership residency, which was basically a school for folks wanting to be pastors. I spent two years there, graduated in June of 2016 and was hired by a church plant in Boise to get their creative arts off the ground. After spending a couple years in ministry, I burned out. To be honest, I was trying to be someone I wasn’t because I had this unconscious belief that God wouldn’t bless my life if I didn’t use my talents in a pastoral position (super not true btw). When I left the church I was starting over. I had no idea who I was, I just knew it wasn’t that guy I was trying to be. …Enter country music.
After exiting ministry I moved to Bend, Oregon where I worked at Safeway part time and at a grower. Quite the different job compared to what I was doing in church… Fast forward through a ton of soul searching and about 5 months later I asked myself the painfully obvious yet infinitely important question that in church felt somewhat “off limits”…
“What do I want to do with my life?” Not “what should I want to do with my life?”… what do I want to do. The answer hit me like a brick. Believe it or not it felt like God’s voice. I had always written country music for fun, and loved to sing it in my free time. Why couldn’t I try to make money off singing my songs for folks? And ladies and gentlemen that is when my business was born.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Getting the train of my business rolling was something of an animal. I had just realized I wanted to sing country and make money doing it… great. Now what?

I started calling places back in Idaho that I remembered having live music, and reaching out to friends who were in the scene in hopes of gleaning wisdom. The first venue I called booked me for a date next month off a poorly recorded 30 second iPhone take of one of my originals. I was stoked y’all, we locked in the date and then they asked if I could play for 2 hours. I said absolutely, ya know, like a liar, because in reality I maybe had 30 minutes of country tunes memorized.
To solve this and un-liar myself, I spent the next month refining my writing and memorizing two songs a day. Not going to lie, the memorizing wasn’t easy and definitely wasn’t fun, but by the time the gig came, I had some 60 songs memorized and ready to roll. Now I had an actual product to entertain folks with, not just a desire or dream.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I’m going to be an odd duck in my response to this question. I did a mediocre if not just plain bad job at being intentionally in growing my socials up until recently. Before I started Jordan Shaw (jordanshawcountry) I had almost no social media whatsoever. I’m an old soul who wants to be in the desert or mountains doing something outdoorsy, not making posts. But my business HAS to have great social media presence… So how did I solve this? I disciplined myself to learn the basics so that it wasn’t an anchor anymore, and later brought in friends who were talented at social media to help run it. These folks are taking it to the next level.
It’s ok to have weaknesses, just be aware of them and staff people who’s strengths are your short comings. It’s working very well now, and here’s what we’re doing that’s winning…
1. Consistent posting based off what YOUR analytics are saying about when your followers are most engaged.
2. Consistent engagement (reply to comments, like posts, tag people/venues/locations in a timely manner)
3. Consistent branding.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jordanshawcountry.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/jordanshawcountry?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jordanshawcountry?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Other: https://linktr.ee/jordanshawcountry

Image Credits
heathermarie.photo Vooduu Photography Jeremy DeLisle and Julianna Keyes Photography