We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Travis Dykes a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Travis, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Making a full time income from being a musician can definitely be a hard thing, because many parts of it is the same as being a freelance creative. By being a freelancer your income is primarily based on opportunities that come to you or ones that you seek, but nothing is ever guaranteed. So what happens to many of us creatives is that we have to always take jobs that we don’t truly want to do to pay our bills. With being a musician there’s no difference. A few years ago I was in the studio recording on an album with a band and normally if you don’t know the musicians you’re working with you ask the general question, “who do you play for?” and that’ll usually get the conversation going. But at this particular session the drummers answer hit me a little different. I asked him the question and he told me he played for this 9x grammy award winning artist and has played with them for over 15 years. Just so you know this guy was probably in his late 50s or early 60s by the looks of him. So I asked this follow up question. “Do you have any retirement plans in your future?”. Now, looking back at this, that was probably not the best question to ask after meeting someone for the first time, but I’m not usually a small talk type of guy. His answer changed my life. he said, “I don’t have a retirement plan and have no plans of retiring”. For most people this can seem very commendable and honorable, but for me, this broke my heart. We talked a little longer and he told me that his main income came from gigs and has never tried to save up for the future. That was really hard to hear. But this conversation taught me a masterclass on life as a freelancer. Every person who freelances goes through a chapter of yes. Where we say yes to almost everything that is offered to us, because we have to. But after having this conversation I realized for myself that I didn’t want to stay there. The “yes” chapter is a crucial and needed chapter for all creatives and freelancers, but not a place to stay. As creatives, most times we are focused on the present, but never make a plan for the future. From this conversation I realized that by time that I got to this drummer’s age I didn’t want to still be in my “yes” chapter of my career, but I want to be at the “no” chapter. This is the chapter where you only say yes to things that you want to do that fulfills you creatively and no to those that don’t. Many people have gotten to this level way sooner than their 50s and 60s, but it wasn’t without intention. If you want to be a full time creative/freelancer or already are, always be working towards your future and not just your present.

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

Hey everybody, my name is Travis Dykes Jr. and I am a Musician/YouTuber based out of Nashville, TN. Music has always been somewhat of a passion of mine, from when I discovered the drums by literally pulling out all of my mom’s pots and pans, to play them like drums with spoons. From that initial introduction to music I always had an interest in it. After that, I discovered the primary instrument that I play today; which is the bass, because my local church needed a bass player more than a drummer. Which was unfortunate, because I always wanted to hit stuff. But from that moment of fulfilling a need for my church I discovered that music was going to be what I did for the rest of my life.

So from then on I got into the whole teaching thing and started a career as a private music teacher teaching bass, then to owning a music school with over 45 students and 6 teachers. Which was a lot. Also, during that time I was traveling as a professional touring musician as well, playing with different artists, bands, events, that made me pretty good money, but then I started to notice. I never really felt like I was building anything. My school was a definite help, but I realized that I had reached my ceiling with teaching one on one lessons when I hit about 36 students per month that I was teaching on my own. This was when I realized that this business was going to be very hard to scale. Amidst having these thoughts, I was still traveling with artists, bands and also trying to finish college and was stressed beyond belief, so I made the decision to start a YouTube channel.

When I started my channel I didn’t know anything about recording video, online media, or anything that would help me be successful on YouTube. All I knew I was how to teach bass. At the beginning of my career on YouTube I never really had a growth plan or had any strategies for growing my channel at all, I just taught what I thought was cool and fun. I never checked my subscriber count, views, likes or even if my channel was monetized or not, I just posted lessons I wished I was taught when I was learning the bass. During that time of freely posting a friend of mine asked me, “hey Travis, how many subscribers do you have?” And I shrugged my shoulders and replied “I have no clue.” So I checked my YouTube channel only to find out I had over 1.2k subscribers and that most of my videos were had over 15k views. I was thoroughly shocked, because I didn’t feel like anyone watched my videos on YouTube and from then on, I fully launched myself into YouTube.

At the time of this article, I have just surpassed over 130k subscribers with millions of total views across my channel and have a hired team that helps me run my channel. From this I’ve launched a few different businesses, such as a merchandise business that creates clothing for musicians and music enthusiasts, wrote a published book called “Do It Yourself Bass”, and am in the process of releasing music courses online to help musicians learn online.

I didn’t want to get “too deep” into my story, so this wouldn’t be too long to read. But along with my YouTube channel and businesses, I still travel as a full time musician, clinician and husband to my wife Caitlin Dykes. I am always so shocked of the blessings that have been afforded to me in my life and can’t wait for what’s next.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Like for most people, 2020 was a tough year. But for many musicians that gig and travel, this year was a life reset button. This happened for me in a way that changed my life and career.

At the beginning of the year I was at Disney World for the first time in my life, which was kinda crazy because it was a long-awaited childhood dream of mine. I was newly married to my wife we were having the time of our lives. At least the first day. On our 2nd day there as we walked from ride to ride, Caitlin (my wife) started noticing me go to the bathroom every 5 minutes and had to sit down after only walking a little distance at a time. She told me, “something is wrong, we are taking you to the urgent care clinic” and lo and behold the doctor told me that I had type 2 diabetes. This was how the first week of 2020 started for me.

There was a lot of other stuff that happened that month as well, but I will spare you the details. Just know, It wasn’t great. Around that time I had one thing that kept me going for the year, is that April would be the was gonna be a career changing month and I was super excited. I had the most fully scheduled month ever, with gigs playing with artists that were multi grammy-award winning and was going to on the road pretty much the entire month. But little did I know just like everybody else in the world my career was about to shift, but not in the direction that I thought.

At the time my sources of income were touring musician, recording musician, music teacher and YouTuber hobbyist (I say hobbyist because my channel wasn’t really making much money at all). So of course we get to March and the whole world shuts down. I lost all of my live gigs in April and most of the year, recording was gigs were very slow and YouTube wasn’t making enough to do anything, so the only thing I had was online music teaching. Just like I mentioned when I shared a little bit about self at the time I had 36 music students and that became my main source of income overnight. So something I don’t think I’ve mentioned, but I am a practicing Christian and have been my whole life. I usually start most of my days with a prayer of some sort to get my mind right of the day, but when I got to April of this year I got this pit in my stomach when I prayed.

I felt like I needed to let go of my private music students. I know, I know, this makes no sense at all being that this was pretty much my only stream of income at the time, but something in me wouldn’t let it go. So a month or two passes and I couldn’t shake it, so I decided to sit down with my wife and tell her what I was feeling. I literally had know strategy or plan to present to her, just that I felt that I needed to let go of my students and shift my focus to YouTube. I was so nervous to tell her, because at the time she wasn’t making much at the time and it was pretty much all on me. So, we had the conversation and words were “if this is what you truly feel is right direction for our family, let’s do it.” I was shook. She didn’t have any push back at all. So I called and emailed all of my students and their parents the coming week after that conversation and let them know that I was transitioning out of teaching.

So from then on all I could control in my life (especially that year) was my YouTube channel and how much I posted. So I started learning about creating a business, story telling, recording higher quality videos (even though it was just my phone), how to speak better on video, and the list goes on. From doing all of that and diving in, I gained over 15k subscribers over that summer and money started pick up a little bit from YouTube Adsense. I started learning about affiliate marketing, Patreon, and other ways of making money through my channel and really started to gain some traction. By the end of the year, I got offered a book deal to write my first ever music book, struck a deal to promote products for a couple of big online music retailers, and almost tripled my following by the end of the year.

But here’s the thing. I don’t want anyone who reads this to think that this didn’t come without worry, failures, doubt, and stress of not knowing what is going to happen; I still can’t predict what’s going to happen. The goal of any successful creative shouldn’t be defined by you predicting the future, but by what you do with what you have. The pressure life brings is only trying to push you towards something, but you have to define what direction that is.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

A huge moment for my career was when I met my first YouTube follower in public at a music store. I was traveling back home to Alabama to visit my parents and was really ahead of schedule so I stopped at a local music store to kill some time. A guy came up to me and said “Do you have a YouTube channel?” And I replied suspiciously, “yes, yes I do…” This was really weird for me, because for most of my career as a YouTuber I only saw my viewers as numbers and not as people. So he proceeds to tell me how my channel has helped him when it comes to learning and playing bass. He said that it so helpful that he now plays professionally based off of the lessons and insights that I’ve shared on my channel. When he told me this, It took me back. My content is helping people? I asked myself. This moment changed everything for me.

When I started creating videos I was just sharing with the intention that these videos were just showing what I was learning or have learned, but it was starting to help people change their lives to some extent. This moment showed me the importance of creating value through every piece of content that I put out there. The shift was that it wasn’t just for myself anymore, but it was for others. When my mindset changed towards value, my content became inherently “more valuable”. My goal for everything that I create and do is to either transform or inspire. Understanding how your business, art or content is effecting and creating value for people will always lead you to the right decisions in everything you do.

So when it comes to the driving force behind what I create and do is to be the most valuable I can be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://travisdykesmusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tdykes/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@travisdykes