It’s easy to think that it’s awesome to get paid and sucky to have to pay people, to be the one signing the checks.
People who climb the ladder get checks.
People who own and build the ladder write checks.
When you’re the one writing the checks and the one responsible for making sure those checks clear, you have an experiential, realistic approach to how making money works.
You learn that money to pay players didn’t just appear because you played a show.
You learn that money to pay the producers back-end points didn’t just appear because you released new music.
You learn that promotion and marketing campaigns don’t happen out of thin air.
And when you’re the one cutting the checks out of your own account(s), you feel and understand the value of each and every precious dollar.
It’s an honor for you to pay your people and for those people to deposit those checks into their own bank accounts and their own lives.
Something you’ve created is financially benefiting the team around you. What an amazing gift you’re giving.
You’re right, to them the paycheck might just seem like magic. Like it was automatically going to happen. As though job security is something that exists.
But you know. You know how hard you’ve worked in order to take care of them in this way. You know how many times you almost didn’t make payroll, but somehow made it happen. You know the all the years of thankless work that enabled their simple satisfaction of walking out to their mailbox and getting a check twice a month.
It’s easy to want the reward for all your hard work to be always cashing checks and never cutting them.
But the real honor and reward for a job well done is to be the one signing people’s checks, checks with lots of 0’s on the end of them.
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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com