Derek Sivers
from the book “Your Music and People”:

Direct it yourself.

2000-04-10

The “do it yourself” mentality is appealing. But it doesn’t mean you do everything yourself. And it doesn’t mean it has to be your hands.

Maybe at first, if you are just starting, and have no action, you can do everything yourself. It can be fun to make your website, engineer your recordings, design your artwork, book your gigs, and even play all the instruments when recording.

But as soon as you get momentum, you’ll completely sabotage your success if you keep trying to do everything yourself.

Instead, learn to use others’ hands. Be like a film director. It’s your vision. You decide how things are done. You direct your team on what to do. You don’t do everything yourself.

Yes, this means you need to find specialists at the other tasks. And yes, sometimes it’s hard to find them. But it’s harder to watch your career crawl instead of fly because you’re trying to do it all yourself. I’ve seen too many make that mistake. Please don’t.