How to Become a Successful Artist — The Pursuit of Bravery

By John Lucas Kovasckitz

I know. It’s a click-bait title. Written by...who?

But I promise that I can help point the way. Hear me out.

My artistic form of choice is songwriting / music, but I think that what I have to say applies to all forms of art and artists. Furthermore, I think we’re all supposed to live in a state of creativity, and our lives themselves are our art forms...so I think, really, this applies to everyone.

I began writing songs at a young age, and started recording them in my shared bedroom in the basement when I was probably seventeen (all good success stories begin either within a basement or garage). I wrote songs that moved me...songs that were so bare and raw - and so obviously recorded and sung by a teenager that didn’t know what he was doing - that I kind of hated when people I knew found them online. I loved the anonymity of the internet...and in many ways I still do.

Needless to say, not many people downloaded my songs at first, and they were free-99.

And that, my friends, is how every good success story begins.

I was obviously not a successful artist, because - aside from the fact that my art was, objectively, not very good - few people paid any attention to my music, and I didn’t make a dime from it.

Furthermore, I recorded it on my own...and, as everyone knows (or as they knew way back in the olden days - ten years ago), all legitimate music is recorded in a studio and backed by a label.

Over ten years later, I’m still making music. Here’s where a good success story would fast-forward to the present day, playing peppy music over montages of me arm-in-arm with Bono or Jay-Z in the studio smoking a cigar, and then driving home in my Tesla to a mansion on the coast.

My wife and I currently live in a duplex, and I still mainly drive the same rusty Subaru hatchback that I did when I recorded my first song. I don’t know Jay-Z or Bono, and I’m a household name in very few houses.

Two years ago, Danielle and I quit our full-time jobs with benefits to travel, and I started telling people that I was a songwriter when they asked what I did. I’ve had some successes: I made around $20,000 for having 15 seconds of a song you could barely hear in a Google commercial, and my music has been on a couple of not-great TV shows. In the age of streaming, a considerable amount of people around the world have listened to my music, and some have become die-hard supporters of my work. But compared to the “big” artists, my numbers are pretty paltry. Most highschoolers have more Instagram followers than I do.

I’m neither trying to humble-brag nor to wallow in self-pity. I’m filled with gratitude that I can support my family through what I create. Unfortunately, it’s fairly difficult to make any money as an artist...let alone to pay your bills. I’ve been able to do it for two years, and I think that’s worth celebrating. But with a baby on the way and my wife going back to school, I’ve been side-hustling hard lately. In addition to music, I clean Airbnbs, I help in a wood shop, and I’m an extra hand at a local venue for events. And everyone knows that successful artists don’t have side-hustles.

By the standards of most, after ten years of making music, and with a kid on the way, it’s probably about time to get a real, steady, job again…this time for good.

By the standards of most, I’ve had some successes as an artist, but I am not a successful artist.

Someone asked me a handful of years ago (before I had found a bit more monetary “success” with my music) if I counted up all of the time over the years that I had spent practicing and making music and sweating for it, how much I would have made per hour. Ten cents? A quarter? ...Implying that perhaps, within Capitalism, my labor-power was not being very well spent.

I don’t think this person realized how hurtful his question was at the time. I was making music that I believed in, and I was working hard to get it out there in the world. However, what hurt the most was - within the typical Western Capitalist confines of value - his implications were probably right.

You’ve read a good bit into this post, so I’ll just go ahead and give away the secret.

You want to know how to be a successful artist? By creating. That’s it. Nothing more.

If I had spent ten years making music, and it was a net drain on my assets and hardly anybody listened to what I put out there...but I really believed in what I was making, I would consider myself a successful artist. Looking back, I was a successful artist at seventeen. I was growing my craft, I was learning, and I was leaning into bravery.

I get a lot of messages from people that express how much my music has meant to them…that it’s been a companion through the hard times and good. And I treasure these interactions, but I’ll take it further: if no one listened to my music, but I created art that was meaningful to me, I would still consider myself a successful artist. Creating, for me, is communion with the Creator. The slow process of creation has sharpened me and softened me...it has made me more Aware.

Money, accolades, followers, etc. are all byproducts of - and thus, inconsequential to - my foundational success as an artist: creating art that I believe in.

I forget this most days, but sometimes I remember.

I think that the person making art that they believe in - while not making a dime for it - is far more successful than the rich “artist” selling his soul to make meaningless products that he thinks people want to buy.

This is not to say that to be a true artist you must be impoverished (I believe artists that add to the human experience should be paid, and paid well!), or that you cannot be making authentic art if you become financially wealthy from it. I’m just saying that I believe our metrics of success are wrong. I’m saying that it’s wrong if our value of someone and what they create is based solely on the amount of copies sold, or the amount of their streams or followers, or their net worth.

I’m saying that I believe the message is more important than the influence; I’m saying that I think five people given the truth is far greater than five million people sold a lie.

And to the subject of side-hustles and front-hustles and just generally working your butt off to support your creativity: set your pride aside and do it. Enjoy the work, and let it be a part of your communion with Creation. One of my favorite people that I know has his doctorate degree, and felt that teaching university level courses took up too much of his creative energy, so he delivered pies in his van for Pizza Hut for awhile. And I think that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard.

Being an artist requires having a different value system.

The world needs artists. The world needs your unique perspective…the Universal needs the particular. The world needs you to speak truth to power, and it needs you to remind us how strong love is. It needs you to remind us what’s important. The world needs the work of artists as companions through death and heartbreak and birth and marriage and everything in-between.

And I think this post is as much for myself as anyone else. I think it’s one that I’ll need to come back to...because it’s so easy to forget when a ten-second video of a cat will get astronomically more plays than something into which you’ve poured your blood and soul.

If money, listeners / viewers, or influence is your metric for success, you will always be empty and will never have enough...because someone will always have more.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

When success is the struggle and release of creating, you will eventually find it if you wrestle long enough.

I am going to keep wrestling. I am going to keep making music. I am going to keep writing. I am going to keep loving my wife, and I’m soon going to meet our son outside of the womb. I am going to teach him how to love and to grow as best as I can, but I suspect he will teach me much more. I am going to keep dreaming. And I am going to keep going.

And I also hope you keep adding to the world in the ways that make you most come alive.

Be brave. Create.

To close, I’ll leave you with the lyrics to a song I finished recently…and then a short video that has become a companion for me over the years.

Everybody’s slaying just to get ahead

Yeah everybody’s slaving just to get ahead

But you’ll never be free if you’re chaining those behind

Or if you’re selling your soul on the dotted line

I ain’t selling my songs to the record man

‘Cause their radio stations won’t reach this land

I ain’t moving to the city and changing my name

You can keep your money you can keep your fame

You can gain the whole world

But it’ll cost your soul

Oh everybody dies

Clinging to fool’s gold

Give me what’s real

What doesn’t rust or fade

Come hell or high water

Come judgement day

Give me my job at the corner store

And I will sell liquor ‘til we close the doors

We can keep the lights on, just fine

And I can pay the rent on time

Give me my garden and the morning dew

And give me my wife with her worn out shoes

Give me my son with his toothy grin

And I would live this life again

Yeah I would live this life again