The selling of Inspirational recorded music is a rough road these days.  The selling of any recorded music is a rough road and it seems that Inspirational music is no different.  It also seems that there are far too many good reasons why – so many that the problem has become very difficult to solve.  Difficult for the entire industry.

Why?  Like I said, the problem is complex.  File sharing does not help.  The fact that many now find their music free and accessible on the Internet at any time and immediately also is huge.  Sometimes I think people are just too busy to listen these days and when they can, there are a myriad free ways to do so and access what they’re looking for.

So we’re all looking at alternate ways of doing business.  At Watchfire Music we are shifting more towards being a digital sheet music company and producer of ancillary music events.  Hence the WFM Listening Room and the WFM Learning Lab.

It’s a changing time and we’re having to change with it – whether we like it or not.

These changes have required wholesale changes within the company.  Focus, leadership, staffing, direction and the day-to-day implementation of just about everything we do has come under careful scrutiny as we fight to survive in a world of evolution.

So what it has meant to me, personally, is really a doubling of the basic work ethic at a time when we were already maxed out and maxing out our wondrous staff.  On top of that, less sales equals less staff, so for many of us our work-load has doubled and tripled as staffing has diminished.  Sleep becomes a thing of the past, people are more stressed, more fearful about their jobs, and the management of company morale becomes just one more issue to contend with daily.

Fortunately, we here at WFM do this because we love it and deeply respect the endeavor of inspiring minds and hearts.  Also your daily letters and notes of gratitude and praise are always a great lift.  That’s one of the great things about show business – there’s often applause.  Sometimes the applause is enough.  Sometimes ya’ gotta eat.

So we plow on.  Oh we sell recorded music, but not nearly on the level that we once expected and not nearly as much as we did just 5 years ago.

I don’t believe it’s our product.  We get letters every day from inspired buyers gushing their gratitude for our inspired words and musical notes.  I will tell you that every CD that we sell has inspired yours truly at one time or another and I keep going back to this music for more.  That’s why, as Creative Director of WFM, I picked it up in the first place.  The music is Inspirational.

So we plow on.  I know I already said that, but it’s what we do.  We come into a mountain of work each day and just plow through it.  I’m sure you do too in your endeavors.

I get asked about once a week, “How do you manage to accomplish so much?”  The answer is simple: hard work.  Hard work and a great dose of creative fulfillment.  We all get great joy out of what we do.  We work together well in a happy environment.  We feed our staff great healthy snacks all day long and keep their tummies happy.  We praise them for every little thing they do that adds to the effectiveness of WFM and we all do the grunt work.  There are no prima donnas in this company.  We all work together and get it done.

I just love our staff.  Most of us are spread around the country and work from home.  We communicate on the phone, through Google lists and email and the separation occasionally has its drawbacks, but basically works well.

Most of all, we try to run our business in a non-emotional environment of mutual support.  We work with a lot of artistic people and world belief is that these kinds of people can be highly emotional.  It comes with the territory.  But we try to diffuse that emotion early, stay away from the stress and offer a happy, quiet workplace that is conducive to concentration.

We set goals daily and expect everyone to fulfill those goals and work along side of them to make sure that it happens effectively.  Fortunately we’re still a small company and can do that.  It’s gotta be tougher as you get bigger.  I look forward to that challenge.

In short, we’re getting’ it done. We fall behind.  We catch up.  We work overtime to do so.  Just like the rest of the world.  Every day we turn out something new – something a little different.  We get off on the creativity.  Just yesterday our site manager, Craig Wagner, designed a new and innovative flyer (entitled New! New! New!).  When we first saw it, we all stopped our work and celebrated his creativity in the kitchen, ate some of my toasted, buttered, salted cashews, drank some Pepsi and then went back to work.  A happy family.

We celebrated Craig and his infinite creativity.  He was one of us — even though he was down in South Carolina.  He was Watchfire.

Today we pull off Show #4 of Series II of the WFM Listening Room – Julia Wade and Jimmy Roberts.  We’re inches away from selling out!  Bigger crowds mean more work.  But this will be a show to remember.  Jimmy’s a real pro and Julia’s debuting her new title song from her next CD, Silk Road.  It’ll be a night to remember.

‘Scuse me, I gotta get to work…