The Heretic’s Comment: We love featuring stories that demonstrate the unstoppable force connected with self-empowerment. While this is an older story we have been tracking over the last couple of weeks, we decided to move forward with posting it now, because the more we looked at the numbers, the more phenomenal Juanes’ tremendous work ethic and grind began to impress us.
For those of you who are not familiar with Juan Esteban Aristizabal Vasquez p/k/a Juanes, he is a columbian solo rock artist who was once a member of the heavy metal band Ekhymosis. Since going solo, Juanes has achieved significant exposure of his music through the use of social media networks. For example, Juanes has an estimated 1.8 million followers on Twitter on any given day and his Facebook Fanpage has over 2.3 million members.
What makes Juanes accomplishment even more impressive is the fact that he only sings songs in Spanish. So he has not compromised his base support in order to achieve cross-over success. In place of cross-over dreams, Juanes has opted to map out a strategy and focus toward grinding and grinding and grinding to expand his existing base of Spanish speaking fans.
Now the even more beautiful part of Juanes story is not the huge number of followers and fans he has respectfully in Twitter and Facebook, but instead is the fact that he has successfully translated these numbers into cashflow. Juanes has accumulated a string of awards from his consistent record sales and hits.
Further, Juanes movement is starting to have global impact. In fact, recently he was featured on the cover of Billboard magazine and will also start a U.S. Tour in March 2011 (a couple of days away). Through his grind ethic, Juances has transformed himself into both an Icon and Super-Brand.
Closing Comments:
The thing we love most about Juanes’ story is the following observation: Juanes did not wait for someone else to promote his artistry and music. Nor did he allow himself to be held hostage by some power structure by waiting for someone to approve a budget before he could move forward. Instead, he took the power that he already had (name recognition and hustle) and kept expanding it…expanding it…expanding it….and then expanding it more. And he is not stopping. The North American Tour, the Billboard cover, these items are only going to expand his power base further.
This is the lesson we are always trying to get across to you here on The Heretic. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to move forward with building and connecting a fanbase to your music. Further, don’t limit yourself or your music’s potential by thinking that you can’t achieve great success unless you have a major label machine behind you. Instead, understand that You make the difference. Everything hinges on you and what you believe about yourself and what you believe about your music.
If you create great music and are willing to believe that there can be a world without limits with regard to your music and the power connected to it, we truly believe that everything you need to go to the level you desire will be drawn to you.
Juanes has done it…..Now It’s Your Turn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Give us your thoughts.
We have provided a link to the story that inspired this post, below
Juanes hailed as social network king, set to kick off US tour in March – National Latin music | Examiner.com.
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