66: Charlotte Eriksson (The Glass Child) on Facing Obstacles, Knowing Yourself and Your Fans, and The Importance of Your Why

Charlotte Eriksson grew up in a house where athletics were emphasized. The arts weren't celebrated and you weren't supposed toe express your feelings. Her family didn't grow up listening to music, so she didn't really discover music until she was 16 years old. That's when a friend introduced her music that touched her life.

From that moment on, she knew she wanted to be a musician. She knew she wanted to spend her life creating that magical feeling for other people. And at the age of 18 Charlotte moved to London to pursue her dream. Since that moment, she has released several albums, toured all over Europe, and has published three books.

In this episode, Charlotte talks about facing obstacles, knowing yourself and your fans, and the importance of knowing your why.

Here are three things you can learn from Charlotte:

Everyone Faces Obstacles

Many of us have this false assumption about people who are successful. We think they don't encounter obstacles just because they're successful. But that's far from the truth. The reality is everyone faces obstacles and challenges along the way, no matter how successful they are.

That's why Charlotte recommends finding heroes who face obstacles and overcomes them. "A hero is not someone who sets out to achieve his dreams and achieves them with no obstacles. A hero is someone who has a dream and everything is working against him. He is running up hill, and it's tough and hard, and no one might believe in him but he makes it to the top anyways. And I'm saying that the hero stands on the top and people only see the glory of him standing up and praise him, but they don't see he had tears in his eyes and he's out of breath and clearly worn out, but he made it."

Charlotte believes these obstacles make us stronger. "It's not about achieving everything you want without any obstacles. It's about having so many obstacles, but pushing through them and learning something in a way that matters."

Know Yourself and Your Fans

A lot of artists and creatives try to build their businesses by selling their work to everyone. They believe the more people they appeal to, the easier it will be to sell their work. But that is the exact opposite of what you want to do.

If you want to build a successful business as an artist, you need to know exactly who you are appealing to. Charlotte believes that begins by knowing who you are as an artist first. Once you know that your audience will become apparent. "Just knowing what you're actually about. Knowing your story, knowing what you're about, knowing your statements, what you want people think about when they hear your name. If you know these things, it will be quite clear who these people are too."

But your work doesn't end there. In order to build and maintain a passionate fanbase, you must build deep connections with your audience. "That's also one thing why I like having really deep connections with fans, because if there are these wide but shallow audiences, they will rarely go and tell their friends that they have found the next amazing thing... but if you build something really really deep, that person will feel such a personal connection and they will go out and tell the rest of their friends too."

This is exactly how Charlotte built her audience. She started with a small and passionate fanbase and grew from there. "I think that's... the best way to start, is to just build something small but really passionate and then let it grow from there."

Know Your Why

Similar to knowing yourself is knowing your why. Knowing your why might be the most important thing you learn in your journey towards building a thriving and successful business. It is the reason you do what you do. Without your why, you lose direction, you lose focus, you stop working on the right things.

Charlotte believes it is absolutely crucial to know your why. They are the reason she does what she does. "For me, everything I'm doing is always about my why, just creating these moments for people, creating belonging, creating community of inspirations. And personally, everything I do I base on the decision of how I want to spend my day to day life. And so everything I do has to match with my values and... I think it all just goes back to knowing why you are doing what you are doing and knowing how you want to spend your life."

She credits knowing her why for keeping her on track. Without her why, she wouldn't be where she is today. "I would never have been able to get to where I am if I didn't know why I did what I did. Embarking on a mission, no matter what you are doing, creating your own business, it's tough, and it's hard, and it's a lot of work, and you will have to go places you didn't want to go, and you will not have time to be with people you might want to be with, and there's a lot of sacrifice. So if you don't have such a deep why, you know exactly why you want this, I don't think you're going to work as hard as you need to work to be able to make it."

Read more shownotes from episode 66 with Charlotte Eriksson