5 Jarring Ways Keeping Only YES People Around You WILL Destroy Your Music Career

As a music artist, it can be tempting to only surround yourself with people who always agree with you and tell you only what you want to hear. However, keeping only “yes people” on your team is dangerous for your career. Without honest and constructive criticism from a diverse range of voices, you may struggle to recognize when your music or image needs improvements. You could end up putting out subpar work without realizing it because no one was brave enough to give critical feedback. It’s also important to hear perspectives from people outside your immediate circle in order to understand how your music or brand may be perceived by a broader audience. Creatives need challenges in order to grow. By silencing dissenting opinions, you risk creating an echo chamber that stifles your potential to evolve and connect with more listeners over time. And always remember: getting constantly praised by those you work with is worse than receiving constructive criticism.

5. You lose touch with reality.

You become the sum of the people you surround yourself with most of the time. And if those people only approve of everything you say and do without bringing critical thinking and market analysis into the mix, you start living in a bubble. We’ve seen countless times A-list artists who’ve given poorly scripted interviews that ended up in them firing their publicist the next day, then follow up with an official apology on their social media accounts claiming they had no clue of X, Y, Z. That’s what happens when you keep around individuals who only care to get paid and get associated with you without having the BRAND’s best interest at heart.

4. Your ego gets blown out of proportion.

An artist with too huge of an ego very shortly becomes the person everyone tip-toes around. And what do you think happens when that ego is perpetually fed without ever being challenged or brought down to reality? It morphs into a snowball effect, leading ultimately to an artist who’s insufferable to everyone they come in contact with. They become the guy/gal recording studios can’t wait to be done working with, only pretending to like them for clout.

3. Your best interest is not at anyone’s heart.

Because your best interest is to have sustainability, evolution, success, and real impact on the world. Those things will never happen or will occur only for a very brief period if you keep YES men and women around. Yes people are concerned only with the present moment and what benefits them. As long as there’s something for them to gain from being around you, they’ll keep yessing everything you claim, even when your actions are out of line and your music – hot trash. We’ve met first-hand major production studios that encouraged acoustically disabled singers into recording full albums when they damn well know the product will NEVER get past social media paid ads.

2. You start going backwards.

Ever seen cringe TikTok videos done by full-blown adults who compete with teenagers? It’s usually the former boys and girls who peaked in high school and were left with a false sense of accomplishment and being better than everyone else, thus resulting in a continuously delulu attitude towards life and society. It’s like they’re forever stuck reliving their best years, their high school times. Well, that’s what you’re looking at if you keep yes people on your team. You will get so used to positive reinforcement, that you will struggle beyond belief to accept eventually that you might be wrong, your production might be outdated, and you may have delivered a mediocre performance during your last show. And well… you mathematically can’t become better when you already think you’re the best. You slowly, but then quickly, start sliding backwards. If you don’t believe us, think of some 2000s’ star who is irrelevant and even unknown in many cases to Gen Z but often engages in surprised Pikachu face when the youngsters don’t credit them as the OGs of popular remixes.

1. You are left alone sooner or later.

Because you have a crappy team around you where nobody ever speaks their mind and probably doesn’t even care to do so. Why should Joe tell you he thinks your music from this year is garbage when you’ve treated Jane very poorly the time she brought up that you’ve become boring as an artist? Joe is smart, and Joe will take your money without stepping over your emotions while you will progressively become a worse version of yourself. And by the time you stop selling records and booking venues, Joe likely will have already applied to numerous other jobs, and won’t have any issues switching teams. When people know their boss is prone to cutting off those who don’t agree with him/her, they always have a backup plan. Being left alone will only come as a surprise to YOU.

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