Bought myself a new cam­corder (JVC Eve­rio) and com­pres­sion soft­ware to record some “white­board dis­cus­sions” with my wife Sylvie for Suc​cess​Chef​.com content.

I wanted to test the soft­ware. So I decided to place the cam­era in front of my drum set (the light­ing was bad and my fault), and played along with “When We Were Young” by The Killers. (One of my favorite bands!)

This was recorded on the first and only take — I never played this song before, but I wanted to try out the cam­era and the com­pres­sion soft­ware. (If you ever won­dered if I can really play drums, you can judge for yourself.)

Don’t laugh, but here I am play­ing “drum karaoke” to the Killers. What do you think?

I recently joined a new band. It’s not a pro­fes­sional band by any stretch (I mean, not one in the sense of gig­ging all the time). It’s a hobby of mine. I’m the drum­mer, and I love clas­sic rock.

And like most of the bands I join, I love design­ing their web­sites. And this one, Dig­gin’ For Hoffa, is no excep­tion. Just like my main site at Suc​cess​Doc​tor​.com, this site is entirely WordPress-​​driven, even though it’s not a blog.

But I’d like to ask you a favor, too…

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I have a new love in my life. And it’s a killer! (Actu­ally, it’s the band “The Killers.”)

I love their music. I just recently pur­chased their CDs “Hot Fuss” and “Sam’s Town.” And I think I’ve played them, oh, about 20–30 times now. These two CDs are rock­ing! Great music, great lyrics, and yes, great drum­ming, too.

(Ron­nie Van­nucci, Jr. is a pretty solid drum­mer in my books. I’ve always been fas­ci­nated by drum­mers who can whip up a storm on such small kits. Buddy Rich is one of them. Ron­nie is def­i­nitely another.)

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When I spoke on stage in Lon­don, UK last sum­mer, I met a really nice guy by the name of Patrizio Moi. We hit it off quite well, prob­a­bly because we have some­thing in com­mon: music.

You see, this Italian-​​born entre­pre­neur is not only a bril­liant guy with a lot of tal­ent. Patrizio is also a record­ing pro­fes­sional and music pro­ducer, with his own record­ing stu­dio and label.

His reper­toire is quite exten­sive, too. He’s worked on or col­lab­o­rated with some of the top record­ing artists in the world. (Andrea Bocelli is one of many, just to give you an example.)

This after­noon, Patrizio con­tacted me via MySpace and asked me a favor. He was about to send an email to his list, mak­ing a one-​​time offer pro­mot­ing his demo record­ing ser­vice. (Demos are incred­i­bly impor­tant in the music busi­ness, just so you know.)

I don’t nor­mally offer free con­sult­ing. But…

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Suc­cess, in any par­tic­u­lar busi­ness, depends for one thing upon your pos­sess­ing, in a well-​​developed state, the fac­ul­ties required in that business.

With­out good musi­cal fac­ulty no one can suc­ceed as a teacher of music. With­out well-​​developed mechan­i­cal fac­ul­ties no one can achieve great suc­cess in any of the mechan­i­cal trades. With­out tact and the com­mer­cial fac­ul­ties no one can suc­ceed in mer­can­tile pur­suits. But to pos­sess in a well-​​developed state the fac­ul­ties required in your par­tic­u­lar voca­tion does not insure get­ting rich. There are musi­cians who have remark­able tal­ent, and who yet remain poor. There are black­smiths, car­pen­ters, and so on who have excel­lent mechan­i­cal abil­ity, but who do not get rich. And there are mer­chants with good fac­ul­ties for deal­ing with peo­ple who nev­er­the­less fail.

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