05 Building a Business Where Twitter fits AJ Amyx
b'Social Media? Twitter can be scary to many, but is this relevant or useful?\\n\\nIt really is daunting to many people, particularly those a little older.\\xa0 We\\u2019ll see that it opens up markets, avenues and relationships efficiently. AJ Amyx, grew up and still lives in a small town, but his views and horizons are far and wide.\\n\\nHe was in a band that really started to do very well, but his life changed. He went through an unsettled period and a complete transformation. Here is a snippet of the episode.\\n\\nFrom a Life Crashing Down to Complete Transformation. How? Why?\\n\\nThomas: You said that you completely crashed. That everything fell apart and then what happened, how did you feel and how did your transformation pull you back up out of that.\\n\\nAJ: Awesome, good question. What happened is you know, in a band you\\u2019re with, you know for us we\\u2019re 5 piece, I mean you know there\\u2019s 2 guitar players, one who\\u2019s a lead player, I was the rhythm guitar player. I give my boy Travis White, he\\u2019s a guy I went to the high school with and we played soccer together and then we are college roommate for 4 years together and he happened to write a lot of the songs and so he was doing keyboards and then my buddy Aaron Reeves was playing base and we had this drummer. So we are literally a 5 piece band and it\\u2019s crazy like when you have 5 people trying to get them to practices all at the same time to get them to the same shows at the time to have the same vision, the same drive, the same work ethic. It\\u2019s like being married to 5 people, I have no clue how a polygamous could have 5 wives. It would be like being in a band every single day. And so, it would be and it\\u2019s kind of how it was and it kind of fell apart because some people were getting married and they don\\u2019t want to travel. Other people wanted to not be so business driven and plaster our faces everywhere. Then you had me who\\u2019s ridiculously driven who wanted to make a career out of it and wanted everyone to work together. The visions were different and so it all came crashing down. And so on August of 09\\u2019 everybody finally set up tension where everybody is like you know, this is not working and this is not fun anymore and it\\u2019s more like a business and it\\u2019s just, it\\u2019s not fun. So let\\u2019s pull the plug on it. This is like where you climb to like being on top of the mountain and everything is starting to you know you work your butt off and everything is starting to snowball downhill. It\\u2019s not easy but it\\u2019s a lot easier. I mean people are approaching you for shows; people are after your record deals; you have radio play; you\\u2019ve already invested in a tour bus; I mean like you\\u2019ve already bled so to speak and now it\\u2019s time to kind of ride the wave. And so we really had to make a hard decision and say okay, this is not fun then let\\u2019s pull the plug on this. But let\\u2019s honor our contract since we are over contract with the people we had gigs with all the way through October because that was our last contracted date and then after October for me it was just tough.\\n\\nRealization of change sets in\\n\\nYou had to figure out man this is been my identity for 10 years. It\\u2019s interesting when you do something for so long. I am talking about you know you\\u2019re working on your (stuff), you\\u2019re reading the books in that industry, you are submersed in that industry, you have given up everything to do it and then for it to be gone. You know you could go do it with somebody else, but I had to really assess and say, is this what I really want. And I remember coming home that summer after Cornerstone Festival and this is when everything was starting to fall apart and I\\u2019m sitting down and having dinner with my mom and dad and my brother and sister and when we\\u2019re coming home. They are sharing these stories from like July 4th and a few family vacations of summers before and I was like you know I don\\u2019t remember that. I remember them saying well brother, it\\u2019s because you weren\\u2019t there. Yeah, I was on tour.'