Behind the Music: A Day in the Life of Steve Stine

Ever wondered how a week in the life of a guitar maestro ticks by? Strum along with me, your host, as I reveal the finely-tuned symphony of my two-week work ritual that's key to producing the soul-stirring content you've come to adore. My Mondays begin with the soothing strums of a guitar warm-up, setting the tone for a creative surge in the studio, crafting exclusive pieces for our GuitarZoom VIPs. The tempo ramps up on Tuesdays with back-to-back guitar lessons, all while keeping the beat with our dedicated GuitarZoom Community. The crescendo builds midweek as I prep for the much-anticipated "Steve's Songs" Thursday releases, balancing the mix of recording, editing, and engaging with our vibrant online following.

Pull back the curtain on the organizational wizardry that orchestrates this harmonious chaos. In this behind-the-scenes tour, I unveil the digital tools that keep my melodies and meetings in harmony—Asana for orchestrating tasks, and Bookmark Ninja for curating sparks of inspiration. Discover how I entwine my guitar practice into the fabric of daily life, ensuring each pluck and chord resonates in the content we broadcast. It's a story of passion, persistence, and the rhythm that fuels a life enveloped in music. So tune in, and get a rare glimpse of the methods that allow me to live out my passion and bring you along for the ride.

Tune in now and learn more!

Links:

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus... 
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0... 
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... . 

Check out Steve's Guitar Membership and Courses: https://bit.ly/3rbZ3He

Transcript

Steve: 0:36

Hey, steve here, thank you so much for joining me again. I get asked a lot what a day-to-day routine looks like for me as far as work goes. You see the output, you see the videos or the guitar courses or things like that. But a lot of people are interested in how exactly all of that works on my end of things. So I thought I would kind of explain it to you. Basically, what I try and do is I roll with a two week routine. I can't get everything done in a week, so I have a two week routine. That I tend to do and even that gets sort of blasted out of the water Anytime something new comes up and I have something else to do. But I would kind of I try and stay as consistent as possible. So that's what I'll talk to you about.

Steve: 1:18

So, for instance, the first week of the month what I do is on Mondays, of course. I get up in the morning, have some coffee, watch a little news and then I grab my guitar and start warming up. That's the first thing I do, and then my plan unless it gets again blown up my plan is to go into the studio, usually try and get there about 8.15 after I drop my daughter off at school and I start working on either content for the VIP section of the guitar zoo membership, because I'm always trying to make new content for that, whether it's a lesson thing or a jamming thing or a how to thing, whatever it might be. But that's what I try and do on Mondays. And then in the afternoon because you have to understand, you have to do some research what is it that people want? And then you have to do some research on how you're going to present it. You can't just turn the video camera on, of course. You have to think about what you're going to do and how you're going to do it and all that sort of thing, and then I would record it and then usually that kind of content will go to my video editor, nadish. He'll do those things. And then I spend the afternoon doing social media engagement stuff, responding to comments or whatever. I unfortunately don't get a lot of time to do that on my own because I always have so many other things to do. But I do try and do some of that on Mondays and if I don't get to it, again, it depends on how long those VIP videos take for preparation into recording. And again, luckily I don't have to do the editing on those, but sometimes I'll do it just because it might have been an easy thing and it'll save Nadish a little bit of time. It just depends on what it is. When it goes to Nadish, of course he'll do the video editing and then I have somebody else that will do the notation, the PDF, all of that kind of stuff for it.

Steve: 3:20

So that's what my Mondays are, and then there's almost always two or three meetings somewhere in there as well of things that I'll have to meet people with or people that want to have a meeting about whatever. And then we move to Tuesdays. Now Tuesdays for me are if you're a guitar Zoom, for instance, inner circle member or an elite member or something like that, you get guitar lessons and I'm usually booked out about six months six to seven months on those. But I have guitar lessons with inner circle or elite members that I do every Tuesday. So, and then usually I have a couple of meetings, but it depends, because my day can be pretty filled with just lessons. But if I do have a little time on the outside you know, eight o'clock in the morning I might do a meeting or something like that, and then I start doing the lessons. So Tuesdays are pretty, pretty locked in, and then Wednesdays.

Steve: 4:15

What I try and do is I try and do some preparation, for on Thursdays I always release some sort of a learning of a song I call it Steve's Songs and so I'll try and create something on Wednesdays for that. So I'll, you know, start thinking about what would be a good song, what would be the point of the song? You know, who does it benefit to teach this? How do I wanna approach this? Not just this is how the song goes, but you know, this is how you could play it if it was a little bit easier. And this is how you could play it if you wanted to play it the way that they play it. And this is how you could do whatever if you want to, you know, embellish in your own way, like I was trying to approach those ways when I'm doing songs.

Steve: 4:56

But so this particular video, because it's going to need to come out the following day, on Thursday, I have to do all the editing. So I'll do the preparation, think about the song, whatever. I'll do the recording and then I'll do the video editing and then I'll do the thumbnail and the description and the tags and all that kind of stuff to get it ready for release. Now, sometimes that kind of thing can take four, five, six, seven hours, depending on what it is that you're doing. So I try and make them fairly short, you know, 10 minutes maybe, 15 minutes maybe, so it doesn't take me all day, but that's what I try and do on Wednesdays, is some of that sort of thing. And then I usually have a couple of different meetings that I do. We have a guitar Zoom meeting every Wednesday that I do as well. So that's what I try and get done on Wednesdays.

Steve: 5:47

And then when Thursdays come around, that's when I would release or I would prep the next video which is either going to come out on Sunday or excuse me, on Saturday or on Monday, depending on which day I release it, and this would just be some sort of content that I'm creating, and then same thing. So it might take three hours, it might take four hours, it might take five hours, it just depends. And then I try and also get done on Thursdays a new podcast and like what I'm doing right now, and then I also try and get done, if it's possible, some sort of jam for Friday, because Friday we have in guitar Zoom. If you're a member of the guitar Zoom membership or a guitar Zoom community on Facebook, we have this thing called Coffee House Fridays and where everybody posts a video of them and what they've been working on or what they're jamming to or whatever it might be, and it's nice to engage in that too. Oftentimes I just don't have time on Thursdays to get that done for Friday, but I try. If I have time I'll certainly get it done. But again, I gotta jam to something, film it, edit the audio so it sounds good. If I'm actually trying to play something half ways decent, I might have to record it a couple of times to get it to where I'm happy with it. It just depends.

Steve: 7:10

And then Friday comes along and Fridays are usually my catch-up days. So what happens on Fridays is I'm in whatever meetings that I didn't get to earlier during the week or I'm doing any paperwork that needs to be done or any post-editing that I haven't gotten to. But then I'm also doing research, for maybe there's a product, maybe Paul Reed Smith has sent me a guitar and I'm gonna make a video for that, or something, or whatever it might be. I might be doing some communication with them on something like that, and that's kind of the way the week goes. And then Saturdays and Sundays, I try to avoid work as much as possible so I can spend time with my family, but it just depends.

Steve: 7:54

So, in talking about those things, all of this leads to efficiency, proper workflow, right? So for me, I live and die by the calendar, and my wife knows this. So if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't exist, and so I have a number of different calendars that are, all you know, skewed together in a big Google calendar that keeps track of everything that I'm doing. Oh, and then the other thing would be anytime the guitar zoom team needs a sales script, or whatever it might be, or they need stuff that's another thing I do on Wednesdays is whenever they need things you know there might be specific things that Tom or Matt or Derek or even Dan needs I put aside some time on Wednesdays. I don't have my calendar right in front of me because I'm talking to you, but I set aside some time to try and get that stuff done for them as well, and so everything's on a calendar, everything's set and situated in the calendar. It doesn't mean that that's the way it's gonna work, but that's what my plan is.

Steve: 8:55

The second week everything kind of stays the same, except on Mondays. Instead of doing VIP videos, I tend to try and focus on guitar courses. Now, I'm not gonna get a whole course done on a Monday, but I might take that Monday and I might do some preparation and some thought and planning. And you know I'll create a. I do outlines or mind maps. That's what I do when I create courses is I go through and you know kind of process, the information and what order of things would be in and that sort of thing. You know, take a look at it and sometimes it's easier for me to do that with a mind map than it is just an outline. But I use both of those for sure, and then throughout the week then if I've got extra time, that's where I would do my recording. Otherwise, on Friday is when I will have to do that. If for some reason, my Friday is packed, I'll revisit this in two weeks when it's time to do the guitar course again. All right, I could switch around the Mondays and the next Monday is when I'll do finish up that guitar course and then VIP videos would be the following Monday, but again, that's all kind of interchangeable.

Steve: 10:01

But it's content for the membership that's happening on Mondays, it's live lessons that are happening on Tuesdays, right, and then it's Wednesday prep for Thursday, thursday prep for Saturday or Monday. That's kind of the general flow of how things work, and so I use a lot of different pieces of software to keep myself organized. So not just calendars but all of the thoughts in my head of trying to create content for this or trying to think of ideas for this, or recording ideas for this. Because that's the other thing that I do is I create all my own jam tracks, my backing tracks, right, so I have to write those, come up with ideas and think, well, what key do I want this in, and what tuning and what tempo and that sort of thing, and what's the purpose of it, right? Am I using it to explain something about melody? So I want more regular chords for that. Or am I doing something that's talking more about a lick or a pattern or something? So I might want something a little bit faster. You know what I mean.

Steve: 10:58

So everything requires thought process and so oftentimes when I go home at the end of the day, I'm still working on thumbnails at eight o'clock at night trying to think about that or trying to comment on some posts. But I'm very cautious of spending much time on social media in the evenings because it just consumes so much of your time. So I'm very cautious about that. But I do like to check it and make sure everything's OK and if anybody has any questions about things, and certainly make posts for whatever on social media, that kind of thing. So hopefully that kind of makes sense. That's kind of what I do, as I'm set up for those. Now, if I have band stuff maybe I'm playing on a Monday night, maybe I'm playing on a Thursday night, maybe I'm playing on a weekend Then I've got to implement time in for those things as well. But those will usually happen in the evenings because I'll have to rehearse and that's something else to think about.

Steve: 11:53

Like, when I'm recording some of this content or I'm creating some of this stuff, whether it's for the website, whether it's for social media oftentimes some of the things that I'm doing require some practice. Like, if you're going to learn a song, I have to do the same thing you do. I have to spend time listening to the song and studying the song and then practicing the song, make sure I can play everything the way. It's. Even more so sometimes Because if I make a video I really can't make a bunch of mistakes, because then people go oh you made a mistake, so you have to do it over and over and over.

Steve: 12:22

And then another thing I do are those remote collaborations. I'm sure you've seen some of those where I create collaborations with other musicians around the world and we jam a Boston song or a Dio song or whatever it might be, and so I do all of that kind of stuff too, and those things are really time consuming and then trying to write music in between there as best I can. It's just there's a lot of stuff so it's not always easy to get to everything, and so oftentimes that week that I've got scheduled might get pushed all over the place, and so sometimes I have to miss a podcast, or sometimes I have to miss a particular video that was supposed to really be released on Thursday but didn't get it. You know that sort of thing, everything you know. You just try and find time the best you can.

Steve: 13:09

But I would recommend to you organize yourself, organize your thoughts, get yourself a couple pieces of software if you need to organize things. You know I use Google for a lot of stuff for all of my tasks that I can then just pull over into my calendar as I do them. But then I have my thought process stuff. So I use like a mind map software and it doesn't really matter which one, but you know I'll use something like that. I use a program called ClickUp to keep track of my thought processes and things that I want to work on and things like that.

Steve: 13:44

I use a program called Asana. If you've ever heard of Asana, that's another really great one. You can actually use a free version of that. That works really well for just basic organization of your thought process and things like that. And then I have another program called Bookmark Ninja where anytime I come across something that I want to go back to I don't have time right now, but I want to read that, or I want to listen to that, or, you know, I want to study that or anything I have a. It comes with a Chrome extension, of course, so I can just click on it and I can save it into a folder. So I have, you know, guitar related folders and then you know, just a reminder to listen to related folders and I'll just dump everything in those and then I'll come back to those when I have time and that way I don't miss some of the things that I want to want to be studying.

Steve: 14:37

So hopefully that kind of makes sense and gives you a little bit of insight into what I'm doing. I wish I could just sit around and, you know, noodle on my guitar all day, but there's a lot of things going on, so usually that sort of thing has to happen either first thing in the morning or later on in the evening, or certainly on the weekends. But don't get me wrong. I mean I'm certainly, you know, implementing my abilities into some of the content that I create. If I'm doing a jam or whatever, you know, it gives me a moment to focus on the things that I'm trying to work on and sort of expel it in the content that I'm creating at the moment. So okay, all right, thank you so much for joining me. Hopefully that was entertaining for you, gives you a little bit of insight into how my brain works, organizing myself and the kind of stuff that I do on a daily basis. All right, talk to you soon.