Follow Your Dream at Any Age with Robert Miller

Robert Miller joins us as a guest in today’s episode. He’s here to talk about fulfilling your dreams, even at an age when you might be thinking of retiring. This is personal for Robert as, when he was nearing retirement, he decided to get into music full-time.

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On this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast:

• What prompted Robert to become a musician in his sixties.
• The experiences that this decision gave Robert over the last 9 years.
• The challenges Robert found along the way.
• What Robert credits as the secret to his success.
• Why having a young feel and sound is important in the music industry.
• Robert’s “aha” moment in 2018.
• Why Robert is inspired to help others achieve their dreams.
• Robert’s DREAM acronym.
• Why you need to define what success means to you.
• Why learning to adjust is crucial to success, especially now.
• How 2020 impacted musicians specifically.
• Robert’s favorite covers to perform.
• When Robert’s next album is coming out.
• Robert’s plans for his music in 2021.
• His message for people who want to do their dream but are scared to go for it.
• The way that Robert approaches his life and how it has worked for him.

Connect with Robert

Project Grand Slam Website: https://www.projectgrandslam.com/

Project Grand Slam Store: https://thepgsstore.com/

TRANSCRIPT

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TRANSCRIPT

I am Gloria Grace Rand, founder of the Love Method and author of the number one Amazon best seller, Live Love Engage – How to Stop Doubting Yourself and start being yourself. In this podcast, we share practical advice from a spiritual perspective on how to live fully, love deeply and engage authentically so you can create a life and business with more impact, influence and income. Welcome to Live, Love, Engage. Namaste and welcome to Live, Love Engage today I am delighted to have a gentleman with us who is good to talk about fulfilling your dreams, even at an age when you might be thinking about retiring. And his name is Robert Miller. So first off, welcome to Live Love Engage.

Robert, thank you very much. You.

I am delighted to have you here because this gentleman I met recently at an event where you got to meet with a whole bunch of different speakers who are looking for opportunities to get their message out. And I was really struck by by his message because he this gentleman, you know, in an age when baby boomers like myself are retiring, he decided to go into music full time and did it in a big way. And I thought that rather than going into more about his bio, I would just start off by talking about or asking you really what prompted you to. Go into music, especially to become a musician in your 60s.

Well, I’ve been a musician really all my life, but I was never doing it at the level and the depth that I always wanted to do it. When I was in my early 20s, I thought that I was going to be a professional musician. That’s the trajectory that my life was on. And like a lot of people, you just get off track. Why life gets in the way. I got married in my early 20s. We had children I needed to earn a living, and soon enough I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do full time. And I kept saying, I’m going to get it back to it. I’m going to get back to it. And I think a lot of us do exactly that. We have a dream we start out with and life gets in the way and we just fall into something or other. And then we look back at some point maybe, and we say, well, how did that happen and why can I ever get back to that? And that’s what happened with me. And I kept thinking about it for quite some time. I was playing music. But again, more like an avocation. More like a hobby. Yeah. And then I got to a point where I reached my early 60s and I said, what am I waiting for? OK, I mean, if I don’t do it now, when am I ever going to do it?

That’s right.

And I just said, OK, now is the time. And I did everything. I jumped into the deep end of the pool, so to speak. And the nice thing is that it’s all worked out really well in just five years. I’ve got nine albums, including a Billboard number one. I’ve got over four million video views. I’ve got over a million Spotify streams. I’ve got over fifty thousand Facebook fans. I’ve played concerts and festivals and a lot of different places around the world. And I’ve even opened for stars like Edgar Winter and Blues Traveler and a guy named Boney James. So it’s been a terrific experience so far. And I felt, among other things, that maybe I could help other people realize their dream because we all have dreams, or at least we all started out with dreams.

Absolutely. Well, I appreciate that intention to be able to do that. But so we’ll talk about that in a little bit. But first, I want to ask you. So how were you actually let me ask you this. What were were there any challenges that you ran into along the way and being able to achieve success? And by the way, congratulations. I mean, billboard number one. I mean an opening for I’ve heard of Blues Traveler. I confess I haven’t heard but that I have heard of that. So what did you run into any challenges along the way?

I don’t think your podcast is going to last long enough for me to list. Just anyone that thinks that life is a straight path is just incorrect. It’s one step forward. It’s two steps back. It’s three steps sideways. I’ve had some health issues along the way. Also, 20 years ago, almost to the day I had an accident on my bicycle, I got hit by a car, wound up breaking my neck. And that was kind of motivation, no one to think about. What do I want to do with the rest of the time that somebody upstairs has given me? So it’s things like that that motivated me finally. But it’s never a straight path.

Yeah, absolutely. So what would you say has been the secret? Or maybe maybe there were even many secrets to success? I mean, what what actually enabled you to be able to achieve this?

Well, I wish I could I wish I could do with the answer to that. But look, I think that everything in life in a in a in a certain sense comes down to having a plan and action plan. I’m very big on that. I think if you start off saying, I want to do something, whatever it might be, write a book, get a new job, go somewhere, become something else, you kind of have to say, OK, how am I going to do it? Right. And that’s exactly what I did. I said, OK, I want to do music full time. I didn’t have a specific goal other than to be on The Ed Sullivan Show, and I’m a little late for that. So I started off and I said, OK, what do I what are the baby steps that I want to take? And among other things, I said I needed to restructure my band. I’m not a solo artist. I play within the context of a band. And one of the things I decided to do was surround myself with. Young, talented musicians, because I wanted to use that vitality, that exuberance that they could give to the whole thing, so people didn’t say, who’s that old guy up on the stage? What’s he doing? So we’ve got a very young feel, a very young sound. And that was important because, let’s face it, the music business is a young person’s game. Yeah, I don’t know any other crazy person like me that started out when they were kind of at the other end of the spectrum saying that this is what I wanted to do. So it’s it’s having a plan, in my opinion, that is the focal point of how how does one get from from where you are to where you might want to be something like.

Well, that that makes sense because you really do have to have an idea of where you’re going to go. Otherwise you’re never going to get there. You’re going to be wandering in the woods somewhere. So it’s good that you have that idea. When was there any particular moment when you realized that, hey, I think I think I finally got it. I think I think this is I think I’ve actually I’ve. Well, I don’t know what made it, but you have to realize that it’s like all those baby steps have started to come to fruition and they’ve they’ve been able to propel you to where you wanted to go.

I really did have one of those moments, OK? It was in twenty eighteen and we were playing our first festivals overseas and we got invited to play at a festival in Serbia and called in this little jazz festival in in Serbia. And here we are on the stage. This twenty thousand people out in the audience. They don’t know us at all. They don’t most of them don’t speak English, but they loved everything that we did. And we just got this wonderful standing ovation and people lined up afterwards to get our autograph and the like. And that was my aha moment.

That’s awesome. Yeah, that’s I can imagine that that was a tremendous feeling to be able to have that. Now you mentioned a little bit at the beginning that you are now looking at being able to help others to achieve their dreams. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Well, look, the fact that I was able to do what I did is nice. It’s interesting. But I think where I can really be useful is to kind of point the way for others. I actually came up with the acronym DREAM to try and describe what I had in mind. The D of is obviously you have to have a dream and everybody has a dream. Of course, most of us start off with a dream when we’re teenagers. Very few people say my dream is to become an accountant. Bigger dreams than that, whether it’s to become a doctor, an astronaut, a baseball player, a musician. The second thing they are, in my view, it has to be a realistic dream depending upon what stage of life you’re at. I mean, if I decided that I wanted to be a baseball player in my 60s, a professional baseball player, that was going to work out too well, he is the execute part of the of the dream, which is what I was talking about before. I think you have to have an action plan and a is what we were also talking about. It’s just there’s no plan that goes exactly the way you want it to. You’ve got to be willing to say, OK, where do I want to make adjustments? Not the boxer. Mike Tyson had a quote that I always love where he said everybody’s got a plan in boxing until they get hit in the face

With

A true and true saying. So you got to be able to adjust. And M for me is how do I measure my success? Because every dream is going to have different indicia of when you’re successful. And that goes along with, well, how long do I give it? What if I’m not successful? What if I’m not on the right track? Am I going to spend the rest of my life chasing this or am I going to be able to say, OK, I took my shot, which to me is the most important thing of all. I think you don’t ever want to look back at any point in your life and say, I never even tried. Yeah, OK, if you try alive to succeed or maybe you won’t succeed, but at least you will have tried. And the satisfaction in that makes a huge difference. So you have to measure what is it that will make a success for you depending upon what your dream is.

Absolutely. And I do like what you you said that you do have to adjust because if anything, that twenty twenty taught us was that a lot of people had to adjust and and just in their normal even businesses and having to learn different ways of being able to serve people and of course entrepreneurs that are a lot of those individuals. Listen to the podcast and watch this. I watch us on YouTube. You have had to pivot and find different ways of being able to serve people, find different ways to be able to connect with one another. That’s why you got to be so popular. Everybody was jumping on Zoom. It’s important to be able to do that. So listen, let me actually ask you about this past year. So how were you able to or were you did you need to pivot at all or or were you able to continue on with that with. What you’re doing

Now, the whole year was you’re 100 percent right, and in addition to that, what I think happened in two thousand and twenty is that because of the pandemic, people focused much more on their mortality. And you don’t have to be older in order to focus on that because so many younger people were being affected by this pandemic as well. So I think that that was kind of that kind of flow through the whole year. For musicians, this year was a disaster, OK, because we couldn’t play live anymore. We had festival appearances. We had a European tour, all of which were canceled. And then the question becomes, what do you do in lieu of that? And what I did two things. Number one, we we fortunately had just released an album. We’re just finished an album almost a week before the pandemic hit. I mean, it was crazy timing just happened to finish it. We couldn’t play in support of it anywhere. But what I said we could do is we could make videos. So we put out four videos of four of the songs on the album, and it was a lot of fun. Two of them were kind of Zoome type videos with everybody in the room, everyone’s playing and singing and all of that stuff. And a couple of them were much more creative, which we did on this album. I like to do covers of iconic songs from the 60s, and I’ve done that for a Jimi Hendrix song, a cream song or King song. This time around I decided to take a Beatles song and I have a video guy that works with us and he put together kind of our version of Yellow Submarine

With

A with video is very, very cool. Anyway, we did four videos and that was nice. And then what I always do, no matter what is happening, is I write because I’m the composer for the band. So I started writing all of this music and it was around June. And I’m saying, OK, things are not going to get any better. What am I going to do at this point? Right. Well, let me let me start to record this stuff. But there was a slight problem. I didn’t have a home studio or anything like that. So the question became, well, what do I do? Right. I literally started to record this

On your phone and I love it.

I started to record am I on my phone? And I emailed what I came up with to my engineer. And somehow or other, he made it into stuff that you could actually listen to. And then I started to email the pieces to the different musicians and we came back and we assembled everything. And guess what? At the end of the day, I came up with a new album.

I’m going to say, yeah, it’s

My first solo album. This this is it.

Oh, very good.

Call it Summer of Love. Twenty twenty. And people have asked me, well, why did you call it Summer of Love? And I said, because in my mind, particularly at that time, I said, the only thing that’s going to really get us through this pandemic, this love is the strongest emotion that we have. The songs on the album are all about either the pandemic and its effects on me more. It’s about the hopefulness that comes out of out of love. And I’m pleased to say that the album has got incredible pre release reviews and it’s about to come out on the twenty ninth of this month. So I’m very excited about that. So that’s what I did during my summer vacation.

I did so well. And for those of you who might be watching this on the replay in January, twenty ninth actually. So when I’m sorry about when, where, where can people get get that and where will they be able to find the album.

The best way to pick up our music is to go to our store. It’s called the store dot com. As for Project Grandslam, they can also go to our website, which is Project Grand Slam dot com. We’re on all the social media sites that you have to be on. So Spotify, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and all of that stuff. But I like sending people to our store because it’s kind of homey and it’s kind of like walking into a retail establishment that’s all about us. Very good for you or for your viewers. Yes. They go to the store. I’m going to give away a gift. This is the album I was talking about that was finished just before the pandemic. And it’s called E! And I’m going to give everybody that goes to the store a free copy of free digital copy of this album. All they need to do is click on it and then enter the word dream in the code when they leave the store. Wonderful audience.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much. That’s very generous. And I’m going to check it out. I want to get myself so I can hear. That’s beautiful. So what plans do you have for twenty, twenty one now for starting this year as well, especially since we’re still unfortunately dealing with our pandemic. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I’m in the process of writing a next album and probably it’s going to work the same way that I did the album that I just described. So that’s just something I do all the time and even thinking of starting my own podcast. What do you think about that?

I think it’s a good idea. Why not? So what would be the subject matter is that I have a sneaky. Well, I may know, but

I think the most important thing I could do is, is kind of that dream idea that I could orient people towards realizing and succeeding at their dream. And at the same time, I can kind of introduce them more to the kind of stuff that I do the music and see whether that combination might resonate.

What do you think? I think it would be a good idea. I like it. And I would listen as it is. It’s a great combination. And you know what is important about it and I want people to hear this is that you’re focusing in on what you’re passionate about. And I think that’s really important. And you’re passionate about helping people. You’re passionate about helping them find their dreams, your passion about music. And when you’re passionate about something, then it’s going to be a lot easier for you to do a podcast. No one believe me, because I know the first time around when I did a podcast about four years ago, I lost my passion for it. And so I quit. And so this time around, I, I came to a better place, actually, number one. And I really I really do enjoy what I’m doing. I love being able to talk to interesting people like yourself and having them share their wisdom with my audience. And so this is my favorite part of the day when I get to record a podcast.

So cool. Well, I’m going to put you on the spot then. Will you be a guest on my podcast? If I start one,

I would be delighted to do so. Absolutely terrific. And it’s interesting is that last year I actually wrote a song too, which was like the first time since I was about seven last time I wrote a song. So something in the air.

You think you release it or you just did it for yourself?

I just did it myself. I, I don’t have any kind of studio either. I just actually in a cappella on this podcast. So if you go to break down to break through that episode, you will hear it because that’s all well as well.

Very cool.

Yeah, very cool. So let’s see what else is what else do you what are some of your other passions? What else do you like to do when you when you’re not making music to make music?

Well, I have two other passions. One is my grandchildren. I’ve got four grandkids. In fact, one of them had his third birthday today. So we got to sing Happy Birthday to Him via Zoom, which is just what you can do these days. And the other thing that I really love to do is I’m pretty active in outside of sports and tennis in particular. I’ve played tennis for a long, long time. I’ve got a lot of friends within that grouping. And so I just enjoy doing that as well.

Very good.

I used to like to travel when you could travel.

Yeah, you and me both. I’m looking forward to doing that again. Exactly. Possibly. Maybe. Let’s say prayer by the end of this show this year would be lovely, especially since I’ve got a nephew who’s going to try again this year to get married. So I’m hoping hoping will be able to attend that wedding.

So that would be great with it.

Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you think would be important for someone to hear out there who is maybe has had an idea of something they wanted to do, but maybe they for whatever reason, they haven’t pursued it?

So I think we tend to come up with reasons and excuses why we don’t do things. And it’s always, well, it’s too hard. I don’t have the time. I’ve got so many other things going on, which is why I like to focus on baby steps. You don’t have to make a gigantic leap, give everything kind of like I did. But it was it was calculated at that point. I knew what I had to do. I had to jump in the pool, as I said. But that’s not the way that life typically works. And again, we talk about dreams. Everyone’s got different sized dreams. Dreams can come in all different types and stripes. They could be as simple as, gee, I haven’t read a book in a long time and I’d love to join a book club. I’d like to I always wanted to open up a business, OK, a store retail store to sell this or that. I wanted to start a podcast. There’s a million different kinds of dreams, and that’s why I say, OK, think about it. What’s really, as you said, what’s your passion? OK, you can’t really have a dream that doesn’t have passion that goes along with it.

That’s kind of like the essence of a dream. It’s your passion. All right, now you’ve got an idea. Is it realistic? Can I do something? What do I want to do? How do I want to go about it? For the most part, all of these things are doable, OK? It may seem like climbing Mount Everest, but it doesn’t have to be that way, particularly if you think in terms of taking those baby steps. OK, let me get to first base and let me hear from first base to second base. I don’t have to hit a homerun every time I get up to the plate, so to speak. That’s kind of the way that I approach my life. And I think that the more that people say, OK, I don’t have to just completely let me take a baby step, let me put my toe in the water, let me see how this feels. Let me take that first step. If I want to be a writer, let me write that first chapter. I don’t have to write the whole book.

Yeah, absolutely.

But the nice thing is, when you do any of that, even if you don’t complete it, you feel good. Hmm.

Yeah, that’s that’s so true. And because especially I mean, one of the analogies I had when I in my forties, I decided I was going to do a marathon and I had not run. In fact, I didn’t I didn’t run in high school or anything like that. I danced. I did ballet and jazz and stuff. But, um, but I joined a program to be able to learn how to do it because I wasn’t going to just be able to pick up on a pair of tennis shoes on and go run twenty six point two miles. The next day is going to happen. So you have to be able to do take those baby steps, as you said, and take actions a little bit at a time. And and I also believe that as you do that the universe conspires in your favor and they’ll and they’ll bring people along to help you, maybe even mentors. Which actually brings me to a good question. Did you have, you know, going into deciding it’s one thing to decide to become a rock and roll star, but it’s another to actually then really be able to make that actually really happen other than you need you need talent, number one. And as you say, you got band members together. But did you have did you have, like a mentor or anybody who could give you some guidance on how to really pursue a career in music?

At this stage, the answer is no. But when I was younger, I did have certain mentors that I looked to and that helped to guide me in, particularly in music. So I think that that’s helpful. And one of the things that I hope to do is to help people. I don’t know if I want to be a mentor because that takes on a big obligation. But what I like to do is to be able to have people get in touch with me if they wish. And I’ll talk to them. You know, I’ll talk for 15 or 30 minutes and you tell me what your ideas are. How are you thinking about going forward here? Maybe I can come up with some suggestions based upon my own experience as to what would be a good path to go on. That’s where I think I can be helpful.

Well, awesome. Well, if someone wants to be able to take you up on that and contact you, what is the best way for someone to do that, to get in touch?

They can either go on to the website that has mentioned Project Grand Slam dotcom or just send me an email. Robert, at Project Grand Slam dot com and I’ll be happy to answer it.

All right. Well, awesome. I will be sure to have all that information in the show notes and also to make sure that people take advantage of your kind and generous offer to get the free copy of your album, because I think that will be wonderful, because we you know, music is a is a wonderful thing. And I think it’s a wonderful you know, when you when you’re feeling down to be able to put some music on, it can lift your spirits up. So unless you’re unless you’ve got really heavy metal stuff, it’s pretty depressing. I don’t know. I’m just assuming it’s going to be hopefully something that I

Think is feeling OK. Good. Uplifting and healing.

Oh, good. All right. Awesome. Well, I appreciate that. And I appreciate being able to spend some time and talk with you today.

It’s been great. Thank you so much for having me on.

I appreciate it. And I appreciate all of you out there listening and watching and all. I meant to do this. I will next time I want to start doing shout outs because we had some awesome reviews on iTunes and I want to be able to highlight those individuals who’ve been kind enough to leave me some good comments. I promise I’ll tell you that next time I’ll be prepared. But I just know that I do appreciate you even even if I’m not naming you by name. So I appreciate you. And until next time, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully loved deeply and engage authentically.

Did you know that a majority of entrepreneurs tend to discount the importance of their work and a good number feel their success is simply due to luck? I know from personal experience that self-doubt can keep you from having the kind of life and business you desire. That’s why I’ve created a free guide called Uniquely You How to Move from Self-doubt to Self-love in four simple steps to claim your free guide. Go to live, love, engage that gift. That’s Live Love. Engage DOT Guide F.T..