Meet Augie Bello

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Augie Bello. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Augie below.

Augie, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us today. We’re excited to dive into your story and your work, but first let’s start with a broader topic that might be stopping many of our readers from pursuing their dreams – haters, nay-sayers, etc. How have you managed to persist despite haters and nay-sayers that inevitably follow folks who are doing something unique, special or off the beaten path?

I’ve always had the mindset that if you tell me something isn’t possible, I will not only show you that it is possible, but I’ll show you a better version than you could have ever imagined. The person who will put you down for trying and pushing forward in your passions is never putting their passions forward. I find a lot of people harbor jealousy in the form of hate towards people who are successful in ways that they could never be. It’s always funny to me when someone will make a snarky comment about my playing/video/success, but then when I look at their page, they have seemingly never tried at all to do what I do. I spend my time on Instagram looking for inspiration so I can provide a new piece of content that will lift people around me, they spend their time on Instagram cosplaying as Simon Cowell in the early seasons of American Idol. Anyways for the most part I pity haters, they’ve got nothing going on except jealousy for the people who are making it happen.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Soon after starting college at The New School for Jazz, I realized that with music as a career, I needed to create my own opportunities and success. With this knowledge, I started to post videos of my music to Instagram in 2018. Since then, I have grown a following of over 800k fans. Through Instagram and TikTok, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and record with multiple artists including, Teddy Swims, Darren Criss, Casey Abrams, Andy Grammer, KYLE, Magic!, Shaggy, James Blunt and many others. In August of 2021, I got to tour with Teddy Swims opening for the Zac Brown Band. In September of 2021 I performed at Life is Beautiful Festival in Las Vegas and Music Midtown Festival in Atlanta with Teddy Swims. In addition, I’ve appeared as a guest on The Drew Barrymore Show and Good Morning America. In 2023 I released his debut EP “Augie” which has received over 1 million streams. My music video for the song “Thinkin’ of Us” features, MTV star, Nev Schulman.

For the past two years I have been conquering my biggest feat which is writing and recording my first album. I’ve just started rolling out the first singles and am excited to announce my full project will be coming out in Spring of 2025. This has been a long road and I’m truly so excited to show the world the art I’ve been making behind closed doors for so long.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The biggest advice I have is to ignore the people in the beginning of your career who doubt your capabilities. The moment you listen to the nay-sayers, the things they say become true. If I say you’ll never be anything and that discourages you from posting videos/writing music/following your dreams, you will never have pushed at it long enough. I remember at the start of my career I was still in college trying to make a name for myself on Instagram. Going into classes I was mocked by fellow classmates as “the Instagram guy” who at the time was posting 5 times a week with a little over 1k followers. That time was rough for me because I knew that something I believed in and was enjoying was leading to people making fun of me. I made sure to take their comments as insecurity on their end and continued pushing forward. Here’s what I found… the same people who made fun of me for my persistence on Instagram in the beginning are now the people telling me “it’s so great it is to see you killing it man.” Remember this is the person who if I listened to them in the first place I would never be where I am. Stay resilient and never let anyone tell you what your capabilities are.

If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?

I find the self employed musical artist/content creator field to be tough at times. While today I might be filled with responsibilities such as recording a video, recording a song, answering emails, completing a brand deal, booking gigs, or performing at gigs, tomorrow I have to find the motivation to continue creating so that these opportunities do come in. I always say when a self employed person is unhappy they suddenly become unemployed. Here’s what I mean. If each morning I need to find the motivation to get up and create meaningful art, but maybe for the past couple of weeks what I’ve been creating or putting out hasn’t received the response I have grown used to, it becomes hard to justify continuing to go down that road. I want to be honest and say there have been plenty of times where I have been horribly unproductive because I really don’t know the direction I want to go in for that time, but I truly have found that as long as I am creating everyday I can get through those tough spots. The biggest thing that has helped me over the years, is really simple. Truly, creating a task list of things I want to accomplish for the next day has made me wake up with purpose and motivation to complete those goals. So yes while the career has ups and downs on the day to day, I still do my best to find the motivation to carry on through the lows.

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Image Credits

Images by Bryce Hall, JAR, Ari Elgharsi

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