We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Bharat Bhargava a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Bharat, thank you so much for joining us today. Let’s jump right into something we’re really interested in hearing about from you – being the only one in the room. So many of us find ourselves as the only woman in the room, the only immigrant or the only artist in the room, etc. Can you talk to us about how you have learned to be effective and successful in situations where you are the only one in the room like you?
To be a trailblazer is tough, you don’t have a blueprint to follow or have someone who looks like you to base your successes off of. You are basically going into something blind and just having to figure it out. It’s no easy task to be successful when you have a few to no one to support you on your journey, but I can contribute most of my successes to few things: My purpose, my community, and my mentors/teachers.
My purpose is the fuel that keeps me going and why I feel like I was created. My community is there to both make sure my vision doesn’t get clouded, as well as catching me when I stumble and can’t get back up. Finally, my mentors and teachers are there to make sure I am well equipped to continue my journey. I tried moving forward without all three, and it caused me to burnout and lose my path. I lost more time trying to do life fast, rather than doing it correctly. I had a friend/mentor tell me: Time is the most valuable resource ever, use it wisely.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a full-time musician in Denver, I have my own projects and I play around with whoever hires me. I have a jazz hip-hop band named, +Ultra (Plus Ultra) and have started to release music with people we have collaborated with throughout Denver (Kid Astronaut, Dandu, Tesoro, Dead Eye Dojo, Ghost Tapes, etc). We also are honored to play again at the Underground Music Showcase at the end of July.
I think the best parts of being in music are that you have an ability to help people that no other profession can do. I had a teacher tell me once that as you go through life you will start to collect dust. Your pace will start to slow down until you stop and can’t move forward because you are over-encumbered. Music has this power to dust off whatever you collected on your journey, and gets you ready to take on the world when you leave. To be a small part of helping people to continue on their journey, is the highest honor and most fulfilling reward I can receive.
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?
I kind of already talked about it earlier, so I will give you guys the mistake that I made that have detrimentally impacted my journey: Bad time management.
Having bad time management feeds into having a no self discipline, as well as (at least for me) bad work life balance.
My time management was so poor that I lost a bunch opportunities as a musician and my reputation started getting impacted. As a musician your reputation is EVERYTHING. I have a problem where I think I can do everything and will overbook myself to the point that I won’t be able to do everything to the best of my abilities. I would get overwhelmed which would cause me to procrastinate, which would cause me to perform poorly and then hurt my reputation. So for me to save my reputation, I would have to work harder and then play more gigs and the cycle continues. I believed my talent could save me from the work I had to do, when in reality, my talent can only get me so far.
What I do now is put myself on a routine and time block how much it will take for me to do something into my calendar. I write my to do list and prioritize what needs to get done first and what can wait for last. This has helped me take more control of the day and feel like I am moving forward. I also understand that some days life is going to happen and I won’t be able to do everything, So I make sure I am flexible enough to enjoy my day, yet still make sure I don’t put off what I need to get done.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
I strive to be a “T-person”, which means I have basic knowledge in a bunch of different things as it relates to my field but I have a deep knowledge in one specific area. I think Elon Musk is a person who is like this. He has knowledge in one specific area, but if he doesn’t know something he would ask his employees to teach him what they are experts in. If you want to be an entrepreneur you will need to do a bunch of different things until you have the resources to out-source it to someone else, so to have enough knowledge that you can do it yourself is wiser than being a “one trick pony”.
To give an example in my field. I can play the piano pretty well, but to be successful, I need to be able to market myself, able to understand how royalties work, how to teach music to someone, how to stylistically play the music with mastery, etc. There is a bunch of stuff I need to be able to do, so if I don’t diversify my skills to a basic/intermediate level, my income can’t diversify.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_unofficial_bharat/
- Other: +Ultra Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plusultraamusic/
Image Credits
Charla Harvey Jordan Altergott Mark Robertson Kalen Jesse
