The main motto is to always offer help to others without expecting anything in return. This is a lot of important work, no question. You should spend 10-15% of your total time on this in the 1st year, and about 10% from the 2nd year on. Traditional lobbying is much less important in the first few years than you might think. After a while, you will realize what a gift it is to help other people & that they want to and will help you, as long as you follow your motto honestly. Cultivate your contacts, they are the real gold in your balance sheet. Finances are important, but money is a fictitious metric; contacts are a real, qualitatively valuable metric with which you can build your first teams, put your networks to work and pursue your goals.

In my experience building a network in any field involves similar activities: identifying who you'd love to connect with, adding value to them, and being thirsty to learn. As an artist I recognized I could not do everything alone. I built a team. We came up with a communication system for interns who wanted to learn about the music industry. We embraced their strengths and gave them projects to stretch in areas they wanted to learn about and to work as a team. They selected successful people in their field, likely to be approached by many. We helped them come up with ways to stand out form the crowd of people asking for help. Social Media to a great extent has removed the middle person. It has not removed the value of polite persistence.

The many conversations with people will help you understand the business and its key networks much better, because with your own network you will become a much more sought-after project partner. This will be an important part of the marketing strategy you build around this core. Rather than following a cookie-cutter approach, build on your existing strengths. If they are in social media, develop them and use them skillfully. If you prefer classic marketing activities, adapt them to your work and use them to market your work, which will automatically lead to acquisition.

Time management is 'the' most valuable skill, especially for a freelancer. You'll most likely have to make time for 5-6 things on any given day. For eg. - Rehearsals, performances, study, self-improvement, extra-classes etc., Utilizing every minute is extremely crucial. However, I am of the opinion that multitasking is a complete waste of time. You'll just divert your focus on many different things at once and won't complete any one of them. My advice would be to stick to a single task at a time and give it your full attention, if it's rehearsal time then focus only on rehearsals, if it's study time then focus only on study. You'll be surprised to see how much more you can accomplish by not multitasking.