Level One: you do it for love, you do it for fun, you do it for friends, family and community. No expectations of making it big. Maybe you get invited to perform somewhere because of your skill and love of the craft. Maybe some lucrative opportunity emerges, but this is not the goal, merely a side effect.
Level Three: The big time. Private jets, mansions, groupies, free drugs, widespread recognition, adulation, and infamy.
Level Two: the vast purgatory between Level One and Level Three. The grind of trying to "make it." Self-promotion in a saturated or disinterested market; sleeping in the tour van playing to empty rooms on a Tuesday night; the endless parade of bookers, agents and promoters all promising one thing or another and disappearing when dry reality evaporates the wet dream. Sisyphean strivers, performing the same futile acts week after week, month after month; Tantalean hustlers dangling one ephemeral opportunity after another before hapless hungry mouths.
If you cannot jump directly from Level One to Level Three, Stay at Level One.
[0] https://www.sfweekly.com/music/the-phantom-surfers-pen-rock-...