My coaching groups at Yale are going strong! Students appreciate having a confidential forum where they can share successes and challenges with a trusted group of peers and learn new strategies for creating sustainable careers. With the semester winding down in a few weeks, our students, especially those who are graduating, are finding it a challenge to keep their spirits up …
Emotional Intelligence for Music Entrepreneurs: Master Your Moods for Better Collaboration
If you were a fly on the wall in my Innovation and Collaboration class last semester at the Yale School of Music (as well as in my class coaching group this semester), you would hear students talking about being in the “red” or the “yellow” zone. What they are referring to is the Mood Meter, an app developed by the …
Know Your People: How Music Entrepreneurs Can Expand the Audience for Classical Music
Audience engagement is all the rage these days as the classical music field grapples with how to stay relevant in today’s culture. Many of us are asking the question of what do today’s audiences REALLY want. In my class at Yale last semester, we took up this question as part of our collaborative projects. The charge to my students was …
How Music Entrepreneurs Survive Tax Season: 6 Deductions to Help Minimize Your Taxes
This week, I am delighted to share a guest blog post to help your financial management from Carolyn Mescher, an Entertainment CPA and musician from Nashville, TN who specializes in music accounting and taxes. As an artist and songwriter herself, Carolyn is intimately familiar with both the business and creative side of the music industry. Carolyn wrote this article after …
Collaboration for Music Entrepreneurs: How to Leverage the Four Communication Styles for Optimal Results
One of the tenets of successful collaboration is that there are no leaders. Instead, each member of the collaborative group is an equal partner in the outcome and takes ownership of a part of the project. Members step up as needed and then recede when another role is required. Think of Balanchine choreography where dancers come forward when it is their …
Creative Problem Solving for Music Entrepreneurs: The Two Mindsets of Creativity
How can a group of 20-something professional musician graduate students generate breakthrough solutions to the problems facing classical music today in order to insure the health and the vitality of the field? This was the focus of my new class last semester at the Yale School of Music entitled Collaboration, Entrepreneurship and Innovation. My goal was to teach creative problem …
How To Jumpstart Your Career Satisfaction: Take the Career Assessment
Happy New Year! I hope that you enjoyed the holiday season and are looking forward to great things in the coming year! I am not big on New Year’s resolutions since it’s too easy to set yourself up for failure by reaching for unrealistic goals. Instead, I encourage people to reflect on the important areas of their lives and assess …
Sō Percussion’s Model of Success: The Collaborative Entrepreneurial Ensemble
One of the highlights of my class at Yale is when I invite alumni from the School of Music to speak to the students about their experience. Since my class this semester is focused on collaboration, I was thrilled to invite Jason Treuting and Eric Beach, two of the four members of the percussion ensemble Sō Percussion. Jason Treuting is the longest standing …
Know Your Purpose and Share Your Vision: How Music Entrepreneurs Find Their Collaborators
Classical music faces a lot of challenges today and my goal in teaching and working with musicians is to help them find their place in the world of music and contribute something valuable and innovative. This fall, I began teaching a new class at Yale, entitled “Collaboration, Entrepreneurship and Innovation”. The premise of the course is that today’s artists need …
So Percussion’s Vision and Mission Statements: How Successful Music Entrepreneurs Communicate Their Purpose and Value
Arts entrepreneurship is about creating value to society through innovative ideas, fueled by a vision for how to make the world a better place, as well as a mission of how to make that vision a reality. That’s why successful arts entrepreneurs know their vision and their mission. People are often confused about what constitute a vision and a mission. …