My class has started and I am thrilled to have another wonderful group of budding music entrepreneurs! This year, I have framed my entrepreneurship course under the umbrella of change: How can you change over the course of this semester and learn the mindset, skills and tools to enable you to create your career success? One important element of success …
The Growth Mindset of Arts Entrepreneurs: An Essential Element in Creating Success
With summer behind us and everyone back in the saddle at work or at school, this is a great opportunity to start off the new year with a new mindset. Whether I am teaching conservatory music students, working with arts leaders or coaching individual clients, my project is the same: how can I help you to create authentic success and …
Managing Audition Rejection: How Music Entrepreneurs Keep Going
This is the season when music students are hearing about the results of their auditions: from graduate schools, fellowships and summer programs, as well as professional orchestra and other ensemble auditions. With so much competition for a limited number of spots, rejection is a common phenomenon. In two of my recent coaching groups at the Yale School of Music, we went …
Entrepreneurial Projects: How Today’s Musicians Are Expanding the Horizons of Classical Music
Each semester, the students in my class at Yale learn how to apply their new entrepreneurial skills in a semester project that is subject to two rules: 1. Do something you never done before; and 2. Go outside your comfort zone. The goal is for students to feel free to experiment, focusing on the learning experience and not on achieving …
“Be good” vs. “Get Better”: Optimizing the Experience of Performing
I have just returned from my summer vacation in California wine country where I learned some valuable lessons about optimal goal setting while improving my piano skills!
Where did all this happen?
At pianoSonoma, a festival that brings together serious adult piano students to study with Juilliard faculty members Michael Shinn and Jessica Chow Shinn, and collaborate and perform chamber music with Young Artists ( current students at or recent graduates of Juilliard), as well attend concerts by the faculty and the Young Artists. It is a thrilling week where I can indulge in my passion for learning and playing the piano and share the joy of making music with superbly talented musicians.
On the plane ride out to California, I had a chance to catch up on my Kindle backlog and settled into a short book called “9 Things Successful People Do Differently” by psychologist and goal-setting expert Heidi Grant Halvorson. Now success is what I teach, coach on and advocate so I was interested in her 9 points. And the one that resonated most powerfully with me was point #5:
Focus On Getting Better, Rather Than Being Good
What does she mean?