TAG: music careers

Creative Careers Podcast for iCadenza: How to Leverage Happiness for Success

I am thrilled to be included in iCadenza’s most recent Creative Careers Podcast. In the Podcast, you will learn about my career path from law to career coaching and music entrepreneurship.  I also discuss my method of coaching wherby I help students and clients discover their values, strengths and passions and learn how to put the pieces together in order …

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 …

Live Your Values Part I: How Music Entrepreneurs Make Smart Career Choices

fingerprints

“Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same but you leave ’em over everything that you do.” Elvis Presley Values are your qualities of intrinsic worth and the principles that run your life. Core values help to define who you are and what is truly important to you. In the words of one musician: “Values will help you to create …

Case Studies of 4 Yale Music Entrepreneurs: Achieving The Impossible

As I sit in my warm, light-filled apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River, I am filled with enormous gratitude that I was spared the wrath of the hurricane, especially when I look across the river to New Jersey or downtown to Lower Manhattan where so much devastation took place. I couldn’t get to New …

Financial Management for Musicians Part I: How To Take Charge of Your Finances

Financial planning is an essential skill for musicians so for the past few weeks, my class has been focused on helping my students to learn the basics of financial management and create their personal financial plans. Once again my friend Jim Remis, partner in a boutique accounting firm and Chairman of the Board of the Hartford Symphony, visited our class and together we provided my students with the kind of information that they need in order to have a comfort level around their finances:  earning revenue creatively and from a variety of sources, budgeting, saving, avoiding debt and basic tax planning.

Here are some basic pointers in order to get started.

Classical Musicians in the 21st Century: How They are Faring and How They Can Make It

I recently wrote about how musicians today are living in a world of opportunity where the many changes that our culture has experienced in the last 50 years has given rise to new possibilities.

As we gear up for the new academic year, this is a great time to check in on how musicians are faring in this new paradigm and what they can do to create sustainable careers. The short answer is that jobs do exist for musicians, both in traditional and new arenas.  However, in order to create sustainable careers, today’s musicians are advised to take charge of their careers, master business and people skills and boldly adopt the entrepreneurial mindset in order to ride the wave of opportunity.

Let’s take a closer look.

The Great New World of Opportunity: Classical Music in the 21st Century

Last week, I had the privilege of speaking at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale School of Music about the state of classical music in the 21st century with a focus on the opportunities for today’s musicians to create successful careers.  Yes, my friends, we are living in a world full of possibilities and great opportunities for classical musicians! So let’s look at what the nay-sayers are saying and then view our world through the lens of opportunity.

Managing Multiple Passions: Achieving Creative Fulfillment and Pushing Through Fear

What do you do when you love so many things that you cannot decide what career direction to pursue?

As someone who transitioned from French literature to law to non-profit management to consulting to career coaching to teaching career entrepreneurship at the Yale School of Music and writing, speaking and coaching on career fulfillment, I was plagued by this very issue.  Indeed, over the course of my various career iterations, I went from utter frustration at thinking that I was never going to figure it out to embarking on a process of reflection and experimentation to learning the beauty of aligning one’s career with one’s passions, values and strengths and of honoring the twists and turns of the journey to creative fulfillment and career success. 

Yes, the process takes time and often leaves you wondering where you are going but once you connect the dots, there is nothing quite like it.  If you are someone with multiple passions and feel stuck in your tracks, here are some reflections on what might be holding you back and what you can do about it.