From Creatives to Business Women

As a modern musician, it is difficult to navigate the murky waters of being a musician and being an entrepreneur. The roles become more complicated when working with colleagues that are also your friends and fellow artists. Somewhere in between, there is a process from performing music together to pinpointing what the vision of the group actually is. What goes further beyond the ink on the page and the artistic nature of phrasing and dynamics? Behind the romance are business plans, writing budgets, and waiting for e-mails. Not only did we have to discover our vision as a group, we had to recognize our individual strengths and weaknesses.

From our first decision to stay together as a group beyond chamber music class, we started making creative videos and showing our character past the music on the page. We wanted to showcase our personality without compromising our professional standards. Through each performance and workshop, we meet and discuss our strengths and weaknesses. We learned that the holidays are not the optimum time for concerts due to everyone’s busy schedule and expensive plane tickets. We learned that sometimes an idea may be amazing, but the execution is too much work for what it’s worth. We learned that it is difficult to speak in public settings without sounding like we are reading from a script. We learned that it is important to have a very clear idea of who we are and be amazing at that. We are musicians that perform in non-traditional concerts, and we want our audience to be involved and part of the music-making process.

In the past year, we have focused a lot more attention on the business aspect of our group. What is a fiscal sponsorship, and how is it different from a non-profit? What is the best way to crowdfund? How do successful groups have their websites? What is the best way to license and publish music? How do we write a marketing plan and who is our market anyway? How do we write grants? How do we build a successful social media presence? Who is best suited for important roles in our group? If we have different opinions, how do we come to a single conclusion? Are we using double space or single space after each sentence? There are some questions we have answered, some not, and an ever growing list of questions. The fun never ends, really.

It has been an incredible journey with these strong and intelligent ladies. There is never a shortage of values, compromise, sacrifices, and jokes to lighten the mood when life gets tough as a group and in our individual lives. We can’t promise each other the road isn’t rocky, but we can promise it will be interesting, and every step will leave us feeling like students over and over again.