After 26 years in the music business, here's why I went back to school, and what I'm bringing back for you.
Show Notes
On Today's Episode of The Entrepreneurial Musician:
- The launch of The MBA Notebook, a new series sharing the ideas from Andrew's MBA that changed how he thinks about the music business
- A question Seth Godin asks about bad ideas, and the hidden cost of having too many good ones
- A conversation with Lance LaDuke about impact that shaped every decision since
- What it was like learning alongside a cohort of artists from 28 countries
- Why everything you do is a business decision, and the gap music school leaves wide open
- Why great art is simply the cost of entry
- What's coming in the series, plus a homework assignment to get you started
Links:
- The Musician's MBA, the new course from Hitz Academy
- Send me your homework: andrew@hitzacademy.com
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurial Musician. I'm your host, Andrew Hitz, and it is great to be back. I recently completed an intensive one-year online MBA through the Global Leaders Institute. I was part of a 70-person cohort that came from, I believe, 28 countries around the world, and that came from applicants from over 90 countries, which is hard for me to even wrap my brain around.
The level of my colleagues was nothing short of inspirational. It was an incredible experience, and I can't wait to share some of the things I've learned with you all. TEM has always been about sharing insights into the music business that none of us were ever taught in music school. I graduated with a performance degree from Northwestern University and then was co-owner of a globally touring brass quintet, Boston Brass, for 14 years.
Since then, I have founded a digital media company and launched Hitz Academy. In spite of all that experience, it turns out there was still a lot I was never taught and that I didn't pick up along the way. I also encountered a lot of things during this degree that I had learned the hard way, but getting this MBA put a lot of that information into easy-to-digest and easy-to-replicate systems.
I was thinking the other day that sharing things I learned during my degree would make for a great TEM series, and that is why I'm launching a series called The MBA Notebook. I'm not exactly sure how long this series will be just yet, but I'll be opening up my MBA notebook one page at a time and sharing the ideas that changed how I think about the music business, many of them from my rockstar colleagues from around the globe.
First, a little background into why I decided to pursue this MBA in the first place. I have never been short of ideas. In fact, I have done many TEM episodes over the years about how generating good ideas is a muscle that you have to exercise. Whenever someone asks Seth Godin how to get good ideas, he famously asks them if they have any bad ideas.
The answer is always no, because if you generate bad ideas, you will also generate good ideas. That's the way it works. The only way to not have any good ideas is to not generate any ideas at all. But this comes at a little bit of a cost. I came up with enough good ideas that I started a lot of them and then ended up with a lot of ideas that were good and that were well received, but they did not have a deep impact because I was spread too thin.
Not only was my attention spread too thin, but also the amount of time and money that I could put into any given idea. So the main reason that I decided to pursue this MBA was to try to reimagine Hitz Academy. That meant discontinuing some things and also accelerating others. I knew I was spread too thin across too many initiatives, but I lacked the systems and the clarity of thought to figure out how best to proceed.
I hoped that the MBA would bring me that clarity, and I'm really happy to report that it did. If I'm being honest, I've been running businesses on instinct and experience for over 20 years, and I wanted the frameworks behind it to take everything to the next level. This is exactly what it delivered for me.
Back in about 2019, I had one of the most impactful conversations I've ever had in my life. It was during a regular weekly call with my business partner, Lance LaDuke. He spoke eloquently about impact and talked about wanting to spend whatever time he had left focusing on things that were impactful for people who maybe didn't get the same head start that both he and I had in life.
From that day forward, we centered every decision we made at Pedal Note Media and The Brass Junkies through the lens of impact. Little did we know that Lance's runway was so short, because he died very tragically from a freak accident in December of 2023. That conversation with Lance was absolutely front of mind when I applied for this MBA and came up over and over again during the course of the degree.
It made the pursuit of this MBA deeply personal, which was helpful when things got really difficult.
I want to take just a second to talk a little bit about the other members of the cohort. This was not your typical MBA program filled with finance bros in their mid-20s. These were artists at the top of their fields from all over the world.
I got to learn from and alongside dancers, musicians, activists, designers, and visual artists, to name a few. I was blown away by these incredible people. The breadth of their lived experiences made the degree quite impactful. I was also knocked out by the faculty that I got to work with.
We learned from professors from Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, McGill, the London School of Economics. The list goes on and on. Some were from the arts and others were not, which made for an interesting mix. But all of the curriculum tied directly to building sustainable arts ventures.
I want to take a quick break here to tell you about a new course from Hitz Academy called The Musician's MBA. I just told you about the incredible people I got to learn from and alongside. The truth is, a full MBA takes a year or two of your life and a lot of money, and most musicians are never going to do that.
So I went to business school so you don't have to. The Musician's MBA takes the most useful ideas from my entire degree and translates them for musicians. Things like sunk cost, and why the time and money you've already spent on a project should never decide whether you keep going. The heroic leadership trap, and why doing everything yourself keeps your business small.
Activity-based costing, and how to find out which of your offerings is quietly losing money. And leverage points, and why the hardest-working musicians often push in the wrong place. On the show, I'll be sharing one idea at a time from my MBA notebook. The course is the whole map in one place, with the actions to take at every step.
If any of that sounds useful, head to musiciansmba.com today to learn more.
This degree confirmed for me that there had been a massive gap in my education. The business side of the arts had always been approached as an add-on, but this degree confirmed for me that absolutely everything you do is a business decision. What you do and don't do is a business decision. How you talk about it is a business decision.
Who you talk about it to is a business decision. This list goes on and on, but I think you get the point. Music schools are brilliant at teaching the craft, but frequently treat the business side of things as a separate part. The problem is that most musicians run a small business, whether they call it that or not.
Playing gigs, having a teaching studio, selling goods and services. And frequently, what separates the people that are good at it from the people who are great is not actually the art. It is the people who have the business skills and the systems in place to be able to provide the most value for the people who will in turn sustain that art as a business.
I know I've said this about a thousand times into this microphone, but I'm in no way discounting how absolutely vital the art is. The problem is that great art is simply the cost of entry. It alone can almost never be the sole differentiator. Sure, great art will stand out from mediocre art, and there are no business skills needed for that.
The problem is that because of technological advances, it has never been easier for people to make art, and that means that the market is absolutely flooded. And you better believe that someone with good art who is crushing the business side of things is almost always going to do better than someone with great art who is not.
And guess what music school tends to focus on almost entirely? Making great art. There's a huge gap there between what is taught and what is needed to succeed. I have experienced that firsthand over the last 26 years in the business, and now I'm equipped to teach it better than I ever have before, thanks to the frameworks and systems I learned in this MBA.
My plan for this series is as follows. One big idea per episode, put in a way that speaks directly to entrepreneurial musicians. No tech bro business school jargon without translating it into plain English that will resonate with musicians. And each episode will end with one small homework assignment, an action that you can take to move yourself closer to your musical dreams.
Because even a small action will move you forward so much more than just continuing to acquire knowledge. A few of the things that will be covered in the beginning of this series include:
- Opportunity cost, and why every gig you say yes to costs you something you can't see on the paycheck
- Customer discovery, and how to learn what people actually need instead of what they politely say they'd buy
- The eight wastes, and how to spot the time you're losing every day without realizing it
- Break-even, and the one number that tells you whether your next offer will make money or quietly lose it
- Positioning, and why sounding like every other musician is costing you work
- Ethics, and the warning signs that a smart business decision is about to become one you regret
And a lot more. That's just to name a few.
And here's your homework assignment for this first installment. Write down the one business skill you wish music school had taught you. And if you want extra credit, email it to me at andrew@hitzacademy.com. That email address is in the show notes. Next time, I'll show you how to figure out what your yes is really costing you.
It's called opportunity cost, and most musicians never calculate it. It took me an MBA to even learn it existed. Thanks for being along with me, and for your patience with the show being on hiatus for a long time while I was having my entire music career, plus having a family, plus pursuing an intensive MBA.
But I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your attention and the fact that you're listening to my voice right now. You are appreciated. And that is going to do it for another episode of The Entrepreneurial Musician.
