TEM50: Monetizing a cocktail party (TEM Short)

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TEM50: Monetizing a cocktail party (TEM Short)

This TEM Short features thoughts about my conversation with Ariel Hyatt, founder of Cyber PR and social media rockstar, from Episode 49.

Links:

Want to help "keep the lights on" and make future episodes of TEM possible? Please visit our Patreon page to see how you can help:

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Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

TEM49: Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR

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TEM49: Ariel Hyatt of Cyber PR

Ariel Hyatt is the founder of Cyber PR. She is an entrepreneur, author and speaker who focuses on the intersection of social media, PR and online marketing.

The day I dreamed up TEM, Ariel was on my immediate short list for guests I had to interview for the podcast. Listen and you'll hear why.

Topics Covered:

  • An example of a perfect email pitching someone

  • The value of networking through social media

  • Why the days of the formal press release are over

  • Why you always need to worry about what the other person is getting out of any interaction

  • The new "paradigm of millions"

  • The pitfall of dehumanizing your social media engagements

  • How many social media channels you should be on and how to choose which ones

  • The pitfalls on social media for artists in particular

  • The problem with viewing social media through the lens of ROI

  • How Ariel has had to shift her business model over the years and the parallels with today's musician

  • Why Facebook is the dominant platform and why it works so well as a marketing tool

  • How Facebook is now "pay to play" and the minimum amount you should be paying each month on Facebook to get noticed

  • Why you need a Facebook page and not just a personal profile

  • Her latest completely free resource for artists, Social Media House

  • What Cyber PR offers for musicians and entrepreneurs

Links:

Favorite Quote:

  • "The thing that will hurt you the most in your quest to stand out is not caring about other people...there is nothing in it for them if you pay no attention to them but you expect the attention be paid to you."

  • Bonus Quote: "When was the last time you went to a cocktail party and were pissed off that you didn't make money. That's how you have to think of social, like a big cocktail party."

TEM48: Can and should continue (TEM Short)

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TEM48: Can and should continue (TEM Short)

This TEM Short features thoughts about my conversation with Mike Robinson, VP of Marketing for KHS America, in Episode 47.

Links:

Want to help "keep the lights on" and make future episodes of TEM possible? Please visit our Patreon page to see how you can help:

https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

TEM47: Mike Robinson, VP of Marketing for KHS America

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TEM47: Mike Robinson, VP of Marketing for KHS America

Mike Robinson is the VP of Marketing for KHS America, the parent company behind Jupiter Band Instruments, XO Professional Brass, Mapex Drums, Hohner Harmonicas and many other brands. I have had the privilege of getting to know Mike since he came on board with the company a little over five years ago.

It was great to get to sit down with someone like Mike who is at the absolute top of their field. He helped shed some light on exactly what branding is and the many different aspects of marketing. This interview was intentionally light on the mechanics of marketing (which Mike pointed out are constantly changing and widely available around the internet) and focused on a more philosophical level which I found both fascinating and really, really helpful.

He had my brain churning (and it still is!)

Topics Covered:

  • How a family connection and a lifelong love of playing music eventually led him into music products as a profession

  • How his first job in the business was on the production line making drum heads along with 35 Dominican women and how his knowledge of drums and hard work led him within six months to a job as the research and development coordinator

  • Why reasearch and development/product development is a part of marketing

  • Why it takes more than just a great product to market it well

  • The value of taking a subject you're not too familiar with and over time through experience and sometimes tough love developing some level of mastery of the subject

  • How the tough lessons never stop during your career and the importance of embracing that

  • How rolling with the punches as a parent is similar to being an entrepreneur

  • That branding done well is a company or person communicating who they are not just what they sell

  • How he went about rebranding Jupiter Band Instruments

  • How the number of musicians in the United States has plateaued and the effect that has had on the music industry

  • The detailed research Jupiter has done to learn more about their different customer bases in an effort to reach them more effectively

  • Why your personal brand is heavily influenced by your behavior

  • How you never know who you are talking to (and how much influence they may have in your field)

  • The potential problem with reading books on marketing mechanics

  • The importance of examining the bigger questions before digging into marketing mechanics

Links:

Books:

Favorite Quote:

  • "It's those challenges and tough lessons that make you who you are. The illusion that at some point you'll acheive a level of life where those tough lessons stop is really just that, it's an illusion. For anyone who is even remotely self-aware, those lessons can and should continue."

Want to help "keep the lights on" and make future episodes of TEM possible? Please visit our Patreon page to see how you can help: 

https://www.patreon.com/tempodcast

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

TEM46: What exactly is the problem? (TEM Short)

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TEM46: What exactly is the problem? (TEM Short)

In episode 45, Drew McManus of Adaptistration and Arts Hacker shared many nuggets of wisdom including the questions he asks to help identify the crux of a problem.

Links:

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

Article: Entrepreneurship and the Artist-Revolutionary by Mark Rabideau

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Below is a link to a must-read article by Mark Rabideau, Director of the 21st-Century Musician Initiative. Here is a money quote from the article:

"Musicians, by design, are built to be creative agents of change, yet, somehow we have fallen victim to a narrowly defined set of professional standards focused on memorizing and mastering set repertoire and a list of career options that hasn’t expanded much since the Middle Ages, particularly if you are a classical musician. Not only does this not align with the opportunities that exist in today’s marketplace, it does not align with what most people, especially today’s under-30 generation, want out of a career – a life of means, the ability to provide for those whom they love most, a life of meaning, doing good work and making an impact within their community and a chance to give back. Rather than fearing the trends of shrinking traditional career paths, we must embrace a willingness to invent our own most promising futures and craft an excitedly uncertain future for our music."

If that doesn't get you fired up I'm not sure what you're doing reading this blog. The entire article is a must read.

Entrepreneurship and The Artist-Revolutionary by Mark Rabideau

RIP To Prince, a brilliant artist and entrepreneur

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I posted this on Facebook earlier today but thought it was appropriate to post it here as well:

Sad day as the world lost a true pioneer on so many fronts. Performer, composer, entrepreneur, artist and brilliant marketer, Prince was the real deal.

He wrote, sang, produced, arranged, composed & played all 27 instruments on his first album, "For You". AT THE AGE OF 19!

Before "Sign of the Times" came out, he ran a full page ad in the Minneapolis Star Tribune with just the lyrics to the title track. Nothing else. Brilliant.

I could easily do an entire TEM episode on Prince. He was a true genius as a musical entrepreneur.

And that's to say nothing of his writing (even songs made famous by other artists like "Nothing Compares To You"). His songs transcended genre and touched everyone. When Phish opened their 12/31/98 show at Madison Square Garden with "1999" the roar of the crowd after the "Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999" line momentarily drowned out the band. The screams were deafening. I get goosebumps on command when thinking about it close to 20 years ago.

And oh by the way his voice was phenomenal and he was one of greatest guitar players to ever live. Can you imagine doing all of those things that well? I can't.

Today is a very sad day for the world but I'm pretty sure he'd rather we all crank "Let's Go Crazy" than spend too long mourning his death so that's exactly what I'm doing. RIP, Prince. There will never be another.

TEM45: Drew McManus of Adaptistration and Arts Hacker

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TEM45: Drew McManus of Adaptistration and Arts Hacker

Drew McManus is one of the premier orchestral consultants in the country and the man behind many projects including Adaptistration and Arts Hacker. He started and sold his first arts-related business when he was in his mid-20's and has since moved on to form many successful organizations.

This was a truly delightful conversation. I love the way Drew thinks about the world and the arts. He is an incredibly thoughtful person and that particularly showed through in a few of his answers in this interview. He answered a handful of questions in a way that wasn't exactly what I was expecting and each time made me think deeper about the subject I had just asked him about. I can't chat with people enough who challenge my thinking along those lines.

It's no wonder he has launched so many successful businesses within the arts world!

Topics Covered:

  • The specific moment he learned the first great lie of academia

  • How he built his first arts-related business in his mid-20's that ended up being so successful that he sold it and it is still in operation today

  • What drove him to form a 501(c)3 at such an early age

  • The factors that led him to become an orchestral consultant (including a lack of people in the field at the time)

  • The importance of a musician having the skills necessary to be able to look at the fiscal health of an organization before auditioning or accepting a position

  • How he networked (and increased his consulting business exponentially) through content marketing years before that's what it was called

  • How his Adaptistration blog not only solved problems for people but also created a community

  • How Arts Hacker was born through identifying a need in the arts world that Drew and his team could meet better than anyone else

  • The importance of creating a workspace environment you can thrive in and of investing in yourself

  • How having good communication skills helps you focus

  • The problem with reading too much advice-driven content

Links:

Books:

Favorite Quote:

"If a problem exists is it because of a system, is it because of a problem, is it because of people, or is it a combination of the three?"

Bonus Quote:

"Anyone who is afraid to talk about failure is probably someone you want to listen to less and less."

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

TEM44: Don't try to change someone's world view

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TEM44: Don't try to change someone's world view

This episode features my thoughts about Seth Godin's opinion that you shouldn't try to change someone's world view.

Show notes for all episodes of TEM including links to all books and websites referenced can be found at:

http://www.andrewhitz.com/shownotes

Links:

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

Help With Google Analytics

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Do you have a website? If not, stop reading this and go build one.

If you do you should be using Google Analytics to analyze everything about the people visiting your website. What are the search terms that are leading people to you? How long are people staying before they leave? Are they using mobile devices or desktop computers?

The list goes on and on and all of this information can help you to best craft your message and then to get it in front of the right eyeballs. This type of analysis is not an option if you are taking your business seriously.

Don't know where to start? There's good news!

Arts Hacker, a website by Drew McManus, has a whole slew of tips on how to use Google Analytics. The posts at Arts Hacker are very well laid out and present actionable advice for anyone regardless of technical ability.

I just used this article to filter out my own visits to andrewhitz.com in order to get better data across the board. This is something I should have done long ago but until I saw that very short and to the point article leading me step-by-step through the process I never got around to it.

Arts Hacker Articles On Google Analytics

I'd encourage you to poke around the rest of the site. There's some very powerful tools there which are completely free!

TEM43: Know your risk tolerance (TEM Short)

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TEM43: Know your risk tolerance (TEM Short)

In Episode 42, Nate Zeisler of The Colburn School talked about his risk tolerance as an entrepreneur.

Everyone's tolerance for risk is different depending on a lot of factors: finances, age, family situation, and many others. Knowing your risk tolerance is an integral component when charting your career path.

Links:

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

When in doubt aim higher

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"Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss but because they aim too low and hit."

—Les Brown

Is your big entrepreneurial idea really big enough? Would the rest of the world agree that it is a big idea or is that just your perspective?

When in doubt, dream bigger. The ideas that catch fire in the world of business are the ones who have lots of impact. They can impact many. Or they have a huge impact on a smaller number of people.

I don't know about you but that Les Brown quote above scares the crap out of me in a good way. It is making me challenge my beliefs that some of my ideas are big ideas and that is healthy.

When in doubt, aim higher.

TEM42: Nate Zeisler of The Colburn School

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TEM42: Nate Zeisler of The Colburn School

Nate Zeisler is the Director of Community Engagement and Career Development at the Colburn School and one of the founders of Arts Enterprise. Over a decade ago he was at the forefront of the entrepreneurial movement within academia and is constantly working to educate students about the intersection of business and the arts.

Nate has had a fascinating career that has included being an elementary band director, a professional bassoon player, a creator of multiple organizations and a professor known for breaking down barriers within academia.

His positivity is contagious and his passion for his work is genuine and he was one of the people I instantly knew I needed to interview when I first dreamed up this podcast.

Topics Covered:

  • How he spent two years doing research before he founded his first chamber ensemble

  • The importance of knowing your risk tolerance when plotting your career

  • How he met his future cofounder of Arts Enterprise when he waited on her table as a doctoral student

  • Why the immediate success of arts enterprise at the university of Michigan made them aware that it would also work well at other schools

  • Why teaching an entrepreneurship class that combined music majors and business majors was so fascinating

  • Why being successful on a number of different fronts led him to reaching a breaking point

  • The importance of sustainability

  • What young musicians need to know about the intersection of business and the arts

  • The "Three Buckets" of project-based work

Links:

Resources Nate Recommends:

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

TEM41: Don't start with logistics (TEM Short)

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TEM41: Don't start with logistics (TEM Short)

A lot of us let logistics guide our dreams. Not David Cutler.

He is a great example in the music business of someone who dreams and dreams big and then figures out the logistics from there. We should all be like that all of the time.

Links:

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass

The will to execute

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"I don't think there is a shortage of remarkable ideas. I think your business has plenty of opportunities to do great things. Nope, what's missing isn't the ideas. It's the will to execute them."

—Seth Godin from The Purple Cow

This is especially true in the music business and in the arts in general. Artists are by definition creative people. We produce creative ideas for a living.

You have plenty of great ideas, many of them quite creative. The problem is so does your competition.

Execution is the name of the game.

It is infinitely harder to get your great idea for a chamber group booked for concerts than it is to come up with the group in the first place.

It is a lot harder to write a book than it is to come up with a good idea for one.

It is much easier to think of a great idea for a website than it is to actually build it.

If you are wondering why you are not having the same amount of success as your competition the answer is almost certainly execution. The X's and O's but also the will to execute.

TEM40: David Cutler of the Savvy Musician on being a creative problem solver, living in a golden era for artists and the link between impact and income

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TEM40: David Cutler of the Savvy Musician on being a creative problem solver, living in a golden era for artists and the link between impact and income

David Cutler is the author of The Savvy Musician and Associate Professor of Music Entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina. He is one of the world's foremost thought leaders in the field of arts entrepreneurship and his enthusiasm for the subject is contagious.

David is a great friend and I enjoy busting on him throughout this interview. I hate saying nice things about my friends but I can't deny that he truly is one of the experts in the field and that he was one of the main people who inspired me to take my career past simply trying to play the tuba well.

This interview will give you a little bit of insight into how his brain works and how he thinks about and approaches problems. It's a great lesson for all of in our quest to try to create something remarkable, just as David has done with The Savvy Musician.

But please don't tell him I said nice things about him. Thanks in advance.

Topics Covered:

  • How he took his skills as a classical musician and applied them to being a creative problem-solver when it came to his career

  • Why he thinks artists are living in a golden era

  • The importance of having both big ideas and follow through

  • Why he always starts with a dream and not with logistics

  • Why you should start with the why rather than the what

  • Why school is the time to be building your platform

  • Why doing your job well may not be enough to leave a mark on the world or to create a viable business model

  • How impact and income are linked if you do it right

  • How to make yourself indispensable

  • Why it is frequently not remarkable today to do one thing really well

Links:

Books:

Favorite Quote:

  • "Musicians are usually good at doing their job well. But there are generally speaking a lot of people who do their job well so you probably need to do more than that to be indispensable."

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass.

Different is better than better

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"Different is better than better." 

—Brian Clark (CEO of Rainmaker Digital)

Yes!

There is a very popular etude book for tuba by Phil Snedecor titled "Low Etudes for Tuba". Phil wrote this book years ago and it continues to sell very well for him in spite of having been released a long time ago. This is not by accident.

It turns out that back in the day John Cradler, Phil's friend who plays tuba in the Presidents' Own Marine Band, told Phil that he should not just write a tuba etude book but one that contains melodies in the extreme low register.

John pointed out to Phil that in spite of the existence of many tuba etude books there wasn't one that specifically addressed this skill head on. Phil asked him if it really would sell. John assured him that it was a glaring hole in the tuba etude book market and that it would.

Sure enough it did and continues to!

The point is that Phil didn't write a better version of a low etude book for tuba. He wrote the first book to do so.

Phil is an incredible writer (both arranger and composer) and very likely could have written a better book than what was already out there if he had been beaten to market by others.

But by writing the first book in that specific niche he was able to sell a whole bunch of them right away. It was a need that people didn't even realize they had and he solved it for them.

The path of least resistance to both impact and financial success is being different. This is much more important than being better.

TEM39: Going with Plan B (TEM Short)

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TEM39: Going with Plan B (TEM Short)

Setbacks are inevitable. Will you have the courage to act on your Plan B?

The story of ChopSaver's Dan Gosling's reaction to losing an orchestral audition for a position he had held for the last three years is truly remarkable.

He didn't just make a decision to pivot in his life. Within 48 hours he was taking actions towards that end. Truly inspirational stuff.

Links:

You can help offset the ongoing costs of producing the show by making a small donation at http://www.pedalnotemedia.com/support-the-entrepreneurial-musician. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Produced by Austin Boyer of FredBrass