To some extent, there must be some personality types that enjoy entrepreneurship over others--at least you have to like to hustle. Do one thing, move onto the next. Find time for friends. Ensembles, and artistic endeavors in general, are necessarily process-oriented. Who would do all the legwork to find the people and then just stop. No one says, “I have achieved what I want: I have an ensemble.” An ensemble is like music itself, only alive as long as the musicians in it are rehearsing and performing. So, we have to keep moving. Might as well enjoy the hustle and the journey.
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Entrepreneurs keep on the move. Yet it remains important to find times of stillness and peace during the marathon—times that allow us to replenish our energy and our motivation. We might even listen to some music. What’s the point in doing all this work if you forget why you’re doing it?
We should seek out the masters of whatever field we’re in. They’ve been there, done that. And they’ve made mistakes we can learn from. Email them (they might not respond, but what if they do?), read what they’ve written, watch their videos. As entrepreneurs in the music field, we have more than just the master musicians—leaders, psychologists, inspirational speakers, these become our teachers, too. What we do is complex and multidimensional. Lots of places for failure to surprise us. By looking to those before us, we might avoid some failures and experience all new ones, failures we’ve earned. *Speaking of masters, I’ve released another episode of my podcast, a conversation with Tricia Park. She’s a musician with great entrepreneurial instincts, having founded both ensembles and music festivals. Check it out here.
The Army likes to push “hip-pocket training,” or training on-the-go. Basically, it’s something that a soldier is studying every time she/he waits in line or anytime there’s a spare moment. The soldier simply pulls out the thing to be studied.
With smartphones and tablets, you’d think we would see an explosion of hip-pocket training in the civilian world. The distractions become too tempting. What if we went back to the old-school way—carry a score or a book on business or finance. Anyone starting an ensemble has so much to learn. Old-fashioned reading and studying might help you make smarter decisions by using your time more wisely—by actually reading instead of scrolling through a feed in those passing moments. Smarter people, smarter decisions, better art, better world. We live with blind spots, whether it’s the percussion line at the bottom of a score, the tax requirements we didn’t realize we had, or that improvisation would be really helpful in getting a job. Sometimes they’re innocent enough. Other times, they are icebergs-in-waiting with potentially disastrous results. (Working through a venue with a proprietary ticketing system that requires your audience to do a lot of work to buy a ticket can result in deadly few ticket sales, for instance.)
How can we eliminate blind spots? 1) We can’t. Sometimes, we won’t know until it’s too late. It’s important to learn from those mistakes and to share with others in similar situations when possible. 2) We keep pushing our boundaries, working to discover what we don’t know we don’t know. We read. We learn from others. 3) Assume they’re there and react decisively when things do go awry. It can be tempting to compare ourselves to other people from high school, college, or studio. They are further ahead or have more—they’re where you ‘should’ be. Yet, that ‘should’ only exists within us. Are we making progress toward the work that matters most to us? To me, this is the more important question, perhaps to be followed up with: what can I do to make progress?
To do anything worthwhile, we must have courageous conversations, those conversations that we must initiate in order to grow and to become fully ourselves. Rarely will fate force our hand—it takes guts. We must determine what needs to be said, what boundaries to set, what hearts to break, or whom to stand up to. Then, we must willingly act and speak to the appropriate people. Only after these conversations can we act more freely and do what must be done. And, then we have to do it again and again until we ourselves become courageous.
It’s easy to over-promise. And it’s very easy to under-deliver. This leaves everyone involved feeling disappointed. A better strategy might be to promise the realistic and deliver the moon.
One friend decides to get the check at lunch. The next time, the other friend gets it. Nobody actually profits in this exchange. It’s not really a gift. Yet it’s a kindness in the moment, a process of trust that renews itself as long as the friends continue going to lunch together. What cycles of trust are you nurturing?
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