Cultivating and Investing in Currency

When you practice, there’s an expectation for mistakes and experimentation.  You miss a run because of a tricky fingering, so you slow it down and do it various ways until you can play it in the desired manner and tempo.  Making a mistake in a practice room costs virtually nothing. For performances, the stakes are higher. How high depends on the performance. If you make a bunch of mistakes, people might not come the next one.

The same is true for entrepreneurship, where the stakes are nothing but high.  Once can practice with a group of friends by inviting them to play once a week or so.  Once paid musicians (with their livelihoods at stake) become involved, however, the costs of failure become, trust, time, and attention.  These are the real currencies of musical entrepreneurship. Mistakes are forgivable but require forgiveness. There is no such thing as a zero cost endeavor in musical entrepreneurship.  Everything matters from the beginning, so guts and integrity--to themselves and to their musicians--are musts for founders. We can cultivate these qualities. We can invest in time, attention, and trust.  Little by little where every little bit matters.

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